and adroit men of affairs, practical and full of ingenious expedients,
intelligent and clear-headed about their secular business, they
retrograded in religion, and became formalists and controversialists.
Theological orthodoxy supplanted intelligent Christianity, and New
England religion sank into a dreary series of wranglings about
Cambridge platforms and Saybrook platforms, half-way covenants and
whole-way covenants, old lights and new lights, consociations and
associations, until it became, for a time at least, more arid and
lifeless than ever had been the Church of England, against the
formalism of which they were continually protesting. It is true that
a few isolated cases of witchcraft are found occurring in the early
history of the colonies, and it was then that the severe laws were
enacted; yet the serious trouble, the great panic, did not come until
the first generation, “those men who had seen the works of the Lord,”
had been gathered unto their fathers. One cannot imagine John Cotton
playing the part of his namesake Cotton Mather, or John Winthrop,
superstitious as he was, in the place of Stoughton. Even Wilson and
Norton, who exulted in the blood of the Quakers, thought witch-finding
a cowardly yielding to popular folly. The responsibility of the men
of the first generation lies rather in the character of the religious
training they gave their successors, a gloomy religion, which in
themselves had been mitigated by a piety, sincere if fanatical, and
perhaps also by some recollection of the brighter experiences of their
childhood’s days in the more genial religious life of England, a life
their children had never known.
It is, then, not astonishing that our forefathers in New England should
have been victims to a common delusion of their times. We may even
say that the circumstances of their lives were such as to render them
especially liable to it; for though the hardships of the early history
of the settlement grew less as time went on, the life in New England
was, at the best, lonely and depressing. The colonists lived dreary
lives of laborious and uninteresting toil, with few physical comforts,
and with poor and unvaried diet. They had few amusements, little or
no recreation, and they were constantly in face of difficulties,
constantly exposed to danger. Their houses were on the verge of the
mysterious forest, where strange sights and sounds were to be seen
and heard, where dwelt the Indians, often hostile and always a source
of uneasiness. They had few books, and those they had were not of a
character to draw them away from the contemplation of themselves.
The Bible they had, it is true, but to read it for any purpose
except that of spiritual exercise would have been deemed profane.
Sermons of abnormal length and dryness, controversial treatises,
ponderous alike literally and figuratively, and, as we shall see
later, ghastly and blood-curdling accounts of memorable providences,
formed their principal literature. The settlers had been for the most
part emigrants from quiet country towns and villages in England, put
down in the unknown wilderness, to work out, under the pressure of
religious enthusiasm, a new social and religious polity. The life
was small, narrow, and squalid, only redeemed from utter sordidness
by gleams of religious idealism and by the stern resolution of the
better class of the settlers to keep themselves and their neighbors
in the paths of righteousness. Their religion was a sombre Calvinism,
giving more prominence to the terrors of the law than to the comforts
of the gospel. Living as they did in scriptural thought, speaking
in scriptural phraseology, dwelling constantly upon the similarity
of their position with that of the children of Israel, it is not
surprising that they should have carried their intense literalism
into every particular. Their external relations, their religious and
political systems, were ruled by the law of Moses as they imagined
it from their somewhat uncritical study of the Old Testament. Their
Christianity was profoundly internal and introspective, something which
was between each individual soul and the Almighty, rather than a law of
social life. The result of this was twofold. They were led to ascribe
to their own convictions the character of divine revelations, and were
also rendered intensely morbid, sometimes exalted above measure and
sometimes as irrationally despondent. They felt that they were the
chosen people of the Lord, doing a great work for him, in “setting
up the candlestick of a pure church in the wilderness to which the
like-minded might resort”; and this feeling led them to believe that
they were especially exposed to the malice and spite of the devil,
who desired to thwart their purpose. They saw special providences in
every common occurrence that made for their welfare or that seemed
to vindicate their theological prejudices, the envy and spite of the
devil in every misadventure or threatening circumstance. Cotton Mather
may be taken as a characteristic specimen of the more intelligent and
devout thinkers among the men of the second generation, and for him the
whole daily life of the colony was a spiritual warfare. The very object
of his greatest work, the “Magnalia Christi,” is to show the special
workings of Divine Providence in favor of the people of Massachusetts,
and to exhibit how they had battled against “principalities and powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places.” The savage Indians were supposed to be
devil-worshippers, and to serve him at their “pow-wows” in the dark
recesses of the unbroken forest. Every storm, every meteor, every
unnatural birth, was a portent.[51] It is not strange that under such
conditions a strong belief in the reality of witchcraft should have
existed, especially when the delusion was general in Europe as well as
in America.
The belief in the power of evil spirits to interfere with man has been
held in every age and in all parts of the world. It is a survival of
that fear of the unseen, which filled the souls of men in those early
ages when, ignorant of the forces of nature, they felt the universe
about them to be hostile and ascribed all unfamiliar sensations to the
agency of some invisible enemy. It is not strange that such a belief
should have arisen. Man’s commonest experiences were those of hostility
and pain; wild animals were hostile, his wilder fellow-men were still
more hostile; from both he suffered injuries that were inflicted
consciously and with evil intent; by analogy--the earliest, as it is
the latest, form of reasoning--the other evils he suffered must be
also the acts of conscious beings. The twinges of rheumatism were no
less real than the pain from the blow of a foeman’s club; it was only
natural to reason that they had been inflicted by an unseen enemy.
The fear of the unseen, so characteristic of primeval man, has left
many traces in language, religion, and custom. Like many another
instinct inherited from savage life, it remains lurking in the human
mind, and at certain times comes to the surface. It has developed
itself in two directions. On the one hand it has led to religion, to a
faith in a supernal Protector with whom the darkness and the light are
both alike; on the other, to a grovelling fear of evil spirits, which
has been the cause of the belief in magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. The
fear of Jehovah was, for Israel and for the world, the beginning of
wisdom. The “seeking unto wizards that peep and mutter” is the parody
of religion, which seems always to exist by its side.
It is probable also that the belief in evil spirits may have had,
in some cases, a different origin. It has been often pointed out on
historical as well as on philological grounds that, in many cases,
the conquest of one tribe by another has degraded the religion of the
conquered into a secondary and dishonorable position. When the Saxon
convert renounced Woden, Thunor, and Saxnote and all their words and
works, the gods of Asgard still remained, in the belief of both convert
and converter, as malignant enemies of Christianity. Whether from a
primitive fear or a degraded polytheism, the result has been the same;
man tends to surround himself with a host of invisible foes.
The monotheistic religions, especially, have waged a bitter warfare
upon this form of polytheism, as derogating from the honors due only
to the highest. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all declared war
against the witch and the magician, at times by stern legislation,
at times by wise teaching of the unreality and nothingness of the
pretences of those who claim supernatural powers.
Perhaps the most strange fact in the history of the subject, and a
remarkable example of the impossibility of anticipating every result of
an action, is that the very efforts which were made by the enlightened
lawgivers of Israel to eradicate this debasing superstition have been
in later times the provocation of the continued recurrence of the
delusion. The words of the law of Israel have been used to prove the
reality of the existence of the offence it had attempted to obliterate,
while the severity of the punishments employed among a people just
rescued from barbarism has been made an excuse for equal severity under
circumstances the most widely different.
Even now such superstitions are extremely common among the negroes
of the southern portion of the United States, and of the West India
Islands, as they are among the Slavs in Bohemia and Russia, and among
the ignorant in every land. Even among the educated classes there is a
more than half-serious belief in “charms,” “mascots,” and “hoodoos,”
which is laughed at but acted upon. The superstitions about Friday, the
number thirteen, and many others of the same nature, are still acted
upon all over the world, and the belief in the evil eye is not confined
to any one class or nation. Spiritualistic materializations and the
marvels of Hindu theosophy are modern examples of this same recurrence
to the fears and follies of our savage ancestors.
In the seventeenth century, it was only a few emancipated spirits
who did not so believe, and they were looked upon with horror by the
majority of religious men as Sadducees and unbelievers. No less an
authority than King James himself, the British Solomon, had written
a most “learned and painful” treatise to prove the necessity of such
a belief for all Christian people, a treatise in which he expounded
satisfactorily, to himself at least, all the most recondite minutiæ of
the subject.[52]
In his reign, by Act of Parliament, witchcraft had been made
punishable by death,[53] and the scandalous case of Lady Essex’s
divorce had been decided on grounds of “maleficium versus hanc.”[54]
Still more recently, as the wise and godly Baxter relates, during the
period of the Commonwealth, the learned Calamy had looked on with
approval, while Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder, tortured some
poor wretches, among whom was one unfortunate dispossessed clergyman
of the persecuted Church of England, into confessing revolting
absurdities.[55] Still later, after the Restoration, the usually
judicious Sir Matthew Hale had condemned and burned two women as
witches, in the very Suffolk from which so many of the New Englanders
had come, on evidence of the same character as that upon which American
courts had to decide.[56] If these erred in believing in witchcraft,
they erred in good company, with all the most orthodox teachers of
religion and philosophy in Europe, Protestant and Catholic as well.
Even Selden, who had no belief in witchcraft himself, justified the
severity which was exercised against those condemned of that offence,
by arguing that if a man thought that by turning his hat around and
saying “Buz” he could kill a man, he ought to be put to death if
he made the attempt, no matter how absurd the claim might be. Sir
Thomas Browne, the well-known author of the _Religio Medici_, gave his
testimony as an expert at the trial of the Suffolk witches, upon the
side of the reality of witchcraft.[57] When the student of the early
annals of the Colonies realizes the extent of this superstition, and
at the same time the literal character of the religion of the majority
of the settlers in New England, their bitter hatred of theological
opponents, and their readiness to believe evil in regard to them;
when he appreciates how harsh and mean and unlovely was the life that
most of them lived, and observes that, side by side with an exalted
religious enthusiasm, the lowest and most abhorrent forms of indecency
and vice prevailed, he will no longer be inclined to wonder at the
existence in such a community of the witchcraft delusion, but will
rather be amazed that, with such a people and among such surroundings,
its duration was so short and its victims so few.
Although the crime of witchcraft was especially named in the colonial
statutes, and the penalty of death imposed upon offenders, it was
some time before a case was detected; and the early settlers seem
usually to have acted most cautiously in this matter. Connecticut
has the unenviable pre-eminence of having furnished the first victim,
if Winthrop may be believed. He notes: “One of Windsor was arraigned
and executed in Hartford for a witch” in March, 1646–7.[58] Then
followed, in 1648, the execution of Margaret Jones at Charlestown,
Mass., whose fate Winthrop also describes. She was tested according
to the most approved maxims of witch-finders in England, being
stripped and searched for witch-marks, or the teats by which it was
believed the devil’s imps were nourished. The search paid no regard
to decency, and when the inquisitors found some small excrescence
they were fully satisfied of the guilt of the accused, and she was
accordingly hanged.[59] In the same year the founders of the liberties
of Connecticut put to death, at Hartford, one Mary Johnson, with whom,
it is related, “Mr. Stone labored with such success that she died in
penitence, confessing her abominable crimes of familiarity with the
devil.”[60] In 1650, a Mistress Lake was hanged at Dorchester, and a
Mistress Kendall at Cambridge, showing that not all the superstitious
had migrated from those places to Hartford and Windsor.[61] In 1651,
Mary Parsons of Springfield was hanged for infanticide; she was
generally accused of being a witch, but on trial before the General
Court was cleared, owing to the insufficiency of the testimony;[62]
and Hugh Parsons, her husband, who was tried and found guilty by the
Court of Assistants in 1652, was re-tried and acquitted by the General
Court, “which, after perusing and considering the evidence, ... judged
that he was not legally guilty of witchcraft, and so not to dye by
law.”[63] These instances of careful examination, as well as the small
number of the cases, show that in the first twenty-five years there was
no general panic, and that the authorities were inclined to proceed
with a deliberation which contrasts very favorably with the tone of
feeling in England at this time. In 1651, Goodwife Bassett was hanged
at Stratford,[64] and John Carrington and his wife of Wethersfield,
probably at Hartford,[65] and in 1653, Goodwife Knapp suffered at
Fairfield.[66] In Massachusetts there were no more cases until 1656, in
which year Mistress Hibbins, a woman of position, whose husband had sat
as an assistant at some of the earlier trials, was hanged in Boston.
It is noticeable in her case that though the magistrates had refused
to accept the verdict of the first jury that had found her guilty, the
General Court, to whom the case came in regular course, condemned
her.[67] Her execution shocked the wiser portion of the community, and
even men of the narrow religious views of Norton and Wilson, though
they did not venture openly to oppose the popular demand for her life,
were heard to say in private that they had hanged a woman whose chief
offence was in having more wit than her neighbors.[68]
After her death there were no more executions in Massachusetts for over
thirty years, though the increasing frequency of marvellous occurrences
and suspicious cases promised ill for the future. Good sense as yet
controlled public affairs, in this direction at least. In Connecticut
witch-finding still continued; in 1558 the wife of Joseph Garlick of
Easthampton (L. I.) was tried for this offence; in 1659 there was an
alarm in Saybrook; and in 1662, one Goody Greensmith of Hartford was
convicted, on her own confession, of having had carnal intercourse
with the devil, and was hanged for the offence; two other women were
condemned with her but “made their escape”; her husband was not so
fortunate and was put to death. Mary Barnes of Farmington was indicted
January 6th, 1662–3, and was probably executed with the Greensmiths.[69]
Other cases occurred, but it is believed that this was the last
execution for witchcraft in Connecticut. The Gallows Hill in Hartford
was, however, long remembered, and has not even yet lost its unsavory
reputation. The political changes incident to the reception of
the charter, by which the colony of New Haven was calmly absorbed
by its astute and ambitious neighbor, seem to have occupied men’s
minds sufficiently to keep them from any great amount of activity
in this direction. Yet, in 1665, Elizabeth Seger was found guilty
of witchcraft at Hartford, but set at liberty, and, 1669, Katharine
Harrison of Wethersfield was tried and condemned; the verdict, however,
was overruled and the prisoner released by the Special Court of
Assistants;[70] four women were tried in 1692, at Fairfield, one of
whom was condemned to death, but not executed; two women were indicted
at Wallingford, and a woman was tried at Hartford as late as 1697, but
acquitted.[71] It has sometimes been said that the arrival of Andros
and the loss of the charter in 1687 was the only thing that prevented a
serious outbreak of the delusion in Connecticut.
When the delusion revived in Massachusetts it was with increased
force and virulence. Its recrudescence may be directly traced to
the publication and general circulation in the colony of a book by
Increase Mather, entitled “An Essay for the recording of Illustrious
Providences,” etc., which contained a detailed account of all the
marvels that Divine benevolence or wrath had wrought in the last thirty
or forty years.[72] At about the same time appeared the account of the
trials in England under Sir Matthew Hale[73] and of the remarkable
mania which had raged in Sweden in 1669.[74] These horrible stories
became the subject of conversation, of meditation in private, and of
sermon and prayer in public. They were apparently read or related to
the young as edifying and instructive literature; for, from this time
forward, children in New England began to repeat the phenomena that had
prevailed on the other side of the Atlantic.
The colony was in a very excited and discontented condition. The
beloved patent upon which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had been so
boldly reared had been taken away from them, and they had been brought
under the government of England. Their “purity of doctrine” was more
than threatened, as not only had they been compelled to desist from
persecuting Quakers, but they had also been constrained to allow the
hated _Book of Common Prayer_ to be read in public, and to permit men
to worship God according to its rubrical provisions. More than this,
the king’s governor had actually polluted one of their meeting-houses
by using it for the performance of the services of the national church.
It seemed indeed to many of the men who were now prominent in the room
of their wiser fathers, that Satan was making a desperate attack upon
the colony; and their minds were predisposed to believe any marvels the
result of diabolical agency.
The first manifestation of the revived delusion appeared in 1688, in
the family of John Goodwin, a sober and prosperous mechanic of Boston.
His children, all of whom were said to be remarkable for “ingenuity
of character,” and who had been religiously brought up, and were
“thought to be without guile,” suddenly exhibited the most alarming
symptoms. One of them, a young girl, had given some offence to an old
Irishwoman of bad character, and had been repaid with vigorous abuse
and vituperation. Shortly afterwards she began to fall into fits, which
were deemed by her friends and neighbors to have something diabolical
about them. Soon the same complaint attacked also her sister and her
two brothers, and the terrified observers reported that they were all
“tormented in the same part of their bodies at the same time, though
kept in separate apartments, and ignorant of one another’s complaints.”
They were free from trouble at night and slept well. Their afflictions
always came on in the daytime and in public. Their diabolical visitants
were apparently instructed in theology, and displayed a depraved taste
in literature that was intensely scandalizing to the pious Cotton
Mather, who interested himself most deeply in the strange affliction
of the children. He relates that they would throw the children into
a senseless condition if they but looked on the outside of such good
books as the _Assembly’s Catechism_ or Cotton’s _Milk for Babes_, while
they might read with complete impunity _Oxford Jests_, popish or Quaker
books, or the _Book of Common Prayer_.[75] The other symptoms were yet
more alarming, physically, if not spiritually. “Sometimes they would
be deaf, then dumb, then blind, and sometimes all these disorders
together would come upon them. Their tongues would be drawn down
their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks,
shoulders, elbows, and all their joints would appear to be dislocated,
and they would make most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut
with knives, beat, etc., and the marks of wounds were afterwards to
be seen.” The ministers of Boston and Charlestown came to the house,
and kept there a day of fasting and prayer, with the happy result of
curing the youngest of the children. The others continued as before;
and then, the clergy having failed, the magistrates took up the case.
The old woman whose violent tongue had apparently had some connection
with the first outbreak of the complaint, was arrested and thrown into
prison, and charged with witchcraft. She would neither deny or confess,
but “appeared to be disordered in mind,” and insisted on talking
Gaelic, though she had been able to talk English before. The physicians
examined her, and reported that she was _compos mentis_, and on their
report the poor creature was hanged--a serious blot on the usually
judicious administration of Sir Edmund Andros; so unlike him that one
is inclined to suspect he must have been absent from Boston when this
foolish crime was perpetrated. The children gradually recovered, grew
up, “experienced religion” in the usual way, and never confessed to any
fault or deceit in the matter. Hutchinson writes that he knew one of
them in after years, who had the character of a very sober, virtuous
woman.[76]
As these cases may be referred to the circulation of the record of the
former marvels and illustrious providences, so now in their turn they
became the provoking causes of many others; for a full and particular
account of these was printed, first in Boston, and then, almost
immediately afterward, in London, with an introduction from no less a
person than Richard Baxter. This, together with the other relations,
was circulated throughout the colony, and led to a still greater
outbreak of the delusion.[77] Men thought about witches and talked
about witches, and very naturally soon came to believe that all the
accidents and disasters and diseases, which they could not explain by
common natural causes, were the result of demoniac agency.