domestic and social life, so repellent to modern thought, is found in
the instructions sent to Endicott by the directors of the English
company.
“To the end the Sabbath may be celebrated in a religious manner, we
appoint that all that inhabit the Plantation, both for the general
and the particular employments, may surcease their labour every
Saturday throughout the year at 3 o’c in the afternoon, and that
they spend the rest of that day in catechizing and preparing for
the Sabbath as the ministers shall direct.”
He was also to see that at least some members of each family were well
grounded in religion,
“whereby morning and evening family duties may be well performed,
and a watchful eye held over all in each family ... that so
disorders may be prevented and ill weeds nipt before they take too
great a head.”
For this purpose the company furnished him with blank books to record
the daily employments of each family and expected these records to be
sent over to England twice a year. In our natural dislike and distrust
of such a Puritan Inquisition we should remember that the exigencies of
the time and place go far towards justifying such stern precautions. The
English company wanted a successful settlement, one to which they could
themselves retreat if political and ecclesiastical oppression in the old
country should prove too great for their endurance; and they well knew
that prosperity depended upon order, sobriety, thrift, and piety. The
splendid history and the moral leadership of New England in these three
centuries have justified this painstaking, minute, even exasperating
watch over the welfare of a colony far from the restraints of an old
civilization, in peril from hostile savages and lawless adventurers on
an inhospitable soil.
As a contrast to this gloomy picture of social life, their intentions
towards the Indians shine in a bright light. The company wrote to
Endicott in reference to the land questions certain to arise:
“If any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any
part of the lands granted in our Patent, we pray you endeavour to
purchase their title, that we may avoid the least scruple of
intrusion.”
Great pains were taken to establish just and humane relations with the
red man. One of the objects of the company was the conversion of the
Indians to the Gospel of Christ. Among the wise measures of the day it
was forbidden to sell them muskets, ammunition or liquor, and they were
permitted to enter the settlement at certain stated times only, for
purposes of trade or treaty. As a nation, our treatment of the Indian
has been so barbarous that this sagacious and Christian policy of the
first Puritans calls for the highest praise and reveals another valuable
trait in the heroic character of the Fathers.
[Illustration: OLD CRADLE.]
That first winter at Naumkeag was a severe test of the fortitude of the
Puritans. They suffered from lack of sufficient food and adequate
shelter, and many died from disease. In their great need Governor
Endicott wrote to Governor Bradford and asked that a physician be sent
to them from the Plymouth settlement. Soon Dr. Fuller came and not only
ministered to the sick, but in many conversations with Endicott and his
companions doubtless prepared the way for their adoption of the
Congregational or Independent form of church. The Pilgrims had withdrawn
from the Church of England, averse to its ritual and discipline, and
were known as Separatists. Even before their arrival at Plymouth they
instituted the Congregational form of worship and discipline which they
had already practised in England and Holland. But the Puritans at
Naumkeag had intended to reform and not to give up the Anglican liturgy
to which they were attached by tradition and sentiment. The Episcopal or
the Congregational order of service was a momentous issue in these
formative months and it is significant that on Dr. Fuller’s return to
Plymouth Endicott wrote to Bradford: “I am by him satisfied, touching
your judgement of the outward form of God’s worship; it is, as far as I
can yet gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth.”
In the following spring four hundred immigrants and four Non-conformist
clergymen, among them Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton, arrived and
steps were then taken for the formal organization of the church. In the
contract the English company made with the Rev. Francis Higginson there
is another evidence of its generous and enlightened policy. He was to
receive £30 for his outfit, £10 for books and £30 per annum for three
years. In addition, the company was to find him a house, food, and wood
for that period, to transport himself and family, and to bring them back
to England at the expiration of the time if it should then be his wish.
He was also to have one hundred acres of land, and if he died his wife
and children were to be maintained while on the plantation.
At this time the Indian name Naumkeag was given up and the settlement
took its present name of Salem, an abbreviation of Jerusalem and
meaning, as every one knows, _Peace_. The important event was the
organization of the church. Services had been held during the winter,
perhaps in that “faire house” of the Governors, and doubtless the whole
or parts of the Anglican liturgy had been used. A radical change now
occurred. After suitable preparation by prayer and fasting the ministers
were examined to test their fitness for the office, and then by a
written ballot, the first use of the ballot in this country, Samuel
Skelton was elected pastor and Francis Higginson teacher or assistant
pastor. Then Mr. Higginson and “three or four of the gravest members of
the church” laid their hands upon the head of Mr. Skelton, and with
appropriate prayer installed him as minister of this first Puritan (as
distinguished from the Pilgrim) church in America. Afterwards, by a
similar imposition of hands and prayer by Mr. Skelton, Mr. Higginson was
installed as teacher. The Plymouth church had been invited to send
delegates, and as one of them Governor Bradford came, delayed by a
storm, but in time to offer the right hand of fellowship. Thirty names
were signed to the following covenant and the First Church of Salem was
organized: “We covenant with the Lord and with one another, and do bind
ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together in all His ways,
according as He is pleased to reveal Himself unto us in His blessed word
of truth.” The deed was done. The Congregational creed and polity were
adopted and the church that for more than two centuries dominated New
England thought and life was established in Salem.
For several years the youthful church met in a private house. But in
1634 the colonists were ready to build the “meeting-house” and the
small, bare edifice, built of logs and boasting a thatched roof and
stone chimney, was soon erected. “A poor thing, but mine own,” the
Puritan might have said as he recalled the venerable and beautiful
cathedrals of the mother-country. But the Puritan doubtless never quoted
Shakespeare. It is more probable that he thought of the tabernacle with
which the chosen people journeyed in the wilderness, long before
Solomon’s temple crowned Mount Moriah, and rejoiced that the House of
the Lord was at last set up in their midst. The sinewy oak timbers of
this ancient building, within modern roof and walls, _still remain_, one
of the most impressive monuments of this ancient town. Its size, 20 x 17
feet, makes one somewhat skeptical of the familiar statement that
everybody went to church in the good old times. But I doubt not that
both floor and gallery were well filled Sundays and at the great
Thursday lecture, although on both days the preacher had the privilege,
to modern divines denied, of reversing his hour-glass after the sand had
run out and, secure of his congregation, deliberately proceeding to his
“Finally, Brethren.” On one side sat the men, on the other the women and
small children, each in his proper place, determined by wealth or public
office. Even in that religious age four men, it appears, were appointed
to prevent the boys from running downstairs before the Benediction was
pronounced, while the constable, armed with a long pole tipped with a
fox’s tail, was always at hand to rouse the drowsy or inattentive. There
was at each service a collection. Only church-members could vote at the
town-meetings, held at first in the new meeting-house, but every
householder was taxed for the support of the church.
In 1630, John Winthrop, the newly appointed Governor of the Colony,
accompanied by several hundred persons, came to Salem. Disappointed in
the place, they soon moved to Charlestown, and there established the
seat of government. From that date Salem took the second place in the
Colony, but always maintained, then as now, an independent,
public-spirited life.
Hither came, in 1634, Roger Williams, after the vicissitudes in those
days experienced by an original and outspoken man. After the
[Illustration: THE ROGER WILLIAMS’ OR “WITCH HOUSE.”]
death of Mr. Higginson, he became the minister of the First Church. The
original timbers of his dwelling-house, dating from 1635, are still to
be seen, more ancient than the ancient roof and walls that cover them,
and reveal faded characters of the Puritan palimpsest. A double interest
attaches to this venerable building, since as the residence of Judge
Corwin tradition has made it the scene of some of the preliminary
examinations in the witch trials. But the wanderings of Roger Williams
were not yet ended. His attacks upon the authority of the magistrates as
well as his controversies with the ministers brought him under the
condemnation of the General Court. Though the Salem church resisted, it
was obliged to part with its minister who quitted Massachusetts under
sentence of banishment, to become the Founder of Rhode Island. A
remarkable man was Roger Williams, of great gifts and singular purity of
conscience, but his inflexible spirit, opposed to the theocratic rule of
ministers and magistrates, was wisely set at constructive work in
another colony.
This was the eventful age of Puritanism in the mother-country and in the
colonies. All that we read of the austere piety and social restraints
of the Puritan theocracy is found in this period from 1629 to 1700. Much
might be said of the growth of Salem in population and wealth and
influence in this century, but there is no time to tell the story in a
single chapter. We come at once to the close of the century when the old
town earned an unenviable notoriety by the tragic affair known as the
Witchcraft Delusion.
We must think of Salem in 1692 as a town of 1700 inhabitants, in a
delightful situation on Massachusetts Bay, almost encircled by
sea-water, while at the west stretched away the vast forest, broken here
and there by large plantations or farms which it was the policy of the
Governor to grant to those who would undertake the pioneer work of
cultivation. These farms, widely scattered, were known as Salem Village,
and at a place a few miles from Salem, now known as Danvers Centre,
there was a little group of farmhouses surrounding a church, of which
the Rev. Samuel Parris was minister. In this family were two slaves,
John and Tituba, whom he had brought from the West Indies, and two
children, his daughter Elizabeth, nine years old, and his niece Abigail
Williams, eleven years of age. In the winter of 1691-92 these children
startled the neighborhood by their unaccountable performances, creeping
under tables, assuming strange and painful attitudes, and uttering
inarticulate cries. At times they fell into convulsions and uttered
piercing shrieks. Dr. Griggs, the local physician, declared the children
bewitched, and this explanation was soon after confirmed by a council of
the ministers held at Mr. Parris’s house.
Absurd as such an explanation seems to us, it must be remembered that,
with rare exceptions, every one at that time believed in witchcraft. It
found an apparent confirmation in the text, “Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live” (Exodus xxii., 18), and the great legal authorities of
England, Bacon, Blackstone, Coke, Selden, and Matthew Hale, had given
decisions implying the fact of witchcraft and indicating the various
degrees of guilt. It was easier to accept this explanation since
executions for this crime had already taken place at Charlestown,
Dorchester, Cambridge, Hartford and Springfield. Governor Winthrop,
Governor Bradstreet and Governor Endicott had each sentenced a witch to
death. Governor Endicott had pronounced judgment upon a person so
important as Mistress Ann Hibbins, widow of a rich merchant and the
sister of Governor Bellingham, familiar to us all in the pages of _The
Scarlet Letter_. A few years before, Cotton Mather, the distinguished
young divine of Boston, 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.
It is not surprising, therefore, that these young girls, instead of
being punished for mischievous conduct or treated for nervous
derangement, were pitied as the victims of some malevolent persons and
urged to name their tormentors. Encouraged by the verdict of physician
and ministers, countenanced by Mr. Parris and the church-members, these
“afflicted children,” as they and some other girls and women similarly
affected in the village were now called, began their accusations. The
first persons mentioned were Tituba, the Indian slave, Goody Osborn, a
bedridden woman whose mind was affected by many troubles, physical and
mental, and Sarah Good, a friendless, forlorn creature, looked upon as a
vagrant.
[Illustration: WITCH PINS.]
In March, 1692, the first examinations were held in the meeting-house in
Salem Village, John Hawthorne, ancestor of the novelist, and Jonathan
Corwin acting as magistrates. The accused did not receive fair
treatment--their guilt was assumed from the first, no counsel was
allowed, the judges even bullied them to force a confession. The
evidence against them, as in all the following cases, was “spectral
evidence,” as it was called. It consisted of the assertions of the
children that they were tortured whenever the accused looked at them,
choked, pinched, beaten, or pricked with the pins which they produced
from their mouths or clothing, and in one instance, at least, stabbed by
a knife the broken blade of which was shown by the “afflicted child.” In
one or two cases the children were convicted of deception, as in the
case of the broken knife-blade. A young man present testified that he
had broken the knife himself and had thrown away the useless blade in
the presence of the accusing girl. But with merely a reprimand from the
judge and the injunction not to tell lies, the girls were permitted to
make their monstrous charges against the men and women who stood amazed,
indignant, helpless, before accusations they could only deny, not
refute.
In this first trial Tituba 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, and named as her accomplices the two
women, Good and Osborn. After the trial, which took place a little later
in Salem, Tituba was sent to the Boston jail, where she remained until
the delusion was over. She was then sold to pay the expenses of her
imprisonment, and is lost to history. The other women were sent to the
Salem jail, which they left only for their execution the following July.
The community felt a sense of relief after the confession of Tituba and
the imprisonment of the other women. It was hoped Satan’s power was
checked. But on the contrary the power of the devil was to be shown in a
far more impressive manner. The “afflicted children” continued to suffer
and soon began to accuse men and women of unimpeachable lives. Within a
few months several hundred people in Salem, Andover and Boston were
arrested and thrown into the jails at Salem, Ipswich, Cambridge and
Boston. As Governor Hutchinson, an historian of the time, stated, the
only way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser. The state of
affairs resembled the Reign of Terror in France a century later, when
men of property and position lived in fear of being regarded as “a
suspect.”
For the thrilling story of these trials and their wretched victims the
student should turn to Mr. Upham’s authoritative and popular volumes
upon _Salem Witchcraft_. The reader can never forget the tragic fate of
the venerable Rebecca Nurse, George Burroughs, a former clergyman of the
church in Salem Village, and the other victims. Here we can review only
the trial of the Corey family, a fitting climax to this scene of horror.
Two weeks after the trial of Tituba and her companions, a warrant was
issued for the arrest of Martha Corey, aged sixty, the third wife of
Giles Corey, a well-known citizen. She was a woman of unusual strength
of character and from the first denounced the witchcraft excitement,
trying to persuade her husband who believed all the monstrous stories,
not to attend the hearings or in any way countenance the proceedings.
Perhaps it was her well-known opinion that directed suspicion to her. At
her trial the usual performance was enacted. The girls fell on the
floor, uttered piercing shrieks, cried out upon their victim. “There is
a man whispering in her ear!” one of them suddenly called out. “What
does he say to you?” the judge demanded of Martha Corey, accepting
without any demur this “spectral evidence.” “We must not believe all
these distracted children say,” was her sensible answer. But good sense
did not preside at the witch trials. She was convicted and not long
afterward executed. Her husband’s evidence went against her and is worth
noting as fairly representative of much of the testimony that convicted
the nineteen victims of this delusion:
“One evening I was sitting by the fire when my wife asked me to go
to bed. I told her I would go to prayer, and when I went to prayer
I could not utter my desires with any sense, not 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.”
It is hard to believe that such statements, most probable events
interpreted in the least probable manner, should have had any judicial
value whatever. Yet it is precisely such a mixture of superstition and
stupid speculation about unusual or even daily incidents that was
regularly brought forward and made to tell against the accused.
Soon after his wife’s arrest Giles Corey himself was arrested, taken
from his mill and brought before the judges of the special court,
appointed by Governor Phipps but held in Salem, to hear the witch
trials. Again the accusing girls went through their performance, again
the judges assumed the guilt of the accused, and tried to browbeat a
confession from him. But in the interval between his arrest and trial
this old man of eighty had had abundant leisure for reflection. He was
sure not only of his own innocence but of his wife’s as well, and it
must have been a bitter thought that his own testimony had helped
convict her. Partly as an atonement for this offense and partly to save
his property for his children, which he could not have done if he had
been convicted of witchcraft, after pleading “not guilty” he remained
mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words that he would be
tried “by God and his country.” Deaf alike to the entreaties of his
friends and the threats of the Court, he was condemned to the torture of
_peine forte et dure_, the one instance when this old English penalty
for contumacy was enforced in New England. According to the law the aged
man was laid on his back, a board was 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.
The execution of eight persons on Gallows Hill three days later,
September 22, were the last to occur in the Colony. Accusations were
still made, trials were held, more people were thrown into jail. But
there were no more executions, and the next spring there was, according
to Hutchinson, such a jail delivery as was never seen before.
“The smith filed off the chains he forged,
The jail bolts backward fell;
And youth and hoary age came forth
Like souls escaped from hell.”
The tragedy was at an end. It lasted about six months, from the first
accusations in March until the last executions in September. Nineteen
persons had been _hanged_, and one man pressed to death. _There is no
foundation for the statement that witches were burned._ No one was ever
burned in New England for witchcraft or any other crime. But hundreds of
innocent men and women were thrown into jail or obliged to flee to some
place of concealment, their homes were broken up, their property
injured, while they suffered great anxiety for themselves and friends.
It was an epidemic of mad, superstitious fear, bitterly to be regretted,
and a stain upon the high civilization of the Bay Colony. It is
associated with Salem, but several circumstances are to be taken into
consideration. First of all, note the fact that while the victims were
residents of Essex County, of Salem and vicinity, and the trials were
held in Salem, yet the special court that tried them was appointed by
the Governor; the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, Stoughton,
presided; and Boston ministers, notably Cotton Mather, the influential
minister of the North Church, were interested observers. Boston as well
as Salem is responsible for the tragedy. In the second place, remember
that this dramatic event with all its frightful consequences led to a
more rational understanding of the phenomena of witchcraft. By a natural
revulsion of feeling future charges of witchcraft were regarded with
suspicion, “spectral evidence” was disallowed, and there were no more
executions for this crime in New England.