Notes
[[80].]
William Stoughton (see above, p. 183 and note 2) was
of course also a nominee of Mather's. He had not been forward in the revolution
which overthrew the Andros government, but he had rallied to it, and Cotton
Mather had written his father wishing he might “do anything to restore
him to the favor of the country.”
[[81].]
In the last week of May, at his first meetings with the new Council. The
court began its sessions at Salem on June 2.
[[82].]
He was present in Boston at meetings of the Council on June 13, 18, July
4, 8, 15, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, September 5, 12, 16, and again on October 14
(Moore, in American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, n. s., V. 251 note). Sewall on September
29 notes in his diary: “Governor comes to Town.”
[[83].]
A summary of it may be found on pp. 356-357, below; the full text is
appended to Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience
(1693) and has been often reprinted, both with that work and in later books. It is
Cotton Mather himself (in his life of Phips) who tells us that he drafted it.
[[84].]
In his letter of May 31 to his parishioner John Richards, a member of the
court (Mather Papers, pp. 391-397). It is
endorsed — with reason — “Mr Cotton Mather, an Essay
concerning Witchcraft”; for an essay it really is. A supplement, and an
interesting one, is his letter of August 17 to John Foster, a member of the
Council (printed by Upham in his Salem Witchcraft and
Cotton Mather, pp. 39-40).
[[85].]
It has been questioned (by Upham and again by G. H. Moore) whether
“the Governor” whose “commands” Mather alleges
(see p. 206) may not be Stoughton instead of Phips; but his discrimination
between the two is too clear and too constant to admit the suspicion, and still less
can Stoughton and Sewall (see pp. 251, 378) have been inexact. A doubt as to
who consulted the clergy must be similarly answered. Yet Stoughton may well
have been behind both acts.
[[86].]
His phrases are taken almost bodily from the book (see, in Drake's
edition, pp. 102-109, not here reprinted); and his statement as to the methods of
the court echoes Mather's. It has been suggested (by Moore) that Mather himself
drafted the letter; but neither the style nor the matter of its later portion can be
his.
[[87].]
Cotton Mather, in his life of Phips, names as one of the causes of the
Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc., second series, I, 348-358) throw a vivid
light on the problems then agitating the public mind. They are dated at New York
on October 5, and the answers, dated October 11, cannot have reached Boston
before the middle of that month. More distinctly than the Boston clergy they
reject “spectral evidence.” According to the Anglican rector at New
York, John Miller (commenting on Mather's statement as borrowed by the
geographer Hermann Moll), “the advice of the established English Minister
was also asked and generously given”; “but,” he adds,
“they were not so civill as to thank him for it, nor do they here
acknowledge it, although it was much to their purpose, and stood them in good
stead.” It may be found, however, written out by his own hand in his copy
of Moll's Atlas (now in the New York Public
Library); and it is summarized at pp. 274-276 of the New York Historical
Society's Collections for 1869 and in the edition of
Miller's New York considered (1695) by Mr.
Paltsits (1903), to whom the editor owes suggestion of the matter. Miller's
answers are, indeed, somewhat less credulous than those of his Calvinist
colleagues; but (as appears from a “Memorandum” of his own) it
is by no means certain that they reached New England.
