Part 12

Some of our quotations are introduced quite as much for the purpose of exhibiting the animus, short-comings, and over-doings of the historians themselves, as for elucidating the general subject of witchcraft. We learn from the pages of the work from which the above extract was taken, that Mrs. Hibbins was sister of Richard Bellingham, deputy-governor of the province at the very time of her trial, and that her highly-esteemed husband had left her an estate which placed her far above poverty. It may fairly be presumed that both her social and pecuniary conditions were very respectable. Upham perceives and forcibly comments upon the inadequacy of the grounds upon which Hutchinson attempted to account for her conviction and execution. That earlier historian evinced, on very many of his pages, his persuasion, or at least a purpose to persuade his readers, that all the peculiar and disturbing phenomena of witchcraft were of exclusively mundane origin, and that temper, trick, imposture, deception, and the like, produced them all. This persuasion made him somewhat impatient of the whole matter, uncareful to scan all the facts before him, or keep his inferences in fair and broad harmony with them. It made him rashly severe. Without indicating a shadow of reason why he does so, he calls this widow of one of Boston's most esteemed merchants and public men--this sister of the deputy-governor of the province--this woman of more wit than her neighbors--this woman befriended by the eminent minister John Norton--this woman not in poverty--this woman whom he ought to have known, did, in her lowest condition, even when a convict in prison and doomed to the gallows--did, in this dire extremity, bespeak and obtain the friendly offices of six or eight of the leading men of the city, and therefore presumably had their respect--such a one, Hutchinson gratuitously calls a "miserable old woman;" and in doing it reveals the careless and heartless historian of those who had come under ban for witchcraft.

Upham, going to the probate records and finding the will of Mrs. Hibbins, which was made a few days after her sentence of death, is able to present her in a different aspect. His comments upon her, as she is revealed by the will and its codicils, are as follows, vol. i. p. 425:--

"The whole tone and manner of these instruments give evidence that she had a mind capable of rising above the power of wrong, suffering, and death itself. They show a spirit calm and serene. The disposition of her property indicates good sense, good feeling, and business faculties suitable to the occasion. In the body of the will, there is not a word, a syllable, or a turn of expression, that refers to or is in the slightest degree colored by her peculiar situation. In the codicil there is this sentence: 'My desire is that all my overseers would be pleased to show so much respect unto my dead corpse, as to cause it to be decently interred, and, if it may be, near my late husband."

Perusal and study of her will and its appendages induced the later historian to speak of Ann Hibbins as "this recently bereaved widow"--a phrase much more agreeable, and seemingly vastly more just in application to her, than "miserable old woman." In that will she names as overseers and administrators of her estate, Captain Thomas Clarke, Lieutenant Edward Hutchinson, Lieutenant William Hudson, Ensign Joshua Scottow, and Cornet Peter Oliver; also in a codicil, she says, "I do earnestly desire my loving friends, Captain Johnson and Edward Rawson, to be added to the rest of the gentlemen mentioned as overseers of my will." Upham, having stated the above, says, "It can hardly be doubted that these persons--and they were all leading citizens--were known by her to be among her friends." Yes, the presumption is very fair, amounting to almost positive proof, that many of the prominent and best people of the town were her friends. The appearance is, that her social walk was wide away from the purlieus of common mundane diabolism and billingsgate. The vulgar would see her standing off beyond their reach, and waste no breath upon her. Only the respectable and influential could touch her to her essential harm.

We commend and thank the later historian for bringing this persecuted woman out into such light as shows that she may have been equal in all good qualities to the best of her persecutors. But his reasons for her persecution and condemnation are scarcely more adequate or credible than those of Hutchinson. We ascribed to him the faculties of a fictionist, and he used them when he said, "The truth is, that the tongue of slander was let loose upon her." The former historian imputed certain offensive acts or traits to both Margaret Jones and Ann Hibbins severally, which he assumed to be the provoking causes of public vengeance. He deemed the sufferers themselves doers of the intolerable wrongs. But his successor makes her beneficence the crime for which Mrs. Jones suffered; and the origination and utterance of slander by the public, the cause of death to Mrs. Hibbins. The earlier writer was lenient toward the public and severe upon the accused women. The later was kind toward the women, but, by necessary implication, intensely aspersory upon the great body of the people; for he makes the public hang one because of her successful medical practice by the use of only simple remedies, and another because of slanders which itself had poured out upon her.

His charge of slander is fictitious. He adduces no evidence that the lady was slandered, and we have met with none anywhere. And were it true, it is quite as much "beyond belief that even at that time a person could be condemned and executed merely on account of being" slandered, as it is that one could have then been thus treated on account of a "crabbed temper" solely.

A much more probable cause of the persecution of Mrs. Hibbins than either of the historians drew forth and rested upon, lurks in that language of "famous Mr. Norton," which says that she "having more wit than her neighbors, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which proving true, cost her her life." Upham, commenting upon that, says, "Nothing was more natural than for her to suppose, knowing the parties, witnessing their manner, considering their active co-operation in getting up the excitement against her, which was then the all-engrossing topic, that they were talking about her." Whence and how did the accomplished rhetorician learn that those two persecutors were active co-operators, or that they were in any degree concerned "in getting up" the excitement against her? How know that their manner was expressive of any particular topic of conversation? How know that she or her case was the then all-engrossing topic? He put forth assumptions as though they were historic facts. No ancient record is credited with them; none contains them that we have met with. He could not well know them to be true. They are fairly reasonable fictions; but we must doubt whether they are either known or knowable as facts. They would be agreeable amplifications if they did not tend to mislead and blind; they would be beauties, and not blemishes, if the soundness and sufficiency of their underlying theory or assumption were conceded. But it is not. Common sense cannot concede it. Boston was neither doltish enough nor wicked enough to generate and sustain slander of such quantity and quality as would force one of her ladies of wit and high connections to die ignominiously on the gallows--never, never. Neither the temper of the woman herself, nor any combined baseness and malice that ever existed in the orderly and religious town of Boston, is admissible as the chief cause of that woman's execution. Her own wit was the historic, and, when defined and illustrated, may appear to be the real cause.

Whether Mrs. Hibbins received on that occasion, and might have been accustomed to get, knowledge by other than man's ordinary processes, and to such extent and of such kind as implied her possession of some faculties above or distinct from great powers at guessing, can best be inferred by looking at the views of her utterances which were taken by those who heard them. Their persecution of her unto death tells what those views were. Have historians made fair and full use of the very small historic basis extant, for accounting for the state and nature of public feeling among the neighbors of this woman? We think not. Her wit, the true corner-stone, has not been their basis of explanation.

When she saw two known persecutors talking, the circumstances may or may not have been helpful to a correct guess at the topic of their conversation then. But--but these men, Upham assumes, were already known to her as her persecutors. Therefore something must have occurred before that time which had aroused persecution of her. These men are called "two of her persecutors," which intimates that she already may have had more than two, and admits the supposition that she may have had very many such, both prior to and at the very time when she made the particular guess whose accuracy has been so plausibly commented upon. Something, antecedent to that guess, had set some minds against her. Yes, if we may trust the conjecture of Upham, something had already created an "excitement against her which was then the all-engrossing topic." The cause of antecedent and existing excitement, at the time she made that guess, was seemingly unsought for by either Hutchinson or Upham. Or, if they sought for this, the most important thing connected with the case, and essential to its satisfactory elucidation, they found nothing which they ventured to publish. Omission to bring out the cause of public excitement, prior to the guess, makes previous history very unsatisfactory. There is some light shining now which may enable the searcher in dark closets of the past to discover meanings there which former explorers failed to find. No new, positive, distinct historical statements explanatory of this case have been seen. We are confined to the same very narrow premises on which previous reasoners stood, but we find different import of the same facts from any which prior expounders disclosed.

We join with Upham in saying that "the only clew we have to the kind of evidence bearing upon the charge of witchcraft that brought this recently bereaved widow to so cruel and shameful a death, is in a letter written by a clergyman in Jamaica to Increase Mather in 1684." That letter, already quoted, imputes to her more wit than others; wit, or penetration, by which she sensed correctly the conversation going on between two of her persecutors. That is the full sum of the direct historical evidence. And what is involved in that? Is crabbed temper there? No. Is slander there? No; but wit is. Standing alone and unexplained, this wit amounts, perhaps, to but little; and yet when interpreted by her sad fate it may amount to very much. It suggests forcibly the probability, bordering close upon certainty, that she was endowed with some faculties which the sagacious Mr. Norton called "wit"--but yet were such as could obtain accurate knowledge so surprisingly as to suggest that it was obtained by process as occult as that by which Jesus perceived the private reasonings of scribes and pharisees--entrappers and persecutors of himself.

To-day,--when observation is almost daily meeting with operations of faculties, in limited classes of men and women, which enable them to read, at times, the secret thoughts and hear the secret and hushed utterances of some afar off,--that Jamaica letter intimates enough to generate presumption that Mrs. Hibbins might have possessed like faculties, and that her exercise of such startled, alarmed, and almost frenzied a community in which such powers were deemed proof positive that their possessor had made a covenant with the Evil One, and received her surprising knowledge from him. Amid a people holding such faith concerning the devil as the colonists here entertained in 1656, the exercise of such powers called upon all God-fearing and true men to rid the world of such a devil-minion as the knowledge possessed by Mrs. Hibbins proved her to be.

A sample of light which is now available shines forth from the following letter, and its rays are blended in those from the lamp that guides our feet while we move onward in tracing out the probable meaning reachable by following up the only historic clew to those powers of Mrs. Hibbins, her possession and exercise of which constituted a capital crime:--

"NO. 1085 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON, "September 23, 1873.

"ALLEN PUTNAM, ESQ., ROXBURY.

"Dear Friend: You solicit information in regard to hearing, from the inner ear, men and women speaking when miles away. I have always possessed that faculty in a remarkable degree. At one time, when building a steamboat in Southern Illinois, under peculiar circumstances, I would often hear men say, 'That man has no money to build a boat with; he's a fraud; and I pity those poor fellows who are working for him.' This was soon after I commenced her construction; and although I did not want to hear it, and tried ever so hard not to, still I could hear them seemingly more distinct than though they were close to me. One day in particular, and at a time when I could see no way out of my difficulty, I heard a Mr. Cutting, who was building some miles up river, say to his foreman, 'I wonder if Mr. Kimball realizes that his timber will be lost.' (Mr. Kimball was the man who furnished my timber and plank.) After the tide turned in my favor, and it was known about town that I paid my men regularly, I heard the remark, 'That man is the most reticent man I ever heard of,' &c."

The author of the letter does not state distinctly that in those two cases the speakers were very much too far away for his external ears to hear their voices, yet such was his statement when he gave me, previously, a verbal account of the facts; and such was his meaning, therefore, in the letter--the remainder of which here follows:--

"At one time, in Cincinnati, although three miles away, I heard my landlady say to her daughter, after I had been boarding with them a week, 'I don't like that man--he is not all right;' and went on to tell her impressions, what she thought I was, which it is not necessary to repeat. At first I felt indignant, forgetting, for the moment, I was three miles away. I finally concluded to say nothing about it when I went home at night, as I thought at first of doing, else they might think I was wrong in some way, as they were both members of the M. E. Church. But, when I got home, having a good opportunity, I told the daughter word for word what her mother had said about me, and also her response to her mother after she (the mother) had got through berating me--which was, 'What do you mean?' and the mother's answer to her exclamation, 'I mean just as I say.' I requested the daughter not to say anything to the mother, as it would do no good. But in the course of the following day the mother got speaking of me again in much the same strain, when the daughter could not resist the temptation, and told her to be careful what she said; and then told her what I had said. The mother was thunderstruck, and after a moment said, 'He is a devil.' I happened to be in a condition such that I heard the mother's response. This I told to the daughter that evening. Now, if I had had a thought that the mother entertained such feelings toward me, I might have attributed it to the workings of my own mind. But as I thought they had diametrically the opposite opinion, I concluded that it was another case of the inner hearing.

"Now, if you can make use of this, or a part of it, you are welcome to do so. Should you desire any other cases, I can furnish many.

"With high considerations I remain, "D. C. DENSMORE."

The writer of the above, when in conversation with me in my own study, incidentally dropped a word which intimated that his inner ear was sometimes receptive of utterances put forth by embodied men and women, who, at the time, were far away from him. In response to my expressed wish to know whether such was the fact, he detailed a number of cases in which he had had such experience; I then asked him to give me one or two of them, briefly, on paper. That request shortly drew forth the foregoing letter.

Much more of the emphatically educational period of Captain Densmore's life was spent in forecastles and cabins of whaleships than in school on shore, and he perhaps expected me to reconstruct his sentences, in part at least, before presenting them in print. But such facts as his experience has encountered ought to be accompanied by the spirit of conscious knowledge and truth pervading his own vocabulary. His language is sufficiently perspicuous to convey his meaning, and possesses force which any considerable change would impair. That spirit makes rhetoric and grammar of secondary consequence in the narration of facts and experiences which show that there exist capacities in some embodied human beings for receiving intelligence-fraught impressions, in ways and under circumstances which the schoolmen and teachers of the world lack knowledge of, but ought to know and get instruction from. Therefore the reader has been permitted to see in his own words the statement of one who has at times heard with his inner or spiritual senses the exact words of speakers who were miles away from him, and thus shown that Mrs. Hibbins, through the possession of natural faculties, though of a kind but rarely developed, might have been something very different from a mere skillful guesser. An assumption that she was helped by spirits is not needful to a satisfactory explanation of a mode in which she might have learned directly and instantly what far absent ones were uttering. Her own faculties, independently of special spirit help or teaching, may have permitted her to hear with perfect distinctness what would have been utterly inaudible by mortals in their ordinary condition. Measuring the marvelousness of her knowledge by the frenzy it produced in the community, and the awful doom it drew upon herself, we look upon her manifestations of "wit" as an outflow of knowledge gained through her own inner or spiritual organs of perception--either with or without the aid of spirits.

When commenting upon what he assumed to be fact, viz., that Mrs. Hibbins made a correct guess, and only a guess, Upham says, that "in the blind infatuation of the time, it was considered proof positive of her being possessed, by aid of the devil, of supernatural insight." Thus he assumed that the mass of people in Boston were under such an infatuation as could and did cause them to believe that very successful guessing required the devil's help! They may have been infatuated, but their infatuation did not act in that direction. Their senses and judgments for determining the forces needful to produce either material or mental effects, may, for aught that history states, have been as keen as any people ever possessed, and their general wisdom and thrift indicate that they did. Why, therefore, hastily brand them with the imbecility of being unequal to a fair, common-sense estimate of the adequacy of causes to produce observed effects? To do so is ungenerous, unjust, and uncalled for by their action. It may have been, and probably was, their freedom from infatuation; it may have been the very keenness and accuracy of their perceptions of the quantity and quality of cause needful to acquirement of knowledge which her utterances revealed, that generated and sustained the hostility against Mrs. Hibbins. Her accuracy in reading facts, secret and transpiring at a distance, was possibly, on many occasions, so far beyond what common experience or science was able to impute to either luck or skill at guessing, that few, if any, could avoid the conclusion that she was receiving supernal aid.

Anything supernal was then deemed devilish. After public excitement had been aroused against her, a very successful guess might possibly be evidence that the devil was its author, but not till the excitement had acquired and exercised bewildering force. Some extraordinary sayings or doings of this lady obviously must have antedated the public furore, else it would never have raged. The nature and circumstances of the case indicate an almost certainty that minds around her, while in their ordinary calmness, must have witnessed sayings or doings by her which "seemed to them more than natural"--which were startling--were out of the usual course, and readily distinguishable from GUESSINGS: because without something of this kind the excitement itself could never have commenced. What first started the public terror of her is the most important question in the case. The excitement did not spring up uncaused. A successful guess was no great novelty and no marvel in times of calmness. It could not then be regarded as diabolical. The bewilderings of antecedent causes were needful to make a correct guess terrific. Excitement might metamorphose a guess into devil-imputed knowledge, but a guess could not beget, though it might intensify, blood-seeking excitement. Whence the excitement itself--such excitement as could regard an accurate guess as necessarily the offspring of diabolical insight?

Mrs. Hibbins lived among the élite of a province, whose people were decidedly sagacious in matters of both private and public business, and were also probably possessed of as high moral and religious principles, as prevailed in any other community on the globe. As before stated, Richard Bellingham, one of the very eminent men of the country, and at that time deputy-governor of the province, was her brother; she was widow of one who had been among the most esteemed citizens of the town, and she is credited with having possessed more wit than her neighbors. Therefore we are hunting for a cause adequate to excite public indignation against a woman of bright intellect, of high position in society, and standing under the shelter of near kinship with those in authority. The cause must have been some strange one. Skill at guessing was too common and natural, and does not meet the requirements.

We all unite in calling the people of 1656 infatuated in relation to witchcraft. But did their infatuation so affect them as to bring obtuseness upon their external senses and their intellectual ability for discerning the nature, character, and force of testimony and evidence? or, on the other hand, did it not show itself almost exclusively in their reception and tenacious retention of monstrous items in their witchcraft creed? Which? Admit an affirmative to the first part of the inquiry--admit that senses and intellects were befooled by external manifestations--and you make those noble forefathers but a band of dolts, heartless and bloodthirsty, taking life because they had not wit enough to read clearly the significance of observed external facts or to see the bearings and force of evidence. Admit the second, viz., that their creed was father of their infatuation, and you may look upon them as a band possessing clear perception of the exact meaning and logical results of all Christendom's fixed creed upon diabolism, and of unflinching purpose to fight for God and Christ against the devil. Demonologically they were infatuated, in common with the enlightened world; while yet for keen observance of outward facts, for just estimate of the adequacy of a cause to produce an observed effect, for determining the just significance of any well-observed fact, for discriminating application of evidence under the rules of their creeds both God-ward and devil-ward, no reason appears why they were not equal to any other community anywhere. Their infatuation was not first on the practical, but on the theoretical side. It was devil-ward, not man-ward directly, though through the creed it became man-ward.

Though perceiving the meagerness and improbability of Hutchinson's solution, Upham, ignoring what he avowed to be the only historical "clew we have" to a correct one, which led directly to the woman's own wit, was pleased to find the exciting cause of her persecution not in her, but in other people, and dogmatically said, "The truth is, the tongue of slander was let loose against her." Such assumption--and it is bold assumption, even if it be in accordance with facts--fails--entirely fails--to meet the fair demands of our common-sense requirements. What started, and extended, and intensified that tongue if it did wag? If its utterances were slanderous, they were a mixture of falsehood and malice. What lies were or could be fabricated against such a woman, the nature of which the common sagacity of society there and then would not detect? What lies which the truthfulness of society there and then would not decline to repeat against her? What malice against that lady of high connections could so pervade society there as to generate a public sentiment that demanded and obtained her life? The people of Boston were not wicked enough to let falsehood and malice triumph in their highest court of justice. Something different from slander was needed to awaken and sustain the popular clamor against this woman, and to cause the court to pass sentence of death upon her. We granted to Upham the faculties of a fictionist, and he used them when he declared that "the truth is, the tongue of slander was let loose upon her." "The truth is," neither he nor any other one among us at this day, knows whether that woman was slandered or not. She may have been, but it is only matter of conjecture, and should not be put forth as truth. Something more than slander in its utmost expandings and accretions was needful to the tragic results which ensued.

We recur again to the only historical cause of excitement against this lady, viz., Norton's hint that she possessed such marvelous wit for guessing, as Upham supposes the people around her considered "proof positive of her being possessed, by the aid of the devil, of supernatural insight." That hint unlocks a door behind which may be found a more adequate and philosophical cause of her arraignment and condemnation than has hitherto been assigned. Since many persons now possess, she too may have possessed constitutional faculties, which, at times, enabled her to sense, comprehend, and enunciate facts and truths which it was impossible for her to learn by man's ordinary processes. Admit simply that she may have possessed intuitive faculties which read the thoughts of others or sensed afar the spirit of sounds, and solution of all mysteries about her is made. Wide awake, keen-sighted, good people may have seen in her the exercise of such powers as were clearly, distinctly, and beyond all question, extraordinary,--yes, supermundane. What then? Why, by all fair logic from Christendom's faith at that time, the devil must be her teacher, and she must be his covenanted servant. Such a helper of Satan, however high in character or station, must be deprived of power to work for him. Very wonderful revelations, such as disclosures of the secret thoughts and private conversations of other and distant persons, being a few times repeated by her, what could people, true to their God and their creed, do less than demand her execution? Nothing--nothing less. Their infatuated but sincere belief about the devil plainly and with mighty force called for her blood. And this not because of any crabbedness in her--not because of any lies about her--not because of malice toward her--not because of the tongue of slander--but because of facts, unquestionable facts, outwrought through her, which the tongue of truth might dutifully publish and republish throughout the town. The trouble, the murderous impulses, sprang from the creed, and especially from those parts of it which made any and all mysterious and disturbing outworkings devilish in their source, and which taught that the devil could act through no human beings but such as had made a voluntary compact to serve him. Those who had covenanted with him must die. Mrs. Hibbins was born with mediumistic faculties, and because of her legitimate use of these, the faith of her times conscientiously took her life.

It gladdens the heart to find a view which legitimately permits Mrs. Hibbins to have been a bright, refined, high-toned, and most estimable lady; and at the same time lessens the blackness of the cloud which has long hung over her judges and executioners. They were not so weak and wicked as to doom one to die because of temper, nor so villainous as to slander away a lady's life. Stern religious adherence and application of an honest, though deluded faith, made them executioners of all such as had exhibited powers which in the dim light of their philosophy and science seemed supernatural. Their weakness consisted of such strong faith as could, and in emergencies must, put in abeyance the kindlier sentiments of their hearts. Their great infirmity, which was then a general one throughout Christendom, was solely infatuation devil-ward.