Six Women of Salem

by Marilynne K. Roach

  According to Abigail Williams, old Jacobs had made his granddaughter Margaret and the maid Sarah Churchill put their hands to the Devil’s book along with his own son George Jacobs Jr., his wife, Sarah, as well as “another woman & her husband viz: Mr. English & his wife” (Philip and Mary English). At some point Sarah Churchill also said that Ann Pudeator brought her a book to sign and that Bridget Bishop, “alias Olliver,” also tormented her.

  Sarah was afflicted again at Ingersoll’s the evening of May 9 after her confession, at which time Mary Walcott identified the specter as Sarah’s master, old George Jacobs, “a man with 2 staves.”

  The latest suspects were probably kept in the Village’s watch house overnight before being crowded into Ingersoll’s cart, which had been rented for the journey to Boston jail But Sarah Churchill, now that she was understood to be a repentant witch and thus a potential witness against her coconspirators, was kept in Salem, her arrival a matter of interest to Mary Warren; here was yet another imprisoned witness whose change of heart was not believed.

  At Thomas and Ann Putnam’s home around midnight Mercy Lewis reported Jacobs’s pursuing specter, carrying his two walking sticks and the Devil’s book, beating her because she refused to sign and threatening to kill her that very night because she had witnessed against his maid Sarah that day and persuaded her to confess.

  Because of this, Hathorne and Corwin issued an arrest warrant on the following day for George Jacobs Sr. and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs. They ordered these suspects brought to town for a hearing in Thomas Beadle’s tavern, where Burroughs had been confined earlier. Sarah Churchill was taken there as a witness, and when she was returned to the Salem jail she had a distressing story full of contradictions that would give Mary Warren even more to worry over.

  Sarah had testified against her master as she was expected to do, accusing him of hurting her despite the fact that the old man insisted on his own innocence. She must also have witnessed against Jacobs’s granddaughter Margaret, whose case notes are lost, for Margaret broke down and also confessed that she had indeed joined the witches.

  But, as Sarah Churchill tried to explain later, the authorities had pressured her to confess. She had belied herself, she said, because they would not believe her. They threatened to lock her up with the other accused witches—people she had charged, who were thus bound to be resentful. They had kept at her until she was afraid not to confess, not to lie in the face of that stony disbelief. If she told Reverend Noyes only once that she had signed the Devil’s book, he would believe her. If she told him a hundred times that she had not, then he would think that she lied. Mary Warren knew what that was like.

  Meanwhile, John Willard’s specter was also active, for Jonathan Corwin wrote an arrest warrant for the man at some point that day, May 10, and entrusted it to Constable John Putnam Jr., Annie’s uncle. But when Constable Putnam reached Will’s Hill, he found Willard was not at home.

  Sarah Churchill returned to court on May 11, joining Mercy Lewis, Annie Putnam, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Mary Walcott, to continue her accusations against Jacobs and his granddaughter. Margaret Jacobs, having confessed, unlike her aggressive grandfather, accused both Mary Warren and Goodwife Alice Parker—Mary Warren’s enemy.

  In Boston on May 10, the day of the first Jacobs examination, Sarah Osborn, unwell to begin with, died in jail. Her nine weeks and two days of imprisonment, as enumerated by the jailer, left an unpaid bill of £1:3:0. Hers was an unhappy and squalid death hastened by illness, no doubt, yet it was a more merciful escape from the prison than a trip to the gallows would be.

  It would take time for news of Goody Osborn’s death to filter back to Salem, where, on May 12, Constable John Putnam Jr. reported to Hathorne that suspect John Willard was nowhere to be found. The constable had searched Willard’s house over near Will’s Hill along with “Severall other houses and places,” all to no avail. As far as he could tell from Willard’s family and friends, “he was ffleed Salem.” (Her kinsman’s failure to seize this suspected witch could only have made Ann Putnam even more concerned for herself and her children.)

  That same day Magistrates Hathorne and Corwin questioned Mary Warren again in the Salem jail. They had interviewed Abigail Hobbs the day before, finding her as cooperative as Deliverance Hobbs and Susanna Churchill. If Mary had hesitated earlier, had held back from further direct accusations—for neither the various hearing notes or the subsequent indictments indicate her presence in court since her own hearing—she now collapsed in a torrent of confession and accusation while Jonathan Corwin took lengthy notes.

  She may have agreed with the charge of witchcraft because of fear or confusion, coming to believe that if the afflicted acted as if her specter were pursuing them, perhaps it was. The magistrates and the ministers, educated gentlemen all, were convinced that this was true. Maybe she believed—or almost believed—it was true, for they said that her actions could give the Devil permission to use her appearance even if she were not aware of it.

  Or Mary gave in and agreed to the charge solely to save her skin. A proven witch would be put to death. But a cooperating repentant witch could be considered sufficiently free of Satan to live long enough to testify. So she did as she was expected to do—she confessed and accused her supposed coconspirators. Besides, Goody Parker had been named among the specters, and that was an accusation she could believe. That her own specter was also reported was an inducement to cooperate, to contradict that sighting.

  Yes, she admitted, she had signed the Devil’s book, saying, “I did nott know itt [then] butt I know itt now, to be Sure itt was the Devills book in the ffirst place to be Sure I did Sett my hand to the Devills book; I have considered of itt, Since you were here last, & itt was the Devills book, [that] my Master Procter brought to me, & he Tould me if I would Sett my hand to th[a]t book I should be well.” So by now she was accusing John Procter as well as Elizabeth.

  Mary, like others, seemed to embroider actual innocuous events to fit the magistrates’ expectations. She denied hurting the afflicted children with magic and then admitted to using poppets. Her mistress, Elizabeth Procter, had brought her a cloth doll representing either Abigail Williams or Annie Putnam. Her master brought her another poppet representing Abigail Williams. The specters of Goodwives Alice Parker (that woman who had killed Mary’s mother) and Ann Pudeator had brought her in prison other dolls as well, representing girls such as Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcott. Alice Parker and Ann Pudeator had bragged of the people they had killed, Mary said. Parker had caused the deaths of local men at sea and drowned Goody Orne’s son in Salem Harbor, washing him up by his mother’s very door. Pudeator poisoned her own husband. While Mary “was thus Confessing,” Corwin wrote, “Parker appeared & bitt hir Extreamly on hir armes as she affirmed unto us.”

  Many witch specters continued to confront her, Mary said, naming other prisoners, ranging from Rebecca Nurse to Dorothy Good, telling how Goody Corey’s specter turned into John Procter’s on her lap. They paused in the session when Reverends Higginson and Hale arrived in order to observe. As Corwin read his notes aloud to the two ministers, Mary “Imediately ffell into dreadfull ffitts” when he read Goody Parker’s name. The woman’s specter had appeared, as did that of Goodwife Ann Pudeator when Hathorne spoke her name.

  According to Mary Warren, the Parker specter had not only struck wealthy John Turner unconscious for a time when she knocked him out of a cherry tree in his orchard but also bewitched the power of speech away from Mary’s own sister. Yet Parker failed completely in her attempt to bewitch Mr. Corwin’s mare to prevent the magistrate from riding to Salem Village. Burroughs likewise failed to hobble Hathorne’s horse to thwart his trip to Boston. They were not that powerful. They could not bewitch Hathorne, but they could evidently attack Mary, who fell into such severe fits that Hathorne and Corwin issued an arrest warrant for both Pudeator and Parker and ordered Marshall Herrick to bring them in immediately for questioning. (The location is no
t specified but may have been Beadle’s tavern as before.) The afflicted witnesses against them would be Mary Warren and Margaret Jacobs.

  When the marshall brought in Alice Parker, Mary English’s tenant and neighbor and Bridget Bishop’s friend, Mary Warren did not hesitate to accuse her. All the resentment at everything her family had lost—her sister locked in silence and her mother dead—due to this perceived enemy boiled over.

  ____________________

  Mary Warren, face to face with Alice Parker, does not doubt her accusation. Not now, not with this woman. She may only half believe her own confession, but even when she had declared that her fits were part of a distraction, even when she tried to recant, she had no reason to doubt the reality of witches, of malefic magic, of the Devil’s malice. Someone could be causing her misery and the afflictions of the other women and girls, and who would want to do such things? Goody Parker is so obvious a threat. Does not the woman go rigid and blank, as though her soul flits elsewhere, invisible to her victims? If anyone is a witch, this woman is for sure, one of the Devil’s willing servants.

  But Goodwife Parker denies the charge, denies bragging about murder victims, denies saying anything to Mary, much less threats. “I never spake a word to her in my life.”

  “You told her also you bewitched her sister, because her father would not mow your grass,” says the magistrate.

  “I never saw her.” After all, Goody Parker’s dealings had been with Mary’s father.

  Does the woman even remember the young girl present somewhere during her dispute with Goodman Warren? Mary is older now, but Mary has not forgotten. She has relived the scene again and again in her mind. Now she raises her hand to strike Parker’s lying mouth, but when she tries to step forward she cannot proceed but instead jerks backward, pushed down by something invisible.

  While Mary struggles to recover herself, Margaret Jacobs accuses Parker of sending her spirit to Northfields, where old Jacobs’s farm is.

  Marshall George Herrick reports that when he arrested the prisoner she had said, “[T]hat there were threescore Witches of the Company.”

  John Louder, who also suspected Bridget Bishop, was there too and says the same.

  Goody Parker says she does not remember what number she had said or who had told her about it. But no one believes her, least of all Mary.

  All through Goody Parker’s examination convulsions thrash Mary, her words are choked off and strangled. She persists and gradually is able to tell her tale—of the sorrows that have eaten into her heart ever since her father’s encounter with Parker, of the grief that has become rage. She tells the magistrates how her father had promised to mow Parker’s grass crop “if he had time.” But he had not had time, so that woman came to his house and threatened him, saying “he had better he had done it.” Soon after that, Mary’s sister, Elizabeth, fell ill, then Mary’s mother. Her mother died, and the sister was left deaf and dumb, imprisoned by silence.

  Goodwife Parker stands there, looking astonished and shaking her head as though she knows nothing about this.

  But even that was not enough for Parker, Mary continues, speaking now to the prisoner as well as to the magistrates. For Parker’s specter pursued Mary still, bringing poppets and a needle, weapons with which to torment the other girls. When Mary refused to torment them, refused to join Parker in the Devil’s work, the specter threatened to run the needle through Mary’s own heart.

  Mary now stares the accused directly in the eye—or tries to—but she cannot meet the witch’s gaze but instead falls as though struck. She hears her enemy speaking, calling on God to prove her innocence. “I wish God would open the Earth and swallow me up presently, if one word of this is true.”

  But although the earth does not open, the magistrates and other onlookers see Mary’s reaction as the result of Parker’s evil magic being cast then and there, right before them in the court, “dreadfully tormenting” Mary, punishing the girl for standing up to her.

  Along with some thirty other witches, Parker took part in the Devil’s bloody sacrament at Reverend Parris’s pasture, Mary says when she can continue. The woman had boasted of that and of chasing John Louder along Salem Common. And all during this questioning Parker kept sending her own specter directly out of her body to afflict Mary.

  Reverend Noyes speaks up to remind the defendant of an earlier time when Goody Parker was ill, when he visited her to inquire about then-current rumors of witchcraft. He had asked “whether she were not guilty,” and Goody Parker had answered that “If she was as free from other sins as from witchcrafts she would not ask the Lord mercy.” That reply is now taken to be an evasion rather than a reference to sins she did not commit.

  At this Mary convulses in a “dreadful fit,” during which her tongue pulls from her mouth, straining until it turns dark.

  This is too much for the defendant, who snaps, “Warrens tongue would be blacker before she died”—black with lies, that is.

  The magistrates ask Goody Parker why she afflicts and torments Mary.

  “If I do,” she answers, “the Lord forgive me.”

  But the court does not believe Goody Parker’s claim of innocence and holds her for trial. Mary Warren can rest assured the witch who destroyed her family will get her just desserts.

  ( 8 )

  May 12 to 30, 1692

  The little nagging doubts have receded further back in Mary Warren’s mind, smothered like embers in ash. As she tries to sleep the night after her encounter with the Parker woman, she feels triumphant and terrified at the same time. Now what will happen? Mary has confessed after all, and she is not sure what the law allows for penitent felons, remorseful witches. If she ever gets out of here—the rancid cell, the small barred window, the jail’s confinement—then what? No one at the Procter farm will have her back. No one there is about to welcome her. Not now.

  She must find somewhere else to work. The magistrates and the other men of authority—did any of their households need a maid? Would any of the women who testified against their neighbors hire her? And if they did, what then? She can see herself aging as she supports other people’s families until she is too old and infirm to be worth hiring. She thinks of the older women servants she sees about Salem—a few widows, others unmarried but no longer young, like that odd Soames woman over on the road to Boston. She is never in the meeting house, but then again, she’s also a Quaker. People say she comes out only at night. Is that Mary’s future? Will her own life stretch out as bleak as that—if she is ever freed?

  The alternative is too terrible to face. She moans at the crowding thoughts.

  ____________________

  The new prisoners may have spent the night in Salem jail, but right after Alice Parker’s May 12 hearing Hathorne wrote a mittimus, the order to transfer Parker and Ann Pudeator to Boston along with Giles Corey, George Jacobs Sr., William Hobbs (who, unlike his wife and daughter, had not confessed), Bridget Bishop, Mary English, Sarah Bishop, with her husband, Edward Jr., Sarah Wildes, and the slave woman Mary Black. (By a slip of the pen Hathorne wrote Ann Putnam’s name among the prisoners, noticed his mistake, and wrote “Pudeatter” over Putnam.)

  Having testified so thoroughly against the woman she blamed for her mother’s death, Mary Warren was in even less of a position to draw back from her confession. On May 13, while Mistress English, Goodwife Bishop, and the others made the long journey south to Boston, Hathorne wrote an arrest warrant for one Abigail Soames, charging her with afflicting Mary Warren. Constable Peter Osgood brought the woman before the magistrates at Thomas Beadle’s tavern directly.

  Mary, escorted to Beadle’s, continued to experience symptoms and, as she passed through the tavern gate, something seemed to bite her. Recent confessor Margaret Jacobs was also present but let Mary take the lead in making accusations.

  Once the constable brought in the prisoner, Mary fell “into a dreadful fit,” feeling stabbed and “continually Crying out that it was this very Woman tho she knew her not be
fore, only affirmed that she herself in apparition had told her that her name was Soams, and also did affirm that this was the very woman that had afflicted her all this day, and that she met her as she was comeing in att the gate, and bit her Exceedingly.”

  The guards, searching the prisoner for possible magical weaponry, found concealed in her apron “a great Botching Needle” (a mending needle), which they removed gingerly. Although it was a logical tool of housewifery, Soames nevertheless denied knowing anything about it.

  Mary, no longer reacting as if stabbed or pinched, continued to talk, telling them that the woman’s apparition had revealed that her name was Abigail Soames, that her brother was cooper John Soames, “that she Lived att Gaskins, and that she had lain Bedrid a year.”

  The magistrates asked the defendant if John Soames was her brother, and Abigail refused to answer—“peremptorily,” the scribe noted—“for all was false that Warren said.” (Abigail, still single at thirty-seven, did have a brother John who was a cooper. The family were Quakers from Gloucester and had had no end of trouble some fifteen years earlier for flouting public worship, under laws that were now no longer in effect.

  Quakers’ avoidance of “Orthodox” (i.e., Congregational) religious services, their rejection of a college-educated ministry in favor of personal inspiration from the “Light within,” their insistence on a greater equality (male Quakers refused to doff their hats to those in authority, even when indoors), and their cutting criticisms of the status quo had seemed a threat to public peace and community solidarity in uncertain times. The “Light within” was supposed to be God’s light, but just how, non-Quakers wondered, could anyone be so sure of the source of these spiritual messages? It seemed more like an invitation to communication with lying, devilish spirits, especially if the recipient fell to trembling in his enthusiasm, which gave the Society of Friends the nickname “Quakers,” or acting out shocking metaphors, as when Rebecca Nurse’s kinswoman appeared naked in public. The authorities had set fines for this behavior, exiled the more outspoken repeaters, and sometimes applied the death penalty to those who returned. (Anglican Virginia, in contrast, whipped and expelled Quakers and continued to do the same again to any who returned.) Massachusetts’s draconian policy was not only ineffective but also caught England’s attention, which helped lead to the loss of the charter. Ironically, the crown required that Massachusetts grant more civil rights to the local Friends than England then allowed to Friends in England. This happened after one Samuel Shattuck had sailed to England to petition the king for help and had had the satisfaction of bringing the order back to the Massachusetts authorities who had once persecuted him. His son, Salem dyer Samuel Shattuck, was convinced that Bridget Bishop had bewitched his son, revealing that Quakers shared the same views about witchcraft as their Congregational neighbors did.