Part 8

“A gentleman of more than ordinary understanding, learning and experience, desired me to write to New-England about your trials and convictions of witches; not being satisfied with the evidence upon which some who have been executed were found guilty. He told me, that in the time of the great reformation parliament, a certain person or persons had a commission to discover and prosecute witches. Upon these prosecutions many were executed, in at least one county in England, until, at length, a gentleman of estate and of great character for piety was accused, which put an end to the commission. And the judges upon a re-hearing, reversed many judgments; but many lives had been taken away. All that I speak with much wonder that any man, much less a man of such abilities, learning and experience as Mr. Stoughton, should take up a persuasion, that the devil cannot assume the likeness of an innocent, to afflict another person. In my opinion, it is a persuasion utterly destitute of any solid reason to render it so much as probable, and besides, contradictory to many instances of fact in history. If you think good, you may acquaint Mr. Stoughton and the other judges with what I write.” Letter from London to I. Mather, Jan. 9, 1692-3.

Richard Hatheway, a blacksmith’s apprentice, was tried before chief justice Holt, March 25, 1702, for imposture. He pretended to be bewitched by Sarah Morduck, and to be restored from his fits only by drawing blood from her by scratching. She had been tried for witchcraft by the same court the year before, and acquitted. He pretended to vomit pins, and to fast for ten weeks. “All the devils in hell,” said the chief justice, “could not have helped you fast so long.” Pins were found in his pocket; and being closely watched, it was ascertained that he partook of food when he assumed to be fasting. Another woman was brought in while he was in his fits, and by scratching her he recovered as well as before. He was sentenced to imprisonment for one year, and to stand in the pillory three times. Rev. Francis Hutchinson states the case in Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, London 2d edition, 1720, p. 280, and it appears in Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 55 and 60. The case with the evidence and arguments is reported in Howell’s State Trials, vol. xiv. pp. 639-669. Hatheway’s master and mistress, who sustained the apprentice in these impostures, were next prosecuted for assault on Sarah Morduck and for riot; and their trial is reported in the same volume.

Howell’s State Trials contain full reports of other witchcraft proceedings, viz.: Case of Mary Smith, 1616, vol. ii. p. 1050; Proceeding against the Essex Witches, 1645, vol. iv. p. 817; and Proceedings against three Devon Witches, 1682, vol. viii. p. 1018.

Eleven trials for witchcraft were held before chief justice Holt, from 1694 to 1702, in which he so charged the juries that they generally brought in verdicts of acquittal. The English statutes for the punishment of witchcraft, however, were not repealed till 1736. 9 Geo. II. chap. 5, Statutes at Large, vol. xvii. p. 3.

“An Account of the Life and Character of Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem village, and of his connection with the Witchcraft Delusion of 1692. By Samuel P. Fowler [of Danvers]” (Salem, 1857, 20 pp. 8vo.), is the fullest and most impartial estimate of Mr. Parris’s character which has appeared in print. Deacon Fowler is an officer of the original church of Salem village, now Danvers; he has the best collection of witch books in New-England, and is one of the most experienced antiquaries of the Essex Institute. He dispels much of the misapprehension which has existed respecting this noted clergyman.

Mr. Parris remained with his people for five years after these events, and in the midst of local disputes outside of the witchcraft tragedy. Mr. Fowler says (p. 19), “It seems there was always a majority of the parish in favor of Mr. Parris remaining with them; and there appears to have been a very general mistake with regard to his dismission from his people, they supposing that he was hastily driven away from the village; whereas he continued and maintained himself through a ministerial quarrel of five years, until he saw fit to discontinue it, when he informed his church of his intentions.”

Mr. Fowler’s entire paper is reprinted in Mr. Drake’s Witchcraft Delusion in New-England, vol. iii. pp. 198-221. The anonymous Ballad of 1692, Giles Corey and Goodwyfe Corey, which Mr. Drake reprints in the same volume (pp. 173-177), and supposes Mr. J. G. Whittier to have been the author—“as but one person could have written it”—was contributed to a Salem newspaper, more than thirty years ago, by Mr. Fitch Poole, of Danvers, now librarian of the Peabody Institute in Peabody.

John Indian and his wife Tituba were slaves. In the mittimus to the jail keeper at Boston, she is described as “an Indian woman belonging to Samuel Parris of Salem village.” (Woodward’s Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. i. p. 15.) Calef (p. 19) says, “she lay in jail till sold for her fees.” The Salem delusion had its origin in the fetichism practised by these two ignorant Spanish-African slaves, whom Mr. Parris probably obtained from the Barbadoes, where he was at one time in business.

R. Calef. [More Wonders, p. 91.]

Hale. [Modest Inquiry, p. 25, ed. 1711.]

Calef. [p. 92.]

This statement is a mistake, and is changed in the final draft. Mr. Parris on no occasion was employed to examine the accused. At the request of the magistrates he took down the evidence, he being a rapid penman and stenographer. On the occasion mentioned in the next paragraph, Danforth put the questions, and the record is, “Mr. Parris being desired and appointed to write out the examination, did take the same, and also read it before the council in public.”

This was a meeting of the council for a preliminary examination, and not “a court” for the trial of the accused. Danforth, deputy governor; Addington, secretary, and Russell, Hathorne, Appleton, Sewall and Corwin, members of the council, were present. It was the only examination that Samuel Sewall attended. On his return to Boston he made this entry in his diary: “April 11, 1692. Went to Salem, where, in the meeting house, the persons accused of witchcraft were examined; was a very great assembly; ’twas awful to see how the afflicted were agitated.” At a later date he inserted in the margin, “Væ, væ, væ.” These words have been taken by a late writer “as expressions of much sensibility at the extent to which he had been misled.” He did in later years regret, and well he might, the course he took in the witchcraft trials; but he never expressed, as the writer does, his disbelief in the reality of diabolical agency as exhibited at that examination. The occasion itself was mournful enough to draw forth these exclamations from one holding his opinions; and hence they are explained without a forced interpretation.

The maid here alluded to was Mary Warren, one of the most violent of the accusing girls. She was a domestic in Proctor’s family.

The documents which Gov. Hutchinson printed belong with the court files at Salem, which have been very carefully arranged and mounted by Mr. William P. Upham. These papers, or such of them as remain, were printed (with many errors) by Mr. W. E. Woodward, in Records of Salem Witchcraft, Roxbury, 1865, 2 vols. sm. 4to. Among these the papers which Gov. Hutchinson printed do not appear. They were doubtless borrowed by him, and never returned. In the Massachusetts archives is a volume of witchcraft papers (vol. cxxxv.), but these documents are not among them.

In 1860, Mr. N. I. Bowditch presented a collection of original papers relating to Salem witchcraft, which once belonged to the Salem court files, to the Massachusetts Historical Society. More than sixty years ago these papers came into possession of the late Hon. John Pickering; who, says Mr. Bowditch, “as he was a sworn officer of the court, had some scruples of conscience about retaining them himself; and therefore, after examining them, gave them to my late father [Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch]. (Proceedings, 1860-62, p. 31).” The collection has been arranged and elegantly bound at the expense of Mr. Bowditch. The volume does not contain the papers printed by Gov. Hutchinson. As Gov. Hutchinson printed only portions of these papers, and doubtless took others which he did not print, it is a matter of some historical interest to know the present location (if they exist) of the original papers which he used.

It is can in the examination, but, I suppose, by the answer, should have been wrote can’t.

Mr. Perkins mentions eight or ten proofs of witchcraft, two only of which he supposes sufficient, viz.: the testimony of two witnesses and the confession of the party. This authority probably had weight with the court as well as with Mr. Hale; but Perkins says it is objected to the latter that a confession may be urged by force or threatening, &c., or by a persuasion that it is the best course to save life or obtain liberty.

Mr. Cary’s account is in Calef, pp. 95-99.

All my references to C. Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, and to Calef, are to the London editions of 1693 and 1700. Mr. S. G. Drake reprints both works in his Witchcraft Delusion in New England (Roxbury, 1866, 3 vols. sm. 4to), with the original paging. This is the best reprint of these noted books. An excellent and inexpensive edition of the “Wonders” appeared in J. Russell Smith’s Library of Old Authors (London, 1862, 16mo.), in which the original paging is not indicated. This edition is especially desirable as it contains reprints of A Further Account of the Tryals of the New England Witches, 1693, and Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits personating Men, 1693, both by Increase Mather. There are several other reprints of the Wonders and of Calef’s More Wonders; but they are carelessly done, and are not reliable for historical purposes. A copy (with one leaf missing) of the original Wonders (Boston, 1693), brought two hundred and ninety dollars at the Woodward auction sale in New-York, April 19, 1869.

See Calef, pp. 98-100.

The jails of Boston and Ipswich were filled, as well as that of Salem. Many of the accused were heads of families; the season for putting in crops was far advanced, and farm labor had been interrupted. “Upon consideration,” say the records of the Council for May 27, 1692, “that there are many criminal offenders now in custody, some whereof have lain long, and many inconveniencies attending the thronging of the gaols at this hot season of the year, there being no judicatories or courts of justice yet established: Ordered, That a special commission of Oyer and Terminer be made out to William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin and Peter Sergeant, Esquires, assigning them to be justices, or any five of them (whereof William Stoughton, John Richards and Bartholomew Gedney Esq’s to be one), to inquire of, hear and determine for this time, according to the law and custom of England and of this their Magesties’ Province, all and all manner of crimes and offences had, made, done or perpetrated within the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and each of them.” Capt. Stephen Sewall was appointed clerk, and Thomas Newton as attorney. George Corwin was the sheriff, and Geo. Herrick, marshal.

The testimony and other papers, in the case of Bridget Bishop, are in Records of Salem Witchcraft, Vol. i. pp. 135-172; Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 65-70; and Calef’s More Wonders, pp. 119-126.

Gov. Hutchinson found this document in the Postscript of Increase Mather’s Cases of Conscience, 1693. His copy, in the early draft, is quite correct, except that the concluding words of the fifth section “be consulted in such a case” were accidentally omitted. In making his final draft he probably noticed that the sentence was incomplete, and instead of recurring to the original authority, supplied words of his own: “may be observed.” This, and similar facts, show that he made little use of original authorities in preparing his final draft. In his last copy of this document, and in printing, ten errors were made in words and transpositions, but one of which appear in the early draft. The most important error was defeat for detect in the second section.

Richard Bernard, 1566-1651, a famous Puritan minister at Batcomb in Somerset. His Guide to Grand Jury-men in cases of Witchcraft (London, 1627), says Increase Mather, “is a solid and wise treatise. As for the judgment of the elders in New-England, so far as I can learn, they do generally concur with Mr. Perkins and Mr. Bernard.” (Cases of Conscience, pp. 252-3, ed. 1862.)

Gov. Hutchinson omitted this paragraph when he prepared his next and final draft, which was a judicious proceeding. The above is a view of the document which may occur to a reader on a first and superficial examination; and it has been claimed by a late writer that “the paper is so worded as to mislead.” The paper was drawn by Cotton Mather; and was “concurringly presented before his Excellency and Council by twelve ministers” of Boston and the vicinity. (Cases of Conscience, Postscript.) Those twelve men knew the meaning of language; and it is hardly possible to believe that they would concur, at that solemn period, in a series of recommendations to the public authorities which carried a contradiction, if not a fraud, on the face of the document. Hutchinson’s omission of the passage may be regarded as a retraction of his first impressions, resulting from further investigation. The advice, in my opinion, is wholly consistent; but this is not the place to discuss the point. I purpose to do this on some other occasion.

This statement shows that Hutchinson had not seen the records of the Council, a copy of which was made in the British State Paper office in 1846, and is now in the office of the Secretary of the State of Massachusetts.

Erroneously printed “Wilder.” The trials of Susannah Martin and Elizabeth Howe are in Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. i. 193-215, and vol. ii. pp. 69-93; Mather’s Wonders, pp. 70-80, and, with the trials of Bishop, Burroughs and Carrier, were copied by Calef, pp. 114-139.