USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 25
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
plained that they were in red-hot ovens, sweating and panting as if they were really in that situation. They cried out from blows by cudgels, and though no blows or cudgels were seen by the bystanders, the marks in red streaks were seen upon their bodies. They jumped into the fire and into water, and their deliverances were so many that it led the tender-hearted narrator to consider "whether the little ones had not their [good] angels in the plain sense of our Saviour's intimation." Nothing so discomposed them as a religious exercise. At family prayers they would "roar, and shriek, and holla," to drown the voice of devotion. "In short," says Mr. Mather, " no good thing must then be endured near those children, who, while they are themselves, do love every good thing in a measure that proclaims in them the fear of God."
On November 14 Mr. Mather took the eldest of the bewitched children, a girl thirteen years of age, whose symptoms were more marked and obdu- rate than those of the others, to his own house ; in order, as he says, that he might do the afflicted family a favor; that he might have the best opportu- nity to investigate the phenomena, and furnish himself with evidence and argument with which to confute the Sadducism of the age. He kept the girl in his family till the following spring, enduring from her every species of trouble and annoyance, and putting in practice his doctrine of dealing with witchcraft and possession wholly by prayer and faith.
For several days " she applied herself to such actions, not only of indus- try, but of piety, as she had been no stranger to." November 20 she cried : " They have found me out!" and went into her abnormal fits, which con- tinued at intervals for four or five months. The strange incidents which occurred are recorded in Memorable Providences. One of them was that an invisible horse would be brought to her by her spirits, mounting which, she would ride strangely about the room ; and on one occasion, " to our admira- tion, she rode (that is, was tossed, as one that rode) up the stairs."
Mr. Mather never revealed the names of the four persons whom the Glover woman named as her confederates, or the three persons whom the Goodwin girl accused as her tormentors; " for," he said, "we should be very tender in such relation [narration] lest we wrong the reputation of the innocent by stories not enough inquired into." No other prosecutions followed : Mr. Mather's plan was to keep the accusations within the narrow- est limits, and to combat witchcraft and possession with spiritual agencies. He had implicit faith in the efficacy of prayer. He applied his theory to the Goodwin children. They all recovered; and he wrote his Memorable Providences to prove to the world three propositions: (1) That there are witches; (2) To show the operations of witchcraft; and (3) To teach how witchcraft should be treated.1 The four ministers of Boston who recom-
1 Four years later, when the witch troubles broke out in Salem Village, Mr. Mather attempted to put his method into operation, by advising that the "afflicted children " be separated and taken out of the excitement of the Village. "I VOL. II. - 19.
did myself offer to provide meat, drink, and lodg- ing for no less than six of the afflicted, that so an experiment might be made, whether Prayer and Fasting, upon the removal of the distressed, might not put a period to the trouble then rising,
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
mended the book say in their prefatory note, "Prayer is a powerful and effectual remedy against the malicious practices of devils and those who covenant with them." Says Mr. Mather : -
" I do now publish the history while the thing is fresh and new ; and I challenge all men to detect so much as one designed falsehood, yea, so much as one important mistake, from the egg to the apple of it. I am resolved after this never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a denial of devils or of witches. I shall count that man ignorant who shall suspect ; but I shall count him downright impudent, if he assert the non-existence of things which we have had such palpable convictions of" (p. 40, 41).
. He concludes his narrative in these words : -
" All that I have now to publish is, that Prayer and Faith was the thing which drove the devils from the children ; and I am to bear this testimony unto the world : That the Lord is nigh to all them who call upon Him in truth, and that blessed are all they that wait for Him " (p. 44).
Hutchinson says: "The children returned to their ordinary behavior, lived to adult age, made profession of religion, and the affliction they had been under they publicly declared to be one motive of it. One of them I knew many years after. She had the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in the transaction." 1 John Goodwin and his wife Martha, who had been members of Mr. Morton's church in Charlestown, were received, May 25, 1690, into Mr. Mather's church. Their four children were subsequently received as members. The eldest son Nathaniel, July 22, 1728, took out letters of administration on Cotton Mather's estate.
Two other cases, which were then supposed to be witchcraft, and were similar in character to that of the Goodwin children, occurred in Boston, in 1692 and 1693. As they were both under the immediate care of Cotton Mather, and were treated by his peculiar method of prayer and fasting, with suppressing the names of suspected confederates of the Devil, and man- aging the affairs as quietly as possible, they passed off without injury to the life or reputation of any one, and without attracting much public attention. The first was the case of Mercy Short, and the second that of Margaret Rule. Mr. Mather wrote out a detailed account of each of these cases and withheld them from publication; but he sometimes loaned them to his
without giving the civil authority the trouble of prosecuting those things." (More Wonders, p. IT.) Again he says: "In fine, the country was in a dreadful ferment, and wise men foresaw a long train of dismal and bloody consequences. There- upon they first advised that the afflicted might be kept asunder in the closest privacy; and one particular person (whom I have cause to know), in pursuance of this advice, offered himself to
provide accommodations for any six of them, that so the success of more than ordinary prayer with fasting might with patience be experienced, before any other courses were taken." (Magnalia, i. 210, Hartford edition, 1853.) This advice was not accepted by the local magistrates at Salem.
1 Hist. of Mass., ii. 26. In his first draft, Hutchinson says she was "one of my tenants, a grave, religious woman."
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
friends for perusal.1 Robert Calef, who had a bitter, personal quarrel with Mr. Mather, obtained possession of the account of the case of Margaret Rule, and printed it in his More Wonders, 1700, without the consent of the author.2 It is entitled, Another Brand Pluckt out of the Burning, and in it the writer says: -
"This young woman [Rule] had never seen the affliction of Mercy Short, whereof a narrative has already been given ; and yet about half a year after the glorious and signal deliverance of that poor damsel, this Margaret fell into an affliction, marvellous, resembling hers in almost all the circumstances of it; indeed, the afflictions were so much alike, that the relation I have given of the one would almost serve as a full history of the other."
The Mercy Short case has never been printed, and till recently was sup- posed to be lost. About ten years ago Dr. Samuel F. Haven, the accom- plished librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, in looking through the Mather manuscripts in that library, found one entitled, A Brand Pluckt out of the Burning, and on examination it proved to be the long-lost Mercy Short narrative. Dr. Haven, in announcing the discovery, promised to print it with notes; but he has not yet found leisure to fulfil his promise. He has, however, for the purpose of this sketch, kindly furnished a copy of the narrative, with permission to make such use of it as the brief limits of this paper will permit. The publication of the entire narrative, which is the full- est description of any single case of diabolical molestations that has occurred
1 " I do not write this," said Mr. Mather, in a prefatory note to his Margaret Rule case, " with a design of throwing it presently into the press ; but only to preserve the memory of such memor- able things, the forgetting whereof would neither be pleasing to God nor useful to men ; as also to give you and some others of peculiar and obliging friends a sight of some curiosities."
2 Calef, in his preface, says : " I received it of a gentleman who had it of the author, and com- ·
print a composure of mine utterly without and against my consent ; but the good Providence of God has herein overruled his malice ; for if that may have impartial readers, he will have his con- futation, and I my perpetual vindication." Mr. Mather's own copy of More Wonders is in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Library. In- scribed on the inside of the cover, in his own handwriting, is the following : " Job xxxi, 35, 36. My desire is -that mine Adversary had written
800 XXXL: 35, 36. - My DEfirs is - that mins Hoverpary had Willen a Book. Surely I would value It upon my shoulder and find it as a crown lo ms.
C: Malfur.
municated it to me with his express consent." Mr. Mather, in Some Few Remarks, p. 36, says : "He [Calef] has been so uncivil as to
a Book. Surely I would take it upon my ' Shoulder, and bind it as a Crown to me .- Cơ: Mather."
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
in New England, will, with Dr. Haven's valuable notes, be an important contribution to the literature of this subject. As the Mercy Short case an- tedates by several months that of Margaret Rule, it properly comes first under consideration.
The case of Mercy Short is important, as it was contemporaneous with
KHÍBORN
SAMUEL SEWALL. 1
1 [A steel-plate engraving after an original
i., and is followed in the present cut Another portrait owned by his descendants, the Misses Ridgway, of Boston, is given in the Sewall Papers,
likeness is owned by Samuel Sewall, of Burling- ton, Mass., and has also been engraved. - ED.]
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON ..
the Salem trials and executions ; and it illustrates the principles and methods of the Boston ministers, so unlike those of Salem. The supposed agent of her afflictions was then under arrest for witchcraft, and on other evi- dence was soon after condemned and executed at Salem. In the testimony against the alleged criminal, which has been preserved,1 there is no allusion to Mercy Short, or to any incident recorded in the narrative, - which con- firms the statement of its author, that he had strictly forbidden the names of any person suspected to be mentioned, and had treated the case wholly by spiritual agencies. Judge Sewall once noticed the case in his Diary (i. 370).2
The narrative begins with the statement that Mercy Short had been taken captive by the Indians at Newichawanock [Berwick, Maine], with her three brothers and two sisters; and that they were redeemed at Quebec, and brought by the fleet to Boston. Her father, mother, brother, sister, and others of her kindred had been killed by the Indians.3
In the summer of 1692, when seven persons from Salem, under accusa- tion of witchcraft, were committed to the jail in Boston,4 Mercy Short was sent by her mistress on an errand to the prison, and was asked by Sarah Good, one of the suspected witches, and later executed at Salem, for a little tobacco. The girl threw a handful of shavings at her, saying, "That's tobacco good enough for you;" whereupon the woman bestowed some ill
I Examination of Sarah Good, in Wood- ward's Records of Salem Witchcraft, i. 1-50.
2 "Nov. 22, 1692. - Now about, Mercy Short grows ill again as formerly. Nov. 25. - Mr. Mather sent for to her."
3 On March 18, 1690, a party of French and Indians under Sieur Hertel, and an Indian named Hopegood, "once a servant of a Christian mas- ter in Boston," made an attack on Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, a settlement on the Cocheco River, which separates New Hampshire from Maine. Berwick was a village on the opposite bank of the river. The villages were burned, thirty persons were killed, and fifty-four taken into captivity. Mr. Mather (in Magnalia, ii. 595-600) gives an account of the massacre, and the shocking details of the suffering of the pris- oners on their march to Quebec. "I know not, reader," he says (in Latin), "whether you can read this record with dry eyes; I only know I cannot write it without tears." The fleet, under Sir William Phips, arrived in Boston with the redeemed captives Nov. 19, 1690. Mr. Drake says he can learn nothing of Mercy Short, ex- cept the allusion to her in the Margaret Rule narrative. Mr. Savage throws no light upon the name. Mr. Mather, however, in his account of the Salmon Falls massacre, mentions the_ name of her father and gives a few particulars concern- ing him and his family. He says, with a dread- ful pun on the name : "It would be a long story
to tell what a particular share in this calamity fell to the family of Clement Short. This hon- est man, with his pious wife and three children, were killed, and six or seven of their children were made prisoners. The most of them arrived safe in Canada, through a thousand hardships ; and the most of them were afterwards redeemed from Canada unto their English friends again." The story of the massacre he may have heard from Mercy Short herself. Her social position in Boston seems to have been that of a servant. See also Belknap, History of New Hampshire, i. 207, edition of 1813.
+ [An account rendered by the Boston jailer, John Arnold, for his supplies to those confined
John: finalo Boston 16 g2.
under his supervison in the prison, is given in the Witchcraft Papers, in the Mass. Archives, and it is from this document that the annexed signature is copied. - ED.]
-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
words upon her. Soon after, the girl was taken with "just such, or perhaps much worse, fits than those which held the bewitched people in the County of Essex." At this period they (her spirits) made her fast for twelve days together, and she underwent such torments as the Goodwin children suffered. The ministers and Christian people of the town were constantly praying at her bedside, and she was after a few weeks happily delivered. She contin- ued well for several months, and then suddenly fell into a swoon, wherein she lay as dead for many hours; and it was not long before distinct and formal fits of witchcraft returned upon her. One of the ministers of the town took a little company of praying neighbors, and kept a day of fasting and prayer with her and for her; and all the while she was entertained with cursed spectres, whom she saw, heard, and felt. As the minister was preach- ing to her, on Mark ix. 28, 29, -" And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting," - she flew at him and tore a leaf of his Bible. She passed through another fast of nine days, and then had a remission of three days, during which she ate a little, and went to church about half a mile from her abode. While there she again fell into fits, and several strong men could carry her no further than the house of a kind neighbor, where she lay for several weeks under the care of pious people who did all they could for her deliv- erance. A detailed account is given of her spectral torments. Concerning the means used for her recovery, Mr. Mather writes : -
" The methods that were taken for the deliverance of Mr. Goodwin's afflicted family four years ago were the very same we now followed for Mercy Short. Had we not strenuously suppressed all clamors and rumors that might have touched the repu- tation of people exhibited in this witchcraft, there might have ensued most uncomfort- able uproar.1 But prayer and fasting we knew to be a course against which none but men most brutishly atheistical (and yet such we have among us) could make excep- tions. Whereupon a number of pious people did ordinarily every day go in and pray with her ; and whereas, many of our people had singularly grounded persuasions that no exercise of religion did give so much vexation unto the spectres in the haunted house as the singing of Psalms, they commonly sang between almost every prayer. But they judged it necessary to fast as well as to pray. Thus the Christians here were put upon spending three days in fasting and prayer, one quickly after the other."
Soon after a third fast, on the evening before the New Year, 1693, her deliverance drew near. She was tormented as never before; she thought she was dying and being carried away by fiends; but " we then quickly saw the death and burial of the trouble now upon her." She roared and shrieked out, "This is more than all the rest." She sent for a minister of the neigh- borhood, " upon whose coming she called for her clothes, dressed herself,
1." As for the spectres that visited and It would be a great iniquity for me to judge afflicted Mercy Short, there were among them such as were in the shape of several who were doubtless innocent of the crime of witchcraft.
them otherwise; and the world, I hope, neither by my means, nor by her, will ever know who they were." - Narrative.
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
and came to him with a countenance marvellously altered into a look of discretion and gravity, and said, 'Now go and give to God the greatest thanks you can devise, for I am gloriously delivered ; my troubles are gone.' The neighbors gave solemn thanks to that faithful God who gave them to tread upon the lion, and to trample the dragon underfoot."
For seven weeks she was free from her invisible tormentors, yet, from weakness, not without frequent fainting and swooning. At the end of this time, while in the North Meeting-house on Sunday, " she was again seized by her tormentors, just as at the former visitations, and such as, we judged, could not but put an end to her life." Bystanders had pins thrust into their flesh by these fiends while they were molesting Mercy Short. "Yea, several wretches were palpable while yet they were not visible, and several of our persons did sometimes actually lay their hands upon these fiends. The people, though they saw nothing, yet felt a substance that felt like a cat or dog; and though they were not fanciful, they died away at the sight. This thing was too sensible and repeated to be pure imagination." In this assault her spectres made her fast about a week.
Soon after this a good spirit occasionally attended her, that suggested appropriate answers to her diabolical tormentors, and comforted her with assurances that she would be victorious over them. Under the guidance of this spirit she would take a Bible in her hands, and, turning over the leaves without looking at them, " would at last turn down a leaf at the most per- tinent place that could be thought of." This instance is mentioned: Her wicked spectres were urging her to sign their book. She took her Bible, and, without looking at the pages, turned down a leaf at Revelation xiii. 8 : " All that dwell upon earth shall worship him [the Beast], whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb." Holding the text up to the spectres, she added that her " name was written in the book of the Lamb." At another time, in that same manner, she folded a leaf at Luke vii. 21, and showed it to the spectres: "In the same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits." Again, her spectres were trying to persuade her that there would be no day of judgment; she showed them Acts i. 11.1 At the beginning of the fourth week " this notable spirit" bade her be of good cheer and hold her integrity, for the next Thursday, about nine or ten o'clock in the evening, she would be gloriously delivered. " There was," says Mr. Mather, " scarce a night, I think, for near a month
1 " When she came to herself," says Mr. Mather, " she told me her manner was to turn the leaves till 't was darted into her mind that she had the place, and then she folded." In another place he says : "But that which carries most of marvel in it, is the impulse which directed her into the Scriptures that might have quickened our devotion, if we had seen cause to make use of them. In her trances, a Bible happening to lie on the bed, she took it up, and, without even casting her eyes upon it, folded down a leaf to a text ; but of all the texts in the Bible, which do you
think it was ? It was that of Revelation xii. 12 : ' The Devil is come down unto you having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.' Again, she calling for a Psalm-book, has, in the dark, turned over many leaves, and, without reading a syllable, has turned down a leaf to a psalm, advising us to sing it in her be- half. I do affirm that no man living could have singled out psalms more expressive of, or suit- able to, her circumstances than those she pitched upon. One of them, I remember, was the be- ginning of the cii."
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
which was not all spent in the exercise of devotion by those that watched. The pious people of the north part of Boston did very much pray with the young woman and for her. The weekly meetings of the young people (the sexes apart) were adjourned to the haunted chamber." Mr. Mather says he did all he could that not so much as the name of any one person might suffer the least ill report on the occasion; but "unwearied prayer we thought was our only way now to resist the Devil."
On the Thursday evening mentioned by her, March 16, 1693, she lay very free from her usual torments. The spectres were about; but they found her so hedged in by some unseen defence that they could not touch her. She rallied them on their defeat, and asked them what advice they would give her before they went. They replied, but the writer could not hear the "pestiferous things" they spoke; whereupon they flew away immediately as the hour named arrived, "striking another young woman down for dead upon the floor as they went along; and so, with a raised soul, she bore her part with us in giving thanks to God for her deliver- ance." Mercy Short was not troubled with any further diabolical moles- tations. After several days her eyes, which had been blinded as if she had been struck with lightning, regained their sight. "She was left also with an ill habit of body which could not be cured without some time and care."
Dr. Haven has appended to his copy the following note: -
"The first leaf of this account (blank) has on the outside the words, 'To be Re- turn'd unto Cotton Mather.' It seems, therefore, that it was loaned by him for perusal, and it bears the marks of use in that way.1 At the close of the narrative is the begin- ning of a statement, by Cotton Mather, of the reason why he forbears to give his opinion 'about the true nature and meaning of these preternatural occurrences ; ' but all, except a few lines, was on another leaf, which is missing."
From Mr. Mather's other writings we can safely infer the import of the passage which is missing. He never wavered from a full belief in the reality of witchcraft and diabolical possession ; but his mind was greatly perplexed as to the nature and meaning of the phenomena. His reading, and the strange proceedings that had passed under his own observation, left his opinions in a very unsettled state. The subject presented dark and hidden mysteries which he could not explain. Writing, in 1701, he says : -
! [There is in the Library of the Historical Society a volume of manuscripts, which contains
this same provision for a return to the author. No. 5 in this volume is called "Cotton To Bey Return'd auto & mather. Mather's belief and practice in those thorny difficulties which have distracted us in the day of temptation," and has marginal reflec- tions in another hand. No. 6 is marked " More Wonders of the Invisible World," by C. Mather, in his own hand; and a fac-simile of the same provision in this manuscript is herewith appended. These several in the handwriting of Cotton Mather, manuscripts refer to the Margaret Rule case. and two of them relating to witchcraft bear -ED.]
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
" About the troubles we have had from the invisible world, I have at present nothing to offer to you, but that I believe they were too dark and deep for ordinary comprehension ; and it may be errors on both hands have attended them, which will never be understood until the day when Satan shall be bound after another manner than he is at this day." 1
Low against Witchcraft. For more particular Divor tion in the Bro ecution of the and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits. Ot Bill against Conjuration, Witchcraft
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