INTRODUCTION
The earliest account of the remarkable
happenings at Salem, in the spring of 1692, which were to bring to a climax and
then to a conclusion the quest of witches in New England, was that which here
follows. The Rev. Deodat Lawson was singularly qualified to write it. He had
himself, only a little earlier (1684-1688), served as pastor to Salem Village, the
rural community in which these happenings took their rise; and, though
dissensions in the parish prevented his longer stay, he seems to have been no
party to these dissensions and must meanwhile have learned to know the scene
and all the actors of that later drama which he here depicts. He was, too, a man
of education, travel, social experience. Born in England, the son of a scholarly
Puritan minister, and doubtless educated there, he first appears in New England
in 1676, and at the time of his call to Salem Village was making his home in
Boston. Thither he returned in 1688: Samuel Sewall, who on May 13 had him in
at Sunday dinner, notes in his diary that he “came to Town to dwell last
week,” and often mentions him thereafter. How at the outbreak of the
witchpanic he came to revisit the Village and to chronicle the doings there, he
himself a dozen years later thus told his English friends:[1]
It pleased God in the Year of our Lord 1692 to visit the People at a place
called Salem Village in New-England, with a very Sore and Grievous Affliction,
in which they had reason to believe, that the Soveraign and Holy God was
pleased to permit Satan and his Instruments, to Affright and Afflict those poor
Mortals in such an Astonishing and Unusual manner.
Now, I having for some time before attended the work of the Ministry in
that Village, the Report of those Great Afflictions came quickly to my notice; and
the more readily because the first Person Afflicted was in the Minister's Family,
who succeeded me, after I was removed from them; in pitty therefore to my
Christian Friends, and former Acquaintance there, I was much concerned about
them, frequently consulted with them, and fervently (by Divine Assistance)
prayed for them; but especially my Concern was augmented, when it was
Reported, at an Examination of a Person suspected for Witchcraft, that my Wife
and Daughter, who Dyed Three Years before, were sent out of the World under
the Malicious Operations of the Infernal Powers; as is more fully represented in
the following Remarks. I did then Desire, and was also Desired, by some
concerned in the Court, to be there present, that I might hear what was alledged
in that respect; observing therefore, when I was amongst them, that the Case of
the Afflicted was very amazing, and deplorable; and the Charges brought against
the Accused, such as were Ground of Suspicions yet very intricate, and difficult
to draw up right Conclusions about them; I thought good for the satisfaction of
my self, and such of my Friends as might be curious to inquiry into those
Mysteries of Gods Providence and Satans Malice, to draw up and keep by me,
a Brief Account of the most Remarkable things, that came to my Knowledge in
those Affairs; which Remarks were afterwards, (at my Request) Revised and
Corrected by some who Sate Judges on the Bench, in those Matters; and were
now Transcribed, from the same Paper, on which they were then Written.
A narrative so timely and so vouched for must have gone speedily into
print.[2] The latest day named in it — “the 5th of
April” — was probably the date both of its completion and of its
going to press. In 1693 it was reprinted in London by John Dunton, who
appended to it an anonymous “Further Account of the Tryals of the
New-England Witches” (an extract from “a letter from thence to
a Gentleman in London”) bringing the story to February, 1693, and to
both joined
Increase Mather's
Cases of Conscience (see pp.
377, 378, below),prefixing to the volume thus made up the title:
A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches.
With the Observations of a Person who was upon the Place several Days when
the suspected Witches were first taken into Examination. To which is added,
Cases of Conscience, etc.
[3] In 1704 Lawson, himself now in England, cast
it into a new form as an appendix to the English edition of his Salem
sermon.
[4]
All names are now left out, that he “may not grieve any, whose Relations
were either Accused or Afflicted, in those times of Trouble and Distress,”
and what had been a narrative is given a statistical form under “three
Heads, viz. (1.) Relating to the Afflicted, (2.) Relating to the Accused, And (3.)
Relating to the Confessing Witches.”
[5] On his own views, and the probable
trend of his influence while at Salem, light is thrown by his introductory
words:
After this,
[6] I being by the Providence of God called over into England, in
the Year 1696; I then brought that Paper of Remarks on the Witchcraft with me;
upon the sight thereof, some Worthy Ministers and Christian Friends here desired
me to Reprint the Sermon and subjoyn the Remarks thereunto, in way of
Appendix, but for some particular Reasons I did then Decline it; But now,
forasmuch as I my self had been an Eye and Ear Witness of most of those
Amazing things, so far as they come within the Notice of Humane Senses; and
the Requests of my Friends were Renewed since I came to Dwell in London; I
have given way to the Publishing of them; that I may satisfy such as are not
resolved to the Contrary, that there may be (and are) such Operations of the
Powers of Darkness on the
Bodies and Minds of Mankind, by Divine Permission; and that those who Sate
Judges in those Cases, may by the serious Consideration of the formidable Aspect
and perplexed Circumstances of that Afflictive Providence be in some measure
excused; or at least be less Censured, for passing Sentance on several Persons,
as being the Instruments of Satan in those Diabolical Operations, when they were
involved in such a Dark and Dismal Scene of Providence, in which Satan did
seem to Spin a finer Thred of Spiritual Wickedness than in the ordinary methods
of Witchcraft; hence the Judges desiring to bear due Testimony against such
Diabolical Practices, were inclined to admit the validity of such a sort of
Evidence as was not so clearly and directly demonstrable to Human Senses, as
in other Cases is required, or else they could not discover the Mysteries of
Witchcraft....
One can not read these words without a suspicion that the reaction in New
England against those held responsible for the procedure at Salem may have had
to do with his return to England; and even in England, it is clear, his cause now
needed defense. If any can wish him further ill, let them be appeased by our two
glimpses of his after fate — a despairing letter in 1714,[7] begging from his
New England friends meat, drink, and clothing for his sick and starving family,
and the passing phrase of a writer who in 1727, mentioning Thomas Lawson,
adds that “he was the father of the unhappy Mr. Deodate Lawson, who
came hither from New England.”[8]
But the reader should not enter on the study of the witchpanic of 1692
without knowing something of our other sources of knowledge. The contemporary
narratives are practically all printed in the pages that follow, and a part of the
trial records will be found embodied in Cotton Mather's
Wonders;[9] but most of these must be sought otherwhere,
and, alas, they are sadly scattered. Some Governor Hutchinson preserved in
his wise and careful pages on this subject,
[10] where alone a part can now be found.
Many have drifted into private hands — like those which in 1860 came into
the hands of the Massachusetts Historical Society and are in part printed in its
Proceedings (1860-1862, pp. 31-37), or those
published by Drake in the foot-notes and appendices to his various histories and
editions,
[11] or those now in the keeping of the Essex Institute at Salem or of the
Boston Public Library.
[12] Such of these as are in print are mentioned in the notes
at the proper points. But most are still in public keeping at Salem; and these in
1864 were printed by W. Elliot Woodward in the two volumes of his
Records of Salem Witchcraft, the work most fundamental
for the first-hand study of this episode. It is, however, imperfect and far from
complete, and there is hope of a better: the
Records and
Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, of which a third volume
has just appeared, must in due course include these witch-trials, and Mr. George
Francis Dow, their editor (who has already by his publication of the witchcraft
records relating to Topsfield
[13] shown his keenness in such work), has in mind the
seizing of this opportunity to print all obtainable papers relating to the Salem
Witchcraft episode. Precious documents too are published by Upham in his
classical
Salem Witchcraft[14] and in the acute and
learned studies of Mr. Abner C. Goodell and Mr. George H.
Moore.
[15]
Notes
[[1].]
In the London edition of his Salem sermon. See below, p. 158, note 3.
[[2].]
One of the acutest students of New England witchcraft, Mr. George H.
Moore (in his “Notes on the Bibliography of Witchcraft in
Massachusetts” in the Proceedings of the
American Antiquarian Society, n. s., V. 248), has said of it: “I cannot
resist the impression upon reading it, that it was promoted by Cotton Mather and
that he wrote the `Bookseller's' notice `to the Reader.' ” If so, he may
well have inspired to the task both author and publisher.
[[3].]
The contents of this volume were reprinted at London, in 1862, by John
Russell Smith, in the volume of his Library of Old
Authors which contains also Cotton Mather's The
Wonders of the Invisible World. In this reprint they fill pp. 199-291,
being described in its main title by only the misleading words, “A Farther
Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches, by Increase
Mather.”
[[4].]
See below, p. 158, note 3.
[[5].]
This revised form of his Account has been
reprinted in full at the end of C. W. Upham's Salem
Witchcraft (Boston, 1867), and, with but slight omissions, in the Library of American Literature edited by Stedman and
Hutchinson (New York, 1891), II. 106-114.
[[6].]
This passage immediately follows that above quoted.
[[7].]
Published (from the Bodleian Library's Rawlinson MS. C. 128, fol. 12)
by George H. Moore, in the Proceedings of the
American Antiquarian Society, n. s., V. 268-269.
[[8].]
Edmund Calamy, in his Continuation, II.
629 (II. 192 of Palmer's revision of 1775, The Nonconformist's Memorial).
[[9].]
At pp. 215-244, below.
[[10].]
History of Massachusetts, II., ch. I.
[[11].]
In his History and Antiquities of Boston
(Boston, 1856), pp. 497, 498, and in his The Witchcraft
Delusion in New England, III. 126, 169-197. All these (the indictment
and the testimony against Philip English, the examination of Mary Clark and of
the slave Tituba) are now in the New York Public Library, as are also his
documents of the Morse case, mentioned above, p. 31, note 1.
[[12].]
As to the fate of the records in general see Upham,
Salem Witchcraft, II. 462.
[[13].]
In vol. XIII. of the Historical Collections
of the Topsfield Historical Society (1908).
[[14].]
Boston, 1867, two vols.
[[15].]
See p. 91, note 2; p. 373, note 3.
