The Witches: Salem, 1692

by Stacy Schiff

  Corwin arranged for the corpse: R, 395. Roach thinks Corwin crossed out the line because someone claimed the body; Six Women of Salem, 252. Puritan interments were simple and in unconsecrated ground. For the site of the burial, Marilynne Roach, Gallows and Graves (Watertown, MA: Sassafras Grove, 1977); Sidney Perley, “Where the Salem Witches Were Hanged,” EIHC 57 (January 1921): 1–19. According to Lawson, graves for a later hanging were dug in advance.

  “painful, grotesque”: Saul Bellow, Herzog (New York: Penguin, 1964), 23.

  “a vexation to herself” to “recovered their senses”: CM in Burr, 249.

  “a formidable crew”: Magnalia, 2: 534. That was the attack during which the Wells women fired at the enemy or, as CM proudly declared, “took up the Amazonian stroke.”

  “a very doleful time”: CM Diary, 1: 150.

  VII. NOW THEY SAY THERE IS ABOVE SEVEN HUNDRED IN ALL

  “Nature has given”: Samuel Johnson to the Reverend Dr. Taylor, August 18, 1763, in The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 1: 228.

  “a relatively spontaneous bicker”: Langbein, Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 253. See also Murrin, “Magistrates, Sinners, and a Precarious Liberty,” Saints and Revolutionaries, 152–206; interview with Richard Trask, April 1, 2014; interview with J. M. Beattie, September 9, 2014.

  “If you sued a lot”: William Offutt Jr., cited in Hoffer, Law and People, 78. Offutt was speaking of Delaware Quakers.

  “I am no thief”: Langbein, Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 57.

  “will pry”: Bernard, Guide to Grand-Jury Men, 244.

  “much harm and little good”: SS Diary, 1: 277. For the Mather contretemps, ibid., 454–55; for the pardoned pirate, ibid., 250.

  Willard’s afternoon sermon: See Peterson, “‘Ordinary Preaching,’” 95–98. Also on Willard, Stephen Robbins, “Samuel Willard and the Spectres of God’s Wrathful Lion,” New England Quarterly 60 (December 1987): 601; Brown, “The Salem Witchcraft Trials.”

  “now they say”: Joshua Brodbent to Francis Nicholson, June 21, 1692, CO 5/1037, no. 112, fol. 227r, PRO.

  “he has left the court”: Brattle in Burr, 184. The facts are elusive, as no commission for the Court of Oyer and Terminer has come down to us.

  “she was a witch”: RFQC, 3: 420. The point about defamation is from Thompson, “‘Holy Watchfulness,’” 504–22.

  To fail to report: McManus, Law and Liberty, 68. Thompson, “‘Holy Watchfulness,’” 521, makes the point that turning in a suspected witch shielded one from accusations of complicity. See Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 204–8, for a chart of prior defamation suits involving witchcraft. David Hall thinks the lack of defamation actions indicates a shock to the system; interview with Hall, October 19, 2012.

  “The Return of Several Ministers Consulted”: June 15, 1692, B&N, 118–19. CM’s original is in the Cotton Mather Letters, John J. Burns Library, Boston College. He would later claim to have offered to take in some of the afflicted, as he had Martha Goodwin; he may have done so now.

  “that I should be”: CM Diary, 1: 311. Mather wrote half of the published Massachusetts sermons to the end of 1692, before he had yet turned thirty.

  “Several persons”: R, 399; Milborne petition, Massachusetts council minutes, CO 5/785 PRO. On the Milborne brothers, David William Voorhees, “‘Fanatiks’ and ‘Fifth Monarchists’: The Milborne Family in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 129 (July 1998): 174–82.

  “seditious and scandalous” to “public justice”: R, 399.

  Thomas Newton outlined his case: R, 409–13.

  “The same evidence”: The observation was Cary’s, R, 311.

  “all the delectable things”: CM in Burr, 236.

  “that some she-devil” to “creature in the world”: CM in Burr, 232–34. Even those who knew Martin and had reason to be well inclined toward her did not rise to her defense. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 649, cites a seventeenth-century observer on the vicious circle.

  Topsfield’s Elizabeth How: CM in Burr, 237–40; see also Philip Graystone, Elizabeth Jackson of Rowley (Hull, UK: Lampada Press, 1993). “If you are a witch”: R, 438. Equal numbers of witnesses spoke for and against her.

  “No, never” to “she is a witch”: R, 373–74.

  when Sarah Wilds came: Years earlier her stepsons had been accused of witchcraft as well; two stepdaughters soon would be. She had been whipped for fornication in 1649; RFQC, 1: 179.

  “almost saw revenge”: R, 462–63.

  “as the child unborn”: R, 349.

  John Putnam Sr. seems to have been: R, 435, and R, 429. A. P. Putnam, Rebecca Nurse and Her Friends (Boston: Thomas Todd, 1894), 1–38.

  “the most ancient, skillful”: R, 412–13.

  “the jury of women”: R, 380.

  the jury returned: Calef in Burr, 358. We know little of how a seventeenth-century jury worked. They did not proceed by ballot or formal vote; they did not always excuse themselves from the courtroom to deliberate; the majority seem to have deferred to the foreman; Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 396. On asking a jury to re-deliberate, e-mail with John Langbein, March 10, 2014. The opposite happened in Connecticut; see Godbeer, Escaping Salem, 119.

  “I could not tell” to “evidence against her”: R, 465.

  “What? Do these persons”: Calef in Burr, 359. On accomplices, interview with J. M. Beattie, September 9, 2014.

  “hard of hearing”: R, 465. The devil whispered at her ear: Lawson, appendix to Christ’s Fidelity, 110; see also Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 546, on the roar in the courtroom.

  nothing on paper: Cited by Trask, R, 53.

  sentence of excommunication: David C. Brown, “The Keys of the Kingdom: Excommunication in Colonial Massachusetts,” New England Quarterly 67 (December 1994): 531–66. For the language, David D. Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 388; Demos, Remarkable Providences, 277; Hall, Witch-Hunting, 89, on Ann Hibbins; CM Diary 1: 180. Interview with David Hall, May 21, 2014.

  late-summer meeting: Proceedings of the MHS, vol. 17 (1879), 268.

  “struck dumb, deaf, blind”: June 10, 1692, letter appended to Lawson, A Further Account.

  “was mistaken”: Calef in Burr, 360. She may have meant John Willard.

  To the job Stoughton brought: On Stoughton, Convers Francis, An Historical Sketch of Watertown (Cambridge: Metcalf, 1830), 59; SS Diary, 1: 148; Records of the First Church at Dorchester (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1801), 50–65; Northend, “Address Before the Essex Bar Association,” 258n. A respected jurist, Stoughton had in 1680 reviewed and revised NE law. The assertion that there were but three qualified men in all of Massachusetts: Randolph to Blathwayt, in Letters and Official Papers, 6: 218.

  “an impudent, saucy”: Governor Fletcher, in John Usher to Nottingham, Colonial State Papers, January 31, 1693, CO 5/571, no. 18, PRO.

  “Christ is against him”: Stoughton, New England’s True Interest (Boston, 1668), 18–23. On Stoughton and the seminal sermon: E-mails with David Hall, May 11, 2013, and October 3, 2014. Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan, 87, names Stoughton among the handful of men who created NE; Stoughton is cited in CM’s The Present State, 36. On Stoughton and the pulpits, Hull, Diaries, 231.

  public office and land speculation: John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 90–99. For the dense pine, Cronon, Changes in the Land, 75.

  “amassed great quantities”: Randolph to Blathwayt, May 21, 1687, Letters and Official Papers, 6: 221.

  “I find all are mad”: Randolph to Shrimpton in ibid., 3: 310. On WS in London, see especially Hall, Edward Randolph, 21–52.

  enemy of the people: Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley (London: Longmans, 1911), 17; Randolph letter, CO/1/54, no 51, fol. 121, PRO.

  “he
might thank himself”: Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 196. She is best on the Andros coup. See also Charles M. Andrews, Narratives of the Insurrections (New York: Scribner’s, 1915), 199–203.

  skid off topic: See Wait Still Winthrop to Ashurst, 1699, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, sixth series (1892): 46–50.

  “rascally petty tyrant”: From “The Revolution in New-England Justified,” cited in Breen, The Character of the Good Ruler, 147–48.

  “by having the windows”: C.D., New England’s Faction Discovered (London, 1690), 4.

  knew only losses: Higginson Family Papers, 202.

  “seek the subversion”: Hull, Diaries, 217.

  all was in disarray: Fisher, Report of a French Protestant Refugee, 17.

  “worm” and “underminer of state”: See Everett Emerson, Letters from New England: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629–1638 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), 148. Given the convulsive state of Massachusetts politics, he was back in office shortly.

  an English official had noted: Randolph to Blathwayt, July 2, 1686, Letters and Official Papers, 4: 99.

  “Mr. Stoughton is a real friend”: CM to IM, cited in Stoughton Sibley entry, 200. CM would extol Stoughton for his “unspotted fidelity”; CM Diary 1: 154. In fairness, he used the same term for Sewall later; see letter of September 17, 1712, NEHGS.

  Nocturnal invasions: Kences, “Some Unexplored Relationships”; Swan, “Bedevilment of Cape Ann”; Magnalia, 2: 621–23. The Gloucester minister—who helped elicit Salem confessions—prayed that “those apparitions may not prove the sad omens of some future and more horrible molestations.”

  velvet saddles: Perley, History of Salem, vol. 3, 127.

  Wait Still Winthrop: Dunn, Puritans and Yankees.

  festivities surrounding Harvard’s commencement: Morison, Harvard College, vol. 2, 465–70; Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, 276; David Levin, Cotton Mather: The Young Life of the Lord’s Remembrancer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 54; Hall, Worlds of Wonder, 65; Thompson, Cambridge Cameos, 37, for the pineapples and anchovies; Hammond diary, P-363, reel 5.3, MHS. Alden’s son was as well the worst offender in his class, twice fined for breaking windows.

  “eat up the poor”: Winthrop to Henry Ashurst, July 25, 1698, Collections of the MHS, sixth series, vol. 5, 1892, xix.

  Phips might defraud: Barnes, “Phippius Maximus,” 278.

  prominent Dutch merchant: See Evan Haefeli’s invaluable “Dutch New York and the Salem Witch Trials: Some New Evidence,” Proceedings of the AAS 110 (October 2000): 277–308; Jacob Melyen letter book, AAS. Melyen was also friendly with Sewall, who registered no concerns about “foolish people.” I am grateful to Joroen Janssen, David Sonnenberg, and Lili Lynton for translation assistance.

  “dismal outcries”: Calef in Burr, 359.

  “the horrible crime”: R, 466.

  “declare for whom”: Stoughton, New England’s True Interest, 24.

  “inexorable persecutions” to “unexperienced men”: Cited in Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement and Progress of the Colonies of North America (New York: Peter Smith, 1947), vol. 4, 52, 57.

  “The widow Glover”: SS Diary, 1: 183.

  “abated in our love”: Stoughton, New England’s True Interest, 21.

  “impudently demanding”: CM to John Cotton, August 5, 1692, Silverman, Selected Letters, 40.

  precious resource: The angry words Sewall exchanged with his father-in-law stemmed from his having been too profligate with February firewood; see Hull, Diaries, 253. On laws to forestall timber shortages, see David Grant Smith, “Crossing Boundaries: Space, Place, and Order in 17th Century Topsfield, MA,” unpublished manuscript, Harvard Divinity School, 2009, 10–15. Already by 1653 the settlers had turned “close, clouded woods” into goodly cornfields; see also Johnson, Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 37.

  All occupied land: Upham, Salem Witchcraft, 354; RFQC, 2: 204.

  simple oak gallows: Interview with Richard Trask, April 1, 2013.

  “You are a liar” to “blood to drink”: Calef in Burr, 358. In her superb Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 115–16, Christine Leigh Heyrman notes that the threat was not new.

  terrible moans: See CM, Useful Remarks: An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men (Boston, 1723).

  God were working in miracles: CM to John Cotton, August 5, 1692, Silverman, Selected Letters, 40.

  “Sometimes,” confessed the abashed: R, 481; CM in Burr, 243.

  VIII. IN THESE HELLISH MEETINGS

  On Andover: Philip Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970); Abbot, Our Company Increases; Enders Anthony Robinson, Andover Witchcraft Genealogy (Andover, MA: Goose Pond Press, 2013); Marjorie Wardwell Otten, The Witch Hunt of 1692 (n.p., n.d.); Jeremy M. Sher, “Brand of Infamy: The Andover Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692” (senior thesis, Princeton, 2001); Sarah Loring Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover (Boston: Houghton, 1880).

  “Doubt is not a pleasant”: Voltaire to Frederick William, November 28, 1770, in Voltaire in His Letters (New York: Putnam’s, 1919), 232.

  grandiose designs: Roger Wolcott to Henry Wolcott, July 25, 1692, Connecticut Historical Society.

  Servants accused mistresses: See Nelson, “Persistence of Puritan Law,” 337, for a man accused of witchcraft by a servant. Benjamin C. Ray discusses accusations leveled at the less wealthy in “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials” in Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002), 26. Demos, The Enemy Within, 84, makes the point that no Native American was prosecuted. Nor were any Jerseyans accused with the exception of Philip English. Abbot, Our Company, explores ethnic tensions in Andover, which might have accounted for the targeting of Scotswomen like Carrier, and, by marriage, Foster. Sher, “Brand of Infamy,” 98, observes that it was odd Thomas Carrier was not accused when he was the father of four witches and the husband of another. Sher points out that Carrier had in fact returned to town before the smallpox, which leveled her family (45). She had however also survived.

  both defended and accused: James Holton, from Ray, “The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations,” 463, and R, 945.

  trivial matters added up: WOW, 152.

  spousal abuse: Demos notes that that went in both directions; A Little Commonwealth, 95.

  perfect conviction rate: Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 687.

  a Salem man: Roger Wolcott to Henry Wolcott, July 25, 1692, Connecticut Historical Society. Joseph Ballard complained of the Laceys; his brother, constable John Ballard, had arrested Carrier in May.

  “pains and pressures”: R, 469; Brattle in Burr, 180. Rosenthal, Salem Story, 54, thinks the girls summoned would have been Ann Putnam Jr. and Mary Walcott. Norton, “George Burroughs,” 233, prefers Mercy Lewis and Betty Hubbard. All had proved their ability to diagnose by the summer. We know Hubbard and Walcott signed indictments against Foster; R, 634. It is possible Foster was arrested before the Salem visionaries even arrived in Andover.

  She soon enough began: R, 467. John Hale asked if he might remain: JH, 47.

  Mary Lacey: R, 471–78; yet more disturbing question than the one posed in June: R, 392.

  the witches’ meeting: Reconstructed largely from testimony of Mary Toothaker, R, 491–92; Mary Barker, R, 559–61; William Barker Sr. (who caught the cloven foot), R, 561–66; the Laceys and Carriers, R, 479–82; Sarah Bridges, R, 553–54; Susannah Post, R, 555; Sarah Wardwell, R, 577–78; Elizabeth Johnson Jr., R, 543; Elizabeth Johnson Sr., R, 568; Ann Foster, R, 471–77; Mary Warren, R, 350; JH in Burr, 419; Lawson, appendix to Christ’s Fidelity. Abigail Williams added the vampiric twist, R, 173. There are nearly fifty accounts in all. CM would retroactively insert Frenchmen and Indian chiefs
into the meetings “to concert the methods of ruining New England”; he claimed to have heard as much from a confessed witch; Burr, 281–22. See Benjamin C. Ray’s fine “They Did Eat Red Bread Like Man’s Flesh,” Common-Place 9 (July 2009). SP’s field may have made sense for a diabolical gathering for reasons still audible today; with a swampy lowlands nearby, it hosted pond frogs, said by Josselyn, New-England’s Rarities, 76, to “chirp in the spring like sparrows, and croak like toads in the autumn.

  eighteen-year-old Richard and sixteen-year-old Andrew: R 479–83; Roger Wolcott to Henry Wolcott, July 25, 1692, Connecticut Historical Society. Twelve-year-old Phoebe Chandler would testify that when Richard Carrier looked her way in meeting, she experienced “a strange burning in the stomach” and missed all but two words of the subsequent prayers and psalms. The symptoms sound familiar even if they are not generally attributed to the evil eye; R, 511.

  “dreadful shapes”: CM in Burr, 236.

  French fall shoes: R, 574. He lured fourteen-year-old William Barker Jr. and Joanna Tyler with clothes as well; R, 571, 661. Pardon her sins: R, 560; revenge on her enemies, R, 547; “abundance of satisfaction”: R, 608; Mary Lacey Jr. could count on glory: R, 474, 569. In an earlier case, the devil tempted a woman into witchcraft by acting as her much-loved dead child; Demos, Entertaining Salem, 170. “abolish all the churches”: Barker, R, 563. Interestingly, no one seems to have applied for eternal youth.

  he composed a petition: R, 486. He would have known he had been on an earlier docket as well. The couple had been sent to Salem in time for the initial trial.

  “and their feet”: R, 480.

  “doth carry things”: R, 573.

  “barbarous and inhumane”: William H. Whitmore, ed., The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts (Boston, 1889), 187.

  Already their estates: Calef in Burr, 361.

  devil insolently copied them: CM made the same point; Burr, 245.

  credited Catholicism: IP, 179.

  “It is also true”: IP, 175. IM included a summary of the Knapp case in IP, as would CM in Magnalia.