Of Robert Calef almost
nothing is known except what can be learned from his book. There has even been
doubt as to whether, of the two Robert Calefs known to us in Boston at this
time, the writer was the father or the son. In 1692, the time of the Salem
witchcraft, the father’s age was 44, the son’s 18.[149] It is unlikely that
anybody would have thought of the son but for a note copied into one of the
memorandum-books of Dr. Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798).[150] This note, of unknown
source reads: “Robert Calef, author of ‘More Wonders of the Invisible World,’
printed at London in 1700, was a native of England; a young man of good sense,
and free from superstition; a merchant in Boston. He was furnished with
materials for his work by Mr. Brattle, of Cambridge; and his brother, of
Boston; and other gentlemen, who were opposed to the Salem proceedings. -- E.
P.” The writer speaks as if with knowledge; and that so sound a historian as
Dr. Belknap should have copied the note speaks for its worth. Able scholars
have by it been led to ascribe the book to the younger Robert; but more careful
study seems to show the objections insuperable. The author never adds “Jr.” to
his name, as a son would have done, and as seems to have been the younger
Robert’s custom.[151] He never pleads youth, even when most apologetic; and,
what weighs more, his indignant foes, seeking all ways to discredit him, never
hint at such a thing. His matter and style have in them nothing of boyishness;
and once, in words suggestive of a migrant and a man of years, he speaks (p.
297, below) of “sound Reason, which is what I have been long seeking for in
this Country in vain.” Most serious of all, his handwriting seems that found in
documents clearly the elder Calef’s, and is that of a mature and even by 1700
that of an aging man; while that of the younger Robert was in 1719-1722 still
firm and flexible -- and notably different.[152]
Robert Calef the elder
came to America at some time before 1688. He was a cloth-merchant, and
doubtless a maker as well as a seller of cloths.[153] Of his eight children the
eldest was, in 1692, a physician in Ipswich. What led to the writing of More
Wonders he has himself told us in his book. It remains only to testify to the
care and exactness which all comparison of his work with the records seems to
show, and to remark that to a student of the literature of witchcraft it is
evident that his reading is larger than he cares to parade. Though he clearly
belonged to the popular party, this is as likely to be a result as a cause --
it is probably neither -- of his feeling on the subject of the witch
superstition; and that he had else any grievance against the Mathers or their
colleagues there is no reason to think.
His book, though
completed in 1697, was not printed till 1700, and then in London. In June,
1698, Cotton Mather records in his diary that “a sort of a Sadducee in this
town” “hath written a Volumn of invented and notorious lies”; “this Volumn,” he
adds, “hee is, as I understand, sending to England, that it may bee printed
there.” Why it found no printer in New England can be guessed; the storm it
raised when it appeared in print is well known. President Increase Mather “ordered
the wicked book to be burnt in the college yard,” [154] and his son’s diary is
eloquent with vexation.
“Some Years ago,” runs
his entry of November 15, 1700, “a very wicked sort of a Sadducee in this Town,
raking together a crue of Libels, which he had written at several Times,
(especially relating to the Wonders of the Invisible World which have been
among us) wherein I am the cheef Butt of his malice, (tho’ many other better
Servants of the Lord are also most maliciously abused by him:) he sent this
vile Volume to London to be published. Now, tho’ I had often and often cried
unto the Lord, that the Cup of this Man’s abominable Bundle of Lies, written on
purpose, with a Quil under a special Energy and Management of Satan, to damnify
my precious Opportunities of Glorifying my Lord Jesus Christ, might pass from
me; Yett, in this point, the Lord has denied my Request: the Book is printed,
and the Impression is this week arrived here.”
It was even felt
necessary to print a reply; but the two Mathers held it beneath them to plead
in their own vindication. It fell to their parishioners. “My pious neighbours
are so provoked,” writes Cotton Mather (December 4), “at the diabolical
Wickedness of the Man who has published a Volume of Libels against my Father
and myself, that they sett apart whole Dayes of Prayer, to complain unto God
against him.” The outcome of their communings together was a pamphlet called
Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book against the Gospel and Ministry of New
England, written by one Robert Calef. It was signed by seven, one of them John
Goodwin; but the materials were furnished by their pastors. It aimed however at
their personal exculpation, and has small interest for the public story.[155]
The doughty merchant
survived the storm. In 1702-1704 he served his townsmen as an overseer of the
poor, in 1707 was chosen an assessor, in 1710 a tithingman. It was perhaps
about this time that he retired to Roxbury, where in 1707 he had bought a place
and where he was a selectman of the town when, in 1719, death found him. There,
in the old burial ground just opposite his home, a stone still testifies that “Here
lyes buried the body of Mr. Robert Calef, aged seventy-one years, died April
the Thirteenth, 1719.” [156]
Calef’s book has been
five times reprinted: in 1796, at Salem, by William Carlton (12°, pp. 318);
again at Salem, in 1823, a mere reimpression, with the addition, from the court
files, of Giles Corey’s examination (12°, pp. 312); in Boston, 1828 (24°, pp.
333), again a reimpression; at Salem, 1861, edited by Mr. S. P. Fowler, with
Cotton Mather’s Wonders, in his volume Salem Witchcraft (see p. 207); and, more
faithfully, in 1866 at Roxbury, as nos. VI., VII., of Woodward’s Historical
Series, under the editorship of S. G. Drake (see pp. 207-208). The present text
follows the original edition (1700), but corrects it by the list of Errata to
be found in the copy (once Cotton Mather’s) possessed by the Massachusetts
Historical Society.[157]
[149]. S. G. Drake, in
the introduction to his edition of Calef, would make his age 14; but the
genealogist of the family, Mr. Matthew A. Stickney, says 18. Yet Mr. Stickney
urges the father’s authorship (N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXX. 461; XLIX.
224). He died in 1894, leaving this genealogy, alas, unpublished, and his heirs
decline to let it be consulted.
[150]. Mass. Hist.
Soc., Proceedings, 1858, p. 288.
[151]. Thus in 1706 “Robt.
Calef, Jun.,” was chosen a clerk of the market (Boston Record Commissioners’
Reports, VIII. 36); thus in 1708 “Robert Calef, junr.” becomes a constable
(id., VIII. 45), and gains permission to erect a house (id., XI. 68, XXIX.
187); thus, too, in that year (see plate) he signs himself “Ro. Calfe Jnr”;
thus in 1710 “Robert Calfe, Jr.,” appears on the rolls of the Artillery Company
(N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXXVIII. 341); and it is after his father’s
death that (see plate) in 1719 to a receipted account, in 1721 to his will, in
1722 to the release of a mortgage, he signed “Rob Calfe”, “Ro: Calfe”, “Robert
Calfe” (see the last two in Drake’s Witchcraft Delusion, II. xxii, xxiv).
[152]. From the author
of More Wonders we have two unquestionable autographs: (1) his marginalia of
1695 on Cotton Mather’s paper (see below, p. 306, note 1) and (2) a letter of
1700 presenting a copy of his book to the Earl of Bellomont, then governor of Massachusetts
and New York. A page of the former is to be photographed in the Massachusetts
Historical Society’s Proceedings for 1913-1914; and the latter (now in the New
York Public Library) is reproduced in full in the Memorial History of Boston
(II. 168). Specimens of both are given in our own plate; and to these are added
(1) the signature “Robert Calef” from the report of two appraisers, October 30,
1693; (2) the signature “Robt. Calef” from the verdict of a Boston coroner’s
jury, January 15, 1696; (3) the same signature, with a line or two of text in
the same hand, from the decision of two arbitrators (Boston, July 29, 1697);
and (4) the last lines and the signature of a paper drawn by “Robt. Calef” as a
selectman of Roxbury in March, 1717 (?). That all six specimens are in the same
hand, and in a hand different from the younger Calef’s, will hardly be
questioned. Is not the older Robert, too, more likely than the younger to have
been an appraiser in 1693, a coroner’s juror in 1696, and an arbiter in 1697?
And (though Calef and Calfe were undoubtedly pronounced alike or nearly so) is
it not less probable that the author of More Wonders changed the habitual
spelling of his signature than that a younger Robert, if not the author, should
thus have distinguished his identity from his father’s? What arguments led the
genealogist Stickney to ascribe the book to the father cannot now be learned:
the “full statement of the reasons” promised by him to the N. E. Hist. and Gen.
Register (see XXX. 461) was, like his genealogy, never published. But, from an
article on “Robert Calef” by Mr. W. S. Harris in the Granite Monthly for 1907
(XXXIX. 157-163), and from correspondence with its author, it is learned that
another student of the Calef pedigree (Mr. W. W. Lunt, of Hingham, Mass.) has
reached that result by a comparison of handwritings. Mr. Harris, it should be
added, quotes the Rev. John Kelly as saying in a funeral sermon (1808) for
Judge John Calfe (b. 1740) of Hampstead, N. H., that the latter’s ancestor (who
was the elder Calef, not the younger) was the author of the book.
[153]. In 1701 Cotton
Mather calls him “the Weaver (though he presumes to call himself Merchant)”
(Some Few Remarks, p. 35).
[154]. Eliot,
Biographical Dictionary (1809), s. v. “Calef.”
[155]. Let any who
would know the contents of the excessively rare little booklet turn to the
works of Upham and Poole mentioned on p. 91; and in his Diary (I. 383-384)
Mather narrates how the book was compiled. The More Wonders it describes as “a
Libellous Book lately come into this Countrey... which is writ (with what help
we know not) by one Robert Calef, who presumes to call himself Merchant of
Boston.” “It was highly rejoicing to us,” add the writers, “when we heard that
our Booksellers were so well acquainted with the Integrity of our Pastors, as
that not one of them could admit of any of those Libels to be vended in their
shops.” Pp. 34-50 of its seventy-one pages are taken up by a letter of Cotton
Mather to the authors. It was perhaps a passage in Mather’s letter that led “E.
P.” to think Robert Calef a “young man”; for those words, in italics and with
capital initials, stare from a sentence so obscure that to a hasty glance
Calef, instead of Mather himself, might easily seem to be meant.
[156]. For these and
other personal details see Drake’s memoir, in his ed. of Calef, and his History
and Antiquities of Boston, pp. 529, 531; Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports,
I. 156, 160, VII. 210, 218, 225, 229, VIII. 24, 26, 31, 33, 41, 43, 75, IX.
179, 195, XI. 145; Memorial History of Boston, IV. 652; F. S. Drake, The Town
of Roxbury (Boston, 1905), pp. 102, 140-149; N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register,
XIV. 52; and the above-cited article of W. S. Harris, which has a photograph of
the gravestone. From these mentions will be learned also the name of his wife,
Mary, and of the two of his eight children who were born (1688, 1691) after his
coming to Boston. It will be learned, too, that in 1692 he was a constable, in
1694 hayward and fenceviewer, in 1697 a surveyor of highways, in 1698 a clerk
of the market. At least it is to “Robert Calef,” not to “Robert Calef, Jr.,”
that the records award these offices. And it is perhaps to be noticed that
while the name of “Robert Calef” is often preceded by “Mr.”, that title does
not appear before that of “Robert Calef, Jr.”
[157]. See Drake’s ed.,
III. 223.
More Wonders of the
Invisible World: Or, The Wonders of the Invisible World, Display’d in Five
Parts.
Part I. An Account of
the Sufferings of Margaret Rule, Written by the Reverend Mr. C. M.
P. II. Several Letters
to the Author, etc. And his Reply relating to Witchcraft.
P. III. The Differences
between the Inhabitants of Salem Village, and Mr. Parris their Minister, in
New-England.
P. IV. Letters of a
Gentleman uninterested, Endeavouring to prove the received Opinions about
Witchcraft to be Orthodox. With short Essays to their Answers.
P. V. A short
Historical Accou[n]t of Matters of Fact in that Affair.
To which is added, A
Postscript relating to a Book intitled, The Life of Sir William Phips.
Collected by Robert
Calef, Merchant, of Boston in New-England. Licensed and Entred according to
Order.
London: Printed for
Nath. Hillar, at the Princes-Arms, in Leaden-Hall-street, over against St. Mary-Ax,
and Joseph Collyer, at the Golden-Bible, on London-Bridge. 1700.[158]
[158]. Title-page of
original.
Gentlemen, You that are freed from
the Slavery of a corrupt Education; and that in spite of human Precepts,
Examples and Presidents,[160] can hearken to the Dictates of Scripture and
Reason:
For your sakes I am
content, that these Collections of mine, as also my Sentiments should be exposed
to publick view; In hopes that having well considered, and compared them with
Scripture, you will see reason, as I do, to question a belief so prevalent (as
that here treated of) as also the practice flowing from thence; they standing
as nearly connext as cause and effect; it being found wholly impracticable, to
extirpate the latter without first curing the former.
And if the Buffoon or
Satyrical will be exercising their Talents, or if the Biggots wilfully and
blindly reject the Testimonies of their own Reason, and more sure word, it is
no more than what I expected from them.
But you Gentlemen, I
doubt not, are willing to Distinguish between Truth and Error, and if this may
be any furtherance to you herein, I shall not miss my Aim.
But if you find the
contrary, and that my belief herein is any way Heterodox, I shall be thankful
for the Information to any Learned or Reverend Person, or others, that shall
take that pains to inform me better by Scripture, or sound Reason, which is
what I have been long seeking for in this Country in vain.
In a time when not only
England in particular, but almost all Europe had been labouring against the
Usurpations of Tyranny and Slavery, The English America has not been behind in
a share in the Common calamities; more especially New-England has met not only
with such calamities as are common to the rest, but with several aggravations
enhansing such Afflictions, by the Devastations and Cruelties of the Barbarous
Indians in their Eastern borders, etc.
But this is not all,
they have been harrast (on many accounts) by a more dreadful Enemy, as will
herein appear to the considerate.
P. 66.[161] Were it as
we are told in Wonders of the Invisible World, that the Devils were walking
about our Streets with lengthned Chains making a dreadful noise in our Ears,
and Brimstone, even without a Metaphor, was making a horrid and a hellish
stench in our Nostrils,
P. 49. And that the
Devil exhibiting himself ordinarily as a black-Man,[162] had decoy’d a fearful
knot of Proud, Froward, Ignorant, Envious and Malitious Creatures, to list
themselves in his horrid Service, by entring their Names in a Book tendered
unto them; and that they have had their Meetings and Sacraments, and associated
themselves to destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of
the World; having each of them their Spectres, or Devils Commissionated by
them, and representing of them, to be the Engines of their Malice, by these
wicked Spectres siezing poor People about the Country with various and bloody
Torments. And of those evidently preternatural Torments some to[o] have died.
And that they have bewitched some even so far, as to make them self destroyers,
and others in many Towns here and there languish’d under their evil hands. The
People thus afflicted miserably scratch’d and bitten; and that the same
Invisible Furies did stick Pins in them, and scald them, distort and disjoint
them, with a Thousand other Plagues; and sometimes drag them out of their
Chambers, and carry them over Trees and Hills Miles together, many of them
being tempted to sign the Devils Laws.
P. 7[0]. These furies
whereof several have killed more People perhaps than would serve to make a
Village.[163]
If this be the true
state of the Afflictions of this Country, it is very deplorable, and beyond all
other outward Calamities miserable. But if on the other side, the Matter be as
others do understand it, That the Devil has been too hard for us by his
Temptations, signs, and lying Wonders, with the help of pernicious notions,
formerly imbibed and professed; together with the Accusations of a parcel of
possessed, distracted, or lying Wenches, accusing their Innocent Neighbours,
pretending they see their Spectres (i. e.) Devils in their likeness Afflicting
of them, and that God in righteous Judgment (after Men had ascribed his Power
to Witches, of Commissionating Devils to do these things) may have given them
over to strong delusions to believe lyes, etc. And to let loose the Devils of
Envy, Hatred, Pride, Cruelty, and Malice against each other; yet still
disguised under the Mask of Zeal for God, and left them to the branding one
another with the odious Name of Witch; and upon the Accusation of those above
mentioned, Brother to Accuse and Prosecute Brother, Children their Parents,
Pastors and Teachers their immediate Flock unto death; Shepherds becoming
Wolves, Wise Men Infatuated; People hauled to Prisons, with a bloody noise
pursuing to, and insulting over, the (true) Sufferers at Execution, while some
are fleeing from that call’d Justice, Justice it self fleeing before such Accusations,
when once it did but begin to refrain further proceedings, and to question such
Practises, some making their Escape out of Prisons, rather than by an obstinate
Defence of their Innocency, to run so apparent hazard of their Lives; Estates
seized, Families of Children and others left to the Mercy of the Wilderness
(not to mention here the Numbers prescribed,[164] dead in Prisons, or Executed,
etc.)
All which Tragedies,
tho begun in one Town, or rather by one Parish, has Plague-like spread more than
through that Country. And by its Eccho giving a brand of Infamy to this whole
Country, throughout the World,
If this were the
Miserable case of this Country in the time thereof, and that the Devil had so
far prevailed upon us in our Sentiments and Actions, as to draw us from so much
as looking into the Scriptures for our guidance in these pretended Intricacies,
leading us to a trusting in blind guides, such as the corrupt practices of some
other Countries, or the bloody Experiments of Bodin, and such other Authors --
Then tho our Case be most miserable, yet it must be said of New-England, Thou
has destroyed thy self, and brought this greatest of Miseries upon thee.
And now whether the
Witches (such as have made a compact by Explicit Covenant with the Devil,
having thereby obtained a power to Commissionate him) have been the cause of
our miseries,
Or whether a Zeal
governed by blindness and passion, and led by president, has not herein
precipitated us into far greater wickedness (if not Witchcrafts) than any have
been yet proved against those that suffered,
To be able to
distinguish aright in this matter, to which of these two to refer our Miseries
is the present Work. As to the former, I know of no sober Man, much less
Reverend Christian, that being ask’d dares affirm and abide by it, that Witches
have that power; viz. to Commissionate Devils to kill and destroy. And as to
the latter, it were well if there were not too much of truth in it, which
remains to be demonstrated.
But here it will be
said, what need of Raking in the Coals that lay buried in oblivion. We cannot
recall those to Life again that have suffered, supposing it were unjustly; it
tends but to the exposing the Actors, as if they had proceeded irregularly.
Truly I take this to be
just as the Devil would have it, so much to fear disobliging men, as not to
endeavour to detect his Wiles, that so he may the sooner, and with the greater
Advantages set the same on foot again (either here or else where) so dragging
us through the Pond twice by the same Cat.[165] And if Reports do not (herein)
deceive us, much the same has been acting this present year in Scotland.[166]
And what Kingdom or Country is it, that has not had their bloody fits and turns
at it. And if this is such a catching disease, and so universal, I presume I
need make no Apology for my Endeavours to prevent, as far as in my power, any
more such bloody Victims or Sacrifices; tho indeed I had rather any other would
have undertaken so offensive, tho necessary a task; yet all things weighed, I
had rather thus Expose my self to Censure, than that it should be wholly
omitted. Were the notions in question innocent and harmless, respecting the
Glory of God, and well being of Men, I should not have engaged in them, but
finding them in my esteem so intollerably destructive of both, This together
with my being by Warrant called before the Justices, in my own Just
Vindication, I took it to be a call from God, to my Power,[167] to Vindicate
his Truths, against the Pagan and Popish Assertions, which are so prevalent;
for tho Christians in general do own the Scriptures to be their only Rule of
Faith and Doctrine, yet these Notions will tell us, that the Scriptures have
not sufficiently, nor at all described the crime of Witchcraft, whereby the
culpable might be detected, tho it be positive in the Command to punish it by
Death; hence the World has been from time to time perplext in the prosecution
of the several Diabolical mediums of Heathenish and Popish Invention, to detect
an Imaginary Crime (not but that there are Witches, such as the Law of God
describes) which has produced a deluge of Blood; hereby rendering the Commands
of God not only void but dangerous.
So also they own Gods
Providence and Government of the World, and that Tempests and Storms, Afflictions
and Diseases, are of his sending; yet these Notions tell us, that the Devil has
the power of all these, and can perform them when commission’d by a Witch
thereto, and that he has a power at the Witches call to act and do, without and
against the course of Nature, and all natural causes, in afflicting and killing
of Innocents; and this is that so many have died for.
Also it is generally
believed, that if any Man has strength, it is from God the Almighty Being: But
these notions will tell us, that the Devil can make one Man as strong as many,
which was one of the best proofs, as it was counted, against Mr. Burroughs the
Minister;[168] tho his contemporaries in the Schools during his Minority could
have testified, that his strength was then as much superiour to theirs as ever
(setting aside incredible Romances) it was discovered to be since. Thus
rendring the power of God, and his providence of none Effect.
These are some of the
destructive notions of this Age, and however the asserters of them seem
sometimes to value themselves much upon sheltring their Neighbours from
Spectral Accusations, They may deserve as much thanks as that Tyrant, that
having industriously obtained an unintelligible charge against his Subjects, in
matters wherein it was impossible they should be Guilty, having thereby their
lives in his power, yet suffers them of his meer Grace to live, and will be
call’d gracious Lord.
It were too
Icarian[169] a task for one unfurnish’d with necessary learning, and Library,
to give any Just account, from whence so great delusions have sprung, and so
long continued. Yet as an Essay from those scraps of reading that I have had
opportunity of, it will be no great venture to say, that Signs and Lying
Wonders have been one principal cause.[170]
It is written of Justin
Martyr, who lived in the second Century, that he was before his conversion a
great Philosopher; first in the way of the Stoicks, and after of the
Peripateticks, after that of the Pythagorean, and after that of the Platonists
sects; and after all proved of Eminent use in the Church of Christ; Yet a
certain Author speaking of one Apollonius Tyaneus[171] has these words, “That
the most Orthodox themselves began to deem him vested with power sufficient for
a Deity; which occasioned that so strange a doubt from Justin Martyr, as cited
by the learned Gregory, Fol. 37.,[172] etc. If God be the Creator and Lord of
the World, how comes it to pass that Apollonius his Telisms,[173] have so much
over-ruled the course of things! for we see that they also have stilled the
Waves of the Sea, and the raging of the Winds, and prevailed against the
Noisome Flies, and Incursions of wild Beasts,” etc. If so Eminent and Early a
Christian were by these false shews in such doubt, it is the less wonder in our
depraved times, to meet with what is Equivalent thereto: Besides this a certain
Author informs me, that “Julian (afterwards called the Apostate) being
instructed in the Philosophy and Disciplines of the Heathen, by Libarius[174]
his Tutor, by this means he came to love Philosophy better than the Gospel, and
so by degrees turn’d from Christianity to Heathenism.”
This same Julian did,
when Apostate, forbid that Christians should be instructed in the Discipline of
the Gentiles, which (it seems) Socrates a Writer of the Ecclesiastical History,
does acknowledge to be by the singular Providence of God; Christians having
then begun to degenerate from the Gospel, and to betake themselves to
Heathenish learning. And in the Mercury for the Month of February, 1695, there
is this Account, “That the Christian Doctors conversing much with the writings
of the Heathen, for the gaining of Eloquence, A Counsel[175] was held at
Carthage, which forbad the reading of the Books of the Gentiles.”
From all which it may
be easily perceived, that in the Primitive times of Christianity, when not only
many Heathen of the Vulgar, but also many learn’d Men and Philosophers had
imbraced the Christian Faith, they still retained a love to their
Heathen-learning, which as one observes being transplanted into a Christian
soile, soon proved productive of pernicious weeds, which over-ran the face of
the Church, hence it was so deformed as the Reformation found it.
Among other pernicious
Weeds arising from this Root, the Doctrine of the power of Devils and
Witchcraft as it is now, and long has been understood, is not the least; the
Fables of Homer, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, etc., being for the Elegancy of their
Language retained then (and so are to this day) in the schools, have not only
introduced, but established such Doctrines to the poisoning the Christian
World. A certain Author Expresses it thus, “that as the Christian Schools at
first brought Men from Heathenism to the Gospel, so these Schools carry Men
from the Gospel to Heathenism, as to their great perfection,” and Mr. I.
M.[176] in his Remarkable Providences, gives an account that (as he calls it)
an Old Counsel[177] did Anathematize all those that believed such power of the
Devils, accounting it a Damnable Doctrine. But as other Evils did afterwards
increase in the Church (partly by such Education) so this insensibly grew up
with them, tho not to that degree, as that any Counsel[178] I have ever heard
or Read of has to this day taken off those Anathema’s; yet after this the
Church so far declined, that Witchcraft became a Principal Ecclesiastical
Engine (as also that of Heresie was) to root up all that stood in their way;
and besides the ways of Tryal that we have still in practice, they invented
some, which were peculiar to themselves; which when ever they were minded to
improve against any Orthodox believer, they could easily make Effectual: That
Deluge of Blood which that Scarlet Whore[179] has to answer for, shed under
this notion, how amazing is it.
The first in England
that I have read of, of any note since the Reformation, that asserts this
Doctrine, is the famous Mr. Perkins,[180] he (as also Mr. Gaul,[181] and Mr.
Bernard,[182] etc. seems all of them to have undertaken one Task, they) taking
notice of the Multiplicity of irregular ways to try them by, invented by
Heathen and Papists, made it their business and main work herein to oppose such
as they saw to be pernicious. And if they did not look more narrowly into it,
but followed the first, viz. Mr. Perkins whose Education (as theirs also) had
forestall’d him into such belief, whom they readily followed, it cannot be
wondered at: And that they were men liable to Err, and so not to be trusted to
as perfect guides, will manifestly appear to him that shall see their several
receits laid down to detect them by their Presumptive and Positive ones. And
consider how few of either have any foundation in Scripture or Reason; and how
vastly they differ from each other in both, each having his Art by himself,
which Forty or an Hundred more may as well imitate, and give theirs, ad
infinitum, being without all manner of proof.
But tho this be their
main design to take off People from those Evil and bloody ways of trial which
they speak so much against, Yet this does not hinder to this day, but the same
evil ways or as bad are still used to detect them by, and that even among
Protestants; and is so far Justified, that a Reverend Person has said lately
here, how else shall we detect Witches? And another being urged to prove by
Scripture such a sort of Witch as has power to send Devils to kill men,
replied, that he did as firmly believe it as any article of his Faith. And that
he (the Inquirer) did not go to the Scripture, to learn the Mysteries of his
trade or Art. What can be said more to Establish there Heathenish notions and
to villifie the Scriptures, our only Rule; and that after we have seen such
dire effects thereof, as has threatned the utter Extirpation of this whole
Country.
And as to most of the
Actors in these Tragedies, tho they are so far from defending their Actions
that they will Readily own, that undue steps have been taken, etc., Yet it
seems they choose that the same should be Acted over again inforced by their
Example, rather than that it should Remain as a Warning to Posterity, wherein
they have mist it. So far are they from giving Glory to God, and taking the due
shame to themselves.
And now to sum up all
in a few words, we have seen a Biggotted Zeal, stirring up a Blind and most
Bloody rage, not against Enemies, or Irreligious Proffligate Persons, But (in
Judgment of Charity, and to view) against as Vertuous and Religious as any they
have left behind them in this Country, which have suffered as Evil doers with
the utmost extent of rigour (not that so high a Charactor is due to all that
Suffered) and this by the Testimony of Vile Varlets as not only were known
before, but have been further apparent since by their Manifest Lives, Whordoms,
Incest, etc. The Accusations of these, from their Spectral Sight, being the
chief Evidence against those that Suffered. In which Accusations they were
upheld by both Magistrates and Ministers, so long as they Apprehended
themselves in no Danger.
And then tho they could
defend neither the Doctrine, nor the Practice, yet none of them have in such a publick
manner as the case Requires, testified against either; tho at the same time
they could not but be sensible what a Stain and lasting Infamy they have
brought upon the whole Country, to the Indangering the future welfair not only
of this but of other places, induced by their Example; if not, to an intailing
the Guilt of all the Righteous Blood that has been by the same means Shed, by
Heathen or Papists, etc., upon themselves, whose deeds they have so far
justified, occasioning the great Dishonour and Blasphemy of the Name of God,
Scandalizing the Heathen, hardning of Enemies; and as a Natural effect thereof,
to the great Increase of Atheism.
I shall conclude only
with acquainting the Reader, that of these Collections, the first, containing
more Wonders of the Invisible World, I received of a Gentleman,[183] who had it
of the Author and communicated it to me,[184] with his express consent, of
which this is a true Copy.[185] As to the Letters, they are for Substance the
same I sent, tho with some small Variation or Addition. Touching the two
Letters from a Gentleman, at his request I have forborn naming him. It is great
Pity the matters of Fact, and indeed the whole, had not been done by some abler
hand better Accomplished and Advantaged with both natural and acquired
Judgments, but others not Appearing, I have inforc’d my self to do what is
done, my other occasions Will not admit any further Scrutiny therein.
Sir, I now lay before you a
very Entertaining Story, a Story which relates yet more Wonders of the
Invisible World,[186] a Story which tells the Remarkable Afflictions and
Deliverance of one that had been Prodigiously handled by the Evil Angels. I was
my self a daily Eye Witness to a large part of these Occurrences, and there may
be produced Scores of Substantial Witnesses to the most of them; yea, I know
not of any one Passage of the Story, but what may be sufficiently Attested. I
do not Write it with a design of throwing it presently into the Press, but only
to preserve the Memory of such Memorable things, the forgetting whereof would
neither be pleasing to God, nor useful to Men; as also to give you, with some
others of peculiar and obliging Friends, a sight of some Curiosities, and I
hope this Apologie will serve to Excuse me, if I mention, as perhaps I may,
when I come to a tenth Paragraph in my Writing,[187] some things which I would
have omitted in a farther Publication.
[159]. I. e., to those
with open minds: the Bereans are commended (Acts xvii. 11) as “more noble”
because “they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the
Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.”
[160]. Precedents: this
odd spelling was then the current one.
[161]. This page-number
and those which follow refer to the pages of Mather’s Wonders (original
edition), from which the substance of these paragraphs is quoted. The passages
quoted will be found in Mather’s book at pp. 48, 41, 50, of the first London
edition, at pp. 95, 80-82, 100, of that of 1862, at pp. 121-122, 102-104, 128,
of the American edition of 1866. They do not belong to the pages reprinted in
the present volume.
[162]. How Mather
conceived this “black man” to look appears from the description he ascribes to
Mercy Short (p. 261, above).
[163]. In the original
there is here no paragraph, the paragraph beginning after the next sentence
with “But, if,” etc.
[164]. “Prescribed,” as
then often, for “proscribed,” i. e., condemned to death.
[165]. For a
description of the joke, played on boobies, of “dragging through a pond with a
cat,” see the Oxford Dictionary, s. v. Cat, III. 14, or Grose, Dictionary of
Vulgar Terms, s. v. “Cat-whipping.” “We hope, sir,” said in 1682 the London
Gazette, “that this Nation will be too wise, to be drawn twice through the same
Water by the very same Cat.”
[166]. As Calef is
writing in August, 1697, he doubtless has in mind the cases in Renfrewshire,
where on June 10 several witches were hanged, then burned, on the Gallow Green
of Paisley; a “Relation” then printed recounts “the Diabolical Practices of
above Twenty.” Neither the relation nor the tidings of the burning could well
have reached America by August 11; but the trials had been notorious for
months. In Scotland, however, such things had been constant, as may be seen by
the records of the Privy Council. Those of this period are chronicled by Robert
Chambers in his Domestic Annals of Scotland.
[167]. I. e., to the
utmost of my power.
[168]. See pp. 219-220,
above.
[169]. I. e.,
presumptuous, like the venture of Icarus, who flew so high that the sun melted
off his wings.
[170]. He is thinking,
of course, of such “Remarkables” as those told by the Mathers.
[171]. Apollonius of
Tyana, the first-century Pythagorean philosopher and wonder-worker, like Justin
Martyr, the second-century apologist of Christianity, is perhaps too well to
need a footnote.
[172]. Justin Martyr,
Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos, qu. 24.
[173]. Telesmata,
talismans, magical devices.
[174]. Libanius.
[175]. Council: the
Fourth Council of Carthage, 398 A. D.
[176]. Increase Mather.
[177]. Council: the
Spanish Council of Bracara, 561 A. D.
[178]. Council.
[179]. He means the
Roman church. Revelation, xvii.
[180]. William Perkins
(1558-1602), the eminent Cambridge divine -- “our Perkins,” as Increase Mather
calls him -- whose Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (London, 1608,
1610, and in the many editions of his Works) was the highest authority to
Puritans.
[181]. John Gaule. See
p. 216, note 1.
[182]. Richard Bernard
(1567-1641), long minister of Batcombe in Somersetshire. His Guide to
Grand-Jurymen... in cases of Witchcraft (1627, 1629) was, though credulous and
cruel enough, the most mild and cautious of the Puritan monographs. The tiny
volume, now very rare, had perhaps never a great circulation (in 1692 Increase
Mather declares it, like Gaule’s book, “rare to be had”); but its rules for the
detection of witches gained much vogue from their adoption by Michael Dalton
into his The Countrey Justice, the standard manual for the procedure of the
lower courts. It is clearly, however, from Bernard’s book itself that Cotton
Mather has abridged these rules in his Wonders; and the book, as well as this extract,
was doubtless in the hands of the Salem judges. Increase Mather quotes it
often, and by page, and tells us that it “is a solid and a wise treatise.”
(Cases of Conscience, 1693, p. 18.)
[183]. It has been
conjectured that this gentleman may have been one of the two Brattles. In a
letter of March 1, 1695 (More Wonders, p. 30 -- not here reprinted), to a “Mr.
B.” (Brattle?) Calef mentions other papers received from Mather through his
hands -- but to be returned speedily and not copied. He, however, he says, made
notes in the margin where he thought it needful. These papers, as it will
rejoice all students to learn, have just been identified by Mr. Worthington C.
Ford (to whose courtesy the editor owes his knowledge of them) among those in
the keeping of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and they will be published
in full -- both Mather’s text and Calef’s marginalia (with a facsimile plate)
in that society’s Proceedings for 1913-1914. See also below, p. 388, at end.
[184]. The original has
“use”; but this is corrected to “me” in the Errata (see p. 295, above).
[185]. A copy, not of
the “express consent,” but of the “More Wonders of the Invisible World” -- the
Margaret Rule story as a whole -- to which the letter of Mather introducing it
was perhaps attached as a sort of open “letter to the reader.” Between this
preface and that letter there intervenes a table of contents, not here
reprinted.
[186]. It is, in other
words, a supplement to his book thus entitled, as its other name, “Another
Brand pluckt out of the Burning,” makes it a supplement to his Mercy Short
narrative.
[187]. See his “Sect.
10” (pp. 316-318, below).
[188]. As to this
letter see p. 306, note 3. The Margaret Rule MS. is still preserved in the
library of the Massachusetts Historical Society; and Poole, who used it for his
chapter on witchcraft in the Memorial History of Boston, has in a footnote (II.
152) printed a facsimile of the “To bee Return’d unto C. Mather” written on it
by its author.
Within these few years
there died in the Southern Parts a Christian Indian, who notwithstanding some
of his Indian Weakness, had something of a better Character of vertue and
Goodness, than many of our People can allow to most of their Countrey-men, that
profess the Christian Religion. He had been a Zealous Preacher of the Gospel to
his Neighbour-hood, and a sort of Overseer, or Officer, to whose Conduct was
owing very much of what good order was maintained among those Proselited
Savages: This Man returning home from the Funeral of his Son, was Complemented
by an English-Man, expressing Sorrow for his Loss; now, tho’ the Indians use,
upon the Death of Relations, to be the most Passionate and Outragious Creatures
in the World, yet this Converted Indian Handsomely and Chearfully repli’d, “Truly
I am sorry, and I am not sorry; I am sorry that I have Buried a dear Son; but I
am not sorry that the will of God is done. I know that without the will of God
my Son could not have Died, and I know that the will of God is allways just and
good, and so I am satisfied.” Immediately upon this, even within a few hours, he
fell himself Sick of a Disease that quickly kill’d him; in the time of which
Disease he called his Folks about him, earnestly perswading them to be Sincere
in their Praying unto God, and beware of the Drunkenness, the Idleness, the
Lying, whereby so many of that Nation disgrac’d their Profession of
Christianity; adding, that he was ashamed when he thought how little Service he
had hitherto done for God; and that if God would prolong his Life he would
Labour to do better Service, but that he was fully sure he was now going to the
Lord Jesus Christ, who had bought him with his own Precious Blood; and for his
part he long’d to Die that he might be with his Glorious Lord; and in the mid’st
of such passages he gave up the Ghost, but in such repute, that the English
People of good Fashion did not think much of Travelling a great way to his
Interment. Lest my Reader do now wonder why I have related this piece of a
Story, I will now hasten to abate that Wonder, by telling that whereto this was
intended, but for an Introduction: Know then that this remarkable Indian being
a little before he Died at work in the Wood making of Tarr, there appeared unto
him a Black-Man, of a Terrible aspect, and more than humane Dimensions,
threatning bitterly to kill him if he would not promise to leave off Preaching
as he did to his Countrey-Men, and promise particularly, that if he Preached
any more, he would say nothing of Jesus Christ unto them. The Indian amaz’d,
yet had the courage to answer, I will in spite of you go on to Preach Christ
more than ever I did, and the God whom I serve will keep me that you shall
never hurt me. Hereupon the Apparition abating somewhat of his fierceness,
offered to the Indian a Book of a considerable thickness and a Pen and Ink, and
said, that if he would now set his hand unto that Book, he would require
nothing further of him; but the Man refused the motion with indignation, and
fell down upon his knees into a Fervent and Pious Prayer unto God for help
against the Tempter, whereupon the Dæmon Vanish’t.
This is a Story which I
would never have tendered unto my Reader, if I had not Receiv’d it from an
honest and useful English Man, who is at this time a Preacher of the Gospel to
the Indians,[189] nor would the probable[190] Truth of it have encouraged me to
have tendered it, if this also had not been a fit introduction unto yet a
further Narrative.
Sect. 2. ’Twas not much
above a year or two, after this Accident (of which no manner of Noise has been
made) that there was a Prodigious descent of Devils upon divers places near the
Center of this Province, wherein some scores of Mis erable People were Troubled
by horrible appearances of a Black-Man, accompanied with Spectres, wearing
these and those Humane Shapes, who offer’d them a Book to be by them sign’d, in
token of their being Listed for the Service of the Devil, and upon their
denying to do it, they were Dragoon’d[191] with a thousand Preternatural
Torments, which gave no little terror to the beholders of these unhappy
Energuments.[192] There was one in the North part of Boston seized by the
Evil-Angels many Months after the General Storm of the late Inchantments was
over, and when the Countrey had long lain pretty quiet, both as to Molestations
and Accusations from the Invisible World, her Name was Margaret Rule, a Young
Woman. She was born of sober and honest Parents, yet Living, but what her own
Character was before her Visitation, I can speak with the less confidence of
exactness, because I observe that wherever the Devils have been let loose to worry
any Poor Creature amongst us, a great part of the Neighbourhood presently set
themselves to inquire and relate all the little Vanities of their Childhood,
with such unequal exaggerations, as to make them appear greater Sinners than
any whom the Pilate of Hell has not yet Preyed upon: But it is affirm’d, that
for about half a year before her Visitation, she was observably improved in the
hopeful symptoms of a new Creature; She was become seriously concern’d for the
everlasting Salvation of her Soul, and careful to avoid the snares of Evil
Company. This Young Woman had never seen the affliction of Mercy Short, whereof
a Narrative has been already given,[193] 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 the full History of the other, this was to that,
little more than the second part to the same Tune, indeed Margarets case was in
several points less remarkable than Mercies, and in some other things the
Entertainment did a little vary.
Sect. 3. ’Twas upon the
Lords Day the 10th of September, in the Year 1693, that Margaret Rule, after
some hours of previous disturbance in the Publick Assembly, fell into odd Fits,
which caused her Friends to carry her home, where her Fits in a few hours grew
into a Figure that satisfied the Spectators of their being preternatural; some
of the Neighbours were forward enough to suspect the rise of this Mischief in
an House hard-by, where lived a Miserable Woman, who had been formerly
Imprisoned on the suspicion of Witchcraft, and who had frequently Cured very
painfull Hurts by muttering over them certain Charms, which I shall not
indanger the Poysoning of my Reader by repeating. This Woman had the Evening
before Margaret fell into her Calamities, very bitterly treated her, and
threatn’d her; but the hazard of hurting a poor Woman that might be innocent,
notwithstanding Surmizes that might have been more strongly grounded than
those, caus’d the pious People in the Vicinity to try rather whether incessant
Supplication to God alone, might not procure a quicker and safer Ease to the Afflicted,
than hasty Prosecution of any suppos’d Criminal, and accordingly that
unexceptionable course was all that was ever followed; yea, which I look’t on
as a token for good, the Afflicted Family was as averse as any of us all to
entertain thoughts of any other course.
Sect. 4. The Young
Woman was assaulted by Eight cruel Spectres, whereof she imagin’d that she knew
three or four, but the rest came still with their Faces cover’d, so that she
could never have a distinguishing view of the countenance of those whom she
thought she knew; she was very careful of my reitterated charges to forbear
blazing the Names, lest any good Person should come to suffer any blast of
Reputation thro’ the cunning Malice of the great Accuser; nevertheless having
since privately named them to my self, I will venture to say this of them, that
they are a sort of Wretches who for these many years have gone under as Violent
Presumptions of Witchcraft, as perhaps any creatures yet living upon Earth;
altho’ I am farr from thinking that the Visions of this Young Woman were
Evidence enough to prove them so. These cursed Spectres now brought unto her a
Book about a Cubet long, a Book Red and thick, but not very broad, and they
demanded of her that she would set her Hand to that Book, or touch it at least
with her Hand, as a Sign of her becoming a Servant of the Devil; upon her
peremptory refusal to do what they asked, they did not after renew the profers
of the Book unto her, but instead thereof, they fell to Tormenting of her in a
manner too Hellish to be sufficiently described, in those Torments confining
her to her Bed, for just Six weeks together.
Sect. 5. Sometimes, but
not always, together with the Spectres there look’t in upon the Young Woman
(according to her account) a short and a Black Man, whom they call’d their
Master, a Wight exactly of the same Dimensions and Complexion and voice, with
the Divel that has exhibited himself unto other infested People, not only in
other parts of this Country but also in other Countrys, even of the European
World, as the relation of the Enchantments there inform us, they all profest
themselves Vassals of this Devil, and in obedience unto him they address
themselves unto various ways of Torturing her; accordingly she was cruelly
pinch’t with Invisible hands very often in a Day, and the black and blew marks
of the pinches became immediately visible unto the standers by. Besides this,
when her attendants had left her without so much as one pin about her, that so
they might prevent some fear’d inconveniencies; yet she would ever now and then
be miserably hurt with Pins which were found stuck into her Neck, Back and
Arms, however, the Wounds made by the Pins would in a few minutes ordinarily be
cured; she would also be strangely distorted in her Joynts, and thrown into
such exorbitant Convulsions as were astonishing unto the Spectators in General;
They that could behold the doleful condition of the poor Family without
sensible compassions, might have Intrals indeed, but I am sure they could have
no true Bowels in them.
Sect. 6. It were a most
Unchristian and uncivil, yea a most unreasonable thing to imagine that the Fitt’s
of the Young Woman were but meer Impostures: And I believe scarce any, but
People of a particular Dirtiness, will harbour such an Uncharitable Censure;
however, because I know not how far the Devil may drive the Imagination of poor
Creatures when he has possession of them, that at another time when they are
themselves would scorn to Dissemble any thing, I shall now confine my Narrative
unto passages, wherein there could be no room left for any Dissimulation. Of
these the first that I’ll mention shall be this; From the time that Margaret
Rule first found herself to be formally besieged by the Spectres untill the
Ninth Day following, namely from the Tenth of September to the Eighteenth, she
kept an entire Fast, and yet she was unto all appearance as Fresh, as Lively,
as Hearty, at the Nine Days End, as before they began; in all this time, tho’
she had a very eager Hunger upon her Stomach, yet if any refreshment were
brought unto her, her Teeth would be set, and she would be thrown into many
Miseries, Indeed once or twice or so in all this time, her Tormentors permitted
her to swallow a Mouthful of somewhat that might encrease her Miseries, whereof
a Spoonful of Rum was the most considerable; but otherwise, as I said, her Fast
unto the Ninth day was very extream and rigid: However, afterwards there scarce
passed a day wherein she had not liberty to take something or other for her
Sustentation, And I must add this further, that this business of her Fast was
carried so, that it was impossible to be dissembled without a Combination of
Multitudes of People unacquainted with one another to support the Juggle, but
he that can imagine such a thing of a Neighbourhood so fill’d with Vertuous
People is a base man, I cannot call him any other.
Sect. 7. But if the
Sufferings of this Young Woman were not Imposture, yet might they not be pure
Distemper? I will not here inquire of our Saducees, what sort of Distemper ’tis
shall stick the Body full of Pins, without any Hand that could be seen to stick
them; or whether all the Pin-makers in the World would be willing to be
Evaporated into certain ill habits of Body producing a Distemper, but of the
Distemper my Reader shall be Judge when I have told him something further of
those unusual Sufferings. I do believe that the Evil Angels do often take
Advantage from Natural Distempers in the Children of Men to annoy them with
such further Mischiefs as we call preternatural. The Malignant Vapours and
Humours of our Diseased Bodies may be used by Devils thereinto insinuating as
engine of the Execution of their Malice upon those Bodies; and perhaps for this
reason one Sex may suffer more Troubles of some kinds from the Invisible World
than the other, as well as for that reason for which the Old Serpent made where
he did his first Address. But I Pray what will you say to this, Margaret Rule
would sometimes have her Jaws for cibly pulled open, whereupon something
Invisible would be poured down her Throat; we all saw her swallow, and yet we
saw her try all she could by Spitting, Coughing and Shriking,[194] that she
might not swalow, but one time the standers by plainly saw something of that
odd Liquor it self on the outside of her Neck; She cried out of it as of
Scalding Brimstone poured into her, and the whole House would Immediately scent
so hot of Brimstone that we were scarce able to endure it, whereof there are
scores of Witnesses; but the Young Woman her self would be so monstrously
Inflam’d that it would have broke a Heart of Stone to have seen her Agonies.
This was a thing that several times happen’d and several times when her Mouth
was thus pull’d open, the standers by clapping their Hands close thereupon the
distresses that otherwise followed would be diverted. Moreover there was a
whitish powder to us Invisible somtimes cast upon the Eyes of this Young Woman,
whereby her Eyes would be extreamly incommoded, but one time some of this
Powder was fallen actually Visible upon her Cheek, from whence the People in
the Room wiped it with their Handkerchiefs, and somtimes the Young Woman would
also be so bitterly scorched with the unseen Sulphur thrown upon her, that very
sensible Blisters would be raised upon her Skin, whereto her Friends found it
necessary to apply the Oyl’s proper for common Burning, but the most of these
Hurts would be cured in two or three days at farthest: I think I may without
Vanity pretend to have read not a few of the best System’s of Physick that have
been yet seen in these American Regions, but I must confess that I have never
yet learned the Name of the Natural Distemper, whereto these odd symptoms do
belong: However I might suggest perhaps many a Natural Medicine, which would be
of singular use against many of them.
Sect. 8. But there fell
out some other matters far beyond the reach of Natural Distemper: This Margaret
Rule once in the middle of the Night Lamented sadly that the Spectres threatned
the Drowning of a Young Man in the Neighbourhood, whom she named unto the
Company: well it was afterwards found that at that very time this Young Man,
having been prest on Board a Man of War then in the Harbour, was out of some
dissatisfaction attempting to swim ashoar, and he had been Drowned in the
attempt, if a Boat had not seasonably taken him up; it was by computation a
minute or two after the Young Womans discourse of the Drowning, that the Young
Man took the Water. At another time she told us that the Spectres bragg’d and
laughed in her hearing about an exploit they had lately done, by stealing from
a Gentleman his Will soon after he had written it; and within a few hours after
she had spoken this there came to me a Gentleman with a private complaint, that
having written his Will it was unaccountably gone out of the way, how or where
he could not Imagine; and besides all this, there were wonderful Noises every
now and then made about the Room, which our People could Ascribe to no other
Authors but the Spectres, yea, the Watchers affirm that they heard those fiends
clapping of their hands together with an Audibleness, wherein they could not be
Imposed upon: And once her Tormentors pull’d her up to the Cieling of the
Chamber, and held her there before a very Numerous Company of Spectators, who
found it as much as they could all do to pull her down again. There was also
another very surprising circumstance about her, agreeable to what we have not
only Read in several Histories concerning the Imps that have been Imployed in
Witchcraft; but also known in some of our own afflicted: We once thought we
perceived something stir upon her Pillow at a little distance from her,
whereupon one present laying his hand there, he to his horror apprehended that
he felt, tho’ none could see it, a living Creature, not altogether unlike a
Rat, which nimbly escap’d from him: and there were diverse other Persons who
were thrown into a great consternation by feeling, as they Judg’d, at other
times the same Invisible Animal.
Sect. 9. As it has been
with a Thousand other Inchanted People, so it was with Margaret Rule in this
particular, that there were several words which her Tormentors would not let
her hear, especially the words Pray or Prayer, and yet she could so hear the
letters of those words distinctly mentioned as to know what they ment. The
standers by were forced sometimes thus in discourse to spell a word to her, but
because there were some so ridiculous as to count it a sort of Spell or a Charm
for any thus to accommodate themselves to the capacity of the Sufferer, little of
this kind was done. But that which was more singular in this matter, was that
she could not use these words in those penetrating discourses, wherewith she
would sometimes address the Spectres that were about her. She would sometimes
for a long while together apply herself to the Spectres, whom she supposed the
Witches, with such Exhortations to Repentance as would have melted an Heart of
Adamant to have heard them; her strains of Expression and Argument were truly
Extraordinary; A person perhaps of the best Education and Experience and of
Attainments much beyond hers could not have exceeded them: nevertheless when
she came to these Words God, Lord, Christ, Good, Repent, and some other such,
her Mouth could not utter them, whereupon she would somtimes in an Angry
Parenthesis complain of their Wickedness in stopping that Word, but she would
then go on with some other Terms that would serve to tell what she ment. And I
believe that if the most suspicious Person in the world had beheld all the
Circumstances of this matter, he would have said it could not have been
dissembled.
Sect. 10. Not only in
the Swedish, but also in the Salem Witchcraft the Inchanted People have talked
much of a White Spirit from whence they received marvellous Assistances in
their Miseries; what lately befel Mercy Short from the Communications of such a
Spirit, hath been the just Wonder of us all, but by such a Spirit was Margaret
Rule now also visited. She says that she could never see his Face; but that she
had a frequent view of his bright, Shining and Glorious Garments; he stood by
her Bed-side continually heartning and comforting of her and counselling her to
maintain her Faith and hope in God, and never comply with the temptations of
her Adversaries; she says he told her, that God had permitted her Affictions to
befall her for the everlasting and unspeakable good of her own Soul, and for
the good of many others, and for his own Immortal Glory, and that she should
therefore be of good Chear and be assured of a speedy deliverance; And the
wonderful resolution of mind wherewith she encountered her Afflictions were but
agreeable to such expectations. Moreover a Minister[195] having one Day with
some Importunity Prayed for the deliverance of this Young Woman, and pleaded
that she belong’d to his Flock and charge; he had so far a right unto her as
that he was to do the part of a Minister of our Lord for the bringing of her
home unto God; only now the Devil hindred him in doing that which he had a
right thus to do, and whereas He had a better Title unto her to bring her home
to God than the Divel could have unto her to carry her away from the Lord, he
therefore humbly applied himself unto God, who alone could right this matter,
with a suit that she might be rescued out of Satans Hands; Immediatly upon
this, tho’ she heard nothing of this transaction she began to call that
Minister her Father, and that was the Name whereby she every day before all
sorts of People distinguished him: the occasion of it she says was this, the
white Spirit presently upon this transaction did after this manner speak to
her, “Margaret, you now are to take notice that” (such a Man) “is your Father,
God has given you to him, do you from this time look upon him as your Father,
obey him, regard him as your Father, follow his Counsels and you shall do well”;
And tho’ there was one passage more, which I do as little know what to make of
as any of the Rest, I am now going to relate it; more than three times have I
seen it fulfilled in the Deliverance of Inchanted and Possest Persons, whom the
Providence of God has cast into my way, that their Deliverance could not be
obtained before the third Fast kept for them, and the third day still obtain’d
the Deliverance, altho’ I have thought of beseeching of the Lord thrice, when
buffeted by Satan, yet I must earnestly Intreat all my Readers to beware of any
superstitious conceits upon the Number Three; if our God will hear us upon once
Praying and Fasting before him ’tis well, and if he will not vouchsafe his
Mercy upon our thrice doing so, yet we must not be so discouraged as to throw
by our Devotion but if the Soveraign Grace of our God will in any particular
Instances count our Patience enough tryed when we have Solemnly waited upon him
for any determinate Number of times, who shall say to him, what doest thou, and
if there shall be any Number of Instances, wherein this Grace of our God has
exactly holden the same course, it may have a room in our humble Observations,
I hope, without any Superstition; I say then that after Margaret Rule had been
more than five weeks in her Miseries, this White Spirit said unto her, “Well
this day such a Man” (whom he named[196]) “has kept a third day for your
deliverance, now be of good cheer you shall speedily be delivered.” I inquired
whether what had been said of that Man were true, and I gained exact and
certain Information that it was precisely so, but I doubt lest in relating this
Passage that I have used more openness than a Friend should be treated with,
and for that cause I have concealed several of the most memorable things that
have occurred not only in this but in some former Histories, altho indeed I am
not so well satisfied about the true nature of this white Spirit, as to count
that I can do a Friend much Honour by reporting what notice this white Spirit
may have thus taken of him.
Sect. 11. On the last
day of the Week her Tormentors as she thought and said, approaching towards
her, would be forced still to recoil and retire as unaccountably unable to
meddle with her, and they would retire to the Fire side with their Poppets; but
going to stick Pins into those Poppets, they could not (according to their
visions) make the Pins to enter, she insulted over them with a very Proper
derision, daring them now to do their worst, whilst she had the satisfaction to
see their Black Master strike them and kick them, like an Overseer of so many
Negro’s, to make them to do their work, and renew the marks of his vengeance on
them, when they failed of doing of it. At last being as it were tired with
their ineffectual Attempts to mortifie her they furiously said, “Well you shant
be the last.” And after a pause they added, “Go, and the Devil go with you, we
can do no more”; whereupon they flew out of the Room and she returning
perfectly to her self most affectionately gave thanks to God for her
deliverance; her Tormentors left her extream weak and faint, and overwhelmed
with Vapours, which would not only cause her sometimes to Swoon away, but also
now and then for a little while discompose the reasonableness of her Thoughts;
Nevertheless her former troubles returned not, but we are now waiting to see
the good effects of those troubles upon the Souls of all concern’d. And now I
suppose that some of our Learned witlings of the Coffee-House, for fear lest
these proofs of an Invisible-world should spoil some of their sport, will
endeavour to turn them all into sport, for which Buffoonary their only pretence
will be, they cant understand how such things as these could be done, whereas
indeed he that is but Philosopher enough to have read but one Little Treatise,
Published in the Year 1656 by no other Man than the Chyrurgion of an Army,[197]
or but one Chap. of Helmont,[198] which I will not quote at this time too
particularly, may give a far more intelligible account of these Appearances
than most of these Blades can give why and how their Tobacco makes ’em Spit; or
which way the flame of their Candle becomes illuminating. As for that cavil,
the world would be undone if the Devils could have such power as they seem to
have in several of our stories, it may be Answered that as to many things the
Lying Devils have only known them to be done, and then pretended unto the doing
of those things, but the true and best Answer is, that by these things we only
see what the Devils could have powers to do, if the great God should give them
those powers, whereas now our Histories affords a Glorious Evidence for the
being of a God, the World would indeed be undone, and horribly undone, if these
Devils, who now and then get liberty to play some very mischievous pranks, were
not under a daily restraint of some Almighty Superior from doing more of such
Mischiefs. Wherefore instead of all Apish flouts and jeers at Histories, which
have such undoubted confirmation, as that no Man that has breeding enough to
regard the Common Laws of Humane Society, will offer to doubt of ’em, it
becomes us rather to adore the Goodness of God, who does not permit such things
every day to befall us all, as he sometimes did permit to befall some few of
our miserable Neighbours.
Sect. 12. And what,
after all my unwearied Cares and Pains, to rescue the Miserable from the Lions
and Bears of Hell, which had siezed them, and after all my Studies to
disappoint the Devils in their designs to confound my Neighbourhood, must I be
driven to the necessity of an Apologie? Truly the hard representations
wherewith some Ill Men have reviled my conduct, and the Countenance which other
Men have given to these representations, oblige me to give Mankind some account
of my Behaviour; No Christian can, I say none but evil workers can criminate my
visiting such of my poor flock as have at any time fallen under the terrible
and sensible molestations of Evil-Angels; let their Afflictions have been what
they will, I could not have answered it unto my Glorious Lord, if I had
withheld my just Counsels and Comforts from them; and if I have also with some
exactness observ’d the methods of the Invisible-World, when they have thus
become observable, I have been but a Servant of Mankind in doing so; yea no
less a Person than the Venerable Baxter has more than once or twice in the most
Publick manner invited Mankind to thank me for that Service.[199] I have not
been insensible of a greater danger attending me in this fulfilment of my
Ministry, than if I had been to take Ten Thousand steps over a Rocky Mountain
fill’d with Rattle-Snakes, but I have consider’d, he that is wise will observe
things, and the Surprizing Explication and confirmation of the biggest part of
the Bible, which I have seen given in these things, has abundantly paid me for
observing them. Now in my visiting of the Miserable, I was always of this
opinion that we were Ignorant of what Powers the Devils might have to do their
mischiefs in the shapes of some that had never been explicitly engaged in
Diabolical Confederacies, and that therefore tho’ many Witchcrafts had been
fairly detected on Enquiries provoked and begun by Specteral Exhibitions, yet
we could not easily be too jealous[200] of the Snares laid for us in the
devices of Satan; the World knows how many Pages I have Composed and Published,
and particular Gentlemen in the Government know how many Letters I have written
to prevent the excessive Credit of Specteral Accusations, wherefore I have
still charged the Afflicted that they should Cry out of no body for Afflicting
of ’em. But that if this might be any Advantage they might privately tell their
minds to some one Person of discretion enough to make no ill use of their
communications, accordingly there has been this effect of it, that the Name of
No one good Person in the World ever came under any blemish by means of any
Afflicted Person that fell under my particular cognisance, yea no one Man,
Woman or Child ever came into any trouble for the sake of any that were
Afflicted after I had once begun to look after’em; how often have I had this
thrown into my dish, that many years ago I had an opportunity to have brought
forth such People as have in the late storm of Witchcraft been complain’d of,
but that I smother’d all, and after that storm was rais’d at Salem, I did
myself offer to provide Meat, Drink and Lodging for no less than Six of the
Afflicted, that so an Experiment might be made, whether Prayer with Fasting
upon the removal of the distressed might not put a Period to the trouble then
rising, without giving the Civil Authority the trouble of prosecuting those
things which nothing but a Conscientious regard unto the cries of Miserable
Families, could have overcome the Reluctancies of the Honourable Judges to
meddle with; In short I do humbly but freely affirm it, there is not that Man
living in this World who has been more desirous than the poor Man I to shelter
my Neighbours from the Inconveniencies of Spectral Outcries, yea I am very
jealous I have done so much that way as to Sin in what I have done, such have
been the Cowardize and Fearfulness whereunto my regard unto the
dissatisfactions of other People has precipitated me. I know a Man in the
World, who has thought he has been able to Convict some such Witches as ought
to Dye, but his respect unto the Publick Peace has caused him rather to try
whether He could not renew them by Repentance: And as I have been Studious to
defeat the Devils of their expectations to set people together by the Ears,
thus, I have also checked and quell’d those forbidden curiosities, which would
have given the devil an invitation to have tarried amongst us, when I have seen
wonderful Snares laid for Curious People, by the secret and future things
discovered from the Mouths of Damsels possest with a Spirit of divination;
Indeed I can recollect but one thing wherein there could be given so much as a
Shadow of Reason for Exceptions, and that is my allowing of so many to come and
see those that were Afflicted, now for that I have this to say, that I have
almost a Thousand times intreated the Friends of the Miserable, that they would
not permit the Intrusion of any Company, but such as by Prayers or other ways
might be helpful to them; Nevertheless I have not absolutely forbid all Company
from coming to your Haunted Chambers, partly because the Calamities of the
Families were such as required the Assistance of many Friends; partly because I
have been willing that there should be disinterested Witnesses of all sorts, to
confute the Calumnies of such as would say all was but Imposture; and partly
because I saw God had Sanctified the Spectacle of the Miseries on the Afflicted
unto the Souls of many that were Spectators, and it is a very Glorious thing
that I have now to mention -- The Devils have with most horrendous operations
broke in upon our Neighbourhood, and God has at such a rate over-ruled all the
Fury and Malice of those Devils, that all the Afflicted have not only been
Delivered, but I hope also savingly brought home unto God, and the Reputation
of no one good Person in the World has been damaged, but instead thereof the
Souls of many, especially of the rising Generation, have been thereby awaken’d
unto some acquaintance with Religion; our young People who belonged unto the
Praying Meetings, of both Sexes, a part would ordinarily spend whole Nights by
the whole Weeks together in Prayers and Psalms upon these occasions, in which
Devotions the Devils could get nothing but like Fools a Scourge for their own
Backs, and some scores of other young People, who were strangers to real Piety,
were now struck with the lively demonstrations of Hell evidently set forth
before their Eyes, when they saw Persons cruelly Frighted, wounded and Starved
by Devils and Scalded with burning Brimstone, and yet so preserved in this
tortured estate as that at the end of one Months wretchedness they were as able
still to undergo another, so that of these also it might now be said, Behold
they Pray in the whole -- The Devil got just nothing; but God got praises,
Christ got Subjects, the Holy Spirit got Temples, the Church got Addition, and
the Souls of Men got everlasting Benefits; I am not so vain as to say that any
Wisdome or Vertue of mine did contribute unto this good order of things: But I
am so just, as to say I did not hinder this Good. When therefore there have
been those that pickt up little incoherent scraps and bits of my Discourses in
this faithful discharge of my Ministry, and so traversted[201] ’em in their
abusive Pamphlets,[202] as to perswade the Town that I was their common Enemy
in those very points, wherein, if in any one thing whatsoever, I have sensibly
approved my self as true a Servant unto ’em as possibly I could, tho my Life
and Soul had been at Stake for it, Yea to do like Satan himself, by sly, base,
unpretending Insinuations, as if I wore not the Modesty and Gravity which
became a Minister of the Gospel, I could not but think my self unkindly dealt
withal, and the neglects of others to do me justice in this affair has caused
me to conclude this Narrative with complaints in another hearing of such
Monstrous Injuries.[203]
[189]. Very probably
his uncle, the Rev. John Cotton (1640-1699), who had formerly preached in
Martha’s Vineyard (1664-1667) and had there learned the Indian tongue, and who
now, at Plymouth, continued to preach to Indians as well as whites. In his life
of Eliot and in bk. VI. of his Magnalia Mather relates much more of the
Christian Indians of Martha’s Vineyard and of the witchcrafts there.
[190] Provable,
demonstrable.
[191] See p. 189, note
2.
[192] Energumens: i.e.,
demoniacs.
[193] See pp. 255 ff.,
above.
[194] Hawking? The word
is unknown to the dictionaries.
[195] Mather himself,
of course.
[196] Again there can
be little doubt that the writer means himself.
[197] Who this “Chyrurgion”
was and what his treatise, is a puzzle -- as it was perhaps meant to be.
Balthasar Timäus von Guldenklee (1600-1667), physician to the Elector of
Brandenburg, had earned his nobility by healing the Swedish army of the pest in
1637, and in his Casus Medicinales has a passage on diseases ascribed to
witchcraft; but it does not appear that this work was published before 1662.
Antonius Deusing (1612-1666), physician to the Stadholder of Friesland,
published in 1656 a treatise on this subject; but it does not appear that he
was ever an army surgeon.
[198] Doubtless the
elder, Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644), the eminent but visionary Flemish
physician; and the “one Chap.” that on “Recepta injecta” in his Tractatus de
Morbis -- though he goes into the subject as fully in paragraphs 87-152 of his
De Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione.
[199] Notably in his
own book on The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (London, 1691) and in the
perface which he wrote for the London edition of Mather’s Memorable
Providences, published in that year.
[200] Suspicious.
[201] Travestied.
[202] See p. 332,
below.
[203] The story of
Margaret Rule is told again in Mather’s Diary (I. 171 ff.) and in a way that
throws fresh light on his relation to the case.
“About a Week after the
Beginning of September, being sollicitous to do some further Service, for the
Name of God, I took a Journey to Salem. There, I not only sought a further
Supply of my Furniture for my Church-History, but also endeavoured, that the complete
History of the late Witchcrafts and Possessions might not bee lost. I judg’d
that the Preservacion of that History might in a while bee a singular Benefit
unto the Church, and unto the World, which made mee sollicitous about it.
Moreover, I was willing to preach the Word of God unto the numerous
Congregation at Salem; which I did, on both Parts of the Sabbath, not only with
a most glorious Assistence of Heaven, but also with some Assurance of Good
thereby to bee done among the People. But I had one singular Unhappiness, which
befel mee, in this Journey. I had largely written three Discourses, which I
designed both to preach at Salem, and hereafter to print. These Notes were
before the Sabbath stolen from mee, with such Circumstances, that I am somewhat
satisfied, The Spectres, or Agents in the invisible World, were the Robbers.
This Diaster had like to have disturbed my Designs for the Sabbath; but God
helped mee to remember a great part of what I had written, and to deliver also
many other Things, which else I had not now made use of. So that the Divel gott
nothing!
“Among other things
which entertained mee at Salem, one was, a Discourse with one Mrs. Carver, who
had been strangely visited with some shining Spirits, which were good Angels,
in her opinion of them.
“She intimated several
things unto mee whereof some were to be kept secret. Shee also told mee, That a
new Storm of Witchcraft would fall upon the Countrey, to chastise the Iniquity
that was used in the wilful Smothering and Covering of the Last; and that many
fierce Opposites to the Discovery of that Witchcraft would bee thereby
convinced.
“Unto my Surprise, when
I came home, I found one of my Neighbours horribly arrested by evil Spirits. I
then beg’d of God, that Hee would help mee wisely to discharge my Duty upon
this occasion, and avoid gratifying of the evil Angels in any of their
Expectations. I did then concern myself to use and gett as much Prayer as I
could for the afflicted young Woman; and at the same time, to forbid, either
her from accusing any of her Neighbours, or others from enquiring any thing of
her. Nevertheless, a wicked Man wrote a most lying Libel to revile my Conduct
in these matters; which drove mee to the Blessed God, with my Supplications
that Hee would wonderfully protect mee, as well from unreasonable Men acted by
the Divels, as from the Divels themselves. I did at first, it may bee, too much
resent the Injuries of that Libel; but God brought good out of it; it
occasioned the Multiplication of my Prayers before Him; it very much promoted
the Works of Humiliation and Mortification in my Soul. Indeed, the Divel made
that Libel an Occasion of those Paroxysms in the Town, that would have
exceedingly gratify’d him, if God had not helped mee to forgive and forgett the
Injuries done unto mee, and to bee deaf unto the Sollicitations of those that
would have had mee so to have resented the Injuries of some few Persons, as to
have deserted the Lecture at the Old Meeting house.
“When the afflicted
young woman had undergone six Weeks of præternatural Calamities and when God
had helped mee to keep just three Dayes of Prayer on her behalf, I had the
Pleasure of seeing the same Success, which I used to have, on my third Fast,
for such possessed People, as have been cast into my cares. God gave her a
glorious Deliverance; The remarkable Circumstances whereof, I have more fully
related, in an History of the whole Business.
“As for my missing
Notes, the possessed young Woman, of her own Accord, enquir’d whether I missed
them not? Shee told mee, the Spectres brag’d in her hearing, that they had rob’t
mee of them; shee added, Bee n’t concern’d; for they confess, they can’t keep
them alwayes from you; you shall have them all brought you again. (They were
Notes on Ps. 119. 19 and Ps. 90. 12 and Hag. 1. 7, 9. I was tender of them and
often pray’d unto God, that they might bee return’d.) On the fifth of October
following, every Leaf of my Notes again came into my Hands, tho’ they were in
eighteen separate Quarters of Sheets. They were found drop’t here and there,
about the Streets of Lyn; but how they came to bee so drop’t I cannot imagine;
and I as much wonder at the Exactness of their Præservation.”
And under October 10th
he adds: “On this Day, I also visited a possessed young Woman in the Neighbourhood,
whose Distresses were not the least occasion of my being thus before the Lord.
I wrestled with God for her: and among other things, I pleaded, that God had
made it my Office and Business to engage my Neighbours in the Service of the
Lord Jesus Christ; and that this young Woman had expressed her Compliance with
my Invitations unto that Service; only that the evil Spirits now hindred her
from doing what shee had vowd: and therefore that I had a sort of Right to
demand her Deliverance from these invading Divels, and to demand such a Liberty
for her as might make her capable of glorifying my Glorious Lord; which I did
accordingly. In the close of this Day, a wonderful Spirit, in White and bright
Raiment, with a Face unseen, appeared unto this young woman, and bid her count
mee her Father, and regard mee and obey mee, as her Father; for hee said, the
Lord had given her to mee; and she should now within a few Dayes bee delivered.
It proved, accordingly.”
And again in December
(p. 178): “And one memorable Providence, I must not forgett. A young Woman
being arrested, possessed, afflicted by evil Angels, her Tormentors made my
Image or Picture to appear before her, and then made themselves Masters of her
Tongue so far, that she began in her Fits to complain that I threatened her and
molested her, tho’ when shee came out of them, shee own’d, that they could not
so much as make my dead Shape do her any Harm, and that they putt a Force upon
her Tongue in her Exclamations. Her greatest Out-cries when shee was herself,
were, for my poor Prayers to be concerned on her behalf.
“Being hereupon
extremely sensible, how much a malicious Town and Land would insult over mee,
if such a lying Piece of a Story should fly abroad, that the Divels in my Shape
tormented the Neighbourhood, I was putt upon some Agonies, and singular Salleys
and Efforts of Soul, in the Resignation of my Name unto the Lord; content that
if Hee had no further service for my Name, it should bee torn to pieces with
all the Reproches in the world. But I cried unto the Lord as for the
Deliverance of my Name, from the Malice of Hell, so for the Deliverance of the
young Woman, whom the Powers of Hell had now seized upon. And behold! Without
any further Noise, the possessed Person, upon my praying by her, was delivered
from her Captivity, on the very same Day that shee fell into it; and the whole
Plott of the Divel, to reproach a poor Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, was
defeated.”
Boston Jan. 11th, 1693.[204] Mr. Cotton Mather, Reverend Sir, I finding it needful on many accounts, I here
present you with the Copy of that Paper, which has been so much Misrepresented,
to the End that what shall be found defective or not fairly Represented, if any
such shall appear, they may be set right, which Runs thus.
September the 13th,
1693.
In the Evening when the Sun was withdrawn, giving place to Darkness to
succeed, I with some others were drawn by curiosity to see Margaret Rule, and
so much the rather because it was reported Mr. M -- [205] would be there that
Night: Being come to her Fathers House into the Chamber wherein she was in Bed,
found her of a healthy countenance of about seventeen Years Old, lying very
still, and speaking very little, what she did say seem’d as if she were
Light-headed. Then Mr. M -- , Father and Son, came up and others with them, in
the whole were about 30 or 40 Persons; they being sat, the Father on a Stool,
and the Son upon the Bedside by her, the Son began to question her, Margaret
Rule, how do you do? then a pause without any answer. Question. What, do there
a great many Witches sit upon you? Answer. Yes. Q. Do you not know that there
is a hard Master? Then she was in a Fit; He laid his hand upon her Face and Nose,
but, as he said, without perceiving Breath; then he brush’d her on the Face
with his Glove, and rubb’d her Stomach (her breast not covered with the
Bed-cloaths) and bid others do so too, and said it eased her, then she revived.
Q. Don’t you know there is a hard Master? A. Yes. Reply; Don’t serve that hard
Master, you know who. Q. Do you believe? Then again she was in a Fit, and he
again rub’d her Breast, etc. (about this time Margaret Perd an attendant
assisted him in rubbing of her. The Afflicted spake angerely to her saying don’t
you meddle with me, and hastily put away her hand) he wrought his Fingers
before her Eyes and asked her if she saw the Witches? A. No. Q. Do you believe?
A. Yes. Q. Do you believe in you know who? A. Yes. Q. Would you have other
people do so too, to believe in you know who? A. Yes. Q. Who is it that
Afflicts you? A. I know not, there is a great many of them (about this time the
Father question’d if she knew the Spectres? An attendant said, if she did she
would not tell; The Son proceeded) Q. You have seen the Black-man, hant[206]
you? A. No. Reply; I hope you never shall. Q. You have had a Book offered you,
hant you? A. No. Q. The brushing of you gives you ease, don’t it? A. Yes. She
turn’d her selfe and a little Groan’d. Q. Now the Witches Scratch you and Pinch
you, and Bite you, don’t they? A. Yes. Then he put his hand upon her Breast and
Belly, viz. on the Cloaths over her, and felt a Living thing, as he said, which
moved the Father also to feel, and some others; Q. Don’t you feel the Live
thing in the Bed? A. No. Reply, that is only Fancie. Q. the great company of
People increase your Torment, don’t they? A. Yes. The People about were desired
to withdraw. One Woman said, I am sure I am no Witch, I will not go; so others,
so none withdrew. Q. Shall we go to Prayers? Then she lay in a Fit as before.
But this time to revive her, they waved a Hat and brushed her Head and Pillow
therewith. Q. Shall we go to Pray, etc. Spelling the Word. A. Yes. The Father
went to Prayer for perhaps half an Hour, chiefly against the Power of the Devil
and Witchcraft, and that God would bring out the Afflicters: during
Prayer-time, the Son stood by, and when they thought she was in a Fit, rub’d
her and brush’d her as before, and beckned to others to do the like; after
Prayer he proceeded; Q. You did not hear when we were at Prayer, did you? A.
Yes. Q. You dont hear always, you dont hear sometimes past a Word or two, do
you? A. No. Then turning him about said, this is just another Mercy Short:
Margaret Perd reply’d, she was not like her in her Fits. Q. What does she eat
or drink? A. Not eat at all; but drink Rum. Then he admonished the young People
to take warning, etc. Saying it was a sad thing to be so Tormented by the Devil
and his Instruments: A Young-man present in the habit of a Seaman, reply’d this
is the Devil all over. Than[207] the Ministers withdrew. Soon after they were
gon the Afflicted desired the Women to be gone, saying, that the Company of the
Men was not offensive to her, and having hold of the hand of a Young-man, said
to have been her Sweet-heart formerly, who was withdrawing; She pull’d him
again into his Seat, saying he should not go to Night. September the 19th, 1693.
This Night I renew’d my Visit, and found her rather of a fresher Countenance
than before, about eight Persons present with her, she was in a Fit Screeming
and making a Noise: Three or four Persons rub’d and brush’d her with their
hands, they said that the brushing did put them away, if they brush’d or rub’d
in the right place; therefore they brush’d and rub’d in several places, and
said that when they did it in the right place she could fetch her Breath, and
by that they knew. She being come to her self was soon in a merry talking Fit.
A Young-man came in and ask’d her how she did? She answered very bad, but at
present a little better; he soon told her he must be gon and bid her good
Night, at which she seem’d troubled, saying, that she liked his Company, and
said she would not have him go till she was well; adding, for I shall Die when
you are gon. Then she complained they did not put her on a clean Cap, but let
her ly so like a Beast, saying, she should lose her Fellows. She said she
wondered any People should be so Wicked as to think she was not Afflicted, but
to think she Dissembled. A Young-woman answered Yes, if they were to see you in
this merry Fit, they would say you Dissembled indeed; She reply’d, Mr. M --
said this was her laughing time, she must laugh now: She said Mr. M -- had been
there this Evening, and she enquired, how long he had been gon? She said, he
stay’d alone with her in the room half an Hour, and said that he told her there
were some that came for Spies, and to report about Town that she was not
Afflicted. That during the said time she had no Fit, that he asked her if she
knew how many times he had Prayed for her to Day? And that she answered that
she could not tell; and that he replyed he had Prayed for her Nine times to
Day; the Attendants said that she was sometimes in a Fit that none could open
her Joynts, and that there came an Old Iron-jaw’d Woman and try’d, but could
not do it; they likewise said, that her Head could not be moved from the
Pillow; I try’d to move her head, and found no more difficulty than another
Bodies (and so did others) but was not willing to offend by lifting it up, one
being reproved for endeavouring it, they saying angrily you will break her
Neck; The Attendants said Mr. M -- would not go to Prayer with her when People
were in the Room, as they did one Night, that Night he felt the Live Creature.
Margaret Perd and another said they smelt Brimstone; I and others said we did
not smell any; then they said they did not know what it was: This Margaret
said, she wish’d she had been here when Mr. M -- was here, another Attendant
said, if you had been here you might not have been permitted in, for her own
Mother was not suffered to be present. Sir,
after the sorest Affliction and greatest blemish to Religion that ever befel
this Countrey, and after most Men began to Fear that some undue steps had been
taken, and after His Excellency (with their Majesties Approbation[208] as is
said) had put a stop to Executions, and Men began to hope there would never be
a return of the like; finding these Accounts to contain in them something
extraordinary, I writ them down the same Nights in order to attain the
certainty of them, and soon found them so confirmed that I have (besides other
Demonstrations) the whole, under the Hands of two Persons are ready to attest
the Truth of it; but not satisfied herewith, I shewed them to some of your
particular Friends, that so I might have the greater certainty: But was much
surprized with the Message you sent me, that I should be Arrested for Slander,
and at your calling me one of the worst of Lyars, making it Pulpit news with
the Name of Pernicious Libels, etc. This occasion’d my first Letter.
September the 29th, 1693. Reverend Sir, I
having written from the Mouths of several Persons, who affirm they were present
with Margaret Rule, the 13th Instant, her Answers and Behaviours, etc. And
having shewed it to several of my Friends, as also yours, and understanding you
are offended at it; This is to acquaint you, that if you and any one particular
Friend, will please to meet me and some other Indifferent Person with me, at
Mr. Wilkins, or at Ben. Harris’s,[209] you intimating the time, I shall be
ready there to read it to you, as also a further Account of proceedings the ’19th
Instant, which may be needful to prevent Groundless prejudices, and let
deserved blame be cast where it ought; From,
Sir, yours in what I
may,
R. C. The effects of which, Sir,
(not to mention that long Letter only once read to me) was, you sent me word
you would meet me at Mr. Wilkins, but before that Answer, at yours and your
Fathers complaint, I was brought before their Majesties Justice, by Warrant, as
for Scandalous Libels against your self, and was bound over to Answer at
Sessions; I do not remember you then objected against the Truth of what I had
wrote, but asserted it was wronged by omissions, which if it were so was past
any Power of mine to remedy, having given a faithful account of all that came
to my knowledge; And Sir, that you might not be without some Cognisance of the
reasons why I took so much pains in it, as also for my own Information, if it
might have been, I wrote to you my second Letter to this effect.
November the 24th, 1693. Reverend Sir, Having
expected some Weeks, your meeting me at Mr. Wilkins according to what you
intimated to Mr. J. M. -- [210] and the time draw ing near for our meeting
elsewhere, I thought it not amiss to give you a Summary of my thoughts in the
great concern, which as you say has been agitated with so much heat. That there
are Witches is not the doubt, the Scriptures else were in vain, which assign
their Punishment to be by Death; But what this Witchcraft is, or wherein it
does consist, seems to be the whole difficulty: And as it may be easily
demonstrated, that all that bear that Name cannot be justly so accounted, so
that some things and Actions not so esteemed by the most, yet upon due
examination will be found to merit no better Character.
In your late Book you
lay down a brief Synopsis of what has been written on that Subject, by a
Triumvirate of as Eminent Men as ever handled it (as you are pleas’d to call
them) Viz. Mr. Perkins,[211] Gaule,[212] and Bernard[213] consisting of about
30 Tokens to know them by, many of them distinct from, if not thwarting each
other: Among all of which I can find but one decisive, Viz. That of Mr. Gaule,
Head IV. and runs thus; Among the most unhappy Circumstances to convict a
Witch, one is a maligning and oppugning the Word, Work, or Worship of God, and
by any extraordinary Sign seeking to seduce any from it, see Deu. 13. 1, 2.
Mat. 24. 24. Acts. 13. 8, 10. 2 Tim. 3. 8. Do but mark well the places, and for
this very property of thus opposing and perverting, they are all there
concluded and absolute Witches.[214]
This Head as here laid
down and inserted by you, either is a Truth or not; if not, why is it here
inserted from one of the Triumvirate, if it be a Truth, as the Scriptures
quoted will abundantly testifie, whence is it that it is so little regarded,
tho it be the only Head well proved by Scripture, or that the rest of the
Triumvirate should so far forget their Work as not to mention it. It were to be
unjust to the Memory of those otherwise Wise Men, to suppose them to have any
Sinister design; But perhaps the force of a prevailing opinion, together with
an Education thereto Suited, might over shadow their Judgments, as being wont
to be but too prevalent in many other cases. But if the above be Truth, then
the Scripture is full and plain, What is Witchcraft? And if so, what need of
his next Head of Hanging of People without as full and clear Evidence as in
other Cases? Or what need of the rest of the Receipts of the Triumvirate? what
need of Praying that the Afflicted may be able to discover who tis that
Afflicts them? or what need of Searching for Tet’s for the Devil to Suck in his
Old Age, or the Experiment of saying the Lords Prayer, etc. Which[215] a
multitude more practised in some places Superstitiously inclin’d. Other Actions
have been practised for easing the Afflicted, less justifiable, if not strongly
savouring of Witchcraft it self, viz. Fondly Imagining by the Hand, etc., to
drive off Spectres, or to knock off Invisible Chains, or by striking in the Air
to Wound either the Afflicted or others, etc. I write not this to accuse any,
but that all may beware believing, That the Devil’s bounds are set, which he
cannot pass, That the Devils are so full of Malice, That it cant be added to by
Mankind, That where he hath Power, he neither can nor will omit Executing it,
That ’tis only the Almighty that sets bounds to his rage, and that only can
Commissionate him to hurt or destroy any.
These last, Sir, are
such Foundations of Truth, in my esteem, that I cannot but own it to be my duty
to ascert them, when call’d tho’ with the hazard of my All: And consequently to
detect such as these, That a Witch can Commissionate Devils to Afflict Mortals,
That he can at his or the Witches pleasure Assume any Shape, That Hanging or
Chaining of Witches can lessen his Power of Afflicting, or restore those that
were at a distance Tormented, with many others depending on these; all tending,
in my esteem, highly to the Dishonour of God, and the Indangering the
well-being of a People, and do further add, that as the Scriptures are full
that there is Witchcraft, (ui sup.) so ’tis as plain that there are
Possessions, and that the Bodies of the Possest have hence been not only
Afflicted, but strangely agitated, if not their Tongues improved to foretell
futurities, etc. and why not to accuse the Innocent, as bewitching them; having
pretence to Divination to gain credence. This being reasonable to be expected,
from him who is the Father of Lies, to the end he may thereby involve a
Countrey in Blood, Mallice, and Evil, surmising which he greedily seeks after,
and so finally lead them from their fear and dependence upon God to fear him,
and a supposed Witch thereby attaining his end upon Mankind; and not only so,
but Natural Distemper, as has been frequently observed by the Judicious, have
so operated as to deceive, more than the Vulgar, as is testified by many Famous
Physicians, and others. And as for that proof of Multitudes of Confessions,
this Countrey may be by this time thought Competent Judges, what credence we
ought to give them, having had such numerous Instances, as also how obtain’d.
And now Sir, if herein
be any thing in your esteem valuable, let me intreat you, not to account it the
worse for coming from so mean a hand; which however you may have receiv’d
Prejudices, etc., Am ready to serve you to my Power; but if you Judge otherwise
hereof, you may take your own Methods for my better Information. Who am, Sir,
yours to command, in what I may,
R. C.[216] In Answer to this
last, Sir, you replyed to the Gentleman that presented it, that you had nothing
to Prosecute against me; and said as to your Sentiments in your Books, you did
not bind any to believe them, and then again renew’d your promise of meeting
me, as before, tho’ not yet performed. Accordingly, tho’ I waited at Sessions,
there was none to object ought against me, upon which I was dismissed. This
gave me some reason to believe that you intended all should have been
forgotten; But instead of that, I find the Coals are fresh blown up, I being
supposed to be represented, in a late Manuscript, More Wonders of the, etc., as
Traversing[217] your Discourse in your Faithful discharge of your Duty, etc.
And such as see not with the Authors Eyes, rendred Sadducees and Witlins,[218]
etc., and the Arguments that square not with the Sentiments therein contain’d,
Buffoonary; rarely no doubt, agreeing with the Spirit of Christ, and his
dealings with an unbelieving Thomas, yet whose infidelity was without compare
less excusable, but the Author having resolved long since, to have no more than
one single Grain of Patience, with them that deny,[219] etc., the Wonder is the
less. It must needs be that offences come, but wo to him by whom they come. To
vindicate my self therefore from such false Imputations, of Satanlike
insinuations, and misrepresenting your Actions, etc., and to vindicate your
self, Sir, as much as is in my Power from those Suggestions, said to be
Insinuated, as if you wore not the Modesty and Gravity, that becomes a Minister
of the Gospel; which it seems, some that never saw the said Narratives, report
themo contain; I say, Sir, for these reasons, I here present you with the first
Coppy that ever was taken, etc. And purpose for a Weeks time to be ready, if
you shall intimate your pleasure, to wait upon you, either at the place
formerly appointed, or any other that is indifferent to the End; that if there
shall appear any defects in that Narrative, they may be amended.
Thus, Sir, I have given
you a genuine account of my Sentiments and Actions in this Affair; and do
request and pray, that if I err, I may be shewed it from Scripture, or sound
Reason, and not by quotations out of Virgil, nor Spanish Rhetorick. For I find
the Witlings mentioned, are so far from answering your profound questions, that
they cannot so much as pretend to shew a distinction between Witchcraft in the
Common notion of it, and Possession; Nor so much as to demonstrate that ever
the Jews or primitive Christians did believe, that a Witch could send a Devil
to Afflict her Neighbours; but to all these, Sir, (ye being the Salt of the
Earth, etc.) I have reason to hope for a Satisfactory Answer to him, who is one
that reverences your Person and Office; And am, Sir, yours to Command in what I
may,
Boston, January the 15th, 1693/4. Mr. R. C. Whereas you intimate your desires, that what’s not fairly, (I take
it for granted you mean truly also,) represented in a Paper you lately sent me,
containing a pretended Narrative of a Visit by my Father and self to an
Afflicted Young woman, whom we apprehended to be under a Diabolical Possession,
might be rectified: I have this to say, as I have often already said, that I do
scarcely find any one thing in the whole Paper, whether respecting my Father or
self, either fairly or truly represented. Nor can I think that any that know my
Parents Circumstances, but must think him deserving a better Character by far,
than this Narrative can be thought to give him. When the main design we managed
in Visiting the poor Afflicted Creature, was to prevent the Accusations of the
Neighbourhood, can it be fairly represented that our design was to draw out
such Accusations, which is the representation of the Paper? We have Testimonies
of the best Witnesses and in Number not a few, That when we asked Rule whether
she thought she knew who Tormented her? the Question was but an Introduction to
the Solemn charges which we then largely gave, that she should rather Dye than
tell the Names of any whom she might Imagine that she knew. Your Informers have
reported the Question, and report nothing of what follows, as essential to the
giving of that Question: And can this be termed a piece of fairness? Fair it
cannot be, that when Ministers Faithfully and Carefully discharge their Duty to
the Miserable in their Flock, little bits, scraps and shreds of their
Discourses should be tackt together to make them contemtible, when there shall
be no notice of all the Necessary, Seasonable, and Profitable things that occur’d,
in those Discourses; And without which, the occasion of the lesser Passages
cannot be understood; And yet I am furnished with abundant Evidences, ready to
be Sworn, that will possitively prove this part of unfairness, by the above
mention’d Narrative, to be done both to my Father and self. Again, it seems not
fair or reasonable that I should be expos’d, for which your self (not to say
some others) might have expos’d me for, if I had not done, Viz. for
discouraging so much Company from flocking about the Possest Maid, and yet, as
I perswade my self, you cannot but think it to be good advice, to keep much
Company from such haunted Chambers; besides the unfairness doth more appear, in
that I find nothing repeated of what I said about the advantage, which the
Devil takes from too much Observation and Curiosity.
In that several of the
Questions in the Paper are so Worded, as to carry in them a presupposal of the
things inquired after, to say the best of it is very unfair: But this is not
all, the Narrative contains a number of Mistakes and Falshoods; which were they
willful and design’d, might justly be termed gross Lies. The representations
are far from true, when ’tis affirm’d my Father and self being come into the
Room, I began the Discourse; I hope I understand breeding a little better than
so: For proof of this, did occasion serve, sundry can depose the contrary.
’Tis no less untrue,
that either my Father or self put the Question, how many Witches sit upon you?
We always cautiously avoided that expression; It being contrary to our inward
belief: All the standers by will (I believe) Swear they did not hear us use it
(your Witnesses excepted) and I tremble to think how hardy those woful
Creatures must be, to call the Almighty by an Oath, to so false a thing. As
false a representation ’tis, that I rub’d Rule’s Stomach, her Breast not being
covered. The Oath of the nearest Spectators, giving a true account of that
matter will prove this to be little less than a gross (if not a doubled) Lie;
and to be somewhat plainer, it carries the Face of a Lie contrived on purpose
(by them at least, to whom you are beholden for the Narrative) Wickedly and
Basely to expose me. For you cannot but know how much this Representation hath
contributed, to make People believe a Smutty thing of me; I am far from
thinking, but that in your own Conscience you believe, that no indecent Action
of that Nature could then be done by me before such observers, had I been so
Wicked as to have been inclin’d to what is Base. It looks next to impossible
that a reparation shoud be made me for the wrong done to, I hope, as to any
Scandal, an unblemish’d, tho’ weak and small Servant of the Church of God. Nor
is what follows a less untruth, that ’twas an Attendant and not my self who
said, if Rule knows who Afflicts her, yet she wont tell. I therefore spoke it
that I might incourage her to continue in that concealment of all Names
whatsoever; to this I am able to furnish my self with the Attestation of
Sufficient Oaths. ’Tis as far from true, that my apprehension of the Imp, about
Rule, was on her Belly, for the Oaths of the Spectators, and even of those that
thought they felt it, can testify that ’twas upon the Pillow, at a distance
from her Body. As untrue a Representation is that which follows, Viz. That it
was said unto her, that her not Apprehending of that odd palpable, tho’ not
visible, Mover was from her Fancy, for I endeavoured to perswade her that it
might be but Fancy in others, that there was any such thing at all. Witnesses
every way sufficient can be produced for this also. ’Tis falsely represented
that my Father felt on the Young-woman after the appearance mentioned, for his
hand was never near her; Oath can sufficiently vindicate him. ’Tis very untrue
that my Father Prayed for perhaps half an Hour, against the power of the Devil
and Witchcraft, and that God would bring out the Afflictors. Witnesses of the
best Credit, can depose, that his Prayer was not a quarter of an Hour, and that
there was no more than about one clause towards the close of the Prayer, which
was of this import; And this clause also was guarded with a singular wariness
and modesty, Viz. If there were any evil Instruments in this matter God would
please to discover them: And that there was more than common reason for that
Petition I can satisfie any one that will please to Inquire of me. And strange
it is, that a Gentleman that from 18 to 54 hath been an Exemplary Minister of
the Gospel; and that besides a station in the Church of God, as considerable as
any that his own Country can afford, hath for divers years come off with
Honour, in his Application to three Crown’d Heads, and the chiefest Nobility of
three Kingdoms, Knows not yet how to make one short Prayer of a quarter of an
hour, but in New-England he must be Libell’d for it. There are divers other
down-right mistakes, which you have permitted your self, I would hope not
knowingly, and with a Malicious design, to be receiver or Compiler of, which I shall
now forbear to Animadvert upon. As for the Appendix of the Narrative I do find
myself therein Injuriously treated, for the utmost of your proof for what you
say of me, amounts to little more than, viz. Some People told you, that others
told them, that such and such things did pass, but you may assure yourself,
that I am not unfurnish’d with Witnesses, that can convict the same. Whereas
you would give me to believe the bottom of these your Methods, to be some
dissatisfaction about the commonly receiv’d Power of Devils and Witches; I do
not only with all freedom offer you the use of any part of my Library, which
you may see cause to peruse on that Subject, but also if you and any else, whom
you please, will visit me at my Study, yea, or meet me at any other place, less
inconvenient than those by you propos’d; I will with all the fairness and
calmness in the World dispute the point. I beg of God that he would bestow as
many Blessings on you, as ever on myself, and out of a sincere wish, that you
may be made yet more capable of these Blessings, I take this occasion to lay
before you the faults (not few nor small ones neither) which the Paper
contained, you lately sent me in order to be Examined by me. In case you want a
true and full Narrative of my Visit, whereof such an indecent Traversty (to say
the best) hath been made, I am not unwilling to communicate it, in mean time
must take liberty to say, ’Tis scarcely consistent with Common Civility, much
less Christian Charity, to offer the Narrative, now with you, for a true one,
till you have a truer, or for a full one, till you have a fuller. Your Sincere
(tho Injur’d) Friend and Servant,
Boston, Jan. 18, 1693.[220] Mr. Cotton Mather, Reverend Sir, Yours of the 15th Instant, I receiv’d
yesterday; and soon found I had promised my self too much by it, Viz, Either
concurrence with, or a denial of those Fundamentals mentioned in mine, of
Novem. the 24th, finding this waved by an Invitation to your Library, etc. I
thank God I have the Bible, and do Judge that sufficient to demonstrate that
cited Head of Mr. Gaule to be a Truth, as also those other Heads mentioned, as
the Foundations of Religion. And in my apprehension, if it be asked any
Christian, whether God governs the World, and whether it be he only can Commissionate
Devils, and such other Fundamentals, He ought to be as ready as in the
Question, who made him? (a little Writing certainly might be of more use, to
clear up the controverted points, than either looking over many Books in a well
furnish’d Library, or than a dispute, if I were qualified for it; the
Inconveniencies of Passion being this way best avoided) And am not without
hopes that you will yet oblige me so far, as to consider that Letter, and if I
Err, to let me see it by Scripture, etc.
Yours, almost the whole
of it, is concerning the Narrative I sent to you, and you seem to intimate as
if I were giving Characters, Reflections, and Libell’s etc. concerning your
self and Relations; all which were as far from my thoughts, as ever they were
in writing after either your self, or any other Minister. In the front you
declare your apprehension to be, that the Afflicted was under a Diabolical
Possession, and if so, I see not how it should be occasion’d by any Witchcraft
(unless we ascribe that Power to a Witch, which is only the Prerogative of the
Almighty, of Sending or Commissionating the Devils to Afflict her.) But to your
particular Objections against the Narrative; and to the first my intelligence
not giving me any further, I could not insert that I knew not. And it seems
improbable that a Question should be put, whether she knew (or rather who they
were) and at the same time to charge her, and that upon her Life, not to tell,
and if you had done so, I see but little good you could promise your self or
others by it, she being Possest, as also having it inculcated so much to her of
Witchcraft. And as to the next Objection about company flocking, etc., I do
profess my Ignorance, not knowing what you mean by it. And Sir, that most of
the Questions did carry with them a presupposing the things inquired after, is
evident, if there were such as those relating to the Black-man and a Book, and
about her hearing the Prayer, etc. (related in the said Narrative, which I find
no Objection against.) As to that which is said of mentioning your self first
discoursing and your hopes that your breeding was better (I doubt it not) nor
do I doubt your Father might first apply himself to others; but my intelligence
is, that you first spake to the Afflicted or Possessed, for which you had the
advantage of a nearer approach. The next two Objections are founded upon
mistakes: I find not in the Narrative any such Question, as how many Witches
sit upon you? and that her Breast was not covered, in which those material
words “with the Bed-Cloaths” are wholly omitted; I am not willing to retort
here your own Language upon you; but can tell you, that your own discourse of
it publickly, at Sir W. P.’s[221] Table, has much more contributed to, etc. As
to the Reply, if she could she would not tell, whether either or both spake it
it matters not much. Neither does the Narrative say you felt the live thing on
her Belly; tho I omit now to say what further demonstrations there are of it.
As to that Reply, that is only her fancy, I find the word “her” added. And as
to your Fathers feeling for the live Creature after you had felt it, if it were
on the Bed it was not so very far from her. And for the length of his Prayer,
possibly your Witnesses might keep a more exact account of the time than those
others, and I stand not for a few Minutes. For the rest of the Objections I
suppose them of less moment, if less can be (however shall be ready to receive
them, those matters of greatest concern I find no Objections against). These
being all that yet appear, it may be thought that if the Narrative be not fully
exact, it was as near as Memory could bear away; but should be glad to see one
more perfect (which yet is not to be expected, seeing none writ at the time).
You mention the appendix, by which I understand the Second Visit, and if you be
by the possessed belyed (as being half an hour with her alone, excluding her
own Mother, and as telling her you had Prayed for her Nine times that day, and
that now was her Laughing time, she must Laugh now) I can see no Wonder in it;
what can be expected less from the Father of Lies, by whom, you Judge, she was
possest.
And besides the above
Letter, you were pleased to send me another Paper containing several
Testimonies of the Possessed being lifted up, and held a space of several
Minutes to the Garret floor, etc., but they omit giving the account, whether
after she was down they bound her down: or kept holding her: And relate not how
many were to pull her down, which hinders the knowledge what number they must
be to be stronger than an Invisible Force. Upon the whole, I suppose you expect
I should believe it; and if so, the only advantage gain’d, is that which has
been so long controverted between Protestants and Papists, whether Miracles are
ceast, will hereby seem to be decided for the latter; it being, for ought I can
see, if so, as true a Miracle as for Iron to swim, and that the Devil can work
such Miracles.
But Sir, leaving these
little disputable things, I do again pray that you would let me have the
happiness of your approbation or confutation of that Letter before referred to.
And now, Sir, that the
God of all Grace may enable us Zealously to own his Truths, and to follow those
things that tend to Peace, and that yourself may be as an useful Instrument in
his hand, effectually to ruin the remainders of Heathenish and Popish
Superstitions, is the earnest desire and prayer of yours to command, in what I
may.
[204]. 1694 of our
present calendar.
[205]. Mather.
[206]. Haven’t, hain’t.
[207]. Then.
[208]. The answer to
Governor Phips’s letter of October 12 (see pp. 196-198, above) was indeed a royal
order of January 26 “approving his action in stopping the proceedings against
the witches in New England, and directing that in all future proceedings
against persons accused of witchcraft or of possession by the devil, all
circumspection be used so far as may be without impediment to the ordinary
course of justice” -- what Frederick the Great would have called “a vague
answer -- in the Austrian style -- that should mean nothing.” It of course did
not reach America till after the despatch of Sir William’s letter of February
21 (pp. 198-202, above).
[209]. The two Boston
booksellers’.
[210]. It is perhaps
idle to guess at the identity of this gentleman; but his initials suggest the
Rev. Joshua Moodey, whose kindlier attitude toward witches and their defenders
may be inferred from his course in the case of Philip English (see pp. 187-188,
note), and who, though early in 1693 he returned to Portsmouth, was still often
in Boston. Nor may it be forgotten that the initials of the Rev. Increase
Mather are by the printer constantly made “J. M.”
[211]. See above, p.
304, note 3.
[212]. See above, p.
216, note 1, and p. 219.
[213]. See above, p.
304, note 5.
[214]. To the end of
the paragraph the words are Gaule’s. Calef is quoting them, not from Gaule’s
book, but from Mather’s Wonders; for Gaule numbers this rule, not IV., but X.,
and the introductory words (“Among the most unhappy Circumstances to convict a
witch, one is”) are not his, but Mather’s -- and there are other slight
departures from Gaule’s wording.
[215]. With.
[216]. By a misprint
the original has “P. C.”
[217]. Travestying. See
p. 323, above.
[218]. See p. 318,
above.
[219]. See p. 123,
above.
[220]. 1694 of new
style.
[221]. Sir William
Phips’s.
[222]. Between this
letter and the pages of Calef’s book which here follow there intervene (1)
further letters from him to Mather and to other Boston ministers, on whom he
urges his views, (2) a body of documents relating to the controversy between
the Rev. Mr. Parris and his disaffected parishioners at Salem Village between
the period of the witch-trials and his removal, (3) an epistolary discussion as
to the theory of witchcraft between Calef and a Scotsman named Stuart.
An Impartial Account of the most Memorable Matters of Fact, touching the
supposed Witchcraft in New England.[223] Mr.
Parris had been some years a Minister in Salem-Village,[224] when this sad
Calamity (as a deluge) overflowed them, spreading it self far and near: He was
a Gentleman of Liberal Education, and not meeting with any great Encouragement,
or Advantage in Merchandizing, to which for some time he apply’d himself,
betook himself to the work of the Ministry; this Village being then vacant, he
met with so much Encouragement, as to settle in that Capacity among them.
After he had been there
about two years, he obtained a Grant from a part of the Town, that the House and
Land he Occupied, and which had been Alotted by the whole People to the
Ministry, should be and remain to him, etc. as his own Estate in Fee Simple.
This occasioned great Divisions both between the Inhabitants themselves, and
between a considerable part of them and their said Minister, which Divisions
were but as a beginning or Præludium to what immediately followed.
It was the latter end
of February 1691,[225] when divers young Persons belonging to Mr. Parris’s
Family, and one or more of the Neighbourhood, began to Act, after a strange and
unusual manner, viz. as by getting into Holes, and creeping under Chairs and
Stools, and to use sundry odd Postures and Antick Gestures, uttering foolish,
ridiculous Speeches, which neither they themselves nor any others could make
sense of; the Physicians that were called could assign no reason for this; but
it seems one of them,[226] having recourse to the old shift, told them he was
afraid they were Bewitched; upon such suggestions, they that were concerned
applied themselves to Fasting and Prayer, which was attended not only in their
own private Families, but with calling in the help of others.
March the 11th. Mr.
Parris invited several Neighbouring Ministers to join with him in keeping a
Solemn day of Prayer at his own House; the time of the exercise those Persons
were for the most part silent, but after any one Prayer was ended, they would
Act and Speak strangely and Ridiculously, yet were such as had been well
Educated and of good Behaviour, the one, a Girl of 11 or 12 years old,[227]
would sometimes seem to be in a Convulsion Fit, her Limbs being twisted several
ways, and very stiff, but presently her Fit would be over.
A few days before this
Solemn day of Prayer, Mr. Parris’s Indian Man and Woman[228] made a Cake of Rye
Meal, with the Childrens Water, and Baked it in the Ashes, and as is said, gave
it to the Dog; this was done as a means to Discover Witchcraft;[229] soon after
which those ill affected or afflicted Persons named several that they said they
saw, when in their Fits, afflicting of them.
The first complain’d
of, was the said Indian Woman, named Tituba. She confessed that the Devil urged
her to sign a Book, which he presented to her, and also to work Mischief to the
Children, etc. She was afterwards Committed to Prison, and lay there till Sold
for her Fees.[230] The account she since gives of it is, that her Master did
beat her and otherways abuse her, to make her confess and accuse (such as he
call’d) her Sister-Witches, and that whatsoever she said by way of confessing
or accusing others, was the effect of such usage; her Master refused to pay her
Fees, unless she would stand to what she had said.[231]
The Children complained
likewise of two other Women, to be the Authors of their Hurt, Viz. Sarah Good,
who had long been counted a Melancholy or Distracted Woman, and one Osburn, an
Old Bed-rid Woman; which two were Persons so ill thought of, that the
accusation was the more readily believed; and after Examination before two
Salem Magistrates,[232] were committed:
March the 19th, Mr.
Lawson (who had been formerly a Preacher at the said Village) came thither, and
hath since set fourth in Print an account of what then passed, about which
time, as he saith, they complained of Goodwife Cory, and Goodwife Nurse,
Members of the Churches at the Village and at Salem, many others being by that
time Accused.
March the 21st,
Goodwife Cory was examined before the Magistrates of Salem, at the Meeting
House in the Village, a throng of Spectators being present to see the Novelty.
Mr. Noyes, one of the Ministers of Salem, began with Prayer, after which the
Prisoner being call’d, in order to answer to what should be Alledged against
her, she desired that she might go to Prayer, and was answered by the
Magistrates, that they did not come to hear her pray, but to examine her.
The number of the
Afflicted were at that time about Ten, Viz. Mrs. Pope, Mrs. Putman, Goodwife
Bibber, and Goodwife Goodall, Mary Wolcott, Mercy Lewes (at Thomas Putmans) and
Dr. Griggs Maid, and three Girls, Viz. Elizabeth Parris, Daughter to the
Minister, Abigail Williams his Neice, and Ann Putman, which last three were not
only the beginners, but were also the chief in these Accusations. These Ten
were most of them present at the Examination, and did vehemently accuse her of
Afflicting them, by Biting, Pinching, Strangling, etc. And they said, they did
in their Fits see her likeness coming to them, and bringing a Book for them to
Sign; Mr. Hathorn, a Magistrate of Salem, asked her, why she Afflicted those
Children? she said, she did not Afflict them; he asked her, who did then? she
said, “I do not know, how should I know?” she said, they were Poor Distracted
Creatures, and no heed to be given to what they said; Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Noyes
replied that it was the Judgment of all that were there present, that they were
bewitched, and only she (the Accused) said they were Distracted: She was
Accused by them, that the Black Man Whispered to her in her Ear now (while she
was upon Examination) and that she had a Yellow Bird, that did use to Suck
between her Fingers, and that the said Bird did Suck now in the Assembly; order
being given to look in that place to see if there were any sign, the Girl that
pretended to see it said, that it was too late now, for she had removed a Pin,
and put it on her head, it was upon search found, that a Pin was there sticking
upright. When the Accused had any motion of their Body, Hands or Mouth, the
Accusers would cry out, as when she bit her Lip, they would cry out of being bitten,
if she grasped one hand with the other, they would cry out of being Pinched by
her, and would produce marks, so of the other motions of her Body, as
complaining of being Prest, when she lean’d to the seat next her, if she
stirred her Feet, they would stamp and cry out of Pain there. After the hearing
the said Cory was committed to Salem Prison, and then their crying out of her
abated.
March the 24th,
Goodwife Nurse was brought before Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Curwin (Magistrates) in
the Meeting House. Mr. Hale, Minister of Beverly, began with Prayer, after
which she being Accus’d of much the same Crimes made the like an swers,
asserting her own Innocence with earnestness. The Accusers were mostly the
same, Tho. Putmans Wife, etc. complaining much. The dreadful Shreiking from her
and others, was very amazing, which was heard at a great distance; she was also
Committed to Prison.
A Child of Sarah Goods
was likewise apprehended, being between 4 and 5 years Old. The Accusers said
this Child bit them, and would shew such like marks, as those of a small Sett
of Teeth upon their Arms; as many of the Afflicted as the Child cast its Eye
upon, would complain they were in Torment; which Child they also Committed.
Concerning these that
had been hitherto Examined and Committed, it is among other things observed by
Mr. Lawson (in Print[233]) that they were by the Accusers charged to belong to
a Company that did muster in Arms, and were reported by them to keep Days of
Fast, Thanksgiving and Sacraments; and that those Afflicted (or Accusers) did
in the Assembly Cure each others, even with a touch of their Hand, when
strangled and otherways tortured, and would endeavour to get to the Afflicted
to relieve them thereby (for hitherto they had not used the Experiment of
bringing the Accused to touch the Afflicted, in order to their Cure) and could
foretel one anothers Fits to be coming, and would say, look to such a one, she
will have a Fit presently and so it happened, and that at the same time when
the Accused person was present, the Afflicted said they saw her Spectre or
likeness in other places of the Meeting House Suckling[234] of their Familiars.
The said Mr. Lawson
being to Preach at the Village, after the Psalm was Sung, Abigail Williams
said, “Now stand up and name your Text”; after it was read, she said, “It is a
long Text.” Mrs. Pope in the beginning of Sermon said to him, “Now there is
enough of that.” In Sermon, he referring to his Doctrine, Abigail Williams said
to him, “I know no Doctrine you had, if you did name one I have forgot it.” Ann
Putman, an afflicted Girl, said, There was a Yellow Bird sate on his Hat as it
hung on the Pin in the Pulpit.
March 31, 1692. Was set
apart as a day of Solemn Humiliation at Salem, upon the Account of this
Business, on which day Abigail Williams said, That she saw a great number of
Persons in the Village at the Administration of a Mock Sacrament, where they
had Bread as read as raw Flesh, and red Drink.
April 1. Mercy Lewis
affirmed, That she saw a man in white, with whom she went into a Glorious
Place, viz. In her fits, where was no Light of the Sun, much less of Candles,
yet was full of Light and Brightness, with a great Multitude in White
Glittering Robes, who Sang the Song in 5. Rev. 9. and the 110 and 149 Psalms;
And was grieved that she might tarry no longer in this place. This White Man is
said to have appeared several times to others of them, and to have given them
notice how long it should be before they should have another Fit.
April the 3d. Being
Sacrament Day at the Village, Sarah Cloys, Sister to Goodwife Nurse, a Member
to one of the Churches, was (tho’ it seems with difficulty prevail’d with to
be) present; but being entred the place, and Mr. Parris naming his Text, 6
John, 70. Have not I chosen you Twelve, and one of you is a Devil (for what
cause may rest as a doubt whether upon the account of her Sisters being
Committed, or because of the choice of that Text) she rose up and went out, the
wind shutting the Door forcibly, gave occasion to some to suppose she went out
in Anger, and might occasion a suspicion of her; however she was soon after
complain’d of, examin’d and Committed.
April the 11th. By this
time the number of the Accused and Accusers being much encreased, was a Publick
Examination at Salem, Six of the Magistrates with several Ministers being
present;[235] there appeared several who complain’d against others with hidious
clamors and Screechings. Goodwife Proctor was brought thither, being Accused or
cryed out against; her Husband coming to attend and assist her, as there might
be need, the Accusers cryed out of him also, and that with so much earnestness,
that he was Committed with his Wife. About this time besides the Experiment of
the Afflicted falling at the sight, etc., they put the Accused upon saying the
Lords Prayer, which one among them performed, except in that petition, Deliver
us from Evil, she exprest it thus, Deliver us from all Evil. This was lookt
upon as if she Prayed against what she was now justly under, and being put upon
it again, and repeating those words, Hallowed be thy name, she exprest it,
Hollowed be thy Name, this was counted a depraving the words, as signifying to
make void, and so a Curse rather then[236] a Prayer, upon the whole it was
concluded that she also could not say it, etc. Proceeding in this work of
examination and Commitment, many were sent to Prison. As an Instance, see the
following Mittimus:
You are in Their
Majesties Names hereby required to take into your care, and safe custody, the
Bodies of William Hobs, and Deborah[238] his Wife, Mary Easty, the Wife of
Isaac Easty, and Sarah Wild, the Wife of John Wild, all of Topsfield; and
Edward Bishop of Salem-Village, Husbandman, and Sarah his Wife, and Mary Black,
a Negro of Lieutenant Nathaniel Putmans of Salem-Village; also Mary English the
Wife of Philip English, Merchant in Salem;[239] who stand charged with High
Suspicion of Sundry Acts of Witchcraft, done or committed by them lately upon
the Bodies of Ann Putman, Mercy Lewis[240] and Abigail Williams, of
Salem-Village, whereby great Hurt and Damage hath been done to the Bodies of
the said Persons, [as] according to the complaint of Thomas Putman and John
Buxton of Salem-Village, Exhibited Salem, Apr 21, 1692, appears, whom you are
to secure in order to their further Examination. Fail not.
You are in their
Majesties Names hereby required to convey the above-named to the Goal at Salem.
Fail not.
John Hathorn, Assistants. Jona. Curwin, Dated Salem, Apr 22, 1692. The occasion of Bishops being cry’d
out of[241] was, he being at an Examination in Salem, when at the Inn an
afflicted Indian[242] was very unruly, whom he undertook, and so managed him,
that he was very orderly, after which in riding home, in company of him and
other Accusers, the Indian fell into a fit, and clapping hold with his Teeth on
the back of the Man that rode before him, thereby held himself upon the Horse,
but said Bishop striking him with his stick, the Indian soon recovered, and
promised he would do so no more; to which Bishop replied, that he doubted not,
but he could cure them all, with more to the same effect; immediately after he
was parted from them, he was cried out of, etc.
May 14, 1692. Sir
William Phips arrived with Commission from Their Majesties to be Governour,
pursuant to the New-Charter; which he now brought with him; the Ancient Charter
having been vacated by King Charles, and King James (by which they had a power
not only to make their own Laws; but also to chuse their own Governour and
Officers;) and the Countrey for some years was put under an absolute
Commission-Government, till the Revolution,[243] at which time tho more than two
thirds of the People were for reassuming their ancient Government, (to which
they had encouragement by His then Royal Highness’s Proclamation) yet some that
might have been better imployed (in another Station)[244] made it their
business (by printing, as well as speaking) to their utmost to divert them from
such a settlement; and so far prevailed, that for about seven Weeks after the
Revolution, here was not so much as a face of any Government; but some few Men
upon their own Nomination would be called a Committee of Safety; but at length
the Assembly prevailed with those that had been of the Government, to promise
that they would reassume; and accordingly a Proclamation was drawn, but before
publishing it, it was underwritten, that they would not have it understood that
they did reassume Charter-Government; so that between Government and no
Government, this Countrey remained till Sir William arrived; Agents being in
this time impowered in England, which no doubt did not all of them act
according to the Minds or Interests of those that impowered them, which is
manifest by their not acting jointly in what was done; so that this place is
perhaps a single Instance (even in the best of Reigns) of a Charter not
restored after so happy a Revolution.
This settlement by Sir
William Phips his being come Governour put an end to all disputes of these
things, and being arrived, and having read his Commission, the first thing he
exerted his Power in, was said to be his giving Orders that Irons should be put
upon those in Prison; for tho for some time after these were Committed, the
Accusers ceased to cry out of them;[245] yet now the cry against them was
renewed, which occasioned such Order; and tho there was partiality in the
executing it (some having taken them off[246] almost as soon as put on) yet the
cry of these Accusers against such ceased after this Order.[247]
May 24. Mrs. Cary of
Charlestown, was Examined and Committed. Her Husband Mr. Nathaniel Cary[248]
has given account thereof, as also of her Escape, to this Effect,
I having heard some
days, that my Wife was accused of Witchcraft, being much disturbed at it, by
advice, we went to Salem-Village, to see if the afflicted did know her; we
arrived there, 24 May, it happened to be a day appointed for Examination; accordingly
soon after our arrival, Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Curwin, etc., went to the
Meeting-house, which was the place appointed for that Work, the Minister began
with Prayer, and having taken care to get a convenient place, I observed, that
the afflicted were two Girls of about Ten Years old,[249] and about two or
three other, of about eighteen, one of the Girls talked most, and could discern
more than the rest. The Prisoners were called in one by one, and as they came
in were cried out of, etc. The Prisoner was placed about 7 or 8 foot from the
Justices, and the Accusers between the Justices and them; the Prisoner was
ordered to stand right before the Justices, with an Officer appointed to hold
each hand, least they should therewith afflict them, and the Prisoners Eyes
must be constantly on the Justices; for if they look’d on the afflicted, they
would either fall into their Fits, or cry out of being hurt by them; after
Examination of the Prisoners, who it was afflicted these Girls, etc., they were
put upon saying the Lords Prayer, as a tryal of their guilt; after the
afflicted seem’d to be out of their Fits, they would look steadfastly on some
one person, and frequently not speak; and then the Justices said they were
struck dumb, and after a little time would speak again; then the Justices said
to the Accusers, “which of you will go and touch the Prisoner at the Bar?” then
the most couragious would adventure, but before they had made three steps would
ordinarily fall down as in a Fit; the Justices ordered that they should be
taken up and carried to the Prisoner, that she might touch them; and as soon as
they were touched by the accused, the Justices would say, they are well, before
I could discern any alteration; by which I observed that the Justices understood
the manner of it. Thus far I was only as a Spectator, my Wife also was there
part of the time, but no notice taken of her by the afflicted, except once or
twice they came to her and asked her name.
But I having an
opportunity to Discourse[250] Mr. Hale[251] (with whom I had formerly
acquaintance) I took his advice, what I had best to do, and desired of him that
I might have an opportunity to speak with her that accused my Wife; which he
promised should be, I acquainting him that I reposed my trust in him.
Accordingly he came to
me after the Examination was over, and told me I had now an opportunity to
speak with the said Accuser, viz. Abigail Williams, a Girl of 11 or 12 Years
old; but that we could not be in private at Mr. Parris’s House, as he had
promised me; we went therefore into the Alehouse, where an Indian Man attended
us, who it seems was one of the afflicted: to him we gave some Cyder, he shewed
several Scars, that seemed as if they had been long there, and shewed them as
done by Witchcraft, and acquainted us that his Wife, who also was a Slave, was
imprison’d for Witchcraft.[252] And now instead of one Accuser, they all came
in, who began to tumble down like Swine, and then three Women were called in to
attend them. We in the Room were all at a stand, to see who they would cry out
of; but in a short time they cried out, Cary; and immediately after a Warrant
was sent from the Justices to bring my Wife before them, who were sitting in a
Chamber near by, waiting for this.
Being brought before
the Justices, her chief accusers were two Girls; my Wife declared to the
Justices, that she never had any knowledge of them before that day; she was
forced to stand with her Arms stretched out. I did request that I might hold
one of her hands, but it was denied me; then she desired me to wipe the Tears
from her Eyes, and the Sweat from her Face, which I did; then she desired she
might lean her self on me, saying, she should faint.
Justice Hathorn
replied, she had strength enough to torment those 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. The
Indian before mentioned, was also brought in, to be one of her Accusers: being
come in, he now (when before the Justices) fell down and tumbled about like a
Hog, but said nothing. The Justices asked the Girls, who afflicted the Indian?
they answered she (meaning my Wife) and now lay upon him; the Justices ordered
her to touch him, in order to his cure, but her head must be turned another
way, least instead of curing, she should make him worse, by her looking on him,
her hand being guided to take hold of his; but the Indian took hold on her
hand, and pulled her down on the Floor, in a barbarous manner; then his hand
was taken off, and her hand put on his, and the cure was quickly wrought. I
being extreamly troubled at their Inhumane dealings, uttered a hasty Speech
(That God would take vengeance on them, and desired that God would deliver us
out of the hands of unmerciful men.) Then her Mittimus was writ. I did with
difficulty and charge obtain the liberty of a Room, but no Beds in it; if there
had, could have taken but little rest that Night. She was committed to Boston
Prison; but I obtained a Habeas Corpus to remove her to Cambridge Prison, which
is in our County of Mid dlesex. Having been there one Night, next Morning the
Jaylor put Irons on her legs (having received such a command) the weight of
them was about eight pounds; these Irons and her other Afflictions, soon
brought her into Convulsion Fits, so that I thought she would have died that
Night. I sent to intreat that the Irons might be taken off, but all intreaties
were in vain, if it would have saved her Life, so that in this condition she
must continue. The Tryals at Salem coming on, I went thither, to see how things
were there managed; and finding that the Spectre-Evidence was there received,
together with Idle, if not malicious Stories, against Peoples Lives, I did
easily perceive which way the rest would go; for the same Evidence that served
for one, would serve for all the rest. I acquainted her with her danger; and
that if she were carried to Salem to be tried, I feared she would never return.
I did my utmost that she might have her Tryal in our own County, I with several
others Petitioning the Judge for it, and were put in hopes of it; but I soon
saw so much, that I understood thereby it was not intended, which put me upon consulting
the means of her escape; which thro the goodness of God was effected, and she
got to Road Island,[253] but soon found her self not safe when there, by reason
of the pursuit after her; from thence she went to New-York, along with some
others that had escaped their cruel hands; where we found his Excellency
Benjamin Fletcher, Esq; Governour, who was very courteous to us. After this
some of my Goods were seized in a Friends hands, with whom I had left them, and
my self imprisoned by the Sheriff, and kept in Custody half a day, and then
dismist; but to speak of their usage of the Prisoners, and their Inhumanity
shewn to them, at the time of their Execution, no sober Christian could bear;
they had also tryals of cruel mockings; which is the more, considering what a
People for Religion, I mean the profession of it, we have been; those that
suffered being many of them Church-Members, and most of them unspotted in their
Conversation, till their Adversary the Devil took up this Method for accusing
them.
Per Nathaniel[254]
Cary.
May 31. Captain John
Aldin[255] was Examined at Salem, and Committed to Boston Prison. The
Prison-Keeper seeing such a Man Committed, of whom he had a good esteem, was
after this the more Compassionate to those that were in Prison on the like
account; and did refrain from such hard things to the Prisoners, as before he
had used. Mr. Aldin himself has given account of his Examination, in these
Words.
John Aldin Senior, of
Boston, in the County of Suffolk, Marriner, on the 28th Day of May, 1692, was
sent for by the Magistrates of Salem, in the County of Essex, upon the
Accusation of a company of poor distracted, or possessed Creatures or Witches;
and being sent by Mr. Stoughton,[256] arrived there the 31st of May, and
appeared at Salem-Village, before Mr. Gidney,[257] Mr. Hathorn, and Mr. Curwin.
Those Wenches being
present, who plaid their jugling tricks, falling down, crying out, and staring
in Peoples Faces; the Magistrates demanded of them several times, who it was of
all the People in the Room that hurt them? one of these Accusers pointed
several times at one Captain Hill, there present, but spake nothing; the same
Accuser had a Man standing at her back to hold her up; he stooped down to her
Ear, then she cried out, Aldin, Aldin afflicted her; one of the Magistrates
asked her if she had ever seen Aldin, she answered no, he asked her how she
knew it was Aldin? She said, the Man told her so.
Then all were ordered
to go down into the Street, where a Ring was made; and the same Accuser cried
out, “there stands Aldin, a bold fellow with his Hat on before the Judges, he
sells Powder and Shot to the Indians and French, and lies with the Indian
Squaes, and has Indian Papooses.” Then was Aldin committed to the Marshal’s
Custody, and his Sword taken from him; for they said he afflicted them with his
Sword. After some hours Aldin was sent for to the Meeting-house in the Village
before the Magistrates; who required Aldin to stand upon a Chair, to the open
view of all the People.
The Accusers cried out
that Aldin did pinch them, then, when he stood upon the Chair, in the sight of
all the People, a good way distant from them, one of the Magistrates bid the
Marshal to hold open Aldin’s hands, that he might not pinch those Creatures.
Aldin asked them why they should think, that he should come to that Village to
afflict those persons that he never knew or saw before? Mr. Gidney bid Aldin
confess, and give glory to God; Aldin said he hoped he should give glory to
God, and hoped he should never gratifie the Devil; but appealed to all that
ever knew him, if they ever suspected him to be such a person, and challenged
any one, that could bring in any thing upon their own knowledge, that might
give suspicion of his being such an one. Mr. Gidney said he had known Aldin
many Years, and had been at Sea with him, and always look’d upon him to be an
honest Man, but now he did see cause to alter his judgment: Aldin answered, he
was sorry for that, but he hoped God would clear up his Innocency, that he
would recall that judgment again, and added that he hoped that he should with
Job maintain his Integrity till he died. They bid Aldin look upon the Accusers,
which he did, and then they fell down. Aldin asked Mr. Gidney, what Reason
there could be given, why Aldin’s looking upon him did not strike him down as
well; but no reason was given that I heard. But the Accusers were brought to
Aldin to touch them, and this touch they said made them well. Aldin began to
speak of the Providence of God in suffering these Creatures to accuse Innocent
persons. Mr. Noyes asked Aldin why he would offer to speak of the Providence of
God. God by his Providence (said Mr. Noyes) governs the World, and keeps it in
peace; and so went on with Discourse, and stopt Aldin’s mouth, as to that.
Aldin told Mr. Gidney, that he could assure him that there was a lying Spirit
in them, for I can assure you that there is not a word of truth in all these
say of me. But Aldin was again committed to the Marshal, and his Mittimus
written, which was as follows.
To Mr. John Arnold, Keeper of the Prison in Boston, in the County of
Suffolk. Whereas Captain John
Aldin of Boston, Marriner, and Sarah Rice, Wife of Nicholas Rice of Reding, Husbandman,
have been this day brought before us, John Hathorn and Jonathan Curwin,
Esquires; being accused and suspected of perpetrating divers acts of
Witchcraft, contrary to the form of the Statute, in that Case made and
provided: These are therefore in Their Majesties, King William and Queen Marys
Names, to Will and require you, to take into your Custody, the bodies of the
said John Aldin, and Sarah Rice, and them safely keep, until they shall thence
be delivered by due course of Law; as you will answer the contrary at your
peril; and this shall be your sufficient Warrant. Given under our hands at
Salem Village, the 31st of May, in the Fourth Year of the Reign of our
Sovereign Lord and Lady, William and Mary, now King and Queen over England,
etc., Anno Dom. 1692.
John Hathorn, Assistants. Jonathan Curwin, To Boston Aldin was carried by a Constable, no Bail would be taken
for him; but was delivered to the Prison-keeper, where he remained Fifteen
Weeks,[258] and then observing the manner of Tryals, and Evidence then taken,
was at length prevailed with to make his Escape, and being returned, was bound
over to Answer at the Superior Court at Boston, the last Tuesday in April, Anno
1693. And was there cleared by Proclamation, none appearing against him.
Per John Aldin. At
Examination, and at other times, ’twas usual for the Accusers to tell of the
black Man, or of a Spectre, as being then on the Table, etc. The People about
would strike with Swords, or sticks at those places. One Justice broke his Cane
at this Exercise, and sometimes the Accusers would say, they struck the
Spectre, and it is reported several of the accused were hurt and wounded
thereby, though at home at the same time.
The Justices proceeding
in these works of Examination, and Commitment, to the end of May, there was by
that time about a Hundred persons Imprisoned upon that Account.
June 2. A special
Commission of Oyer and Terminer having been Issued out, to Mr. Stoughton, the
New Lieutenant Governour, Major Saltonstall, Major Richards, Major Gidny, Mr.
Wait Winthrop, Captain Sewall, and Mr. Sergeant;[259] These (a Quorum of them)
sat at Salem this day; where the most that was done this Week, was the Tryal of
one Bishop, alias Oliver, of Salem; who having long undergone the repute of a
Witch, occasioned by the Accusations of one Samuel Gray: he about 20 Years
since, having charged her with such Crimes, and though upon his Death-bed he
testified his sorrow and repentance for such Accustations, as being wholly
groundless; yet the report taken up by his means continued, and she being
accused by those afflicted, and upon search a Tet, as they call it, being
found, she was brought in guilty by the Jury; she received her Sentence of
Death, and was Executed, June 10, but made not the least Confession of any
thing relating to Witchcraft.[260]
June 15. Several
Ministers in and near Boston, having been to that end consulted by his
Excellency,[261] exprest their minds to this effect, viz.
That they were affected
with the deplorable state of the afflicted; That they were thankful for the
diligent care of the Rulers, to detect the abominable Witchcrafts, which have
been committed in the Country, praying for a perfect discovery thereof. But
advised to a cautious proceeding, least many Evils ensue, etc. And that tenderness
be used towards those accused, relating to matters presumptive and convictive,
and also to privacy in Examinations, and to consult Mr. Perkins and Mr.
Bernard,[262] what tests to make use of in the Scrutiny: That Presumptions and
Convictions ought to have better grounds, than the Accusers affirming that they
see such persons Spectres afflicting them: And that the Devil may afflict in
the shape of good Men; and that falling at the sight, and rising at the touch
of the Accused, is no infallible proof of guilt; That seeing the Devils
strength consists in such Accusations, our disbelieving them may be a means to
put a period to the dreadful Calamities; Nevertheless they humbly recommend to
the Government, the speedy and vigorous prosecu tion of such as have rendered
themselves obnoxious, according to the direction given in the Laws of God, and
the wholesome Statutes of the English Nation, for the Detection of Witchcraft.
This is briefly the
substance of what may be seen more at large in Cases of Conscience, (ult.)[263]
And one of them[264] since taking occasion to repeat some part of this advice,
Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 83, declares, (notwithstanding the
Dissatisfaction of others) that if his said Book may conduce to promote
thankfulness to God for such Executions, he shall rejoyce, etc.
The 30th of June, the
Court according to Adjournment again sat; five more were tried, viz. Sarah Good
and Rebecca Nurse, of Salem-Village; Susanna Martin of Amsbury; Elizabeth How
of Ipswich; and Sarah Wildes of Topsfield; these were all condemned that
Sessions, and were all Executed on the 19th of July.[265]
At the Tryal of Sarah
Good, one of the afflicted fell in a Fit, and after coming out of it, she cried
out of the Prisoner, for stabing her in the breast with a Knife, and that she
had broken the Knife in stabbing of her, accordingly a piece of the blade of a
Knife was found about her. Immediately information being given to the Court, a
young Man was called, who produced a Haft and part of the Blade, which the
Court having viewed and compared, saw it to be the same. And upon inquiry the
young Man affirmed, that yesterday he happened to break that Knife, and that he
cast away the upper part, this afflicted person being then present. The young
Man was dismist, and she was bidden by the Court not to tell lyes; and was
improved (after as she had been before) to give Evidence against the Prisoners.
At Execution, Mr. Noyes
urged Sarah Good to Confess, and told her she was a Witch, and she knew she was
a Witch, to which she replied, “you are a lyer; I am no more a Witch than you
are a Wizard, and if you take away my Life, God will give you Blood to drink.”
At the Tryal of Rebecka
Nurse, this was remarkable that the Jury brought in their Verdict not Guilty,
immediately all the accusers in the Court, and suddenly after all the afflicted
out of Court, made an hideous out-cry, to the amazement, not only of the
Spectators, but the Court also seemed strangely surprized; one of the Judges
exprest himself not satisfied, another of them as he was going off the Bench,
said they would have her Indicted anew. The chief Judge said he would not
Impose upon the Jury; but intimated, as if they had not well considered one
Expression of the Prisoners, when she was upon Tryal, viz. That when one Hobbs,
who had confessed her self to be a Witch, was brought into the Court to witness
against her, the Prisoner turning her head to her, said, “What, do you bring
her? she is one of us,” or to that effect; this together with the Clamours of the
Accusers, induced the Jury to go out again, after their Verdict, not Guilty.
But not agreeing, they came into the Court, and she being then at the Bar, her
words were repeated to her, in order to have had her explanation of them, and
she making no Reply to them, they found the Bill, and brought her in Guilty;
these words being the Inducement to it, as the Foreman has signified in
writing, as follows.
I Thomas Fisk, the
Subscriber hereof, being one of them that were of the Jury the last week at
Salem-Court, upon the Tryal of Rebecka Nurse, etc., being desired by some of
the Relations to give a Reason why the Jury brought her in Guilty, after her
Verdict not Guilty; I do hereby give my Reasons to be as follows, viz.
When the Verdict not
Guilty was, the honoured Court was pleased to object against it, saying to
them, that they think they let slip the words, which the Prisoner at the Bar
spake against her self, which were spoken in reply to Goodwife Hobbs and her
Daughter, who had been faulty in setting their hands to the Devils Book, as
they have confessed formerly; the words were “What, do these persons give in
Evidence against me now, they used to come among us.” After the honoured Court
had manifested their dissatisfaction of the Verdict, several of the Jury
declared themselves desirous to go out again, and thereupon the honoured Court
gave leave; but when we came to consider of the Case, I could not tell how to
take her words, as an Evidence against her, till she had a further opportunity
to put her Sense upon them, if she would take it; and then going into Court, I
mentioned the words aforesaid, which by one of the Court were affirmed to have
been spoken by her, she being then at the Bar, but made no reply, nor
interpretation of them; whereupon these words were to me a principal Evidence
against her.
Thomas Fisk. When Goodwife Nurse
was informed what use was made of these words, she put in this following
Declaration into the Court.
These presents do
humbly shew, to the honoured Court and Jury, that I being informed, that the
Jury brought me in Guilty, upon my saying that Goodwife Hobbs and her Daughter
were of our Company; but I intended no otherways, then as[266] they were
Prisoners with us, and therefore did then, and yet do judge them not legal
Evidence against their fellow Prisoners. And I being something hard of hearing,
and full of grief, none informing me how the Court took up my words, and therefore
had not opportunity to declare what I intended, when I said they were of our
Company.
Rebecka Nurse. After her
Condemnation she was by one of the Ministers of Salem excommunicated;[267] yet
the Governour saw cause to grant a Reprieve, which when known (and some say
immediately upon granting) the Accusers renewed their dismal out-cries against
her, insomuch that the Governour was by some Salem Gentleman prevailed with to
recall the Reprieve, and she was Executed with the rest.
The Testimonials of her
Christian behaviour, both in the course of her Life, and at her Death, and her
extraordinary care in educating her Children, and setting them good Examples,
etc., under the hands of so many, are so numerous, that for brevity they are
here omitted.[268]
It was at the Tryal of
these that one of the Accusers cried out publickly of Mr. Willard Minister in
Boston,[269] as afflicting of her; she was sent out of the Court, and it was
told about she was mistaken in the person.
August 5. The Court
again sitting, six more were tried on the same Account, viz. Mr. George
Burroughs, sometime minister of Wells, John Procter, and Elizabeth Procter his
Wife, with John Willard of Salem-Village, George Jacobs Senior, of Salem, and
Martha Carryer of Andover;[270] these were all brought in Guilty and Condemned;
and were all Executed Aug. 19, except Procter’s Wife, who pleaded
Pregnancy.[271]
Mr. Burroughs was
carried in a Cart with the others, through the streets of Salem to Execution;
when he was upon the Ladder, he made a Speech for the clearing of his
Innocency, with such Solemn and Serious Expressions, as were to the Admiration
of all present; his Prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord’s Prayer,)
was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, and such (at least
seeming) fervency of Spirit, as was very affecting, and drew Tears from many
(so that it seemed to some, that the Spectators would hinder the Execution).
The accusers said the black Man stood and dictated to him; as soon as he was
turned off, Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a Horse, addressed himself to
the People, partly to declare, that he was no ordained Minister, and partly to
possess the People of his guilt; saying, That the Devil has often been
transformed into an Angel of Light; and this did somewhat appease the People,
and the Executions went on; when he was cut down, he was dragged by the Halter
to a Hole, or Grave, between the Rocks, about two foot deep, his Shirt and
Breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of Trousers of one Executed, put on
his lower parts, he was so put in, together with Willard and Carryer, one of
his Hands and his Chin, and a Foot of one [of] them being left uncovered.[272]
John Willard had been
imployed to fetch in several that were accused; but taking dissatisfaction from
his being sent, to fetch up some that he had better thoughts of, he declined
the Service, and presently after he himself was accused of the same Crime, and
that with such vehemency, that they sent after him to apprehend him; he had
made his Escape as far as Nashawag,[273] about 40 Miles from Salem; yet’tis
said those Accusers did then presently tell the exact time, saying, now Willard
is taken.
John Procter and his
Wife being in Prison, the Sheriff came to his House and seized all the Goods,
Provisions, and Cattle that he could come at, and sold some of the Cattle at
half price, and killed others, and put them up for the West-Indies; threw out
the Beer out of a Barrel, and carried away the Barrel; emptied a Pot of Broath,
and took away the Pot, and left nothing in the House for the support of the
Children: No part of the said Goods are known to be returned. Procter earnestly
requested Mr. Noyes to pray with and for him, but it was wholly denied, because
he would not own himself to be a Witch.
During his Imprisonment
he sent the following Letter, in behalf of himself and others.
Salem-Prison, July 23, 1692. Mr. Mather, Mr. Allen, Mr. Moody, Mr.
Willard, and Mr. Bailey[274] Reverend Gentlemen. The innocency of our Case with the Enmity of our Accusers
and our Judges, and Jury, whom nothing but our Innocent Blood will serve their
turn, having Condemned us already before our Tryals, being so much incensed and
engaged against us by the Devil, makes us bold to Beg and Implore your Favourable
Assistance of this our Humble Petition to his Excellency, That if it be
possible our Innocent Blood may be spared, which undoubtedly otherwise will be
shed, if the Lord doth not mercifully step in. The Magistrates, Ministers,
Jewries,[275] and all the People in general, being so much inraged and incensed
against us by the Delusion of the Devil, which we can term no other, by reason
we know in our own Consciences, we are all Innocent Persons. Here are five
Persons who have lately confessed themselves to be Witches, and do accuse some
of us, of being along with them at a Sacrament, since we were committed into
close Prison, which we know to be Lies. Two of the 5 are (Carriers Sons[276])
Young-men, who would not confess any thing till they tyed them Neck and Heels[277]
till the Blood was ready to come out of their Noses, and ’tis credibly believed
and reported this was the occasion of making them confess that[278] they never
did, by reason they said one had been a Witch a Month, and another five Weeks,
and that their Mother had made them so, who has been confined here this nine
Weeks. My son William Procter, when he was examin’d, because he would not
confess that he was Guilty, when he was Innocent, they tyed him Neck and Heels
till the Blood gushed out at his Nose, and would have kept him so 24 Hours, if
one more Merciful than the rest, had not taken pity on him, and caused him to
be unbound. These actions are very like the Popish Cruelties. They have already
undone us in our Estates, and that will not serve their turns, without our
Innocent Bloods. If it cannot be granted that we can have our Trials at Boston,
we humbly beg that you would endeavour to have these Magistrates changed, and
others in their rooms, begging also and beseeching you would be pleased to be
here, if not all, some of you at our Trials, hoping thereby you may be the
means of saving the shedding our Innocent Bloods, desiring your Prayers to the
Lord in our behalf, we rest your Poor Afflicted Servants,
John Procter, etc. He
pleaded very hard at Execution, for a little respite of time, saying that he
was not fit to Die; but it was not granted.
Old Jacobs being
Condemned, the Sheriff and Officers came and seized all he had, his Wife had
her Wedding Ring taken from her, but with great difficulty obtained it again.
She was forced to buy Provisions of the Sheriff, such as he had taken, towards
her own support, which not being sufficient, the Neighbours of Charity relieved
her.[279]
Margaret Jacobs being
one that had confessed her own Guilt, and testified against her Grand-Father
Jacobs, Mr. Burroughs, and John Willard, She the day before Executions, came to
Mr. Burroughs, acknowledging that she had belyed them,[280] and begged Mr.
Burroughs Forgiveness, who not only forgave her, but also Prayed with and for
her. She wrote the following Letter to her Father.
From the Dungeon, in Salem-Prison, August 20, 92. Honoured Father, After my Humble Duty Remembred to
you, hoping in the Lord of your good Health, as Blessed be God I enjoy, tho in
abundance of Affliction, being close confined here in a loathsome Dungeon, the
Lord look down in mercy upon me, not knowing how soon I shall be put to Death,
by means of the Afflicted Persons; my Grand-Father having Suffered already, and
all his Estate Seized for the King. The reason of my Confinement is this, I
having, through the Magistrates Threatnings, and my own Vile and Wretched
Heart, confessed several things contrary to my Conscience and Knowledg, tho to
the Wounding of my own Soul, the Lord pardon me for it; but Oh! the terrors of
a wounded Conscience who can bear. But blessed be the Lord, he would not let me
go on in my Sins, but in mercy I hope so my Soul would not suffer me to keep it
in any longer, but I was forced to confess the truth of all before the
Magistrates, who would not believe me, but tis their pleasure to put me in
here, and God knows how soon I shall be put to death. Dear Father, let me beg
your Prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and send us a Joyful and Happy meeting
in Heaven. My Mother poor Woman is very Crazey, and remembers her kind Love to
you, and to Uncle, viz. D. A.[281] So leaving you to the protection of the
Lord, I rest your Dutiful Daughter,
Margaret Jacobs. At the time
appointed for her Tryal, she had an Imposthume in her head, which was her
Escape.[282]
September 9. Six more
were tried, and received Sentance of Death, viz. Martha Cory of Salem-Village,
Mary Easty of Topsfield, Alice Parker and Ann Pudeater of Salem, Dorcas Hoar of
Beverly, and Mary Bradberry of Salisbury.[283] September 16, Giles Cory was
prest to Death.
September 17. Nine more
received Sentance of Death, viz. Margaret Scot of Rowly, Goodwife Redd of
Marblehead, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker of Andover, also Abigail Falkner
of Andover, who pleaded Pregnancy, Rebecka Eames of Boxford, Mary Lacy, and Ann
Foster of Andover, and Abigail Hobbs of Topsfield.[284] Of these Eight were
Executed, September 22, viz. Martha Cory, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann
Pudeater, Margaret Scot, Willmet Redd, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker.
Giles Cory pleaded not
Guilty to his Indictment, but would not put himself upon Tryal by the Jury
(they having cleared none upon Tryal) and knowing there would be the same
Witnesses against him, rather chose to undergo what Death they would put him
to. In pressing his Tongue being prest out of his Mouth, the Sheriff with his
Cane forced it in again, when he was dying. He was the first in New-England,
that was ever prest to Death.[285]
The Cart going up the
Hill with these Eight to Execution, was for some time at a sett; the afflicted
and others said, that the Devil hindred it, etc.
Martha Cory, Wife to
Giles Cory, protesting her Innocency, concluded her Life with an Eminent Prayer
upon the Ladder.
Wardwell having
formerly confessed himself Guilty, and after denied it, was soon brought upon
his Tryal; his former Confession and Spectre Testimony was all that appeared
against him. At Execution while he was speaking to the People, protesting his
Innocency, the Executioner being at the same time smoaking Tobacco, the smoak
coming in his Face, interrupted his Discourse, those Accusers said, the Devil
hindred him with smoak.
Mary Easty, Sister also
to Rebecka Nurse, when she took her last farewell of her Husband, Children and
Friends, was, as is reported by them present, as Serious, Religious, Distinct,
and Affectionate as could well be exprest, drawing Tears from the Eyes of
almost all present. It seems besides the Testimony of the Accusers and
Confessors, another proof, as it was counted, appeared against her, it having
been usual to search the Accused for Tets; upon some parts of her Body, not
here to be named, was found an Excrescence, which they called a Tet. Before her
Death she put up the following Petition:
To the Honorable Judge
and Bench now sitting in Judicature in Salem and the Reverend Ministers, humbly
sheweth, That whereas your humble poor Petitioner being Condemned to die, doth
humbly beg of you, to take it into your Judicious and Pious Consideration, that
your poor and humble Petitioner knowing my own Innocency (blessed be the Lord
for it) and seeing plainly the Wiles and Subtilty of my Accusers, by my self,
cannot but judge charitably of others, that are going the same way with my
self, if the Lord step not mightily in. I was confined a whole Month on the
same account that I am now condemned for, and then cleared by the Afflicted
persons, as some of your Honours know, and in two days time I was cried out
upon by them, and have been confined, and now am condemned to die. The Lord
above knows my Innocency then, and likewise doth now, as at the great day will
be known to Men and Angels. I Petition to your Honours not for my own Life, for
I know I must die, and my appointed time is set; but the Lord he knows it is,
if it be possible, that no more Innocent Blood be shed, which undoubtedly
cannot be avoided in the way and course you go in. I question not, but your
Honours do to the utmost of your powers, in the discovery and detecting of
Witchcraft and Witches, and would not be guilty of Innocent Blood for the
World; but by my own Innocency I know you are in the wrong way. The Lord in his
infinite Mercy direct you in this great work, if it be his blessed will, that
Innocent Blood be not shed; I would humbly beg of you, that your Honours would
be pleased to Examine some of those confessing Witches, I being confident there
are several of them have belyed themselves and others, as will appear, if not
in this World, I am sure in the World to come, whither I am going; and I
question not, but your selves will see an alteration in these things: They say,
my self and others have made a league with the Devil, we cannot confess. I know
and the Lord he knows (as will shortly appear) they belye me, and so I question
not but they do others; the Lord alone, who is the searcher of all hearts,
knows that as I shall answer it at the Tribunal Seat, that I know not the least
thing of Witchcraft, therefore I cannot, I durst not belye my own Soul. I beg
your Honours not to deny this my humble Petition, from a poor dying Innocent
person, and I question not but the Lord will give a blessing to your
Endeavours.
Mary Esty. After Execution Mr.
Noyes turning him to the Bodies, said, what a sad thing it is to see Eight
Firebrands of Hell hanging there.
In October 1692, One of
Wenham[286] complained of Mrs. Hale, whose Husband, the Minister of Beverly,
had been very forward in these Prosecutions, but being fully satisfied of his
Wives sincere Christianity, caused him to alter his Judgment; for it was come
to a stated Controversie, among the New-England Divines, whether the Devil
could Afflict in a good Man’s shape; it seems nothing else could convince him:
yet when it came so near to himself, he was soon convinc’d that the Devil might
so Afflict.[287] Which same reason did after wards prevail with many others;
and much influenced to the succeeding change at Tryals.[288]
October 7. (Edward
Bishop and his Wife having made their Escape out of Prison) this day Mr. Corwin
the Sheriff, came and Seiz’d his Goods, and Cattle, and had it not been for his
second Son (who borrowed Ten Pound and gave it him) they had been wholly lost,
the Receipt follows; but it seems they must be content with such a Receipt as
he would give them.
Received this 7th day
of October 1692, of Samuel Bishop of the Town of Salem, of the County of Essex,
in New-England, Cordwainer, in full satisfaction, a valuable Summ of Money, for
the Goods and Chattels of Edward Bishop, Senior, of the Town and County
aforesaid, Husbandman; which Goods and Chattels being seized, for that the said
Edward Bishop, and Sarah his Wife, having been committed for Witchcraft and
Felony, have made their Escape; and their Goods and Chattles were forfeited
unto their Majesties, and now being in Possession of the said Samuel Bishop;
and in behalf of Their Majesties, I do hereby discharge the said Goods and
Chattles, the day and year above written, as witness my hand,
George Corwin, Sheriff. But
before this the said Bishops Eldest Son, having Married into that Family of the
Putmans,[289] who were chief Prosecutors in this business; he holding a Cow to
be branded lest it should be seiz’d, and having a Push or Boyl upon his Thigh,
with his straining it broke; this is that that was pretended to be burnt with
the said Brand; and is one of the bones thrown to the Dogmatical to pick, in
Wonders of the Invisible World, P. 143.[290] the other, of a Corner of a Sheet,
pretended to be taken from a Spectre, it is known that it was provided the day
before, by that Afflicted person, and the third bone of a Spindle is almost as
easily provided, as the piece of the Knife; so that Apollo needs not herein be
consulted,[291] etc.
Mr. Philip English and
his Wife having made their Escape out of Prison, Mr. Corwin the Sheriff seiz’d
his Estate, to the value of about Fifteen Hundred Pound, which was wholly lost
to him, except about Three Hundred Pound value, (which was afterward
restored.)[292]
After Goodwife Hoar was
Condemned, her Estate was seiz’d, and was also bought again for Eight Pound.
George Jacobs, Son to
old Jacobs,[293] being accused, he fled, then the Officers came to his House,
his Wife was a Woman Crazy in her Senses and had been so several Years. She it
seems had been also accused; there were in the House with her only four small
Children, and one of them suck’d, her Eldest Daughter[294] being in Prison; the
Officer perswaded her out of the House, to go along with him, telling her she
should speedily return, the Children ran a great way after her crying.
When she came where the
Afflicted were, being asked, they said they did not know her, at length one
said, don’t you know Jacobs the old Witch, and then they cry’d out of her, and
fell down in their Fits; she was sent to Prison, and lay there Ten Months, the
Neighbours of pitty took care of the Children to preserve them from perishing.
About this time a New
Scene was begun, one Joseph Ballard of Andover, whose Wife was ill (and after
died of a Fever) sent to Salem for some of those Accusers, to tell him who
afflicted his Wife; others did the like: Horse and Man were sent from several
places to fetch those Accusers who had the Spectral sight, that they might
thereby tell who afflicted those that were any ways ill.
When these came into
any place where such were, usually they fell into a Fit; after which being
asked who it was that afflicted the person, they would, for the most part, name
one whom they said sat on the head, and another that sat on the lower parts of
the afflicted. Soon after Ballard’s sending (as above) more than Fifty of the
People of Andover were complained of, for afflicting their Neighbours. Here it
was that many accused themselves, of Riding upon Poles through the Air; Many
Parents believing their Children to be Witches, and many Husbands their Wives,
etc. When these Accusers came to the House of any upon such account, it was
ordinary for other young People to be taken in Fits, and to have the same
Spectral sight.
Mr. Dudley
Bradstreet,[295] a Justice of Peace in Andover, having granted out Warrants
against, and Committed Thirty or Forty to Prisons, for the supposed
Witchcrafts, at length saw cause to forbear granting out any more Warrants.
Soon after which he and his Wife were cried out of, himself was (by them) said
to have killed Nine persons by Witchcraft, and found it his safest course to
make his Escape.
A Dog being afflicted
at Salem-Village, those that had the Spectral sight being sent for, they
accused Mr. John Bradstreet (Brother to the Justice) that he afflicted the said
Dog, and now rid upon him: He made his Escape into Pescattequa-Government,[296]
and the Dog was put to death, and was all of the Afflicted that suffered death.
At Andover, the
Afflicted complained of a Dog, as afflicting of them, and would fall into their
Fits at the Dogs looking upon them; the Dog was put to death.
A worthy Gentleman of
Boston, being about this time accused by those at Andover, he sent by some
particular Friends a Writ to Arrest those Accusers in a Thousand Pound Action
for Defamation, with instructions to them, to inform themselves of the
certainty of the proof, in doing which their business was perceived, and from
thence forward the Accusations at Andover generally ceased.[297]
In October some of
these Accusers were sent for to Glocester, and occasioned four Women to be sent
to Prison, but Salem Prison being so full it could receive no more, two were
sent to Ipswich Prison. In November they were sent for again by Lieutenant
Stephens, who was told that a Sister of his was bewitched; in their way passing
over Ipswich-bridge, they met with an old Woman, and instantly fell into their
Fits: But by this time the validity of such Accusations being much questioned,
they found not that Encouragement they had done elsewhere, and soon withdrew.
These Accusers swore
that they saw three persons sitting upon Lieutenant Stephens’s Sister till she
died; yet Bond was accepted for those Three.
And now Nineteen
persons having been hang’d, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned,
in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of
the Churches in N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation
in general, and not one clear’d; About Fifty having confest themselves to be
Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and
above Two Hundred more accused; The Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer
comes to a period,[298] which has no other foundation than the Governours
Commission,[299] and had proceeded in the manner of swearing Witnesses, viz. By
holding up the hand, (and by receiving Evidences in writing) according to the
Ancient Usage of this Countrey; as also having their Indictments in English. In
the Tryals, when any were Indicted for Afflicting, Pining, and wasting the Bodies
of particular persons by Witchcraft; it was usual to hear Evidence of matter
foreign, and of perhaps Twenty or Thirty years standing, about over-setting
Carts, the death of Cattle, un kindness to Relations, or unexpected Accidents
befalling after some quarrel. Whether this was admitted by the Law of England,
or by what other Law, wants to be determined; the Executions seemed mixt, in
pressing to death for not pleading, which most agrees with the Laws of England,
and Sentencing Women to be hanged for Witchcraft, according to the former
practice of this Country, and not by burning, as is said to have been the Law
of England.[300] And though the confessing Witches were many; yet not one of
them that confessed their own guilt, and abode by their Confession were put to
Death.[301]
Here followeth what
account some of those miserable Creatures give of their Confession under their
own hands.
We whose Names are
under written, Inhabitants of Andover, when as that horrible and tremendous
Judgment beginning at Salem-Village, in the Year 1692, (by some) call’d
Witchcraft, first breaking forth at Mr. Parris’s House, several Young persons
being seemingly afflicted, did accuse several persons for afflicting them, and
many there believing it so to be; we being informed that if a person were sick,
that the afflicted persons could tell, what or who was the cause of that
sickness. Joseph Ballard of Andover (his Wife being sick at the same time) he
either from himself, or by the advice of others, fetch’d two of the persons
call’d the afflicted persons, from Salem-Village to Andover. Which was the
beginning of that dreadful Calamity that befel us in Andover. And the Authority
in Andover, believing the said Accusations to be true, sent for the said
persons to come together, to the Meeting-house in Andover (the afflicted
persons being there.) After Mr. Bernard[302] had been at Prayer, we were
blindfolded, and our hands were laid upon the afflicted persons, they being in
their Fits, and falling into their Fits at our coming into their presence (as
they said) and some led us and laid our hands upon them, and then they said
they were well, and that we were guilty of afflicting of them; whereupon we
were all seized as Prisoners, by a Warrant from the Justice of the Peace, and
forthwith carried to Salem. And by reason of that suddain surprizal, we knowing
our selves altogether Innocent of that Crime, we were all exceedingly
astonished and amazed, and consternated and affrighted even out of our Reason;
and our nearest and dearest Relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition,
and knowing our great danger, apprehending that there was no other way to save
our lives, as the case was then circumstantiated, but by our confessing our
selves to be such and such persons, as the afflicted represented us to be, they
out of tender love and pitty perswaded us to confess what we did confess. And
indeed that Confession, that is said we made, was no other than what was
suggested to us by some Gentlemen; they telling us, that we were Witches, and
they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us
think that it was so; and our understanding, our reason, and our faculties
almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition; as also the hard
measures they used with us, rendred us uncapable of making our Defence; but
said any thing and every thing which they desired, and most of what we said,
was but in effect a consenting to what they said. Sometime after when we were
better composed, they telling of us what we had confessed, we did profess that
we were Innocent, and Ignorant of such things. And we hearing that Samuel
Wardwell had renounced his Confession, and quickly after Condemned and
Executed, some of us were told that we were going after Wardwell.
Mary Osgood, Mary Tiler, Deliv. Dane, Abigail Barker, Sarah Wilson,
Hannah Tiler.[303] It may here be
further added concerning those that did Confess, that besides that powerful
Argument, of Life (and freedom from hardships and Irons not only promised, but
also performed to all that owned their guilt), There are numerous Instances,
too many to be here inserted, of the tedious Examinations before private
persons, many hours together; they all that time urging them to Confess (and
taking turns to perswade them) till the accused were wearied out by being
forced to stand so long, or for want of Sleep, etc. and so brought to give an
Assent to what they said; they then asking them , Were you at such a
Witch-meeting, or have you signed the Devil’s Book, etc. upon their replying,
yes, the whole was drawn into form as their Confession.
But that which did
mightily further such Confessions, was their nearest and dearest Relations
urging them to it. These seeing no other way of escape for them, thought it the
best advice that could be given; hence it was that the Husbands of some, by
counsel often urging, and utmost earnestness, and Children upon their Knees
intreating, have at length prevailed with them, to say they were guilty.[304]
As to the manner of
Tryals, and the Evidence taken for Convictions at Salem, it is already set
forth in Print, by the Reverend Mr. Cotton Mather, in his Wonders of the
Invisible World , at the Command of his Excellency, Sir William Phips; with not
only the Recommendation, but thanks of the Lieutenant Governour;[305] and with
the Approbation of the Reverend Mr. J. M.[306] in his Postscript to his Cases
of Conscience; which last Book was set forth by the consent of the Ministers in
and near Boston.[307]
Two of the Judges have
also given their Sentiments in these words, p. 147.
The Reverend and worthy
Author, having at the direction of his Excellency the Governour, so far obliged
the Publick, as to give some account of the sufferings, brought upon the
Countrey by Witchcrafts, and of the Tryals which have passed upon several
executed for the same.
Upon perusal thereof,
We find the matters of Fact and Evidence truly reported, and a prospect given
of the Methods of Conviction, used in the proceedings of the Court at Salem.
Boston, October 11, 1692. William Stoughton, Samuel Sewall. And considering that this may fall into
the hands of such as never saw those Wonders, it may be needful to transcribe
the whole account he has given thereof, without any variation (but with one of
the Indictments annext to the Tryal of each).[308]
Thus far the Account
given in Wonders of the Invisible World; in which setting aside such words as
these, in the Tryal of G. B. viz., “They (i. e. the Witnesses) were enough to
fix the character of a Witch upon him.”[309]
In the Tryal of Bishop,
these words, “but there was no need of them,” i. e. of further Testimony.[310]
In the Tryal of How,
where it is said, “and there came in Testimony of preternatural Mischiefs,
presently befalling some that had been instrumental to debar her from the
Communion, whereupon she was intruding.”[311] Martin is call’d “one of the most
impudent, scurrilous, wicked Creatures in the World.” In his Account of Martha
Carryer, he is pleased to call her “a Rampant Hag,”[312] etc.
These Expressions, as
they manifest that he wrote more like an Advocate than an Historian,[313] so
also that those that were his Imployers[314] were not mistaken in their choice
of him for that work, however he may have mist it in other things.
As in his owning (in
the Tryal of G. B.) That the Testimony of the bewitched and confessors was not
enough against the Accused, for it is known that not only in New-England, such
Evidence has been taken for sufficient, but also in England, as himself there
owns, and will also hold true of Scotland, etc., they having proceeded upon
such Evidence, to the taking away of the Lives of many, to assert that this is
not enough is to tell the World that such Executions were but so many Bloody
Murders; which surely was not his intent to say.
His telling that the
Court began to think that Burroughs stept aside to put on invisibility, is a
rendring them so mean Philosophers, and such weak Christians, as to be fit to
be imposed upon by any silly pretender.
His calling the
Evidence against How trivial, and others against Burroughs, he accounts no part
of his Conviction; and that of lifting a Gun with one Finger, its being not
made use of as Evidence, renders the whole but the more perplext. (Not to
mention the many mistakes therein contain’d.)[315]
Yet all this (and more
that might have been hinted at) does not hinder, but that his Account of the
manner of Trials of those for Witchcraft is as faithfully related as any Tryals
of that kind, that was ever yet made publick;[316] and it may also be
reasonably thought that there was as careful a Scrutiny, and as unquestion’d
Evidences improved, as had been formerly used in the Tryals of others, for such
crimes in other places. Tho indeed a second part might be very useful, to set
forth which was the Evidence Convictive in these Tryals, for it is not
supposed, that Romantick or Ridiculous stories should have any influence, such
as biting a Spectres Finger, so that the Blood flowed out, or such as Shattock’s
Story of 12 Years standing, which yet was presently 18 Years or more, and yet a
Man of that excellent Memory, as to be able to recall a small difference his
Wife had with another Woman, when Eighteen Years were past.[317]
As it is not to be
supposed that such as these could Influence any Judge or Jury, so not
unkindness to relations, or God’s having given to one Man more strength than to
some others, the over-setting of Carts, or the death of Cattle, nor yet Excrescencies
(call’d Tets) nor little bits of Rags tied together (call’d Poppets.) Much less
any persons illness, or having their Cloaths rent when a Spectre has been well
banged, much less the burning the Mares Fart, mentioned in the Tryal of
How.[318]
None of these being in
the least capable of proving the Indictment; The supposed Criminals were
Indicted for Afflicting, etc., such and such particular persons by Witchcraft,
to which none of these Evidences have one word to say, and the Afflicted and Confessors
being declared not enough, the matter needs yet further explaining.[319]
But to proceed, the
General Court having sat and enacted Laws, particularly one against Witchcraft,
assigning the Penalty of Death to any that shall feed, reward or employ, etc.,
Evil Spirits, though it has not yet been explained what is intended thereby, or
what it is to feed, reward or imploy Devils, etc., yet some of the Legislators
have given this instead of an Explanation, that they had therein but Copied the
Law of another Country.[320]
January 3. By vertue of
an Act of the General Court, the first Superior Court was held at Salem, for
the County of Essex, the Judges appointed were Mr. William Stoughton (the
Lieutenant Governour) Thomas Danforth, John Richards, Wait Winthorp,[321] and
Samuel Sewall, Esquires, Where Ignoramus[322] was found upon the several Bills
of Indictment against Thirty, and Billa Vera[323] against Twenty six more; of
all these Three only were found Guilty by the Jewry upon Trial, two of which
were (as appears by their Behaviour) the most senseless and Ignorant Creatures
that could be found;[324] besides which it does not appear what came in against
those more than against the rest that were acquitted.[325]
The Third was the Wife
of Wardwell, who was one of the Twenty Executed, and it seems they had both
confessed themselves Guilty; but he retracting his said Confession, was tried
and Executed;[326] it is supposed that this Woman fearing her Husbands fate,
was not so stiff in her denyals of her former Confession, such as it was. These
Three received Sentence of Death.
At these Tryals some of
the Jewry made Inquiry of the Court, what Account they ought to make of the
Spectre Evidence? and received for Answer “as much as of Chips in Wort.”[327]
January 31, 169 2/3.
The Superior Court began at Charles-town, for the County of Middlesex, Mr.
Stoughton, Mr. Danforth, Mr. Winthorp, and Mr. Sewall Judges, where several had
Ignoramus returned upon their Bills of Indictment, and Billa Vera upon others.
In the time the Court
sat, word was brought in, that a Reprieve was sent to Salem,[328] and had
prevented the Execution of Seven of those that were there Condemned, which so
moved the chief Judge,[329] that he said to this effect, “We were in a way to
have cleared the Land of these, etc., who it is obstructs the course of Justice
I know not; the Lord be merciful to the Countrey,” and so went off the Bench,
and came no more that Court: The most remarkable of the Tryals, was of Sarah
Daston, she was a Woman of about 70 or 80 Years of Age. To usher in her Tryal,
a report went before, that if there were a Witch in the World she was one, as
having been so accounted of, for 20 or 30 Years; which drew many People from
Boston, etc., to hear her Tryal. There were a multitude of Witnesses produced
against her; but what Testimony they gave in seemed wholly forreign, as of
accidents, illness, etc., befalling them, or theirs after some Quarrel; what
these testified was much of it of Actions said to be done 20 Years before that
time. The Spectre-Evidence was not made use of in these Tryals, so that the
Jewry soon brought her in not Guilty; her Daughter and Grand-daughter, and the
rest that were then tried, were also acquitted. After she was cleared Judge
Danforth Admonished her in these words, “Woman, Woman, repent, there are shrewd
things come in against you”; she was remanded to Prison for her Fees, and there
in a short time expired. One of Boston that had been at the Tryal of Daston,
being the same Evening in company with one of the Judges in a publick place,
acquainted him that some that had been both at the Tryals at Salem and at this
at Charlestown, had asserted that there was more Evidence against the said
Daston than against any at Salem, to which the said Judge conceeded, saying,
That it was so. It was replied by that person, that he dare give it under his
hand, that there was not enough come in against her to bear a just
reproof.[330]
April 25, 1693. The
first Superiour Court was held at Boston, for the County of Suffolk, the Judges
were the Lieutenant Governour, Mr. Danforth, Mr. Richards and Mr. Sewall,
Esquires.
Where (besides the
acquitting Mr. John Aldin by Proclamation) the most remarkable was, what
related to Mary Watkins, who had been a Servant, and lived about Seven Miles
from Boston, having formerly Accused her Mistress of Witch craft, and was
supposed to be distracted, she was threatned if she persisted in such
Accusations to be punished; this with the necessary care to recover her Health,
had that good effect, that she not only had her Health restored, but also
wholly acquitted her Mistress of any such Crimes, and continued in Health till
the return of the Year, and then again falling into Melancholly humours she was
found strangling her self; her Life being hereby prolonged, she immediately
accused her self of being a Witch; was carried before a Magistrate and
committed. At this Court a Bill of Indictment was brought to the Grand Jury
against her, and her confession upon her Examination given in as Evidence, but
these not wholly satisfied herewith, sent for her, who gave such account of her
self, that they (after they had returned into the Court to ask some Questions)
Twelve of them agreed to find Ignoramus, but the Court was pleased to send them
out again, who again at coming in returned it as before.
She was continued for
some time in Prison, etc., and at length was sold to Virginia.[331] About this
time the Prisoners in all the Prisons were released.[332]
To omit here the
mentioning of several Wenches in Boston, etc., who pretended to be Afflicted,
and accused several, the Ministers often visiting them, and praying with them,
concerning whose Affliction Narratives are in being in Manuscript.[333] Not
only these, but the generality of those Accusers may have since convinc’d the
Ministers by their vicious courses that they might err in extending too much
Charity to them.
The conclusion of the
whole in the Massachusetts Colony was, Sir William Phips, Governour, being call’d
home, before he went he pardon’d such as had been condemned, for which they
gave about 30 Shillings each to the Kings Attorney.[334]
In August 1697. The
Superiour Court sat at Hartford, in the Colony of Connecticut, where one
Mistress Benom was tried for Witchcraft, she had been accused by some Children
that pretended to the Spectral sight; they searched her several times for Tets;
they tried the Experiment of casting her into the Water,[335] and after this she
was Excommunicated by the Minister of Wallinsford.[336] Upon her Tryal nothing
material appearing against her, save Spectre Evidence, she was acquitted, as
also her Daughter, a Girl of Twelve or Thirteen Years old, who had been
likewise Accused; but upon renewed Complaints against them, they both fled into
New-York Government.[337]
Before this the
Government Issued forth the following Proclamation.[338]
Whereas the Anger of
God is not yet turned away, but his Hand is still stretched out against his
People in manifold Judgments, particularly in drawing out to such a length the
troubles of Europe, by a perplexing War; and more especially, respecting ourselves
in this Province, in that God is pleased still to go on in diminishing our
Substance, cutting short our Harvest, blasting our most promising undertakings
more ways than one, unsetling of us,[339] and by his more Immediate hand,
snatching away many out of our Embraces, by sudden and violent Deaths, even at
this time when the Sword is devouring so many both at home and abroad, and that
after many days of publick and Solemn addressing of him, And altho considering
the many Sins prevailing in the midst of us, we cannot but wonder at the
Patience and Mercy moderating these Rebukes; yet we cannot but also fear that
there is something still wanting to accompany our Supplications. And doubtless
there are some particular Sins, which God is Angry with our Israel for, that
have not been duly seen and resented by us, about which God expects to be
sought, if ever he turn again our Captivity.
Wherefore it is
Commanded and Appointed, that Thursday the Fourteenth of January next be
observed as a Day of Prayer, with Fasting throughout this Province, strictly
forbidding all Servile labour thereon; that so all Gods People may offer up
fervent Supplications unto him, for the Preservation, and Prosperity of his
Majesty’s Royal Person and Government, and Success to attend his Affairs both
at home and abroad; that all iniquity may be put away which hath stirred God’s
Holy jealousie against this Land; that he would shew us what we know not, and
help us wherein we have done amiss to do so no more; and especially that
whatever mistakes on either hand have been fallen into, either by the body of
this People, or any orders of men, referring to the late Tragedy, raised among
us by Satan and his Instruments, thro the awful Judgment of God, he would
humble us therefore[340]and pardon all the Errors of his Servants and People,
that desire to love his Name and be attoned to his Land; that he would remove
the Rod of the wicked from off the Lot of the Righteous; that he would bring
the American Heathen, and cause them to hear and obey his Voice.
Given at Boston,
Decemb. 17, 1696, in the 8th Year of his Majesties Reign.
Isaac Addington, Secretary. Upon
the Day of the Fast in the full Assembly, at the South Meeting-House in Boston,
one of the Honourable Judges, who had sat in Judicature in Salem, delivered in
a Paper,[341] and while it was in reading stood up, But the Copy being not to
be obtained at present, It can only be reported by Memory to this effect, viz.
It was to desire the Prayers of God’s People for him and his, and that God
having visited his Family, etc., he was apprehensive that he might have fallen
into some Errors in the Matters at Salem, and pray that the Guilt of such
Miscarriages may not be imputed either to the Country in general, or to him or
his family in particular.
We whose names are
under written, being in the Year 1692 called to serve as Jurors, in Court at
Salem, on Tryal of many, who were by some suspected Guilty of doing Acts of
Witchcraft upon the Bodies of sundry Persons:
We confess that we our
selves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand the mysterious
delusions of the Powers of Darkness, and Prince of the Air; but were for want
of Knowledge in our selves, and better Information from others, prevailed with
to take up with such Evidence against the Accused, as on further consideration,
and better Information, we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the
Lives of any, Deut. 17. 6, whereby we fear we have been instrumental with
others, tho Ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon our selves, and this
People of the Lord, the Guilt of Innocent Blood; which Sin the Lord saith in
Scripture, he would not pardon, 2 Kings 24. 4, that is we suppose in regard of
his temporal Judgments. We do therefore hereby signifie to all in general (and
to the surviving Sufferers in especial) our deep sense of, and sorrow for our
Errors, in acting on such Evidence to the condemning of any person.
And do hereby declare
that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken, for which we are
much disquieted and dis tressed in our minds; and do therefore humbly beg
forgiveness, first of God for Christ’s sake for this our Error; And pray that
God would not impute the guilt of it to our selves, nor others; and we also
pray that we may be considered candidly, and aright by the living Sufferers as
being then under the power of a strong and general Delusion, utterly
unacquainted with, and not experienced in matters of that Nature.
We do heartily ask
forgiveness of you all, whom we have justly offended, and do declare according
to our present minds, we would none of us do such things again on such grounds
for the whole World; praying you to accept of this in way of Satisfaction for
our Offence; and that you would bless the Inheritance of the Lord, that he may
be intreated for the Land.
Foreman, Thomas Fisk, William Fisk, John Batcheler, Thomas Fisk, Junior
John Dane, Joseph Evelith, Thomas Perly, Senior John Pebody, Thomas Perkins,
Samuel Sayer, Andrew Elliott, Henry Herrick, Senior.[342] Mr. C. M. having been very forward
to write Books of Witchcraft, has not been so forward either to explain or
defend the Doctrinal part thereof, and his belief (which he had a Years time to
compose) he durst not venture so as to be copied.[343] Yet in this of the Life
of Sir William he sufficiently testifies his retaining that Heterodox belief,
seeking by frightfull stories of the sufferings of some, and the refined sight
of others, etc., P. 69 to obtrude upon the World, and confirm it in such a
belief, as hitherto he either cannot or will not defend, as if the Blood
already shed thereby were not sufficient.
Mr. I. Mather, in his
Cases of Conscience, P. 25, tells of a Bewitched Eye, and that such can see
more than others. They were certainly bewitched Eyes that could see as well
shut as open, and that could see what never was, that could see the Prisoners
upon the Afflicted, harming of them, when those whose Eyes were not bewitched could
have sworn that they did not stir from the Bar. The Accusers are said to have
suffered much by biting, P. 73. And the prints of just such a set of Teeth, as
those they Accused, had, but such as had not such bewitch’d Eyes have seen the
Accusers bite themselves, and then complain of the Accused. It has also been
seen when the Accused, instead of having just such a set of Teeth, has not had
one in his head. They were such bewitched Eyes that could see the Poisonous
Powder (brought by Spectres P. 70.) And that could see in the Ashes the print
of the Brand, there invisibly heated to torment the pretended Sufferers with,
etc.
These with the rest of
such Legends have this direct tendency, viz. To tell the World that the Devil
is more ready to serve his Votaries, by his doing for them things above or
against the course of Nature, shewing himself to them, and making explicit
contract with them, etc., than the Divine Being is to his faithful Servants,
and that as he is willing, so also able to perform their desires. The way
whereby these People are believed to arrive at a power to Afflict their
Neighbours, is by a compact with the Devil, and that they have a power to
Commissionate him to those Evils, P. 72. However Irrational, or Inscriptural
such Assertions are, yet they seem a necessary part of the Faith of such as
maintain the belief of such a sort of Witches.
As the Scriptures know
nothing of a covenanting or commissioning Witch, so Reason cannot conceive how
Mortals should by their Wickedness arrive at a power to Commissionate Angels,
Fallen Angels, against their Innocent Neighbours. But the Scriptures are full
in it, and the Instances numerous, that the Almighty, Divine Being has this
prerogative to make use of what Instrument he pleaseth, in Afflicting any, and
consequently to commissionate Devils: And tho this word commissioning, in the
Authors former Books, might be thought to be by inadvertency; yet now after he
hath been caution’d of it, still to persist in it seems highly Criminal. And
therefore in the name of God, I here charge such belief as guilty of Sacriledge
in the highest Nature, and so much worse than stealing Church Plate, etc., As
it is a higher Offence to steal any of the glorious Attributes of the Almighty,
to bestow them upon Mortals, than it is to steal the Utensils appropriated to
his Service. And whether to ascribe such power of commissioning Devils to the
worst of Men, be not direct Blasphemy, I leave to others better able to
determine. When the Pharisees were so wicked as to ascribe to Beelzebub, the
mighty works of Christ (whereby he did manifestly shew forth his Power and
Godhead) then it was that our Saviour declar’d the Sin against the Holy Ghost
to be unpardonable.
When the Righteous God
is contending with Apostate Sinners, for their departures from him, by his
Judgments, as Plagues, Earthquakes, Storms and Tempests, Sicknesses and
Diseases, Wars, loss of Cattle, etc. Then not only to ascribe this to the
Devil, but to charge one another with sending or commissionating those Devils to
these things, is so abominable and so wicked, that it requires a better
Judgment than mine to give it its just denomination.
But that Christians so
called should not only charge their fellow Christians therewith, but proceed to
Tryals and Executions; crediting that Enemy to all Goodness, and Accuser of the
Brethren, rather than believe their Neighbours in their own Defence; This is so
Diabolical a Wickedness as cannot proceed, but from a Doctrine of Devils; how
far damnable it is let others discuss. Tho such things were acting in this
Country in Sir Williams time, yet p. 65. there is a Discourse of a Guardian
Angel, as then over-seeing it, which notion, however it may suit the Faith of
Ethnicks,[344] or the fancies of Trithemius,[345] it is certain that the
Omnipresent Being stands not in need as Earthly Potentates do, of governing the
World by Vicegerents. And if Sir William had such an Invisible pattern to
imitate, no wonder tho some of his Actions were unaccountable, especially those
relating to Witchcraft: For if there was in those Actions an Angel
super-intending, there is little reason to think it was Gabriel or the Spirit
of Mercury, nor Hanael the Angel or Spirit of Venus, nor yet Samuel the Angel
or Spirit of Mars; Names feigned by the said Trithemius, etc. It may rather be
thought to be Apollyon, or Abaddon.
Obj.[346] But here it
will be said, “What, are there no Witches? Do’s not the Law of God command that
they should be extirpated? Is the Command vain and Unintelligible?” Sol.[347]
For any to say that a Witch is one that makes a compact with, and Commissions
Devils, etc., is indeed to render the Law of God vain and Unintelligible, as
having provided no way whereby they might be detected, and proved to be such;
And how the Jews waded thro this difficulty for so many Ages, without the
Supplement of Mr. Perkins and Bernard thereto, would be very mysterious. But to
him that can read the Scriptures without prejudice from Education, etc., it
will manifestly appear that the Scripture is full and Intelligible, both as to
the Crime and means to detect the culpable. He that shall hereafter see any
person, who to confirm People in a false belief, about the power of Witches and
Devils, pretending to a sign to confirm it, such as knocking off of invisible
Chains with the hand, driving away Devils by brushing, striking with a Sword or
Stick, to wound a person at a great distance, etc., may (according to that head
of Mr. Gauls, quoted by Mr. C. M. and so often herein before recited, and so
well proved by Scripture) conclude that he has seen Witchcraft performed.
If Baalam became a
Sorcerer by Sacrifizing and Praying to the true God against his visible people;
Then he that shall pray that the afflicted (by their Spectral Sight) may accuse
some other Person (whereby their reputations and lives may be indangered) such
will justly deserve the Name of a Sorcerer. If any Person pretends to know more
then[348] can be known by humane means, and professeth at the same time that
they have it from the Black-Man, i. e. the Devil, and shall from hence give
Testimony against the Lives of others, they are manifestly such as have a
familiar Spirit; and if any, knowing them to have their Information from the
Black-Man, shall be inquisitive of them for their Testimony against others,
they therein are dealing with such as have a Familiar-Spirit.
And if these shall
pretend to see the dead by their Spectral Sight, and others shall be
inquisitive of them, and receive their Answers what it is the dead say, and who
it is they accuse, both the one and the other are by Scripture Guilty of
Necromancy.
These are all of them
crimes as easily proved as any whatsoever, and that by such proof as the Law of
God requires, so that it is no Unintelligible Law.
But if the Iniquity of
the times be such, that these Criminals not only Escape Indemnified,[349] but
are Incouraged in their Wickedness, and made use of to take away the Lives of
others, this is worse than a making the Law of God Vain, it being a rendring of
it dangerous, against the Lives of Innocents, and without all hopes of better,
so long as these Bloody Principles remain.
As long as Christians
do Esteem the Law of God to be Imperfect, as not describing that crime that it
requires to be Punish’d by Death;
As long as men suffer
themselves to be Poison’d in their Education, and be grounded in a False Belief
by the Books of the Heathen;
As long as the Devil
shall be believed to have a Natural Power, to Act above and against a course of
Nature;
As long as the Witches
shall be believed to have a Power to Commission him;
As long as the Devils
Testimony, by the pretended afflicted, shall be received as more valid to
Condemn, than their Plea of Not Guilty to acquit;
As long as the Accused
shall have their Lives and Liberties confirmed and restored to them, upon their
Confessing themselves Guilty;
As long as the Accused
shall be forc’t to undergo Hardships and Torments for their not Confessing;
As long as Tets for the
Devil to Suck are searched for upon the Bodies of the accused, as a token of
guilt;
As long as the Lords
Prayer shall be profaned, by being made a Test, who are culpable;
As long as Witchcraft,
Sorcery, Familiar Spirits, and Necromancy, shall be improved to discover who
are Witches, etc.,
So long it may be
expected that Innocents will suffer as Witches.
So long God will be
Daily dishonoured, And so long his Judgments must be expected to be continued.
[223]. I. e., the
witchcraft at Salem in 1692.
[224]. As to Parris and
Salem Village, and in general as to the Salem witchcraft, which is the subject
of the rest of Calef’s narrative, see the introduction and notes to Lawson’s
Brief Account (pp. 147-164, above). That account (as also the parallel
narrative of Hale, at pp. 413 ff., below) should be constantly compared with
the present one.
[225]. 1692 of our
calendar.
[226]. Doubtless Dr.
William Griggs, of Salem Village, whose wife’s niece, a maid in his household,
was one of the “afflicted.”
[227]. Abigail
Williams, Parris’s niece.
[228]. West-Indian
slaves, brought back with him from Barbadoes.
[229]. It was suggested
by the wife of a neighbor. When, a fortnight later, she was disciplined by the
village church for this dabbling in superstition, Parris himself wrote in the
church-record book: “It is well known that when these Calamities first began,
which was in my own Family, the Affliction was several weeks before such
hellish Operations as Witchcraft was suspected; Nay, it never broke forth to
any considerable Light, until diabolical Means was used, by the making of a
cake by my Indian Man, who had his Directions from this our Sister Mary Sibly;
since which Apparitions have been plenty, and exceeding much Mischief hath
followed.” (Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II. 95; Hanson, Danvers, p. 289, quoted by
Drake.)
[230]. I. e., to meet
her prison expenses. She lay there for a year and a month.
[231]. Besides the
documents of Tituba’s case printed in the Records of Salem Witchcraft (I.
41-50), a much fuller report of her examination (March 1-2, 1692) strangely
differing from that already printed, is appended to Drake’s edition of Mather
and Calef (The Witchcraft Delusion in New England, III. 185-195).
[232]. On March 1,
before John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin. From this point to his entry of April
3 Calef’s narrative rests wholly on that of Lawson.
[233] See above, pp.
162-164.
[234]. “Sucking” in
original; corrected in Errata.
[235]. Among them was
Samuel Sewall, who wrote in his diary for that day: “Went to Salem, where, in
the Meeting-house, the persons accused of Witchcraft were examined; was a very
great Assembly; ’twas awfull to see how the afflicted persons were agitated.
Mr. Noyes pray’d at the beginning, and Mr. Higginson concluded.” In the margin
he has later added: “Vae, Vae, Vae, Witchcraft” -- i. e., “woe, woe, woe!” So
many (seven) of the magistrates were present that the court took the form of a “council”
(the highest of colonial tribunals), under the presidency of Deputy-governor
Danforth (Records of Salem Witchcraft, I. 101; Hutchinson, Massachusetts,
second ed., II. 27-30).
[236]. I. e., than.
This spelling was then usual.
[237]. Jail-keeper.
[238]. Deliverance.
[239]. Mary Esty, aged
56, was a sister of Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse. We shall meet her again. As
to these Topsfield cases, see above, p. 237, note 1. Edward Bishop, aged 44,
was probably a step-son of Bridget Bishop (see above, pp. 223-229, and below,
p. 356), and his wife was a daughter of John Wilds. On Mary Black, see
Chandler, American Criminal Trials, I. 427, and Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II.
136-137. As for Mary English, see below, p. 371.
[240]. “Mary” in
original; corrected in Errata.
[241]. I. e., cried out
against, accused.
[242]. The afflicted
Indian, i.e., Parris’s John: it is clearly a misprint.
[243]. I. e., the
English Revolution and the overthrow in New England of the Andros government
(1689).
[244]. He doubtless
means especially Cotton Mather. So, at least, Mather assumes in his reply (his
letter in Some Few Remarks, etc., pp. 46-47) and vigorously denies that he
opposed the reassumption.
[245]. See p. 348, note
1.
[246]. Doubtless a
misprint for “having them taken off.”
[247]. The reason for
the irons was the assertion of the “afflicted” that their sufferings did not
cease till the accused were thus in fetters. An account of the prison-keeper
(Hanson, Danvers, p. 290) has such items as: “May 9th, To Chains for Sarah Good
and Sarah Osborn, 14s. May 23d, To Shackles for 10 Prisoners. May 29th, to 1
pr. Irons.” See also Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 212, 213. Even little
Dorcas Good was put into chains.
[248]. Captain
Nathaniel Cary was a shipmaster, a man of ability and prominence, later a
member of the General Court and a justice.
[249]. Abigail Williams
and Ann Putnam.
[250]. Talk with.
[251]. The Rev. John
Hale, of Beverly. As to his part in the trials see below, p. 369.
[252]. Cary is
speaking, of course, of “John Indian” and Tituba.
[253]. Rhode Island. “July
30, 1692. Mrs. Cary makes her escape out of Cambridge-Prison, who was Committed
for Witchcraft.” (Sewall, Diary, I. 362.)
[254]. “Jonathan” in
original: corrected to “Nathaniel” in Errata.
[255]. See above, pp.
170, note 2, and 178, note 6. Captain Alden, Indian fighter, naval commander,
now at seventy a man of wealth, was one of the leading figures of New England.
[256]. The
lieutenant-governor -- soon to be head of the special court for the trial of
the witches. See above, p. 183, note 2, and p. 199.
[257]. Bartholomew
Gedney, of Salem, the third magistrate, was, like his colleagues, an assistant
of the province.
[258]. Captain Alden’s
case seems to have made a great stir. On July 20 there was held a special “Fast
at the house of Capt. Alden, upon his account.” Judge Sewall read a sermon, and
Willard, Allen, and Cotton Mather prayed, then Captain Hill and Captain
Scottow; “concluded about 5. aclock.” (Sewall, Diary, I. 361-362.) A year
later, on June 12, 1693, Sewall records: “I visit Capt. Alden and his wife, and
tell them I was sorry for their Sorrow and Temptations by reason of his
Imprisonment, and that [I] was glad of his Restauration.”
[259]. See above, pp.
183-185, 196-198. These gentlemen were all members of the new Council of the
province. Saltonstall, out of dissatisfaction with the proceedings, early
withdrew (see above, p. 184), and was later himself accused (Sewall’s Diary, I.
373). Jonathan Corwin took his place. A quorum was five. All the judges had had
experience in the colony’s Court of Assistants; but none had had a legal
training.
[260]. As to the trial
of Bridget Bishop see above, pp. 223-229. Before her last marriage she had been
a widow Oliver. The testimony against her includes the deposition of a Samuel
Gray (Records of Salem Witchcraft, I. 152-153) as to her bewitching to death
his child some fourteen years before. Of his repentance at his death, which
must have been recent when Calef wrote, the writer doubtless speaks from
personal knowledge.
[261]. See above, p.
194.
[262]. See above, p.
304, notes 3, 5.
[263]. The full text of
the document, that is, may be found at the end of Increase Mather’s Cases of
Conscience (London, 1693). With that book, or from it, it has been often
reprinted. In his life of Phips (and in its reprint in his Magnalia) Cotton
Mather tells us that it was drawn up by himself; but it doubtless embodied a
compromise. Increase Mather calls it “the humble Advice which twelve Ministers
concurringly presented before his Excellency and Council,” and it entitles
itself “The Return of several Ministers consulted by his Excellency, and the
Honourable Council, upon the present Witchcrafts in Salem Village.”
[264]. Cotton Mather,
of course.
[265]. As to the trials
of Susanna Martin and Elizabeth How see above, pp. , and records there cited.
The documents for those of Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wildes, may be
found in Records of Salem Witchcraft (I. 11-34, 76-99, 180-189), but for the two
last more fully in the Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical
Society (XIII. 80-92).
[266]. I. e., than
that.
[267]. By Mr. Noyes, of
whose church in Salem Town she was a member. Says the church record: “1692,
July 3. -- After sacrament, the elders propounded to the church, -- and it was,
by an unanimous vote, consented to, -- that our sister Nurse, being a convicted
witch by the Court, and condemned to die, should be excommunicated; which was
accordingly done in the afternoon, she being present.” (Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, II. 290.) Upham, himself long pastor of this church, has drawn a
powerful picture of the probable scene.
[268]. Two of these
testimonials, one of them signed by thirty-eight of her neighbors, are printed
by Upham (Salem Witchcraft, II. 271-272), and more exactly, from the still
extant MSS., in the Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society
(XIII. 57-58) -- and with them the touching evidence of the neighbors who first
bore her the news of her accusation.
[269]. See above, pp.
22, 184, and 186, note 3.
[270]. As to the trials
of Burroughs and Goodwife Carrier see above, pp. 215-222, 241-244, and records
there cited. Those relating to Procter and his wife, to Willard, and to Jacobs
may be found in Records of Salem Witchcraft (I. 60-74, 99-117, 266-279,
253-265). The testimonials on behalf of the Procters are reprinted (with
corrections) by Upham (Salem Witchcraft, II. 305-307). As to Willard other
papers will be found in Dr. S. A. Green’s Groton in the Witchcraft Times
(Groton, 1883), pp. 23-29. The documents relating to Jacobs are to be found
also in the Collections of the Essex Institute (II. 49-57), where (and in I.
52-56) are further details as to him and his household.
[271]. For Brattle’s
account of their execution see above, p. 177.
[272]. “This day,”
writes Judge Sewall in his diary, “George Burrough, John Willard, Jno. Procter,
Martha Carrier and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of
Spectators being present. Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, Hale, Noyes,
Chiever, etc. All of them said they were innocent, Carrier and all. Mr. Mather
says they all died by a Righteous Sentence. Mr. Burrough by his Speech, Prayer,
protestation of his Innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which
occasions their speaking hardly concerning his being executed.” In the margin
he later added “Dolefull Witchcraft!”
[273]. Nashaway, an old
name of Lancaster.
[274]. By “Mr. Mather”
is unquestionably meant Increase Mather. He alone, as the senior in age and in
dignity, could with propriety be thus given the first place; and his son, if
named at all, would have been identified as “Mr. Cotton Mather.” That he is not
named at all needs no explanation to those who have read his own words as to
accusers and accused and his complaints as to the blame heaped upon himself. Of
Moody, Willard, Bailey, we have perhaps seen enough in earlier pages to guess
why such an appeal might with hope be addressed to them. The Boston Tory Joshua
Broadbent, writing on June 21 from New York, reported that “Mrs. Moody, Parson
Moody’s wife, is said to be one” of the witches. (Calendar of State Papers,
Colonial, 1689-1692, p. 653.) Of Allen, the well-to-do minister of the First
Church, who seems to have been a man of much caution, it may be well to
remember that prior to 1678 he had owned the estate at Salem Village since
occupied, but not yet in full ownership, by the Nurses, Procter’s near
neighbors, and that he was doubtless personally known to the petitioner.
Bailey, who had come to America in 1683, had at first assisted Willard at the
South Church, and, after a pastorate at Watertown, was now Allen’s assistant at
the First.
[275]. Juries. It
should not be overlooked that in these trials of 1692 the jurors were chosen
from among church-members only, not, as later, from all who had the property to
make them voters under the new charter. The act establishing this qualification
for the jurors was not passed till November 25. (See Goodell in Mass. Hist.
Soc., Proceedings, second series, I. 67-68.)
[276]. Richard and
Andrew, sons of Martha Carrier, of Andover. (See above, pp. 241-244.) Richard
was 18.
[277]. As to this form
of torture see above, p. 102 and note 1. For some of the evidence extorted by
it in this case see Records of Salem Witchcraft, p. 198. The use of torture in
cases of witchcraft had been recommended by Perkins, the Puritan oracle, and
yet more warmly by King James; and despite protesting jurists it came into use.
Even Coke, who maintains that “there is no Law to warrant tortures in this
land, nor can they be justified by any prescription,” has to add “being so
lately brought in” (Institutes, III., cap. 2). As to its actual use in English
witch-trials see Notestein, Witchcraft in England, index, s. v. “Torture.” But
Massachusetts law, from 1641 on, had straitly forbidden it except, after
conviction, to extort the names of accomplices; and even then forbade “such
tortures as be barbarous and inhumane” (see Body of Liberties, par. 45; ed. of
1660, p. 67; ed. of 1672, p. 129). If in 1648 the highest court of the colony,
learning with admiration of the achievements of Matthew Hopkins in England, was
“desirous that the same course which hath been taken in England for the
discovery of witches, by watchinge, may also be taken here,” and ordered, in
the case of a witch, that “a strict watch be set about her every night, and
that her husband be confined to a private room, and watched also” (Records of
Massachusetts, III. 126), their phrasing betrays how little they understood the
rigor of the English method. In 1692 even Cotton Mather declared himself “farr
from urging the un-English method of torture” (Mather Papers, p. 394), though
he urged on the judges “whatever hath a tendency to put the witches into
confusion,” such as “Crosse and Swift Questions.” But the procedure of that
day, like our own, drew a line between what might be used in the courts and
what might be permitted to extra-judicial inquiry, and we shall see yet more of
methods used at Salem to extort confession.
[278]. That which.
[279]. I. e., out of
charity the neighbors relieved her.
[280]. How she was
brought to confess she herself told in a brave paper:
“The humble declaration
of Margaret Jacobs unto the honoured court now sitting at Salem, sheweth
“That whereas your poor
and humble declarant being closely confined here in Salem jail for the crime of
witchcraft, which crime, thanks be to the Lord, I am altogether ignorant of, as
will appear at the great day of judgment. May it please the honoured court, I was
cried out upon by some of the possessed persons, as afflicting of them;
whereupon I was brought to my examination, which persons at the sight of me
fell down, which did very much startle and affright me. The Lord above knows I
knew nothing, in the least measure, how or who afflicted them; they told me,
without doubt I did, or else they would not fall down at me; they told me if I
would not confess, I should be put down into the dungeon and would be hanged,
but if I would confess I should have my life; the which did so affright me,
with my own vile wicked heart, to save my life made me make the confession I
did, which confession, may it please the honoured court, is altogether false
and untrue. The very first night after I had made my confession, I was in such
horror of conscience that I could not sleep, for fear the Devil should carry me
away for telling such horrid lies. I was, may it please the honoured court,
sworn to my confession, as I understand since, but then, at that time, was
ignorant of it, not knowing what an oath did mean. The Lord, I hope, in whom I
trust, out of the abundance of his mercy, will forgive me my false forswearing
myself. What I said was altogether false, against my grandfather, and Mr.
Burroughs, which I did to save my life and to have my liberty; but the Lord,
charging it to my conscience, made me in so much horror, that I could not
contain myself before I had denied my confession, which I did, though I saw
nothing but death before me, choosing rather death with a quiet conscience,
than to live in such horror, which I could not suffer. Whereupon my denying my
confession, I was committed to close prison, where I have enjoyed more felicity
in spirit a thousand times than I did before in my enlargement.
“And now, may it please
your honours, your poor and humble declarant having, in part, given your
honours a description of my condition, do leave it to your honours pious and
judicious discretions to take pity and compassion on my young and tender years;
to act and do with me as the Lord above and your honours shall see good, having
no friend but the Lord to plead my cause for me; not being guilty in the least
measure of the crime of witchcraft, nor any other sin that deserves death from
man; and your poor and humble declarant shall forever pray, as she is bound in
duty, for your honours’ happiness in this life, and eternal felicity in the
world to come. So prays your honours declarant.
“Margaret Jacobs.”
The document is
preserved by Hutchinson, and may be found in the first chapter of his second
volume (or in Poole’s reprint of an earlier draft, N. E. Hist. and Gen.
Register, XXIV. 402-403).
[281]. Daniel Andrew,
the kinsman and neighbor who had fled with her father. He had been a leading
man, a teacher, a deputy to the General Court, and apparently a staunch
opponent of the panic. As to the crazed mother, see p. 371, below, and the
grandmother’s petition in Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, V. 79 (or in Chandler’s
American Criminal Trials, I. 431-432).
[282]. For a little
more of her story see below, p. 371. She was acquitted in January, but had to
remain in jail, even after the governor by proclamation had freed the prisoners
(May, 1693), for want of means to pay her prison fees. A stranger, touched with
compassion on hearing of her case, advanced the money -- and was in time
repaid. (Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II. 353-354.)
[283]. The papers
relating to Ann Pudeater (Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 12-22) have been
embodied in a study of her case by G. F. Chever in the Collections of the Essex
Institute (II. 37-42, 49-54). The widow Dorcas Hoar seems to have earned some
suspicion by an interest in fortune-telling (Records of Salem Witchcraft, I.
235-253), and, though she confessed, she was condemned; but she had potent
friends. “A petition is sent to Town,” says Sewall in his Diary on September
21, “in behalf of Dorcas Hoar, who now confesses. Accordingly an order is sent
to the Sheriff to forbear her Execution.” “This is,” he adds, “the first
condemned person who has confess’d.” The aged Mrs. Bradbury, daughter of John
Perkins of Ipswich and wife of Captain Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, was not
only one of the most socially eminent but one of the most venerated women of
her region, and her arrest enlisted in her defence the public sentiment of all
the district (see Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 160-174). She was aided to
escape from prison, and so from death.
[284]. For the Andover
and Topsfield cases reference may again be made to Mrs. Bailey’s Historical
Sketches of Andover and to vol. XIII. of the Collections of the Topsfield
Historical Society as well as to the Records of Salem Witchcraft. The papers as
to Wilmot Redd, or Reed, are in the Records (II. 97-106); Margaret Scott’s seem
lost. The examinations of Mary Lacy and Ann Foster should be studied in
Hutchinson’s chapter as well as in the Records (II. 135-142), and see also p.
244, above, and pp. 418-419, below.
[285]. This was, of
course, the old English “peine forte et dure” for those who, in cases of petty
treason or of felony, will not “put themselves upon the country,” or, as Coke
has it, “when the offender standeth mute, and refuseth to be tryed by the
common law of the land.” (See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law,
second ed., II. 650-652.) Whether in Giles Corey’s case this was mere proud
protest or had some ulterior end is not yet clear. The theory that he hoped
thereby to save himself from attainder and preserve his right to bequeath his
property has been learnedly contested by G. H. Moore (see especially his Final
Notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts, New York, 1885, pp. 40-59). As to Giles
Corey see also p. 250, above, and Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 175-180. The
missing report of his examination is printed at the end of Calef’s book in the
editions of 1823, 1861, and 1866.
[286]. Mary Herrick. At
least the following remarkable tale of hers (first published in the N. E. Hist.
and Gen. Register, XXVII. 55) must have had to do with Mr. Hale’s change of
view:
“An Account Received
from the mouth of Mary Herrick aged about 17 yeares having been Afflicted [by]
the Devill or some of his instruments, about 2 month. She saith she had oft
been Afflicted and that the shape of Mrs. Hayle had been represented to her,
One amongst others, but she knew not what hand Afflicted her then, but on the
5th of the 9th [i. e., November] She Appeared again with the Ghost of Gooddee
Easty, and that then Mrs. Hayle did sorely Afflict her by pinching, pricking
and Choaking her. On the 12th of the 9th she Came again and Gooddee Easty with
her and then Mrs. Hayle did Afflict her as formerly. Sd Easty made as if she
would speake but did not, but on the same night they Came again and Mrs. Hayle
did sorely Afflict her, and asked her if she thought she was a Witch. The Girl
answered no, You be the Devill. Then said Easty sd and speake, She Came to tell
her She had been put to Death wrongfully and was Innocent of Witchcraft, and
she Came to Vindicate her Cause and she Cryed Vengeance, Vengeance, and bid her
reveal this to Mr. Hayle and Gerish, and then she would rise no more, nor
should Mrs. Hayle Afflict her any more. Memorand: that Just before sd Easty was
Executed, She Appeared to sd Girl, and said I am going upon the Ladder to be
hanged for a Witch, but I am innocent, and before a 12 Month be past you shall
believe it. Sd Girl sd she speake not of this before because she believed she
was Guilty, Till Mrs. Hayle appeared to her and Afflicted her, but now she
believeth it is all a Delusion of the Devil.
“This before Mr. Hayle
and Gerish 14th of the 9th 1692.”
“Gerish” means the Rev.
Joseph Gerrish, of Wenham, who is doubtless here the scribe.
[287]. But see (at pp.
404, 405, below) Hale’s own account of this change of view.
[288]. Hale’s whole
book (see below, pp. 397-432) is a commentary on this passage.
[289]. His wife was a
daughter of John Putnam, brother of Nathaniel and uncle of Deacon Edward and of
the Thomas whose wife and daughter were of the “afflicted.” As to the Bishops
see (besides Upham) Essex Institute Collections, XLII. 146 ff.
[290]. At pp. 247-248,
above.
[291]. I. e., it needs
no oracle to explain the matter; see p. 248, note 1.
[292]. Philip English
was the foremost ship-owner of Salem, a man of large wealth and exceptional
prominence. He had come in early life from the island of Jersey and at Salem
had married, in 1675, the daughter and heiress of the merchant William
Hollingworth. His wife, now thirty-nine, a lady of education and refinement,
was arrested on April 22 (see p. 347, above) and on April 30 a warrant was
issued for himself, but he could not be found. Detected, however, in his Boston
hiding-place, he was on May 31 committed, but was allowed to give bail, and
with his wife was kept in loose custody at Boston. As to their escape thence,
see above, pp. 178, 186, note 3; and for their story in general the articles by
G. F. Chever in the Essex Institute’s Collections, I., II., Salem Witchcraft
Records, I. 189-193, the evidence of William Beale appended by Drake to his ed.
of Mather and Calef (III. 177-185), the documents printed in the Publications
of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, X. 17-20, a letter of Dr. Bentley in
Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, first ser., X. 64-66, and a passage from his
diary quoted by R. D. Paine in The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem (New York,
1909), pp. 26-28.
[293]. See above, pp.
360, 364.
[294]. Margaret.See pp.
364-366.
[295]. A son of the
venerable Governor Bradstreet and himself a man of station.
[296]. I. e., New
Hampshire.
[297]. On this Andover
episode see also pp. 180-181, 241-244, above.
[298]. Its last session
was on September 22, though the court was not definitely dropped till the end
of October. See above, p. 200 and note 1.
[299]. The implication
perhaps is that the governor exceeded his powers. That question has been much
and hotly debated -- most learnedly by Mr. A. C. Goodell in his Further Notes
on the History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1884), pp. 20 ff.,
and Dr. G. H. Moore in his Final Notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts (New
York, 1885), pp. 71-84.
[300]. This is an
error. In England, too, witches were hanged -- unless convicted of bewitching
to death their husbands, when for husband-murder, “petty treason,” they were
burned (see Coke, Institutes, pt. III., cap. 2, 6, 101, and the records of the
courts). Sir Matthew Hale indeed makes witchcraft “at Common Law” still “punished
with death, as Heresie, by Writ De Hæretico Comburendo” (Pleas of the Crown, p.
6). But this, of course, was after trial by an ecclesiastical court; and since
the Reformation ecclesiastical courts had not had cognizance of such cases.
[301]. This, the most
striking feature of the Salem trials, is perhaps partially explained by the
closing suggestion of Cotton Mather’s advice to the judges (Mather Papers, p.
396): “What if some of the lesser Criminalls be onely scourged with lesser
punishments, and also put upon some solemn, open, Publike and Explicitt
renunciation of the Divil?... Or what if the death of some of the offenders
were either diverted or inflicted, according to the successe of such their
renunciation?” If it was unique that those who confessed escaped death, it was
nothing unique that they should be reckoned “lesser Criminalls.”
[302]. The Rev. Thomas
Barnard, associate minister at Andover. Dane, his senior, seems to have been
averse to the proceedings.
[303]. This is
doubtless what Brattle calls (p. 189, above) “a petition lately offered to the
chief Judge.” The examination and confession of Mary Osgood may be found in
Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, II. ch. I. (or in Poole’s reprint, N. E. Hist. and
Gen. Register, XXIV. 398). She, the two Tylers, and Abigail Barker were tried
and acquitted in January at the first session of the new Superior Court (see in
vol. X. of the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts the brief
but valuable paper of John Noble, pp. 12-26).
[304]The best
commentary on these words is a remarkable paper which more than a century ago
came into the hands of the Massachusetts Historical Society and was published
in its Collections (second series, 111. 221-225). As Dr. Belknap, who prepared
it for publication, labelled it "Remainder of the account of the Salem
Witchcraft" and seems to have meant it to be printed with Brattle’s letter
(see pp. 169-190, above), it is not improbable that, with that document, it had
come from the family of Brattle and that it was originally his. In that case it
is by no means impossible that in his hands Calef may have seen it and that
from him he may have received the recantation printed just above. The added
paper runs:
"Salem, Oct. 19, ’92.
The Rev. Mr. 1. Mather went to Salem [to visit] the confessours (so called): He
conferred with several of them, and they spake as follows:" [Then are
narrated the explanations given by eleven of the women, the most suggestive
being this:] "Goodwife Tyler did say, that when she was first apprehended,
she had no fears upon her, and did think that nothing could have made her
confesse against herself; but since, she had found to her great grief, that she
had wronged the truth, and falsely accused herself: she said, that when she was
brought to Salem, her brother Bridges rode with her, and that all along the way
from Andover to Salem, her brother kept telling her that she must needs be a
witch, since the afflicted accused her, and at her touch were raised out of
their fitts, and urging her to confess herself a witch; she as constantly told
him,that she was no witch, that she knew nothing of witchcraft, and begg’d of
him not to urge her to confesse; however when she came to Salem, she was
carried to a room, where her brother on one side and Mr. John Emerson on the
other side did tell her that she was certainly a witch, and that she saw the
devill before her eyes at that time (and accordingly the said Emerson would
attempt with his hand to beat him away from her eyes) and they so urged her to
confesse, that she wished herself in any dungeon, rather than be so treated:
Mr. Emerson told her once and again, Well! I see you will not confesse! Well! I
will now leave you , and then you are undone, body and soul forever: Her
brother urged her to confesse, and told her that in so doing she could not lye;
to which she answered, Good brother, do not say so, for I shall lye if I
confesse, and then who shall answer unto God for my lye? He still asserted it,
and said that God would not suffer so many good men to be in such an errour
about it, and that she would be hang’d, if she did not confesse, and continued
so long and so violently to urge and presse her to confesse, that she thought
verily her life would have gone from her, and became so terrifyed in her mind,
that she own’d at length almost any thing that they propounded to her; but she
had wronged her conscience in so doing, she was guilty of a great sin in
belying of herself, and desired to mourn for it as long as she lived: This she
said and a great deal more of the like nature, and all of it with such
affection, sorrow, relenting, grief, and mourning as that it exceeds any pen
for to describe and expresse the same."
The "Mr. John
Emerson" of this episode was that clerical schoolmaster whom we have
already met in New Hampshire (see p. 37, note 3), but who was now, a teacher at
Charlestown. (Sibley, Harvard Graduates, II. 471-474.) If so personal an
activity of President Mather surprise, let it be remembered how widely the
persecution was now striking. His parishioner Lady Phips was among the accused,
and the Quaker John Whiting has a yet more startling suggestion: commenting in
1702 on the account just printed in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia, he mentions the
"two Hundred more accused, some of which of great Estates in Boston,"
and in the margin adds, "Query, Was not the Governour’s Wife, and C. M.’s
Mother, some of them?" (Truth and Innocency Defended, p. 140.)
Yet not all dared to
retract. "More than one or two of those now in Prison," writes
Increase Mather (Cases of Conscience, Postscript), "have freely and
credibly acknowledged their Communion and Familiarity with the Spirits of
Darkness; and have also declared unto me the Time and Occasion, with the
particular Circumstances of their Hellish Obligations and Abominations."
[305]For Cotton Mather’s
Wonders, with its imprimatur by Phips and its preface by Stoughton, see above,
pp. 205 ff.
[306] Increase Mather:
the printer seems unable to distinguish Calef’s I from his J.
[307]. The book, with
all its credulity, is in the main a vigorous and learned argument against
improper methods for detecting witches, and chiefly against reliance on the
testimony of the bewitched. Commended by the ministers, fourteen of whom sign
the preface “to the Christian reader,” it may have done something to allay the
panic. But, though it is dated by the author “October 3,” the title-page date
of 1693 suggests that, like his son’s Wonders (see p. 207, note 1), it was long
in the press or withheld from the public.
[308]. As the pages of
Mather’s Wonders containing these trials are reprinted in full above (pp.
215-244), it is needless here to repeat them. They occupy pp. 113-139 of Calef’s
book. Then comes what here follows.
[309]. See p. 216.
[310]. See p. 229.
[311]. See p. 237.
[312]. See p. 244.
[313]. The author had
himself said, “I report matters not as an Advocate, but as an Historian.”
[314]. Phips,
Stoughton, and the latter’s fellow-judges.
[315]. As to the
insertion in Mather’s account of evidence not given at the trial, and as to his
errors of statement, see the careful analysis of Upham in his “Salem Witchcraft
and Cotton Mather,” pp. 46-48 (Historical Magazine, n. s., VI. 175-177).
[316]. To those who
know the wretched chap-books which have had to serve as records of the English
witch-trials -- and these alone Calef was likely to know -- this will not seem
high praise. The modern student can, however, compare for himself Mather’s
accounts with the court records -- and, where mere transcription is concerned,
will find them faithful.
[317]. See pp. 225-227.
Shattuck, testifying in 1692, placed in 1680 his child’s bewitchment, but “about
17 or 18 years after” the exposure of the witch.
[318]. See pp. 239-240.
[319]. The offense
charged, in the indictments printed by Calef, was that the accused “wickedly
and feloniously hath used certain detestable arts, called witchcrafts and
sorceries, by which said wicked arts” the said bewitched “was and is tortured,
afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted and tormented against the peace of our
sovereign lord and lady, the King and Queen, and against the form of the
statute in that case made and provided.” This was the usual form; but four of
the indictments extant (against Rebecca Eames, Samuel Wardwell, Rebecca Jacobs,
Records of Salem Witchcraft, II. 24, 143, 147-148, and William Barker’s,
preserved by Chandler, American Criminal Trials, I. 429) charge instead that
the accused “wickedly and feloniously a covenant with the Evil Spirit the Devil
did make,” and in two of these “the statute of King James the First” is
expressly named as contravened. That statute, indeed, punished alike with death
those who should “consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward
any evil or wicked spirit,” and the laws of Massachusetts made it death “if any
man or woman be a witch (that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit)”
-- without a mention of harm to man or beast as element of the crime. That the
indictments specify such harm was perhaps only because the public attorney --
Thomas Newton (succeeded on July 26 by Anthony Checkley) -- was fresh from
English practice; but, as Calef implies, the proof should meet the indictment.
Newton (1660-1721) had come to Boston in 1688. Mr. Goodell, who studied the
originals, says the quoted indictments mentioning the English statute “appear
to have been drawn in blank by him, and afterwards filled in by Checkley” (Further
Notes, p. 37). As to Newton see the study of Moore (Final Notes, pp. 94-103).
Edward Randolph says of him (V. 143) that he was “a person well known in the
practice in the Courts in England and New England,” while Checkley he calls “a
man ignorant in the Laws of England.” In 1691 Newton had been attorney general
at New York.
[320]. The laws of the
colony had never ceased to be operative; and the first act passed (June 15,
1692) by the General Court under the new charter was for the continuance of
these laws, “being not repugnant to the laws of England nor inconsistent with
the present constitution,” in full force till November 10. On October 29 the
Court passed a general “act for the punishing of capital offenders,” in which
the old Massachusetts law as to witchcraft -- “If any man or woman be a witch,
that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death”
-- retains its old place and wording. And on December 14, “for more particular
direction in the execution of the law against witchcraft,” the same General
Court enacted the long English statute of 1604 (1 James I., cap. 12) --
omitting only the penalty of loss of “the privilege and benefit of clergy and
sanctuary” and the clauses saving dower and inheritance to widow and heir of
the convicted and providing that peers shall be tried by peers, substituting as
the place of pillorying “some shire town” for “some market town upon the market
day or at such time as any fair shall be kept there,” and adding to the penalty
(for the lighter degrees of sorcery) of imprisonment, pillory, and public
confession of the offence, the clause: “which said offense shall be written in
capital letters, and placed upon the breast of said offender.” The commission
creating the Court of Oyer and Terminer (May 27, 1692) antedated, however, all
these laws, and instructed that body “to enquire of, hear and determine for
this time, according to the law and custom of England and of this their
Majesties’ province, all and all manner of crimes.” (For a learned study of
witchcraft laws in England and New England see Moore’s Notes on Witchcraft, pp.
3-11.)
[321]. Winthrop.
[322]. “We do not know”
-- i. e., no basis for prosecution.
[323]. “A true bill.”
[324]. Elizabeth
Johnson and Mary Post. Elizabeth Johnson (as to whom see also p. 420) was
reprieved, and after six months’ imprisonment was freed. Her grandfather, the
Rev. Francis Dane, said of her “she is but simplish at the best.” Mary Post and
Sarah Wardwell likewise escaped death.
[325]. And so the
public attorney told the governor (see p. 201).
[326]. See pp. 366-367.
[327]. I. e., as of
less than no worth.
[328]. By Governor
Phips (see p. 201).
[329]. Stoughton.
[330]. On Sarah Daston’s
case see documents printed in the Publications (X. 12-16) of the Colonial
Society of Massachusetts and the brief account of her trial by an eye-witness
in the letter prefixed to the London edition of Increase Mather’s Cases of
Conscience.
[331]. As to Mary
Watkins see an article in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register (XLIV. 168 ff.).
She lived at Milton, was white, and on August 11 was still in prison, but was
asking the jail-keeper to provide a master to carry her “out of this country
into Virginia.”
[332]. I. e., on
payment of fees. See pp. 343, 366.
[333]. He means, of
course, Mercy Short (see above, pp. 255 ff.) and Margaret Rule (see pp.
308-323). From this sentence it seems clear that this account of the Salem
episode was written before the earlier pages of his book, which begins with the
narrative of Margaret Rule and takes its title from it.
[334]. Phips left for
England November 17, 1694. (Sewall’s Diary, I. 393.)
[335]. See above, p.
21.
[336]. Wallingford.
[337]. Of Winifred
Benham, mother and daughter, Mr. Taylor (The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial
Connecticut, p. 155) learns only -- from “Records Court of Assistants (1: 74,
77) ” -- that they were in August, 1697, tried and acquitted at Hartford, and
in October indicted on new complaints, the jury returning “Ignoramus.” They
were doubtless the widow and daughter of that “Joseph Benham of New Haven,” who
in 1656/7 was married at Boston to Winifred King (N. E. Hist. and Gen.
Register, XI. 203) and later became one of the first settlers of Wallingford.
(See also Davis, History of Wallingford and Meriden, p. 412, cited by
Levermore, in the New Englander, XLIV. 815.)
[338]. For the
interesting story of this proclamation see the Diary (I. 439-441) of Judge
Sewall, who drafted its final form, and that of Cotton Mather (I. 211), who
drew a rejected one. The draft itself, with a careful study of these
proceedings, see in Moore’s Notes on Witchcraft (pp. 14-19).
[339]. The punctuation
of the copy in the Massachusetts archives, as printed in a note to Sewall’s
Diary (I. 440), joins “more ways than one” to “unsettling of us.”
[340]. I. e., therefor.
[341]. Samuel Sewall.
The exact wording of his paper he gives in his Diary (I. 445):
“Copy of the Bill I put
up on the Fast day; giving it to Mr. Willard as he pass’d by, and standing up
at the reading of it, and bowing when finished; in the Afternoon.
“Samuel Sewall,
sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being
sensible, that as to the Guilt contracted upon the opening of the late
Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this Day
relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of,
Desires to take the Blame and shame of it, Asking pardon of men, And especially
desiring prayers that God, who has an Unlimited Authority, would pardon that sin
and all other his sins, personal and Relative: And according to his infinite
Benignity, and Sovereignty, Not Visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon
himself or any of his, nor upon the Land: But that He would powerfully defend
him against all Temptations to Sin, for the future; and vouchsafe him the
efficacious, saving Conduct of his Word and Spirit.”
[342]. This ends the
book, as first written; but the author adds a “Postscript,” called out by the
publication, in 1697, of Cotton Mather’s life of Sir William Phips, who had
died in London early in 1695. Not the achievements of Sir William, thinks
Calef, but Increase Mather’s negotiation in England and his procuring of the
new charter, “are the things principally driven at in the book,” and “another
principal thing is to set forth the supposed witchcrafts in New-England, and
how well Mr. Mather the Younger therein acquitted himself.” Wherefore, after
freeing his mind as to the matter of the charter, he takes up Mather’s
allegations as to the Salem episode, and, pointing out that, “tho this Book
pretends to raise a Statue in Honour of Sir William, yet it appears it was the
least part of the design of the Author to Honour him, but rather to Honour
himself, and the Ministers,” since by so printing the advice of the ministers
(see above, p. 356) “as to give a full Account of the cautions given him, but
designedly hiding from the Reader the Incouragements and Exhortations to
proceed,” it really throws the blame upon Phips, he devotes the remaining
pages, here reprinted, to Cotton Mather’s real views and their influence. The
Life of Phips, now a rare book, is reprinted in Mather’s Magnalia.
[343]. In a part of his
book not here reprinted (pp. 85 ff.) Calef speaks more fully of this paper,
lent him early in 1695, but on condition of its return within a fortnight and
uncopied. It was perhaps the MS. described by Poole (Memorial History, II. 152,
note) as now in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and
called “Cotton Mather’s belief and practice in those thorny difficulties which
have distracted us in the day of temptation” -- having “marginal reflections in
another hand.” [Since the foregoing words were written, this conjecture has
been proved true. See above, p. 306, note 1.]
[344]. Pagans.
[345]. A German abbot
and scholar who in the early sixteenth century wrote most credulously about
witches and angels.
[346]. Objection.
[347]. Solution.
[348]. I. e., than.
[349]. Unpunished.