USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 27
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
advocate, but as an historian." Stephen Sewall, the clerk of the court at Salem, and brother of Judge Sewall, furnished these reports.1 As Stephen Sewall was a stanch believer in the Salem methods, he is doubtless respon- sible for anecdotes and statements contained therein which have been charged to Mr. Mather's credulity and superstition.2
The book is an intense and highly-wrought expression of the author's implicit belief in the reality of the witchcraft and diabolical agency then abroad in the land; and yet, extravagant as it appears to modern readers, it is a faithful representation of the popular alarm and spiritual terror of that period. As to the fact of witchcraft, and that a witch, if legally proved to be such, should not be suffered to live, there was no difference of opinion in the community ; but as to the method of detecting and trying witches, there was an animated and bitter controversy concerning what was then called the Salem and the Boston methods. Mr. Mather says: -
" The Devil hath made us like a troubled sea ; 't is by our quarrels that we spoil our prayers. To wrangle the Devil out of the country will be truly a new experiment. It is wonderfully necessary that some healing attempts be made at this time. I am so desirous of a share in them, that, if being thrown overboard were needful to allay the storm, I should think dying a trifle to be undergone for so great a blessedness."
Mr. Mather, then less than thirty years of age, undertook to act the difficult rôle of a middle-man and pacificator. He adds : -
" I would most importunately, in the first place, entreat every man to maintain a holy jealousy over his own soul at this time. Let us more generally agree to maintain a kind opinion of one another ; but if we disregard this rule of charity we shall give our body politic to be burned " (pp. 11, 12).
He spoke in charitable terms of the judges, as men eminent for wisdom and virtue : -
"They went about the work for which they were commissioned with very great aversion ; so they still have been under heart-breaking solicitudes how they might therein best serve both God and man. Have there been any disputed methods used for the discovery of the works of darkness? It may be none but what have had great precedents in other parts of the world. Surely they have, at the worst, been the faults of a well-meaning ignorance (pp. 11, 12). ... There are very worthy men who are not a little dissatisfied at the proceedings in the prosecution of this witchcraft,
1 Mr. Mather, Sept. 20, 1692, wrote to Stephen Sewall, addressing him " My dear and very oblig- ing Stephen," asking him for " a narrative of the evidences given in at the trials of half-a-dozen, or if you please a dozen, of the principal witches that have been condemned." This letter has been strangely misrepresented. (See North American Review, cviii. 391.) Two days later they had an interview at the house of Judge Sewall, in Boston, when Judge Stoughton and John Hathorn, of Salem, were present, and there VOL. II .- 21.
was "speaking about publishing some trials of the witches." (Judge Sewall's Diary, i., p. 366.) 2 An anecdote of this class is in Bancroft (ii. 259, ed. of 1876), and is used by a dozen other writers, as a choice illustration of Mr. Mather's credulity: "As this woman [Bridget Bishop] was under a guard, passing by the great and spacious meeting-house in Salem, she gave a look towards the house, and immediately a demon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of it " (p. 138, ed. of 1862).
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
. . . those reverend persons [of Boston] who gave this advice [of June 15] to the honorable council : 'That presumptions, whereupon persons may be committed, and much more convictions, whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witch- crafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused persons being represented by a spectre unto the afflicted. Nor are alterations made in the sufferers by a look or touch of the accused to be esteemed an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to be abused by the Devil's ledgerdemains'" (p. 12).
From the principles of this advice, which was drawn up by himself,1 he never swerved.
4. Increase Mather's Cases of. Conscience concerning Witchcraft, 1693.2 While the trials and executions were going on in Salem, in the summer of 1692, Increase Mather was requested by the ministers of Boston and the vicinity to prepare a more elaborate statement of their views than was con- tained in their advice of June 15, which the judges did not accept. He finished the work October 3, and it was printed soon after in Boston and London. The main purpose of the treatise was to show the injustice and illegality of spectral testimony which was freely admitted in the trials at Salem. Its preface to the " Christian Reader," written by Samuel Willard,3 is signed by fourteen ministers, who say: "That there are devils and witches the Scriptures assert and experience confirms; they are the com- mon enemies of mankind and set upon mischief. But certainly the more execrable the crime is, the more critical care is to be used in the exposing of the names, liberties, and lives of men (especially of a godly conversa- tion) to the imputation of it." They express their hearty consent to, and concurrence with, what is contained in the treatise. The author meets the whole question at issue in his opening sentence : -
" The first case that I am desired to express my judgment in, is this : 'Whether it is not possible for the Devil to impose on the imaginations of persons bewitched, and to cause them to believe that an innocent, yea, that a pious person does torment them, when the Devil himself does it ; or whether Satan may not appear in the shape of an innocent and pious as well as a nocent and wicked person, to afflict such as suffer by diabolical molestations?' The answer to the question must be affirmative." (App. to C. M's Wonders, p. 225, ed. of 1862.)
1 See Cotton Mather's Life of Increase Mather, 1723, p. 165, and Samuel Mather's Life of Cotton Mather, 1729, p. 45. May 31, 1693, three days before the trials began at Salem, Mr. Mather wrote a letter to John Richards, one of the judges, in which he cautioned the judges against admitting spectral testimony. This letter is printed in Mather Papers, 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 391. If the judges at Salem had accepted the caution and acted upon it, no accused person could have been convicted.
2 [The Boston edition of Cases of Conscience has this imprint : " Boston, printed and sold by Benjamin Harris, at the London Coffee-House, 1693." The London edition of the same year
was published by Dunton, but it had a preface of ten pages of matter, -" A True Narrative of some Remarkable Passages. . . . Collected by Deodat Lawson ;" and a general title prefixed to the book is A further account of the Tryals of New England Witches, etc. The matter of Law- son's had been printed the year before at Boston in ten pages quarto, as a Brefe and True Narra- tive of Passages, etc. - ED.]
3 " Oct. 11, 1692. Read Mr. Willard's epis- tle to Mr. Mather's book as to Cases of Con- science touching Witchcraft."- fudge Sewall's Diary, i. 367. It is strange that in the year 1692 so little about witchcraft appears in Sew- all's Diary.
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
He then proceeds to prove, by citing many examples, that the Devil can assume any shape he chooses, even that of an angel of light. " This then I declare and testify, that to take away the life of any one, merely because a spectre or devil in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them, will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land." The strange exhibi- tions in the afflicted persons from the sight or touch of the accused, which had also been accepted as testimony, he shows are no evidence of guilt, as he believes they are produced by demons ; and he affirms that the oath and testimony of confessed witches, and of persons possessed, should never be received. A trial for witchcraft ought to be conducted by the same law and rules of evidence as a trial for murder, burglary, or any other felony. He says : - .
"The Word of God instructs jurors and judges to proceed upon clear human testimony. But the Word no where giveth us the least intimation that every one is a witch, at whose look the bewitched person shall fall into fits ; nor yet, that any other means should be used for the discovery of witches than what may be used for the finding out of murderers, adulterers, and other criminals. . .. The ways of trying witches long used in many nations (as the judicious Mr. Perkins expresseth it) were invented by the Devil, that so innocent persons might be condemned, and some noto- rious witches escape " (pp. 268, 270).
It will readily be seen that a trial for witchcraft, conducted by the " Bos- ton method," would be a very harmless proceeding. There were no more executions after Mr. Mather's treatise appeared.1 Says Cotton Mather, in the Life of his father (p. 166) : -
" But what gave the most illumination to the country, and a turn to the tide, was the special service which he did in composing and publishing his very learned Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft ; in which treatise he did with incomparable reason and reading demonstrate that the Devil may appear in the shape of an innocent and a virtuous person, to afflict those that suffer by diabolical molestations ; and that the ordeal of the sight and touch is not a conviction of a covenant with the Devil, but liable to great exceptions against the lawfulness, as well as the evidence, of it. Upon this the Governor pardoned such as had been condemned, and the spirit of the country ran violently upon acquitting all the accused."
In the postscript of Cases of Conscience Increase Mather says : " Some, I hear, have taken up a notion that the book newly published by my son [ Wonders of the Invisible World] is contradictory to this of mine. ' Tis
1 [Some of the writers already referred to as implicating the Mathers in the Salem method, find ground for this view in what Increase Mather says in this treatise : "I hope the think- ing part of mankind will be satisfied that there was more than that which is called spectre evi- dence for the conviction of the persons con- demned. I was not myself present at any of the trials, excepting one, - viz., that of George Bur-
roughs ; had I been one of his judges, I could not have acquitted him." The writers of the other side claim that this extract should be taken with the explanation that Burroughs was hanged after conviction by human not spectral testi- mony. This is fully presented by Mr. Poole in his article in the North American Review, vol. cviii., and need not be gone into in detail here. -ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
strange that such imaginations should enter the minds of men. I perused and approved of that book before it was printed ; and nothing but my rela- tion to him hindered me from recommending it to the world." 1
5. Samuel Willard's Some Miscellany Observations on our present Debatcs respecting Witchcrafts, in a Dialogue between S and B, 1692.2
The subject of this anonymous pamphlet, of 16 pages, is substantially the same as that of Cases of Conscience, - How shall witch-trials be con- ducted ?- but it is treated in the form of a dialogue between " S and B," which initials were probably intended to represent "Salem " and " Boston." "S" defends the spectral theory of the judges at Salem, and "B" the views of the Boston ministers. That Mr. Willard was the author of the tract appears from the statement of Cotton Mather in Some Few Remarks, p. 35 ; and Calef, in More Wonders, p. 38, quotes from it and mentions Mr. Willard as the author. Mr. Willard, in his views of witchcraft and its proper treatment, was perfectly in accord with the Mathers. The tract is written with great ability, and simply as a specimen of dialectic treat- ment it is not easy to name one that is its superior. "S " states and defends the popular theory of spectral evidence, and "B" subjects it to the most searching and scathing condemnation. There is no paper of the same limits extant which will give the reader so clear an insight into the essence of the exciting controversy, in 1692, concerning the methods of trying witches, which culminated in making it impossible for another person to be exe- cuted for witchcraft in New England.
6. Thomas Brattle's Account of Witchcraft in the County of Essex, 1692. Mr. Brattle was a prominent merchant of Boston, a large benefactor of Harvard College, and its treasurer from 1693 to his death in 1713. Presi- dent Quincy says of him that " he was distinguished for opulence, activity, and talent, and for the zeal and readiness with which he devoted his time, wealth, and intellectual power to objects of private benevolence and public usefulness." 3 He was one of the founders of the Brattle-Street Church, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society.4 Mr Brattle's Account is dated Oct. 8, 1692, and is addressed to a clergyman who had asked for the information, and whose name is unknown. The paper was first printed in 1798, in the fifth
1 Cases of Conscience is reprinted in J. R. and then suffered to escape from the Province. Smith's London edition of Wonders of the In- visible World, 1862, pp. 219-288; and the Advice of the Boston Ministers of June 15, 1692, is on pp. 289, 290. The latter is copied into Hutchin- son's History of Massachusetts (ii. 52), with several verbal errors and omissions. It is omitted from Salem Witchcraft, 1867; and Cases of Conscience is not even mentioned in that work.
2 The only original copy of this tract which I have seen is in the Library of the Mass. Hist. Soci- ety. It was printed at Philadelphia, by William Bradford, for Hezekiah Usher. Mr. Usher was one of the persons arrested for witchcraft. He was kept for two weeks in a private house,
Mr. Brattle (p. 69) complains of the partiality shown him, when other persons whose cases were the same were actually imprisoned, and refused bail on any terms. The tract has been reprinted in the Cougregational Quarterly, Boston, July, 1869, ii. 401, and issued in a separate form. No mention is made of it in Salem Witchcraft, 1867. 8 History of Harvard College, i. 410.
4 The statement, often repeated, that a person of Mr. Brattle's character, standing, and dignity assisted Robert Calef in the preparation of his book (see Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1858, p. 288 ; and Salem Witchcraft, ii. 461) is too improbable to be seriously considered.
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volume of the Massachusetts Historical Collections, pp. 60-79. It contains much important information which is mentioned by no other writer. "I am very open," says Mr. Brattle, "to communicate my thoughts unto you, and in plain terms to tell you what my opinion is of the Salem methods." He describes and pronounces them " rude and barbarous methods." "This Salem philosophy," he says, " some men may call the new philosophy; but I think it deserves the name of Salem superstition and sorcery, and it is not fit to be named in a land of such light as New England is." Concerning the witnesses who confessed that they had made a league with the Devil, he says : -
" They are deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evil spirit ; and, therefore, unfit to be evidences either against themselves or any one else. . . . But although the Chief Judge [Stoughton] and some of the other judges be very zealous in these proceedings, yet this you may take for a truth, that there are several about the Bay, men of understanding, judgment, and piety, inferior to few, if any, in New England, that do utterly condemn the said proceedings, and do freely deliver their judgment in the case to be this, viz : that these methods will utterly ruin and undo poor New England. "
Several of them he mentions, - Simon Bradstreet, Thomas Danforth,1 Increase Mather, Samuel Willard, and Nathaniel Saltonstall.
" Excepting Mr. Hale [of Beverly], Mr. Noyes and Mr. Parris [both of Salem], the reverend elders, almost throughout the whole country, are very much dissatisfied. The principal men of Boston, and thereabout, are generally agreed that irregular and dangerous methods have been taken as to these matters."
Cotton Mather's name does not appear in the narrative, except as the friend and comforter of the accused. Mr. Brattle (p. 76) says: " I cannot but think very honorably of the endeavors of a reverend person in Boston," whom he does not name, but the description fitly applies to Mr. Mather.2
7. Robert Calef's More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700.3 "It is remarkable," says the writer of Salem Witchcraft, 1867 (ii. 461), "that Brattle does not mention Calef." No other writer of the date of 1692 mentions Calef. There is doubt at this day who Calef was, though the writer named says he was " a son of Robert Calef, of Roxbury." The name nowhere appears until the Salem tragedy had been acted, the curtain had dropped, the lights had gone out, and the com-
· munity had recovered its senses. If he be the person mentioned, Calef must have been, from the best genealogical inferences which can now be drawn, a
1 For interview with Danforth, see Sewall's Diary, i. 367.
2 See North American Review, 108, p. 387, where I have given the grounds on which this opinion was based. The compliment has been claimed for Mr. Willard; but Mr. Willard re-
ceived his tribute of praise openly, and by name, on the preceding page.
8 [It seems to have been issued in two London impressions in 1700, or at least Mr. Deane's copy has two titles which are dif- ferent. - En ]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age, flying his kite or trundling his hoop in the streets of Boston, when Mr. Brattle wrote his account. The reputa- tion which has been associated with the name of Calef for the past century, as a stalwart agent in putting an end to Salem witchcraft, is an anachronism,
WILLIAM STOUGHTON.1
a myth, and a delusion. His personal history is a blank which the most assiduous investigation has not been able to fill, or even to supply with the most common details. It is not known where or when he was born, when
1 [This likeness of the presiding Justice in the Salem witchcraft trials follows a portrait now hanging in Memorial Hall, at Cambridge. Unlike
Sewall, he never was brought to acknowledge his error in the matter. His character is drawn in Dr. Ellis's chapter. - En. |
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he died, or where he was buried; and yet he lived in Boston, " the Metropo- lis of the English America," and his will is on file in the Suffolk Records.1 In his book he styles himself " Merchant, of Boston; " in a deed executed shortly before he died, "Clothier;" and by Cotton Mather he is styled "Weaver ;" "a man who makes little conscience of lying; " " a very wicked sort of a Sadducee," etc.
The earliest mention of the name of Robert Calef on record in connec- tion with witchcraft is in an account of a visit he made, Sept. 13, 1693, at the house of Margaret Rule, she then being in the midst of her diabolical afflictions. Thirty or forty other persons were in the room. Increase and Cotton Mather called at the same time to administer spiritual consolation. Calef made a second visit six days later, when the Mathers were not present, and he wrote out an account of both visits, in which he freely used the names of the Mathers. These accounts he circulated in the community. Cotton Mather, hearing of the use he was making of their names, sent for the paper, and, on examining it, pronounced its statements base and malicious falsehoods, and threatened to prosecute him if he circulated the paper any further. A bitter and life-long quarrel was the result. Calef per- sisting in his course, Mr. Mather caused him to be arrested for libel Calef thereupon wrote to Mr. Mather a letter, half-apologetical, professing to be "one that reverences your person and office," expressing his belief in witchcraft, and desiring an interview at the book-seller's, that they might exchange views on the subject of diabolism.2 In consequence of this letter Mr. Mather did not appear against him; and on Jan. 15, 1693-94, wrote to him a very severe and fatherly letter,3 stating that he found "scarcely any one thing in the whole paper, whether respecting my father or myself, fairly
1 Mr. S. G. Drake, in Witchcraft Delusion in New England, 1876, v. ii., gives the " Pedigree of Calef," and makes Robert Calef -the collector of More Wonders (for the book professes to have no author) - the fourth son of Robert Calef (or Calfe, or Calf; the name was variously writ- ten), who died at Roxbury, April 13, 1719, aged 71 years. Mr. Savage and many other writers make substantially the same statements, and they are probably correct. There is no uncertainty about the date of death or the age of the senior Robert Calef; for they are taken from his grave- stone at Roxbury. He must, therefore, have been 44 years of age in 1692 ; and his fourth son Robert could not have been, in the natural order of events, more than 14 or 15 years old in 1692. Mr. Drake states that the son "died near the close of 1722 or early in 1723, aged about 45." Mr. Savage says: "Of his death we have no exact date ; but it was between April [11] 1722 [when he released a mortgage deed, signing his name " Robert Calfe " ] and Feb. 18 following, when his will was proved. Ever honored be his name !" etc. Assuming that he died late in 1722 or early in 1723, aged about 45, he would have
been about 15 or 16 years of age in 1693 when his name first appears, and about 23 when his book was published.
Within the past five years a doubt has been suggested as to the identity of the person whose name is attached to the book. The doubt has arisen from the apparent improbability that one so young as the son could have written or com- piled such a noted book. (See N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., xxx. 461 ; and F. S. Drake's His- tory of the Town of Roxbury, 1878, p. 149). These writers claim that Robert Calef, Sr., and not the son, was the compiler, and the person whose memory we are expected to honor. I have not seen the evidence to justify either the statement or the expectation. There is nothing in the book which a person of the age of the son, with the help he had, could not have done; and there is much in it which can best be explained by assuming it to be the work of an immature youth. My conservative tendencies lead me to side with the older genealogists.
2 More Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 16. Original edition.
3 Ibid., p. 19.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
or truly represented." He points out at great length where Calef has done them both great injustice and injury. He proposed, in case Calef desired a true and full narrative of the visit, " whereof such an indecent
Great f&
I how lay at the foot ofyour begolong the Book intil. Moro Hond ONE of the Invisible Words. how it not book too much profumt to afix for honourallo a name to fo moan a work in head of this had boon a dedication to your Excellency. I expect it will mott with arving wcoption in generall you and In the influonal of the book of Reigns and und or your Ecwlancing Goverment I can not but promis to my frewall Loyal portion Uno Security your Gee. favourable construction of the whole world will abundantly weamponce General fr one of the mangt the not lagh affectionate in you Government - Roll Gule
LETTER TO BELLOMONT.1
travesty hath been made," to furnish one. He offered Calef the use of his library, and invited him to his study, if he cared to investigate the - subject of witchcraft. Calef's conduct in this matter was that of an un- scrupulous, conceited, and mischievous boy. He writes like a boy, begin- ning the narrative of his visit to Margaret Rule in this fashion: " In the evening, when the sun was withdrawn, giving place to darkness to succeed, I, with some others, were (sic) drawn by curiosity to see Margaret Rule." 2 Calef afterward wrote a succession of crude, rambling letters to Mr. Mather, Mr. Willard, Mr. Wadsworth, "To the Ministers, whether English, French, or Dutch," and "To the Ministers in and near Boston; " each one growing more presuming, until they became positively insulting and libel-
1 [This fac-simile comes to the Editor through Mr. Deane, and is of an original letter in a copy of Calef's book in the Lenox Library, which seems to have been a presentation copy to Gov-
ernor Bellomont. It was obtained by Mr. Lenox from Obadiah Rich, and bears the bookplate of Sir William Grace, Bart. - ED.]
2 More Wonders, p. 13.
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WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
lous. To none of these epistles did he receive a reply, and he felt cha- grined at the indifference and contempt in which he was held by the clergy. Said Mr. Mather, in Some Few Remarks (pp. 34, 35) : -
" I have had the honor to be aspersed and abused by Robert Calef. I remember that when this miserable man [he was then, 1701, twenty-three or twenty-four years of age] sent unto an eminent minister in the town [Mr. Willard] a libellous letter, which he has now published, and when he demanded an answer, that reverend person only said : 'Go, tell him that the answer to him and his letter is in the 26th of Proverbs and the 4th' [' Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him ' ]. The reason that made me unwilling to trust any of my writings in the hands of this man was, because I saw the weaver (though he presumes to call himself a merchant) was a stranger to all the rules of civility ; and I foresaw I should be served as now I find."
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