USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 5
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The progress of the frenzy from its simple beginnings in the house of Parris to the devastation it wrought a few months later is one of the most striking episodes in Colonial history.
In an atmosphere surcharged with doubt and suspicion and always with the omnipresent belief in the Devil's interposition in the troubled affairs of men, it was natural and inevitable that the strange actions of the bewitched children should have been interpreted as a direct manifestation of the powers of darkness. Doubtless, the children themselves became alarmed at the attention they were attracting, and may well have sur-
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THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE
mised that they might themselves be regarded as witches un- less they could direct suspicion toward others by whom they might claim to be bewitched. .
Be this as it may, they were not slow in pointing out their "tormenters," and forthwith indicated Tituba, from whom they had first acquired their dangerous knowledge. She was arrested on February 28, 1692, together with two miserable women of the town, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn. Tituba, although admitting her compact with the Devil, escaped by in- criminating Good and Osburn and also, as later transpired, two highly respected aged women, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse (whose home still stands in Danvers), all of whom were executed, chiefly on the testimony of the accusing girls. Probably the arrest of Rebecca Nurse was instigated by the enmity of the Putnams, who, mother and daughter, were among the chief accusers through the following months. Overwhelmed by the accusations against two such respected persons as Goodwives Corey and Nurse and inflamed by a sermon preached by Rev. Deodat Lawson, which was inter- rupted by the antics of several of the persecuted children, popular feeling reached a degree of panic, which precluded any possible control of the rising excitement.
WITCH TRIALS (1692)
During the spring and summer of 1692 upwards of 125 persons were arrested and confined to await trial. George Jacobs and John Procter, in whose family two of the accusing girls had been servants were taken into custody. A grand- daughter of Jacobs, confessing herself a witch, testified against him; she recanted too late to save his life. Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth How and Susannah Martin, the mother of the heroine of Whittier's "The Witch's Daughter" were ar- rested on the usual flimsy pretexts. John Willard sealed his fate as did John Procter by ill considered but pertinent re- marks reflecting on the accusing girls.
Reverend John Burroughs had been minister of the church in Salem Village from 1680 to 1682. He had left on account of the dissension in that most unfortunate parish and had since been living in Maine, latterly presiding over a church
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WITCH TRIALS
in Wells. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1670 and although variously reported as a man of quick passion, and cruel disposition, he appears to have been living quietly and circumspectly in Wells when he was apprehended and brought to Salem on May 4, 1692. Much fantastic testimony was given, especially by Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis; but the chief evidence against him was furnished by his reputed marvelous and unnatural strength. It is reported that "his power of muscle discovered itself early when he was a member of Cambridge College," an attribute which would not have detracted from his reputation in these later years.
Bridget Bishop, the first to be tried and executed, was a woman of different type from the others. She was the keeper of a tavern, and given somewhat to conspicuous dress, and ready retort. "Puppets" had been found in her cellar and sufficient difficulties arose with her neighbors to bring her under suspicion, which finally resulted in her trial and death as a witch. Her death warrant has been preserved, the only document of this sort known to be in existence.
Mary Easty, a younger sister of Rebecca Nurse, was the mother of seven children, a woman of peculiar serenity and devotion to duty. She was twice arrested, the second time for producing distressing fits in Martha Lewis, was remanded to prison and executed in September. A letter written shortly before her death, addressed to Sir William Phips, the presid- ing judges and the ministers, has been preserved, in which the condemned woman denies any knowledge of witchcraft and gently warns her prosecutors to be careful in the course they are pursuing lest they shed more innocent blood.
The case of Martha Carrier represents another tragic phase of the situation. When she was arrested four of her children were likewise imprisoned, one of whom, a girl of eight, over- come by the horrors of her situation, confessed that her mother had made her a witch when she was six years old, upon which evidence Martha was condemned. Cotton Mather rather uncharitably says of her: "This rampant hag was the person of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed that the Devil promised her that she should be Queen of Hell." Her trial was a peculiarly stormy one. Goaded as she was by the taunts and actions of
40
THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE
the accusing children, she finally turned upon the magistrates with the words-"It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks who are out of their wits." And then gave the lie direct to her accusers. Such retorts naturally condemned beyond hope the tortured victims who made them. There could be no defence and no escape.
EXECUTIONS (1692)
The complete list of those executed at Salem is as follows :- June 10, Bridget Bishop; July 19, Sarah Osgood, Elizabeth How, George Jacobs, Sr., Susanna Martin, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wildes; August 19, George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, John Procter, John Willard; Sept. 19, Giles Corey-pressed to death; September 22, Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudester, William Redd (Wilmot Read or Reed), Margaret Scott, Samuel Wardell. The total is thirteen women and seven men, every one of whom protested innocence of the crime of witchcraft.
The method of execution, except in the case of Giles Corey was by hanging on an eminence in the outskirts of Salem, since known as Gallows Hill. Giles Corey suffered death by pressing, a barbarous practice sanctioned by the English law for those who refused to plead.
The circumstances surrounding Burroughs' execution on Gallows Hill were peculiarly dramatic. John Willard, John Procter, Martha Carrier and George Jacobs were hanged on the same day, August 19, and many were present as spectators on that occasion. Burroughs through his calmness and ability to repeat the Lord's prayer without faltering, so impressed the crowd that it was about to interfere with the progress of the execution, when, according to Calef, Cotton Mather addressed the people, declaring that Burroughs was not a properly or- dained minister and that "the devil was often transformed into an angel of light."
SPECTRAL EVIDENCE (1692)
Although many details of the proceedings have been lost or suppressed, with a few exceptions adequate records have been preserved of the various trials in the Salem outbreak.
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SPECTRAL EVIDENCE
The proceedings were, in general, modelled after the English law, following Sir Matthew Hale. Particularly important was the recognition of the validity of so-called "spectral evi- dence" as sanctioned by Hale and accepted by the judges here during the period of the trials. It was one of the common methods of the "afflicted children," to assert during the examination of the suspected person, that spectres of the accused appeared or spoke to them which threw them into fits and paroxysms of various sorts causing them extreme anguish and suffering, or that they had visions of persons who had been killed or injured by the accused, or that they heard spirit voices. Throughout the Salem trials this type of evidence was admitted and was largely productive of the adverse ver- dicts which followed.
Violent disputes arose as to whether the Devil could appear in the shape of a person without that person's consent. Wil- liam Stoughton who presided at all the trials maintained to the end that the Devil could not take upon himself the like- ness of an innocent person to afflict another. In other words, he could act only through those in league with him, who had "signed the book"-viz., actual witches. Others held with equal assurance to the view that a demon might appear in the shape of an innocent man for evil purposes. It is possible John Bur- roughs might have escaped the gallows had Cotton Mather not asserted that the "Devil has often been transformed into an angel of light."
On the arrival of the new Governor, Sir William Phips, in Boston May 14, 1692, the witchcraft excitement was well under way. The prisons were full; the courts previously operative had disappeared pending the adoption of the new charter. It was a time of extreme emergency and again following English precedent, a special court of Oyer and Ter- miner was constituted on May 27 for the trial of the witches. The deputy governor, William Stoughton, was first named and became chief justice, it is supposed through the influence of his friends, the Mathers, father and son. His associate, Samuel Sewall, kept a diary which has been an invaluable source of in- formation during this period, but he was present at only one of the trials. Nathaniel Saltonstall is said to have withdrawn from the commission after the conviction of Bridget Bishop,
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THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE
the first of the victims, "very much dissatisfied with the pro- ceedings." Parris and Noyes, the minister of the Salem church, took no judicial part in the prosecutions, but served largely as court reporters, and to them we owe the fairly complete description of the proceedings. They were, however, exceedingly active in the discovery of the witches and in bring- ing them to trial. Their record is peculiarly unsavory. At the last hanging of eight persons, Noyes is credited with having made the oft-quoted remark: "What a sad thing it is to see eight Firebands of Hell hanging there."
Although the persons accused of witchcraft lived for the most part in neighboring towns, the trials were held in the courthouse on Washington Street, in Salem, and possibly in a few instances in the town meeting-house. Preliminary exami- nations only were made in Nathaniel Ingersoll's tavern and at the meeting-house in Salem Village.
The formal trial was conducted with Stoughton presiding, and several other associate judges. Juries were also empanel- led but their part in the final decision beyond acquiescing in the opinion of the judges and bringing in the formal verdict appears to have been unimportant. The judges not only passed on the evidence presented by witnesses, but took a leading part in the questioning and cross examination of the defendants. They filled the double role of judge and prosecuting attorney. The accused had no counsel and were permitted no defence. If friends or relatives attempted to interpose in their favor, they too were likely to be apprehended as accomplices.
CHARACTER OF THE TRIALS (1692)
The indefensible practice of asking leading questions made the situation still more confusing and hopeless. It is, in fact, a reflection on any community that such travesties as passed for trials should have been possible in a company of otherwise fairminded and intelligent people. Furthermore, although pre- sumably it would have had little effect on the outcome, the judges were for the most part not lawyers. Stoughton had been educated for the ministry and was a man of unquestioned ability, and not without experience of judicial procedure in witchcraft cases since he had participated in the trial of Mary
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JUDICIAL PROCEDURE
Glover in 1688. A lawyer, Thomas Newton, was appointed a special King's attorney and later the attorney general, Anthony Checkley, was given charge of the prosecutions. George Corwin, who figured prominently in the arrests was a sheriff.
The exact dates of the sittings of the court are uncertain, for Hutchinson is inaccurate in his statement on this point; but probably not more than four sessions were held, from the middle of May, until the latter part of September. Acts dur- ing the year providing regular courts led to the discontinuance of the special emergency court of Oyer and Terminer but not before its activities had brought about the summary death of twenty persons. Stoughton was again appointed chief justice of the newly organized court, and in Jan. 1693 presided in Salem at the trial of three witches, who were convicted but not executed. This ended the persecutions in Essex County. There was, in fact, but one other noteworthy case in Massa- chusetts, that of Margaret Rule in September, 1693 to which reference will later be made.
JUDICIAL PROCEDURE (1692)
The conduct of the individual trials has been narrated in detail by Governor Hutchinson, and many of the original records have been preserved at the Essex Institute in Salem, and elsewhere. The procedure was similar in all cases. In the court room were the judges, the jury, the accusers, largely made up of the "afflicted children," and a goodly number of the curious and mystified populace. The accused person was brought into this hostile assemblage, conscious of her inno- cence, but without counsel, or opportunity to defend herself except by general denials. Contrary to the accepted attitude of a more enlightened period, she was assumed to be guilty and was called upon to prove her innocence, which was quite impossible under the existing conditions of prejudice and popular credulity. The only defence possible was general denial met at every turn by the apparent suffering of the accusers, which, no doubt, gained added force from the fact that they were supposedly innocent children.
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THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE
ATTITUDE OF ACCUSERS AND ACCUSED (1692)
The Puritans were not philosophers; they did not deal in abstractions. To them the Devil personifying evil was a reality, however difficult to reconcile with the omnipotence of God. From their viewpoint, to overcome his machinations necessitated the destruction of his agents, the witches, who had allied themselves with him. This was a duty enjoined upon them by the Bible, from which alone they sought guidance. In this the Puritans of New England differed in no respect from those of other faith except that the peculiar grimness of their religion lent itself in highest degree to this conception.
That the children were peculiarly wicked, ignorant and de- signing persons there seems no reason to suppose. To explain their conduct throughout by so simple an hypothesis as that of pure knavery and maliciousness is wholly untenable. Doubtless this played a part, particularly in the earlier days, but that they were responsible for their fits and generally neurotic behavior at the later trials is not to be considered seriously.
At a time of exceptional emotional excitement it is natural that self-control be lost to such a degree that acts are per- formed quite beyond the volition of the performer. The extraordinary manifestations on the part of children and others following the ravages of the Black Death in Europe is a case in point. It is difficult to imagine a situation more certain to arouse hysterical reactions than that which these children in Salem Village were called upon to face. Through a series of fortuitous circumstances they found themselves the center of amazed attention, flattering to anyone, but es- pecially to children. Limited though their knowledge may have been they were thoroughly convinced of the existence of witchcraft and no doubt of its dangers, if the accusation were visited upon them. They became, therefore, naturally enough the accusers and not the accused, a role practically forced upon them by the judgment of their elders, who pro- nounced them bewitched. How sincere they may have been in their belief in their own bewitchment, and how far they may have been instigated by older and designing persons, for
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THE ACCUSED
example Mrs. Ann Putnam, to implicate their supposed tor- menters is matter for conjecture.
That they soon became hysterical and in a measure at least irresponsible is not open to doubt. Anything like a satisfac- tory analysis of their mental state must be inadequate, unless it takes into account the modern theories of auto-hypnotic phenomena, sub-conscious motivation, dissociated personality, suggestion and the mass of evidence which goes to show that acts may be performed in these various states beyond the power of conscious control and often beyond the cognizance of the performer. Furthermore, in their disordered fancy the child- ren may have suspected that they were actually witches, and more or less unconsciously sought to defend themselves from the fate which they were meting out to others.
CONFIDENCE OF THE ACCUSED (1692)
The much discussed spectral evidence is best explained on the basis of hallucinations of sight and, at times, of hearing to which children under strain of intense excitement might well be subject, however probable it may be that in some in- stances they were instructed as to their behavior. That ordi- nary children could have been trained in so short a space of time to become such consummate actresses is in itself a patho- logical phenomenon, demanding further explanation. The re- sponsibility for the outbreak cannot with justice be attributed to the deluded children. At the worst they were merely the chance instruments in the hands of a public sentiment which demanded satisfaction for a state of affairs which in its limited vision could only be due to the renewed activities of the Devil in their midst. We may, however, regret from an experi- mental standpoint that Col. Hutchinson's suggestion was not followed, to determine before any trials began whether the Devil could not be whipped out of the afflicted.
The attitude of the judges and of the ministers who advised them was entirely logical. They believed in witchcraft and set themselves diligently to enforce the laws for its suppres- sion. That such enforcement could be productive of no good results they had not the imagination to see. The error of their method of procedure they came later to acknowledge, even
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THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE
while continuing to maintain their belief. The complete fail- ure to weigh the often ridiculous evidence, their dependence upon the irresponsible words and actions of nervously over- wrought children, and especially their acceptance of spectral evidence as proof of guilt may throw doubt upon their intellig- ence, and would be utterly condemnatory had they not been under the all-pervading influence of the prevailing fanaticism. There is, however, little doubt of their rigid integrity and of their strict adherence to duty as they saw it.
It is a curious commentary on the whole episode that, with few exceptions, the persons apprehended were so convinced of their own innocence that, as far as they were concerned, justice had miscarried; while at the same time they had no doubt of the possibility that the crime for which they were being unjustly punished might be committed by others. Mary Easty's affecting letter addressed to the court, which convicted her, while firmly maintaining her innocence, expressed the hope that "The Lord in His infinite mercy direct you in this great work if it be his blessed will that no more innocent blood be shed."
During the later period of the trials many of the accused confessed to witchcraft, no doubt as a means of saving their lives. That they were spared is one of the many illogical prepossessions of the authorities, since it is difficult to see how confession could dissolve their compact with the Devil or make them less obnoxious to the community. Of those who were accused at Andover many soon recanted, and without equivo- cation admitted that they were forced into confession through fear, since scant mercy had been shown those who persisted in asserting their innocence.
The experience of the Hobbs family illustrates another strange phase of the persecution. The daughter, Abigail, ad- mitted that she was a witch and accused her parents, who were arrested. The mother at first denied and then admitted her guilt and forthwith charged her husband and a younger child with witchcraft. The husband continued steadfast in his de- nial. Abigail was convicted but not executed, and the parents likewise escaped. The situation was, in general, greatly com- plicated by the confessing witches who forthwith implicated others, and played a part second only to the "afflicted children"
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COTTON MATHER
in the accusations. It was an intricate process, involving one stratum of the population after another.
COTTON MATHER'S INFLUENCE (1690-1694)
The Reverend Cotton Mather, minister of the Old South Church in Boston, is the subject of a special chapter in this volume. He has had a long series of detractors and defenders. Beginning with his contemporary critic, Robert Calef, both sides in the heat of argument have frequently strained the facts to substantiate their contentions. A judicial attitude toward him has been peculiarly difficult, on the one hand be- cause of the extraordinary attributes of the man and on the other because of the unprecedented character of the events in which he was forced to take part. His father, Increase Mather, a president of Harvard College, was a deep-dyed Puritan, and a representative of the austere faith upon which the early life of the Massachusetts Colony was built. He naturally believed in witchcraft, and in his Remarkable Providences, nearly ten years before the trials, wrote naively of demons, and apparitions. His even more distinguished son, bred in the same school of thought, exemplified both the best and the worst of the spirit of the time. He was a scholar trained for the ministry, versed in varied knowledge ranging from law to medicine; he was an ardent promulgator of the gospel ; he was a ready writer; he was confident that he had a special and very important mission in the world. Combined with these attributes was an egotism which is almost beyond comprehension. Responsibility rested heavily upon him. The colony must be saved by his efforts, and no such menace as witchcraft had ever assailed its integrity. This combination of ability and consummate egotism is the key note of his relation to the witchcraft persecutions. His position as minister of the church together with his prominence in public affairs generally, rendered inevitable his participation in the stirring events which by his writing and spoken word he had done much to foment.
Apologists for Cotton Mather have insisted that he took no part in the actual trials, and in fact rarely went to Salem dur- ing their progress. It is also urged in his behalf that he coun-
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THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE
selled care in the examinations and warned against too ready acceptance of spectral evidence. A semi-official opinion of the ministers, requested by the newly appointed court of Oyer and Terminer, is said to have been written by Mather. This was on the whole, for the times, a reasonable statement, advis- ing caution, and throwing doubt on the validity of spectral evidence, on the ground "that a demon may by God's permis- sion appear even to all purposes in the shape of an innocent yea and a virtuous man." John Fiske and others are of the opinion that had the recommendations of the ministers been followed no executions would have taken place.
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