The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697)

CHAPTER III. Fundamentals--the Scriptural Citations--Old and New

Fundamentals--The scriptural citations--Old and New Testament--Josephus--Ancient and modern witchcraft--The distinction--The arch enemy Satan--Action of the Church--The later definition--The New England indictments--Satan's recognition--Persecutions in Italy, Germany and France--Slow spread to England--Statute of Henry VIII--Cranmer's injunction--Jewell's sermon--Statute James I--His Demonologie--Executions in Eastern England--Witch finder Hopkins--Howell's statement--John Lowes--Witchcraft in Scotland--Commissions--Instruments of torture--Forbes' definition--Colonial beliefs

CHAPTER IV

Fiske's view--The forefathers' belief--Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven laws--Sporadic cases--The Salem tragedy--Statements of Hawthorne, Fiske, Lowell, Latimer--The victims--Upham's picture--The trial court--Sewall's confession--Cotton Mather--Calef and Upham--Poole--Mather's rules--Ministerial counsel--Longfellow's opinion--Mather's responsibility--His own evidence--Conspectus

CHAPTER V. The Epidemic in Connecticut--Palfrey--Trumbulls--Winthrop's

The Epidemic in Connecticut--Palfrey--Trumbulls--Winthrop's Journal--Treatment of witchcraft--Silence and evasion--The true story--How told--Witnesses--Testimony--All classes affected--The courts--Judges and jurors--The best evidence--The record--Grounds for examination of a witch--Jones' summary--Witch marks--What they were--How discovered--Dalton's Country Justice--The searchers--Searchers' report in Disborough and Clawson cases

CHAPTER VI. Hamersley's and Morgan's Comment--John Allyn's Letter--the

Hamersley's and Morgan's comment--John Allyn's letter--The accusation--Its origin--Its victims--Many witnesses--Record evidence--The witnesses themselves--Memorials of their delusion--Notable depositions--Selected testimonies, and cases--Katherine Harrison--The court--The judge--The indictment--Grand jury's oath--Credulity of the court--Testimony--Its unique character--Bracy--Dickinson--Montague-- Graves--Francis--Johnson--Hale--Smith--Verdict and sentence--Court's appeal to the ministers--Their answer--A remarkable document--Katherine's petition--"A Complaint of severall grieuances"--Katherine's reprieve-- Dismissal from imprisonment--Removal

CHAPTER VII

Mercy Disborough--Cases at Fairfield, 1692--The special court--The indictment--Testimonies--Jesop--Barlow--Dunning--Halliberch--Benit-- Grey--Godfree--Search for witch marks--Ordeal by water--Cateran Branch's accusation--Jury disagree--Later verdict of guilty--The governor's sentence--Reference to General Court--Afterthought--John Hale's conclusion--Courts call on the ministers--Their answer--General advice--Reasons for reprieve--Notable papers--Eliot and Woodbridge--Willis--Pitkin--Stanly--The pardon

CHAPTER VIII

Hawthorne--Latimer--Additional cases--Curious and vulgar testimony--All illustrative of opinion--Make it understandable--Elizabeth Seager--Witnesses--What they swore to--Garretts--Sterne--Hart--Willard-- Pratt--Migat--"Staggerings" of the jury--Contradictions--Verdict-- Elizabeth Godman--Governor Goodyear's dilemma--Strange doings--Ball's information--Imprisonment--Discharge--Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith-- Character, Accusation--Rebecca's confession--Conviction--Double execution at Hartford

CHAPTER IX

Elizabeth Clawson--The indictment--Witnesses--"Kateran" Branch--Garney-- Kecham--Abigail and Nathaniel Cross--Bates--Sargent Wescot and Abigail-- Finch--Bishop--Holly--Penoir--Slawson--Kateran's Antics--Acquittal. Hugh Crotia--The court--Grand jury--Indictment--Testimony--Confession-- Acquittal--Gaol delivery--Elizabeth Garlick--A sick woman's fancies--"A black thing at the bed's featte"--Burning herbs--The sick child--The ox' broken leg--The dead ram and sow--The Tale burning

CHAPTER X

Goodwife Knapp--Her character--A notable case--Imprisonment--Harsh treatment--The inquisitors--Their urgency--Knapp's appeal--The postmortem desecration--Prominent people involved--Davenport and Ludlow--Staplies vs. Ludlow--The court--Confidential gossip--Cause of the suit--Testimony-- Davenport--Sherwood--Tomson--Gould--Ward--Pell--Brewster--Lockwood--Hull-- Brundish--Whitlock--Barlow--Lyon--Mistress Staplies--Her doings aforetime-- Tashs' night ride--"A light woman"--Her character--Reparation suit--Her later indictment--Power of the delusion--Pertinent inquiry

CHAPTER XI. Present Opinions--J. Hammond Trumbull--Annie Eliot

Present opinions--J. Hammond Trumbull--Annie Eliot Trumbull--Review--Authenticity--Record evidence--Controversialists--Actual cases--Suspicions--Accusations--Acquittals--Flights--Executions--First complete roll--Changes in belief--Contrast--Edwards--Carter--"The Rogerenes"--Conclusion--Hathorne--Mather

THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION IN COLONIAL CONNECTICUT

CHAPTER I

"First, because Witchcraft is a rife and common sinne in these our daies, and very many are intangled with it, beeing either practitioners thereof in their owne persons, or at the least, yielding to seeke for helpe and counsell of such as practise it." A Discovrse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, PERKINS, 1610.

"And just as God has his human servants, his church on earth, so also the Devil has his--men and women sworn to his service and true to his bidding. To win such followers he can appear to men in any form he pleases, can deceive them, enter into compact with them, initiate them into his worship, make them his allies for the ruin of their fellows. Now it is these human allies and servants of Satan, thus postulated into existence by the brain of a monkish logician, whom history knows as witches." The Literature of Witchcraft, BURR.

Witchcraft in its generic sense is as old as human history. It has written its name in the oldest of human records. In all ages and among all peoples it has taken firm hold on the fears, convictions and consciences of men. Anchored in credulity and superstition, in the dread and love of mystery, in the hard and fast theologic doctrines and teachings of diabolism, and under the ban of the law from its beginning, it has borne a baleful fruitage in the lives of the learned and the unlearned, the wise and the simple.

King and prophet, prelate and priest, jurist and lawmaker, prince and peasant, scholars and men of affairs have felt and dreaded its subtle power, and sought relief in code and commandment, bull and anathema, decree and statute--entailing even the penalty of death--and all in vain until in the march of the races to a higher civilization, the centuries enthroned faith in the place of fear, wisdom in the place of ignorance, and sanity in the seat of delusion.

In its earlier historic conception witchcraft and its demonstrations centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime--the sole father of the Satanic compacts with men and women, and the law both canonical and civil took cognizance of his malevolent activities.

In the Acropolis mound at Susa in ancient Elam, in the winter of 1901-2, there was brought to light by the French expedition in charge of the eminent savant, M. de Morgan, one of the most remarkable memorials of early civilization ever recovered from the buried cities of the Orient.

It is a monolith--a stele of black diorite--bearing in bas-relief a likeness of Hammurabi (the Amrephel of the Old Testament; Genesis xiv, 1), and the sixth king of the first Babylonian dynasty, who reigned about 2250 B.C.; and there is also carved upon it, in archaic script in black letter cuneiform--used long after the cursive writing was invented--the longest Babylonian record discovered to this day,--the oldest body of laws in existence and the basis of historical jurisprudence.

It is a remarkable code, quickly made available through translation and transliteration by the Assyrian scholars, and justly named, from its royal compiler, Hammurabi's code. He was an imperialist in purpose and action, and in the last of his reign of fifty-five years he annexed or assimilated the suzerainty of Elam, or Southern Persia, with Assyria to the north, and also Syria and Palestine, to the Mediterranean Sea.

This record in stone originally contained nineteen columns of inscriptions of four thousand three hundred and fourteen lines, arranged in two hundred and eighty sections, covering about two hundred separate decisions or edicts. There is substantial evidence that many of the laws were of greater antiquity than the code itself, which is a thousand years older than the Mosaic code, and there are many striking resemblances and parallels between its provisions, and the law of the covenant, and the deuteronomy laws of the Hebrews.

The code was based on personal responsibility. It protects the sanctity of an oath before God, provides among many other things for written evidence in legal matters, and is wonderfully comprehensive and rich in rules for the conduct of commercial, civic, financial, social, economic, and domestic affairs.

These sections are notably illustrative:

"If a man, in a case (pending judgment), utters threats against the witnesses (or), does not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.

"If a judge pronounces a judgment, renders a decision, delivers a verdict duly signed and sealed and afterwards alters his judgment, they shall call that judge to account for the alteration of the judgment which he had pronounced, and he shall pay twelvefold the penalty which was in the said judgment, and, in the assembly, they shall expel him from his seat of judgment, and he shall not return, and with the judges in a case he shall not take his seat.

"If a man practices brigandage and is captured, that man shall be put to death.

"If a woman hates her husband, and says: 'thou shalt not have me,' they shall inquire into her antecedents for her defects; and if she has been a careful mistress and is without reproach and her husband has been going about and greatly belittling her, that woman has no blame. She shall receive her presents and shall go to her father's house.

"If she has not been a careful mistress, has gadded about, has neglected her house and has belittled her husband, they shall throw that woman into the water.

"If a physician operates on a man for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and causes the man's death, or opens an abscess (in the eye) of a man with a bronze lancet and destroys the man's eye, they shall cut off his fingers.

"If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm and the house, which he has built, collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death."

It is, however, with only one of King Hammurabi's wise laws that this inquiry has to do, and it is this:

"If a man has placed an enchantment upon a man, and has not justified himself, he upon whom the enchantment is placed to the Holy River (Euphrates) shall go; into the Holy River he shall plunge. If the Holy River holds (drowns) him he who enchanted him shall take his house. If on the contrary, the man is safe and thus is innocent, the wizard loses his life, and his house."

Or, as another translation has it:

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