We lead attention next to one who moved in the highest circle of Boston
society--to an elderly lady of wit, culture, high connections socially,
and of friendship with many of the most prominent and virtuous people of
her day. So far as known, hers is meager as a case of witchcraft, attended
by a less variety and extent of startling phenomena than most others; but
it well reveals the force of the witchcraft creed, and the shifts of
historians for explaining its only marvelous phenomenon which history
hints at.
Hutchinson says, "The most remarkable occurrence in the colony in the year
1655 [1656 ?] was the trial and condemnation of Mrs. Ann Hibbins for
witchcraft. Her husband, who died in the year 1654, was an agent for the
colony in England, several years one of the assistants, and a merchant of
note in the town of Boston; but losses in the latter part of his life had
reduced his estate, and increased the natural crabbedness of his wife's
temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome, and brought her under
church censures, and at length rendered her so odious to her neighbors as
to cause some of them to accuse her of witchcraft. The jury brought her in
guilty, but the magistrates refused to accept the verdict; so the cause
came to the general court, where the popular clamor prevailed against her,
and the miserable old woman was condemned and executed. Search was made
upon her body for teats, and her chests and boxes for puppets, images,
&c.; but there is no record of anything of that sort being found. Mr.
Beach, a minister in Jamaica, in a letter to Dr. Increase Mather in the
year 1684, says, 'You may remember what I have sometimes told; your famous
Mr. Norton once said at his own table before Mr. Wilson the pastor, elder
Penn, and myself and wife, &c., who had the honor to be his guests, that
one of your magistrates' wives, as I remember, was hanged for a witch only
for having more wit than her neighbors. It was his very expression; she
having, as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors,
whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which, proving
true, cost her her life, notwithstanding all he could do to the contrary,
as he himself told us.'
"It fared with her as it did with Joan of Arc in France. Some counted her
a saint and some a witch, and some observed solemn marks of Providence set
upon those who were very forward to condemn her, and to brand others upon
the like ground with the like reproach."
The author of the above was born fifty-five years after the execution of
Mrs. Hibbins, and his account of her was not published till 1764, that is,
one hundred and eight years after her decease. In his youth he may have
conversed with aged people who were living at the time of the trial and
execution of this woman, and may have received from them their notions
concerning her temper and character. But if he did, his informers, during
more than half a century before he was old enough to be an intelligent
listener, had been living in the midst of people who were ashamed of the
treatment which they and their fathers had bestowed upon reputed witches.
Thus ashamed and yielding to an almost universal propensity in men to make
their own imputed errors and crimes seem slight, trivial, and excusable as
possible, nothing would be more natural than a general propensity to
vilify the sufferers, under a mistaken, though common, notion that the
vileness of the persecuted excuses the wrong of the persecutors.
Whether Hutchinson, in his youth, received from any source special mental
biases which inclined him to regard all who suffered for witchcraft as
quarrelsome and vicious, cannot now be ascertained; but it is obvious from
his epithets that his disposition let him very readily apply to such
persons terms of very decided disparagement. He spoke of one Mary Oliver
as "a poor wretch;" also of Mrs. Hibbins as "the miserable old woman," and
specified the "natural crabbedness of her temper which made her turbulent
and quarrelsome." He implies that such traits were both the grounds and
the sum of the charge and proofs of her witchcraft, and does all this
without adducing a particle of evidence that she possessed such a temper,
or was either _turbulent_ or _quarrelsome_. His allegations seem like the
offspring of either blinding contempt or of deluded fancy,--yes,
_deluded_,--for surely clear-eyed fancy must have foreseen that after ages
could never believe that the highest court in the colony found natural
crabbedness of temper, and consequent turbulence, satisfactory proof of an
explicit compact with the devil, and therefore punishable by death. The
insufficiency and probable inaccuracy of his reasons for the arraignment
and condemnation of this person, will be more clearly exhibited further
on, and mainly in extracts from a later historian.
Mr. Beach's letter, quoted by Hutchinson, gives distinct indication that
Mrs. Hibbins was endowed with faculties which were vastly more likely to
out-work what her age deemed witchcraft, than was any amount of bad temper
and crabbedness. She had "more wit than her neighbors;" she "unhappily
guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street,
were talking of her, which, proving true, cost her her life." Here is
indication of probability that this lady, as did Margaret Jones, possessed
ability to comprehend the conversation of far distant parties, or to sense
in the thoughts of some absent people with whom she came in rapport.
Similar abilities are possessed and exercised by many persons in these
days, who have constitutional endowments of a kind which were formerly
believed to be diabolical acquisitions, and were then deemed proofs of
witchcraft--proofs of compact with Satan.
"It fared with her," says Hutchinson, "as it did with Joan of Arc in
France. Some counted her a saint and some a witch." In these words the
historian himself furnishes cause for distrusting the justice of ascribing
to her a crabbed temper and habitual quarrelsomeness. For who, in any
community, would ever count one _a saint_ who manifested such offensive
qualities to any great extent as he ascribed to her? Surely no one would.
And yet he states that very many persons did so count Mrs. Hibbins.
Doubtless among her advocates was "your famous Mr. Norton," a very
eminent, sagacious, and able minister in Boston. There was enough about
her to draw out from Hutchinson the concession that the public here was
divided in judgment concerning her character, as it formerly was in
France concerning Joan of Arc, that Maid of Orleans, who heard and obeyed
voices from out the unseen.
Crabbedness of temper and quarrelsomeness were not grounds on which any
portion of the people would count her a _saint_. The historian refutes his
own position. A more recent searcher for causes of her fate perceived, and
very clearly pointed out, the inaccuracy and obvious insufficiency of
Hutchinson's grounds and reasons why Mrs. Hibbins was arraigned and
convicted, but proceeded to assign others which are scarcely less
inadequate and improbable. He writes as follows, vol. i. p. 422, _Hist. of
Witchcraft_:--
"While it is hardly worthy of being considered a sufficient explanation of
the matter,--it being beyond belief, that, even at that time, a person
could be condemned and executed merely on account of a 'crabbed
temper,'--it is not consistent with the facts as made known to us from the
record-offices. She could not have been so reduced in circumstances as to
produce such extraordinary effects upon her character, for she left a good
estate.... The only clew we have to the kind of evidence bearing upon the
charge of witchcraft that brought this recently bereaved widow to so cruel
and shameful a death, is in a letter written by a clergyman in Jamaica to
Increase Mather" (as quoted above). "Nothing," Upham adds, "was more
natural than for her to suppose, knowing the parties, witnessing their
manner, considering their active co-operation in getting up the excitement
against her, which was then the all-engrossing topic, that they were
talking about her. But, in the blind infatuation of the time, it was
considered proof positive of her being possessed, _by the aid of the
devil_, of supernatural insight--precisely as, forty years afterward, such
evidence was brought to bear with telling effect against George
Burroughs.... The truth is, that the tongue of slander was let loose upon
her, and the calumnies circulated by reckless gossip became so magnified
and exaggerated, and assumed such proportions, as enabled her vilifiers to
bring her under the censure of the church, and that emboldened them to cry
out against her as a witch."
Some of our quotations are introduced quite as much for the purpose of
exhibiting the animus, short-comings, and over-doings of the historians
themselves, as for elucidating the general subject of witchcraft. We learn
from the pages of the work from which the above extract was taken, that
Mrs. Hibbins was sister of Richard Bellingham, deputy-governor of the
province at the very time of her trial, and that her highly-esteemed
husband had left her an estate which placed her far above poverty. It may
fairly be presumed that both her social and pecuniary conditions were very
respectable. Upham perceives and forcibly comments upon the inadequacy of
the grounds upon which Hutchinson attempted to account for her conviction
and execution. That earlier historian evinced, on very many of his pages,
his persuasion, or at least a purpose to persuade his readers, that all
the peculiar and disturbing phenomena of witchcraft were of exclusively
mundane origin, and that temper, trick, imposture, deception, and the
like, produced them all. This persuasion made him somewhat impatient of
the whole matter, uncareful to scan all the facts before him, or keep his
inferences in fair and broad harmony with them. It made him rashly severe.
Without indicating a shadow of reason why he does so, he calls this widow
of one of Boston's most esteemed merchants and public men--this sister of
the deputy-governor of the province--this woman of more wit than her
neighbors--this woman befriended by the eminent minister John Norton--this
woman not in poverty--this woman whom he ought to have known, did, in her
lowest condition, even when a convict in prison and doomed to the
gallows--did, in this dire extremity, bespeak and obtain the friendly
offices of six or eight of the leading men of the city, and therefore
presumably had their respect--such a one, Hutchinson gratuitously calls a
"miserable old woman;" and in doing it reveals the careless and heartless
historian of those who had come under ban for witchcraft.
Upham, going to the probate records and finding the will of Mrs. Hibbins,
which was made a few days after her sentence of death, is able to present
her in a different aspect. His comments upon her, as she is revealed by
the will and its codicils, are as follows, vol. i. p. 425:--
"The whole tone and manner of these instruments give evidence that she had
a mind capable of rising above the power of wrong, suffering, and death
itself. They show a spirit calm and serene. The disposition of her
property indicates good sense, good feeling, and business faculties
suitable to the occasion. In the body of the will, there is not a word, a
syllable, or a turn of expression, that refers to or is in the slightest
degree colored by her peculiar situation. In the codicil there is this
sentence: 'My desire is that all my overseers would be pleased to show so
much respect unto my dead corpse, as to cause it to be decently interred,
and, if it may be, near my late husband."
Perusal and study of her will and its appendages induced the later
historian to speak of Ann Hibbins as "this recently bereaved widow"--a
phrase much more agreeable, and seemingly vastly more just in application
to her, than "miserable old woman." In that will she names as overseers
and administrators of her estate, Captain Thomas Clarke, Lieutenant Edward
Hutchinson, Lieutenant William Hudson, Ensign Joshua Scottow, and Cornet
Peter Oliver; also in a codicil, she says, "I do earnestly desire my
loving friends, Captain Johnson and Edward Rawson, to be added to the rest
of the gentlemen mentioned as overseers of my will." Upham, having stated
the above, says, "It can hardly be doubted that these persons--and they
were all leading citizens--were known by her to be among her friends."
Yes, the presumption is very fair, amounting to almost positive proof,
that many of the prominent and best people of the town were her friends.
The appearance is, that her social walk was wide away from the purlieus of
common mundane diabolism and billingsgate. The vulgar would see her
standing off beyond their reach, and waste no breath upon her. Only the
respectable and influential could touch her to her essential harm.
We commend and thank the later historian for bringing this persecuted
woman out into such light as shows that she may have been equal in all
good qualities to the best of her persecutors. But his reasons for her
persecution and condemnation are scarcely more adequate or credible than
those of Hutchinson. We ascribed to him the faculties of a fictionist, and
he used them when he said, "The truth is, that the tongue of slander was
let loose upon her." The former historian imputed certain offensive acts
or traits to both Margaret Jones and Ann Hibbins severally, which he
assumed to be the provoking causes of public vengeance. He deemed the
sufferers themselves doers of the intolerable wrongs. But his successor
makes her beneficence the crime for which Mrs. Jones suffered; and the
origination and utterance of slander _by the public_, the cause of death
to Mrs. Hibbins. The earlier writer was lenient toward the public and
severe upon the accused women. The later was kind toward the women, but,
by necessary implication, intensely aspersory upon the great body of the
people; for he makes the public hang one because of her successful medical
practice by the use of only simple remedies, and another because of
slanders which itself had poured out upon her.
His charge of slander is fictitious. He adduces no evidence that the lady
was slandered, and we have met with none anywhere. And were it true, it is
quite as much "beyond belief that even at that time a person could be
condemned and executed merely on account of being" _slandered_, as it is
that one could have then been thus treated on account of a "crabbed
temper" solely.
A much more probable cause of the persecution of Mrs. Hibbins than either
of the historians drew forth and rested upon, lurks in that language of
"famous Mr. Norton," which says that she "having more wit than her
neighbors, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw
talking in the street, were talking of her, which proving true, cost her
her life." Upham, commenting upon that, says, "Nothing was more natural
than for her to suppose, knowing the parties, witnessing their manner,
considering their active co-operation in getting up the excitement against
her, which was then the all-engrossing topic, that they were talking about
her." Whence and how did the accomplished rhetorician learn that those two
persecutors were active co-operators, or that they were in any degree
concerned "in _getting up_" the excitement against her? How _know_ that
their manner was expressive of any particular topic of conversation? How
_know_ that she or her case was the then all-engrossing topic? He put
forth assumptions as though they were historic facts. No ancient record is
credited with them; none contains them that we have met with. He could not
well know them to be true. They are fairly reasonable fictions; but we
must doubt whether they are either known or knowable as _facts_. They
would be agreeable amplifications if they did not tend to mislead and
blind; they would be beauties, and not blemishes, if the soundness and
sufficiency of their underlying theory or assumption were conceded. But it
is not. Common sense cannot concede it. Boston was neither doltish enough
nor wicked enough to generate and sustain _slander_ of such quantity and
quality as would force one of her ladies of wit and high connections to
die ignominiously on the gallows--never, never. Neither the temper of the
woman herself, nor any combined baseness and malice that ever existed in
the orderly and religious town of Boston, is admissible as the chief
cause of that woman's execution. Her own _wit_ was the historic, and, when
defined and illustrated, may appear to be the real cause.
Whether Mrs. Hibbins received on that occasion, and might have been
accustomed to get, knowledge by other than man's ordinary processes, and
to such extent and of such kind as implied her possession of some
faculties above or distinct from great powers at guessing, can best be
inferred by looking at the views of her utterances which were taken by
those who heard them. Their persecution of her unto death tells what those
views were. Have historians made fair and full use of the very small
historic basis extant, for accounting for the state and nature of public
feeling among the neighbors of this woman? We think not. Her _wit_, the
true corner-stone, has not been their basis of explanation.
When she saw two known persecutors talking, the circumstances may or may
not have been helpful to a correct guess at the topic of their
conversation _then_. But--but these men, Upham assumes, were _already_
known to her as her persecutors. Therefore something must have occurred
before that time which had aroused persecution of her. These men are
called "two of her persecutors," which intimates that she already may have
had more than two, and admits the supposition that she may have had very
many such, both prior to and at the very time when she made the particular
_guess_ whose accuracy has been so plausibly commented upon. Something,
antecedent to that guess, had set some minds against her. Yes, if we may
trust the conjecture of Upham, something had already created an
"excitement against her which was then the all-engrossing topic." The
cause of antecedent and existing excitement, at the time she made _that_
guess, was seemingly unsought for by either Hutchinson or Upham. Or, if
they sought for this, _the most important thing connected with the case,
and essential to its satisfactory elucidation_, they found nothing which
they ventured to publish. Omission to bring out the cause of public
excitement, _prior to the guess_, makes previous history very
unsatisfactory. There is some light shining now which may enable the
searcher in dark closets of the past to discover meanings there which
former explorers failed to find. No new, positive, distinct historical
statements explanatory of this case have been seen. We are confined to the
same very narrow premises on which previous reasoners stood, but we find
different import of the same facts from any which prior expounders
disclosed.
We join with Upham in saying that "_the only clew_ we have to the kind of
evidence bearing upon _the charge of witchcraft_ that brought this
recently bereaved widow to so cruel and shameful a death, is in a letter
written by a clergyman in Jamaica to Increase Mather in 1684." That
letter, already quoted, imputes to her more _wit_ than others; wit, or
penetration, by which she sensed correctly the conversation going on
between two of her persecutors. That is the full sum of the direct
historical evidence. And what is involved in that? Is crabbed temper
there? No. Is slander there? No; but _wit_ is. Standing alone and
unexplained, this wit amounts, perhaps, to but little; and yet when
interpreted by her sad fate it may amount to very much. It suggests
forcibly the probability, bordering close upon certainty, that she was
endowed with some faculties which the sagacious Mr. Norton called
"wit"--but yet were such as could obtain accurate knowledge so
surprisingly as to suggest that it was obtained by process as occult as
that by which Jesus perceived the private reasonings of scribes and
pharisees--entrappers and persecutors of himself.
To-day,--when observation is almost daily meeting with operations of
faculties, in limited classes of men and women, which enable them to read,
at times, the secret thoughts and hear the secret and hushed utterances of
some afar off,--that Jamaica letter intimates enough to generate
presumption that Mrs. Hibbins might have possessed like faculties, and
that her exercise of such startled, alarmed, and almost frenzied a
community in which such powers were deemed proof positive that their
possessor had made a covenant with the Evil One, and received her
surprising knowledge from him. Amid a people holding such faith concerning
the devil as the colonists here entertained in 1656, the exercise of such
powers called upon all God-fearing and true men to rid the world of such a
devil-minion as the knowledge possessed by Mrs. Hibbins proved her to be.
A sample of light which is now available shines forth from the following
letter, and its rays are blended in those from the lamp that guides our
feet while we move onward in tracing out the probable meaning reachable by
following up the only historic clew to those powers of Mrs. Hibbins, her
possession and exercise of which constituted a capital crime:--
"NO. 1085 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON,
"September 23, 1873.
"ALLEN PUTNAM, ESQ., ROXBURY.
"Dear Friend: You solicit information in regard to hearing, from the
_inner_ ear, men and women speaking when miles away. I have always
possessed that faculty in a remarkable degree. At one time, when
building a steamboat in Southern Illinois, under peculiar
circumstances, I would often hear men say, 'That man has no money to
build a boat with; he's a fraud; and I pity those poor fellows who are
working for him.' This was soon after I commenced her construction;
and although I did not want to hear it, and tried ever so hard not to,
still I could hear them seemingly more distinct than though they were
close to me. One day in particular, and at a time when I could see no
way out of my difficulty, I heard a Mr. Cutting, who was building some
miles up river, say to his foreman, 'I wonder if Mr. Kimball realizes
that his timber will be lost.' (Mr. Kimball was the man who furnished
my timber and plank.) After the tide turned in my favor, and it was
known about town that I paid my men regularly, I heard the remark,
'That man is the most reticent man I ever heard of,' &c."
The author of the letter does not state distinctly that in those two cases
the speakers were very much too far away for his external ears to hear
their voices, yet such was his statement when he gave me, previously, a
verbal account of the facts; and such was his meaning, therefore, in the
letter--the remainder of which here follows:--
"At one time, in Cincinnati, although three miles away, I heard my
landlady say to her daughter, after I had been boarding with them a
week, 'I don't like that man--he is _not_ all right;' and went on to
tell her impressions, what she thought I was, which it is not
necessary to repeat. At first I felt indignant, forgetting, for the
moment, I was three miles away. I finally concluded to say nothing
about it when I went home at night, as I thought at first of doing,
else they might think I was wrong in some way, as they were both
members of the M. E. Church. But, when I got home, having a good
opportunity, I told the daughter word for word what her mother had
said about me, and also her response to her mother after she (the
mother) had got through berating me--which was, 'What do you mean?'
and the mother's answer to her exclamation, 'I mean just as I say.' I
requested the daughter not to say anything to the mother, as it would
do no good. But in the course of the following day the mother got
speaking of me again in much the same strain, when the daughter could
not resist the temptation, and told her to be careful what she said;
and then told her what I had said. The mother was thunderstruck, and
after a moment said, 'He is a devil.' I happened to be in a condition
such that I heard the mother's response. This I told to the daughter
that evening. Now, if I had had a thought that the mother entertained
such feelings toward me, I might have attributed it to the workings of
my own mind. But as I thought they had diametrically the opposite
opinion, I concluded that it was another case of the inner hearing.
"Now, if you can make use of this, or a part of it, you are welcome
to do so. Should you desire any other cases, I can furnish many.
"With high considerations I remain,
"D. C. DENSMORE."
The writer of the above, when in conversation with me in my own study,
incidentally dropped a word which intimated that his inner ear was
sometimes receptive of utterances put forth by embodied men and women,
who, at the time, were far away from him. In response to my expressed wish
to know whether such was the fact, he detailed a number of cases in which
he had had such experience; I then asked him to give me one or two of
them, briefly, on paper. That request shortly drew forth the foregoing
letter.
Much more of the emphatically educational period of Captain Densmore's
life was spent in forecastles and cabins of whaleships than in school on
shore, and he perhaps expected me to reconstruct his sentences, in part at
least, before presenting them in print. But such facts as his experience
has encountered ought to be accompanied by the spirit of conscious
knowledge and truth pervading his own vocabulary. His language is
sufficiently perspicuous to convey his meaning, and possesses force which
any considerable change would impair. That spirit makes rhetoric and
grammar of secondary consequence in the narration of facts and experiences
which show that there exist capacities in some embodied human beings for
receiving intelligence-fraught impressions, in ways and under
circumstances which the schoolmen and teachers of the world lack knowledge
of, but ought to know and get instruction from. Therefore the reader has
been permitted to see in his own words the statement of one who has at
times heard with his inner or spiritual senses the exact words of speakers
who were miles away from him, and thus shown that Mrs. Hibbins, through
the possession of natural faculties, though of a kind but rarely
developed, might have been something very different from a mere skillful
guesser. An assumption that she was helped by spirits is not needful to a
satisfactory explanation of a mode in which she might have learned
directly and instantly what far absent ones were uttering. Her own
faculties, independently of special spirit help or teaching, may have
permitted her to hear with perfect distinctness what would have been
utterly inaudible by mortals in their ordinary condition. Measuring the
marvelousness of her knowledge by the frenzy it produced in the community,
and the awful doom it drew upon herself, we look upon her manifestations
of "wit" as an outflow of knowledge gained through her own inner or
spiritual organs of perception--either with or without the aid of spirits.
When commenting upon what he assumed to be fact, viz., that Mrs. Hibbins
made a correct guess, and only a _guess_, Upham says, that "in the blind
infatuation of the time, it was considered proof positive of her being
possessed, _by aid of the devil_, of supernatural insight." Thus he
assumed that the mass of people in Boston were under such an infatuation
as could and did cause them to believe that very successful _guessing_
required the devil's help! They may have been infatuated, but their
infatuation did not act in that direction. Their senses and judgments for
determining the forces needful to produce either material or mental
effects, may, for aught that history states, have been as keen as any
people ever possessed, and their general wisdom and thrift indicate that
they did. Why, therefore, hastily brand them with the imbecility of being
unequal to a fair, common-sense estimate of the adequacy of causes to
produce observed effects? To do so is ungenerous, unjust, and uncalled for
by their action. It may have been, and probably was, their freedom from
infatuation; it may have been the very keenness and accuracy of their
perceptions of the quantity and quality of cause needful to acquirement of
knowledge which her utterances revealed, that generated and sustained the
hostility against Mrs. Hibbins. Her accuracy in reading facts, secret and
transpiring at a distance, was possibly, on many occasions, so far beyond
what common experience or science was able to impute to either luck or
skill at guessing, that few, if any, could avoid the conclusion that she
was receiving supernal aid.
Anything supernal was then deemed devilish. After public excitement had
been aroused against her, a very successful guess might possibly be
evidence that the devil was its author, but not till the excitement had
acquired and exercised bewildering force. Some extraordinary sayings or
doings of this lady obviously must have antedated the public furore, else
it would never have raged. The nature and circumstances of the case
indicate an almost certainty that minds around her, while in their
ordinary calmness, must have witnessed sayings or doings by her which
"seemed to them more than natural"--which were startling--were out of the
usual course, and readily distinguishable from GUESSINGS: because without
something of this kind the excitement itself could never have commenced.
What first started the public terror of her is the most important question
in the case. The excitement did not spring up uncaused. A successful guess
was no great novelty and no marvel in times of calmness. It could not then
be regarded as diabolical. The bewilderings of antecedent causes were
needful to make a correct _guess_ terrific. Excitement might metamorphose
a guess into devil-imputed knowledge, but a guess could not beget, though
it might intensify, blood-seeking excitement. Whence the excitement
itself--such excitement as could regard an accurate guess as necessarily
the offspring of diabolical insight?
Mrs. Hibbins lived among the _elite_ of a province, whose people were
decidedly sagacious in matters of both private and public business, and
were also probably possessed of as high moral and religious principles, as
prevailed in any other community on the globe. As before stated, Richard
Bellingham, one of the very eminent men of the country, and at that time
deputy-governor of the province, was her brother; she was widow of one who
had been among the most esteemed citizens of the town, and she is credited
with having possessed more wit than her neighbors. Therefore we are
hunting for a cause adequate to excite public indignation against a woman
of bright intellect, of high position in society, and standing under the
shelter of near kinship with those in authority. The cause must have been
some strange one. _Skill at guessing_ was too common and natural, and does
not meet the requirements.
We all unite in calling the people of 1656 infatuated in relation to
witchcraft. But did their infatuation so affect them as to bring
obtuseness upon their external senses and their intellectual ability for
discerning the nature, character, and force of testimony and evidence? or,
on the other hand, did it not show itself almost exclusively in their
reception and tenacious retention of monstrous items in their witchcraft
creed? Which? Admit an affirmative to the first part of the inquiry--admit
that senses and intellects were befooled by external manifestations--and
you make those noble forefathers but a band of dolts, heartless and
bloodthirsty, taking life because they had not wit enough to read clearly
the significance of observed external facts or to see the bearings and
force of evidence. Admit the second, viz., that their creed was father of
their infatuation, and you may look upon them as a band possessing clear
perception of the exact meaning and logical results of all Christendom's
fixed creed upon diabolism, and of unflinching purpose to fight for God
and Christ against the devil. Demonologically they were infatuated, in
common with the enlightened world; while yet for keen observance of
outward facts, for just estimate of the adequacy of a cause to produce an
observed effect, for determining the just significance of any
well-observed fact, for discriminating application of evidence under the
rules of their creeds both God-ward and devil-ward, no reason appears why
they were not equal to any other community anywhere. Their infatuation was
not first on the practical, but on the theoretical side. It was
devil-ward, not man-ward _directly_, though through the creed it became
man-ward.
Though perceiving the meagerness and improbability of Hutchinson's
solution, Upham, ignoring what he avowed to be the only historical "clew
we have" to a correct one, which led directly to the woman's own wit, was
pleased to find the exciting cause of her persecution not in _her_, but in
other people, and dogmatically said, "The _truth_ is, the tongue of
slander was let loose against her." Such assumption--and it is bold
assumption, even if it be in accordance with facts--fails--entirely
fails--to meet the fair demands of our common-sense requirements. What
started, and extended, and intensified that tongue if it did wag? If its
utterances were _slanderous_, they were a mixture of _falsehood_ and
_malice_. What _lies_ were or could be fabricated against such a woman,
the nature of which the common sagacity of society there and then would
not detect? What _lies_ which the truthfulness of society there and then
would not decline to repeat against her? What malice against that lady of
high connections could so pervade society there as to generate a public
sentiment that demanded and obtained her life? The people of Boston were
not wicked enough to let falsehood and malice triumph in their highest
court of justice. Something different from _slander_ was needed to awaken
and sustain the popular clamor against this woman, and to cause the court
to pass sentence of death upon her. We granted to Upham the faculties of a
fictionist, and he used them when he declared that "the truth is, the
tongue of slander was let loose upon her." "The truth is," neither he nor
any other one among us at this day, knows whether that woman was slandered
or not. She may have been, but it is only matter of conjecture, and
should not be put forth as _truth_. Something more than slander in its
utmost expandings and accretions was needful to the tragic results which
ensued.
We recur again to the only historical cause of excitement against this
lady, viz., Norton's hint that she possessed such marvelous wit for
guessing, as Upham supposes the people around her considered "proof
positive of her being possessed, _by the aid of the devil_, of
supernatural insight." That hint unlocks a door behind which may be found
a more adequate and philosophical cause of her arraignment and
condemnation than has hitherto been assigned. Since many persons now
possess, she too may have possessed constitutional faculties, which, at
times, enabled her to _sense_, comprehend, and enunciate facts and truths
which it was impossible for her to learn by man's ordinary processes.
Admit simply that she may have possessed intuitive faculties which read
the thoughts of others or sensed afar the spirit of sounds, and solution
of all mysteries about her is made. Wide awake, keen-sighted, good people
may have seen in her the exercise of such powers as were clearly,
distinctly, and beyond all question, extraordinary,--yes, supermundane.
What then? Why, by all fair logic from Christendom's faith at that time,
the devil must be her teacher, and she must be his covenanted servant.
Such a helper of Satan, however high in character or station, must be
deprived of power to work for him. Very wonderful revelations, such as
disclosures of the secret thoughts and private conversations of other and
distant persons, being a few times repeated by her, what could people,
true to their God and their creed, do less than demand her execution?
Nothing--nothing less. Their infatuated but sincere belief about the devil
plainly and with mighty force called for her blood. And this not because
of any crabbedness in her--not because of any lies about her--not because
of malice toward her--not because of the tongue of slander--but because of
facts, unquestionable facts, outwrought through her, which the tongue of
truth might dutifully publish and republish throughout the town. The
trouble, the murderous impulses, sprang from the _creed_, and especially
from those parts of it which made any and all mysterious and disturbing
outworkings devilish in their source, and which taught that the devil
could act through no human beings but such as had made a voluntary compact
to serve him. Those who had covenanted with him must die. Mrs. Hibbins was
born with mediumistic faculties, and because of her legitimate use of
these, the faith of her times conscientiously took her life.
It gladdens the heart to find a view which legitimately permits Mrs.
Hibbins to have been a bright, refined, high-toned, and most estimable
lady; and at the same time lessens the blackness of the cloud which has
long hung over her judges and executioners. They were not so weak and
wicked as to doom one to die because of temper, nor so villainous as to
slander away a lady's life. Stern religious adherence and application of
an honest, though deluded _faith_, made them executioners of all such as
had exhibited powers which in the dim light of their philosophy and
science seemed supernatural. Their weakness consisted of such strong faith
as could, and in emergencies must, put in abeyance the kindlier
sentiments of their hearts. Their great infirmity, which was then a
general one throughout Christendom, was solely infatuation _devil-ward_.
We charge our ancestors with _infatuation_. People in all ages and nations
have, no doubt, been subject to its influence. Perhaps every individual
man and woman is more or less swayed by it. Each one in respect to some
things may act without his usual good judgment, and contrary to the
dictates of reason. The people of Boston were obviously debarred, by their
infatuation devil-ward, from perceiving that Mrs. Hibbins might have
received extraordinary gifts from some other giver than the great evil
devil. And is it _impossible_ that infatuation influenced her recent
historian first to reject the historic wit, and substitute for it fancied
slander, as cause for the excitement against her, and then put his
substitution forth as the _truth_; though both common sense and sound
philosophy see at a glance, first, that it is only a conjecture, and
secondly, that it is entirely inadequate to produce the effects which it
was fabricated to account for? In doing this _he_ seemingly acted without
_his_ usual good judgment, and contrary to the appropriate dictates of his
enlightened reason--was infatuated.
Both of the two historians above quoted, virtually assumed that there
never occurred here any phenomena, either mental or physical, which were
not wrought out by agents, forces, and faculties purely mundane. Therefore
the facts of history necessarily pushed them up to make implied, and often
explicit, allegation that whole communities of resolute, wide-awake,
energetic people, were possessors of external senses which were pitifully
and superlatively deludible--possessors of enormous general credulity--of
perceptions and judgments woefully warped and benighted in matters
generally, excepting only a few of their girls and old women, who
manifested cunning and deviltry supreme in making high sport out of the
weaknesses of their elders and betters. Having driven stakes beyond which
nature and natural forces must not go under forfeiture of historic
recognition, anything not explainable by forces recognized within those
stakes, is accounted for by the sage exclamation, "But that was a time of
great credulity;" or "in the blind infatuation of the time," things were
thus and so. We are willing to grant the existence of much credulity and
infatuation both of old and now, but are not willing to allow that the
facts of seeing what some other persons have not seen, and knowing the
existence and partial operations of some forces in nature which some
people have not paid attention to, are proof of either "great credulity"
or "blind infatuation." Had the later historian been free from all
infatuation, he could have learned from passing developments that Mrs.
Hibbins probably, at times, was essentially a liberated spirit, hearing
what Swedenborg calls "cogitatio loquens"--speaking thought--and that her
repetition of what she thus learned took her life.
Hers was not a case of necessary spirit co-operation, was perhaps only one
of uncommon liberation of the internal perceptive faculties. Because
highly illumined, her brilliancy was judged to be diabolical, and
therefore must be extinguished.