Notes
[[367].]
I. e., “New Haven (or
Stratford)”: Hale was not sure (see p. 410) whether the
case in mind was at New Haven or at Stratford. Stratford, though so near New
Haven, was under the Connecticut government. Under that of New Haven there
were, so far as is known, no witch-executions.
[[368].]
Margaret Jones, executed at Boston on June 15, 1648. See
Winthrop, Journal, II. 344-345 (of the
edition in this series, II. 397 of ed. of 1853), and Poole in
Memorial History of Boston, II. 135-137; also, above,
p. 363, note 2 — for it was doubtless to Margaret Jones that the resolution
as to “watchinge” referred, and it suggests that her accusation too
may have been the outcome of the witch-hunt which had just been raging in the
Puritan counties of England. She was not, as thinks Hale, the first New England
victim; in Connecticut Alse Young was hanged, May 26, 1647.
[[369].]
The writer was then a boy of twelve.
[[370].]
Doubtless that “H. Lake's wife, of Dorchester, whom,” as
Nathaniel Mather in 1684 wrote to his brother Increase of having heard,
“the devill drew in by appearing to her in the likenes, and acting the part
of a child of hers then lately dead, on whom her heart was much set.”
(See Mather Papers, p. 58, and Poole in
N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXIV. 3,
note.) Mather had lived in Dorchester prior to his migration to England,
about 1650; but, as he had been in constant communication with friends in
America, it is not at all sure that his knowledge of this case antedates his leaving.
In Hale's account there seems some confusion with the case of Mary Parsons (p.
410).
[[372].]
Probably John Phillips of Dorchester — the conjecture is
Farmer's.
[[373].]
Mrs. Ann Hibbins, widow of one of the foremost men in Boston and said
to have been a sister of Governor Bellingham. (See Records of Massachusetts, IV., pt. 1, p. 269;
Hutchinson, Massachusetts, second ed., I. 187-188;
Me-morial History of Boston, II.
138-141.)
[[374].]
This was the case of Mary Parsons and her husband Hugh, whom she
accused (1651). (See Drake, Annals of
Witchcraft, pp. 64-72, and especially the appended papers of Hugh
Parsons's case, pp. 219-258. The originals of these papers are now in the New
York Public Library. Others, from the Suffolk court files, are printed in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXXV.
152-153.)
[[375].]
Not in the Remarkable Providences of
Increase Mather, but in the Memorable Providences
of Cotton Mather at the pages named (see above, pp.
135-136).
[[376].]
Probably that “Goody Bassett” who was on trial at Stratford
in 1651 (Connecticut Records, I. 220), and of whom
we know from testimony given at New Haven in 1654 (New Haven Records, II. 83) that she was condemned and
that she confessed.
[[377].]
See above, pp. 19-20.
[[378].]
When in 1669 the Connecticut court asked the ministers their opinion as
to this point, they answered in almost these words (see Taylor, The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, p.
58). This opinion is said to be in the hand-writing of the Rev. Gershom
Bulkeley, the author of Will and Doom. But it does
not follow that he was its author, much less that he was the originator of this
dictum. Whatever its source, it is to be suspected that it had originally nothing
to do with “spectral evidence,” but was only a protest against such
pleas as that of the bishop who, caught under the bed of a nun, maintained later
that the cul-prit was only the Devil impersonating him. On Bulkeley and his
rational atti-tude toward later charges of witchcraft, see his Will and Doom (Conn. Hist. Soc., Collections, III.), introduction and pp.
233-235.
[[379].]
See above, p. 239, note 1.
[[380].]
See above, in paragraph 1.
[[381].]
What is meant, as is clear from Hale's later quotations, is Keble's Assis-tance to Justices. See above, p. 163, note
2.
[[382].]
See above, p. 304, note 5.
[[383].]
Mrs. Morse. See above, pp. 23-31.
[[384].]
Goody Glover. See above, pp. 100 ff.
[[385].]
See above, pp. 91 ff.
