of Thomas Weld, in the house of his brother Joseph, near what is now
Eustis Street, Roxbury. She was there until March, when, returning to
Boston for further trial, she was utterly cast out, even John Cotton,
who had been her friend, turning against her.
Mr. Cotton did not present an heroic figure in this trial. Had he
chosen, he might have turned the drift of public opinion in Mrs.
Hutchinson's favour, but he was either too weak or too politic to
withstand the pressure brought to bear upon him, and he gave a qualified
adhesion to the proceedings. Winthrop did not hesitate to use severe
measures, and in the course of the struggle Vane, who deeply admired the
Boston prophetess, left the country in disgust. Mrs. Hutchinson was
arraigned at the bar as if she had been a criminal of the most dangerous
kind. Winthrop, who presided, catechised her mercilessly, and all
endeavoured to extort from her some damaging admission. But in this they
were unsuccessful. "Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to
hold her tongue," commented the governor, in describing the court
proceedings. Yet when all is said, the "trial" was but a mockery, and
those who read the proceedings as preserved in the "History of
Massachusetts Under the Colony and Province," written by Governor
Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the
judgment there pronounced by a court which expounded theology instead of
law against a woman who, as Coddington truly said, "had broken no law,
either of God or of man."
Banishment was the sentence pronounced, and after the church which had
so lately caressed and courted Mrs. Hutchinson had in its turn visited
upon her the verdict of excommunication, her husband sold all his
property and removed with his family to the island of Aquidneck, as did
also many others whose opinions had brought them under the censure of
the governing powers. In this connection it is worth noting that the
head of the house of Hutchinson stood right valiantly by his persecuted
wife, and when a committee of the Boston church went in due time to
Rhode Island for the purpose of bringing back into the fold the sheep
which they adjudged lost, Mr. Hutchinson told them bluntly that, far
from being of their opinion, he accounted his wife "a dear saint and
servant of God."
The rest of Mrs. Hutchinson's story is soon told. Upon the death of her
husband, which occurred five years after the banishment, she went with
her family into the Dutch territory of New Netherlands, settling near
what is now New Rochelle. And scarcely had she become established in
this place when her house was suddenly assaulted by hostile Indians,
who, in their revengeful fury, murdered the whole family, excepting
only one daughter, who was carried away into captivity. Thus in the
tragedy of an Indian massacre was quenched the light of the most
remarkable intellect Boston has ever made historic by misunderstanding.
Hawthorne, in writing in his early manhood of Mrs. Hutchinson
("Biographical Sketches"), humourously remarked, Seer that he was:
"There are portentous indications, changes gradually taking place in the
habits and feelings of the gentler sex, which seem to threaten our
posterity with many of those public women whereof one was a burden too
grievous for our fathers."
Fortunately, we of to-day have learned to take our clubwomen less
tragically than Winthrop was able to do.
[Illustration: OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.]
IN THE REIGN OF THE WITCHES
One of the most interesting of the phenomena to be noted by the student
of historical houses is the tenacity of tradition. People may be told
again and again that a story attributed to a certain site has been
proven untrue, but they still look with veneration on a place which has
been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by
which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what
is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of
Essex and North Streets, Salem. A dark, scowling building, set far
enough back from the street for a modern drugstore to stand in front of
it, the house itself is certainly sufficiently sinister in appearance to
warrant its name, even though one is assured by authorities that no
witch was ever known to have lived there. Its sole connection with
witchcraft, history tells us, is that some of the preliminary
examinations of witches took place here, the house being at the time the
residence of Justice Jonathan Corwin. Yet it is this house that has
absorbed the interest of historical pilgrims to Salem through many
years, just because it looks like a witch-house, and somebody once made
a muddled statement by which it came to be so regarded.
This house is the oldest standing in Salem or its vicinity, having been
built before 1635. And it really has a claim to fame as the Roger
Williams house, for it was here that the great "Teacher" lived during
his troubled settlement in Salem. The people of Salem, it will be
remembered, persistently sought Williams as their spiritual pastor and
master until the General Court at Boston unseated the Salem deputies for
the acts of their constituents in retaining a man of whom they
disapproved, and the magistrates sent a vessel to Salem to remove Mr.
Williams to England. The minister eluded his persecutors by fleeing
through the wintry snows into the wilderness, to become the founder of
the State of Rhode Island.
Mr. Williams was a close friend and confidential adviser of Governor
Endicott, and those who were alarmed at the governor's impetuosity in
cutting the cross from the king's colours, attributed the act to his
[Williams's] influence. In taking his departure from the old house of
the picture to make his way to freedom, Williams had no guide save a
pocket compass, which his descendants still exhibit, and no reliance but
the friendly disposition of the Indians toward him.
But it is of the witchcraft delusion with which the house of our picture
is connected rather than with Williams and his story, that I wish now to
speak. Jonathan Corwin, or Curwin, who was the house's link to
witchcraft, was made a councillor under the new charter granted
Massachusetts by King William in 1692, and was, as has been said, one of
the justices before whom the preliminary witch examinations were held.
He it was who officiated at the trial of Rebecca Nourse, of Danvers,
hanged as a witch July 19, 1692, as well as at many other less
remarkable and less revolting cases.
[Illustration: REBECCA NOURSE HOUSE, DANVERS, MASS.]
Rebecca Nourse, aged and infirm and universally beloved by her
neighbours, was accused of being a witch--why, one is unable to find
out. The jury was convinced of her innocence, and brought in a verdict
of "not guilty," but the court sent them out again with instructions to
find her guilty. This they did, and she was executed. The tradition is
that her sons disinterred her body by stealth from the foot of the
gallows where it had been thrown, and brought it to the old homestead,
now still standing in Danvers, laying it reverently, and with many
tears, in the little family burying ground near by.
The majority of the persons condemned in Salem were either old or
weak-witted, victims who in their testimony condemned themselves, or
seemed to the jury to do so. Tituba, the Indian slave, is an example of
this. She was tried in March, 1692, by the Justice Corwin of the big,
dark house. She confessed that under threats from Satan, who had most
often appeared to her as a man in black, accompanied by a yellow bird,
she had tortured the girls who appeared against her. She named
accomplices, and was condemned to imprisonment. After a few months she
was sold to pay the expenses of her lodging in jail, and is lost to
history. But this was by no means the end of the matter. The "afflicted
children" in Salem who had made trouble before now began to accuse men
and women of unimpeachable character. Within a few months several
hundred people were arrested and thrown into jails. As Governor
Hutchinson, the historian of the time, points out, the only way to
prevent an accusation was to become an accuser oneself. The state of
affairs was indeed analogous to that which obtained in France a century
later, when, during the Reign of Terror, men of property and position
lived in the hourly fear of being regarded as "a suspect," and
frequently threw suspicion on their neighbours the better to retain
their own heads.
We of to-day cannot understand the madness that inspired such cruelty.
But in the light of Michelet's theory,--that in the oppression and
dearth of every kind of ideal interest in rural populations some
safety-valve had to be found, and that there _were_ real organised
secret meetings, witches' Sabbaths, to supply this need of
sensation,--the thing is less difficult to comprehend. The religious
hysteria that resulted in the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson was but
another phase of the same thing. And the degeneration to be noted to-day
in the remote hill-towns of New England is likewise attributable to
Michelet's "dearth of ideal interest."
The thing once started, it grew, of course, by what it fed upon.
Professor William James, Harvard's distinguished psychologist, has
traced to torture the so-called "confessions" on which the evil
principally throve. A person, he says, was suddenly found to be
suffering from what we to-day should call hysteria, perhaps, but what in
those days was called a witch disease. A witch then had to be found to
account for the disease; a scapegoat must of necessity be brought
forward. Some poor old woman was thereupon picked out and subjected to
atrocious torture. If she "confessed," the torture ceased. Naturally she
very often "confessed," thus implicating others and damning herself.
Negative suggestion this modern psychologist likewise offers as light
upon witchcraft. The witches seldom cried, no matter what their anguish
of mind might be. The inquisitors used to say to them then, "If you're
not a witch, cry, let us see your tears. There, there! you can't cry!
That proves you're a witch!"
Moreover, that was an age when everybody read the Bible, and believed in
its verbal inspiration. And there in Exodus (22:18), is the plain
command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Cotton Mather, the
distinguished young divine, had published a work affirming his belief in
witchcraft, and detailing his study of some bewitched children in
Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family, the better to
observe the case. The king believed in it, and Queen Anne, to whose name
we usually prefix the adjective "good," wrote to Governor Phips a letter
which shows that she admitted witchcraft as a thing unquestioned.
It is in connection with the witchcraft delusion in Salem that we get
the one instance in New England of the old English penalty for
contumacy, that of a victim's being pressed to death. Giles Corey, who
believed in witchcraft and was instrumental in the conviction of his
wife, so suffered, partly to atone for his early cowardice and partly to
save his property for his children. This latter thing he could not have
done if he had been convicted of witchcraft, so after pleading "not
guilty," he remained mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words
that he would be tried "by God and his country."
The arrest of Mrs. Corey, we learn, followed closely on the heels of
that of Tituba and her companions. The accused was a woman of sixty, and
the third wife of Corey. She seems to have been a person of unusual
strength of character, and from the first denounced the witchcraft
excitement, trying to persuade her husband, who believed all the
monstrous stories then current, not to attend the hearings or in any way
countenance the proceedings. Perhaps it was this well-known attitude of
hers that directed suspicion to her.
At her trial the usual performance was enacted. The "afflicted girls"
fell on the floor, uttered piercing shrieks, and cried out upon their
victim. "There is a man whispering in her ear!" one of them suddenly
exclaimed. "What does he say to you?" the judge demanded of Martha
Corey, accepting at once the "spectral evidence". "We must not believe
all these distracted children say," was her sensible answer. But good
sense was not much regarded at witch trials, and she was convicted and
not long afterward executed. Her husband's evidence, which went
strongly against her, is here given as a good example of much of the
testimony by which the nineteen Salem victims of the delusion were sent
to Gallows Hill.
"One evening I was sitting by the fire when my wife asked me to go to
bed. I told her that I would go to prayer, and when I went to prayer I
could not utter my desires with any sense, nor open my mouth to speak.
After a little space I did according to my measure attend the duty. Some
time last week I fetched an ox well out of the woods about noon, and he
laying down in the yard, I went to raise him to yoke him, but he could
not rise, but dragged his hinder parts as if he had been hip shot, but
after did rise. I had a cat some time last week strongly taken on the
sudden, and did make me think she would have died presently. My wife bid
me knock her in the head, but I did not, and since she is well. My wife
hath been wont to sit up after I went to bed, and I have perceived her
to kneel down as if she were at prayer, but heard nothing."
Incredible as it seems to-day, this was accepted as "evidence" of Mrs.
Corey's bewitchment. Then, as so often happened, Giles Corey, the
accuser, was soon himself accused. He was arrested, taken from his mill,
and brought before the judges of the special court appointed by Governor
Phips to hear the witch trials in Salem. Again the girls went through
their performance, again there was an endeavour to extort a confession.
But this time Corey acted the part of a man. He had had leisure for
reflection since he had testified against his wife, and he was now as
sure that she was guiltless as that he himself was. Bitter, indeed, must
have been the realisation that he had helped convict her. But he
atoned, as has been said, to her and to his children by subjecting
himself to veritable martyrdom. Though an old man whose hair was
whitened with the snows of eighty winters, he "was laid on his back, a
board placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could
endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day,
and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his
sufferings." Rightly must this mode of torture have been named _peine
forte et dure_. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution
of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people
in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but _there is
absolutely no foundation for the statement that some were burned_.
The revulsion that followed the cessation of the delusion was as marked
as was the precipitation that characterised the proceedings. Many of the
clergy concerned in the trials offered abject apologies, and Judge
Sewall, noblest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
implicated in the madness, stood up on Fast Day before a great
congregation in the South Church, Boston, acknowledged his grievous
error in accepting "spectral evidence," and to the end of his life did
penance yearly in the same meeting-house for his part in the
transactions.
Not inappropriately the gloomy old house in which the fanatical Corwin
had his home is to-day given over to a dealer in antique furniture.
Visitors are freely admitted upon application, and very many in the
course of the year go inside to feast their eyes on the ancient
wainscoting and timbers. The front door and the overhanging roof are
just as in the time of the witches, and from a recessed area at the
back, narrow casements and excrescent stairways are still to be seen.
The original house had, however, peaked gables, with pineapples carved
in wood surmounting its latticed windows and colossal chimneys that
placed it unmistakably in the age of ruffs, Spanish cloaks, and long
rapiers.
LADY WENTWORTH OF THE HALL
On one of those pleasant long evenings, when the group of friends that
Longfellow represents in his "Tales of the Wayside Inn" had gathered in
the twilight about the cheery open fire of the house at Sudbury to tell
each other tales of long ago, we hear best the story of Martha Hilton.
We seem to catch the poet's voice as he says after the legend from the
Baltic has been alluringly related by the Musician:
"These tales you tell are, one and all,
Of the Old World,
Flowers gathered from a crumbling wall,
Dead leaves that rustle as they fall;
Let me present you in their stead
Something of our New England earth;
A tale which, though of no great worth,
Has still this merit, that it yields
A certain freshness of the fields,
A sweetness as of home-made bread."
And then, as the others leaned back to listen, there followed the
beautiful ballad which celebrates the fashion in which Martha Hilton, a
kitchen maid, became "Lady Wentworth of the Hall."
The old Wentworth mansion, where, as a beautiful girl, Martha came,
served, and conquered all who knew her, and even once received as her
guest the Father of his Country, is still in an admirably preserved
state, and the Wayside Inn, rechristened the Red Horse Tavern, still
entertains glad guests.
[Illustration: RED HORSE TAVERN, SUDBURY, MASS.]
This inn was built about 1686, and for almost a century and a half from
1714 it was kept as a public house by generation after generation of
Howes, the last of the name at the inn being Lyman Howe, who served
guests of the house from 1831 to about 1860, and was the good friend
and comrade of the brilliant group of men Longfellow has poetically
immortalised in the "Tales." The modern successor of Staver's Inn, or
the "Earl of Halifax," in the doorway of which Longfellow's worthy dame
once said, "as plain as day:"
"Oh, Martha Hilton! Fie! how dare you go
About the town half dressed and looking so!"
is also standing, and has recently been decorated by a memorial tablet.
In Portsmouth Martha Hilton is well remembered, thanks to Longfellow and
tradition, as a slender girl who, barefooted, ragged, with neglected
hair, bore from the well
"A pail of water dripping through the street,
And bathing as she went her naked feet."
Nor do the worthy people of Portsmouth fail to recall the other actor in
this memorable drama, upon which the Earl of Halifax once benignly
smiled:
"A portly person, with three-cornered hat,
A crimson velvet coat, head high in air,
Gold-headed cane and nicely powdered hair,
And diamond buckles sparkling at his knees,
Dignified, stately, florid, much at ease.
For this was Governor Wentworth, driving down
To Little Harbour, just beyond the town,
Where his Great House stood, looking out to sea,
A goodly place, where it was good to be."
There are even those who can perfectly recollect when the house was very
venerable in appearance, and when in its rooms were to be seen the old
spinet, the Strafford portrait, and many other things delightful to the
antiquary. Longfellow's description of this ancient domicile is
particularly beautiful:
"It was a pleasant mansion, an abode
Near and yet hidden from the great highroad,
Sequestered among trees, a noble pile,
Baronial and Colonial in its style;
Gables and dormer windows everywhere--
Pandalan pipes, on which all winds that blew
Made mournful music the whole winter through.
Within, unwonted splendours met the eye,
Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry;
Carved chimneypieces, where, on brazen dogs,
Revelled and roared the Christmas fire of logs.
Doors opening into darkness unawares,
Mysterious passages and flights of stairs;
And on the walls, in heavy-gilded frames,
The ancestral Wentworths, with old Scripture names.
Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt."
The place thus prettily pictured is at the mouth of Sagamore Creek, not
more than, two miles from the town of Portsmouth. The exterior of the
mansion as it looks to-day does not of itself live up to one's
preconceived idea of colonial magnificence. A rambling collection of
buildings, seemingly the result of various "L" expansions, form an
inharmonious whole which would have made Ruskin quite mad. The site is,
however, charming, for the place commands a view up and down Little
Harbour, though concealed by an eminence from the road. The house is
said to have originally contained as many as fifty-two rooms. If so, it
has shrunk in recent years. But there is still plenty of elbow space,
and the cellar is even to-day large enough to accommodate a fair-sized
troop of soldiery.
As one enters, one notices first the rack in which were wont to be
deposited the muskets of the governor's guard. And it requires only a
little imagination to picture the big rooms as they were in the old
days, with the portrait of Strafford dictating to his secretary just
before his execution, the rare Copley, the green damask-covered
furniture, and the sedan-chair, all exhaling an atmosphere of
old-time splendour and luxury. Something of impressiveness has
recently been introduced into the interior by the artistic arrangement
of old furniture which the house's present owner, Mr. Templeton
Coolidge, has brought about. But the exterior is "spick-span" in modern
yellow and white paint!
[Illustration: GOVERNOR WENTWORTH HOUSE, PORTSMOUTH, N. H.]
Yet it was in this very house that Martha for seven years served her
future lord. There, busy with mop and pail----
"A maid of all work, whether coarse or fine,
A servant who made service seem divine!"
she grew from childhood into the lovely woman whom Governor Wentworth
wooed and won.
In the March of 1760 it was that the host at Little Harbour exclaimed
abruptly to the good rector of St. John's, who had been dining
sumptuously at the manor-house:
"This is my birthday; it shall likewise be my wedding-day, and you shall
marry me!" No wonder the listening guests were greatly mystified, as
Martha and the portly governor were joined "across the walnuts and the
wine" by the Reverend Arthur Brown, of the Established Church.
And now, of course, Martha had her chariot, from which she could look
down as disdainfully as did the Earl of Halifax on the humble folk who
needs must walk. The sudden elevation seems, indeed, to have gone to my
lady's head. For tradition says that very shortly after her marriage
Martha dropped her ring and summoned one of her late kitchen colleagues
to rescue it from the floor. But the colleague had quickly become
shortsighted, and Martha, dismissing her hastily, picked up the circlet
herself.
Before the Reverend Arthur Brown was gathered to his fathers, he had
another opportunity to marry the fascinating Martha to another
Wentworth, a man of real soldierly distinction. Her second husband was
redcoated Michael, of England, who had been in the battle of Culloden.
This Colonel Michael Wentworth was the "great buck" of his day, and was
wont to fiddle at Stoodley's far into the morning for sheer love of
fiddling and revelry. Stoodley's has now fallen indeed! It is the brick
building marked "custom-house," and it stands at the corner of Daniel
and Penhallow Streets.
To this Lord and Lady Wentworth it was that Washington, in 1789, came as
a guest, "rowed by white-jacketed sailors straight to their vine-hung,
hospitable door." At this time there was a younger Martha in the house,
one who had grown up to play the spinet by the long, low windows, and
who later joined her fate to that of still another Wentworth, with whom
she passed to France.
A few years later, in 1795, the "great buck" of his time took to a
bankrupt's grave in New York, forgetting, so the story goes, the eternal
canon fixed against self-slaughter.