As renowned as any one among all sufferers under persecutions for
witchcraft--a hero in the band--was Giles Corey, husband of Martha, more
than fourscore years old, but still strong and resolute. He may have been
wild and rough in youth and early manhood, but was efficient in business,
and before the close of life was possessor of a very handsome estate for
those times in that region. When the witchcraft prosecutions commenced, he
sided with the multitude for a time; was vexed that his wife would not do
the same, and, in his excitement, perhaps gave free vent to such hard
epithets as his tongue had been allowed to put forth freely in his earlier
years; some of which were soon brought to bear against his good dame,
while she was subjected to examination. From some cause his sympathy with
the prosecutors subsided when he saw his good wife maligned by them, and
soon the witch detectors were after him also. He was arrested and
imprisoned. His keen penetration perceived that acquittal, as things were
going, was impossible, unless the accused pleaded guilty; which plea
truth, honor, and manhood forbade him to make. To be tried and condemned
would involve a forfeiture of his property, and take it from his children.
But no trial could be had, and of course no condemnation, unless he should
plead either guilty or not guilty to the indictment. His decision was soon
formed. Taken into court, he closed his lips, and no power there could
open them. Neither _guilty_ nor _not guilty_ could be wrung from them. The
large, strong, old man stood in calm majesty before the court, his silence
challenging the whole civil power of the province to shake his purpose.
English custom in such cases--and he probably knew it--was to subject the
recusant to lingering torture, trusting that pain or prostration would
wring out a plea of either guilty or not guilty. Order was given by the
court to lay this old man prostrate, pile over him heavy weights, and put
him upon starvation diet for the purpose of bringing his stubborn will to
subjection. But neither oppressing weights, the pangs of hunger, nor both
combined, weakened the hold of that strong will upon its purpose. His only
utterances then were, "More weight, more weight!"
Corey himself testified at his preliminary examination, and the court
tried to make it evidence of diabolism, that, twice at least, when
attempting to pray, there was more or less stoppage of his utterance.
Whether this was caused by the action of some outside intelligence
bringing spirit forces to bear upon him is not apparent. The case as
stated will hardly justify the presumption, though it suggests the
possibility that it was. The dumbness that was formerly imposed upon the
prophet Ezekiel and priest Zacharias, and that which frequently befalls
mediums in our own age, teach that unseen intelligences sometimes can and
do temporarily prevent the use of vocal organs by their legitimate owners.
The conclusive evidences which led to his commitment were spectral. His
apparition had been seen by many, and had harmed them. Ann Putnam's sharp
eyes were first in this case, as in most others, to see the witch. She saw
this old man's apparition April 13; Mercy Lewis did on the 14th; and
subsequently he was seen as a specter by, and gave annoyances to, eight
other females and two males, who severally gave in depositions to that
effect.
Was their perception of him nothing more than the product of the
imagination of the witnesses? Were all the declarations false?
Possibly--but not probably; for both imagination and perjury are often
charged with doing what clairvoyance legitimately sees and authorizes.
He was examined April 19, five days after his apparition was first seen.
Calef states that "Sept. 16th Giles Corey was prest to death." In a
foot-note, p. 260 of _Salem Witchcraft_, we read that "Giles Corey was
_executed_ Sept. 19, 1692, about noon." Perhaps these statements permit
the conclusion that he was subjected to pressure from some hour of the
16th, Calef's date, till noon of the 19th, or about three days, when,
according to Fowler, he died. "In pressing," Calef says, "his tongue being
prest out of his mouth, the sheriff, with his cane, forced it in again
when he was dying."
Corey's endurance and call for "more weight," says Upham, ii. 340, "for a
person of more than eighty-one years of age, must be allowed to have been
a marvelous exhibition of prowess, illustrating, as strongly as anything
in human history, the power of a resolute will over the utmost pain and
agony of body, and demonstrating that Giles Corey was a man of heroic
nerve, and of a spirit that could not be subdued." Hutchinson closes his
account of this case with the remark that, "in all ages of the world,
superstitious credulity has produced greater cruelty than is practiced
among Hottentots, or other nations, whose belief of a deity is called in
question." And why "_greater_ cruelty"? Nowhere outside of Christendom was
so cruel a devil conceived of as within it. And therefore greater
incitements to cruelty were called up in those fighting against his
minions than in any other men anywhere at any time. The creed devil-ward,
and not general "superstitious credulity," evoked in strong, good men,
true to their ancestral and the _Christian_ world's faith, more than
SAVAGE CRUELTY.