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The
Salem Witch Trials
Taken
from 'The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology' by Rossell Hope
Robbins
The
year 1692 seems to have been a particularly troubled one in New
England. It was a time of political uncertainty, with Increase Mather
at the English Court, seeking clarification of the colony's
government. The French were waging war, and the Indians were on the
warpath. Taxes were intolerable (in 1691 the colonial government had
demanded £1,346), the winter was cruel, pirates were attacking
commerce, and smallpox was raging. in addition, the ingrown
irritations of a small village, where ownership of land and boundaries
were in dispute, increased the tensions.
To men and women brought up in a restricting evangelical world, the
troubles of 1692 were caused by the Devil. The Puritan New England
mind was alerted to devils and to their agents on earth, witches.
Belief in the supernatural was unquestioned. The Bible told about
witches and demoniacal possession; the Mosaic codes of Massachusetts
turned legend into law. Witchcraft was part of the Weltanschauung
of the colonists, especially strong since Massachusetts was not a
monarchy or a republic, but a theocracy. The party line of the church
ministers became both the law of God and the law of the land. Any
traffic with Satan was treason to God - and the colony. This religious
control of the state accounts in part for the panic in Massachusetts
at a time when elsewhere the witchcraft delusion was waning (the last
witch had been executed in England in 1685). When one of those accused
as witches, William Barker, added political to religious heresy, the
Puritans believed him: "The design was to destroy Salem village,
and to begin at the Minster's house, and to destroy the Church of God
and to set up Satan's kingdom" - Hale, Modest Inquiry into
Witchcraft, Boston, 1702. The same realisation occurred to an
Englishman, John Evelyn, who recorded in his diary (February 4, 1693):
"unheard of stories of the universal increase of Witches in New
England; men, women, and children devoting themselves to the Devil, so
as to threaten the subversion of the government."
The immediate cause of this "subversion" was a group of
unmarried young women who visited the house of Rev. Samuel Parris to
listen to his slave Tituba's tales of West Indian lore. His daughter
Elizabeth, aged nine, and her cousin Abigail Williams, aged eleven,
the two youngest girls, were so emotionally excited by these
get-togethers, coming at the onset of puberty, that they went into
fits of uncontrollable sobbing and convulsions. Even after Elizabeth
had been sent to live with Stephen Sewall (brother of Judge Samuel
Sewall, who later abjured his part in the trials), her fits continued.
In the first published account of the Salem troubles, A Brief and
True Narrative (Boston, 1692), Deodat Lawson, Rev Samuel's
Predecessor, told how she saw Abigail "run to the fire, and begin
to throw fire brands about the house; and run against the back as if
she would run up the chimney."
Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams were the bellwethers in this
defiance of the whole adult world, showing lawlessness, disobedience,
flouting of authority, delinquency, to an extent no one in the
twentieth century can envision. Little Elizabeth, brought up by the
strictest of fathers, flung the holy Bible across the room - and got
away with it. Abigail, who lived at the Parris home, took the
limelight at a solemn day of fasting on March 11 for relief from the
bewitchment - shrieking, romping, and disrupting the prayers. On
Sunday, march 20, at a guest sermon by Rev. Deodat Lawson, Abigail
gave a performance of audacious impudence - and everybody marveled.
Lawson himself described it:
After psalm was sung, Abigail Williams said to me, "Now stand
up, and name your text." And after it was read, she said,
"It is a long text." . . . And in the afternoon, Abigail
Williams, upon my referring to my doctrines, said to me, "I know
of no doctrine you had. If you did name one, I have forgot it."
Later, at the examination of john Procter, Parris (who was then
acting as recording secretary) wrote:
So great were the interruptions of John [Indian] and Abigail by
fits, while we were observing these things to notify [record] them,
that we were fain to send them both away that I might have liberty to
write this without disturbance.
This was the start, but out of this hysteria of high-strung
personalities developed the contrived artfulness of the later fits of
the older girls. Robert Calef, a Boston merchant who observed the
proceedings, noted how from the first the girls acted in their homes,
using "sundry odd postures and antic gestures, uttering foolish
ridiculous speeches, which neither they themselves not any others
could make sense of."
Of these older girls, Ann Putnam was the youngest, twelve.
Elizabeth Hubbard, who worked for her aunt and uncle (Dr. William
Griggs), was seventeen; Mary Walcott, sixteen; Mary Warren, who worked
for John and Elizabeth Proctor, twenty; Mercy Lewis, another servant
girl (of the Putnams'), Nineteen; and Susan Sheldon and Elizabeth
Booth were both eighteen. These eight "witch bitches" (as
one of the accused, old George Jacobs, called them) were the
ringleaders. in addition, other young people also acted strangely and
joined in accusing their neighbours - Sarah Churchill, a
twenty-year-old servant of George Jacobs'; Sarah Trask, nineteen;
Margaret Reddington, Twenty; Phoebe Chandler, only twelve; and Martha
Sprague, sixteen.
These girls were not children, but late teen-agers, and by the time
the trials were ended were almost a year older. They were, as the
court called them, "grown persons." Even Ann Putnam, twelve,
was precocious, designated by the court not as a child, but as a
"single woman."
As recently as 1668, public opinion had been concerned with
possession, and had ascribed the affliction of john Goodwin's children
in Boston to the Devil. The Goodwin children stem from the long line
of Children Accusers. Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts observed:
"The behaviour of the [Salem] children is so exact as to leave no
room for doubt [that] the stories [of previous possessed children] had
been read by the New England persons, or had been told to them."
In view of this tradition which considered rebellious adolescents
as bewitched, the opinion in Salem about the girls was not surprising.
The local physician, Dr. Griggs, who himself harboured a possessed
girl in his home, and the local ministers diagnosed witchcraft. The
local judges found suspects responsible for the girls' antics, and
thereby proved witchcraft.
If the doctor and ministers could offer no explanation save
witchcraft, at least one citizen had a practical suggestion to stop
the manifestations of witchcraft. "If [the girls] were
let alone, we should all be devils and witches quickly; they should
rather be had to the whipping post." His procedure had proved
effective, for John Proctor added that when his Mary Warren "was
first taken with fits, he kept her close to the [spinning] wheel and
threatened to thrash her; and then she had no more fits - til the next
day he had gone forth, and then she must have her fits again,
forsooth."
Proctor's suggestion was disregarded, and folk preferred the
explanation of witchcraft. Mary Sibey, the aunt of Mary Walcott,
inadvertently forced attention on the matter, She had Tituba's
husband, John Indian, make a "witch cake." A contemporary
New England almanac gives a recipe: "To cure ague. Take a cake of
barley meal and mix it with children's water, bake it, and feed it to
the dog. If the dog shakes, you will be cured." Mrs. Sibley may
also have hoped that, alternatively, if the dog got sick, the girls
would tell who or what afflicted them. When Rev. Samuel Parris
realised what was going on under his nose, the affair became dynamite.
What may have begun as a teenage prank had developed into a cause
célebre. It may be - motives are very elusive - they initially
hit upon the idea of specters haunting them in order to escape
punishment for their fantastic behaviour. This device was developed
little by little. Tituba was actually the first to tell in court about
specters or shapes of neighbours trying to win them to the Devil. When
the question "Who torments you?" failed to produce names,
suggestive questions followed, and answers had to be given. So the
girls named first the obvious scapegoats of the community, the
vulnerable and weak - Tituba, the Negro slave; Sarah Good, the
pipe-smoking beggar; and Sarah Osbourne, a thrice-wedded cripple.
Martha Cory, the fourth to be accused, had an illegitimate half-caste
son. Having taken the first steps in accusing people and seen their
horrifying effects, the girls still more feared to reveal the truth.
Sarah Good was charged on February 29, 1692, with feloniously using
and practicing "certain detestable arts called witchcraft and
sorceries, "whereby Sarah Bibber, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Ann
Putnam were "tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted, and
tormented." Her preliminary examination of March 1, 1692, was a
trial balloon of public sentiment and the testing ground for future
accusations; the girls' techniques improved with experience. Judge
Hathorne (an ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne) and Judge Corwin, both
of Salem firmly believed in deviltry and sorcery.
Q. Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity
with?
A. None.
Q. Have you made no contract with the Devil?
A. No.
Q. Why do you hurt these children?
A. I do not hurt them. I scorn it!
Q. Whom do you employ then to do it?
A. I employ nobody.
Q. What creature do you employ then?
A. No creature - but I am falsely accused.
This formula became the standard gambit for interrogation. When
Judge Hathorne saw that his questions to Sarah Good were not creating
evidence for a conviction, he sought help from the girls. "Judge
Hathorne desired the children, all of them, to look upon her and see
if this were the person that had hurt them. And so they all did look
upon her and said this was one of the persons that did torment
them." To demonstrate the torment, the girls cried out as if in
pain, claiming pinchings, bitings, and paralysis. Apparently at this
first trial not all the girls were sure about their spectral evidence,
so the record adds: "Presently they were all
tormented."
Having produced visible evidence of Sarah's power to bewitch, Judge
Hathorne then demanded names of her accomplices:
Q. Why, who was it?
A. I do not know, but it was some you brought to the
meetinghouse with you.
Q. We brought you to the meetinghouse.
A. But you brought in two more.
Q. Who was it, then, that tormented the children?
A. It was Osbourne.
In addition to going into fits whenever as accused was presented in
court, the girls corroborated each other by prognosticating each
other's contortions. At the examination of William Hobbs,
"Abigail Williams said he was going to Mercy Lewis, and quickly
after the said Lewis was seized with a fit. Then Abigail cried, 'he is
coming to Mary Walcott.' And said Mary presently fell into a fit
also." Without realising the implications, Judge Hathorne
characterised the girls in his interrogation of Rebecca Nurse:
"They accuse you of hurting them, and if you think it is not
unavailingly by design, then you must look upon them as
murderers."
The sworn despositions of all the young women are much of a piece.
Erase the name of the accused, and the evidence would apply to any
other. Thus Elizabeth Booth accused John Proctor:
The desposition of Elizabeth Booth, aged eighteen years, who
testifieth and saith that since I have been afflicted, I have been
grievously tormented by my neighbour, John Proctor, senior, or his
appearance. Also I have seen John Proctor, senior, or his appearance
most grievously torment and afflict Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, and Ann
Putnam, junior, by pinching, twisting, and almost choking them. Jurat
in curia [She swears to it in court].
Over three months later, Mary Walcott was repeating this formula
against Abigail Faulkner:
The desposition of Mary Walcott, who testifieth and saith that
about the 9th August, 1692, I was most dreadfully afflicted by a woman
that told me her name was Abigail Faulkner. But on the 11th August,
being the day of the examination of Abigail Faulkner, she did most
dreadfully afflict me during the time of her examination. I saw
Abigail Faulkner, or her appearance, most grievously afflict and
torment Sarah Phelps and Ann Putnam. And I verily believe in my heart
that Abigail Faulkner is a witch, and that she has often afflicted me
and that aforesaid persons by acts of witchcraft.
Whenever the young women became uncertain of a course of action, a
lead was given them by another witness, Ann's mother, Mrs. Thomas
Putnam. A close reading of the court records points strongly to her
masterminding the accusations.
A second older witness who frequently testified was 36-year-old
Sarah Bibber, mentioned as a complainant in the first indictment of
February 29. Ten of her despositions against highly respected persons
are extant. Generally she contented herself with backing the girls. At
the trial of Rebecca Nurse, for example, she was the second witness of
a specter: "I saw the apparition of Rebecca Nurse . . . most
grievously torture and afflict the bodies of Mary Walcott, Mercy
Lewis, and Abigail Williams by pinching them and almost choking them
to death." This she swore on oath before the court.
But friends and relatives of Mrs. Nurse were scrutinising her.
Sarah Nurse, Rebecca's daughter, detected chicanery and came forward
to swear: "I saw Goody Bibber pull pins out of her clothes and
hold them between her fingers, and clasp her hands round her knees.
And then she cried out and said Goody Nurse pinched her. This I can
testify."
Some time later, certain neighbours made statements about this
Sarah Bibber. John and Lydia Porter said she was "a woman of an
unruly turbulent spirit, and she would often fall into strange fits
when she was crossed of her humour." Richard Walker confirmed
this. Some people with whom the Bibbers had lodged made highly damning
comments on her credibility as a witness. For example, she "would
be very often speaking against one and another very obscenely and
those things that were false, and wishing bad wishes and very
often." Other neighbours said she "could fall into fits as
often as she pleased."
Those who beat the gun by confessing were the only accused against
whom the girls did not testify at length. The Salem victims were
hanged not because they admitted to being witches, but because
they denied it. No one who confessed to being a witch was ever
hanged, yet, if witchcraft were a punishable offense, a confessed
criminal should have been punished.
A confession meant a reprieve, for then the accusers did not make a
scene. At the examination of Mary Warren, "not one of the
sufferers was afflicted during her examination after once she began to
confess, though they were tormented before." After Tituba
confessed, Ann Putnam, as well as Elizabeth Hubbard, said: "She
left off hurting me and has hurt me but little since." And Rev.
Francis Dane noted "the common speech that was frequently spread
among us of their liberty, if they [the accused] would confess."
On the other hand, Samuel Wardwell, who first made a confession but
later denied it, was hanged. In all, 55 of the 150 accused, confessed
in order to get reprieves (Thomas Brattle's Letter).
The course of the trial shocked only two of the "witch
bitches" into confessing their deception; and the public
performance of the other girls, terrified that they would be exposed,
was do outrageously hostile that both penitents recanted, and were
taken back into the ranks of the accusers.
Sarah Churchill, twenty, servant to George Jacobs, was one of the
less vocal accusers. When Jacobs was apprehended and examined, she
refused to continue the imposture. The other girls immediately accused
her as a witch. Frightened by this twist of events, she quickly
reversed herself and rejoined the afflicted.
Her conscience bothered her, however, and she poured out her doubts
to Sarah Ingersoll, the spinster daughter of Deacon Ingersoll, a
pillar of the church and proprietor of the Salem Village
"ordinary" or inn. Sarah filed a desposition, but the court
ignored it, just as it had ignored the exposure of Sarah Bibber:
The desposition of Sarah Ingersoll, aged about thirty years, saith
that seeing Sarah Churchill, after her examination, she came to me
crying and wringing her hands, seeming to be much troubled in spirit.
I asked her what she ailed. She answered she had undone herself. I
asked her in what. She said in belying herself and others in saying
she had set her hand to the devil's book; whereas, she said, she never
did. I told her I believed she had set her hand to the book. She
answered, crying, and said, "No, no, no. I never, I never
did!" I asked her then what made her say she did. She answered
because they threatened her, and told her they would put her into the
dungeon, and put her along with Mr. Burroughs. And thus several times
she followed [me] up and down, telling me that she had undone herself
in belying herself and others . . . She said also that if she told Mr.
Noyes but once she had set her hand to the book, he would believe her.
But if she had told the truth and said she had not set her hand to the
book, a hundred times, he would not believe her.
The other defector - temporarily - was Mary Warren, the maid at the
Proctors'. The fate of the Proctor family was enough to bring sanity
to a half-wit. John and his wife Elizabeth were in jail. Mary Warren
was left with their five children (the youngest aged three). An
overzealous sheriff, taking the law into his own hands, had
appropriated the family property. Long before the trial, he came
to the house and seized all the goods and, provisions and cattle
that he could come at, and sold some of the cattle at half price and
killed others and put them for the West Indies; threw out the beer out
of the barrel and carried away the barrel, emptied a pot of broth and
took away the pot, and left nothing for the support of the children.
Like Sarah. she could not bring herself to testify against her
employer. Instead of supporting the fifty-two neighbours who boldly
upheld his innocence in a public petition, however, she uttered her
thoughts to her girl friends. Detecting a dangerous weak reed, Ann
Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Abigail Williams accused Mary
Warren as witch.
From April 21 to May 12, Mary Warren was hounded by the magistrates
and "witch bitches" until she confessed that John Proctor's
apparition had afflicted her. Most of the questioning turned round her
signing the devil's book, which she eventually admitted, her finger
making a black mark. But whether her finger was wet with spittle, with
sweat, or "with cider that she had been drinking of," she
could not say. While in jail, and momentarily free from the judges'
pressures, she admitted:
When I was afflicted I thought I saw the apparitions of a hundred
persons; for she said her head was distempered that she could not tell
what she said. And the said Mary told us that when she was well again,
she could not say that she saw any of the apparitions at the time
aforesaid.
Mitigation for their sins could be found for other young witch
finders who actually suffered epileptic fits or spastic fits, or who
were mentally deranged. But there can be no mitigation of the crimes
of the Salem girls. Never at any time, even during the hangings, was
the slightest compunction or contrition shown (with the possible
exception of Sarah Churchill and Mary Warren). They knew exactly what
they were doing. Their acts during 1692 imply a state of utter
delinquency, causing death without rhyme or reason, for sport. On
March 28, at Ingersoll's inn, one girl said she saw Mrs. Proctor
afflicting her. Mrs. Ingersoll "told the girl she told a lie, for
there was nothing. Then the girl said she did it for sport - 'they
must have some sport.'"
Some of these young accusers continued their evil-doing after the
trials, so that, as the Reversal of Attainer in 1711 stated,
"some of the principle accusers and witnesses . . .have since
discovered [shown] themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious
conversation." The only document which proves the irrational
viciousness is Ann Putnam's confession made fourteen years later, when
she was twenty-six.
In addition to the accusations of injuring the young women by
appearing as evil spectres, most "witches" were accused also
by adults with acts of maleficia. Such alleged misdeeds were
never directly included in the indictment, and seem to have been
allowed as evidence on the theory that any stick was good enough to
beat the dog. The desposition of Sarah Holton against Rebecca Nurse is
typical of the rest, and no whit more stupid. In all the accusations
of harming persons or cattle, the plaintiff was completely unable to
link cause and effect, and united two incidents related only in time
to try to prove a causal relationship.
The desposition of Sarah Holton, relict [widow] of Benjamin Holton,
deceased, who testifieth and saith that about this time three years,
my dear and loving husband, Benjamin Holton, deceased, was as well as
ever I knew him in my life, till on Saturday morning that Rebecca
Nurse, who now stands charged for witchcraft, came to our house and
fell a-railing at him, because our pigs got into her field (though our
pigs were sufficiently yoked, and their fence was down in several
places). Yet all we could say to her could in no ways pacify her, but
she continued railing and scolding a great while together, calling her
son, Benjamin Nurse, to go and get a gun and kill our pigs, and let
none of them go out of the field, though my poor husband gave her
never a mis-beholding word. And within a short time after this, my
poor husband going out very early in the morning, as he was a-coming
in again, he was taken with a strange fit in the entry, being struck
blind and stricken down two or three times. So that when he came to
himself, he told me he thought he should never come into the house any
more. And all summer after, he continued in a languishing condition,
being much pained at his stomach and often struck blind. But about a
fortnight before he died, he was taken with strange and violent fits,
acting much like to our poor bewitched persons, when we thought they
would have died. And the doctor that was with him could not find what
his distemper was. And the day before he died, he was very cheerly,
but about the midnight he was again most violently seized upon with
violent fits, till the next night about midnight he departed this life
by a cruel death.
But crimes were petty compared to sin; the pact with the
Devil, rather than the evil accruing from the pact, was what mattered.
Cotton Mather defined witchcraft as "a renouncing of God and
advancing of a filthy Devil into the throne of the Most high; 'tis the
most nefandous high treason against the majesty on high."
A large part of the hysteria which blanketed Salem and its environs
was due to the indiscriminate accusations of the girls, whereby anyone
might find himself labeled a witch. Some who possibly approved the
arrest of such "inferiors" as Tituba or Sarah Good were only
weeks later themselves accused, like Martha Cory, who had said:
"I could not blame the Devil for making witches of them;
for they are idle, slothful persons and minded nothing that was
good."
The accused were, in fact, a cross-section of society in the Salem
area, from farm labourers to landowners.
John Willard, farmer and deputy constable of Salem Village, had
arrested the first suspects, but he came to see that the real culprits
were the girls in the informers' box. "Hang them,"
he had cried. This was talk unendurable in a police officer, and
Willard realised it. He fled from Salem, but was picked up ten days
later, accused by six girls and Mrs. Putnam on seven indictments (the
third against any defendant), tried at the third session of the court
on August 2, and hanged on August 19.
John Proctor had a house and cattle and a hired girl (Mary Warren)
to help with his five children. He had no patience with believers in
witchcraft, and this was his undoing. Sam Sibley, the uncle of Mary
Walcott, informed how Proctor had dealt with Mary Warren. It was
dangerous to speak one's mind, even to friends. "If he [proctor]
had John Indian in his custody, he would soon beat the devil out of
him." This comment too was offered (by Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll)
as evidence in court. A man's scepticism and dissent from a majority
prejudice made him a witch.
The most distinguished victim was the former minister of Salem
Village, Rev. George Burroughs, who had left the village about 1682.
Rebecca Nurse was another classic figure. Her husband, Francis, had
been a plain yeoman who did not mind hard work, and with his four sons
and four sons-in-law had almost paid off a 300-acre estate. Rebecca
was the eldest of three sisters; the other two, again both substantial
citizens, Sarah Cloyce and Mary Ersty, were also accused and
convicted. Sarah made a confession and was reprieved. When charged (by
the Putnam clan) with bewitching the girls, Rebecca Nurse was
seventy-one years old and bedridden. Through the verbatim reports of
her trial a picture emerges of this old matriarch - maintaining her
integrity to the last, puzzled over the search for "preternatural
marks":
Q. How came you sick? For there is an odd discourse of
that in the mouths of many.
A. I am sick at my stomach.
Q. Have you no wounds?
A. I have not but old age.
At the first, many of those accused were residents of Salem Village
or Salem Farms - the equivalent of a township of about thirty square
miles, with a population of less than a hundred households. Many
others came from neighbouring Topsfield, significant because there was
considerable bitter talk between the men of the two districts. As the
girls' notoriety in spotting witches grew, witches were later
discovered in more distant places.
Andover became the chief scene of these extended exploits. One John
Ballard, whose wife's sickness defied diagnosis or cure, suggested the
Salem girls investigate this and other mysterious maladies. Ann Putnam
and Mary Walcott were handicapped by not knowing the names of the
local residents, but they found an even more effective substitute in
the "touch" test. Ann and Mary went into fits, and the
suspects lined up to touch the girls. If the girls became quiet, the
toucher was a witch. "Ann Putnam said she had never seen her, but
since she [the accused] came to Salem town last, said Putnam fell into
a fit and said [Ann] Pudeator was commanded to take her by the wrist,
and did. And said Putnam was well presently." Ann Pudeator was
hanged on September 22. When Mary Parker of Andover "came before
the justices, she recovered all of the afflicted out of their fits by
the touch of her hand." She was hanged on September 22.
The cause of Mrs. Ballard's sickness, said Ann and Mary, was
clearly bewitching by Ann Foster, her daughter Mary Lacy, and her
granddaughter Mary. Mrs. Foster died in jail from ill treatment and
exposure, but Mary Lacy saved her life by confessing. The examinations
of these three women are valuable evidence to show how the mind and
will can be broken by the pressures of imprisonment and tricky
questioning.Mrs. Foster confessed the "devil appeared to her in
the shape of a bird at several times, such a bird as she never saw the
like before." She had "tied a knot in a rag and threw it
into the fire to hurt Timothy Swan, and that she did hurt the rest
that complained of her by squeezing poppets like them, and so almost
choked them." She confirmed the broomstick legend:
She and Martha Carrier did both ride on a stick or pole when they
went to the witch meeting at Salem Village, and that the stick broke
as they were carried in the air above the tops of the trees, and they
fell. But she did hang fast about the neck of Goody Carrier and were
presently at the village, that she was then much hurt of her leg.
A few days later, unaware that her daughter, Mrs. Lacy, had made
just as lurid a confession, Mrs. Foster refused to implicate her. Then
Goodwife Lacy was called in and began thus: "Oh, mother, how do
you do? We have left Christ, and the Devil hath got hold of us. How
shall I get rid of this evil one? I desire God to break my rocky heart
that I may get the victory this time. "
After Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Lacy had been questioned and removed,
young Mary Lacy was brought in, and immediately Mary Warren had a
violent fit which lasted until Mary lacy touched her. Then she berated
her parent: "Where is my mother that made me a witch, and I knew
it not?" To accuse another was the best way of showing
cooperation with the court and earning consideration.
Judge Hathorne still hankered after names:
Q. Your mother and your grandmother say there was a
minister there. How many men did you see there?
A. I saw no one but Richard Carrier.
Q. Did you see no one else?
A. There was a minister there, and I think he is now
in prison.
Q. Were there not two ministers there?
A. Cannot tell.
Q. Was there one Mr. Borroughs there?
A. Yes.
In Andover, after Justice Dudley Bradstreet had issued forty
warrants, he refused to sign any more. Because of lack of cooperation
in hunting down enemies of chapel and state, which suggested sympathy
for the witches and therefore made him a witch, he was indicted for
committing nine murders. He fled with his wife. His brother John,
though likewise the son of a former governor, was also indicted; his
offense - inciting a dog to afflict. "The said dog was tried and
hung for a witch."
After Andover, the girls moved into the Boston area.
Mrs. Nathaniel Carey of Charlestown visited Salem Village to clear
herself of incriminating rumours. Mr. Carey reported:
Being brought before the justices, her chief accusers were two
girls. My wife declared to the justices that she had never had any
knowledge of them before that day. She was forced to stand with her
arms stretched out. I requested that I might hold one of her hands,
but it was denied me. Then she desired me wipe the tears from her eyes
and the sweat from her face, which I did. Then she desired she might
lean herself on me, saying she should faint. Justice Hathorne replied
she had strength enough to torment these persons, and she should have
strength enough to stand. I speaking something against their cruel
proceedings, they commanded me to be silent or else I should be turned
out of the room. (Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World)
Captain John Alden of Boston was named. Then, of course, he did not
have the romantic glamour which Longfellow's poem gave him. But he was
known and respected as a sea captain and a fighter in the Indian wars,
so much in esteem that Lieutenant Governor Stoughton himself signed
the warrant. The girls went though their routines, and one of them
pointed out a Captain Hill, but she was prompted by a bystander and
then correctly identified Alden. "There stands Alden! A bold
fellow with his hat on before the judges. He sells powder and shot to
the Indians and French, and lies with Indian squaws and has Indian
papooses."
Brought back into the courtroom, he was ordered to stand on a chair
and face the girls: they all fell flat on their faces. Alden's hand
was placed on them: at once they recovered. At this juncture, he asked
the judges a question which, if answered, would have ended all the
trials: "What's the reason you don't fall when I look at
you? Can you give me one?" Alden's sword was taken away, and he
was imprisoned in Boston jail. After fifteen weeks he escaped.
In spite of growing distrust of the girls everywhere else, in
October Gloucester sent for them; but there they discovered only four
witches. The panic caused by the French and Indian attacks in July was
subsiding. Summoned again in November, the girls met a rather chilly
reception, and no one was arrested. En route, at Ipswich, they went
into their usual fits at an old woman, but the people of Ipswich
ignored them.
During the hysteria, almost 150 people were arrested; a search of
all the court records would no doubt add to this number. Because of
the time taken to convict ach prisoner, only thirty-one were tried in
1692 (not including Sarah Churchill and Mary Warren, two accusers who
briefly recanted). The court of Oyer and Terminer [hear and determine]
sentenced to death all thirty-one (of whom six were men). Nineteen
were hanged. Of the remaining twelve, two (Sarah Osbourne and Ann
Foster) died in jail; one (Giles Cory) was pressed to death; one (Tituba)
was held indefinitely in jail without trial; two (Abigail Faulkner and
Elizabeth Proctor) postponed execution by pleading pregnancy and lived
long enough to be reprieved; one (Mary Bradbury) escaped from jail
after sentencing; and five made confessions which secured reprieves
for them.
An especially shocking detail about these trials is that the
accused had to pay for their maintenance in jail, even when acquitted!
A reprieve cost a fee; a discharge another. The relatives paid the
hangman's fee for the execution. Many remained in prison after the
general jail delivery because their possessions had been sold to
maintain their families in the meantime. Sarah Dustin was acquitted in
January, 1693, but, having no one to come to her aid, died in prison.
Margaret Jacobs was acquitted, but the property of her parents had
been seized, and she was kept in jail until at length a generous
stranger (a Mr. Gammon) heard of her plight and bought her freedom.
William Buckley spent his last shilling paying £10 to release his
wife and daughter. He survived another ten years. his pastor, Rev.
Joseph Green made the following entry in his diary: "January 2,
1702. Old William Buckley died this evening. He was at meeting the
last Sabbath, and died with the cold, I fear for want of comforts and
good tending. Lord forgive! He was about eighty years old. He was very
poor." Tituba remained in jail until May, 1693, when an ignoramus
technically freed her; after thirteen months imprisonment, she was
finally sold for prison expenses as a slave. Ann Foster died in jail;
her son had to pay £2 26s. 0d. costs before he
could get back the body for burial. For Sarah Osbourne's body, costs
of £1 3s. 5d. were demanded. When finally Elizabeth
Proctor and Abigail Faulkner, reprieved for pregnancy, were released,
they found themselves legally dead and unable to claim their own
property and inheritance.
The sins of the court of Oyer and Terminer are legion: confessions
forced by binding neck and heels until blood oozed from the nose;
admittance of testimony of a seven-year-old daughter by which her
mother (Martha Carrier) was hanged, and evidence of another
seven-year-old, Lydia Nichols, which confirmed the conviction of
Abigail Hobbs; denial of advice and lawyers to the accused; loaded
questioning and browbeating - in short, a determination to stretch
every device to find the accused guilty. Yet Cotton Mather believed
the Salem trials were conducted more impartially than the famous
Lancashire trials.
The fundamental evil of the trials, however, was not so much the
miscarriage of justice in particular instances, shocking as these
were, but the underlying philosophy on which the trials were based and
against which Mary Esty and Sarah Cloyce had vainly protested: the
theory that the Devil used the shapes or bodies of the wicked (those
who had made a pact with him) as spectres to torment and even kill the
innocent. Tied in with spectral evidence were two other anti-legal
premises: guilt by association, and guilt by accusation.
The first major published discussion of spectral evidence was by
Rev. Samuel Willard, minister of the Old South Church in Boston, who
late in 1692 published Some Miscellany Observations. Willard
had three of the judges in his congregation, and his tolerance and
perpicacity may have helped them free themselves of bigotry.
The immediate problem was how to detect witches and avoid false
accusation of the innocent. On the one hand were those diehards and
officials who held that the Devil worked only through those who had
made a pact with him; therefore spectral evidence was proof of
witchcraft. The clergy generally maintained that the Devil would
confuse people by appearing in the shape or spectre of a good person.
Spectral evidence was therefore unreliable. Witches, Willard said,
must be expressly charged for specific acts, and there must be a full
and legal discovery that the party accused hath done the fact by which
the crime is evidenced . . . The thing testified [must] be that which
[the witness] came to the knowledge of, after the manner of men"
- not by God's revelation or the Devil's insinuation.
Increase Mather was another to oppose the sort of evidence on which
the court of Oyer and Terminer had convicted. On October 3, 1692, he
addressed a group of Boston ministers (who supported his position) and
strongly opposed evidence based on spectres, "touching" to
sure fits, or confessions of possessed persons. He admitted only two
classes of proof: voluntary confession, and two witnesses to the
accused's saying or doing something that only "such as have
familiarity with the devil ever did or can do." Perhaps aware he
was holding open the door for dubious testimony by this second proof,
he added a highly important caveat:
It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than that
one honest person should be condemned. . . . It is better a guilty
person should be absolved than that he should without ground of
conviction be condemned. I had rather judge a witch to be an honest
woman, than judge an honest woman as a witch.
An even stronger attack on spectral evidence and the conduct of the
court came from a wealthy and educated Bostonian, Thomas Brattle, who
also in October, 1692, circulated a very lengthy letter among his
friends. He applied common sense rules to the court procedure, and
asked some embarrassing questions. Since the judges have made touching
the test of witchcraft, why do they bother with so much other
evidence? Why do the witches afflict only some girls and not others?
Why are confessions full of lies and flat contradictions accepted by
the court? Why is the evidence of confessed witches, admitted agents
of the Devil, accepted against Christian persons? "That such as
confess themselves to be witches, to have renounced God and Christ and
all that is sacred, should yet be allowed and ordered to swear by the
name of the great God! This indeed seemeth to me to be a gross taking
of God's name in vain." Why is the distinction between a spectre
and a real person ignored? Why are all sorts of extraneous evidence
allowed at trials for witchcraft? Why are highly placed persons who
are accused of witchcraft not prosecuted? Why are fugitives not
extradited from New York? Why are children so encouraged by zealous
adults? "Now no man will be so much out of his wits as to make
this a legal evidence; and yet this seems to be our case." The
whole thing was nonsense: "The witches meetings, the devil's
baptisms and mock sacraments, which the accusing and confessing
witches oft speak of, are nothing else but the effect of their fancy,
depraved and deluded by the devil, and not a reality to be regarded or
minded by any wise man."
The influence of Brattle's letter was so extensive that those
upholding the court, William Stoughton, John Hathorne, Stephen Sewall,
Cotton Mather, and Captain John Higginson, decided to publish an apologia.
Mather, indeed, stated that Governor Phips had asked him for such a
volume. Thus the Wonders of the Invisible World came to be
written as a semiofficial history of the Salem trials. Its publication
date was held up by the Governor (because "people were
dissatisfied . . .some [hanged] were thought by many persons to be
innocent") until the new "reformed" court had softened
the memory of the old. Yet early in January, 1693, over a hundred were
still in jail. Mather's work is invaluable for its almost stenographic
reports of five typical trials - George Burroughs, Bridget Bishop,
Susanna Martin; Elizabeth how, and Martha Carrier.
The only trouble with the book was that it was completely
tendentious and seemed to whitewash the court. Furthermore, Mather
still wrote with complete credulity in witches. Indeed, in his
accounts of Mercy Short and Margaret Rule, written after the exposure
of the Salem girls, Mather never once questioned the demonaic origin
of their fits. On the other hand, Robert Calef, a Boston business man,
saw in them only exhibitionism. Later, he expanded his views with
suppressed information about the Salem trials as More Wonders of
the Invisible World (London, 1700), a clear attack on Mather. in
turn, Calef was excoriated by a group of pro-Mather clergymen in
Obadih Gill's Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book
(Boston, 1701), and was forced to move from Boston to Roxbury.
When spectral evidence had been discredited, conviction for
witchcraft was impossible. by January, 1693, the judges who had
accepted spectral evidence in the summer and fall of 1692 now rejected
it. When a juror asked how much weight should be given it, he was told
"as much as chips in wort [beer]." Out of fifty-two accused,
the judges condemned only three persons, of feeble mind, who had
confessed to being witches. Chief Justice Stoughton ordered these
three to be hanged, along with five others held over from 1692
(including Elizabeth Proctor, now no longer pregnant), but Governor
Phips overrode him and reprieved all eight. Later in April, 1693, Mary
Watkins, a servant girl, confessed at Boston to Witchcraft, but the
jury returned an ignoramus. Sent out to reconsider their
verdict, since the accused had voluntarily confessed, the jurymen
again returned the same dismissal. On January 15, 1697, the jurors who
had brought in the verdicts of guilty made their amends. That day was
a day of fasting in the colony to show repentance for all the
wrongdoings of the trials. Ten years after the executions, Judge
Samuel Sewall confessed the guilt of the court, desiring "to take
the blame and shame of it, asking the pardon of men." In July,
1702, twelve ministers from Essex county supported the petition of the
surviving witches in Andover and Topsfield for vindication, since
"their names were exposed to infamy and reproach while their
trial and condemnation stand on the public record." The General
Court at last declared that the use of spectral evidence was unlawful,
and on October 17, 1711, reversed the attainders of twenty-two of the
thirty-one convicted in 1692, whose relatives (or themselves, if
surviving) so petitioned. The act was not perfect, for it was never
signed by the Governor; there is some suspicion, too, that the act was
intended to protect the Salem lobby against civil suits. The
reinstatement of those without survivors or without friends (such as
Bridget Bishop and Sarah Osbourne) to plead their memories had to wait
150 years; in 1957 the commonwealth of Massachusetts finally reversed
the attainders of all those not covered by the earlier act. In 1709,
nearly two dozen accused or their descendants, joined later by others,
sought financial compensation for their losses sustained during the
trials. These claims were admitted in 1711, although the infinitesimal
sum of less than £600 was all that was allocated to reimburse the
survivors and their families.
Charles W. Upham, who in 1867 wrote his two-volume Salem
Witchcraft, still the definitive work on this subject, summed up
the historic importance of Salem:
Error is seldom overthrown by mere reasoning. It yields only to the
logic of events. No power of learning or wit could have rooted the
witchcraft superstition out of the minds of men. Nothing short of a
demonstration of their deformities, follies, and horrors, such as here
was held up to the view of the world, could have given their death
blow. This was the final cause of Salem witchcraft, and makes it one
of the great landmarks in the world's history. |