under sentence of death; that sentence suspended by reprieves from the
Governor, from time to time, until the next year, when her husband, in
her behalf and in her name, presented an earnest and touching petition
"to the honored Governor, Deputy-governor, Magistrates, and Deputies
now assembled in Court, May the 18th, 1681," that her case might be
concluded, one way or another. After referring to her condemnation, and
to her attestation of innocence, she says, "By the mercy of God, and
the goodness of the honored Governor, I am reprieved." She begs the
Court to "hearken to her cry, a poor prisoner." She places herself at
the foot of the tribunal[i.452] of the General Court: "I now stand
humbly praying your justice in hearing my case, and to determine
therein as the Lord shall direct. I do not understand law, nor do I
know how to lay my case before you as I ought; for want of which I
humbly beg of your honors that my request may not be rejected." The
House of Deputies, on the 24th of May, voted to give her a new trial.
But the magistrates refused to concur in the vote; and so the matter
stood, for how long a time there are, I believe, no means of knowing.
Finally, however, she was released from prison, and allowed to return
to her own house. This we learn from a publication made by Mr. Hale, of
Beverly, in 1697. It seems, that, after getting her out of prison and
restored to her home, to use Mr. Hale's words, "her husband, who was
esteemed a sincere and understanding Christian by those that knew him,
desired some neighbor ministers, of whom I was one, to discourse his
wife, which we did; and her discourse was very Christian, and still
pleaded her innocence as to that which was laid to her charge." From
Mr. Hale's language, it may be inferred that she had not been pardoned
or discharged, but still lay under sentence of death, after her removal
to her own house: for he and his brethren did not "esteem it prudence
to pass any definite sentence upon one under her circumstances;" but
they ventured to say that they were "inclined to the more charitable
side." Mr. Hale states, that, "in her last sickness, she was in much
trouble and darkness of spirit, which occasioned a[i.453] judicious
friend to examine her strictly, whether she had been guilty of
witchcraft; but she said _no_, but the ground of her trouble was some
impatient and passionate speeches and actions of hers while in prison,
upon the account of her suffering wrongfully, whereby she had provoked
the Lord by putting contempt upon his Word. And, in fine, she sought
her pardon and comfort from God in Christ; and died, so far as I
understand, praying to and relying upon God in Christ for salvation."
The cases of Margaret Jones, Ann Hibbins, and Elizabeth Morse
illustrate strikingly and fully the history and condition of the public
mind in New England, and the world over, in reference to witchcraft in
the seventeenth century. They show that there was nothing
unprecedented, unusual, or eminently shocking, after all, in what I am
about to relate as occurring in Salem, in 1692. The only real offence
proved upon Margaret Jones was that she was a successful practitioner
of medicine, using only simple remedies. Ann Hibbins was the victim of
the slanderous gossip of a prejudiced neighborhood; all our actual
knowledge of her being her Will, which proves that she was a person of
much more than ordinary dignity of mind, which was kept unruffled and
serene in the bitterest trials and most outrageous wrongs which it is
possible for folly and "man's inhumanity to man" to bring upon us in
this life. Elizabeth Morse appears to have been one of the best of
Christian women. The accusations against them, as a whole, cover nearly
the[i.454] whole ground upon which the subsequent prosecutions in Salem
rested. John Winthrop passed sentence upon Margaret Jones, John
Endicott upon Ann Hibbins, and Simon Bradstreet upon Elizabeth Morse.
The last-named governor performed the office as an unavoidable act of
official duty, and prevented the execution of the sentence by the
courageous use of his prerogative, in defiance of public clamor and the
wrath of the representatives of the whole people of the colony. These
facts sufficiently show, that the proceedings afterwards had in Salem
accorded with those in like cases, of that and preceding generations;
and were sanctioned by the all but universal sentiments of mankind and
a uniform chain of precedents.
The trial of Bridget Bishop, in 1680, before the County Court at Salem,
for witchcraft, and her acquittal, have already been mentioned in the
account of Salem Village, in the First Part.
In 1688, an Irish woman, named Glover, was executed in Boston for
bewitching four children belonging to the family of a Mr. Goodwin. She
was a Roman Catholic, represented to have been quite an ignorant
person, and seems, moreover, from the accounts given of her, to have
been crazy. The oldest of the children was only about thirteen years of
age. The most experienced physicians pronounced them bewitched. Their
conduct, as it is related by Cotton Mather, was indeed very
extraordinary. At one time they would bark like dogs, and then again
they would purr like[i.455] cats. "Yea," says he, "they would fly like
geese, and be carried with an incredible swiftness, having but just
their toes now and then upon the ground, sometimes not once in twenty
feet, and their arms waved like the wings of a bird."
One of the children seems to have had a genius scarcely inferior to
that of Master Burke himself: there was no part nor passion she could
not enact. She would complain that the old Irish woman had tied an
invisible noose round her neck, and was choking her; and her complexion
and features would instantly assume the various hues and violent
distortions natural to a person in such a predicament. She would
declare that an invisible chain was fastened to one of her limbs, and
would limp about precisely as though it were really the case. She would
say that she was in an oven; the perspiration would drop from her face,
and she would exhibit every appearance of being roasted: then she would
cry out that cold water was thrown upon her, and her whole frame would
shiver and shake. She pretended that the evil spirit came to her in the
shape of an invisible horse; and she would canter, gallop, trot, and
amble round the rooms and entries in such admirable imitation, that an
observer could hardly believe that a horse was not beneath her, and
bearing her about. She would go up stairs with exactly such a toss and
bound as a person on horseback would exhibit.
After some time, Cotton Mather took her into his own family, to see
whether he could not exorcise her.[i.456] His account of her conduct,
while there, is highly amusing for its credulous simplicity. The
cunning and ingenious child seems to have taken great delight in
perplexing and playing off her tricks upon the learned man. Once he
wished to say something in her presence, to a third person, which he
did not intend she should understand. He accordingly spoke in Latin.
But she had penetration enough to conjecture what he had said: he was
amazed. He then tried Greek: she was equally successful. He next spoke
in Hebrew: she instantly detected the meaning. At last he resorted to
the Indian language, and that she pretended not to know. He drew the
conclusion that the evil being with whom she was in compact was
acquainted familiarly with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but not with
the Indian tongue.
It is curious to notice how adroitly she fell into the line of his
prejudices. He handed her a book written by a Quaker, to which sect it
is well known he was violently opposed: she would read it off with
great ease, rapidity, and pleasure. A book written against the Quakers
she could not read at all. She could read Popish books, but could not
decipher a syllable of the Assembly's Catechism. Dr. Mather was
earnestly opposed to the order and liturgy of the Church of England.
The artful little girl worked with great success upon this prejudice.
She pretended to be very fond of the Book of Common Prayer, and called
it her Bible. It would relieve her of her sufferings, in a moment, to
put it into her hands. While she could[i.457] not read a word of the
Scriptures in the Bible, she could read them very easily in the
Prayer-book; but she could not read the Lord's Prayer even in this her
favorite volume. All these things went far to strengthen the conviction
of Dr. Mather that she was in league with the Devil; for this was the
only explanation that could be given to satisfy his mind of her
partiality to the productions of Quakers, Catholics, and Episcopalians,
and her aversion to the Bible and the Catechism.
She exhibited the most exquisite ingenuity in beguiling Dr. Mather by
the force of a charm, the power of which he could not resist for a
moment,—flattery. He thus describes, with a complacency but thinly
concealed under the veil of affected modesty, the part she played, in
order to give the impression—which it was the great object of his
ambition to make upon the public mind—that the Devil stood in special
fear of his presence:—
"There then stood open the study of one belonging to the family, into
which, entering, she stood immediately on her feet, and cried out,
'They are gone! they are gone! They say that they cannot,—God won't let
'em come here!' adding a reason for it which the owner of the study
thought more kind than true; and she presently and perfectly came to
herself, so that her whole discourse and carriage was altered into the
greatest measure of sobriety."
Upon quitting the study, "the demons" would instantly again take hold
of her. Mather continues the statement, by saying that some persons,
wishing to try[i.458] the experiment, had her brought "up into the
study;" but he says that she at once became—
"so strangely distorted, that it was an extreme difficulty to drag her
up stairs. The demons would pull her out of the people's hands, and
make her heavier than, perhaps, three of herself. With incredible toil
(though she kept screaming, 'They say I must not go in'), she was
pulled in; where she was no sooner got, but she could stand on her
feet, and, with altered note, say, 'Now I am well.' She would be faint
at first, and say 'she felt something to go out of her' (the noises
whereof we sometimes heard like those of a mouse); but, in a minute or
two, she could apply herself to devotion. To satisfy some strangers,
the experiment was, divers times, with the same success, repeated,
until my lothness to have any thing done like making a charm of a room,
caused me to forbid the repetition of it."
Even in her most riotous proceedings, she kept her eye fixed upon the
doctor's weak point. When he called the family to prayers, she would
whistle and sing and yell to drown his voice, would strike him with her
fist, and try to kick him. But her hand or foot would always recoil
when within an inch or two of his body; thus giving the idea that there
was a sort of invisible coat of mail, of heavenly temper, and proof
against the assaults of the Devil, around his sacred person! After a
while, Dr. Mather concluded to prepare an account of these
extraordinary circumstances, wherewithal to entertain his congregation
in a sermon. She seemed to be quite displeased at the thought of his
making public the doings of her master, the Evil[i.459] One, attempted
to prevent his writing the intended sermon, and disturbed and
interrupted him in all manner of ways. For instance, she once knocked
at his study door, and said that "there was somebody down stairs that
would be glad to see him." He dropped his pen, and went down. Upon
entering the room, he found nobody there but the family. The next time
he met her, he undertook to chide her for having told him a falsehood.
She denied that she had told a falsehood. "Didn't you say," said he,
"that there was somebody down stairs that would be glad to see
me?"—"Well," she replied, with inimitable pertness, "is not Mrs. Mather
always glad to see you?"
She even went much farther than this in persecuting the good man while
he was writing his sermon: she threw large books at his head. But he
struggled manfully against these buffetings of Satan, as he considered
her conduct to be, finished the sermon, related all these circumstances
in it, preached, and published it. Richard Baxter wrote the preface to
an edition printed in London, in which he declares that he who will not
be convinced by all the evidence Dr. Mather presents that the child was
bewitched "must be a very obdurate Sadducee." It is so obvious, that,
in this whole affair, Cotton Mather was grossly deceived and
audaciously imposed upon by the most consummate and precocious cunning,
that it needs no comment. I have given this particular account of it,
because there is reason to believe that it originated the delusion in
Salem. It occurred only four years[i.460] before. Dr. Mather's account
of the transaction filled the whole country; and it is probable that
the children in Mr. Parris's family undertook to re-enact it.
There is nothing in the annals of the histrionic art more illustrative
of the infinite versatility of the human faculties, both physical and
mental, and of the amazing extent to which cunning, ingenuity,
contrivance, quickness of invention, and presence of mind can be
cultivated, even in very young persons, than such cases as this just
related. It seems, at first, incredible that a mere child could carry
on such a complex piece of fraud and imposture as that enacted by the
little girl whose achievements have been immortalized by the famous
author of the "Magnalia." Many other instances, however, are found
recorded in the history of the delusion we are discussing.
That of the grandchild of William and Elizabeth Morse, in Newbury, was
nearly as marvellous, and perfectly successful in deceiving the whole
country except Caleb Powell; and he got into much trouble in
consequence of seeing through it. A similar instance of juvenile
imposture is related as having occurred at Amsterdam in 1560. Twenty or
thirty boys pretended to be suddenly seized with a kind of rage and
fury, were cast upon the ground, and tormented with great agony. These
fits were intermittent; and, when they had passed off, their subjects
did not seem to be conscious of what had taken place. While they
lasted, the boys threw up, apparently from their stomachs, large
quantities of needles, pins, thimbles, pieces of[i.461] cloth,
fragments of pots and kettles, bits of glass, locks of hair, and a
variety of other articles. There was no doubt, at the time, that they
were suffering under the influence of the Devil; and multitudes crowded
round them, and gazed upon them with wonder and horror.
The details of the cases in Newbury and Charlestown were dressed up by
Cotton Mather and other writers in the strongest colors that credulous
superstition and the peculiar views of that age on the subject of
demonology could employ. They were almost universally received as proof
that Satan had commenced an onslaught, such as had never before been
known, upon the Church and the world! They appear to us as simply
absurd, and the result of precocious knavery; not so to the people of
that generation. They were looked upon as fearful demonstrations of
diabolical power, and preludes to the coming of Satan, with his
infernal confederates, to overwhelm the land. The imaginations of all
were excited, and their apprehensions morbidly aroused. The very air
was filled with rumors, fancies, and fears. The ministers sounded the
alarm from their pulpits. The magistrates sharpened the sword of
justice. The deputy-governor of the colony, Danforth, began to arrest
suspected persons months before proceedings commenced, or were thought
of, in Salem Village. It was believed that evil spirits had been seen,
by men's bodily eyes, in a neighboring town. They glided over the
fields, hovered around the houses, appeared, van[i.462]ished, and
re-appeared on the outskirts of the woods, in the vicinity of
Gloucester. Their movements were observed by several of the
inhabitants; and the whole population of the Cape was kept in a state
of agitation and alarm, in consequence of the mysterious phenomena, for
three weeks. The inhabitants retired to the garrison, and put
themselves in a state of defence against the diabolical besiegers.
Sixty men were despatched from Ipswich, in military array, to
re-enforce the garrison, and several valiant sallies were made from its
walls. Much powder was expended, but no corporeal or incorporeal blood
was shed. An account of these events was drawn up by the Rev. John
Emerson, then the minister of the first parish in Gloucester, from
which the facts now mentioned have been selected. It is very minute and
particular. The appearance and dress of the supernatural enemies are
described. They wore white waistcoats, blue shirts, and white breeches,
and had bushy heads of black hair. Mr. Emerson concludes his account by
expressing the hope that "all rational persons will be satisfied that
Gloucester was not alarmed last summer for above a fortnight together
by real French and Indians, but that the Devil and his agents were the
cause of all the molestation which at this time befell the town."
These wonderful things took place at Cape Ann, about the time that the
great conflict between the Devil and his confederates on the one hand,
and the ministers and magistrates on the other, at Salem Village, was
reaching its height. It is said that it was[i.463] regarded by the most
considerate persons, at the time, as an artful contrivance of the Devil
to create a diversion of the attention of the pious colonists from his
operations through the witches in Salem, and, by dividing and
distracting their forces, to obtain an advantage over them in the war
he was waging against their churches and their religion.
We are now ready to enter upon the story of Salem witchcraft. We have
endeavored to become acquainted with the people who acted conspicuous
parts in the drama, and to understand their character; and have tried
to collect, and bring into appreciating view, the opinions and
theories, the habits of thought, the associations of mind, the
passions, impulses, and fantasies that guided, moulded, and controlled
their conduct. The law, literature, and theology of the age, as they
bore on the subject, have been brought before us. The last great
display of the effects of the doctrines of demonology, of the belief of
the agency of invisible, irresponsible beings, whether fallen angels or
departed spirits, upon the actions of men and human affairs, is now to
open before us. The final results of superstitions and fables and
fancies, accumulating through the ages, are to be exhibited in a
transaction, an actual demonstration in real life. They are to present
an exemplification that will at once fully display their power, and
deal their death-blow.
Without the least purpose or wish to cover up or extenuate the follies,
excesses, or outrages I am about[i.464] to describe, into which the
community suffered itself to be led in the witchcraft proceedings of
1692,—with a desire, on the contrary, to make the lesson then given of
the mischief resulting from misguided enthusiasm, and which will always
result when popular excitement is allowed to wield the organized powers
of society, as impressive as facts and truth will justify,—I feel bound
to say, in advance, that there are some considerations which we must
keep before us, while reviewing the incidents of the transaction. The
theological, legal, and philosophical doctrines and the popular
beliefs, on which it was founded, have, as I have shown, led, in other
countries and periods, to similar, and often vastly more shameful,
cruel, and destructive results. But there was something in the affair,
as it was developed here, that has arrested the notice of mankind, and
clothed it with an inherent interest, beyond all other events of the
kind that have elsewhere or ever occurred.
The moral force engendered in the civilization planted on these shores,
and pervading the whole body of society, supplied a mightier momentum,
as it does to this day, and ever will, to the movement of the people,
acting in a mass and as a unit, than can anywhere else be found. A
population, invigorated by hardy enterprise, and the constant exercise
of all the faculties of freedom, and actuated throughout by individual
energy of character, must be mightier in motion than any other people.
Such a population multiplies tenfold its physical forces, by the
addition of[i.465] moral and intellectual energies. The men of the day
and scene we are now to contemplate, however deluded, to whatever
extremities carried, were controlled by fixed, absolute, sharply
defined, and, in themselves, great ideas. They believed in God. They
also believed in the Devil. They bowed in an adoration that penetrated
their inmost souls, before the one as a being of infinite holiness:
they regarded the other as a being of an all but infinite power of
evil. They feared and worshipped God. They hated and defied the Devil.
They believed that Satan was waging war against Jehovah, and that the
conflict was for the dominion of the world, for the establishment or
the overthrow of the Church of Christ. The battle, they fully believed,
could have no other issue than the salvation or the ruin of the souls
of men. This was not, with them, a mere technical, verbal creed. It was
a deep-seated conviction, held earnestly with a clear and distinct
apprehension of its import, by every individual mind. For this warfare,
they put on the whole armor of faith, rallied to the banner of the Most
High, and met Satan face to face. In this one great idea, a stern,
determined, unflinching, all-sacrificing people concentrated their
strength. No wonder that the conflict reached a magnitude which made it
observable to the whole country and all countries at the time, and will
make it memorable throughout all time. Those engaged in it, with this
sentiment absorbing their very souls, passed, for the time, out of the
realm of all other sentiments, and were insensible to all other
considera[i.466]tions. The nearer and dearer the relatives, the higher
and more conspicuous the persons, who, in their belief, were in league
with the Devil, the more profound the abhorrence of their crime, and
the determination to cut off and destroy them utterly. They believed
that Satan had, once before, "against the throne and monarchy of God,
raised impious war and battle proud;" and that for this he had been
cast out from "heaven, with all his host of rebel angels;" that he,
with his army of subordinate wicked spirits, was making a desperate
effort to retrieve his lost estate, by a renewed rebellion against God;
and they were determined to drive him, and all his confederates, for
ever from the confines of the earth. The humble hamlet of Salem Village
was felt to be the great and final battle-ground. However wild and
absurd this idea is now regarded, it was then sincerely and thoroughly
entertained, and must be taken into the account, in coming to a just
estimate of the character of the transaction, and of those engaged in
it.
One other thought is to be borne in mind, as we pass through the scenes
that are to be spread before us. The theology of Christendom, at that
time, so far as it relates to the power and agency of Satan and
demonology in general,—and this is the only point of view on which I
ever refer to theology in this discussion,—and the whole fabric of
popular superstitions founded upon it, had reached their culmination.
The beginning, middle, and close of the seventeenth century, witnessed
the greatest display of those supersti[i.467]tions, and prepared the
way for their final explosion. As the hour of their dissolution was at
hand, and they were doomed to vanish before the light of science and
education, to pass from the realm of supposed reality into that of
acknowledged fiction, it seems to have been ordered that they should
leave monuments behind them, from which their character, elements, and
features, and their terrible influence, might be read and studied in
all subsequent ages.
The ideas in reference to the agency and designs of the great enemy of
God and man, and all his subordinate hosts, witches, fairies, ghosts,
"gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire," "apparitions, signs, and
prodigies," by which the minds of men had so long been filled, and
their fearful imaginations exercised, as they took their flight,
imprinted themselves, for perpetual remembrance, in productions which,
more than any works of mere human genius, are sure to live for ever.
They left their forms crystallized, with imperishable lineaments, in
the greatest of dramas and the greatest of epics. The plays of
Shakespeare, as the century opened, and the verse of Milton in its
central period, are their record and their picture.
But there was another shape and aspect in which it was pre-eminently
important to have their memory preserved; and that was their
application to life, their influence upon the conduct of men, the
action of tribunals, and the movements of society, and, in general,
their effects, when allowed full operation, upon human happiness and
welfare. This want was supplied, as[i.468] the century terminated, by
the tragedy in real life, whose scenes are now to be presented in
Witchcraft at Salem Village.