Daughters of the Inquisition

by Christina Crawford

  History professor Mary Beth Norton in her work In the Devil’s Snare brings new illumination to the much recorded trials of women in Massachusetts during 1692–3, known as the Salem witch trials. These trials, more accurately termed the Essex County Crisis, involved accusers who were young women and girls, unlike the norm wherein the accusers were males. The previous New England incident had occurred in Hartford, Connecticut, in the 1660’s, involving perhaps eleven people. Norton says that “the Salem accused were closely related to such stereotypical women: husbands, sisters, daughters, mothers and sons of witches also had been vulnerable to the same charges.” She continues, “The Salem outbreak rivaled the major seventeenth century witch-hunts in England or Scotland, all but one of which it also postdated.”561

  The special court of Oyer and Terminer which was established to handle the secular prosecutions convicted the accused and handled the executions of almost all of those they tried. But this was unusual for many reasons. First, the lower status men who sat on the juries (there were no women jurors) were not in the habit of giving merit to the words of very young girls, whose “normal role was to be seen and not heard, to tend to others needs and to acquiesce (to adults) in all tasks required of them.”562 During the trials these girls turned the social order upside down for a few moments in time. Second, unlike any trials during the European Inquisition against women, “within five years, one judge and twelve jurors formally apologized for their roles in the affair, and within two decades the Massachusetts government also acknowledged its responsibility for what were by then viewed as unjust proceedings. The legislature voted to compensate both survivors of the trials and their descendents of the executed.”563 What really happened to make this set of trials against women in New England so different from those in the Old World?

  Perhaps the first major difference was the obvious one: this new world itself, a vast continent of previously unimagined possibility. It was, however, already populated by peoples unlikely to take kindly to this invasion of their homelands. In the territory of Maine there had been two wars already between the native tribes and the settlers in which many of the newcomers had been killed, their settlements, livestock and crops destroyed. In this context, the men responsible for general security were seen as failing their duty as protectors. The settlers were divided in their loyalty not only to leader but also to church. Many were Christians but not Puritans. Church leaders demanded total allegiance to the Puritan rule and tended to ostracize those who failed to buy church membership. This posture created the classic ingroup versus out-group scenario, ripe for scapegoating. Added to this, the Indian Wars were going increasingly badly for the settlers resulting in an influx of traumatized refugees from the Northern frontier. All of a sudden, in very small communities there existed “new people” (refugees) and “old people” and gossip, which was the only efficient means of communication in these rural outposts. This gossip spread rumors, half-truths, and blossomed first into widespread petty scandals and then into deadly serious trials and hangings. All of the players in this drama were originally from England. They had already fled persecution and death, but they were now faced with war on their own frontier and discrimination in the town to which they were forced to return by Puritan leaders and churchmen who ruled strictly and without leeway towards human frailty. These humorless, rigid men saw women in a limited, unkind light.

  Mary Beth Norton asks why were so many people charged and why were so many convicted and hanged? As a means of entering the prevailing psyche of that day, she describes the mindset saying, “the foundation of the crisis lay in the Puritan New Englanders singular world view … (which taught) them that they were a chosen people, charged with bringing God’s message to a heathen land previously ruled by the devil … God spoke to them repeatedly through his providences … small and large events of their daily lives.”564 These “providences” were signs of weather, the sky, stars, climate, diseases, misfortune or good fortune, births and deaths. The people of this world believed themselves to “be surrounded by an invisible world of spirits as well as by a natural world of palpable objects … both worlds communicating Gods messages, because both operated under his direction … Satan played a major role in the invisible world.”565 This is a nearly perfect description of the guiding principles of the European Inquisition combined with the ancient, popular beliefs in magic, previously defined in terms of both natural magic and supernatural magic.

  The native tribal people, the Wabanaki, who were considered enemies of the New Englander were also aligned with French Catholics and because that alliance seemed to be winning, it suggested that the Protestant faith and particularly the Puritan version of that religion was not as powerful as that of the opponent. The leaders were desperate to prove their effectiveness, if not at the frontier, then right at home.

  The Wabanaki had shamans whom the settlers called witches, which heightened the fears of the Puritans against paranormal phenomena. Norton writes, “this is not to say that the war caused the witchcraft crisis, but rather that the conflict created the conditions that allowed the crisis to develop as rapidly and extensively as it did.”566 With regard to the actual trials and lack of impartiality on the part of judges in the court of Oyer and Terminer during 1692–3, she continues saying that “the judges had too much personally at stake in the outcome. They quickly became invested in believing in the reputed witch’s guilt, in large part because they needed to believe that they themselves were not guilty of causing New England’s current woes.”567 Guilt by accusation was assumed credible. Execution by hanging was the only outcome expected.

  Accusations caused by afflictions and “fits” of the victims could have been the result of eating ergotized grain which causes convulsions and previously occurred in Europe. It could have been caused by trauma and acute anxiety, which would be a reasonable explanation because many of the girls came from the frontier where they had witnessed death and chaos before fleeing with whatever family members were still alive. It could also have been caused by the same greed and misogyny seen during the Inquisitions in Europe and Spain. In fact, author Budapest writes that “in Salem, in colonial America, the intent was the same. Cotton Mather had lands adjoining Goodie Nurse, and he wanted hers. He managed to acquire almost all the property of all the witches who were hanged.”568

  In Massachusetts, unlike elsewhere, criticism of the trials came to light immediately afterwards. “These critics understood at some level that the most effective way to attack the trials was to attack the core group of accusers. When they did and their (the accusers) charges had been successfully discredited, support for the prosecutions melted away.”569

  However belatedly commendable the reversal was, it was too late to save the women and men who were hanged on the following dates:

  June 10

  Bridget Bishop

  July 19

  Sarah Goode, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wilds Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe

  August 19

  Martha Carrier, and the men: Rev. George Burroughs, George Jacobs Jr., John Willard

  September 22

  Mary Easty, Martha Corey, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Reid, Margaret Scott Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker

  Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Hobbs an accuser, Dorcas Hoar, Mary Bradbury (who escaped), Ann Foster (who died in jail), Mary Lacey Sr., Abigail Faulkner, Rebecca Eames were all found guilty but not hanged.

  The New World with its vast opportunities and equally vast challenges tended to disperse the zeal with which women were publicly persecuted. And, for reasons of practicality, women were far more valuable to the new colonies than they had been perceived in the Old World from which they fled. The women of New England were a scarce resource, and the esteem in which they were held tended to rise as realization of that fact dawned on the men who depended on their skills, as the teachers, healers and midwives, weavers, gardeners, mothers and tradeswomen, which they had brought with them from generations of being the self-sustaining peasant
women of the old homelands. Women were soon able to move out to the frontiers where they bought land, owned businesses, ran schools, held public office, and once again became the traditional community stabilizers.

  Scotland

  According to Lea there was no Catholic Papal Inquisition in Scotland except for one case of burning which was political in nature during the reign of James III (1460–88). However, when the Reformation came, the protestant Calvinists made sure that the “scriptures were searched and the Levitical laws were enforced.”570 This is a reference to the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, which was made widely available for the first time concurrent with the Reformation and provided the ammunition with which to persecute women, even though the irony is that all sects of European and Spanish Christianity actively persecuted the Hebrew people. In a classic disconnect, they held the laws of the Levites as written in the Old Testament as holy while persecuting the Jewish people whose ancestors wrote them, and then used the same laws of a people they actively discredited to justify the killing of women for whom they had no respect, all the while proclaiming their own self-righteousness.

  The General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland in 1640 and in 1642 “ordered all ministers and presbyteries to keep special watch on witches and charmers and to see that they are prosecuted and punished.”571 In Scotland, unlike England, the Continent or Spain, the accused was allowed defense by counsel during proceedings against them in court.572 As early as 1629 there are cases recorded of women accused and burnt: Isabel Young and Katherine Iswald in 1629, Elizabeth Bathgate in 1634, Janet Baker and Margaret Lauder in 1643, Agnes Finnie in 1644, Maragret Anderson in 1658, Margaret Taylor, Janet Black, Katherine Rany, Bessie Paton in 1658, Bessie Luost and four other women in 1659, John Douglas and eight women also in 1659, Elspeth Graham and five women in 1661, Margaret Bryson and five women in 1661, John Kerr and four women in 1661, also Margaret Hutchison and Janet Cock in that same year and Agnes Williamson in 1662.573

  In 1649 a man by the name of Hob Grieve is arrested at Lander and confesses to being a messenger of the devil. “He accuses so many women that the prisons overflowed and could not hold more. All whom he accused confessed to witchcraft. The women were condemned to be burnt.” In that same year of 1649 a witch-pricker named John Kincaid testifies against Patrick Watson and his wife Menie Halliburton. The witch-pricker describes the locations of devils marks on both the man and woman. This declaration is signed by six witnesses, and the couple is condemned.574 At the same time another woman whose name is not recorded by Lea is accused, not by Grieve or by the pricker, but will not confess and is not condemned to be burnt with all her neighbors, but is consigned to be left totally alone in prison. She begs to be burned with the other women. She then confesses and is condemned. Her confession is, of course, suspicious although not enough to preclude burning. Her own words recorded just before her execution after all ceremonial preparations were concluded are chilling insight. She says,

  Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch, by my own confession, and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly upon myself: my blood be upon my own head. And as I must make answer to the God of Heaven presently I declare I am as free of witch-craft as any child; but being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison, under that name of witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison, nor ever coming in credit again (i.e. being respected), through the temptation of the devil I made up that confession, on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than live. And then she was executed.575

  How many other countless thousands of women, falsely accused and deserted by spouse, family and friends ended their days in similar circumstances with the belief that death is merciful in comparison with the horrors of life awaiting them?

  In 1652 English Commissioners for the administration of justice in criminal matters came to Edinburgh. The court inquired how the numbers of women accused and turned over to the civil magistrates were found guilty. The answer was exceeding torture. The accused “thumbs were tied behind them and then hanging them up by them; two Highlanders whipt them, after which they set lighted candles to the soles of their feet and between their toes, then burned them by putting lighted candles into their mouths and then burning them in the head. There were six of them accused whereof four died of the torture.”576

  On September 13, 1678, Isobel Elliot and nine women were tried together, confessed, convicted, condemned and burnt. The Borrowstones trial of women in 1679 at first accuses Annaple Thomsone, Margaret Pringle and two women both named Margaret Hamilton, a Bessie Vicker and a man named Wm. Craw. Charges are having intercourse with the devil, holding meetings where they danced and drank with the devil. When the trial actually convenes, the list of jurors is very lengthy. There are thirteen names of men from the Baronie of Carriden, twelve men from the town of Borrowstones, twelve men of the Baronie of Kinneill. The warrant for the burning of the women as witches is delivered on December 19, naming December 23 as the day of execution. It says that the convicts are “to be taken to the west end of Borrowstones, the ordinar place of the execution ther … to be wirried at a steack until they are dead, and thereafter to have their bodies burnt to ashes.”577

  A group of women were accused as the witches of Pittenweem in 1704 by a man who was later exposed as an imposter, but not before one of the accused, Janet Cornfoot was tortured and brutally murdered by a mob. Beatrix Lang refused to confess and was tortured by pricking and deprived of sleep for five days until she broke down and confessed what was required by her torturers. But then she denied her guilt, was placed in the stocks, and then confined in a prison called Thieves Hole, where she was put in a dark dungeon for five months. When eventually released from Thieves Hole prison, Beatrix aimlessly wandered the countryside, having become insane.578

  Sir George Mackenzie wrote his opinions on matters coming before his court, which are included in Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1678), printed in the History of the Witches of Renfrewshire, first edition 1809. Sir George is a realist. He writes, “I condemn next to the witches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges, who burn persons by thousands as guilty of this crime.” The extant records do not reflect these large numbers, but Sir George was writing concurrent with the events as they happened. Because he was a “justice-dispute” and examined women who confessed judicially without torture, he had first-hand knowledge which he shares with the example of a woman whom he called a “silly creature.” This woman told Sir George in supposed confidence that she had not confessed because she was guilty, “but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat nor lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her and that therefore she desired to be out of the world, whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness what she said.”579

  No matter where she lived in Europe, whether it was Spain, England, France, German lands, Hungary or Scotland it is clear that once a woman was accused, whether or not she was guilty, imprisoned or burned, her life on this earth was over. Forever more she was an outcast, without hope of a future, shunned by relatives, harassed by townsfolk, tortured by men. Is it any wonder that women preferred death to life under these intolerable circumstances?

  The New World – Mexico, Central and South America

  Conquering Spaniards brought with them the Inquisition now led primarily by the black-robed Jesuits. Everywhere they subdued the local inhabitants and stole their property; they also forced conversion on those whom, in their ignorance and intolerance, they termed heathens. The first major city they constructed was Cartegenia, Columbia. In the main town square amidst striking examples of colonial architecture is an unassuming structure with a small plaque identifying it as a museum of the Inquisition. Alongside force
d conversion was the ever-present Inquisition, prying into the lives of the ordinary. The black robe missionaries were not only zealous but also relentless in their pursuit of the wayward.

  In 1609, Mexico found itself in a period of intense unrest among Afro-Mexican slaves. The large numbers of cimarrones provoked Spaniards to acute anxiety. Individual owners and the institutions of Spanish colonial society sought to use corporal punishment to repress slave resistance, and verbal and symbolic discourse to persuade or terrorize slaves. Exasperated owners brought their slaves before the Inquisition when beatings not only failed to repress them but also provoked verbal rejection named blasphemy. But inquisitors did not merely attempt to extirpate heresy; they were also reinforcing the individual efforts of slave owners to repress their slaves for the “good” of all Spanish society.580

  The slaves were resistant and countered by bringing their own grievances before the tribunal of the Inquisition in protest. When they testified, they named their abusers, named the acts of violence which had been used against them and openly condemned the use of cruelty which maintained the slave system. One testimony renounces the ideological foundation on which slavery existed by saying, “Reniego a Dios!” I renounce the God who would allow you such cruelty over my body; you do not control my mind or my tongue.”581