Mr. Parris' parsonage soon went to ruin, as did some of the dwellings
of the "afflicted" children, who learned and practiced certain things
in his house which he afterward pronounced to be arts of Satan, and
declared to have been pursued without his knowledge and with the
cognizance of only his servants (John and Tituba, the Indian and the
negress). Barn, and well, and garden disappeared in a sorry tract of
rough ground, and the dwelling became a mere handful of broken bricks.
The narrative of the pastor's struggles and devices to retain his pulpit
is very interesting; but they are not related to our object here; and
all we need say is, that three sons and sons-in-law of Mrs. Nurse
measured their strength against his, and, without having said an
intemperate or superfluous word, or swerved from the strictest rules of
congregational action, sent him out of the parish. He finally opined
that "evil angels" had been permitted to tempt him and his coadjutors on
either hand; he admitted that some mistakes had been made; and, said
he, "I do humbly own this day, before the Lord and his people, that God
has been righteously spitting in my face; and I desire to lie low under
all this reproach," etc.; but the remonstrants could not again sit
under his ministry, and his brethren in the Province did not pretend to
exculpate him altogether. He buried his wife--against whom no record
remains--and departed with his children, the eldest of whom, the
playfellow of the "afflicted" children, he had sent away before she
had taken harm in the "circle." He drifted from one small outlying
congregation to another, neglected and poor, restless and untamed,
though mortified, till he died in 1720. Mr. Noyes died somewhat earlier.
He is believed not to have undergone much change, as to either his views
or his temper. He was a kind-hearted and amiable man when nothing came
in the way; but he could hold no terms with Satan; and in this he
insisted to the last that he was right.
Cotton Mather was the survivor of the other two. He died in 1728; and he
never was happy again after that last batch of executions. He trusted to
his merits, and the genius he exhibited under that onslaught of Satan,
to raise him to the highest post of clerical power in the Province, and
to make him--what he desired above all else--President of Harvard
University. Mr. Upham presents us with a remarkable meditation written
by the unhappy man, so simple and ingenious that it is scarcely possible
to read it gravely; but the reader is not the less sensible of his
misery. The argument is a sort of remonstrance with God on the
recompense his services have met with. He has been appointed to serve
the world, and the world does not regard him; the negroes, and (who
could believe it?) the negroes are named Cotton Mather in contempt of
him; the wise and the unwise despise him; in every company he is avoided
and left alone; the female sex, and they speak basely of him; his
relatives, and they are such monsters that he may truly say, "I am a
brother to dragons;" the Government, and it heaps indignities upon him;
the University, and if he were a blockhead, it could not treat him worse
than it does. He is to serve all whom he can aid, and nobody ever does
anything for him; he is to serve all to whom he can be a helpful and
happy minister, and yet he is the most afflicted minister in the
country; and many consider his afflictions to be so many miscarriages,
and his sufferings in proportion to his sins. There was no popularity or
power for him from the hour when he stood to see his brother Burroughs
put to death on the Hill. He seems never to have got over his surprise
at his own failures; but he sank into deeper mortification and a more
childish peevishness to the end.
"ONE OF THE AFFLICTED"--HER CONFESSION.
Of only one of the class of express accusers--of the "afflicted"--will
we speak; but not because she was the only one reclaimed. One bewildered
child we have described as remorseful, and brave in her remorse; and
others married as they would hardly have done if they had been among the
"profligate." Ann Putnam's case remains the most prominent, and the most
pathetic. She was twelve years old when the "circle" at Mr. Parris'
was formed. She had no check from her parents, but much countenance
and encouragement from her morbidly-disposed mother. She has the bad
distinction of having been the last of the witnesses to declare a
"vision" against a suspected person; but, on the other hand, she has the
honor, such as it is, of having striven to humble herself before the
memory of her victims. When she was nineteen her father died, and her
mother followed within a fortnight, leaving the poor girl, in bad health
and with scanty means, to take care of a family of children so large
that there were eight, if not more, dependent on her. No doubt she was
aided, and she did what she could; but she died worn out at the age of
thirty-six. Ten years before that date she made her peace with the
Church and society by offering a public confession in the meeting-house.
In order to show what it was that the accusers did admit, we must make
room for Ann Putnam's confession:
"'I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence
that befell my father's family in the year about '92; that I, then
being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made the
instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime,
whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just
grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that
it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time,
whereby I justly fear that I have been instrumental with others, though
ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt
of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person
I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of
any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing
against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by
Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing
Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and
to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a
calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in
the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto
whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offense, whose relations were
taken away or accused. (Signed) Ann Putnam.'
"This confession was read before the congregation, together with her
relation, August 25, 1706; and she acknowledged it.
"J. GREEN, _Pastor_." (Vol. ii. p. 510.)