Soon after the commencement of prosecutions, suspicion alighted on one of
more refinement, intelligence, efficiency, godliness, and respectability
than the females first arrested. Martha, wife of Giles Corey,--aged,
prayerful, but bright; disbelieving in any witchcraft; doubting the
existence of any witches; discountenancing searches for any,--said that
the eyes of the magistrates were blinded, and that she could open them.
She possessed spiritual and theological knowledge uncommon in her day and
vicinity, and must have held beliefs and convictions derived from other
sources than those at which her neighbors obtained their supplies. She was
aloof from the prevalent delusion devil-ward.
Though a church member, a woman of prayer, of reputed, and doubtless of
genuine, piety, Martha Corey was very early _sensed_ by the Anns Putnam,
mother and daughter, as the source of emanations which tortured them.
Therefore she must be a witch. Grounds for such conclusion were not
necessarily fanciful and fallacious. When and where natural outworkings
from mediumistic properties and conditions were mistaken for symptoms of
witchcraft, Martha Corey might easily be convicted of diabolism. We credit
the allegation of Ann Putnam the younger that she was annoyed and
afflicted by Mrs. Corey even while the two were miles apart. But we
decline to admit that Mrs. Corey necessarily or probably had any voluntary
connection with the girl's sufferings. Either unintelligent natural forces
attracted the woman's effluvia to Ann, or else Tituba's "tall man," or
some other hidden intelligent being, formed connections and applied
processes which brought elements of these two persons into conjunction,
and thus produced in the girl intense physical disturbances and
sufferings, and attendant liberation of her inner perceptive faculties.
Ann's uncle, Edward Putnam, together with Ezekiel Cheever, because of the
girl's repeated outcries upon Mrs. Corey, only just one week after the
sending of Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osburn to jail, concluded to make
a call upon sister Corey, who was "in church covenant" with them, and
learn from her own lips what she would say relative to the suspicions that
had been raised concerning her.
These just and considerate men,--for they were such,--probably seeing the
possibility that the child might be mistaken as to the person who was
causing her to suffer, very properly called upon Ann when they were about
to start on their way to the woman's residence, and asked the suffering
girl to describe the dress Mrs. Corey was then wearing. Their obvious
design was to test the accuracy of the child's perceptions. But that
purpose was not accomplished. The child pleaded inability to see, and
stated that blindness was put upon her just then _by the accused woman
herself_. The sequel indicates that Mrs. Corey foresensed the visit she
was about to receive, imbibed knowledge of the intended test, and of
action to thwart its success. Though dwelling and being miles apart as
physical persons, those two females may have then been practically
together as spirits, and have mutually sensed the thoughts, acts, and
conditions of each other as far as each avoided intentional concealment.
All of Ann's statements may have been in strict accordance with facts
actually witnessed and experienced by her inner self. There is no need to
assume that she feigned or falsified at all, even if no invisible personal
operators were concerned in what then transpired; and certainly not, if
Tituba's "tall man" and his associates were then present and acting, as
they may have been. Perhaps invisible actors, holding both of these
impressible subjects under psychological control, either imparted to, or
withheld from either of them, just such knowledge and perceptions as would
further the purposes of the operators--which may have been either simply a
manifestation of their own powers, or an intimation to the adroit men that
they were undertaking to deal with something which it would not be easy to
outwit or thwart. Also other and very different purposes may have actuated
them.
Some spirits, at some times, have ability, through some mortal lips, to
express their thoughts to the embodied, and to wreathe their own emotions
over faces they borrow, even while the spirit, the selfhood, of the mortal
form usurped is conscious of what is being done through it. Remember that
the form of the conscious Agassiz was, against his own will, made to obey
Townshend's mind. Perhaps Madam Corey's expressions of thoughts and
emotions were sometimes prompted, and at other times modified by an unseen
intelligence temporarily cohabiting with her own.
When the two brethren of the church, going forth on their solemn,
self-imposed mission, had arrived at her home, Madam Corey welcomed them
_with a smile_; notwithstanding she possessed and expressed very exact
knowledge of the ominous nature and the purpose of their call. Her
saluting words were, "I know what you are come for. You are come to talk
with me about being a witch; but I am none. I cannot help other people's
talking of me." This probably had reference to Ann Putnam's saying that
she was afflicted by this speaker. She soon asked the men whether Ann,
whose accusations had prompted their call, "had described the clothes she
then wore." Learning that her dress had not been described, "a smile came
over her face." Somebody's consciousness of power, issuing from her form,
to obscure the child's vision, probably expressed itself in that smile;
and the reflection that the child was operated upon by forces within or
action through Mrs. Corey's own form, and therefore not necessarily by the
devil, and inference thence that the girl was not necessarily bewitched,
was followed by her saying, "she did not think there were any witches."
She knew enough of spiritual things to enable her to observe the broad
distinction, overlooked by her cotemporaries, that may exist between some
spirits and the devil; and also between persons whose inner senses were
cognizant of spirit presence and action as naturally as the outer eye was
of the sunlight, between these and such other human beings, could there be
any such, and she thought there could not, who made a covenant with the
devil, which covenant was a necessary preliminary to being a witch. "She,"
very reasonably, "did not think there were any" such "witches;" and only
_such_ were sought for by her visitors and the startled public.
This woman was intelligent, courteous, and devout--was capable of
understanding that _witch_, as then defined, necessarily meant a person
who had voluntarily entered into a distinct compact with a factitious
devil. Her _sensings_ in spirit spheres found no native-born monstrosity
there, and she could say in good conscience that she did not believe there
existed any such witches as her visitors and fellow church members were on
the hunt for. At the same time she may have known, probably did know, that
her own spirit and the spirit of little Ann Putnam could come into such
communings as would give them accurate and conscious mutual perception of
many unspoken thoughts and experiences in each other.
Mrs. Corey, as we view her, was very mediumistic, and was also a woman
whose habitual aspirations were after things true, pure, and excellent.
But no amount of good or bad moral and religious qualities either
constitutes or nullifies ability for mutual visibility and rapport between
mediumistic persons. All such are impressible more by virtue of their
organisms and native properties, external and internal, than by any
intellectual and moral acquisitions, whether good or _bad_.
Properties issuing from Mrs. Corey's system probably pinched and otherwise
tortured Ann Putnam; the girl knew their special mundane issuance, and
innocently gave utterance to the knowledge. She did so innocently and in
good faith. But the divulgence of facts often brings fearful sequences.
When clear-headed logicians, being also conscientious and true men, as
well as holders of undoubting faith that none but covenanted devotees to a
wily devil could obtain knowledge and work harm by mysterious
processes,--when such men took this case into careful consideration, the
facts stated by the girl were to them proof that Mrs. Corey was the
devil's minion, and therefore must be consigned to a witch's doom--death.
Edward Putnam and one other complained of her.
The warrant for her arrest was dated March 19, just one week after the
visit of Putnam and Cheever. She was examined on the 21st; sentenced,
September 9; executed, September 22. The questioning at the examination
was discursive and protracted, spreading beyond inquiries as to who hurt
the children, and how they were tormented, because of the prisoner's
alleged disbelief in witchcraft; disapprobation of efforts to detect it;
declarations that the magistrates, ministers, and others were blinded, and
that she could open their eyes. She denied all knowledge as to who hurt
the children, all knowledge of the devil, and repeatedly asked permission
to go to prayer; but this privilege was denied her. She behaved like one
conscious of innocence of the things laid to her charge, and manifested
much intelligence, self-possession, and tact.
While on trial, one feature in her demeanor, already indicated on a
previous occasion, strongly attracts notice. Notwithstanding the terrible
fate that was standing before her, and the unflagging persistency of the
magistrates and all others present in assuming her guilt, she was several
times accused of _laughing_. Those laughs may have been simply hysterical,
but possibly they were widely different from such.
"Why did you say the magistrates' and ministers' eyes were blinded," and
"you would open them? She laughed, and denied it."
"Were you to serve the devil ten years? She laughed."
"Why did you say you would show us? She laughed again."
As previously stated, when Edward Putnam and Ezekiel Cheever made their
call, although she knew the solemn object of the visit, they report that
"in a _smiling manner_ she said, 'I know what you are come for.' With
'eagerness of mind' she asked them, 'Does she tell you what clothes I have
on?' And when they replied that Ann had said, 'You came and blinded her,
and told her that she should see you no more before it was night, that so
she might not tell us what clothes you had on,' she seemed to _smile at it
as if she had showed us a pretty trick_." These men obviously were
prettily tricked. But who was genuine author of playful proceedings at a
time when the business was so grave and solemn? And whose emotions mantled
her face with smiles in the stern and frowning presence of "authority"?
Her calm and pleasant deportment, while others were agitated or solemnly
stern, was very like what is often manifested through some human forms by
intelligences whose condition places them beyond the reach of man's
frowns, laws, prisons, and scaffolds, and who, dwelling aloof from storms
of human passion, can smile amid scenes that make humanity shudder.
Calef states, that "Martha Corey, wife to Giles Corey, protesting her
innocency, concluded her life with an eminent prayer upon the ladder."
Upham (vol. ii. 458) sums up her character thus: "Martha Corey was an aged
Christian professor of eminently devout habits and principles. It is
indeed a _strange fact_, that, in her humble home, surrounded, as it then
was, by a wilderness, this husbandman's wife should have reached a height
so above and beyond her age." The strangeness of the fact argues strongly
in favor of our position, that she was so unfolded as to receive
instruction directly from supernal teachers, or sense it in amid supernal
auras. "But," continues the historian, "it is proved conclusively by the
depositions adduced against her, that her mind was wholly disinthralled
from the errors of that period. She utterly repudiated the doctrines of
witchcraft, and expressed herself strongly and fearlessly against them.
The prayer which this woman made 'upon the ladder,' and which produced
such an impression upon those who heard it, was undoubtedly expressive of
enlightened piety, worthy of being characterized as 'eminent' in its
sentiments, and in its demonstration of an innocent, heart and life."
All her history suggests that this worthy woman, whose ways and powers
were somewhat peculiar, was one of those rare individuals whose interior
perceptives become so unfolded while in the body as to sense in knowledge
by processes, and in some directions to extent, beyond the possible reach
of man's outward intellect. Because of such blissful unfoldings her age
condemned her, hastened her exit from among a creed-bound people, and her
entrance to the home of freed spirits.