University of Virginia Library

The Rev. George Burroughs, the most notable of the victims at Salem. A graduate of Harvard in the class of 1670, he preached in Maine for some years, and in 1680 became pastor at Salem Village, where he fell heir to a parish quarrel, and, becoming involved in it, found it wise to remove in 1683 — Deodat Lawson succeeding him. Burroughs returned to Maine, and was a pastor there at Wells, when his accusation by the “afflicted” at Salem caused his arrest. He was brought back to Salem on May 4, committed on May 9, tried on August 5, executed on August 19. As to his story see especially Upham, Salem Witchcraft, Sibley, Harvard Graduates (II. 323-334), Moore, “Notes on the Bibliography of Witchcraft in Massachusetts” (in American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, n. s., V.), pp. 270-273, but, first of all, the mentions of Calef, reprinted below (pp. 301, 360-365, 378-379).

It is not improbable that Mather had already begun to find himself blamed for his harsh words as to Burroughs. On August 5, the day of his trial, he had written to a friend: “Our Good God is working of Miracles. Five Witches were Lately Executed, impudently demanding of God a Miraculous Vindication of their Innocency. Immediately upon this, Our God Miraculously sent in Five Andover-Witches, who made a most ample, surprising, amazing Confession, of all their Villainies and declared the Five newly executed to have been of their Company; discovering many more; but all agreeing in Burroughs being their Ringleader, who, I suppose, this day receives his Trial at Salem, whither a Vast Concourse of people is gone; My Father this morning among the Rest.”

John Gaule, rector of Great Stoughton, in Huntingdonshire, was the first to oppose openly the witch-finder Hopkins, and wrote a little book, Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcrafts (London, 1646), to lay bare his outrages and suggest saner methods. (See Notestein, Witchcraft in England, pp. 186-187, 236-237.) His rules for the detection of witches are published (though not without serious garbling) earlier in Mather's volume.

The wife and the daughter of Deodat Lawson; see p. 148.

I. e., those tried and executed in 1612, and famous through the Discoverie of Potts (London, 1613), which Mather seems here to use, and the play of Shadwell.

John Gaule again: this is the fifth of his “more certain” signs. (Select Cases, p. 82.)

But see, on the contrary, page 301.

He is quoting John Gaule — the first of his “more certain” signs (Select Cases, pp. 80-81).

Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark (London, 1656) — reprinted in 1661 as A Perfect Discovery of Witches. In neither edition are precisely these words to be found; but their substance occurs often. How bold and thoroughgoing a skeptic is Ady, and why Mather counts it answer enough that the passage was taken from his book, may be guessed from his opening sentence in which he gives “The Reason of the Book”: “The Grand Errour of these latter Ages is ascribing power to Witches, and by foolish imagination of mens brains, without grounds in the Scriptures, wrongfull killing of the innocent under the name of Witches.” “When one Mr. Burroughs, a Clergyman, who some few years since was hang'd in New-England as a Wizzard, stood upon his Tryal,” wrote Dr. Hutchinson in 1718 in the book that was to end the controversy (Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, p. xv), “he pull'd out of his Pocket a Leaf that he had got of Mr. Ady's Book, to prove that the Scripture Witchcrafts were not like ours: And as that Defence was not able to save him, I humbly offer my Book as an Argument on the Behalf of all such miserable People.”

“Presently” then meant “at once.”

For details as to his execution see above, p. 177, and below, pp. 360-361. Before accepting in perfect faith Mather's account of his trial, one should weigh not only the comments of Calef (see pp. 378-380, below) and the severer criticisms of Upham (Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather) but the extant records (Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 109-128; Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings, 1860-1862, pp. 31-37; indictment, Calef, p. 113).