USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 23
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8 [When the news of the fall of Quebec arrived in Boston, a large bonfire was made on Copp's Hill. Forty-five tar barrels, two cords of wood, fifty pounds of powder, and other com- bustibles were consumed. Another fire was lighted at Fort Hill. The province paid for them, together with thirty-two gallons of rum and much beer for the people. (Drake's Land- marks, p. 209.) A Thanksgiving was ordered, and Samuel Cooper preached the sermon before the Governor, Oct. 16; and on the 25th Andrew Eliot preached another discourse of thanks- giving. The victory of Sir Edward Hawke over the French fleet of the next month caused a VOL. II. - 17.
renewed rejoicing when it became known in Boston, which was not till Feb. 21, 1760. The Castle and the batteries fired salutes. - ED.]
4 [The news of its fall reached Boston Sept. 23. A Thanksgiving was proclaimed for Oct. 9, when Mr. Foxcroft of the First Church preached a sermon on Grateful Reflections, which is of some historical value. - ED.]
5 [The command of the expedition to Louis- burg was given to General Amherst. Landing June 8, 1758, he effected a lodgement July 26, when the place surrendered. Returning to Bos- ton in September, with an imposing array of war-ships and transports, he encamped his army of 4,500 men on the Common, and on the 16th took up his march for Albany. There are plans of the defences which Amherst encountered in Jeffery's History of the French Dominion, and in Brown's Cape Breton, p. 297. - ED.]
6 [The two main defences of the town, look- ing seaward, and on the soil of the peninsula itself, during these years of anxiety, were the batteries known respectively as the North Bat- tery - whose site is nearly marked by Battery Wharf-and the South Battery, or Boston Sconce at the foot of Fort Hill. They appear in all the contemporary views of Boston; but we for- tunately have more distinct pictures of them in two contemporary engravings. The early his- tory of the North Battery has already been
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
traced in the first volume of this History, and the view here given is drawn from a copper- plate engraving by Paul Revere, which is on a certificate of " an inlisted Montross at His Ma- jesty's North Battery in Boston." The original view measures 734 by 3/2 inches, and the plate belongs to the Historical Society, and an im- pression from it will be found in its Proceedings,
IS77, P. 364 ; and a fac-simile is given in Wat- son's Paul Revere's Signals, 1880. It was prob- ably engraved about 1760, and shows a part of the North End of Boston, with Charlestown beyond the river. This sketch affords one of the best views of that town before the Revo- lution. The battery in the form shown in the cut owes its origin to an order of the town in
THE NORTH BATTERY.
1706, whereby a £1,000 was voted to extend the battery one hundred and twenty feet, with a breadth of forty feet. In the Essex Institute is preserved the view of the South Battery, - here reduced from a size of 7 by 212 inches. The original engraving, likewise on a Montross's cer- tificate, is much better drawn and cut than that of the North Battery. A heliotype of it, full size, is given in the Historical Society's Proceed-
ings, as before. Mr. Whitmore places the date of the engraving about 1740. (Sewall Papers, i. 195.) Andros in his time had erected on the hill a palisade fort with a house within to lodge the gar- rison, and this is shown in Bonner's map of 1722, and Burgiss's of 1728. There is no marked change in the delineation of the palisade and battery below in any of the editions of Bonner's map from 1722 to 1769 .- ED.]
THE SCONCE AND FORT HILL.
CHAPTER IV.
WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
BY WILLIAM F. POOLE, Librarian of the Chicago Public Library.
T `HE storm of terror and death, called the Witchcraft Delusion, which swept over Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, left its traces on the early life of the New-England colonies. While it raged in Europe, thirty thousand victims perished in the British Islands, seventy-five thousand in France, one hundred thousand in Germany, and corresponding · numbers in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Sweden. Witchcraft in New England was of a sporadic and spasmodic type compared with its epidemic and protracted virulence in the Old World; and yet the thirty-two execu- tions in the New-England colonies, for supposed confederation with devils, have filled a larger space in history and in public attention than the thirty thousand similar executions which occurred in the mother country. Eng- lish writers at this day, when they need striking proofs of the superstitions of former times, take their illustrations from the records of New-England witchcraft. A full and impartial account of English and Scottish diabolism has never commended itself, as a subject of historical investigation, to a modern English writer. Such a record as New England has of its later witchcraft is a desideratum in the historical literature of old England. The theme is one of strange and perpetual interest, and as a subject for psy- chological study it will never lose its hold on the minds of men. The recent development of what is called "Spiritualism" is only another phase of phenomena which, under the names of magic, sorcery, necromancy, en- chantment, mesmerism, fetichism, and witchcraft, are as old as history, and universal as the human race.
The New-England colonists had no views concerning witchcraft and diabolical agency which they did not bring with them from the Old World. The prosecutions in England were never carried on with a blinder zeal and more fatal results than during the first twenty years after Governor Win- throp and his company landed at Boston. James Howell, who was later " Historiographer Royal" to Charles II., says in his Familiar Letters, Feb. 3, 1646: -
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
" We have multitudes of witches among us ; for in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hundred indicted within these two years, and above the half of them executed. . . . I speak it with horror ! God guard us from the Devil ! for I think he was never so busy upon any part of the earth that was lightened by the beams of Christianity." 1
Again he writes, Feb. 22, 1647 : -
" Within the compass of two years, near upon three hundred witches were ar- raigned, and the major part of them executed, in Essex and Suffolk only. Scotland swarms with them more and more, and persons of good quality are executed daily." 2
At that time the professional "Witch-Finder-General," Matthew Hopkins, was passing through the English counties practising his trade, and under the sanction of the courts subjecting his victims to every species of torture and indignity. His method of "searching" and "watching " suspected persons was recommended in the law books, and was, we shall see, by order of the General Court of Massachusetts, applied to the first witch executed in the Massachusetts Colony. His water-test was tried in Connecticut, and the report was that the victims " swam like a cork." These outrageous pro- ceedings were not condemned by the English clergy, either of the Estab- lished Church or of the Dissenters. The excellent Richard Baxter, author of The Saints' Everlasting Rest, says in his Certainty of the World of Spirits, 1691, p. 52: " The hanging of a great number of witches in Suf- folk and Essex, by the discovery of one Hopkins, in 1645 and 1646, is famously known. Mr. [Dr. Edmund] Calamy went along with the judges in the circuit to hear the confessions, and see there were no fraud or wrong done them." There was no doubt in the legal or clerical profession as to the reality of witchcraft,3 or as to the duty of the courts to extirpate it. The English law books gave the most minute directions as to the means of detecting, and the form of trying, witches. Some of these atrocious and nauseating details we must give, in order that the spirit of the age and the subject we are considering may be understood.
Concerning the later witch-trials of New England an enormous mass of original information is accessible, in the form of court records, depositions,
1 P. 386, edition of 1673. 2 P. 427.
3 Sir William Blackstone, more than seventy years after the last witch was executed in New England, wrote in his Commentaries (4, 61) : " To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to con- tradict the revealed Word of God in various passages in both the Old and New Testament ; and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testi- mony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits."
W. E. H. Lecky, in History of Rationalism, p. 38, says : " It is, I think, difficult to examine the
subject with impartiality, without coming to the conclusion that the historical evidence establish- ing the reality of witchcraft is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to disbelieve it with- out what, on other subjects, we should deem the most extraordinary rashness. The defenders of the belief, who were often men of great and distinguished talent, maintained that there was no fact in history more fully attested ; and that to reject it would be to strike at the root of all historical evidence of the miraculous. ... In our day, it may be said with confidence that it would be altogether impossible for such an amount of evidence to accumulate round a conception which had no substantial basis in fact."
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
and contemporary accounts; but concerning two of the earlier cases which occurred in Boston there is not a report of a trial, a deposition, or a court record to be found. Contemporary allusions to the earlier cases, sometimes without even the surname of the person executed, are all the information concerning them which has come down to us. Governor Winthrop, in his Journal, under the date of March, 1646-47, made his entry : "One [blank] of Windsor arraigned and executed at Hartford for a witch." 1 The Connecticut records make no mention of it, and nothing more is known of the case. Mr. John Hale, in his Modest Inquiry, 1704, says: " Another that suffered on that account [of witchcraft] was a Dorchester woman." Only recently has the name of this woman come to light.2 Of the four persons executed for witchcraft in Boston, only one, who suffered in 1688, is mentioned by Increase or Cotton Mather, who did more than all other early New-England writers to preserve the record of such events. Of the twelve executions which took place in New England before 1692,3 the Christian names of only four of the sufferers are known.
I. In Boston, the earliest execution for witchcraft was that of Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, on June 15, 1648. There seems to be no evidence that any earlier case of witchcraft was under investigation in the colony. Her husband, Thomas Jones, was arrested at the same time on the same charge, but he was not convicted. The little we know of Margaret Jones we find in Governor Winthrop's Journal. She was evidently a strong- minded woman, and a skilful practitioner of medicine. She used simple remedies and small doses, yet they produced extraordinary effects. Perhaps she adopted the principle of similia similibus curantur, and was a precursor of Hahnemann. Her predictions as to cases treated by the heroic method proved to be true. Her touch seemed to be attended with mesmeric influ- ence. There was no charge that she had bewitched any one, and the usual phenomena of spectres, fits, spasms, etc. were wanting. The main evidence on which she was convicted was her imps, which were detected by " watch- ing" her, after the Hopkins method. She was tried by the General Court, which was almost wholly composed of the original founders of the colony. John Winthrop was Governor; Thomas Dudley, Deputy-Governor; John
1 Vol. II. 374, edition of 1853.
2 She was the wife of Henry Lake. This appears in a letter of Nathaniel Mather, of Dublin, to his brother Increase, dated Dec. 31, 1684, acknowledging the receipt of Remarkable Providences, 1684. He says : " Why did you not put in the story of Mrs. Hibbins's witchcrafts, and the discovery thereof, and also of H. Lake's wife, of Dorchester?" Mather Papers, 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 58.
8 The following is the list of the twelve per- sons who were executed for witchcraft in New England before 1692, when twenty other persons were executed at Salem, whose names are well known. It is possible that the list is not com-
plete ; but I have included all of which I have any knowledge, and with such details as to names and dates as could be ascertained : -
1646, - " Woman of Windsor," Connecticut (name unknown), at Hartford. 1648, - Mar- garet Jones, of Charlestown, at Boston. 1648, - Mary Johnson, at Hartford. 1650? - Henry Lake's wife, of Dorchester. 1650 ?- Mrs. Ken- dall, of Cambridge. 1651, - Mary Parsons, of Springfield, at Boston. 1651,- Goodwife Bas- sett, at Fairfield, Conn. 1653,-Goodwife Knap, at Hartford. 1656, - Ann Hibbins, at Boston. 1662,-Goodman Greensmith, at Hartford. 1662, - Goodwife Greensmith, at Hartford. 1688, - Goody Glover, at Boston.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Endicott, Richard Bellingham, Richard Salstonstall, Increase Nowell, Simon Bradstreet, William Hibbins (whose widow was executed for witchcraft in 1656), John Winthrop, Jr., and William Pynchon (who conducted the witch examinations at Springfield a few years later), were Assistants. The records of the Court, which on topics of less interest are very full, give no details or even mention of the trial. The Court Records and the Deputies' Records, however, for May 18, give an order concerning Margaret Jones and her hus- band, without the mention of their names, as follows : -
" This court, desirous that the same course which hath been taken in England for the discovery of witches, by watching [them a certain time], may also be taken here with the witch now in question : [It is ordered that the best and surest way may forthwith be put in practice, to begin this night, if it may be, being the 18th of the 3d month] that a strict watch be set about her every night, and that her husband be confined to a private room and watched also " (Deputies' Records, with the words in brackets in- serted from the Court Records). 1
The theory of the English law books was that every witch had familiars or imps, which were sent out by the witch to work deeds of darkness, and that they returned to the witch once a day, at least, for sustenance, and usually in the night. By watching the witch these imps might be detected, and thus furnish certain proof of guilt in the accused.
Michael Dalton's Country Justice, containing the Practice, Duty, and Power of Fustices of the Peace, was a common book in the colonies, and was quoted in the witch trials at Salem. In the chapter on "Witchcraft " it has the following directions : -
" Now against these witches, being the most cruel, revengeful, and bloody of all the rest, the Justices of the Peace may not always expect direct evidence, seeing all their works are the works of darkness, and no witnesses present with them to accuse them ; and, therefore, for the better discovery, I thought good here to insert certain observations, partly out of the 'Book of Discovery of the Witches that were arraigned at Lancaster, Anno 1612, before Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, Judges of Assize there,' and partly out of Mr. [Richard] Bernard's 'Guide to Grand Jurymen.'
" These witches have ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, which appeareth to them, some- times in one shape and sometimes in another ; as in the shape of a man, woman, boy, dog, cat, foal, hare, rat, toad, etc. And to these their spirits they give names, and they meet together to christen them (as they speak). Their said familiar hath some big or little teat upon their body, and in some secret place, where he sucketh them. And besides their sucking the Devil leaveth other marks upon their body, sometimes like a blue or red spot, like a flea-biting, sometimes the flesh sunk in and hollow (all which for a time may be covered, yea, taken away, but will come out again in their old form). And these Devil's marks be insensible, and being pricked will not bleed, and be often in their secretest parts, and therefore require diligent and careful search. These first two are main points to discover and convict those witches ; for they fully prove that those witches have a familiar, and made a league with
1 The Mass. Records, iii. 126; and ii. 242.
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
the Devil. So, likewise, if the suspected be proved to have been heard to call upon their spirits, or to talk to them, or of them, or have offered them to others. So if they have been seen with their spirit, or to feed something secretly ; these are proofs that they have a familiar. They have often pictures [images] of clay or wax, like a man, etc., made of such as they would bewitch, found in their house, or which they may roast or bury in the earth, that as the picture consumes, so may the parties bewitched consume." (Edition of 1727, p. 514.)1
Mr. John Gaule, in his Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft, 1646, p. 77, condemning the barbarous methods of discovering witches, thus describes the mode of "watching a witch" in use at the time :-
" Having taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some uneasy posture, to which if she submits not, she is bound with cords. She is there watched, and kept without meat or sleep for the space of four-and-twenty hours, - for they say within that time they shall see her imp come and suck. A little hole is likewise made in the door for the imps to come in at."
Mr. Baxter, writing in 1691, says that, three weeks before, a woman in Brightling, in Suffolk, was examined before the magistrates, " searched [for witch-marks] and watched for four-and-twenty hours."
Margaret Jones was " searched " and " watched ; " the fatal witch-marks were discovered, and her imp was seen in " the clear day-light," as appears in the record of the case which Governor Winthrop made in his Journal at the time : -
"[June 15, 1648].2 At this court, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was-
" I. That she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, men, women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure, or etc. [sic], were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.
"2. She practising physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own confession, were harmless, - as anise-seed, liquors, etc., - yet had extraordinary vio- lent effects.
" 3. She would use to tell such as would not make use of her physic, that they would never be healed; and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.
1 Here are specimens of the English "Blue Laws " of that period in the same volume : " A person not coming to some church or chapel forfeits 12s. to the poor, to be levied by dis- tress " (p. 71). " He who keeps any servant in his house or other person not coming to church for a month together forfeits £10 per month" (p. 71). " If any shall strike another in a church or church-yard, or draw a weapon in a church or church-yard, with intent to strike, and being thereof convicted, shall be adjudged to have one of his ears cut off; and having no ears, then
shall be burned in the cheek with a hot iron having the letter F." (p. 70). The first edition of Dalton's Country Justice appeared in 1619, and the last, the twelfth edition, in 1746. The work was revised and re-edited from time to time, and was a popular and standard authority in England for more than a hundred years.
2 No date appears against this paragraph in Winthrop. The date next preceding is June 4, 1648. The true date of the execution was doubtless June 15, as appears in Danforth's Almanac for that year.
-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
" 4. Some things which she foretold came to pass accordingly ; other things she would tell of, as secret speeches, etc., which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of.
" 5. She had, upon search, an apparent teat . . . as fresh as if it had been newly sucked ; and after it had been scanned, upon a forced search, that was withered, and another began on the opposite side.
"6. In the prison, in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it was vanished. The like child was seen in two other places to which she had relation ; and one maid that saw it, fell sick upon it, and was cured by the said Margaret, who used means to be employed to that end. Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc." (ii. 397, ed. of 1853).
Mr. John Hale, in his Modest Inquiry, p. 17, mentions the case, but none of the incidents recorded by Winthrop. He was born in Charlestown, was twelve years old at the time, and with some neighbors visited the con- demned woman in prison the day she was executed. He says : -
" The first [witch executed] was a woman of Charlestown, Anno 1647 or 1648. She was suspected, partly because that, after some angry words passing between her and her neighbors, some mischief befell such neighbors in their creatures [cattle] or the like ; partly because some things supposed to be bewitched, or have a charm upon . them, being burned, she came to the fire and seemed concerned.
" The day of her execution I went, in company of some neighbors, who took great pains to bring her to confession and repentance ; but she constantly professed herself innocent of that crime. Then one prayed her to consider if God did not bring this punishment upon her for some other crime ; and asked if she had not been guilty of stealing many years ago. She answered, she had stolen something ; but it was long since, and she had repented of it, and there was grace enough in Christ to pardon that long ago ; but as for witchcraft she was wholly free from it, -and so she said unto her death."
There is no other contemporary mention of the case. It is a horrible record; and in downright, stolid superstition and inhumanity was not sur- passed, if, indeed, it was equalled, at Salem forty-four years later. That it was an incident characteristic of the time, and that similar atrocities were being committed in every nation in Europe without shocking the sensibili- ties of the most refined and cultivated men of that day, are the only miti- gating circumstances which can be suggested.
Thomas Jones, the husband of the woman executed, found, on his re- lease from prison, that his troubles had only begun. He resolved to leave the country, and took passage in the Boston ship "Welcome," riding at anchor before Charlestown. She had on board eighty horses and one hundred and twenty tons of ballast. The weather was calm, yet the ship fell to rolling, and so deep it was feared she would founder. Great weight
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
was placed on one side to trim her, and she would heel over on the other side. The County Court of Boston was then in session, and hearing that the husband of the executed witch was on board, between whom and the captain a dispute had arisen as to his passage-money, sent officers to arrest him, one of them saying "the ship would stand still as soon as he was in prison." No sooner was the warrant shown, than the rolling of the ship began to stop, and after the man was in prison it moved no more. Governor Winthrop narrates this story in his Journal.1
2. Mary Parsons, wife of Hugh Parsons, of Springfield, was the victim in the second execution for witchcraft in Boston, May 29, 1651. The earliest mention of the matter in the Court Records is as follows : -
" May 8, 1651. The Court understanding that Mary Parsons, now in prison, ac- cused for a witch, is likely through weakness to die before trial, if it be deferred, do order that on the morrow, by eight of the clock in the morning, she be brought before and tried by the General Court." 2
Two indictments were filed against her: (a) For " using diverse devilish practices by witchcraft to the hurt of the persons of Martha and Rebecca Moxon," daughters of Mr. George Moxon, minister of Springfield; and (b) " for murdering her own child." She pleaded not guilty to the first indict- ment, and to the second "she acknowledged herself guilty." As the penalty was death for each offence, she was convicted on the second charge, and sentenced to be hanged. In the margin is a note that she was " re- prieved till May 29."3 The depositions in the case taken at Springfield, which have been preserved, all relate to the charge of witchcraft. Her con- fession that she murdered her own child is evidence of the insanity of the woman. As neither the Records, nor any contemporary account that he could find, mention her execution, Governor Hutchinson said, " It does not appear that she was executed." Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, a few years ago, found in a London newspaper, Mercurius Publicus, of Sept. 25, 1651, a letter dated "From Natick, in New England, July 4, 1651," not signed, but doubtless written by Mr. John Eliot, the Indian apostle, which says : -
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