1630, and settled at Dorchester. He was deputy governor in 1634, and
seems to have been "slated," to use the modern term, for the
governorship in the following year. But this private agreement among
the deputies was broken, for some unknown reason, by the voters, who
chose Haynes, perhaps as a less objectionable representative of the
opposition. Ludlow complained so openly and angrily of the failure to
carry out the agreement that he was dropped from the magistracy at the
next election. He went at once to Connecticut, and was deputy governor
there in alternate years until 1654. Incensed at the interference of
New Haven to prevent his county, Fairfield, from waging an independent
warfare against the Dutch, he went to Virginia in 1654, taking the
records of the county with him. It is not known when or where he died.
Pynchon, the third lay leader of the opposition, took part in the
migration, but remained within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts,
founding the town of Springfield.
At the May session of the Massachusetts General Court in 1634, an
application for "liberty to remove" was received from Newtown. It was
granted. At the September session the request was changed into one for
removal to Connecticut. This was a very different matter, and, after
long debate, was defeated by the vote of the Assistants, tho the
Deputies passed it. Various reasons were assigned for the request to
remove to Connecticut,--lack of room in their present locations, the
desire to save Connecticut from the Dutch, and "the strong bent of
their spirits to remove thither;" but the last looks like the
strongest reason. In like manner, while the arguments to the contrary
were those which would naturally suggest themselves, the weakening of
Massachusetts, and the peril of the emigrants, the concluding
argument, that "the removing of a candlestick" would be "a great
judgment," seems to show the feeling of all parties that the secession
was the result of discord between two parties.
Haynes was made governor at the next General Court. Successful
inducements were offered to some of the Newtown people to remove to
Boston, and some few concessions were made. But the migration which
had been denied to the corporate towns had probably been begun by
individuals. There is a tradition that some of the Watertown people
passed this winter of 1634-35 at the place where Wethersfield now
stands. In May, 1635, the Massachusetts General Court voted that
liberty be granted to the people of Watertown and Roxbury to remove
themselves to any place within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. In
March, 1636, the secession having already been accomplished, the
General Court issued a "Commission to Several Persons to govern the
people at Connecticut."
Its preamble reads: "Whereas, upon some reasons and grounds, there are
to remove from this our Commonwealth and body of the Massachusetts in
America divers of our loving friends and neighbors, freemen and
members of Newtown, Dorchester, Watertown, and other places, who are
resolved to transport themselves and their estates unto the river of
Connecticut, there to reside and inhabit; and to that end divers are
there already, and divers others shortly to go." This tacit permission
was the only authorization given by Massachusetts; but it should be
noted that the unwilling permission was made more gracious by a kindly
loan of cannon and ammunition for the protection of the new
settlements.
If it be true that some of the Watertown people had wintered at
Wethersfield in 1634-35, this was the first civil settlement in
Connecticut; and it is certain that, all through the following spring,
summer, and autumn, detached parties of Watertown people were settling
at Wethersfield. During the summer of 1635, a Dorchester party
appeared near the Plymouth factory, and laid the foundations of the
town of Windsor. In October of the same year a party of sixty persons,
including women and children, largely from Newtown, made the overland
march and settled where Hartford now stands. Their journey was begun
so late that the winter overtook them before they reached the river,
and, as they had brought their cattle with them, they found great
difficulty in getting everything across the river by means of rafts.
It may have been that the echoes of all these preparations had reached
England, and stirred the tardy patentees to action. During the autumn
of 1635, John Winthrop, Jr., agent of the Say and Sele associates,
reached Boston, with authority to build a large fort at the mouth of
the Connecticut River. He was to be "Governor of the River
Connecticut" for one year, and he at once issued a proclamation to the
Massachusetts emigrants, asking "under what right and preference they
had lately taken up their plantation."
It is said that they agreed to give up any lands demanded by him, or
to return on having their expenses repaid. A more dangerous influence,
however, soon claimed Winthrop's attention. Before the winter set in
he had sent a party to seize the designated spot for a fort at the
mouth of the Connecticut River. His promptness was needed. Just as his
men had thrown up a work sufficient for defense and had mounted a few
guns, a Dutch ship from New Amsterdam appeared, bringing a force
intended to appropriate the same place. Again the Dutch found
themselves a trifle late; and their post at Hartford was thus finally
cut off from effective support.
This was a horrible winter to the advanced guard of English settlers
on the upper Connecticut. The navigation of the river was completely
blocked by ice before the middle of November; and the vessels which
were to have brought their winter supplies by way of Long Island Sound
and the river were forced to return to Boston, leaving the wretched
settlers unprovided for. For a little while some scanty supplies of
corn were obtained from the neighboring Indians, but this resource
soon failed. About seventy persons straggled down the river to the
fort at its mouth. There they found and dug out of the ice a sixty-ton
vessel, and made their way back to Boston. Others turned back on the
way they had come, and struggled through the snow and ice to "the
Bay." But a few held their grip on the new territory. Subsisting first
on a little corn bought from more distant Indians, then by hunting,
and finally on ground-nuts and acorns dug from under the snow, they
fought through the winter and held their ground. But it was a narrow
escape. Spring found them almost exhausted, their unsheltered cattle
dead, and just time enough to bring necessary supplies from home. The
Dorchester people alone lost cattle to the value of two thousand
pounds.
The Newtown congregation, in October, 1635, found customers for their
old homes in a new party from England; and in the following June
Hooker and Stone led their people overland to Connecticut. They
numbered one hundred, with one hundred and sixty head of cattle. Women
and children were of the party. Mrs. Hooker, who was ill, was carried
on a litter; and the journey, of "about one hundred miles," occupied
two weeks. Its termination was well calculated to dissipate the evil
auguries of the previous winter. The Connecticut Valley in early June!
Its green meadows, flanked by wooded hills, lay before them. Its oaks,
whose patriarch was to shelter their charter, its great elms and
tulip-trees, were broken by the silver ribbon of the river; here and
there were the wigwams of the Indians, or the cabins of the survivors
of the winter; and, over and through all, the light of a day in June
welcomed the newcomers. The thought of abandoning Connecticut
disappeared forever.
[1] From Johnston's "History of Connecticut." By permission of, and
by arrangement with, the authorized publishers, Houghton, Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1887, by Alexander Johnston.
WITCHCRAFT IN NEW ENGLAND
(1647-1696)
BY JOHN G. PALFREY[1]
The people of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, like all other
Christian people at that time and later,--at least, with extremely
rare individual exceptions,--believed in the reality of a hideous
crime called witchcraft. They thought they had Scripture for that
belief, and they knew they had law for it, explicit and abundant; and
with them law and Scripture were absolute authorities for the
regulation of opinion and of conduct.
In a few instances, witches were believed to have appeared in the
earlier years of New England. But the cases had been sporadic. The
first instance of an execution for witchcraft is said to have occurred
in Connecticut, soon after the settlement [1647, May 30th]; but the
circumstances are not known, and the fact has been doubted. A year
later, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown in Massachusetts, and it has
been said, two other women in Dorchester and Cambridge, were convicted
and executed for the goblin crime. These cases appear to have excited
no more attention than would have been given to the commission of any
other felony, and no judicial record of them survives....
With three or four exceptions,--for the evidence respecting the
asserted sufferers at Dorchester and Cambridge is imperfect,--no
person appears to have been punished for witchcraft in Massachusetts,
nor convicted of it, for more than sixty years after the settlement,
though there had been three or four trials of other persons suspected
of the crime. At the time when the question respecting the colonial
charter was rapidly approaching an issue, and the public mind was in
feverish agitation, the ministers sent out a paper of proposals for
collecting facts concerning witchcraft [1681]. This brought out a work
from President Mather entitled "Illustrious Providences," in which
that influential person related numerous stories of the performances
of persons leagued with the Devil [1684].
The imagination of his restless young son[2] was stimulated, and
circumstances fed the flame. In the last year of the government of
Andros [1688], a daughter, thirteen years old, of John Goodwin,--a
mason living at the South End of Boston,--had a quarrel with an Irish
washerwoman about some missing clothes. The woman's mother took it up,
and scolded provokingly. Thereupon the wicked child, profiting, as it
seems, by what she had been hearing and reading on the mysterious
subject, "cried out upon her," as the phrase was, as a witch, and
proceeded to act the part understood to be fit for a bewitched person;
in which behavior she was presently joined by three others of the
circle, one of them only four or five years old. Now they would lose
their hearing, now their sight, now their speech; and sometimes all
three faculties at once. They mewed like kittens; they barked like
dogs.
Cotton Mather prayed with one of them; but she lost her hearing, he
says, when he began, and recovered it as soon as he finished. Four
Boston ministers and one of Charlestown held a meeting, and passed a
day in fasting and prayer, by which exorcism the youngest imp was
"delivered." The poor woman, crazed with all this pother,--if in her
right mind before,--and defending herself unskilfully in her foreign
gibberish and with the volubility of her race, was interpreted as
making some confession. A gossiping witness testified that six years
before she had heard another woman say that she had seen the accused
come down a chimney. She was required to repeat the Lord's Prayer in
English,--an approved test; but being a Catholic, she had never
learned it in that language. She could recite it, after a fashion, in
Latin; but she was no scholar, and made some mistakes. The helpless
wretch was convicted and sent to the gallows.
Cotton Mather took the oldest "afflicted" girl to his house, where she
dexterously played upon his self-conceit to stimulate his credulity.
She satisfied him that Satan regarded him as his most terrible enemy,
and avoided him with especial awe. When he prayed or read in the
Bible, she was seized with convulsion fits. When he called to family
devotion she would whistle, and sing, and scream, and pretend to try
to strike and kick him; but her blows would be stopt before reaching
his body, indicating that he was unassailable by the Evil One. Mather
published an account of these transactions,[3] with a collection of
other appropriate matter. The treatise circulated not only in
Massachusetts, but widely also in England, where it obtained the warm
commendation of Richard Baxter; and it may be supposed to have had an
important effect in producing the more disastrous delusion which
followed three years after. The Goodwin children soon got well: in
other words, they were tired of their atrocious foolery; and the death
of their victim gave them a pretense for a return to decent
behavior....
Martha Corey and Rebecca Nourse were cried out against. Both were
church-members of excellent character; the latter seventy years of
age. They were examined by the same magistrates, and sent to prison,
and with them a child of Sarah Good, only four or five years old, also
charged with diabolical practises. Mr. Parris preached upon the text,
"Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Sarah
Cloyse, understanding the allusion to be to Nourse, who was her
sister, went out of church, and was accordingly cried out upon,
examined, and committed. Elizabeth Procter was another person charged.
The Deputy-Governor and five magistrates came to Salem for the
examination of the two prisoners last named. Procter appealed to one
of the children who was accusing her. "Dear child," she said, "it is
not so; there is another judgment, dear child:" and presently they
denounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side. A week
afterward warrants were issued for the apprehension of four other
suspected persons; and a few days later for three others, one of whom,
Philip English, was the principal merchant of Salem. On the same day,
on the information of one of the possessed girls, an order was sent to
Maine for the arrest of George Burroughs, formerly a candidate for the
ministry at Salem Village, and now minister of Wells. The witness said
that Burroughs, besides being a wizard, had killed his first two
wives, and other persons whose ghosts had appeared to her and
denounced him....
Affairs were in this condition when the King's Governor arrived. About
a hundred alleged witches were now in jail, awaiting trial. Their case
was one of the first matters to which his attention was called.
Without authority for so doing,--for by the charter which he
represented, the establishment of judicial courts was a function of
the General Court,--he proceeded to institute a special commission of
Oyer and Terminer, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was
the hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners
applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act was
to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation twenty years old and
retracted by its author on his death-bed, had been revived. The court
sentenced her to die by hanging, and she was accordingly hanged at the
end of eight days. Cotton Mather, in his account of the proceedings,
relates that as she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had
given a look toward the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and
immediately a dæmon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of
it." It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had given way under
the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on collected for so extraordinary
a spectacle.
At the end of another four weeks the court sat again and sentenced
five women, two of Salem, and one each of Amesbury, Ipswich, and
Topsfield, all of whom were executed, protesting their innocence. In
respect to one of them, Rebecca Nourse, a matron eminent for piety and
goodness, a verdict of acquittal was first rendered. But Stoughton
sent the jury out again, reminding them that in her examination, in
reference to certain witnesses against her who had confest their own
guilt, she had used the expression, "they came among us." Nourse was
deaf, and did not catch what had been going on. When it was afterward
repeated to her she said that by the coming among us she meant that
they had been in prison together. But the jury adopted the court's
interpretation of the word as signifying an acknowledgment that they
had met at a witch orgy. The Governor was disposed to grant her a
pardon. But Parris, who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered
and prevailed. On the last communion day before her execution she was
taken into church, and formally excommunicated by Noyes, her
minister....
In the course of the next month, in which the Governor left Boston for
a short tour of inspection in the Eastern country, fifteen
persons--six women in one day, and on another eight women and one
man--were tried, convicted, and sentenced. Eight of them were hanged.
The brave Giles Corey, eighty years of age, being arraigned, refused
to plead. He said that the whole thing was an imposture, and that it
was of no use to put himself on his trial, for every trial had ended
in a conviction,--which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that,
suffering the penalty of the English common law for a contumacious
refusal to answer,--the _peine forte et dure_,--he was prest to death
with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he intended to
protect the inheritance of his children, which, as he had been
informed, would by a conviction of felony have been forfeit to the
crown.
There had been twenty human victims, Corey included; besides two dogs,
their accomplices in the mysterious crime. Fifty persons had obtained
a pardon by confessing; a hundred and fifty were in prison awaiting
trial; and charges had been made against two hundred more. The
accusers were now flying at high quarries. Hezekiah Usher, known to
the reader as an ancient magistrate of fair consideration, was
complained of; and Mrs. Thacher, mother-in-law of Corwin, the justice
who had taken the earliest examinations. Zeal in pushing forward the
prosecution began to seem dangerous; for what was to prevent an
accused person from securing himself by confession, and then revenging
himself on the accuser by arraigning him as a former ally?...
The drunken fever-fit was now over, and with returning sobriety came
profound contrition and disgust. A few still held out against the
return of reason. There are some men who never own that they have been
in the wrong, and a few men who are forever incapable of seeing it.
Stoughton, with his bull-dog stubbornness, that might in other times
have made him a St. Dominic, continued to insist that the business had
been all right, and that the only mistake was in putting a stop to it.
Cotton Mather was always infallible in his own eyes. In the year after
the executions he had the satisfaction of studying another remarkable
case of possession in Boston; but when it and the treatise which he
wrote upon it failed to excite much attention, and it was plain that
the tide had set the other way, he soon got his consent to let it run
at its own pleasure, and turned his excursive activity to other
objects....
Members of some of the juries, in a written public declaration,
acknowledged the fault of their wrongful verdicts, entreated
forgiveness, and protested that, "according to their present minds,
they would none of them do such things again, on such grounds, for the
whole world; praying that this act of theirs might be accepted in way
of satisfaction for their offense." A day of General Fasting was
proclaimed by authority, to be observed throughout the jurisdiction,
in which the people were invited to pray that "whatever mistakes on
either hand had been fallen into, either by the body of this people,
or by any orders of men, referring to the late tragedy raised among us
by Satan and his instruments, through the awful judgment of God, he
would humble them therefor, and pardon all the errors of his servants
and people."
[1] From Palfrey's "History of New England." By permission of, and
by arrangement with, the authorized publishers, Houghton, Miffin
Co. Copyright, 1873.
[2] Cotton Mather, son of Increase Mather, the president of Harvard
College.
[3] This work was entitled "Wonders of the Invisible World." It is
now much sought after by collectors of Americana.
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF NEW YORK
(1664)
BY JOHN R. BRODHEAD[1]
England now determined boldly to rob Holland of her American province.
King Charles II accordingly sealed a patent granting to the Duke of
York and Albany a large territory in America, comprehending Long
Island and the islands in its neighborhood--his title to which Lord
Stirling had released--and all the lands and rivers from the west side
of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay. This
sweeping grant included the whole of New Netherlands and a part of the
territory of Connecticut, which, two years before, Charles had
confirmed to Winthrop and his associates.
The Duke of York lost no time in giving effect to his patent. As lord
high admiral he directed the fleet. Four ships, the _Guinea_, of
thirty-six guns; the _Elias_, of thirty; the _Martin_, of sixteen; and
the _William and Nicholas_, of ten, were detached for service against
New Netherlands, and about four hundred fifty regular soldiers, with
their officers, were embarked. The command of the expedition was
intrusted to Colonel Richard Nicolls, a faithful Royalist, who had
served under Turenne with James, and had been made one of the
gentlemen of his bedchamber. Nicolls was also appointed to be the
Duke's deputy-governor, after the Dutch possessions should have been
reduced.
With Nicolls were associated Sir Robert Carr, Colonel George
Cartwright, and Samuel Maverick, as royal commissioners to visit the
several colonies in New England. These commissioners were furnished
with detailed instructions; and the New England governments were
required by royal letters to "join and assist them vigorously" in
reducing the Dutch to subjection. A month after the departure of the
squadron the Duke of York conveyed to Lord Berkeley and Sir George
Carteret all the territory between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers,
from Cape May north to 41° 40' latitude, and thence to the Hudson, in
41° latitude, "hereafter to be called by the name or names of Nova
Cæsarea or New Jersey."
Intelligence from Boston that an English expedition against New
Netherlands had sailed from Portsmouth was soon communicated to
Stuyvesant by Captain Thomas Willett; and the burgomasters and
_schepens_ of New Amsterdam were summoned to assist the council with
their advice. The capital was ordered to be put in a state of defense,
guards to be maintained, and _schippers_ to be warned. As there was
very little powder at Fort Amsterdam a supply was demanded from New
Amstel, and a loan of five or six thousand guilders was asked from
Rensselaerswyck. The ships about to sail for Curaçao were stopt;
agents were sent to purchase provisions at New Haven; and as the enemy
was expected to approach through Long Island Sound, spies were sent to
obtain intelligence at West Chester and Milford.
But at the moment when no precaution should have been relaxed, a
dispatch from the West India directors, who appear to have been misled
by advices from London, announced that no danger need be apprehended
from the English expedition, as it was sent out by the King only to
settle the affairs of his colonies and establish episcopacy, which
would rather benefit the company's interests in New Netherlands.
Willett now retracting his previous statements, a perilous confidence
returned. The Curacao ships were allowed to sail; and Stuyvesant,
yielded to the solicitation of his council, went up the river to look
after affairs at Fort Orange.