Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706

I. e., in February and March of the year we call 1692. As to all this story see above the parallel narratives of Lawson (pp. 147 ff.) and Calef (pp. 341 ff.).

[[387].]

See above, pp. 205 ff.

[[388].]

This fast, enacted on May 6, was celebrated on May 26, 1692 (Massachu-setts Acts and Resolves, VII. 459).

[[389].]

Sarah Osborn and Sarah Good.

[[390].]

Precedents.

[[391].]

See above, p. 163, note 2. “Conjuration” is the heading given by Keble to his section on witchcraft (pp. 217-220).

[[392].]

The account is not Sir Matthew's own, nor yet an official record, but one taken down “for his own satisfaction” “by a Person then Attending the Court,” and so did not till 1682 find its way into print. As we have seen (p. 215, note 1) it was embodied by Cotton Mather in his Wonders.

[[393].]

See above, pp. 5-6.

[[394].]

See above, p. 304, note 5.

[[395].]

Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (1691), really a collection of witch stories, has been earlier described (p. 98, note 2). The name of “R. Bur-ton,” or “R. B.,” the pseudonym under which the prolific London publisher Nathaniel Crouch concealed his identity, is attached to a multitude of chap-books; but that here in question was undoubtedly his The Kingdom of Darkness (London, 1688), a pictorial “history of dæmons, specters, witches, apparitions, possessions, disturbances, and other wonderful and supernatural delusions, mis-chievous feats, and malicious impostures of the Devil,” “together with a preface obviating the common objections and allegations of the Sadduces and Atheists of the age.” It is, in other words, a credulous hodge-podge of all the older witch and devil tales that could be packed into its duodecimo pages; tales made vivid by its startling frontispiece and the crude but awful woodcuts that adorn its text.

[[396].]

Deliverance Hobbs — called by error “Deborah” on p. 347. The court record of her examination may be found in Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 186-192.

[[397].]

George Burroughs.

[[398].]

Ann Foster. See above, pp. 244, 366. As her son later alleged, she “suffered imprisonment twenty-one weeks and upon her Tryall was condemned for supposed witchcraft... and died in prison.”

[[399].]

“Among other things.”

[[400].]

Martha Carrier. See above, pp. 241-244.

[[401].]

Doubtless a printer's error for M. C. (Martha Carrier).

[[402].]

Mary Lacy. See pp. 244, 366. Though condemned, she escaped death.

[[403].]

Again a misprint for M. C. (see Mary Lacy's testimony in Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 140: “her mother Foster, Goody Carrier and herself rid upon a pole to Salem Village meeting”).

[[404].]

Richard Carrier, son of Martha.

University of Virginia Library

Notes