 | Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 |  |
FROM “MORE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD,” BY ROBERT CALEF, 1700
INTRODUCTION
Of Robert Calef almost nothing is known except what can be learned from his book. There has even been doubt as to whether, of the two Robert Calefs known to us in Boston at this time, the writer was the father or the son. In 1692, the time of the Salem witchcraft, the father's age was 44, the son's 18.[149] It is unlikely that anybody would have thought of the son but for a note copied into one of the memorandum-books of Dr. Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798).[150] This note, of unknown source reads: “Robert Calef, author of `More Wonders of the Invisible World,' printed at London in 1700, was a native of England; a young man of good sense, and free from superstition; a merchant in Boston. He was furnished with materials for his work by Mr. Brattle, of Cambridge; and his brother, of Boston; and other gentlemen, who were opposed to the Salem proceedings. — E. P.” The writer speaks as if with knowledge; and that so sound a historian as Dr. Belknap should have copied the note speaks for its worth. Able scholars have by it been led to ascribe the book to the younger Robert; but more careful study seems to show the objections insuperable. The author never adds “Jr.” to his name, as a son would have done, and as seems to have been the younger Robert's custom.[151] He never pleads youth, even
Robert Calef the elder came to America at some time before 1688. He was a cloth-merchant, and doubtless a maker as
His book, though completed in 1697, was not printed till 1700, and then in London. In June, 1698, Cotton Mather records in his diary that “a sort of a Sadducee in this town” “hath written a Volumn of invented and notorious lies”; “this Volumn,” he adds, “hee is, as I understand, sending to England, that it may bee printed there.” Why it found no printer in New England can be guessed; the storm it raised when it appeared in print is well known. President Increase Mather “ordered the wicked book to be burnt in the college yard,” [154] and his son's diary is eloquent with vexation.
“Some Years ago,” runs his entry of November 15, 1700, “a very wicked sort of a Sadducee in this Town, raking together a crue of Libels, which he had written at several Times,
It was even felt necessary to print a reply; but the two Mathers held it beneath them to plead in their own vindication. It fell to their parishioners. “My pious neighbours are so provoked,” writes Cotton Mather (December 4), “at the diabolical Wickedness of the Man who has published a Volume of Libels against my Father and myself, that they sett apart whole Dayes of Prayer, to complain unto God against him.” The outcome of their communings together was a pamphlet called Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book against the Gospel and Ministry of New England, written by one Robert Calef. It was signed by seven, one of them John Goodwin; but the materials were furnished by their pastors. It aimed however at their personal exculpation, and has small interest for the public story.[155]
The doughty merchant survived the storm. In 1702-1704 he served his townsmen as an overseer of the poor, in 1707
Calef's book has been five times reprinted: in 1796, at Salem, by William Carlton (12°, pp. 318); again at Salem, in 1823, a mere reimpression, with the addition, from the court files, of Giles Corey's examination (12°, pp. 312); in Boston, 1828 (24°, pp. 333), again a reimpression; at Salem, 1861, edited by Mr. S. P. Fowler, with Cotton Mather's Wonders, in his volume Salem Witchcraft (see p. 207); and, more faithfully, in 1866 at Roxbury, as nos. VI., VII., of Woodward's Historical Series, under the editorship of S. G. Drake (see pp. 207-208). The present text follows the original edition (1700), but corrects it by the list of Errata to be found in the copy (once Cotton Mather's) possessed by the Massachusetts Historical Society.[157]
Notes
S. G. Drake, in the introduction to his edition of Calef, would make his age 14; but the genealogist of the family, Mr. Matthew A. Stickney, says 18. Yet Mr. Stickney urges the father's authorship (N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXX. 461; XLIX. 224). He died in 1894, leaving this genealogy, alas, unpublished, and his heirs decline to let it be consulted.
Thus in 1706 “Robt. Calef, Jun.,” was chosen a clerk of the market (Boston Record Commissioners' Reports, VIII. 36); thus in 1708 “Robert Calef, junr.” becomes a constable (id., VIII. 45), and gains permission to erect a house (id., XI. 68, XXIX. 187); thus, too, in that year (see plate) he signs himself “Ro. Calfe Jnr”; thus in 1710 “Robert Calfe, Jr.,” appears on the rolls of the Artillery Company (N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXXVIII. 341); and it is after his father's death that (see plate) in 1719 to a receipted account, in 1721 to his will, in 1722 to the release of a mortgage, he signed “Rob Calfe”, “Ro: Calfe”, “Robert Calfe” (see the last two in Drake's Witchcraft Delusion, II. xxii, xxiv).
From the author of More Wonders we have two unquestionable autographs: (1) his marginalia of 1695 on Cotton Mather's paper (see below, p. 306, note 1) and (2) a letter of 1700 presenting a copy of his book to the Earl of Bellomont, then governor of Massachusetts and New York. A page of the former is to be photographed in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Proceedings for 1913-1914; and the latter (now in the New York Public Library) is reproduced in full in the Memorial History of Boston (II. 168). Specimens of both are given in our own plate; and to these are added (1) the signature “Robert Calef” from the report of two appraisers, October 30, 1693; (2) the signature “Robt. Calef” from the verdict of a Boston coroner's jury, January 15, 1696; (3) the same signature, with a line or two of text in the same hand, from the decision of two arbitrators (Boston, July 29, 1697); and (4) the last lines and the signature of a paper drawn by “Robt. Calef” as a selectman of Roxbury in March, 1717 (?). That all six specimens are in the same hand, and in a hand different from the younger Calef's, will hardly be questioned. Is not the older Robert, too, more likely than the younger to have been an appraiser in 1693, a coroner's juror in 1696, and an arbiter in 1697? And (though Calef and Calfe were undoubtedly pronounced alike or nearly so) is it not less probable that the author of More Wonders changed the habitual spelling of his signature than that a younger Robert, if not the author, should thus have distinguished his identity from his father's? What arguments led the genealogist Stickney to ascribe the book to the father cannot now be learned: the “full statement of the reasons” promised by him to the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register (see XXX. 461) was, like his genealogy, never published. But, from an article on “Robert Calef” by Mr. W. S. Harris in the Granite Monthly for 1907 (XXXIX. 157-163), and from correspondence with its author, it is learned that another student of the Calef pedigree (Mr. W. W. Lunt, of Hingham, Mass.) has reached that result by a comparison of handwritings. Mr. Harris, it should be added, quotes the Rev. John Kelly as saying in a funeral sermon (1808) for Judge John Calfe (b. 1740) of Hampstead, N. H., that the latter's ancestor (who was the elder Calef, not the younger) was the author of the book.
In 1701 Cotton Mather calls him “the Weaver (though he presumes to call himself Merchant)” (Some Few Remarks, p. 35).
Let any who would know the contents of the excessively rare little booklet turn to the works of Upham and Poole mentioned on p. 91; and in his Diary (I. 383-384) Mather narrates how the book was compiled. The More Wonders it describes as “a Libellous Book lately come into this Countrey... which is writ (with what help we know not) by one Robert Calef, who presumes to call himself Merchant of Boston.” “It was highly rejoicing to us,” add the writers, “when we heard that our Booksellers were so well acquainted with the Integrity of our Pastors, as that not one of them could admit of any of those Libels to be vended in their shops.” Pp. 34-50 of its seventy-one pages are taken up by a letter of Cotton Mather to the authors. It was perhaps a passage in Mather's letter that led “E. P.” to think Robert Calef a “young man”; for those words, in italics and with capital initials, stare from a sentence so obscure that to a hasty glance Calef, instead of Mather himself, might easily seem to be meant.
For these and other personal details see Drake's memoir, in his ed. of Calef, and his History and Antiquities of Boston, pp. 529, 531; Boston Record Commissioners' Reports, I. 156, 160, VII. 210, 218, 225, 229, VIII. 24, 26, 31, 33, 41, 43, 75, IX. 179, 195, XI. 145; Memorial History of Boston, IV. 652; F. S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury (Boston, 1905), pp. 102, 140-149; N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XIV. 52; and the above-cited article of W. S. Harris, which has a photograph of the gravestone. From these mentions will be learned also the name of his wife, Mary, and of the two of his eight children who were born (1688, 1691) after his coming to Boston. It will be learned, too, that in 1692 he was a constable, in 1694 hayward and fenceviewer, in 1697 a surveyor of highways, in 1698 a clerk of the market. At least it is to “Robert Calef,” not to “Robert Calef, Jr.,” that the records award these offices. And it is perhaps to be noticed that while the name of “Robert Calef” is often preceded by “Mr.”, that title does not appear before that of “Robert Calef, Jr.”
MORE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD
More Wonders of the Invisible World: Or, The Wonders of the Invisible World, Display'd in Five Parts.
Part I. An Account of the Sufferings of Margaret Rule, Written by the Reverend Mr. C. M.
P. II. Several Letters to the Author, etc. And his Reply relating to Witchcraft.
P. III. The Differences between the Inhabitants of Salem Village, and Mr. Parris their Minister, in New-England.
P. IV. Letters of a Gentleman uninterested, Endeavouring to prove the received Opinions about Witchcraft to be Orthodox. With short Essays to their Answers.
P. V. A short Historical Accou[n]t of Matters of Fact in that Affair.
To which is added, A Postscript relating to a Book intitled, The Life of Sir William Phips.
Collected by Robert Calef, Merchant, of Boston in New-England. Licensed and Entred according to Order.
London: Printed for Nath. Hillar, at the Princes-Arms, in Leaden-Hall-street, over against St. Mary-Ax, and Joseph Collyer, at the Golden-Bible, on London-Bridge. 1700.[158]
Notes
The Epistle to the Reader, And more especially to the Noble Bereans[159] of this Age, wherever Residing.
You that are freed from the Slavery of a corrupt Education; and that in spite of human Precepts, Examples and Presidents,[160] can hearken to the Dictates of Scripture and Reason:
For your sakes I am content, that these Collections of mine, as also my Sentiments should be exposed to publick view; In hopes that having well considered, and compared them with Scripture, you will see reason, as I do, to question a belief so prevalent (as that here treated of) as also the practice flowing from thence; they standing as nearly connext as cause and effect; it being found wholly impracticable, to extirpate the latter without first curing the former.
And if the Buffoon or Satyrical will be exercising their Talents, or if the Biggots wilfully and blindly reject the Testimonies of their own Reason, and more sure word, it is no more than what I expected from them.
But you Gentlemen, I doubt not, are willing to Distinguish between Truth and Error, and if this may be any furtherance to you herein, I shall not miss my Aim.
But if you find the contrary, and that my belief herein is any way Heterodox, I shall be thankful for the Information to any Learned or Reverend Person, or others, that shall take that pains to inform me better by Scripture, or sound Reason, which is what I have been long seeking for in this Country in vain.
In a time when not only England in particular, but almost all Europe had been labouring against the Usurpations of Tyranny and Slavery, The English America has not been behind in a share in the Common calamities; more especially New-England has met not only with such calamities as are common to the rest, but with several aggravations enhansing such Afflictions, by the Devastations and Cruelties of the Barbarous Indians in their Eastern borders, etc.
But this is not all, they have been harrast (on many accounts) by a more dreadful Enemy, as will herein appear to the considerate.
P. 66.[161] Were it as we are told in Wonders of the Invisible World, that the Devils were walking about our Streets with
P. 49. And that the Devil exhibiting himself ordinarily as a black-Man,[162] had decoy'd a fearful knot of Proud, Froward, Ignorant, Envious and Malitious Creatures, to list themselves in his horrid Service, by entring their Names in a Book tendered unto them; and that they have had their Meetings and Sacraments, and associated themselves to destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the World; having each of them their Spectres, or Devils Commissionated by them, and representing of them, to be the Engines of their Malice, by these wicked Spectres siezing poor People about the Country with various and bloody Torments. And of those evidently preternatural Torments some to[o] have died. And that they have bewitched some even so far, as to make them self destroyers, and others in many Towns here and there languish'd under their evil hands. The People thus afflicted miserably scratch'd and bitten; and that the same Invisible Furies did stick Pins in them, and scald them, distort and disjoint them, with a Thousand other Plagues; and sometimes drag them out of their Chambers, and carry them over Trees and Hills Miles together, many of them being tempted to sign the Devils Laws.
P. 7[0]. These furies whereof several have killed more People perhaps than would serve to make a Village.[163]
If this be the true state of the Afflictions of this Country, it is very deplorable, and beyond all other outward Calamities miserable. But if on the other side, the Matter be as others do understand it, That the Devil has been too hard for us by his Temptations, signs, and lying Wonders, with the help of pernicious notions, formerly imbibed and professed; together with the Accusations of a parcel of possessed, distracted, or lying Wenches, accusing their Innocent Neighbours, pretending they see their Spectres (i. e.) Devils in their likeness Afflicting of them, and that God in righteous Judgment (after Men
All which Tragedies, tho begun in one Town, or rather by one Parish, has Plague-like spread more than through that Country. And by its Eccho giving a brand of Infamy to this whole Country, throughout the World,
If this were the Miserable case of this Country in the time thereof, and that the Devil had so far prevailed upon us in our Sentiments and Actions, as to draw us from so much as looking into the Scriptures for our guidance in these pretended Intricacies, leading us to a trusting in blind guides, such as the corrupt practices of some other Countries, or the bloody Experiments of Bodin, and such other Authors — Then tho our Case be most miserable, yet it must be said of New-England, Thou has destroyed thy self, and brought this greatest of Miseries upon thee.
And now whether the Witches (such as have made a compact by Explicit Covenant with the Devil, having thereby obtained a power to Commissionate him) have been the cause of our miseries,
Or whether a Zeal governed by blindness and passion, and
To be able to distinguish aright in this matter, to which of these two to refer our Miseries is the present Work. As to the former, I know of no sober Man, much less Reverend Christian, that being ask'd dares affirm and abide by it, that Witches have that power; viz. to Commissionate Devils to kill and destroy. And as to the latter, it were well if there were not too much of truth in it, which remains to be demonstrated.
But here it will be said, what need of Raking in the Coals that lay buried in oblivion. We cannot recall those to Life again that have suffered, supposing it were unjustly; it tends but to the exposing the Actors, as if they had proceeded irregularly.
Truly I take this to be just as the Devil would have it, so much to fear disobliging men, as not to endeavour to detect his Wiles, that so he may the sooner, and with the greater Advantages set the same on foot again (either here or else where) so dragging us through the Pond twice by the same Cat.[165] And if Reports do not (herein) deceive us, much the same has been acting this present year in Scotland.[166] And what Kingdom or Country is it, that has not had their bloody fits and turns at it. And if this is such a catching disease, and so universal, I presume I need make no Apology for my Endeavours to prevent, as far as in my power, any more such bloody Victims or Sacrifices; tho indeed I had rather any other would
So also they own Gods Providence and Government of the World, and that Tempests and Storms, Afflictions and Diseases, are of his sending; yet these Notions tell us, that the Devil has the power of all these, and can perform them when commission'd by a Witch thereto, and that he has a power at the Witches call to act and do, without and against the course of Nature, and all natural causes, in afflicting and killing of Innocents; and this is that so many have died for.
Also it is generally believed, that if any Man has strength, it is from God the Almighty Being: But these notions will tell us, that the Devil can make one Man as strong as many, which was one of the best proofs, as it was counted, against Mr. Burroughs the Minister;[168] tho his contemporaries in the Schools during his Minority could have testified, that his strength was then as much superiour to theirs as ever (setting aside incredible Romances) it was discovered to be since. Thus rendring the power of God, and his providence of none Effect.
These are some of the destructive notions of this Age, and however the asserters of them seem sometimes to value themselves much upon sheltring their Neighbours from Spectral Accusations, They may deserve as much thanks as that Tyrant, that having industriously obtained an unintelligible charge against his Subjects, in matters wherein it was impossible they should be Guilty, having thereby their lives in his power, yet suffers them of his meer Grace to live, and will be call'd gracious Lord.
It were too Icarian[169] a task for one unfurnish'd with necessary learning, and Library, to give any Just account, from whence so great delusions have sprung, and so long continued. Yet as an Essay from those scraps of reading that I have had opportunity of, it will be no great venture to say, that Signs and Lying Wonders have been one principal cause.[170]
It is written of Justin Martyr, who lived in the second Century, that he was before his conversion a great Philosopher; first in the way of the Stoicks, and after of the Peripateticks, after that of the Pythagorean, and after that of the Platonists sects; and after all proved of Eminent use in the Church of Christ; Yet a certain Author speaking of one Apollonius Tyaneus[171] has these words, “That the most Orthodox themselves began to deem him vested with power sufficient for a Deity; which occasioned that so strange a doubt from Justin Martyr, as cited by the learned Gregory, Fol. 37.,[172] etc. If God be the Creator and Lord of the World, how comes it to pass that Apollonius his Telisms,[173] have so much over-ruled the course of things! for we see that they also have stilled the Waves of the Sea, and the raging of the Winds, and prevailed against the Noisome Flies, and Incursions of wild Beasts,” etc. If so Eminent and Early a Christian were by these false shews in such doubt, it is the less wonder in our
This same Julian did, when Apostate, forbid that Christians should be instructed in the Discipline of the Gentiles, which (it seems) Socrates a Writer of the Ecclesiastical History, does acknowledge to be by the singular Providence of God; Christians having then begun to degenerate from the Gospel, and to betake themselves to Heathenish learning. And in the Mercury for the Month of February, 1695, there is this Account, “That the Christian Doctors conversing much with the writings of the Heathen, for the gaining of Eloquence, A Counsel[175] was held at Carthage, which forbad the reading of the Books of the Gentiles.”
From all which it may be easily perceived, that in the Primitive times of Christianity, when not only many Heathen of the Vulgar, but also many learn'd Men and Philosophers had imbraced the Christian Faith, they still retained a love to their Heathen-learning, which as one observes being transplanted into a Christian soile, soon proved productive of pernicious weeds, which over-ran the face of the Church, hence it was so deformed as the Reformation found it.
Among other pernicious Weeds arising from this Root, the Doctrine of the power of Devils and Witchcraft as it is now, and long has been understood, is not the least; the Fables of Homer, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, etc., being for the Elegancy of their Language retained then (and so are to this day) in the schools, have not only introduced, but established such Doctrines to the poisoning the Christian World. A certain Author Expresses it thus, “that as the Christian Schools at first brought Men from Heathenism to the Gospel, so these Schools carry Men from the Gospel to Heathenism, as to their great perfection,” and Mr. I. M.[176] in his Remarkable Providences, gives an account that (as he calls it) an Old Counsel[177] did
The first in England that I have read of, of any note since the Reformation, that asserts this Doctrine, is the famous Mr. Perkins,[180] he (as also Mr. Gaul,[181] and Mr. Bernard,[182] etc. seems all of them to have undertaken one Task, they) taking notice of the Multiplicity of irregular ways to try them by, invented by Heathen and Papists, made it their business and main work herein to oppose such as they saw to be pernicious. And if they did not look more narrowly into it, but followed the first, viz. Mr. Perkins whose Education (as theirs also) had
But tho this be their main design to take off People from those Evil and bloody ways of trial which they speak so much against, Yet this does not hinder to this day, but the same evil ways or as bad are still used to detect them by, and that even among Protestants; and is so far Justified, that a Reverend Person has said lately here, how else shall we detect Witches? And another being urged to prove by Scripture such a sort of Witch as has power to send Devils to kill men, replied, that he did as firmly believe it as any article of his Faith. And that he (the Inquirer) did not go to the Scripture, to learn the Mysteries of his trade or Art. What can be said more to Establish there Heathenish notions and to villifie the Scriptures, our only Rule; and that after we have seen such dire effects thereof, as has threatned the utter Extirpation of this whole Country.
And as to most of the Actors in these Tragedies, tho they are so far from defending their Actions that they will Readily own, that undue steps have been taken, etc., Yet it seems they choose that the same should be Acted over again inforced by their Example, rather than that it should Remain as a Warning to Posterity, wherein they have mist it. So far are they from giving Glory to God, and taking the due shame to themselves.
And now to sum up all in a few words, we have seen a Biggotted Zeal, stirring up a Blind and most Bloody rage, not against Enemies, or Irreligious Proffligate Persons, But (in Judgment of Charity, and to view) against as Vertuous and Religious as any they have left behind them in this Country, which have suffered as Evil doers with the utmost extent of rigour (not that so high a Charactor is due to all that Suffered)
And then tho they could defend neither the Doctrine, nor the Practice, yet none of them have in such a publick manner as the case Requires, testified against either; tho at the same time they could not but be sensible what a Stain and lasting Infamy they have brought upon the whole Country, to the Indangering the future welfair not only of this but of other places, induced by their Example; if not, to an intailing the Guilt of all the Righteous Blood that has been by the same means Shed, by Heathen or Papists, etc., upon themselves, whose deeds they have so far justified, occasioning the great Dishonour and Blasphemy of the Name of God, Scandalizing the Heathen, hardning of Enemies; and as a Natural effect thereof, to the great Increase of Atheism.
I shall conclude only with acquainting the Reader, that of these Collections, the first, containing more Wonders of the Invisible World, I received of a Gentleman,[183] who had it of the Author and communicated it to me,[184] with his express consent, of which this is a true Copy.[185] As to the Letters, they
Letter
I now lay before you a very Entertaining Story, a Story which relates yet more Wonders of the Invisible World,[186] a Story which tells the Remarkable Afflictions and Deliverance of one that had been Prodigiously handled by the Evil Angels. I was my self a daily Eye Witness to a large part of these Occurrences, and there may be produced Scores of Substantial Witnesses to the most of them; yea, I know not of any one Passage of the Story, but what may be sufficiently Attested. I do not Write it with a design of throwing it presently into the Press, but only to preserve the Memory of such Memorable things, the forgetting whereof would neither be pleasing to God, nor useful to Men; as also to give you, with some others of peculiar and obliging Friends, a sight of some Curiosities, and I hope this Apologie will serve to Excuse me, if I mention, as perhaps I may, when I come to a tenth Paragraph in my Writing,[187] some things which I would have omitted in a farther Publication.
Notes
I. e., to those with open minds: the Bereans are commended (Acts xvii. 11) as “more noble” because “they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.”
This page-number and those which follow refer to the pages of Mather's Wonders (original edition), from which the substance of these paragraphs is quoted. The passages quoted will be found in Mather's book at pp. 48, 41, 50, of the first London edition, at pp. 95, 80-82, 100, of that of 1862, at pp. 121-122, 102-104, 128, of the American edition of 1866. They do not belong to the pages reprinted in the present volume.
How Mather conceived this “black man” to look appears from the description he ascribes to Mercy Short (p. 261, above).
In the original there is here no paragraph, the paragraph beginning after the next sentence with “But, if,” etc.
For a description of the joke, played on boobies, of “dragging through a pond with a cat,” see the Oxford Dictionary, s. v. Cat, III. 14, or Grose, Dictionary of Vulgar Terms, s. v. “Cat-whipping.” “We hope, sir,” said in 1682 the London Gazette, “that this Nation will be too wise, to be drawn twice through the same Water by the very same Cat.”
As Calef is writing in August, 1697, he doubtless has in mind the cases in Renfrewshire, where on June 10 several witches were hanged, then burned, on the Gallow Green of Paisley; a “Relation” then printed recounts “the Diabolical Practices of above Twenty.” Neither the relation nor the tidings of the burning could well have reached America by August 11; but the trials had been notorious for months. In Scotland, however, such things had been constant, as may be seen by the records of the Privy Council. Those of this period are chronicled by Robert Chambers in his Domestic Annals of Scotland.
I. e., presumptuous, like the venture of Icarus, who flew so high that the sun melted off his wings.
Apollonius of Tyana, the first-century Pythagorean philosopher and wonder-worker, like Justin Martyr, the second-century apologist of Christianity, is perhaps too well to need a footnote.
William Perkins (1558-1602), the eminent Cambridge divine — “our Perkins,” as Increase Mather calls him — whose Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (London, 1608, 1610, and in the many editions of his Works) was the highest authority to Puritans.
Richard Bernard (1567-1641), long minister of Batcombe in Somersetshire. His Guide to Grand-Jurymen... in cases of Witchcraft (1627, 1629) was, though credulous and cruel enough, the most mild and cautious of the Puritan monographs. The tiny volume, now very rare, had perhaps never a great circulation (in 1692 Increase Mather declares it, like Gaule's book, “rare to be had”); but its rules for the detection of witches gained much vogue from their adoption by Michael Dalton into his The Countrey Justice, the standard manual for the procedure of the lower courts. It is clearly, however, from Bernard's book itself that Cotton Mather has abridged these rules in his Wonders; and the book, as well as this extract, was doubtless in the hands of the Salem judges. Increase Mather quotes it often, and by page, and tells us that it “is a solid and a wise treatise.” (Cases of Conscience, 1693, p. 18.)
It has been conjectured that this gentleman may have been one of the two Brattles. In a letter of March 1, 1695 (More Wonders, p. 30 — not here reprinted), to a “Mr. B.” (Brattle?) Calef mentions other papers received from Mather through his hands — but to be returned speedily and not copied. He, however, he says, made notes in the margin where he thought it needful. These papers, as it will rejoice all students to learn, have just been identified by Mr. Worthington C. Ford (to whose courtesy the editor owes his knowledge of them) among those in the keeping of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and they will be published in full — both Mather's text and Calef's marginalia (with a facsimile plate) in that society's Proceedings for 1913-1914. See also below, p. 388, at end.
A copy, not of the “express consent,” but of the “More Wonders of the Invisible World” — the Margaret Rule story as a whole — to which the letter of Mather introducing it was perhaps attached as a sort of open “letter to the reader.” Between this preface and that letter there intervenes a table of contents, not here reprinted.
It is, in other words, a supplement to his book thus entitled, as its other name, “Another Brand pluckt out of the Burning,” makes it a supplement to his Mercy Short narrative.
As to this letter see p. 306, note 3. The Margaret Rule MS. is still preserved in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society; and Poole, who used it for his chapter on witchcraft in the Memorial History of Boston, has in a footnote (II. 152) printed a facsimile of the “To bee Return'd unto C. Mather” written on it by its author.
ANOTHER BRAND PLUCKT OUT OF THE
BURNING, OR, MORE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD
PART I.
Section I. The Afflictions of Margaret Rule.
Within these few years there died in the Southern Parts a Christian Indian, who notwithstanding some of his Indian Weakness, had something of a better Character of vertue and Goodness, than many of our People can allow to most of their Countrey-men, that profess the Christian Religion. He had been a Zealous Preacher of the Gospel to his Neighbour-hood, and a sort of Overseer, or Officer, to whose Conduct was owing very much of what good order was maintained among those Proselited Savages: This Man returning home from the Funeral of his Son, was Complemented by an English-Man, expressing Sorrow for his Loss; now, tho' the Indians use, upon the Death of Relations, to be the most Passionate and Outragious Creatures in the World, yet this Converted Indian Handsomely and Chearfully repli'd, “Truly I am sorry, and I am not sorry; I am sorry that I have Buried a dear Son; but I am not sorry that the will of God is done. I know that without the will of God my Son could not have Died, and I know that the will of God is allways just and good, and so I am satisfied.” Immediately upon this, even within a few hours, he fell himself Sick of a Disease that quickly kill'd him; in the time of which Disease he called his Folks about him, earnestly perswading them to be Sincere in their Praying unto God, and beware of the Drunkenness, the Idleness, the Lying, whereby so many of that Nation disgrac'd their Profession of Christianity; adding, that he was ashamed when he thought how little Service he had hitherto done for God; and that if God would prolong his Life he would Labour to do better Service, but that he was fully sure he was now going to the Lord Jesus Christ, who had bought him with his own Precious Blood; and for his part he long'd to Die that he might be with his Glorious Lord; and in the mid'st of such passages he gave up
This is a Story which I would never have tendered unto my Reader, if I had not Receiv'd it from an honest and useful English Man, who is at this time a Preacher of the Gospel to the Indians,[189] nor would the probable[190] Truth of it have encouraged me to have tendered it, if this also had not been a fit introduction unto yet a further Narrative.
Sect. 2. 'Twas not much above a year or two, after this Accident (of which no manner of Noise has been made) that there was a Prodigious descent of Devils upon divers places near the Center of this Province, wherein some scores of Mis
Sect. 3. 'Twas upon the Lords Day the 10th of September, in the Year 1693, that Margaret Rule, after some hours of previous disturbance in the Publick Assembly, fell into odd
Sect. 4. The Young Woman was assaulted by Eight cruel Spectres, whereof she imagin'd that she knew three or four, but the rest came still with their Faces cover'd, so that she could never have a distinguishing view of the countenance of those whom she thought she knew; she was very careful of my reitterated charges to forbear blazing the Names, lest any good Person should come to suffer any blast of Reputation thro' the cunning Malice of the great Accuser; nevertheless having since privately named them to my self, I will venture to say this of them, that they are a sort of Wretches who for these many years have gone under as Violent Presumptions of Witchcraft, as perhaps any creatures yet living upon Earth; altho' I am farr from thinking that the Visions of this Young Woman were Evidence enough to prove them so. These cursed Spectres now brought unto her a Book about a Cubet long, a Book Red and thick, but not very broad, and they demanded of her that she would set her Hand to that Book, or touch it at least with her Hand, as a Sign of her becoming a Servant of the Devil; upon her peremptory refusal to do what they asked, they did not after renew the profers of the
Sect. 5. Sometimes, but not always, together with the Spectres there look't in upon the Young Woman (according to her account) a short and a Black Man, whom they call'd their Master, a Wight exactly of the same Dimensions and Complexion and voice, with the Divel that has exhibited himself unto other infested People, not only in other parts of this Country but also in other Countrys, even of the European World, as the relation of the Enchantments there inform us, they all profest themselves Vassals of this Devil, and in obedience unto him they address themselves unto various ways of Torturing her; accordingly she was cruelly pinch't with Invisible hands very often in a Day, and the black and blew marks of the pinches became immediately visible unto the standers by. Besides this, when her attendants had left her without so much as one pin about her, that so they might prevent some fear'd inconveniencies; yet she would ever now and then be miserably hurt with Pins which were found stuck into her Neck, Back and Arms, however, the Wounds made by the Pins would in a few minutes ordinarily be cured; she would also be strangely distorted in her Joynts, and thrown into such exorbitant Convulsions as were astonishing unto the Spectators in General; They that could behold the doleful condition of the poor Family without sensible compassions, might have Intrals indeed, but I am sure they could have no true Bowels in them.
Sect. 6. It were a most Unchristian and uncivil, yea a most unreasonable thing to imagine that the Fitt's of the Young Woman were but meer Impostures: And I believe scarce any, but People of a particular Dirtiness, will harbour such an Uncharitable Censure; however, because I know not how far the Devil may drive the Imagination of poor Creatures when he has possession of them, that at another time when they are themselves would scorn to Dissemble any thing, I shall now confine my Narrative unto passages, wherein there could be no room left for any Dissimulation. Of these the first that I'll mention shall be this; From the time that Margaret Rule
Sect. 7. But if the Sufferings of this Young Woman were not Imposture, yet might they not be pure Distemper? I will not here inquire of our Saducees, what sort of Distemper 'tis shall stick the Body full of Pins, without any Hand that could be seen to stick them; or whether all the Pin-makers in the World would be willing to be Evaporated into certain ill habits of Body producing a Distemper, but of the Distemper my Reader shall be Judge when I have told him something further of those unusual Sufferings. I do believe that the Evil Angels do often take Advantage from Natural Distempers in the Children of Men to annoy them with such further Mischiefs as we call preternatural. The Malignant Vapours and Humours of our Diseased Bodies may be used by Devils thereinto insinuating as engine of the Execution of their Malice upon those Bodies; and perhaps for this reason one Sex may suffer more Troubles of some kinds from the Invisible World than the other, as well as for that reason for which the Old Serpent made where he did his first Address. But I Pray what will you say to this, Margaret Rule would sometimes have her Jaws for
Sect. 8. But there fell out some other matters far beyond the reach of Natural Distemper: This Margaret Rule once in the middle of the Night Lamented sadly that the Spectres threatned the Drowning of a Young Man in the Neighbourhood, whom she named unto the Company: well it was afterwards found that at that very time this Young Man, having been prest on Board a Man of War then in the Harbour, was
Sect. 9. As it has been with a Thousand other Inchanted People, so it was with Margaret Rule in this particular, that there were several words which her Tormentors would not let her hear, especially the words Pray or Prayer, and yet she could so hear the letters of those words distinctly mentioned as to know what they ment. The standers by were forced sometimes thus in discourse to spell a word to her, but because there were some so ridiculous as to count it a sort of Spell or a Charm for any thus to accommodate themselves to the
Sect. 10. Not only in the Swedish, but also in the Salem Witchcraft the Inchanted People have talked much of a White Spirit from whence they received marvellous Assistances in their Miseries; what lately befel Mercy Short from the Communications of such a Spirit, hath been the just Wonder of us all, but by such a Spirit was Margaret Rule now also visited. She says that she could never see his Face; but that she had a frequent view of his bright, Shining and Glorious Garments; he stood by her Bed-side continually heartning and comforting of her and counselling her to maintain her Faith and hope in God, and never comply with the temptations of her Adversaries; she says he told her, that God had permitted her Affictions to befall her for the everlasting and unspeakable good of her own Soul, and for the good of many others, and for his own Immortal Glory, and that she should therefore be of good Chear and be assured of a speedy deliverance; And the wonderful resolution of mind wherewith she encountered her Afflictions were but agreeable to such expectations. Moreover a Minister[195] having one Day with some Importunity Prayed for the deliverance of this Young Woman, and pleaded
Sect. 11. On the last day of the Week her Tormentors as she thought and said, approaching towards her, would be forced still to recoil and retire as unaccountably unable to meddle with her, and they would retire to the Fire side with their Poppets; but going to stick Pins into those Poppets, they could not (according to their visions) make the Pins to enter, she insulted over them with a very Proper derision, daring them now to do their worst, whilst she had the satisfaction to see their Black Master strike them and kick them, like an Overseer of so many Negro's, to make them to do their work, and renew the marks of his vengeance on them, when they failed of doing of it. At last being as it were tired with their ineffectual Attempts to mortifie her they furiously said, “Well you shant be the last.” And after a pause they added, “Go, and the Devil go with you, we can do no more”; whereupon they flew out of the Room and she returning perfectly to her self most affectionately gave thanks to God for her deliverance; her Tormentors left her extream weak and faint, and overwhelmed with Vapours, which would not only cause her sometimes to Swoon away, but also now and then for a little while discompose the reasonableness of her Thoughts; Nevertheless her former troubles returned not, but we are now waiting to see the good effects of those troubles upon the Souls of all concern'd. And now I suppose that some of our Learned witlings of the Coffee-House, for fear lest these proofs of an Invisible-world should spoil some of their sport, will endeavour to turn them all into sport, for which Buffoonary their only
Sect. 12. And what, after all my unwearied Cares and
Notes
Very probably his uncle, the Rev. John Cotton (1640-1699), who had formerly preached in Martha's Vineyard (1664-1667) and had there learned the Indian tongue, and who now, at Plymouth, continued to preach to Indians as well as whites. In his life of Eliot and in bk. VI. of his Magnalia Mather relates much more of the Christian Indians of Martha's Vineyard and of the witchcrafts there.
Who this “Chyrurgion” was and what his treatise, is a puzzle — as it was perhaps meant to be. Balthasar Timäus von Guldenklee (1600-1667), physician to the Elector of Brandenburg, had earned his nobility by healing the Swedish army of the pest in 1637, and in his Casus Medicinales has a passage on diseases ascribed to witchcraft; but it does not appear that this work was published before 1662. Antonius Deusing (1612-1666), physician to the Stadholder of Friesland, published in 1656 a treatise on this subject; but it does not appear that he was ever an army surgeon.
Doubtless the elder, Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644), the eminent but visionary Flemish physician; and the “one Chap.” that on “Recepta injecta” in his Tractatus de Morbis — though he goes into the subject as fully in paragraphs 87-152 of his De Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione.
Notably in his own book on The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (London, 1691) and in the perface which he wrote for the London edition of Mather's Memorable Providences, published in that year.
The story of Margaret Rule is told again in Mather's Diary (I. 171 ff.) and in a way that throws fresh light on his relation to the case.
“About a Week after the Beginning of September, being sollicitous to do some further Service, for the Name of God, I took a Journey to Salem. There, I not only sought a further Supply of my Furniture for my Church-History, but also endeavoured, that the complete History of the late Witchcrafts and Possessions might not bee lost. I judg'd that the Preservacion of that History might in a while bee a singular Benefit unto the Church, and unto the World, which made mee sollicitous about it. Moreover, I was willing to preach the Word of God unto the numerous Congregation at Salem; which I did, on both Parts of the Sabbath, not only with a most glorious Assistence of Heaven, but also with some Assurance of Good thereby to bee done among the People. But I had one singular Unhappiness, which befel mee, in this Journey. I had largely written three Discourses, which I designed both to preach at Salem, and hereafter to print. These Notes were before the Sabbath stolen from mee, with such Circumstances, that I am somewhat satisfied, The Spectres, or Agents in the invisible World, were the Robbers. This Diaster had like to have disturbed my Designs for the Sabbath; but God helped mee to remember a great part of what I had written, and to deliver also many other Things, which else I had not now made use of. So that the Divel gott nothing!
“Among other things which entertained mee at Salem, one was, a Discourse with one Mrs. Carver, who had been strangely visited with some shining Spirits, which were good Angels, in her opinion of them.
“She intimated several things unto mee whereof some were to be kept secret. Shee also told mee, That a new Storm of Witchcraft would fall upon the Countrey, to chastise the Iniquity that was used in the wilful Smothering and Covering of the Last; and that many fierce Opposites to the Discovery of that Witchcraft would bee thereby convinced.
“Unto my Surprise, when I came home, I found one of my Neighbours horribly arrested by evil Spirits. I then beg'd of God, that Hee would help mee wisely to discharge my Duty upon this occasion, and avoid gratifying of the evil Angels in any of their Expectations. I did then concern myself to use and gett as much Prayer as I could for the afflicted young Woman; and at the same time, to forbid, either her from accusing any of her Neighbours, or others from enquiring any thing of her. Nevertheless, a wicked Man wrote a most lying Libel to revile my Conduct in these matters; which drove mee to the Blessed God, with my Supplications that Hee would wonderfully protect mee, as well from unreasonable Men acted by the Divels, as from the Divels themselves. I did at first, it may bee, too much resent the Injuries of that Libel; but God brought good out of it; it occasioned the Multiplication of my Prayers before Him; it very much promoted the Works of Humiliation and Mortification in my Soul. Indeed, the Divel made that Libel an Occasion of those Paroxysms in the Town, that would have exceedingly gratify'd him, if God had not helped mee to forgive and forgett the Injuries done unto mee, and to bee deaf unto the Sollicitations of those that would have had mee so to have resented the Injuries of some few Persons, as to have deserted the Lecture at the Old Meeting house.
“When the afflicted young woman had undergone six Weeks of præternatural Calamities and when God had helped mee to keep just three Dayes of Prayer on her behalf, I had the Pleasure of seeing the same Success, which I used to have, on my third Fast, for such possessed People, as have been cast into my cares. God gave her a glorious Deliverance; The remarkable Circumstances whereof, I have more fully related, in an History of the whole Business.
“As for my missing Notes, the possessed young Woman, of her own Accord, enquir'd whether I missed them not? Shee told mee, the Spectres brag'd in her hearing, that they had rob't mee of them; shee added, Bee n't concern'd; for they confess, they can't keep them alwayes from you; you shall have them all brought you again. (They were Notes on Ps. 119. 19 and Ps. 90. 12 and Hag. 1. 7, 9. I was tender of them and often pray'd unto God, that they might bee return'd.) On the fifth of October following, every Leaf of my Notes again came into my Hands, tho' they were in eighteen separate Quarters of Sheets. They were found drop't here and there, about the Streets of Lyn; but how they came to bee so drop't I cannot imagine; and I as much wonder at the Exactness of their Præservation.”
And under October 10th he adds: “On this Day, I also visited a possessed young Woman in the Neighbourhood, whose Distresses were not the least occasion of my being thus before the Lord. I wrestled with God for her: and among other things, I pleaded, that God had made it my Office and Business to engage my Neighbours in the Service of the Lord Jesus Christ; and that this young Woman had expressed her Compliance with my Invitations unto that Service; only that the evil Spirits now hindred her from doing what shee had vowd: and therefore that I had a sort of Right to demand her Deliverance from these invading Divels, and to demand such a Liberty for her as might make her capable of glorifying my Glorious Lord; which I did accordingly. In the close of this Day, a wonderful Spirit, in White and bright Raiment, with a Face unseen, appeared unto this young woman, and bid her count mee her Father, and regard mee and obey mee, as her Father; for hee said, the Lord had given her to mee; and she should now within a few Dayes bee delivered. It proved, accordingly.”
And again in December (p. 178): “And one memorable Providence, I must not forgett. A young Woman being arrested, possessed, afflicted by evil Angels, her Tormentors made my Image or Picture to appear before her, and then made themselves Masters of her Tongue so far, that she began in her Fits to complain that I threatened her and molested her, tho' when shee came out of them, shee own'd, that they could not so much as make my dead Shape do her any Harm, and that they putt a Force upon her Tongue in her Exclamations. Her greatest Out-cries when shee was herself, were, for my poor Prayers to be concerned on her behalf.
“Being hereupon extremely sensible, how much a malicious Town and Land would insult over mee, if such a lying Piece of a Story should fly abroad, that the Divels in my Shape tormented the Neighbourhood, I was putt upon some Agonies, and singular Salleys and Efforts of Soul, in the Resignation of my Name unto the Lord; content that if Hee had no further service for my Name, it should bee torn to pieces with all the Reproches in the world. But I cried unto the Lord as for the Deliverance of my Name, from the Malice of Hell, so for the Deliverance of the young Woman, whom the Powers of Hell had now seized upon. And behold! Without any further Noise, the possessed Person, upon my praying by her, was delivered from her Captivity, on the very same Day that shee fell into it; and the whole Plott of the Divel, to reproach a poor Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, was defeated.”
PART II. A Letter to Mr. C. M.
Letter
Reverend Sir, I finding it needful on many accounts, I here present you with the Copy of that Paper, which has been so much Misrepresented, to the End that what shall be found defective or not fairly Represented, if any such shall appear, they may be set right, which Runs thus.
September the 13th, 1693.
September the 19th, 1693.
Sir, after the sorest Affliction and greatest blemish to Religion that ever befel this Countrey, and after most Men began to Fear that some undue steps had been taken, and after His Excellency (with their Majesties Approbation[208] as is said) had put a stop to Executions, and Men began to hope there would never be a return of the like; finding these Accounts to contain in them something extraordinary, I writ them down the same Nights in order to attain the certainty of them, and soon found them so confirmed that I have (besides other Demonstrations) the whole, under the Hands of two Persons are ready to attest the Truth of it; but not satisfied herewith, I shewed them to some of your particular Friends,
Letter
I having written from the Mouths of several Persons, who affirm they were present with Margaret Rule, the 13th Instant, her Answers and Behaviours, etc. And having shewed it to several of my Friends, as also yours, and understanding you are offended at it; This is to acquaint you, that if you and any one particular Friend, will please to meet me and some other Indifferent Person with me, at Mr. Wilkins, or at Ben. Harris's,[209] you intimating the time, I shall be ready there to read it to you, as also a further Account of proceedings the '19th Instant, which may be needful to prevent Groundless prejudices, and let deserved blame be cast where it ought; From,
Sir, yours in what I may,
The effects of which, Sir, (not to mention that long Letter only once read to me) was, you sent me word you would meet me at Mr. Wilkins, but before that Answer, at yours and your Fathers complaint, I was brought before their Majesties Justice, by Warrant, as for Scandalous Libels against your self, and was bound over to Answer at Sessions; I do not remember you then objected against the Truth of what I had wrote, but asserted it was wronged by omissions, which if it were so was past any Power of mine to remedy, having given a faithful account of all that came to my knowledge; And Sir, that you might not be without some Cognisance of the reasons why I took so much pains in it, as also for my own Information, if it might have been, I wrote to you my second Letter to this effect.
Letter
Having expected some Weeks, your meeting me at Mr. Wilkins according to what you intimated to Mr. J. M. — [210] and the time draw
In your late Book you lay down a brief Synopsis of what has been written on that Subject, by a Triumvirate of as Eminent Men as ever handled it (as you are pleas'd to call them) Viz. Mr. Perkins,[211] Gaule,[212] and Bernard[213] consisting of about 30 Tokens to know them by, many of them distinct from, if not thwarting each other: Among all of which I can find but one decisive, Viz. That of Mr. Gaule, Head IV. and runs thus; Among the most unhappy Circumstances to convict a Witch, one is a maligning and oppugning the Word, Work, or Worship of God, and by any extraordinary Sign seeking to seduce any from it, see Deu. 13. 1, 2. Mat. 24. 24. Acts. 13. 8, 10. 2 Tim. 3. 8. Do but mark well the places, and for this very property of thus opposing and perverting, they are all there concluded and absolute Witches.[214]
This Head as here laid down and inserted by you, either is a Truth or not; if not, why is it here inserted from one of the Triumvirate, if it be a Truth, as the Scriptures quoted will abundantly testifie, whence is it that it is so little regarded, tho it be the only Head well proved by Scripture, or that the rest of the Triumvirate should so far forget their Work as not to mention it. It were to be unjust to the Memory of those otherwise Wise Men, to suppose them to have any Sinister design; But perhaps the force of a prevailing opinion, together with an Education thereto Suited, might over
These last, Sir, are such Foundations of Truth, in my esteem, that I cannot but own it to be my duty to ascert them, when call'd tho' with the hazard of my All: And consequently to detect such as these, That a Witch can Commissionate Devils to Afflict Mortals, That he can at his or the Witches pleasure Assume any Shape, That Hanging or Chaining of Witches can lessen his Power of Afflicting, or restore those that were at a distance Tormented, with many others depending on these; all tending, in my esteem, highly to the Dishonour of God, and the Indangering the well-being of a People, and do further add, that as the Scriptures are full that there is Witchcraft, (ui sup.) so 'tis as plain that there are Possessions, and that the Bodies of the Possest have hence been not only Afflicted, but strangely agitated, if not their Tongues improved to foretell futurities, etc. and why not to accuse the Innocent, as bewitching them; having pretence to Divination to gain credence. This being reasonable to be expected, from him who is the Father of Lies, to the end he may thereby involve a Countrey in Blood, Mallice, and Evil, surmising which he greedily seeks after, and so finally lead them from their fear and dependence upon God to fear him, and a supposed Witch thereby attaining his end upon Mankind; and not only so, but Natural Distemper, as has been frequently observed by the Judicious, have so operated as to deceive, more than the Vulgar, as
And now Sir, if herein be any thing in your esteem valuable, let me intreat you, not to account it the worse for coming from so mean a hand; which however you may have receiv'd Prejudices, etc., Am ready to serve you to my Power; but if you Judge otherwise hereof, you may take your own Methods for my better Information. Who am, Sir, yours to command, in what I may,
In Answer to this last, Sir, you replyed to the Gentleman that presented it, that you had nothing to Prosecute against me; and said as to your Sentiments in your Books, you did not bind any to believe them, and then again renew'd your promise of meeting me, as before, tho' not yet performed. Accordingly, tho' I waited at Sessions, there was none to object ought against me, upon which I was dismissed. This gave me some reason to believe that you intended all should have been forgotten; But instead of that, I find the Coals are fresh blown up, I being supposed to be represented, in a late Manuscript, More Wonders of the, etc., as Traversing[217] your Discourse in your Faithful discharge of your Duty, etc. And such as see not with the Authors Eyes, rendred Sadducees and Witlins,[218] etc., and the Arguments that square not with the Sentiments therein contain'd, Buffoonary; rarely no doubt, agreeing with the Spirit of Christ, and his dealings with an unbelieving Thomas, yet whose infidelity was without compare less excusable, but the Author having resolved long since, to have no more than one single Grain of Patience, with them that deny,[219] etc., the Wonder is the less. It must needs be that offences come, but wo to him by whom they come. To vindicate my self therefore from such false Imputations, of Satanlike insinuations, and misrepresenting your Actions, etc., and to vindicate your self, Sir, as much as is in my Power from those Suggestions, said to be Insinuated, as if you wore not the Modesty and Gravity, that becomes a Minister of the Gospel; which it seems, some that never saw the said Narratives,
Thus, Sir, I have given you a genuine account of my Sentiments and Actions in this Affair; and do request and pray, that if I err, I may be shewed it from Scripture, or sound Reason, and not by quotations out of Virgil, nor Spanish Rhetorick. For I find the Witlings mentioned, are so far from answering your profound questions, that they cannot so much as pretend to shew a distinction between Witchcraft in the Common notion of it, and Possession; Nor so much as to demonstrate that ever the Jews or primitive Christians did believe, that a Witch could send a Devil to Afflict her Neighbours; but to all these, Sir, (ye being the Salt of the Earth, etc.) I have reason to hope for a Satisfactory Answer to him, who is one that reverences your Person and Office; And am, Sir, yours to Command in what I may,
Letter
Whereas you intimate your desires, that what's not fairly, (I take it for granted you mean truly also,) represented in a Paper you lately sent me, containing a pretended Narrative of a Visit by my Father and self to an Afflicted Young woman, whom we apprehended to be under a Diabolical Possession, might be rectified: I have this to say, as I have often already said, that I do scarcely find any one thing in the whole Paper, whether respecting my Father or self, either fairly or truly represented. Nor can I think that any that know my Parents Circumstances, but must think him deserving a better Character by far, than this Narrative can be thought to give him. When the main design we managed in Visiting the poor Afflicted Creature, was to prevent the Accusations of the Neighbourhood, can it be fairly represented that our design was to draw out such Accusations, which is the representation
In that several of the Questions in the Paper are so Worded, as to carry in them a presupposal of the things inquired after, to say the best of it is very unfair: But this is not all, the Narrative contains a number of Mistakes and Falshoods; which were they willful and design'd, might justly be termed gross Lies. The representations are far from true, when 'tis affirm'd my Father and self being come into the Room, I began the Discourse; I hope I understand breeding a little better than so: For proof of this, did occasion serve, sundry can depose the contrary.
'Tis no less untrue, that either my Father or self put the Question, how many Witches sit upon you? We always
Letter
Yours of the 15th Instant, I receiv'd yesterday; and soon found I had promised my self too much by it, Viz, Either concurrence with, or a denial of those Fundamentals mentioned in mine, of Novem. the 24th, finding this waved by an Invitation to your Library, etc. I thank God I have the Bible, and do Judge that sufficient to demonstrate that cited Head of Mr. Gaule to be a Truth, as also those other Heads mentioned, as the Foundations of Religion. And in my apprehension, if it be asked any Christian, whether God governs the World, and whether it be he only can Commissionate Devils, and such other Fundamentals, He ought to be as ready as in the Question, who made him? (a little Writing certainly might be of more use, to clear up the controverted points, than either looking over many Books in a well furnish'd Library, or than a dispute, if I were qualified for it; the Inconveniencies of Passion being this way best avoided) And am not without hopes that you will yet oblige me so far, as to consider that Letter, and if I Err, to let me see it by Scripture, etc.
Yours, almost the whole of it, is concerning the Narrative I sent to you, and you seem to intimate as if I were giving
And besides the above Letter, you were pleased to send me another Paper containing several Testimonies of the Possessed being lifted up, and held a space of several Minutes to the Garret floor, etc., but they omit giving the account, whether after she was down they bound her down: or kept holding her: And relate not how many were to pull her down, which hinders the knowledge what number they must be to be stronger than an Invisible Force. Upon the whole, I suppose you expect I should believe it; and if so, the only advantage gain'd, is that which has been so long controverted between Protestants and Papists, whether Miracles are ceast, will hereby seem to be decided for the latter; it being, for ought I can see, if so, as true a Miracle as for Iron to swim, and that the Devil can work such Miracles.
But Sir, leaving these little disputable things, I do again pray that you would let me have the happiness of your approbation or confutation of that Letter before referred to.
And now, Sir, that the God of all Grace may enable us Zealously to own his Truths, and to follow those things that tend to Peace, and that yourself may be as an useful Instrument
Notes
The answer to Governor Phips's letter of October 12 (see pp. 196-198, above) was indeed a royal order of January 26 “approving his action in stopping the proceedings against the witches in New England, and directing that in all future proceedings against persons accused of witchcraft or of possession by the devil, all circumspection be used so far as may be without impediment to the ordinary course of justice” — what Frederick the Great would have called “a vague answer — in the Austrian style — that should mean nothing.” It of course did not reach America till after the despatch of Sir William's letter of February 21 (pp. 198-202, above).
It is perhaps idle to guess at the identity of this gentleman; but his initials suggest the Rev. Joshua Moodey, whose kindlier attitude toward witches and their defenders may be inferred from his course in the case of Philip English (see pp. 187-188, note), and who, though early in 1693 he returned to Portsmouth, was still often in Boston. Nor may it be forgotten that the initials of the Rev. Increase Mather are by the printer constantly made “J. M.”
To the end of the paragraph the words are Gaule's. Calef is quoting them, not from Gaule's book, but from Mather's Wonders; for Gaule numbers this rule, not IV., but X., and the introductory words (“Among the most unhappy Circumstances to convict a witch, one is”) are not his, but Mather's — and there are other slight departures from Gaule's wording.
Between this letter and the pages of Calef's book which here follow there intervene (1) further letters from him to Mather and to other Boston ministers, on whom he urges his views, (2) a body of documents relating to the controversy between the Rev. Mr. Parris and his disaffected parishioners at Salem Village between the period of the witch-trials and his removal, (3) an epistolary discussion as to the theory of witchcraft between Calef and a Scotsman named Stuart.
PART V. An Impartial Account of the most Memorable Matters of Fact, touching the supposed Witchcraft in New England.[223]
Mr. Parris had been some years a Minister in Salem-Village,[224] when this sad Calamity (as a deluge) overflowed them, spreading it self far and near: He was a Gentleman of Liberal Education, and not meeting with any great Encouragement, or Advantage in Merchandizing, to which for some time he apply'd himself, betook himself to the work of the Ministry; this Village being then vacant, he met with so much Encouragement, as to settle in that Capacity among them.
After he had been there about two years, he obtained a Grant from a part of the Town, that the House and Land he Occupied, and which had been Alotted by the whole People to the Ministry, should be and remain to him, etc. as his own Estate in Fee Simple. This occasioned great Divisions both between the Inhabitants themselves, and between a considerable part of them and their said Minister, which Divisions were but as a beginning or Præludium to what immediately followed.
It was the latter end of February 1691,[225] when divers young Persons belonging to Mr. Parris's Family, and one or
March the 11th. Mr. Parris invited several Neighbouring Ministers to join with him in keeping a Solemn day of Prayer at his own House; the time of the exercise those Persons were for the most part silent, but after any one Prayer was ended, they would Act and Speak strangely and Ridiculously, yet were such as had been well Educated and of good Behaviour, the one, a Girl of 11 or 12 years old,[227] would sometimes seem to be in a Convulsion Fit, her Limbs being twisted several ways, and very stiff, but presently her Fit would be over.
A few days before this Solemn day of Prayer, Mr. Parris's Indian Man and Woman[228] made a Cake of Rye Meal, with the Childrens Water, and Baked it in the Ashes, and as is said, gave it to the Dog; this was done as a means to Discover Witchcraft;[229] soon after which those ill affected or afflicted Persons named several that they said they saw, when in their Fits, afflicting of them.
The first complain'd of, was the said Indian Woman, named Tituba. She confessed that the Devil urged her to sign a Book, which he presented to her, and also to work Mischief to the Children, etc. She was afterwards Committed to Prison, and lay there till Sold for her Fees.[230] The account she since gives of it is, that her Master did beat her and otherways abuse her, to make her confess and accuse (such as he call'd) her Sister-Witches, and that whatsoever she said by way of confessing or accusing others, was the effect of such usage; her Master refused to pay her Fees, unless she would stand to what she had said.[231]
The Children complained likewise of two other Women, to be the Authors of their Hurt, Viz. Sarah Good, who had long been counted a Melancholy or Distracted Woman, and one Osburn, an Old Bed-rid Woman; which two were Persons so ill thought of, that the accusation was the more readily believed; and after Examination before two Salem Magistrates,[232] were committed:
March the 19th, Mr. Lawson (who had been formerly a Preacher at the said Village) came thither, and hath since set fourth in Print an account of what then passed, about which time, as he saith, they complained of Goodwife Cory, and Goodwife Nurse, Members of the Churches at the Village and at Salem, many others being by that time Accused.
March the 21st, Goodwife Cory was examined before the Magistrates of Salem, at the Meeting House in the Village, a throng of Spectators being present to see the Novelty. Mr. Noyes, one of the Ministers of Salem, began with Prayer, after which the Prisoner being call'd, in order to answer to what should be Alledged against her, she desired that she might go to Prayer, and was answered by the Magistrates, that they did not come to hear her pray, but to examine her.
The number of the Afflicted were at that time about Ten,
March the 24th, Goodwife Nurse was brought before Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Curwin (Magistrates) in the Meeting House. Mr. Hale, Minister of Beverly, began with Prayer, after which she being Accus'd of much the same Crimes made the like an
A Child of Sarah Goods was likewise apprehended, being between 4 and 5 years Old. The Accusers said this Child bit them, and would shew such like marks, as those of a small Sett of Teeth upon their Arms; as many of the Afflicted as the Child cast its Eye upon, would complain they were in Torment; which Child they also Committed.
Concerning these that had been hitherto Examined and Committed, it is among other things observed by Mr. Lawson (in Print[233]) that they were by the Accusers charged to belong to a Company that did muster in Arms, and were reported by them to keep Days of Fast, Thanksgiving and Sacraments; and that those Afflicted (or Accusers) did in the Assembly Cure each others, even with a touch of their Hand, when strangled and otherways tortured, and would endeavour to get to the Afflicted to relieve them thereby (for hitherto they had not used the Experiment of bringing the Accused to touch the Afflicted, in order to their Cure) and could foretel one anothers Fits to be coming, and would say, look to such a one, she will have a Fit presently and so it happened, and that at the same time when the Accused person was present, the Afflicted said they saw her Spectre or likeness in other places of the Meeting House Suckling[234] of their Familiars.
The said Mr. Lawson being to Preach at the Village, after the Psalm was Sung, Abigail Williams said, “Now stand up and name your Text”; after it was read, she said, “It is a long Text.” Mrs. Pope in the beginning of Sermon said to him, “Now there is enough of that.” In Sermon, he referring to his Doctrine, Abigail Williams said to him, “I know no Doctrine you had, if you did name one I have forgot it.” Ann Putman, an afflicted Girl, said, There was a Yellow Bird sate on his Hat as it hung on the Pin in the Pulpit.
March 31, 1692. Was set apart as a day of Solemn Humiliation at Salem, upon the Account of this Business, on which day Abigail Williams said, That she saw a great number
April 1. Mercy Lewis affirmed, That she saw a man in white, with whom she went into a Glorious Place, viz. In her fits, where was no Light of the Sun, much less of Candles, yet was full of Light and Brightness, with a great Multitude in White Glittering Robes, who Sang the Song in 5. Rev. 9. and the 110 and 149 Psalms; And was grieved that she might tarry no longer in this place. This White Man is said to have appeared several times to others of them, and to have given them notice how long it should be before they should have another Fit.
April the 3d. Being Sacrament Day at the Village, Sarah Cloys, Sister to Goodwife Nurse, a Member to one of the Churches, was (tho' it seems with difficulty prevail'd with to be) present; but being entred the place, and Mr. Parris naming his Text, 6 John, 70. Have not I chosen you Twelve, and one of you is a Devil (for what cause may rest as a doubt whether upon the account of her Sisters being Committed, or because of the choice of that Text) she rose up and went out, the wind shutting the Door forcibly, gave occasion to some to suppose she went out in Anger, and might occasion a suspicion of her; however she was soon after complain'd of, examin'd and Committed.
April the 11th. By this time the number of the Accused and Accusers being much encreased, was a Publick Examination at Salem, Six of the Magistrates with several Ministers being present;[235] there appeared several who complain'd against others with hidious clamors and Screechings. Goodwife Proctor was brought thither, being Accused or cryed out against; her Husband coming to attend and assist her, as there might
To their Majesties Goal-keeper[237] in Salem.
You are in Their Majesties Names hereby required to take into your care, and safe custody, the Bodies of William Hobs, and Deborah[238] his Wife, Mary Easty, the Wife of Isaac Easty, and Sarah Wild, the Wife of John Wild, all of Topsfield; and Edward Bishop of Salem-Village, Husbandman, and Sarah his Wife, and Mary Black, a Negro of Lieutenant Nathaniel Putmans of Salem-Village; also Mary English the Wife of Philip English, Merchant in Salem;[239] who stand charged with High Suspicion of Sundry Acts of Witchcraft, done or committed by them lately upon the Bodies of Ann Putman, Mercy Lewis[240] and Abigail Williams, of Salem-Village, whereby great Hurt and Damage hath been done to the Bodies of the said Persons, [as] according to the complaint of Thomas Putman and John Buxton of Salem-Village, Exhibited Salem, Apr 21, 1692, appears, whom you are to secure in order to their further Examination. Fail not.
To Marshal George Herrick of Salem Essex.
You are in their Majesties Names hereby required to convey the above-named to the Goal at Salem. Fail not.
The occasion of Bishops being cry'd out of[241] was, he being at an Examination in Salem, when at the Inn an afflicted Indian[242] was very unruly, whom he undertook, and so managed him, that he was very orderly, after which in riding home, in company of him and other Accusers, the Indian fell into a fit, and clapping hold with his Teeth on the back of the Man that rode before him, thereby held himself upon the Horse, but said Bishop striking him with his stick, the Indian soon recovered, and promised he would do so no more; to which Bishop replied, that he doubted not, but he could cure them all, with more to the same effect; immediately after he was parted from them, he was cried out of, etc.
May 14, 1692. Sir William Phips arrived with Commission from Their Majesties to be Governour, pursuant to the New-Charter; which he now brought with him; the Ancient Charter having been vacated by King Charles, and King James (by which they had a power not only to make their own Laws; but also to chuse their own Governour and Officers;) and the Countrey for some years was put under an absolute Commission-Government, till the Revolution,[243] at which time tho more than two thirds of the People were for reassuming their ancient Government, (to which they had encouragement by His then Royal Highness's Proclamation) yet some that might have been better imployed (in another Station)[244] made it their business (by printing, as well as speaking) to their
This settlement by Sir William Phips his being come Governour put an end to all disputes of these things, and being arrived, and having read his Commission, the first thing he exerted his Power in, was said to be his giving Orders that Irons should be put upon those in Prison; for tho for some time after these were Committed, the Accusers ceased to cry out of them;[245] yet now the cry against them was renewed, which occasioned such Order; and tho there was partiality in the executing it (some having taken them off[246] almost as soon as put on) yet the cry of these Accusers against such ceased after this Order.[247]
May 24. Mrs. Cary of Charlestown, was Examined and Committed. Her Husband Mr. Nathaniel Cary[248] has given account thereof, as also of her Escape, to this Effect,
I having heard some days, that my Wife was accused of Witchcraft, being much disturbed at it, by advice, we went to Salem-Village, to see if the afflicted did know her; we arrived there, 24 May, it happened to be a day appointed for Examination; accordingly soon after our arrival, Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Curwin, etc., went to the Meeting-house, which was the place appointed for that Work, the Minister began with Prayer, and having taken care to get a convenient place, I observed, that the afflicted were two Girls of about Ten Years old,[249] and about two or three other, of about eighteen, one of the Girls talked most, and could discern more than the rest. The Prisoners were called in one by one, and as they came in were cried out of, etc. The Prisoner was placed about 7 or 8 foot from the Justices, and the Accusers between the Justices and them; the Prisoner was ordered to stand right before the Justices, with an Officer appointed to hold each hand, least they should therewith afflict them, and the Prisoners Eyes must be constantly on the Justices; for if they look'd on the afflicted, they would either fall into their Fits, or cry out of being hurt by them; after Examination of the Prisoners, who it was afflicted these Girls, etc., they were put upon saying the Lords Prayer, as a tryal of their guilt; after the afflicted seem'd to be out of their Fits, they would look steadfastly on some one person, and frequently not speak; and then the Justices said they were struck dumb, and after a little time would speak again; then the Justices said to the Accusers, “which of you will go and touch the Prisoner at the Bar?” then the most couragious would adventure, but before they had made three steps would ordinarily fall down as in a Fit; the Justices ordered that they should be taken up and carried to the Prisoner, that she might touch them; and as soon as they were touched by the accused, the Justices would say, they are well, before I could discern any alteration; by which I observed that the Justices understood the manner of it. Thus far I was only as a Spectator, my Wife also was there part of the time, but no notice taken of her by the afflicted, except once or twice they came to her and asked her name.
But I having an opportunity to Discourse[250] Mr. Hale[251] (with whom I had formerly acquaintance) I took his advice, what I had best to do, and desired of him that I might have an opportunity to speak with her that accused my Wife; which he promised should be, I acquainting him that I reposed my trust in him.
Accordingly he came to me after the Examination was over, and told me I had now an opportunity to speak with the said Accuser,
Being brought before the Justices, her chief accusers were two Girls; my Wife declared to the Justices, that she never had any knowledge of them before that day; she was forced to stand with her Arms stretched out. I did request that I might hold one of her hands, but it was denied me; then she desired me to wipe the Tears from her Eyes, and the Sweat from her Face, which I did; then she desired she might lean her self on me, saying, she should faint.
Justice Hathorn replied, she had strength enough to torment those persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I speaking something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the Room. The Indian before mentioned, was also brought in, to be one of her Accusers: being come in, he now (when before the Justices) fell down and tumbled about like a Hog, but said nothing. The Justices asked the Girls, who afflicted the Indian? they answered she (meaning my Wife) and now lay upon him; the Justices ordered her to touch him, in order to his cure, but her head must be turned another way, least instead of curing, she should make him worse, by her looking on him, her hand being guided to take hold of his; but the Indian took hold on her hand, and pulled her down on the Floor, in a barbarous manner; then his hand was taken off, and her hand put on his, and the cure was quickly wrought. I being extreamly troubled at their Inhumane dealings, uttered a hasty Speech (That God would take vengeance on them, and desired that God would deliver us out of the hands of unmerciful men.) Then her Mittimus was writ. I did with difficulty and charge obtain the liberty of a Room, but no Beds in it; if there had, could have taken but little rest that Night. She was committed to Boston Prison; but I obtained a Habeas Corpus to remove her to Cambridge Prison, which is in our County of Mid
Per Nathaniel[254] Cary.
May 31. Captain John Aldin[255] was Examined at Salem, and Committed to Boston Prison. The Prison-Keeper seeing
An Account how John Aldin, Senior, was dealt with at Salem-Village.
John Aldin Senior, of Boston, in the County of Suffolk, Marriner, on the 28th Day of May, 1692, was sent for by the Magistrates of Salem, in the County of Essex, upon the Accusation of a company of poor distracted, or possessed Creatures or Witches; and being sent by Mr. Stoughton,[256] arrived there the 31st of May, and appeared at Salem-Village, before Mr. Gidney,[257] Mr. Hathorn, and Mr. Curwin.
Those Wenches being present, who plaid their jugling tricks, falling down, crying out, and staring in Peoples Faces; the Magistrates demanded of them several times, who it was of all the People in the Room that hurt them? one of these Accusers pointed several times at one Captain Hill, there present, but spake nothing; the same Accuser had a Man standing at her back to hold her up; he stooped down to her Ear, then she cried out, Aldin, Aldin afflicted her; one of the Magistrates asked her if she had ever seen Aldin, she answered no, he asked her how she knew it was Aldin? She said, the Man told her so.
Then all were ordered to go down into the Street, where a Ring was made; and the same Accuser cried out, “there stands Aldin, a bold fellow with his Hat on before the Judges, he sells Powder and Shot to the Indians and French, and lies with the Indian Squaes, and has Indian Papooses.” Then was Aldin committed to the Marshal's Custody, and his Sword taken from him; for they said he afflicted them with his Sword. After some hours Aldin was sent for to the Meeting-house in the Village before the Magistrates; who required Aldin to stand upon a Chair, to the open view of all the People.
The Accusers cried out that Aldin did pinch them, then, when he stood upon the Chair, in the sight of all the People, a good way distant from them, one of the Magistrates bid the Marshal to hold open Aldin's hands, that he might not pinch those Creatures. Aldin asked
Letter
Whereas Captain John Aldin of Boston, Marriner, and Sarah Rice, Wife of Nicholas Rice of Reding, Husbandman, have been this day brought before us, John Hathorn and Jonathan Curwin, Esquires; being accused and suspected of perpetrating divers acts of Witchcraft, contrary to the form of the Statute, in that Case made and provided: These are therefore in Their Majesties, King William and Queen Marys Names, to Will and require you, to take into your Custody, the bodies of the said John Aldin, and Sarah Rice, and them safely keep, until they shall thence be delivered by due course of Law; as you will answer the contrary at your peril; and this shall be your sufficient Warrant. Given under our hands at Salem Village, the 31st of May, in the Fourth Year of the Reign of our
To Boston Aldin was carried by a Constable, no Bail would be taken for him; but was delivered to the Prison-keeper, where he remained Fifteen Weeks,[258] and then observing the manner of Tryals, and Evidence then taken, was at length prevailed with to make his Escape, and being returned, was bound over to Answer at the Superior Court at Boston, the last Tuesday in April, Anno 1693. And was there cleared by Proclamation, none appearing against him.
At Examination, and at other times, 'twas usual for the Accusers to tell of the black Man, or of a Spectre, as being then on the Table, etc. The People about would strike with Swords, or sticks at those places. One Justice broke his Cane at this Exercise, and sometimes the Accusers would say, they struck the Spectre, and it is reported several of the accused were hurt and wounded thereby, though at home at the same time.
The Justices proceeding in these works of Examination, and Commitment, to the end of May, there was by that time about a Hundred persons Imprisoned upon that Account.
June 2. A special Commission of Oyer and Terminer having been Issued out, to Mr. Stoughton, the New Lieutenant Governour, Major Saltonstall, Major Richards, Major Gidny, Mr. Wait Winthrop, Captain Sewall, and Mr. Sergeant;[259] These (a Quorum of them) sat at Salem this day; where the
June 15. Several Ministers in and near Boston, having been to that end consulted by his Excellency,[261] exprest their minds to this effect, viz.
That they were affected with the deplorable state of the afflicted; That they were thankful for the diligent care of the Rulers, to detect the abominable Witchcrafts, which have been committed in the Country, praying for a perfect discovery thereof. But advised to a cautious proceeding, least many Evils ensue, etc. And that tenderness be used towards those accused, relating to matters presumptive and convictive, and also to privacy in Examinations, and to consult Mr. Perkins and Mr. Bernard,[262] what tests to make use of in the Scrutiny: That Presumptions and Convictions ought to have better grounds, than the Accusers affirming that they see such persons Spectres afflicting them: And that the Devil may afflict in the shape of good Men; and that falling at the sight, and rising at the touch of the Accused, is no infallible proof of guilt; That seeing the Devils strength consists in such Accusations, our disbelieving them may be a means to put a period to the dreadful Calamities; Nevertheless they humbly recommend to the Government, the speedy and vigorous prosecu
This is briefly the substance of what may be seen more at large in Cases of Conscience, (ult.)[263] And one of them[264] since taking occasion to repeat some part of this advice, Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 83, declares, (notwithstanding the Dissatisfaction of others) that if his said Book may conduce to promote thankfulness to God for such Executions, he shall rejoyce, etc.
The 30th of June, the Court according to Adjournment again sat; five more were tried, viz. Sarah Good and Rebecca Nurse, of Salem-Village; Susanna Martin of Amsbury; Elizabeth How of Ipswich; and Sarah Wildes of Topsfield; these were all condemned that Sessions, and were all Executed on the 19th of July.[265]
At the Tryal of Sarah Good, one of the afflicted fell in a Fit, and after coming out of it, she cried out of the Prisoner, for stabing her in the breast with a Knife, and that she had broken the Knife in stabbing of her, accordingly a piece of the blade of a Knife was found about her. Immediately information being given to the Court, a young Man was called, who produced a Haft and part of the Blade, which the Court having viewed and compared, saw it to be the same. And upon inquiry the young Man affirmed, that yesterday he happened to break that Knife, and that he cast away the upper part, this afflicted person being then present. The young Man was
At Execution, Mr. Noyes urged Sarah Good to Confess, and told her she was a Witch, and she knew she was a Witch, to which she replied, “you are a lyer; I am no more a Witch than you are a Wizard, and if you take away my Life, God will give you Blood to drink.”
At the Tryal of Rebecka Nurse, this was remarkable that the Jury brought in their Verdict not Guilty, immediately all the accusers in the Court, and suddenly after all the afflicted out of Court, made an hideous out-cry, to the amazement, not only of the Spectators, but the Court also seemed strangely surprized; one of the Judges exprest himself not satisfied, another of them as he was going off the Bench, said they would have her Indicted anew. The chief Judge said he would not Impose upon the Jury; but intimated, as if they had not well considered one Expression of the Prisoners, when she was upon Tryal, viz. That when one Hobbs, who had confessed her self to be a Witch, was brought into the Court to witness against her, the Prisoner turning her head to her, said, “What, do you bring her? she is one of us,” or to that effect; this together with the Clamours of the Accusers, induced the Jury to go out again, after their Verdict, not Guilty. But not agreeing, they came into the Court, and she being then at the Bar, her words were repeated to her, in order to have had her explanation of them, and she making no Reply to them, they found the Bill, and brought her in Guilty; these words being the Inducement to it, as the Foreman has signified in writing, as follows.
July 4, 1692.
I Thomas Fisk, the Subscriber hereof, being one of them that were of the Jury the last week at Salem-Court, upon the Tryal of Rebecka Nurse, etc., being desired by some of the Relations to give a Reason why the Jury brought her in Guilty, after her Verdict not Guilty; I do hereby give my Reasons to be as follows, viz.
When the Verdict not Guilty was, the honoured Court was pleased to object against it, saying to them, that they think they let slip the words, which the Prisoner at the Bar spake against her self, which were spoken in reply to Goodwife Hobbs and her Daughter, who had been faulty in setting their hands to the Devils Book, as they have confessed formerly; the words were “What, do these persons
When Goodwife Nurse was informed what use was made of these words, she put in this following Declaration into the Court.
These presents do humbly shew, to the honoured Court and Jury, that I being informed, that the Jury brought me in Guilty, upon my saying that Goodwife Hobbs and her Daughter were of our Company; but I intended no otherways, then as[266] they were Prisoners with us, and therefore did then, and yet do judge them not legal Evidence against their fellow Prisoners. And I being something hard of hearing, and full of grief, none informing me how the Court took up my words, and therefore had not opportunity to declare what I intended, when I said they were of our Company.
After her Condemnation she was by one of the Ministers of Salem excommunicated;[267] yet the Governour saw cause to grant a Reprieve, which when known (and some say immediately upon granting) the Accusers renewed their dismal out-cries against her, insomuch that the Governour was by some Salem Gentleman prevailed with to recall the Reprieve, and she was Executed with the rest.
The Testimonials of her Christian behaviour, both in the course of her Life, and at her Death, and her extraordinary care in educating her Children, and setting them good Examples, etc., under the hands of so many, are so numerous, that for brevity they are here omitted.[268]
It was at the Tryal of these that one of the Accusers cried out publickly of Mr. Willard Minister in Boston,[269] as afflicting of her; she was sent out of the Court, and it was told about she was mistaken in the person.
August 5. The Court again sitting, six more were tried on the same Account, viz. Mr. George Burroughs, sometime minister of Wells, John Procter, and Elizabeth Procter his Wife, with John Willard of Salem-Village, George Jacobs Senior, of Salem, and Martha Carryer of Andover;[270] these were all brought in Guilty and Condemned; and were all Executed Aug. 19, except Procter's Wife, who pleaded Pregnancy.[271]
Mr. Burroughs was carried in a Cart with the others, through the streets of Salem to Execution; when he was upon the Ladder, he made a Speech for the clearing of his Innocency, with such Solemn and Serious Expressions, as were to the Admiration of all present; his Prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord's Prayer,) was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, and such (at least seeming) fervency of Spirit, as was very affecting, and drew Tears from many (so that it seemed to some, that the Spectators would hinder
John Willard had been imployed to fetch in several that were accused; but taking dissatisfaction from his being sent, to fetch up some that he had better thoughts of, he declined the Service, and presently after he himself was accused of the same Crime, and that with such vehemency, that they sent after him to apprehend him; he had made his Escape as far as Nashawag,[273] about 40 Miles from Salem; yet'tis said those Accusers did then presently tell the exact time, saying, now Willard is taken.
John Procter and his Wife being in Prison, the Sheriff came to his House and seized all the Goods, Provisions, and Cattle that he could come at, and sold some of the Cattle at half price, and killed others, and put them up for the West-Indies; threw out the Beer out of a Barrel, and carried away the Barrel; emptied a Pot of Broath, and took away the Pot, and left nothing in the House for the support of the Children: No part of the said Goods are known to be returned. Procter earnestly requested Mr. Noyes to pray with and for him, but
During his Imprisonment he sent the following Letter, in behalf of himself and others.
Letter
The innocency of our Case with the Enmity of our Accusers and our Judges, and Jury, whom nothing but our Innocent Blood will serve their turn, having Condemned us already before our Tryals, being so much incensed and engaged against us by the Devil, makes us bold to Beg and Implore your Favourable Assistance of this our Humble Petition to his Excellency, That if it be possible our Innocent Blood may be spared, which undoubtedly otherwise will be shed, if the Lord doth not mercifully step in. The Magistrates, Ministers, Jewries,[275] and all the People in general, being so much inraged and incensed against us by the Delusion of the Devil, which we can term no other, by reason we know in our own Consciences, we are all Innocent Persons. Here are five Persons who have lately
He pleaded very hard at Execution, for a little respite of time, saying that he was not fit to Die; but it was not granted.
Old Jacobs being Condemned, the Sheriff and Officers came and seized all he had, his Wife had her Wedding Ring taken from her, but with great difficulty obtained it again. She was forced to buy Provisions of the Sheriff, such as he had taken, towards her own support, which not being sufficient, the Neighbours of Charity relieved her.[279]
Margaret Jacobs being one that had confessed her own Guilt, and testified against her Grand-Father Jacobs, Mr. Burroughs, and John Willard, She the day before Executions, came to Mr. Burroughs, acknowledging that she had belyed them,[280] and begged Mr. Burroughs Forgiveness, who not only
Letter
After my Humble Duty Remembred to you, hoping in the Lord of your good Health, as Blessed be God I enjoy, tho in abundance of Affliction, being close confined here in a loathsome Dungeon, the Lord look down in mercy upon me, not knowing how soon I shall be put to Death, by means of the Afflicted Persons; my Grand-Father having Suffered already, and all his Estate Seized for the King. The reason of my Confinement is this, I having, through the Magistrates Threatnings, and my own Vile and Wretched Heart, confessed several things contrary to my Conscience and Knowledg, tho to the Wounding of my own Soul, the Lord pardon me for it; but Oh! the terrors of a wounded Conscience who can bear. But blessed be the Lord, he would not let me go on in my Sins, but in mercy I hope so my Soul would not suffer me to keep it in any longer, but I was forced to confess the truth of all before the Magistrates, who would not believe me, but tis their pleasure to put me in here, and God knows how soon I shall be put to death. Dear Father, let me beg your Prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and send us a Joyful and Happy meeting in Heaven. My Mother poor Woman is very Crazey, and
At the time appointed for her Tryal, she had an Imposthume in her head, which was her Escape.[282]
September 9. Six more were tried, and received Sentance of Death, viz. Martha Cory of Salem-Village, Mary Easty of Topsfield, Alice Parker and Ann Pudeater of Salem, Dorcas Hoar of Beverly, and Mary Bradberry of Salisbury.[283] September 16, Giles Cory was prest to Death.
September 17. Nine more received Sentance of Death, viz. Margaret Scot of Rowly, Goodwife Redd of Marblehead, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker of Andover, also Abigail Falkner of Andover, who pleaded Pregnancy, Rebecka Eames of Boxford, Mary Lacy, and Ann Foster of Andover, and Abigail Hobbs of Topsfield.[284] Of these Eight were Executed,
Giles Cory pleaded not Guilty to his Indictment, but would not put himself upon Tryal by the Jury (they having cleared none upon Tryal) and knowing there would be the same Witnesses against him, rather chose to undergo what Death they would put him to. In pressing his Tongue being prest out of his Mouth, the Sheriff with his Cane forced it in again, when he was dying. He was the first in New-England, that was ever prest to Death.[285]
The Cart going up the Hill with these Eight to Execution, was for some time at a sett; the afflicted and others said, that the Devil hindred it, etc.
Martha Cory, Wife to Giles Cory, protesting her Innocency, concluded her Life with an Eminent Prayer upon the Ladder.
Wardwell having formerly confessed himself Guilty, and after denied it, was soon brought upon his Tryal; his former Confession and Spectre Testimony was all that appeared against him. At Execution while he was speaking to the People, protesting his Innocency, the Executioner being at the same time smoaking Tobacco, the smoak coming in his Face, interrupted his Discourse, those Accusers said, the Devil hindred him with smoak.
Mary Easty, Sister also to Rebecka Nurse, when she took
To the Honorable Judge and Bench now sitting in Judicature in Salem and the Reverend Ministers, humbly sheweth, That whereas your humble poor Petitioner being Condemned to die, doth humbly beg of you, to take it into your Judicious and Pious Consideration, that your poor and humble Petitioner knowing my own Innocency (blessed be the Lord for it) and seeing plainly the Wiles and Subtilty of my Accusers, by my self, cannot but judge charitably of others, that are going the same way with my self, if the Lord step not mightily in. I was confined a whole Month on the same account that I am now condemned for, and then cleared by the Afflicted persons, as some of your Honours know, and in two days time I was cried out upon by them, and have been confined, and now am condemned to die. The Lord above knows my Innocency then, and likewise doth now, as at the great day will be known to Men and Angels. I Petition to your Honours not for my own Life, for I know I must die, and my appointed time is set; but the Lord he knows it is, if it be possible, that no more Innocent Blood be shed, which undoubtedly cannot be avoided in the way and course you go in. I question not, but your Honours do to the utmost of your powers, in the discovery and detecting of Witchcraft and Witches, and would not be guilty of Innocent Blood for the World; but by my own Innocency I know you are in the wrong way. The Lord in his infinite Mercy direct you in this great work, if it be his blessed will, that Innocent Blood be not shed; I would humbly beg of you, that your Honours would be pleased to Examine some of those confessing Witches, I being confident there are several of them have belyed themselves and others, as will appear, if not in this World, I am sure in the World to come, whither I am going; and I question not, but your selves will see an alteration in these things: They say, my self and others have made a league with the Devil, we cannot confess. I know and the Lord he knows (as will shortly appear) they belye me, and so I question not but they do others; the Lord alone, who is the searcher of all hearts, knows that as I shall answer it at the
After Execution Mr. Noyes turning him to the Bodies, said, what a sad thing it is to see Eight Firebrands of Hell hanging there.
In October 1692, One of Wenham[286] complained of Mrs. Hale, whose Husband, the Minister of Beverly, had been very forward in these Prosecutions, but being fully satisfied of his Wives sincere Christianity, caused him to alter his Judgment; for it was come to a stated Controversie, among the New-England Divines, whether the Devil could Afflict in a good Man's shape; it seems nothing else could convince him: yet when it came so near to himself, he was soon convinc'd that the Devil might so Afflict.[287] Which same reason did after
October 7. (Edward Bishop and his Wife having made their Escape out of Prison) this day Mr. Corwin the Sheriff, came and Seiz'd his Goods, and Cattle, and had it not been for his second Son (who borrowed Ten Pound and gave it him) they had been wholly lost, the Receipt follows; but it seems they must be content with such a Receipt as he would give them.
Received this 7th day of October 1692, of Samuel Bishop of the Town of Salem, of the County of Essex, in New-England, Cordwainer, in full satisfaction, a valuable Summ of Money, for the Goods and Chattels of Edward Bishop, Senior, of the Town and County aforesaid, Husbandman; which Goods and Chattels being seized, for that the said Edward Bishop, and Sarah his Wife, having been committed for Witchcraft and Felony, have made their Escape; and their Goods and Chattles were forfeited unto their Majesties, and now being in Possession of the said Samuel Bishop; and in behalf of Their Majesties, I do hereby discharge the said Goods and Chattles, the day and year above written, as witness my hand,
But before this the said Bishops Eldest Son, having Married into that Family of the Putmans,[289] who were chief Prosecutors in this business; he holding a Cow to be branded lest it should be seiz'd, and having a Push or Boyl upon his Thigh, with his straining it broke; this is that that was pretended to be burnt with the said Brand; and is one of the bones thrown to the Dogmatical to pick, in Wonders of the Invisible World, P. 143.[290] the other, of a Corner of a Sheet, pretended to be taken from a Spectre, it is known that it was provided the day before, by that Afflicted person, and the third bone of a Spindle is almost as easily provided, as the piece of the Knife; so that Apollo needs not herein be consulted,[291] etc.
Mr. Philip English and his Wife having made their Escape out of Prison, Mr. Corwin the Sheriff seiz'd his Estate, to the value of about Fifteen Hundred Pound, which was wholly lost to him, except about Three Hundred Pound value, (which was afterward restored.)[292]
After Goodwife Hoar was Condemned, her Estate was seiz'd, and was also bought again for Eight Pound.
George Jacobs, Son to old Jacobs,[293] being accused, he fled, then the Officers came to his House, his Wife was a Woman Crazy in her Senses and had been so several Years. She it seems had been also accused; there were in the House with her only four small Children, and one of them suck'd, her Eldest Daughter[294] being in Prison; the Officer perswaded her out of the House, to go along with him, telling her she should speedily return, the Children ran a great way after her crying.
When she came where the Afflicted were, being asked, they said they did not know her, at length one said, don't you know Jacobs the old Witch, and then they cry'd out of her, and fell down in their Fits; she was sent to Prison, and lay there Ten Months, the Neighbours of pitty took care of the Children to preserve them from perishing.
About this time a New Scene was begun, one Joseph Ballard of Andover, whose Wife was ill (and after died of a Fever) sent to Salem for some of those Accusers, to tell him who
When these came into any place where such were, usually they fell into a Fit; after which being asked who it was that afflicted the person, they would, for the most part, name one whom they said sat on the head, and another that sat on the lower parts of the afflicted. Soon after Ballard's sending (as above) more than Fifty of the People of Andover were complained of, for afflicting their Neighbours. Here it was that many accused themselves, of Riding upon Poles through the Air; Many Parents believing their Children to be Witches, and many Husbands their Wives, etc. When these Accusers came to the House of any upon such account, it was ordinary for other young People to be taken in Fits, and to have the same Spectral sight.
Mr. Dudley Bradstreet,[295] a Justice of Peace in Andover, having granted out Warrants against, and Committed Thirty or Forty to Prisons, for the supposed Witchcrafts, at length saw cause to forbear granting out any more Warrants. Soon after which he and his Wife were cried out of, himself was (by them) said to have killed Nine persons by Witchcraft, and found it his safest course to make his Escape.
A Dog being afflicted at Salem-Village, those that had the Spectral sight being sent for, they accused Mr. John Bradstreet (Brother to the Justice) that he afflicted the said Dog, and now rid upon him: He made his Escape into Pescattequa-Government,[296] and the Dog was put to death, and was all of the Afflicted that suffered death.
At Andover, the Afflicted complained of a Dog, as afflicting of them, and would fall into their Fits at the Dogs looking upon them; the Dog was put to death.
A worthy Gentleman of Boston, being about this time accused by those at Andover, he sent by some particular Friends a Writ to Arrest those Accusers in a Thousand Pound Action for Defamation, with instructions to them, to inform themselves of the certainty of the proof, in doing which their business was
In October some of these Accusers were sent for to Glocester, and occasioned four Women to be sent to Prison, but Salem Prison being so full it could receive no more, two were sent to Ipswich Prison. In November they were sent for again by Lieutenant Stephens, who was told that a Sister of his was bewitched; in their way passing over Ipswich-bridge, they met with an old Woman, and instantly fell into their Fits: But by this time the validity of such Accusations being much questioned, they found not that Encouragement they had done elsewhere, and soon withdrew.
These Accusers swore that they saw three persons sitting upon Lieutenant Stephens's Sister till she died; yet Bond was accepted for those Three.
And now Nineteen persons having been hang'd, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the Churches in N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one clear'd; About Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and above Two Hundred more accused; The Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer comes to a period,[298] which has no other foundation than the Governours Commission,[299] and had proceeded in the manner of swearing Witnesses, viz. By holding up the hand, (and by receiving Evidences in writing) according to the Ancient Usage of this Countrey; as also having their Indictments in English. In the Tryals, when any were Indicted for Afflicting, Pining, and wasting the Bodies of particular persons by Witchcraft; it was usual to hear Evidence of matter foreign, and of perhaps Twenty or Thirty years standing, about over-setting Carts, the death of Cattle, un
Here followeth what account some of those miserable Creatures give of their Confession under their own hands.
We whose Names are under written, Inhabitants of Andover, when as that horrible and tremendous Judgment beginning at Salem-Village, in the Year 1692, (by some) call'd Witchcraft, first breaking forth at Mr. Parris's House, several Young persons being seemingly afflicted, did accuse several persons for afflicting them, and many there believing it so to be; we being informed that if a person were sick, that the afflicted persons could tell, what or who was the cause of that sickness. Joseph Ballard of Andover (his Wife being sick at the same time) he either from himself, or by the advice of others, fetch'd two of the persons call'd the afflicted persons, from Salem-Village to Andover. Which was the beginning of that dreadful Calamity that befel us in Andover. And the Authority in Andover, believing the said Accusations to be true, sent for the said persons to come together, to the Meeting-house in Andover (the afflicted persons
It may here be further added concerning those that did Confess, that besides that powerful Argument, of Life (and
But that which did mightily further such Confessions, was their nearest and dearest Relations urging them to it. These seeing no other way of escape for them, thought it the best advice that could be given; hence it was that the Husbands of some, by counsel often urging, and utmost earnestness, and Children upon their Knees intreating, have at length prevailed with them, to say they were guilty.[304]
As to the manner of Tryals, and the Evidence taken for Convictions at Salem, it is already set forth in Print, by the
Two of the Judges have also given their Sentiments in these words, p. 147.
The Reverend and worthy Author, having at the direction of his Excellency the Governour, so far obliged the Publick, as to give some account of the sufferings, brought upon the Countrey by Witchcrafts, and of the Tryals which have passed upon several executed for the same.
Upon perusal thereof, We find the matters of Fact and Evidence truly reported, and a prospect given of the Methods of Conviction, used in the proceedings of the Court at Salem.
And considering that this may fall into the hands of such as never saw those Wonders, it may be needful to transcribe the whole account he has given thereof, without any variation (but with one of the Indictments annext to the Tryal of each).[308]
Thus far the Account given in Wonders of the Invisible World; in which setting aside such words as these, in the Tryal of G. B. viz., “They (i. e. the Witnesses) were enough to fix the character of a Witch upon him.”[309]
In the Tryal of Bishop, these words, “but there was no need of them,” i. e. of further Testimony.[310]
In the Tryal of How, where it is said, “and there came in Testimony of preternatural Mischiefs, presently befalling some that had been instrumental to debar her from the Communion, whereupon she was intruding.”[311] Martin is call'd “one of
These Expressions, as they manifest that he wrote more like an Advocate than an Historian,[313] so also that those that were his Imployers[314] were not mistaken in their choice of him for that work, however he may have mist it in other things.
As in his owning (in the Tryal of G. B.) That the Testimony of the bewitched and confessors was not enough against the Accused, for it is known that not only in New-England, such Evidence has been taken for sufficient, but also in England, as himself there owns, and will also hold true of Scotland, etc., they having proceeded upon such Evidence, to the taking away of the Lives of many, to assert that this is not enough is to tell the World that such Executions were but so many Bloody Murders; which surely was not his intent to say.
His telling that the Court began to think that Burroughs stept aside to put on invisibility, is a rendring them so mean Philosophers, and such weak Christians, as to be fit to be imposed upon by any silly pretender.
His calling the Evidence against How trivial, and others against Burroughs, he accounts no part of his Conviction; and that of lifting a Gun with one Finger, its being not made use of as Evidence, renders the whole but the more perplext. (Not to mention the many mistakes therein contain'd.)[315]
Yet all this (and more that might have been hinted at) does not hinder, but that his Account of the manner of Trials of those for Witchcraft is as faithfully related as any Tryals of that kind, that was ever yet made publick;[316] and it may also
As it is not to be supposed that such as these could Influence any Judge or Jury, so not unkindness to relations, or God's having given to one Man more strength than to some others, the over-setting of Carts, or the death of Cattle, nor yet Excrescencies (call'd Tets) nor little bits of Rags tied together (call'd Poppets.) Much less any persons illness, or having their Cloaths rent when a Spectre has been well banged, much less the burning the Mares Fart, mentioned in the Tryal of How.[318]
None of these being in the least capable of proving the Indictment; The supposed Criminals were Indicted for Afflicting, etc., such and such particular persons by Witchcraft, to which none of these Evidences have one word to say, and the Afflicted and Confessors being declared not enough, the matter needs yet further explaining.[319]
But to proceed, the General Court having sat and enacted Laws, particularly one against Witchcraft, assigning the Penalty of Death to any that shall feed, reward or employ, etc., Evil Spirits, though it has not yet been explained what is intended thereby, or what it is to feed, reward or imploy Devils, etc., yet some of the Legislators have given this instead of an Explanation, that they had therein but Copied the Law of another Country.[320]
January 3. By vertue of an Act of the General Court, the first Superior Court was held at Salem, for the County of Essex, the Judges appointed were Mr. William Stoughton (the Lieutenant Governour) Thomas Danforth, John Richards, Wait Winthorp,[321] and Samuel Sewall, Esquires, Where Ignoramus[322] was found upon the several Bills of Indictment against Thirty, and Billa Vera[323] against Twenty six more; of all these Three only were found Guilty by the Jewry upon Trial, two of which were (as appears by their Behaviour) the most senseless and Ignorant Creatures that could be found;[324] besides which it does not appear what came in against those more than against the rest that were acquitted.[325]
The Third was the Wife of Wardwell, who was one of the Twenty Executed, and it seems they had both confessed themselves Guilty; but he retracting his said Confession, was tried and Executed;[326] it is supposed that this Woman fearing her Husbands fate, was not so stiff in her denyals of her former Confession, such as it was. These Three received Sentence of Death.
At these Tryals some of the Jewry made Inquiry of the Court, what Account they ought to make of the Spectre Evidence? and received for Answer “as much as of Chips in Wort.”[327]
January 31, 169 2/3. The Superior Court began at Charles-town, for the County of Middlesex, Mr. Stoughton, Mr. Danforth, Mr. Winthorp, and Mr. Sewall Judges, where several had Ignoramus returned upon their Bills of Indictment, and Billa Vera upon others.
In the time the Court sat, word was brought in, that a Reprieve was sent to Salem,[328] and had prevented the Execution of Seven of those that were there Condemned, which so moved the chief Judge,[329] that he said to this effect, “We were in a way to have cleared the Land of these, etc., who it is obstructs
April 25, 1693. The first Superiour Court was held at Boston, for the County of Suffolk, the Judges were the Lieutenant Governour, Mr. Danforth, Mr. Richards and Mr. Sewall, Esquires.
Where (besides the acquitting Mr. John Aldin by Proclamation) the most remarkable was, what related to Mary Watkins, who had been a Servant, and lived about Seven Miles from Boston, having formerly Accused her Mistress of Witch
She was continued for some time in Prison, etc., and at length was sold to Virginia.[331] About this time the Prisoners in all the Prisons were released.[332]
To omit here the mentioning of several Wenches in Boston, etc., who pretended to be Afflicted, and accused several, the Ministers often visiting them, and praying with them, concerning whose Affliction Narratives are in being in Manuscript.[333] Not only these, but the generality of those Accusers may have since convinc'd the Ministers by their vicious courses that they might err in extending too much Charity to them.
The conclusion of the whole in the Massachusetts Colony was, Sir William Phips, Governour, being call'd home, before he went he pardon'd such as had been condemned, for which they gave about 30 Shillings each to the Kings Attorney.[334]
In August 1697. The Superiour Court sat at Hartford, in the Colony of Connecticut, where one Mistress Benom was tried for Witchcraft, she had been accused by some Children that pretended to the Spectral sight; they searched her several times for Tets; they tried the Experiment of casting her into the Water,[335] and after this she was Excommunicated by the Minister of Wallinsford.[336] Upon her Tryal nothing material appearing against her, save Spectre Evidence, she was acquitted, as also her Daughter, a Girl of Twelve or Thirteen Years old, who had been likewise Accused; but upon renewed Complaints against them, they both fled into New-York Government.[337]
Before this the Government Issued forth the following Proclamation.[338]
By the Honourable the Lieutenant Governour, Council and Assembly of his Majesties Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in General Court Assembled.
Whereas the Anger of God is not yet turned away, but his Hand is still stretched out against his People in manifold Judgments, particularly in drawing out to such a length the troubles of Europe, by a perplexing War; and more especially, respecting ourselves in this Province, in that God is pleased still to go on in diminishing our Substance, cutting short our Harvest, blasting our most promising undertakings more ways than one, unsetling of us,[339] and by his more
Wherefore it is Commanded and Appointed, that Thursday the Fourteenth of January next be observed as a Day of Prayer, with Fasting throughout this Province, strictly forbidding all Servile labour thereon; that so all Gods People may offer up fervent Supplications unto him, for the Preservation, and Prosperity of his Majesty's Royal Person and Government, and Success to attend his Affairs both at home and abroad; that all iniquity may be put away which hath stirred God's Holy jealousie against this Land; that he would shew us what we know not, and help us wherein we have done amiss to do so no more; and especially that whatever mistakes on either hand have been fallen into, either by the body of this People, or any orders of men, referring to the late Tragedy, raised among us by Satan and his Instruments, thro the awful Judgment of God, he would humble us therefore[340]and pardon all the Errors of his Servants and People, that desire to love his Name and be attoned to his Land; that he would remove the Rod of the wicked from off the Lot of the Righteous; that he would bring the American Heathen, and cause them to hear and obey his Voice.
Given at Boston, Decemb. 17, 1696, in the 8th Year of his Majesties Reign.
Upon the Day of the Fast in the full Assembly, at the South Meeting-House in Boston, one of the Honourable Judges, who had sat in Judicature in Salem, delivered in a Paper,[341] and while it was in reading stood up, But the Copy being not to be obtained at present, It can only be reported by Memory to this effect, viz. It was to desire the Prayers
Some that had been of several Jewries, have given forth a Paper, Sign'd with their own hands in these words.
We whose names are under written, being in the Year 1692 called to serve as Jurors, in Court at Salem, on Tryal of many, who were by some suspected Guilty of doing Acts of Witchcraft upon the Bodies of sundry Persons:
We confess that we our selves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness, and Prince of the Air; but were for want of Knowledge in our selves, and better Information from others, prevailed with to take up with such Evidence against the Accused, as on further consideration, and better Information, we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the Lives of any, Deut. 17. 6, whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, tho Ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon our selves, and this People of the Lord, the Guilt of Innocent Blood; which Sin the Lord saith in Scripture, he would not pardon, 2 Kings 24. 4, that is we suppose in regard of his temporal Judgments. We do therefore hereby signifie to all in general (and to the surviving Sufferers in especial) our deep sense of, and sorrow for our Errors, in acting on such Evidence to the condemning of any person.
And do hereby declare that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken, for which we are much disquieted and dis
We do heartily ask forgiveness of you all, whom we have justly offended, and do declare according to our present minds, we would none of us do such things again on such grounds for the whole World; praying you to accept of this in way of Satisfaction for our Offence; and that you would bless the Inheritance of the Lord, that he may be intreated for the Land.
Mr. C. M. having been very forward to write Books of Witchcraft, has not been so forward either to explain or defend the Doctrinal part thereof, and his belief (which he had a Years time to compose) he durst not venture so as to be copied.[343]
Mr. I. Mather, in his Cases of Conscience, P. 25, tells of a Bewitched Eye, and that such can see more than others. They were certainly bewitched Eyes that could see as well shut as open, and that could see what never was, that could see the Prisoners upon the Afflicted, harming of them, when those whose Eyes were not bewitched could have sworn that they did not stir from the Bar. The Accusers are said to have suffered much by biting, P. 73. And the prints of just such a set of Teeth, as those they Accused, had, but such as had not such bewitch'd Eyes have seen the Accusers bite themselves, and then complain of the Accused. It has also been seen when the Accused, instead of having just such a set of Teeth, has not had one in his head. They were such bewitched Eyes that could see the Poisonous Powder (brought by Spectres P. 70.) And that could see in the Ashes the print of the Brand, there invisibly heated to torment the pretended Sufferers with, etc.
These with the rest of such Legends have this direct tendency, viz. To tell the World that the Devil is more ready to serve his Votaries, by his doing for them things above or against the course of Nature, shewing himself to them, and making explicit contract with them, etc., than the Divine Being is to his faithful Servants, and that as he is willing, so also able to perform their desires. The way whereby these People are believed to arrive at a power to Afflict their Neighbours, is by a compact with the Devil, and that they have a power to Commissionate him to those Evils, P. 72. However Irrational, or Inscriptural such Assertions are, yet they seem
As the Scriptures know nothing of a covenanting or commissioning Witch, so Reason cannot conceive how Mortals should by their Wickedness arrive at a power to Commissionate Angels, Fallen Angels, against their Innocent Neighbours. But the Scriptures are full in it, and the Instances numerous, that the Almighty, Divine Being has this prerogative to make use of what Instrument he pleaseth, in Afflicting any, and consequently to commissionate Devils: And tho this word commissioning, in the Authors former Books, might be thought to be by inadvertency; yet now after he hath been caution'd of it, still to persist in it seems highly Criminal. And therefore in the name of God, I here charge such belief as guilty of Sacriledge in the highest Nature, and so much worse than stealing Church Plate, etc., As it is a higher Offence to steal any of the glorious Attributes of the Almighty, to bestow them upon Mortals, than it is to steal the Utensils appropriated to his Service. And whether to ascribe such power of commissioning Devils to the worst of Men, be not direct Blasphemy, I leave to others better able to determine. When the Pharisees were so wicked as to ascribe to Beelzebub, the mighty works of Christ (whereby he did manifestly shew forth his Power and Godhead) then it was that our Saviour declar'd the Sin against the Holy Ghost to be unpardonable.
When the Righteous God is contending with Apostate Sinners, for their departures from him, by his Judgments, as Plagues, Earthquakes, Storms and Tempests, Sicknesses and Diseases, Wars, loss of Cattle, etc. Then not only to ascribe this to the Devil, but to charge one another with sending or commissionating those Devils to these things, is so abominable and so wicked, that it requires a better Judgment than mine to give it its just denomination.
But that Christians so called should not only charge their fellow Christians therewith, but proceed to Tryals and Executions; crediting that Enemy to all Goodness, and Accuser of the Brethren, rather than believe their Neighbours in their own Defence; This is so Diabolical a Wickedness as cannot proceed, but from a Doctrine of Devils; how far damnable it is let others discuss. Tho such things were acting in this
Obj.[346] But here it will be said, “What, are there no Witches? Do's not the Law of God command that they should be extirpated? Is the Command vain and Unintelligible?” Sol.[347] For any to say that a Witch is one that makes a compact with, and Commissions Devils, etc., is indeed to render the Law of God vain and Unintelligible, as having provided no way whereby they might be detected, and proved to be such; And how the Jews waded thro this difficulty for so many Ages, without the Supplement of Mr. Perkins and Bernard thereto, would be very mysterious. But to him that can read the Scriptures without prejudice from Education, etc., it will manifestly appear that the Scripture is full and Intelligible, both as to the Crime and means to detect the culpable. He that shall hereafter see any person, who to confirm People in a false belief, about the power of Witches and Devils, pretending to a sign to confirm it, such as knocking off of invisible Chains with the hand, driving away Devils by brushing, striking with a Sword or Stick, to wound a person at a great distance, etc., may (according to that head of Mr. Gauls, quoted by Mr. C. M. and so often herein before recited, and so well proved by Scripture) conclude that he has seen Witchcraft performed.
If Baalam became a Sorcerer by Sacrifizing and Praying to the true God against his visible people; Then he that shall pray that the afflicted (by their Spectral Sight) may accuse some other Person (whereby their reputations and lives may be indangered) such will justly deserve the Name of a Sorcerer. If any Person pretends to know more then[348] can be known by humane means, and professeth at the same time that they have it from the Black-Man, i. e. the Devil, and shall from hence give Testimony against the Lives of others, they are manifestly such as have a familiar Spirit; and if any, knowing them to have their Information from the Black-Man, shall be inquisitive of them for their Testimony against others, they therein are dealing with such as have a Familiar-Spirit.
And if these shall pretend to see the dead by their Spectral Sight, and others shall be inquisitive of them, and receive their Answers what it is the dead say, and who it is they accuse, both the one and the other are by Scripture Guilty of Necromancy.
These are all of them crimes as easily proved as any whatsoever, and that by such proof as the Law of God requires, so that it is no Unintelligible Law.
But if the Iniquity of the times be such, that these Criminals not only Escape Indemnified,[349] but are Incouraged in their Wickedness, and made use of to take away the Lives of others, this is worse than a making the Law of God Vain, it being a rendring of it dangerous, against the Lives of Innocents, and without all hopes of better, so long as these Bloody Principles remain.
As long as Christians do Esteem the Law of God to be Imperfect, as not describing that crime that it requires to be Punish'd by Death;
As long as men suffer themselves to be Poison'd in their Education, and be grounded in a False Belief by the Books of the Heathen;
As long as the Devil shall be believed to have a Natural Power, to Act above and against a course of Nature;
As long as the Witches shall be believed to have a Power to Commission him;
As long as the Devils Testimony, by the pretended afflicted,
As long as the Accused shall have their Lives and Liberties confirmed and restored to them, upon their Confessing themselves Guilty;
As long as the Accused shall be forc't to undergo Hardships and Torments for their not Confessing;
As long as Tets for the Devil to Suck are searched for upon the Bodies of the accused, as a token of guilt;
As long as the Lords Prayer shall be profaned, by being made a Test, who are culpable;
As long as Witchcraft, Sorcery, Familiar Spirits, and Necromancy, shall be improved to discover who are Witches, etc.,
So long it may be expected that Innocents will suffer as Witches.
So long God will be Daily dishonoured, And so long his Judgments must be expected to be continued.
Notes
As to Parris and Salem Village, and in general as to the Salem witchcraft, which is the subject of the rest of Calef's narrative, see the introduction and notes to Lawson's Brief Account (pp. 147-164, above). That account (as also the parallel narrative of Hale, at pp. 413 ff., below) should be constantly compared with the present one.
Doubtless Dr. William Griggs, of Salem Village, whose wife's niece, a maid in his household, was one of the “afflicted.”
It was suggested by the wife of a neighbor. When, a fortnight later, she was disciplined by the village church for this dabbling in superstition, Parris himself wrote in the church-record book: “It is well known that when these Calamities first began, which was in my own Family, the Affliction was several weeks before such hellish Operations as Witchcraft was suspected; Nay, it never broke forth to any considerable Light, until diabolical Means was used, by the making of a cake by my Indian Man, who had his Directions from this our Sister Mary Sibly; since which Apparitions have been plenty, and exceeding much Mischief hath followed.” (Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II. 95; Hanson, Danvers, p. 289, quoted by Drake.)
Besides the documents of Tituba's case printed in the Records of Salem Witchcraft (I. 41-50), a much fuller report of her examination (March 1-2, 1692) strangely differing from that already printed, is appended to Drake's edition of Mather and Calef (The Witchcraft Delusion in New England, III. 185-195).
On March 1, before John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin. From this point to his entry of April 3 Calef's narrative rests wholly on that of Lawson.
Among them was Samuel Sewall, who wrote in his diary for that day: “Went to Salem, where, in the Meeting-house, the persons accused of Witchcraft were examined; was a very great Assembly; 'twas awfull to see how the afflicted persons were agitated. Mr. Noyes pray'd at the beginning, and Mr. Higginson concluded.” In the margin he has later added: “Vae, Vae, Vae, Witchcraft” — i. e., “woe, woe, woe!” So many (seven) of the magistrates were present that the court took the form of a “council” (the highest of colonial tribunals), under the presidency of Deputy-governor Danforth (Records of Salem Witchcraft, I. 101; Hutchinson, Massachusetts, second ed., II. 27-30).
Mary Esty, aged 56, was a sister of Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse. We shall meet her again. As to these Topsfield cases, see above, p. 237, note 1. Edward Bishop, aged 44, was probably a step-son of Bridget Bishop (see above, pp. 223-229, and below, p. 356), and his wife was a daughter of John Wilds. On Mary Black, see Chandler, American Criminal Trials, I. 427, and Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II. 136-137. As for Mary English, see below, p. 371.
I. e., the English Revolution and the overthrow in New England of the Andros government (1689).
He doubtless means especially Cotton Mather. So, at least, Mather assumes in his reply (his letter in Some Few Remarks, etc., pp. 46-47) and vigorously denies that he opposed the reassumption.
The reason for the irons was the assertion of the “afflicted” that their sufferings did not cease till the accused were thus in fetters. An account of the prison-keeper (Hanson, Danvers, p. 290) has such items as: “May 9th, To Chains for Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn, 14s. May 23d, To Shackles for 10 Prisoners. May 29th, to 1 pr. Irons.” See also Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 212, 213. Even little Dorcas Good was put into chains.
Captain Nathaniel Cary was a shipmaster, a man of ability and prominence, later a member of the General Court and a justice.
Rhode Island. “July 30, 1692. Mrs. Cary makes her escape out of Cambridge-Prison, who was Committed for Witchcraft.” (Sewall, Diary, I. 362.)
See above, pp. 170, note 2, and 178, note 6. Captain Alden, Indian fighter, naval commander, now at seventy a man of wealth, was one of the leading figures of New England.
The lieutenant-governor — soon to be head of the special court for the trial of the witches. See above, p. 183, note 2, and p. 199.
Bartholomew Gedney, of Salem, the third magistrate, was, like his colleagues, an assistant of the province.
Captain Alden's case seems to have made a great stir. On July 20 there was held a special “Fast at the house of Capt. Alden, upon his account.” Judge Sewall read a sermon, and Willard, Allen, and Cotton Mather prayed, then Captain Hill and Captain Scottow; “concluded about 5. aclock.” (Sewall, Diary, I. 361-362.) A year later, on June 12, 1693, Sewall records: “I visit Capt. Alden and his wife, and tell them I was sorry for their Sorrow and Temptations by reason of his Imprisonment, and that [I] was glad of his Restauration.”
See above, pp. 183-185, 196-198. These gentlemen were all members of the new Council of the province. Saltonstall, out of dissatisfaction with the proceedings, early withdrew (see above, p. 184), and was later himself accused (Sewall's Diary, I. 373). Jonathan Corwin took his place. A quorum was five. All the judges had had experience in the colony's Court of Assistants; but none had had a legal training.
As to the trial of Bridget Bishop see above, pp. 223-229. Before her last marriage she had been a widow Oliver. The testimony against her includes the deposition of a Samuel Gray (Records of Salem Witchcraft, I. 152-153) as to her bewitching to death his child some fourteen years before. Of his repentance at his death, which must have been recent when Calef wrote, the writer doubtless speaks from personal knowledge.
The full text of the document, that is, may be found at the end of Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience (London, 1693). With that book, or from it, it has been often reprinted. In his life of Phips (and in its reprint in his Magnalia) Cotton Mather tells us that it was drawn up by himself; but it doubtless embodied a compromise. Increase Mather calls it “the humble Advice which twelve Ministers concurringly presented before his Excellency and Council,” and it entitles itself “The Return of several Ministers consulted by his Excellency, and the Honourable Council, upon the present Witchcrafts in Salem Village.”
As to the trials of Susanna Martin and Elizabeth How see above, pp. , and records there cited. The documents for those of Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wildes, may be found in Records of Salem Witchcraft (I. 11-34, 76-99, 180-189), but for the two last more fully in the Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society (XIII. 80-92).
By Mr. Noyes, of whose church in Salem Town she was a member. Says the church record: “1692, July 3. — After sacrament, the elders propounded to the church, — and it was, by an unanimous vote, consented to, — that our sister Nurse, being a convicted witch by the Court, and condemned to die, should be excommunicated; which was accordingly done in the afternoon, she being present.” (Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II. 290.) Upham, himself long pastor of this church, has drawn a powerful picture of the probable scene.
Two of these testimonials, one of them signed by thirty-eight of her neighbors, are printed by Upham (Salem Witchcraft, II. 271-272), and more exactly, from the still extant MSS., in the Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society (XIII. 57-58) — and with them the touching evidence of the neighbors who first bore her the news of her accusation.
As to the trials of Burroughs and Goodwife Carrier see above, pp. 215-222, 241-244, and records there cited. Those relating to Procter and his wife, to Willard, and to Jacobs may be found in Records of Salem Witchcraft (I. 60-74, 99-117, 266-279, 253-265). The testimonials on behalf of the Procters are reprinted (with corrections) by Upham (Salem Witchcraft, II. 305-307). As to Willard other papers will be found in Dr. S. A. Green's Groton in the Witchcraft Times (Groton, 1883), pp. 23-29. The documents relating to Jacobs are to be found also in the Collections of the Essex Institute (II. 49-57), where (and in I. 52-56) are further details as to him and his household.
“This day,” writes Judge Sewall in his diary, “George Burrough, John Willard, Jno. Procter, Martha Carrier and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of Spectators being present. Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, Hale, Noyes, Chiever, etc. All of them said they were innocent, Carrier and all. Mr. Mather says they all died by a Righteous Sentence. Mr. Burrough by his Speech, Prayer, protestation of his Innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which occasions their speaking hardly concerning his being executed.” In the margin he later added “Dolefull Witchcraft!”
By “Mr. Mather” is unquestionably meant Increase Mather. He alone, as the senior in age and in dignity, could with propriety be thus given the first place; and his son, if named at all, would have been identified as “Mr. Cotton Mather.” That he is not named at all needs no explanation to those who have read his own words as to accusers and accused and his complaints as to the blame heaped upon himself. Of Moody, Willard, Bailey, we have perhaps seen enough in earlier pages to guess why such an appeal might with hope be addressed to them. The Boston Tory Joshua Broadbent, writing on June 21 from New York, reported that “Mrs. Moody, Parson Moody's wife, is said to be one” of the witches. (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1689-1692, p. 653.) Of Allen, the well-to-do minister of the First Church, who seems to have been a man of much caution, it may be well to remember that prior to 1678 he had owned the estate at Salem Village since occupied, but not yet in full ownership, by the Nurses, Procter's near neighbors, and that he was doubtless personally known to the petitioner. Bailey, who had come to America in 1683, had at first assisted Willard at the South Church, and, after a pastorate at Watertown, was now Allen's assistant at the First.
Juries. It should not be overlooked that in these trials of 1692 the jurors were chosen from among church-members only, not, as later, from all who had the property to make them voters under the new charter. The act establishing this qualification for the jurors was not passed till November 25. (See Goodell in Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings, second series, I. 67-68.)
Richard and Andrew, sons of Martha Carrier, of Andover. (See above, pp. 241-244.) Richard was 18.
As to this form of torture see above, p. 102 and note 1. For some of the evidence extorted by it in this case see Records of Salem Witchcraft, p. 198. The use of torture in cases of witchcraft had been recommended by Perkins, the Puritan oracle, and yet more warmly by King James; and despite protesting jurists it came into use. Even Coke, who maintains that “there is no Law to warrant tortures in this land, nor can they be justified by any prescription,” has to add “being so lately brought in” (Institutes, III., cap. 2). As to its actual use in English witch-trials see Notestein, Witchcraft in England, index, s. v. “Torture.” But Massachusetts law, from 1641 on, had straitly forbidden it except, after conviction, to extort the names of accomplices; and even then forbade “such tortures as be barbarous and inhumane” (see Body of Liberties, par. 45; ed. of 1660, p. 67; ed. of 1672, p. 129). If in 1648 the highest court of the colony, learning with admiration of the achievements of Matthew Hopkins in England, was “desirous that the same course which hath been taken in England for the discovery of witches, by watchinge, may also be taken here,” and ordered, in the case of a witch, that “a strict watch be set about her every night, and that her husband be confined to a private room, and watched also” (Records of Massachusetts, III. 126), their phrasing betrays how little they understood the rigor of the English method. In 1692 even Cotton Mather declared himself “farr from urging the un-English method of torture” (Mather Papers, p. 394), though he urged on the judges “whatever hath a tendency to put the witches into confusion,” such as “Crosse and Swift Questions.” But the procedure of that day, like our own, drew a line between what might be used in the courts and what might be permitted to extra-judicial inquiry, and we shall see yet more of methods used at Salem to extort confession.
How she was brought to confess she herself told in a brave paper:
“The humble declaration of Margaret Jacobs unto the honoured court now sitting at Salem, sheweth
“That whereas your poor and humble declarant being closely confined here in Salem jail for the crime of witchcraft, which crime, thanks be to the Lord, I am altogether ignorant of, as will appear at the great day of judgment. May it please the honoured court, I was cried out upon by some of the possessed persons, as afflicting of them; whereupon I was brought to my examination, which persons at the sight of me fell down, which did very much startle and affright me. The Lord above knows I knew nothing, in the least measure, how or who afflicted them; they told me, without doubt I did, or else they would not fall down at me; they told me if I would not confess, I should be put down into the dungeon and would be hanged, but if I would confess I should have my life; the which did so affright me, with my own vile wicked heart, to save my life made me make the confession I did, which confession, may it please the honoured court, is altogether false and untrue. The very first night after I had made my confession, I was in such horror of conscience that I could not sleep, for fear the Devil should carry me away for telling such horrid lies. I was, may it please the honoured court, sworn to my confession, as I understand since, but then, at that time, was ignorant of it, not knowing what an oath did mean. The Lord, I hope, in whom I trust, out of the abundance of his mercy, will forgive me my false forswearing myself. What I said was altogether false, against my grandfather, and Mr. Burroughs, which I did to save my life and to have my liberty; but the Lord, charging it to my conscience, made me in so much horror, that I could not contain myself before I had denied my confession, which I did, though I saw nothing but death before me, choosing rather death with a quiet conscience, than to live in such horror, which I could not suffer. Whereupon my denying my confession, I was committed to close prison, where I have enjoyed more felicity in spirit a thousand times than I did before in my enlargement.
“And now, may it please your honours, your poor and humble declarant having, in part, given your honours a description of my condition, do leave it to your honours pious and judicious discretions to take pity and compassion on my young and tender years; to act and do with me as the Lord above and your honours shall see good, having no friend but the Lord to plead my cause for me; not being guilty in the least measure of the crime of witchcraft, nor any other sin that deserves death from man; and your poor and humble declarant shall forever pray, as she is bound in duty, for your honours' happiness in this life, and eternal felicity in the world to come. So prays your honours declarant.
“Margaret Jacobs.”
The document is preserved by Hutchinson, and may be found in the first chapter of his second volume (or in Poole's reprint of an earlier draft, N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXIV. 402-403).
Daniel Andrew, the kinsman and neighbor who had fled with her father. He had been a leading man, a teacher, a deputy to the General Court, and apparently a staunch opponent of the panic. As to the crazed mother, see p. 371, below, and the grandmother's petition in Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, V. 79 (or in Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. 431-432).
For a little more of her story see below, p. 371. She was acquitted in January, but had to remain in jail, even after the governor by proclamation had freed the prisoners (May, 1693), for want of means to pay her prison fees. A stranger, touched with compassion on hearing of her case, advanced the money — and was in time repaid. (Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II. 353-354.)
The papers relating to Ann Pudeater (Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 12-22) have been embodied in a study of her case by G. F. Chever in the Collections of the Essex Institute (II. 37-42, 49-54). The widow Dorcas Hoar seems to have earned some suspicion by an interest in fortune-telling (Records of Salem Witchcraft, I. 235-253), and, though she confessed, she was condemned; but she had potent friends. “A petition is sent to Town,” says Sewall in his Diary on September 21, “in behalf of Dorcas Hoar, who now confesses. Accordingly an order is sent to the Sheriff to forbear her Execution.” “This is,” he adds, “the first condemned person who has confess'd.” The aged Mrs. Bradbury, daughter of John Perkins of Ipswich and wife of Captain Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, was not only one of the most socially eminent but one of the most venerated women of her region, and her arrest enlisted in her defence the public sentiment of all the district (see Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 160-174). She was aided to escape from prison, and so from death.
For the Andover and Topsfield cases reference may again be made to Mrs. Bailey's Historical Sketches of Andover and to vol. XIII. of the Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society as well as to the Records of Salem Witchcraft. The papers as to Wilmot Redd, or Reed, are in the Records (II. 97-106); Margaret Scott's seem lost. The examinations of Mary Lacy and Ann Foster should be studied in Hutchinson's chapter as well as in the Records (II. 135-142), and see also p. 244, above, and pp. 418-419, below.
This was, of course, the old English “peine forte et dure” for those who, in cases of petty treason or of felony, will not “put themselves upon the country,” or, as Coke has it, “when the offender standeth mute, and refuseth to be tryed by the common law of the land.” (See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, second ed., II. 650-652.) Whether in Giles Corey's case this was mere proud protest or had some ulterior end is not yet clear. The theory that he hoped thereby to save himself from attainder and preserve his right to bequeath his property has been learnedly contested by G. H. Moore (see especially his Final Notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts, New York, 1885, pp. 40-59). As to Giles Corey see also p. 250, above, and Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 175-180. The missing report of his examination is printed at the end of Calef's book in the editions of 1823, 1861, and 1866.
Mary Herrick. At least the following remarkable tale of hers (first published in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXVII. 55) must have had to do with Mr. Hale's change of view:
“An Account Received from the mouth of Mary Herrick aged about 17 yeares having been Afflicted [by] the Devill or some of his instruments, about 2 month. She saith she had oft been Afflicted and that the shape of Mrs. Hayle had been represented to her, One amongst others, but she knew not what hand Afflicted her then, but on the 5th of the 9th [i. e., November] She Appeared again with the Ghost of Gooddee Easty, and that then Mrs. Hayle did sorely Afflict her by pinching, pricking and Choaking her. On the 12th of the 9th she Came again and Gooddee Easty with her and then Mrs. Hayle did Afflict her as formerly. Sd Easty made as if she would speake but did not, but on the same night they Came again and Mrs. Hayle did sorely Afflict her, and asked her if she thought she was a Witch. The Girl answered no, You be the Devill. Then said Easty sd and speake, She Came to tell her She had been put to Death wrongfully and was Innocent of Witchcraft, and she Came to Vindicate her Cause and she Cryed Vengeance, Vengeance, and bid her reveal this to Mr. Hayle and Gerish, and then she would rise no more, nor should Mrs. Hayle Afflict her any more. Memorand: that Just before sd Easty was Executed, She Appeared to sd Girl, and said I am going upon the Ladder to be hanged for a Witch, but I am innocent, and before a 12 Month be past you shall believe it. Sd Girl sd she speake not of this before because she believed she was Guilty, Till Mrs. Hayle appeared to her and Afflicted her, but now she believeth it is all a Delusion of the Devil.
“This before Mr. Hayle and Gerish 14th of the 9th 1692.”
“Gerish” means the Rev. Joseph Gerrish, of Wenham, who is doubtless here the scribe.
His wife was a daughter of John Putnam, brother of Nathaniel and uncle of Deacon Edward and of the Thomas whose wife and daughter were of the “afflicted.” As to the Bishops see (besides Upham) Essex Institute Collections, XLII. 146 ff.
Philip English was the foremost ship-owner of Salem, a man of large wealth and exceptional prominence. He had come in early life from the island of Jersey and at Salem had married, in 1675, the daughter and heiress of the merchant William Hollingworth. His wife, now thirty-nine, a lady of education and refinement, was arrested on April 22 (see p. 347, above) and on April 30 a warrant was issued for himself, but he could not be found. Detected, however, in his Boston hiding-place, he was on May 31 committed, but was allowed to give bail, and with his wife was kept in loose custody at Boston. As to their escape thence, see above, pp. 178, 186, note 3; and for their story in general the articles by G. F. Chever in the Essex Institute's Collections, I., II., Salem Witchcraft Records, I. 189-193, the evidence of William Beale appended by Drake to his ed. of Mather and Calef (III. 177-185), the documents printed in the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, X. 17-20, a letter of Dr. Bentley in Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, first ser., X. 64-66, and a passage from his diary quoted by R. D. Paine in The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem (New York, 1909), pp. 26-28.
Its last session was on September 22, though the court was not definitely dropped till the end of October. See above, p. 200 and note 1.
The implication perhaps is that the governor exceeded his powers. That question has been much and hotly debated — most learnedly by Mr. A. C. Goodell in his Further Notes on the History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1884), pp. 20 ff., and Dr. G. H. Moore in his Final Notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts (New York, 1885), pp. 71-84.
This is an error. In England, too, witches were hanged — unless convicted of bewitching to death their husbands, when for husband-murder, “petty treason,” they were burned (see Coke, Institutes, pt. III., cap. 2, 6, 101, and the records of the courts). Sir Matthew Hale indeed makes witchcraft “at Common Law” still “punished with death, as Heresie, by Writ De Hæretico Comburendo” (Pleas of the Crown, p. 6). But this, of course, was after trial by an ecclesiastical court; and since the Reformation ecclesiastical courts had not had cognizance of such cases.
This, the most striking feature of the Salem trials, is perhaps partially explained by the closing suggestion of Cotton Mather's advice to the judges (Mather Papers, p. 396): “What if some of the lesser Criminalls be onely scourged with lesser punishments, and also put upon some solemn, open, Publike and Explicitt renunciation of the Divil?... Or what if the death of some of the offenders were either diverted or inflicted, according to the successe of such their renunciation?” If it was unique that those who confessed escaped death, it was nothing unique that they should be reckoned “lesser Criminalls.”
The Rev. Thomas Barnard, associate minister at Andover. Dane, his senior, seems to have been averse to the proceedings.
This is doubtless what Brattle calls (p. 189, above) “a petition lately offered to the chief Judge.” The examination and confession of Mary Osgood may be found in Hutchinson's Massachusetts, II. ch. I. (or in Poole's reprint, N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXIV. 398). She, the two Tylers, and Abigail Barker were tried and acquitted in January at the first session of the new Superior Court (see in vol. X. of the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts the brief but valuable paper of John Noble, pp. 12-26).
best commentary on these words is a remarkable paper which more than a century ago came into the hands of the Massachusetts Historical Society and was published in its Collections (second series, 111. 221-225). As Dr. Belknap, who prepared it for publication, labelled it "Remainder of the account of the Salem Witchcraft" and seems to have meant it to be printed with Brattle's letter (see pp. 169-190, above), it is not improbable that, with that document, it had come from the family of Brattle and that it was originally his. In that case it is by no means impossible that in his hands Calef may have seen it and that from him he may have received the recantation printed just above. The added paper runs:
"Salem, Oct. 19, '92. The Rev. Mr. 1. Mather went to Salem [to visit] the confessours (so called): He conferred with several of them, and they spake as follows:" [Then are narrated the explanations given by eleven of the women, the most suggestive being this:] "Goodwife Tyler did say, that when she was first apprehended, she had no fears upon her, and did think that nothing could have made her confesse against herself; but since, she had found to her great grief, that she had wronged the truth, and falsely accused herself: she said, that when she was brought to Salem, her brother Bridges rode with her, and that all along the way from Andover to Salem, her brother kept telling her that she must needs be a witch, since the afflicted accused her, and at her touch were raised out of their fitts, and urging her to confess herself a witch; she as constantly told him,that she was no witch, that she knew nothing of witchcraft, and begg'd of him not to urge her to confesse; however when she came to Salem, she was carried to a room, where her brother on one side and Mr. John Emerson on the other side did tell her that she was certainly a witch, and that she saw the devill before her eyes at that time (and accordingly the said Emerson would attempt with his hand to beat him away from her eyes) and they so urged her to confesse, that she wished herself in any dungeon, rather than be so treated: Mr. Emerson told her once and again, Well! I see you will not confesse! Well! I will now leave you , and then you are undone, body and soul forever: Her brother urged her to confesse, and told her that in so doing she could not lye; to which she answered, Good brother, do not say so, for I shall lye if I confesse, and then who shall answer unto God for my lye? He still asserted it, and said that God would not suffer so many good men to be in such an errour about it, and that she would be hang'd, if she did not confesse, and continued so long and so violently to urge and presse her to confesse, that she thought verily her life would have gone from her, and became so terrifyed in her mind, that she own'd at length almost any thing that they propounded to her; but she had wronged her conscience in so doing, she was guilty of a great sin in belying of herself, and desired to mourn for it as long as she lived: This she said and a great deal more of the like nature, and all of it with such affection, sorrow, relenting, grief, and mourning as that it exceeds any pen for to describe and expresse the same."
The "Mr. John Emerson" of this episode was that clerical schoolmaster whom we have already met in New Hampshire (see p. 37, note 3), but who was now, a teacher at Charlestown. (Sibley, Harvard Graduates, II. 471-474.) If so personal an activity of President Mather surprise, let it be remembered how widely the persecution was now striking. His parishioner Lady Phips was among the accused, and the Quaker John Whiting has a yet more startling suggestion: commenting in 1702 on the account just printed in Cotton Mather's Magnalia, he mentions the "two Hundred more accused, some of which of great Estates in Boston," and in the margin adds, "Query, Was not the Governour's Wife, and C. M.'s Mother, some of them?" (Truth and Innocency Defended, p. 140.)
Yet not all dared to retract. "More than one or two of those now in Prison," writes Increase Mather (Cases of Conscience, Postscript), "have freely and credibly acknowledged their Communion and Familiarity with the Spirits of Darkness; and have also declared unto me the Time and Occasion, with the particular Circumstances of their Hellish Obligations and Abominations."
Cotton Mather's Wonders, with its imprimatur by Phips and its preface by Stoughton, see above, pp. 205 ff.
The book, with all its credulity, is in the main a vigorous and learned argument against improper methods for detecting witches, and chiefly against reliance on the testimony of the bewitched. Commended by the ministers, fourteen of whom sign the preface “to the Christian reader,” it may have done something to allay the panic. But, though it is dated by the author “October 3,” the title-page date of 1693 suggests that, like his son's Wonders (see p. 207, note 1), it was long in the press or withheld from the public.
As the pages of Mather's Wonders containing these trials are reprinted in full above (pp. 215-244), it is needless here to repeat them. They occupy pp. 113-139 of Calef's book. Then comes what here follows.
As to the insertion in Mather's account of evidence not given at the trial, and as to his errors of statement, see the careful analysis of Upham in his “Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather,” pp. 46-48 (Historical Magazine, n. s., VI. 175-177).
To those who know the wretched chap-books which have had to serve as records of the English witch-trials — and these alone Calef was likely to know — this will not seem high praise. The modern student can, however, compare for himself Mather's accounts with the court records — and, where mere transcription is concerned, will find them faithful.
See pp. 225-227. Shattuck, testifying in 1692, placed in 1680 his child's bewitchment, but “about 17 or 18 years after” the exposure of the witch.
The offense charged, in the indictments printed by Calef, was that the accused “wickedly and feloniously hath used certain detestable arts, called witchcrafts and sorceries, by which said wicked arts” the said bewitched “was and is tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted and tormented against the peace of our sovereign lord and lady, the King and Queen, and against the form of the statute in that case made and provided.” This was the usual form; but four of the indictments extant (against Rebecca Eames, Samuel Wardwell, Rebecca Jacobs, Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 24, 143, 147-148, and William Barker's, preserved by Chandler, American Criminal Trials, I. 429) charge instead that the accused “wickedly and feloniously a covenant with the Evil Spirit the Devil did make,” and in two of these “the statute of King James the First” is expressly named as contravened. That statute, indeed, punished alike with death those who should “consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or wicked spirit,” and the laws of Massachusetts made it death “if any man or woman be a witch (that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit)” — without a mention of harm to man or beast as element of the crime. That the indictments specify such harm was perhaps only because the public attorney — Thomas Newton (succeeded on July 26 by Anthony Checkley) — was fresh from English practice; but, as Calef implies, the proof should meet the indictment. Newton (1660-1721) had come to Boston in 1688. Mr. Goodell, who studied the originals, says the quoted indictments mentioning the English statute “appear to have been drawn in blank by him, and afterwards filled in by Checkley” (Further Notes, p. 37). As to Newton see the study of Moore (Final Notes, pp. 94-103). Edward Randolph says of him (V. 143) that he was “a person well known in the practice in the Courts in England and New England,” while Checkley he calls “a man ignorant in the Laws of England.” In 1691 Newton had been attorney general at New York.
The laws of the colony had never ceased to be operative; and the first act passed (June 15, 1692) by the General Court under the new charter was for the continuance of these laws, “being not repugnant to the laws of England nor inconsistent with the present constitution,” in full force till November 10. On October 29 the Court passed a general “act for the punishing of capital offenders,” in which the old Massachusetts law as to witchcraft — “If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death” — retains its old place and wording. And on December 14, “for more particular direction in the execution of the law against witchcraft,” the same General Court enacted the long English statute of 1604 (1 James I., cap. 12) — omitting only the penalty of loss of “the privilege and benefit of clergy and sanctuary” and the clauses saving dower and inheritance to widow and heir of the convicted and providing that peers shall be tried by peers, substituting as the place of pillorying “some shire town” for “some market town upon the market day or at such time as any fair shall be kept there,” and adding to the penalty (for the lighter degrees of sorcery) of imprisonment, pillory, and public confession of the offence, the clause: “which said offense shall be written in capital letters, and placed upon the breast of said offender.” The commission creating the Court of Oyer and Terminer (May 27, 1692) antedated, however, all these laws, and instructed that body “to enquire of, hear and determine for this time, according to the law and custom of England and of this their Majesties' province, all and all manner of crimes.” (For a learned study of witchcraft laws in England and New England see Moore's Notes on Witchcraft, pp. 3-11.)
Elizabeth Johnson and Mary Post. Elizabeth Johnson (as to whom see also p. 420) was reprieved, and after six months' imprisonment was freed. Her grandfather, the Rev. Francis Dane, said of her “she is but simplish at the best.” Mary Post and Sarah Wardwell likewise escaped death.
On Sarah Daston's case see documents printed in the Publications (X. 12-16) of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and the brief account of her trial by an eye-witness in the letter prefixed to the London edition of Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience.
As to Mary Watkins see an article in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register (XLIV. 168 ff.). She lived at Milton, was white, and on August 11 was still in prison, but was asking the jail-keeper to provide a master to carry her “out of this country into Virginia.”
He means, of course, Mercy Short (see above, pp. 255 ff.) and Margaret Rule (see pp. 308-323). From this sentence it seems clear that this account of the Salem episode was written before the earlier pages of his book, which begins with the narrative of Margaret Rule and takes its title from it.
Of Winifred Benham, mother and daughter, Mr. Taylor (The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, p. 155) learns only — from “Records Court of Assistants (1: 74, 77) ” — that they were in August, 1697, tried and acquitted at Hartford, and in October indicted on new complaints, the jury returning “Ignoramus.” They were doubtless the widow and daughter of that “Joseph Benham of New Haven,” who in 1656/7 was married at Boston to Winifred King (N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XI. 203) and later became one of the first settlers of Wallingford. (See also Davis, History of Wallingford and Meriden, p. 412, cited by Levermore, in the New Englander, XLIV. 815.)
For the interesting story of this proclamation see the Diary (I. 439-441) of Judge Sewall, who drafted its final form, and that of Cotton Mather (I. 211), who drew a rejected one. The draft itself, with a careful study of these proceedings, see in Moore's Notes on Witchcraft (pp. 14-19).
The punctuation of the copy in the Massachusetts archives, as printed in a note to Sewall's Diary (I. 440), joins “more ways than one” to “unsettling of us.”
Samuel Sewall. The exact wording of his paper he gives in his Diary (I. 445):
“Copy of the Bill I put up on the Fast day; giving it to Mr. Willard as he pass'd by, and standing up at the reading of it, and bowing when finished; in the Afternoon.
“Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the Guilt contracted upon the opening of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this Day relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, Desires to take the Blame and shame of it, Asking pardon of men, And especially desiring prayers that God, who has an Unlimited Authority, would pardon that sin and all other his sins, personal and Relative: And according to his infinite Benignity, and Sovereignty, Not Visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the Land: But that He would powerfully defend him against all Temptations to Sin, for the future; and vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving Conduct of his Word and Spirit.”
This ends the book, as first written; but the author adds a “Postscript,” called out by the publication, in 1697, of Cotton Mather's life of Sir William Phips, who had died in London early in 1695. Not the achievements of Sir William, thinks Calef, but Increase Mather's negotiation in England and his procuring of the new charter, “are the things principally driven at in the book,” and “another principal thing is to set forth the supposed witchcrafts in New-England, and how well Mr. Mather the Younger therein acquitted himself.” Wherefore, after freeing his mind as to the matter of the charter, he takes up Mather's allegations as to the Salem episode, and, pointing out that, “tho this Book pretends to raise a Statue in Honour of Sir William, yet it appears it was the least part of the design of the Author to Honour him, but rather to Honour himself, and the Ministers,” since by so printing the advice of the ministers (see above, p. 356) “as to give a full Account of the cautions given him, but designedly hiding from the Reader the Incouragements and Exhortations to proceed,” it really throws the blame upon Phips, he devotes the remaining pages, here reprinted, to Cotton Mather's real views and their influence. The Life of Phips, now a rare book, is reprinted in Mather's Magnalia.
In a part of his book not here reprinted (pp. 85 ff.) Calef speaks more fully of this paper, lent him early in 1695, but on condition of its return within a fortnight and uncopied. It was perhaps the MS. described by Poole (Memorial History, II. 152, note) as now in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and called “Cotton Mather's belief and practice in those thorny difficulties which have distracted us in the day of temptation” — having “marginal reflections in another hand.” [Since the foregoing words were written, this conjecture has been proved true. See above, p. 306, note 1.]
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