Published a year before the Salem Witch Trails, ‘The Certainty of the World of the Spirits‘ was a pamphlet detailing the events of the Bury St Edmunds Witch trials in the town of the same name in Suffolk, England; the trials were instigated by Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General of England. The author of the pamphlet Richard Baxter, was a friend of Sir Matthew Hale, who would preside as judge during the 1662 trail.  Hale’s judgment in the case would act as a powerful influence on the continuing persecution of witches in England and similar persecutions in the American colonies, leading to the Salem Witch trials for which this pamphlet was influential in the conducting of the trials.