USA > Massachusetts > The history of Massachusetts, the provincial period. 1692-1775 v. II > Part 4
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4 " There was not a village in Eng-
land," says Addison, Spectator, No. 419, " that had not a ghost in it; the churchyards were all haunted ; every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it; and there was scarce- ly a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit."
5 Gifford's Dialogue concerning Witches, Lond. 1593.
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29
WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND.
" palpable witches markes ; " and " every new disease, notable CHAP. accident, mirable of nature, rarity of art, and strange work or II. just judgment of God," was "accounted for no other but an 1692. act or effect of witchcraft." 1
Hence England, in the seventeenth century, and every other nation of Europe, believed in the agency of evil spirits ; and, guided by the statute of Moses, -" Thou shalt not suffer a Ex. 22: witch to live," - the penal code of every state recognized the 18. existence and the criminality of witchcraft ; persons suspected as witches or wizards were frequently tried, condemned, and executed ; and the most eminent judges, as Sir Matthew Hale, distinguished for his learning as well as for his piety, sided with the multitude, and passed the sentence of death upon the accused.2 Commerce with the devil, indeed, was an article of faith firmly embedded in the popular belief ; and thousands were ready to testify that they had caught glimpses of Satan and his allies when
" Down the glen strange shadows sprang, Mortal and fiend, a wizard gang, Seen dimly side by side. They gathered there from every land That sleepeth in the sun ; They came with spell and charm in hand, Waiting their master's high command - Slaves to the evil one." 3
The earliest trial for witchcraft in Massachusetts occurred in 1648. 1648, when Margaret Jones was charged with this crime, found guilty, and executed.4 Nor was this an isolated case ; for, during a period of forty years, there were similar instances in Massachusetts and Connecticut.5 Under the administration 1688.
Jun. 15.
1 Gaule, pp. 5, 6. Hutchinson, i. 141. The year previ- Hutchinson, ii. 27; Grahame, i. 2 ous, there was an execution at Hart- ford for witchcraft. Savage, on Win- throp, ii. 374. 3 Legends of New England.
274 ; Holmes, Ann. i. 439.
4 Mass. Rec's, ii. 242; Winthrop,
ΓΌ. 397; Hubbard, 530; Hale, 16;
5 Hale's Modest Inquiry, pp. 16- 21, ed. 1771; Hutchinson, ii. 22-24.
30
WITCHCRAFT IN MASSACHUSETTS.
CHAP. of Andros, however, a case occurred, which seems to have been II. the precursor of the delusion which soon after spread so widely.
1688. A child about thirteen years of age, the daughter of John Goodwin, " a grave man and a good liver at the north part of Boston," charged a laundress residing in her father's family with having stolen some linen. The mother of this laundress, " Goody Glover," an illiterate Irish woman, and a Catholic withal, repelled the accusation, and gave Goodwin's daughter " harsh language," soon after which she fell into fits, which were said to have "something diabolical in them." A sister and two brothers of the girl, the youngest but five years old, "followed her example," and the infection spread until the excitement was general. Weird faces and giant goblins haunted the imagination of many a little one, as the life blood curdled with horror in its veins ; and trembling crones began to deliberate upon the propriety of nailing horseshoes to the door posts to preserve them from the enchantments of evil spirits. The evidences of bewitchment were such as were usually adduced. " Sometimes they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind ; and sometimes all these disorders together would come upon them. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints would appear to be dislo- cated, and they would make most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut with knives, beat, &c., and the marks of wounds were afterwards to be scen." Yet the children " slept comfort- ably at night," notwithstanding they were "struck dead " in the daytime " at the sight of the Assembly's Catechism, Cot- ton's Milk for Babes, and some other good books," though they could read fluently enough in "Oxford's Jests, Popish and Quaker books, and the Common Prayer."
The ministers of Boston, Cotton Mather, Willard, Allen, and Moody, with Symmes of Charlestown, anxious to investigate the case, "kept a day of fasting and prayer at the troubled house," and with such success that "the youngest child made
31
OUTBREAK AT SALEM VILLAGE.
no more complaints." But the others were not relieved ; upon CHAP. which the magistrates interposed ; the woman was apprehended, II. 1688. examined, and executed ; and an account of the whole affair was published by Cotton Mather, and reprinted in England, with a preface by Richard Baxter, who says, "The evidence is so convincing that he must be a very obdurate Sadducee who will not believe." 1
It is highly probable, as Hutchinson suggests, that the out- break of this delusion in New England was principally caused by certain books which had been circulated in England, copies of which had reached this country.2 Superstition is an epi- demic, easily produced, and its power increases the longer it prevails, until it reaches its climax, after which it subsides. And the history of the witchcraft delusion in New England proves the correctness of this statement.
It was before the arrival of Sir William Phips that the first 1691-92. symptoms of delusion appeared, at which date a daughter and Feb. a niece of Mr. Parris, formerly a merchant, but then the minis- ter of Salem Village, (now North Danvers,) with one or two other girls in the neighborhood, beginning to act " in a strange and unusual manner," the physicians of the place pronounced them bewitched. Mr. Parris, the father of one of the sufferers, who is charged as "the beginner and procurer of the sore affliction to Salem Village and the whole country,"3 had, for some time, been at such variance with a portion of his parish- ioners, that the strife between them had attracted the attention of the General Court ; 4 and upon the occurrence of these cases, he eagerly availed himself of the opportunity to gratify his
1 Hale, 21; Calef, 299; Remarks on Calef, 38, 62 ; Mather's Magnalia, b. vi. c. vii .; Hutchinson, ii. 25. Cot- ton Mather published, in 1685, an ac- count of the cases which had occurred in New England, with arguments to prove that they were the effects of familiarity with the devil.
2 As Glanvil's Witch Stories, and
the essays of Perkins, Gaule, and Ber- nard, with the trials of the witches in Suffolk. Three of these works - those of Perkins, Gaule, and Bernard - are referred to by Cotton Mather in his Enchantments Encountered.
3
Calef, 136, ed. 1823 ; Hale, 22.
Calef, 187, 188; Hutchinson, ii. 18.
32
INCREASE OF THE BEWITCHED.
CHAP. spite by involving his opponents in disgrace. Tituba, an Indian II. servant in his employ, who had been accustomed to practise
1692. " wild incantations," was the first person accused ; 1 and two
Mar. 1. others being complained of, - Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn, the one " melancholy or distracted," and the other "old and Mar. 11. bedridden," - the ministers of the neighborhood were called in, private fasts were held at the house of Mr. Parris, another Mar. 31. in public at the village, and, finally, a general fast was pro- claimed throughout the colony, "to seek the Lord that he would rebuke Satan, and be a light unto his people in this day of darkness." 2
The notoriety thus given to the affair, like flax cast upon a smouldering fire, caused the latent credulity of the people to burst forth into a blaze. - Bewitched persons alarmingly multi- plied ; and the ministers increased the evil by inflammatory discourses delivered from their pulpits, in which they declared that God had lengthened the chains of the spirits of darkness, and let loose the devil upon New England, who often appeared in the shape of a black man, as a punishment for the wicked- ness and " Sadducism " of the people.3
To whom the largest share of responsibility attaches for the melancholy events which followed, it may be difficult to say. It would be easy to bring plausible proofs to show that those who were most forward in the work were intentionally guilty ; and it would be especially easy to lay upon Cotton Mather, the "thaumaturgus " of the province, a burden of blame which, it may be supposed, properly belongs to him as a principal actor in the terrible tragedy. And there may have been, on his part, and on the part of Parris, and Noyes, and Stoughton, inordinate eagerness in fostering the delusion which, without
1 Calef, 189, says Parris abused her, to make her confess. In her in- cantations, rye meal was mixed with human urine and given the children to eat.
2 Lawson's Brief Narr. 8; Calef, 188, 189, 193; Hale, 22, 24.
3 Vide Lawson's Sermon, pub. in 1692. Parris, Noyes, and C. Mather also delivered sermons, and probably others.
33
THE RESPONSIBLE PARTIES.
their cooperation, would probably have soon languished; but CHAP. it does not thence follow that they were wilfully culpable. It II. requires, indeed, no extraordinary stretch of charity to believe 1692. that, for the most part, they were honest in their views, and acted from a sincere conviction of duty. That they were de- ceived, there can be little doubt, and that they were blinded by credulity ; but the errors into which they fell would seem to have been such as have been often witnessed among men of an impulsive temperament and strong conceit.
Besides, the people themselves, or a majority of them at least, were as fervent believers in the reality of witchcraft as the ministers and magistrates, and had certainly some agency in producing and prolonging the excitement which prevailed. When the spell of superstition is cast over a community, it is impossible to tell who will be able to resist its enchantment ; for, oftentimes, men of sober judgment are captivated by its power, and, in such cases, are hurried into greater excesses than those who might, from the weakness of their faculties, be supposed more susceptible to the infirmities of a disturbed and heated imagination. Upon all who participated in these scenes a portion of responsibility rests ; for the delusion was . wide-spread, and the seeds of fanaticism, every where scat- tered, were so prolific that a harvest of bitterness was the natural result.
Few dared gainsay the popular belief. There were some, indeed, whose views were in advance of the rest of their age ; 1 but their appeals had little influence at the time. They did all they could, consistently with their own safety, to stem the current of popular prejudice. But the power was not theirs to say to the boisterous waves of passion, "Peace, be
1 As Brattle and Calef, but espe- cially Willard, the pastor of the South Church, to whom the pamphlet enti- titled "Some Miscellany Observa- tions " is attributed by Calef. Brattle also commends the course of Simon
Bradstreet, Thomas Danforth, Increase Mather, and Nathaniel Saltonstall, and affirms that most of the ministers and several of the justices were dis- satisfied with the proceedings insti- tuted. 1 M. H. Coll. v. 75.
VOL. II. 3
34
PROGRESS OF THE DELUSION.
CHAP. still !" nor could they quell in an instant the furious rage II. of the storm of imposture which swept over the land. Some
1692. things had also occurred for which even the sceptical were unable to account - incidents analogous to those of our own day. And if such incidents, in the nineteenth century, have been attributed to spiritual agents, is it surprising that, in the seventeenth century, they should have been deemed convincing proofs of the reality of witchcraft ? The delusion, if it may be called such, was neither wholly unnatural nor wholly inex- plicable. It originated, without doubt, in that subtle and mysterious influence which is found, at times, to thrill with awe the stoutest heart, bewildering the senses, confounding the judgment, and baffling the skill of philosophy to explain. It requires deeper thinkers than any that have yet appeared to solve all the problems which psychology presents, and to read the Sphinx riddles it throws in our path.
The interest awakened by the first outburst of "Satan's assaults " was not suffered to subside for the want of support ; Mar. 31. for, before the end of March, the number of the afflicted had increased to ten ; 1 and, as the public mind became more ex- cited, after some preliminary examinations six of the magis- Apr. 11. trates were convened at Salem, and more formal proceedings were instituted. The ministers, as usual, were present on the occasion, and Parris was conspicuous for the officiousness of his zeal. It was chiefly through his means that the prosecu- tions were conducted ; and it was observed, as a proof of his partiality, that, while accusations against his friends were carefully "stifled," charges against his enemies were " vigi- lantly promoted."2 His own record, still extant, shows plainly his feelings ; and from this it is evident that he was neither an impartial advocate nor an unbiased judge. Lead- ing questions were asked, whose drift the dullest could not fail to perceive, until a number of persons, hitherto of
' Lawson's Narr. 4; Calef, 190.
2 Calef, 135, 194; Hutchinson, ii. 31.
35
PROGRESS OF THE DELUSION.
1143274
unblemished reputation - principally females - were attaint- CHAP. ed and imprisoned. Yet the cautious Hale remarks that he II. observed in the conduct of the parties in general, "jus- 1692. tices, judges, and others, a conscientious endeavor to do the thing that was right ; "1 and the venerable Higginson, when bending beneath the weight of more than fourscore years, bears similar testimony to their integrity, though he very properly adds, " There is a question yet unresolved, whether some of the laws, customs, and principles used by the judges and juries in the trials of witches in England, which were followed as patterns here, were not insufficient and unsafe." 2
The door once opened, the number of prisoners rapidly increased. It was not " the poor, and vile, and ragged beg- gars upon earth " that were alone accused. Even ministers of the gospel did not escape ; and George Burroughs, who had formerly preached in Salem Village, and who was hated by Parris as a rival, was committed and executed.3 No one, it was found, was safe so long as convictions could be so easily procured. "Neither age nor sex, neither ignorance nor innocence, neither learning nor piety, neither reputation nor office," could shield the suspected from the grasp of the law. The only avenue of escape that seemed to be left was confession, which, it was intimated, might avert from the ac- May 11. cused the sentence of death.4 The gallows was set up, not for professed witches, but for those who rebuked the delusion, and persisted in asserting their personal innocence.5
Upon the organization of the new government, those who were imprisoned for witchcraft were ironed, and the sad work of prosecution proceeded with increased violence. Sir William Phips, the governor, himself a man of but ordinary abilities, had been indebted for his office more to the favor of the
1 Modest Inquiry, 25.
Preface to Hale's Inquiry, p. 5.
3 See C. Mather's Wonders of the
Invisible World, 94-104; Calef, 212,
213, 231-242 ; Hutchinson, ii. 57-59. 4 Grahame, i. 277; Hutchinson, ii.
34.
6 Bancroft, iii. 87.
36
THE PHENOMENA EXHIBITED.
CHAP. Mathers than to his own qualifications ; and William Stough- II. ton, the lieutenant governor, was also indebted to the Mathers
1692. for his elevation, though personally fitted for the station he filled by his talents, which were at least of average respecta- bility. Both of these gentlemen, though differing from each other in most respects, had one trait in common - a regard to their private interests ; and both, being thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the age, fell in with the popular sentiment, and lent to it the weight of their official support.
It is singular to notice the facility with which fanaticism dupes its victims. Not only did the number of the accused increase, but some, of irreproachable life, fancied themselves possessed with the devil, and confessed that they had entered into a compact with Satan, signed with their own blood.1 The occurrence of phenomena such as, in our own day, have been attributed to a morbid excitement of the nervous system, to a disturbed state of the electric forces of the body, to animal magnetism, and to the agency of spirits, added to the confusion. Some were lifted from the ground by an invisible power, and suspended in the air.2 Others displayed feats of remarkable, if not of preternatural, strength.3 Others, by a look, struck with convulsions those upon whom their glance fell, or deprived them of speech.4 Even physical objects were mysteriously affected. Buildings were shaken ; furniture was destroyed ; and things inanimate seemed to have been endued with the instincts of life.5 The phenomena of somnambulism and clairvoyance were likewise exhibited.6
It is not enough to assert that all these were delusions ; for if the evidence of the senses is utterly unreliable, the whole fabric of society is at once overthrown. The most cautious scepticism did not deny what was confirmed, not only by
1 See Mather and Calef, and comp. Glanvil, Gaule, &c.
? See Calef, 61, 62.
3 See C. Mather and Calef.
4 See Hale, 52, and Brattle, in 1 M. H. Coll. v. 62, 63.
5 Calef and Mather relate instances of this kind.
6 Calef, 29; Upham ; Bancroft, &c.
37
COURSE OF THE MAGISTRATES.
credible witnesses, but by the irresistible convictions of per- CHAP. sonal inspection. And that must be a hopeless state of incre- II. dulity which, when any thing out of the usual course occurs, 1692. refuses to believe in its reality because of its unaccountable- ness, or because it has never fallen within the range of indi- vidual experience.
One of the earliest acts of the new administration was the institution of a Court of Oyer and Terminer ; and a session of the same was held at Salem, where the excitement most June 2. prevailed.1 Bridget Bishop, a friendless woman, was the first person brought forward for trial. The charges against her were preferred by Parris, conviction followed, and eight days Jun. 10. after she was hanged .? It has been remarked as worthy of special notice, that not one of the magistrates at that time held office by popular suffrage, and that the tribunal which had been created had no other sanction but an extraordinary and an illegal commission, for which the people were not responsible.3 Yet the magistrates were not the originators of this delusion, however readily they may have lent to it their influence. Nor were the ministers of the country solely culpa- ble, however greatly or justly they may be blamed. For there were not wanting many, of inferior rank, who approved their course and sanctioned their proceedings. If the ministers rec- Jun. 15. ommended " the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as had rendered themselves obnoxious," they, at the same time, urged the "need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest, by too much credulity for things received only upon the devil's authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us."4 And if the magistrates, forgetting the caution, adopted the recom- mendation, the people were present to witness the executions.5
1 Calef, 207. The officers of this Court were William Stoughton, Na- thaniel Saltonstall, John Richards, Bartholomew Gedney, Wait Win- throp, Samuel Sewall, and Peter Sar- gent. See Quincy, Hist. H. Coll. i. 178.
2 C. Mather, Wonders, &c., 104- 114; Hutchinson, 51, 52. 3 Calef, 225; Hutchinson, ii. 51; Bancroft, iii. 88.
4 I. Mather, Cases of Conscience ; Calef, 207, 208; Hutchinson, ii. 52.
5 Comp. Hutchinson, ii. 54.
38
NUMBER OF VICTIMS.
CHAP. As the excitement increased, the number of victims multi- II. plied ; and at the next session of the court, five were condemned
1692. and hanged. In the next month, six more were convicted, all July 19. of whom were executed but one - Elizabeth Proctor, who was Jun. 30. Aug.19. soon to become a mother.1 In the following month, a like Aug. 5. Sep. 16. number were sentenced ; and a week later, Giles Cory, a ven- Sept. 9. erable octogenarian, for refusing to plead was pressed to death - the first and the only instance of this horrible punishment Sep. 17. inflicted in New England.2 The next day nine others were Sep. 22. sentenced, and eight of them suffered at the gallows - Noyes, the minister of Salem, exclaiming, as their bodies swung in the air, "There hang eight firebrands of hell."3 Never, perhaps, was the memorable prediction of our Saviour more strikingly verified than at these trials : "From henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father ; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother ; the mother-in-law against Luk.12: 52, 53. her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her moth- er-in-law." Children were brought forward as accusers of their parents, grandchildren accused their grandparents, and wives their husbands. Not that the ties of natural affection were sundered, for in most cases the accusations were extorted through fear. The only alternative left to the suspected was to accuse those of their own household, or suffer themselves ; and if, under such circumstances, they were " dragooned " into a confession which it was difficult to resist, upon recovering their self-possession many retracted and besought forgiveness. 4
1 Calef, 208, 212 ; Hutchinson, ii. 57.
2 Calef, 218, 311, 312; Hutchin- son, ii. 60.
3 Calef, 221. In justice to Mr. Noyes, however, it should be stated that Brattle, in 1 M. H. Coll. v. 64, speaks of him as "a learned, a chari- table, and a good man, though all the
devils in hell, and all the possessed in Salem, should assert the contrary."
4 Hale, 29, 32; Calef, 214 et seq. ; Hutchinson, ii. 42-46, 59. In cases where women were accused, a jury of one doctor and eight women examined their bodies for witch marks, and a fleabite would pass for a teat at which imps sucked.
39
THE STORM AT ITS HEIGHT.
That there was some imposture mixed with this affair can CHAP. hardly be doubted ; for manifestations of art and contrivance, II. of deliberate cunning and cool malice, are said to have been 1692. palpably exhibited ; and in one or two instances the accusers were " caught in their own snare, and nothing but the blind- ness of the bewildered community saved them from disgraceful exposure and well-deserved punishment."1 Personal resent- ments may likewise have been gratified by procuring the con- viction of those it hated ; and in every respect there may have been too much precipitancy in listening to the accusations of irresponsible persons. Yet, as a whole, it may probably be with justice conceded, that, however frightful the excesses into which the people were hurried, they acted under honest con- victions of duty ; though their sincerity by no means exoner- ates them from the charge of acting injudiciously, nor does it relieve them from the imputation of yielding too readily to the power of delusion. Without doubt, they condemned, upon grounds whose insufficiency was afterwards acknowledged, many of the worthiest and best of the age.
By this time nineteen persons had been hanged, one had been pressed to death, and eight more were under sentence ; while of fifty-five who had confessed, not one had suffered. One third at least of those who perished were church mem- bers ; and more than half are said to have been persons " of a good conversation in general." A few of the accused, by the connivance of their friends, escaped by flight ; yet the prisons were crowded with victims to the number of at least one hundred and fifty, and above two hundred more were accused.2 It was a season of the deepest gloom and anxiety ; the people were shivering with superstitious awe; and the thoughtful trembled, and were panic-struck, as they pictured
Oct.
2 Calef, 225; Hale, 33 ; Brattle, in 1 M. H. Coll. v. 76, 78. The delusion was not confined to Salem, though it
1 Upham's Lectures, 52. originated there; but it had spread to Boston, Charlestown, Andover, and other places.
40
COTTON MATHER HESITATES.
CHAP. to themselves the probable results -for the " generation of II. the children of God were in danger."1 But the storm was at 1692. its height ; and the crisis was produced by charges against persons of whose innocence every one was satisfied. Well might those who had never before doubted, and who had ex- pressed the utmost confidence in the real agency of Satan, pause, and become sceptical, when they found their own friends accused ; and well might Cotton Mather, officious in his zeal for the detection of satanic influence, learn wisdom from the experience of the past, and exclaim, "The whole business is hereupon become so snarled, and the determination of the question, one way or another, so dismal, that our hon- orable judges have room for Jehoshaphat's exclamation, We know not what to do. They have used, as judges have here- tofore done, the spectral evidences, to introduce their further inquiries into the lives of the persons accused ; and they have thereupon, by the wonderful providence of God, been so strengthened with other evidences, that some of the witch gang have been fairly executed. But what shall be done as to those against whom the evidence is found chiefly in the dark world ? Here they do solemnly demand our addresses to the Father of Lights on their behalf. But in the mean time the devil improves the darkness of this affair to push us into a blind man's buffet ; and we are even ready to be sin- fully, yea, hotly and madly, mauling one another in the dark. The consequence of these things every considerate man trem- bles at ; and the more, because the frequent cheats of passion and rumor do precipitate so many, that I wish I could say the most were considerate." 2
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