LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 THE 
 
 NEW-ENGLAND TRAGEDIES 
 
 IN PROSE. 
 
 BY 
 ROWLAND H. ALLEN. 
 
 I. THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 II. THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 NICHOLS AND NOYES. 
 
 1869.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 
 
 ROWLAND H. ALLEN, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, 
 
 STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS, 
 
 3 CORNHILL, BOSTON.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE verse of Longfellow has been inspired again 
 by the Muse of History. His theme is not a 
 sportive one. The hand which has been wont to 
 charm us with its blithe and joyous play, in this new 
 motion sets ten thousand hearts athrob to the cadences 
 of complaint. Yet our beloved poet does not disown 
 himself. Ever and anon this minor melody gives 
 way to the bright-toned, familiar calls of charity and 
 candor. 
 
 To such laments for the two faults of the Fathers, 
 we will listen without repining ; for we can foster the 
 silent hope, meanwhile, that the next strain we hear 
 will be one of noble praise for their grand and myriad 
 virtues. 
 
 Till then we shall be curious to know how much is 
 fact, and how much fancy, in the latest work of the 
 " Laureate of America." 
 
 MOUNT BKLLINGHAM, November, 1868.
 
 I. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS.
 
 THE 
 
 NEW-ENGLAND TRAGEDIES 
 IN PROSE. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 JOHN ENDICOTT had the heart of a prince. 
 He "came over to governe." He led the 
 sturdy band that conquered from the domain of the 
 forests the first free State of New England. And 
 he " was a fit instrument to begin this wildernesse 
 work." From his little ship, "The Abigail," he 
 leaped upon the rocks of Naumkeak, less than 
 eight years after "The Mayflower" anchored in 
 Plymouth Bay. Three or four Englishmen only had 
 ventured before that into the region around Cape 
 Ann. They had fishing and trading posts there, 
 but could hardly be said to have homes. They 
 were, however, jealous of their rights ; and conten- 
 tion quickly kindled against the strangers. But
 
 8 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 the new leader was " loving as well as austere ; " 
 and he dealt so gently with this affair that in a 
 little while it issued in joyful peace. It changed 
 the name of that place to Salem. The English 
 residents now numbered about " fiftie or sixtie per- 
 sons." Vast woods towered around them in lofty 
 and unbroken colonnades. But Endicott was built 
 for a pioneer. His stalwart arm laid low many a 
 monarch of the primeval trees, and his hearty voice 
 cheered on his men as they advanced into the 
 unknown gloom. They cut out roadways, built 
 bridges across the streams, and cleared off the 
 virgin soil, till, in the quaint language of the day, 
 " they began to sett up ploughing." 
 
 Early letters were sent to England, where the 
 chartered company still remained ; Endicott being 
 the only original patentee who had come to America. 
 The patent of the Company of Massachusetts Bay 
 included all that part of New England stretching 
 from three miles north of the Merrimack to three 
 miles south of the Charles River, and " from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean." "The Planter's 
 Plea," printed in 1630, speaking of these early let- 
 ters, says, " The good report of Capt. Endicott's 
 government, and the increase of the colony, began 
 to awaken the spirits of some persons not formerly
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 9 
 
 engaged." They were so "awakened," that, in June 
 of the same year, the whole company with its court 
 and charter transferred itself to the New World. 
 This was "the great arrival," amounting, altogether, 
 to " eleven shipps " and fifteen hundred souls. 
 
 Gov. Winthrop, by appointment from England, 
 superseded Gov. Endicott. We do not hear from 
 him one murmur of complaint at the loss of his 
 well-earned honors. He might have pointed to 
 the records of the Court, which testified, that " in 
 consideration of his meritt, worth, and good desert 
 by erreccon of hands," he had been confirmed 
 in his office once and again. He might have re- 
 called those two lone years of wise and valiant toil 
 for which Dr. Bentley says, that, " above all others, 
 he deserves the name of the Father of New Eng- 
 land." But not a lisp of this is uttered. The first 
 governor of Massachusetts could obey as well as 
 command ; and, through all the administration of 
 his gifted and saintly rival, he was his firm support- 
 er and most sympathizing friend. Winthrop died 
 in 1649 j an d from that time, until his own death in 
 1665, Endicott was at the head of affairs. He 
 held the highest office in the Commonwealth for 
 sixteen different years, a longer period than any 
 other governor under the original charter.
 
 io THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 During the more retired portion of his life, he 
 cultivated with great enthusiasm and taste his 
 " Orchard Farm." The farm was situated three 
 miles from Salem Town. It became after a few 
 years the most beautiful spot in America. On 
 three sides, its sunny slopes descended to the waves 
 of the Atlantic. The mansion-house crowned a 
 little eminence near by. That was the home of 
 hospitality and love. By the most diligent inquiry 
 we cannot find that there was ever any discord in 
 the family. As an historical fact, the eldest son 
 John cherished a filial and submissive spirit. He 
 married Elizabeth Howchin, and would have 
 courted only a pretty fancy had he doted on Edith 
 Christison. The lord of our manor dwelt with 
 dignity on his elegant estate. He used to make 
 his journeys to and fro always by water. From 
 the point at which he fastened his shallop, an 
 avenue, overhung with plum-trees and grape-vines, 
 led up to his very door. He was a leader in the 
 agriculture of the colony. One time, he was tardy 
 at the General Court. The excuse he forwarded 
 was this, " He could not come up until the corne 
 be sett." In 1648, he sold to William Trask five 
 hundred apple-trees for two hundred acres of land ! 
 In his will, dated 1650, he says, "I give to my
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 11 
 
 dear and loving wife Elizabeth all my farm called 
 ' Orchard,' and y e orchards, nurseries, fruit-trees, 
 gardens, and fences thereunto pertaining." The 
 traces of his labor here have disappeared. But one 
 venerable pear-tree, which he planted with his own 
 hand two hundred years ago, still battles the storms 
 of winter, and greets the gentler gales of summer. 
 It is a monument to his horticultural zeal. 
 
 Before Endicott had emigrated to America, he 
 bore the title of captain. He was a soldier to the 
 end of his life. He was" early appointed Major- 
 general of the military forces in all the planta- 
 tion. Those prompt, stern ways which in after- 
 years he carried too far, perhaps, into the civil 
 affairs he administered, were acquired in the midst 
 of arms, and on the perilous edge of battle. One 
 renowned event must not be forgotten. The royal 
 banner used by the colonial troops bore upon its 
 folds the crimson cross of St. George. It was a 
 relic of papal idolatry. The Puritan warrior could 
 not brook it. And one day before they started on 
 an expedition, with his own keen sword he cut it 
 out bodily. This daring act drew upon him the 
 wrath of the king. Says a careful author, " It was 
 the first blow struck in America in defiance of the 
 royalty of England." It would have cost him his
 
 12 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 life had it not been for the thunders of rebellion at 
 home, which at that time burst upon the head of 
 Charles the First. All the chief men of the colony 
 agreed in feeling with Endicott ; " the only dif- 
 ference being," says Mr. Felt, " that he manifested 
 his opinion in deed, while they retained theirs in 
 secret." The trusty blade with which this memora- 
 ble deed was done is still preserved as a fine heir- 
 loom among his descendants. 
 
 Mr. Endicott " was a very virtuous gentleman," 
 are the neat words of the annalist of that day, 
 " and greatly beloved of the most as he well de- 
 served." He was a rigorous magistrate ; but, as he 
 venerated justice with his whole soul, he was cer- 
 tainly a good one. " God sifted a whole nation, that 
 he might send choise grain over into this wilder- 
 ness." Was there a choicer spirit that his ? He 
 came to America from the impulse of heartfelt 
 religion. " Whatever may have been the object of 
 others," is the claim of his biographer, " there can 
 be no doubt that his was the establishment of a 
 church where he might enjoy Christ and his ordi- 
 nances in their primitive purity." The poet of the 
 company wrote for him this rare God-speed : 
 
 " Strong, valiant John, wilt thou march on, and take up sta- 
 tion first ? 
 
 Christ called hath thee : his souldier be, and faile not of thy 
 trust."
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 13 
 
 " Upon the account of religion," says the " Plea," 
 the whole company sought an asylum here, " where 
 they could enjoy the liberty of their own persua- 
 sion, without disturbing the peace of the kingdom, 
 and without offence to others not like-minded with 
 themselves." Their hearts glowed with the hope 
 of planting a pure gospel amid the silent groves 
 of America. The first official letters from Matthew 
 Cradock, president of the Company in England, 
 to Endicott, then just " setting his corne," in the 
 little glades of the woods, contained this admonition, 
 " We trust you will not be unmindful of the main 
 end of our plantation, by endeavoring to bring the 
 Indians to the knowledge of the gospel." . Among 
 the articles voted "to provide to send for New 
 England " are, " Ministers, the Patent under seal, a 
 Seal, Men skilled in making of pitch, of salt," &c. 
 The seal of the colony was an Indian, standing 
 erect, with an arrow in his right hand, encircled 
 with the motto, " Come over and help us." If any 
 of the " salvages " claimed a right to the land, 
 " they were to purchase their tytle, that they 
 might avoid the least scruple of intrusion." The 
 Puritans resorted to every expedient, that, with in- 
 defeasible, honor they might make " the holy experi- 
 ment."
 
 14 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 And ministers were sent, men of renown. A 
 church was formed in Salem, Aug. 6, 1629, the 
 first church formed in. America, the Plymouth 
 church having crossed the ocean ready-made. Mr. 
 Endicott's early pastor and spiritual father, Rev. 
 Mr. Skelton, became "teacher." The company 
 that sailed with Winthrop, after barely touching at 
 Salem, coasted along the curving bay for a more 
 commodious place. They landed on the north 
 bank of Charles River. There they decided to 
 build their homes, where now is the city of Charles- 
 town. By them a second church was constituted 
 July 30, 1630. But, ere long, the beautiful penin- 
 sula of Shawmut allured them across the stream. 
 Nearly all moved thither ; and there they laid the 
 foundations on which rapidly arose the metropolis 
 of New England. It received the name of Bos- 
 ton, in honor of the distinguished John Cotton, 
 who came from Boston, England. For twenty-one 
 years, John Cotton had been vicar of St. Botolph's 
 Church, one of the most imposing cathedrals of 
 the realm. The lantern of its tower was two hun- 
 dred and eighty feet above the ground, a beacon 
 that could be seen by mariners far at sea. In con- 
 sequence of this fact, St. Botolph was considered 
 the patron saint of sailors. It was said that " the
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 15 
 
 lamp there ceased to burn when Cotton became a 
 shining light in the wilderness of New England." 
 He exchanged the grandeur of such an edifice for 
 the pulpit of a little building in the woods, thatched 
 with straw, and walled with mud. This original 
 structure stood on State Street, then King Street, 
 where now is the Merchants' Exchange. In 1640, 
 it was replaced by a superior house, built of wood, 
 on the west side of Washington Street, not far 
 south of Court Street, then named Queen Street. 
 This was the church which afterwards resounded 
 with the sermons of John Norton and the outcries 
 of the Quakers. 
 
 When Mr. Cotton, " the Nestor of New Eng- 
 land," was on his death-bed, his despairing parish- 
 ioners implored him to name a successor. He fell 
 into a troubled sleep : in it he dreamed that he saw 
 Mr. Norton of Ipswich, riding into Boston on a 
 snow-white horse. His waking thought he was con- 
 vinced could be no better than that. Mr. Norton 
 was his unfaltering appointment. He was called 
 thereafter, "The falling mantle of the rising 
 prophet." John Norton was a devoted preacher. 
 The maxim of his life was this, " Christ evidently 
 set forth is divine eloquence." Yet he had to con- 
 tend with a " natural inclination to gayety ! " He
 
 1 6 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 was once addicted to excessive card-playing, but 
 gave it up upon the admonition of a servant in his 
 father's house. When at length he left his county 
 in England, " an ancient man said he believed 
 there was not more grace and excellence in all 
 Essex than what Mr. Norton had carried away." 
 The master of his college wished him to accept a 
 fellowship in Cambridge, and his wealthy uncle de- 
 sired to buy for him a valuable benefice ; but he 
 declined them both for a simpler worship here. 
 By nature he was a peacemaker. Through his 
 kindly intervention, grave hostilities were prevented, 
 that were likely to pass between " our people and 
 the Dutch at Manhatoes" (Manhattan). At one 
 time there was imminent danger of a break between 
 the civil and religious orders. He preached, at a 
 critical hour, the " Thursday Lecture ; " taking for 
 his theme Ex. iv. 27, where Aaron met Moses in the 
 mount, and kissed him. So clear and persuasive 
 was his proof that there were reciprocal duties to 
 be rendered, that the whole danger vanished at 
 once, and harmony was restored to their councils. 
 He was famed for his scholarship ; and his elegant 
 Latin crossed the ocean again and again, in answer 
 to knotty questions from Dutch and English divines. 
 
 " For he a rope of sand could twist 
 As tough as learned Sarbonist."
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 17 
 
 In the " Magnalia " of Cotton Mather, we read 
 that " he had a neater style than most men ; but he 
 desired to furnish himself adpugnam, rather than ad 
 pompam." Thomas Shepherd, his life-long friend, 
 contrasted him with the schoolmen to their disad- 
 vantage. 
 
 " Dull souls their tapers burn exceeding dim : 
 They might to school again to learn of him." 
 
 He was reckoned by President Styles among the 
 first quaternion of New England, "who were equal 
 to the first characters in theology in all Chris- 
 tendom and in all ages." But, says a modern de- 
 pictor, " his tenets surpassed in terror even those 
 of the celebrated Calvin ! " His temper was chol- 
 eric ; and, although it did not make him irascible, it 
 gave a certain impetuosity to his thought, and led 
 him to affirm that there were errors that could only 
 be combated " with the holy tactics of the civil 
 sword." But his most renowned gift was an unri- 
 valled excellence in prayer. His whole soul seemed 
 then to be aglow and aloft. Young divines used 
 to resort to him as an example. So affluent and 
 becoming were the holy thoughts he cherished, that 
 sometimes for an hour together he continued his 
 address to God, without weariness to himself or
 
 1 8 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 those around him. One aged man from Ipswich 
 used " ordinarially " to come on foot to Boston, 
 a distance of thirty miles, to be present at the 
 Thursday Lecture. He said, " It was worth a 
 great journey to unite in one of Mr. Norton's 
 prayers." 
 
 And the influence of such lives as these pervaded 
 the Puritan community. " I have lived," was the 
 testimony of Nathaniel Ward, the author of " The 
 Simple Cobbler of Agawam," " in a colony of many 
 thousand English, almost these twelve years, and 
 am held a very sociable man ; yet I may consid- 
 erately say I never heard but one oath sworn, nor 
 never saw one man drunk, in all that time." A 
 book bearing the date 1643 affirms, "that one may 
 live there from year to year, and not see a drunkard, 
 or hear an oath, or meet a beggar." " This re- 
 markable private morality," thought Sir James 
 Mackintosh, " is worthy of attention, especially in 
 connection with the creeds they professed." There 
 were, indeed, profane and sottish men, for there 
 were statute laws against them ; no stricter laws, 
 however, than there are to-day, than there ought to 
 be everywhere. Education had already begun to 
 root itself in the soil of fair Harvard. It was fos- 
 tered by care-taking hands. Industry and trade
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 19 
 
 also flourished with the vigor of youth. Their do- 
 minion over nature widened and improved. 
 
 " Thus to men cast in that heroic mould 
 Came empire such as Spaniard never knew, 
 Such empire as beseems the just and true ; 
 And at the last, almost unsought, came gold." 
 
 This was the happy land, John Endicott in the 
 chair of state, and John Norton in the leading pul- 
 pit, and Christian citizens in every post of duty, 
 this was the land so soon to shudder beneath the 
 fatal tread of a dreadful mistake. 
 
 Religion and laws were closely intertwined in the 
 Puritan community : the government felt itself 
 bound to expatriate every disorderly person, as 
 much as the church was bound to excommunicate 
 him. They were like a household. They had 
 purchased their territory for a home. It was no 
 El Dorado : it was their Mount of Sion. With im- 
 mense toil and unspeakable denials, they had 
 rescued it from the wild woods for the simple pur- 
 pose that they might have a place for themselves 
 and their children to worship God undisturbed. 
 They knew nothing of toleration. They had not 
 thought of that, nor had the thought of it hardly 
 entered the world. Their right to shut the door
 
 2O THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 against intruders seemed to them as undoubted 
 and absolute as their right to breath the air around 
 them. The coming of the Quakers was to put the 
 validity of this right to a final test. At length it 
 was abandoned ; but not until these devoted fields 
 had been the scene of the first tragedy of New 
 England. 
 
 The people called Quakers at the present day 
 possess in a high degree the respect of mankind. 
 They are known for the virtues of benevolence and 
 peace. Their little oddities of habit and speech 
 hardly provoke remark. The gentle spirits of Penn 
 and Barclay, the second founders of the sect, seem 
 to have passed into the entire body. They are mild 
 in their deportment, and leaders in every reform. 
 Clarkson and Hopper, Elizabeth Fry and John 
 Bright, are the foremost names in the philanthro- 
 pic movements of the age. There is one also, 
 dwelling on the banks of the Merrimack, whose calm 
 brow wears a chaplet woven by the shackled hands 
 of all the world. It crowns him also a true laureate 
 of America. He has not yet chosen for the 
 subject of his song the errors of his ancestry. But, 
 although such is their lofty excellence to-day, " sel- 
 dom," says Palfrey, " have enthusiasts been more 
 coarse, more unfriendly, more wild and annoying, 
 than the early Friends."
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 21 
 
 There were, however, no excesses that could 
 justify, even should they palliate, the cruelties with 
 which they were received. Cotton Mather said, 
 " If any man will appear in vindication of them, 
 let him do as he pleases ; for my part I will 
 not." It is to be noted that the more severe 
 laws against them were passed with great difficulty, 
 and, soon after the tumult in which they were exe- 
 cuted, were regarded with universal regret. But 
 the sole aim of them, we must remember, was to 
 exclude the Quakers, and not to torment them. 
 And says Mr. Bancroft, a great friend of the sect, 
 " Prohibiting the arrival of Quakers was not perse- 
 cution, and banishment is a term hardly to be used 
 of one who has not acquired a home. When a 
 pauper is sent to his native town, he is not called an 
 exile." Now, the Puritans disclaimed the right to 
 sit in judgment on the opinions of others. They 
 denied that they persecuted for conscience' sake. 
 " Non qua errones sed qua turbones," was the rule 
 that they proclaimed. They believed that " here- 
 ticide was not an evangelical way for extinguishing 
 heresies." Mr. Norton, the exponent of their 
 sterner thoughts, himself asserted that neither 
 Quakers nor others ought to be punished for their 
 consciences ; that the law could take hold only of
 
 22 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 their outward acts, and that only when they were 
 subversive of the good order of the land. And 
 brave old Roger Clap, commander of the Boston 
 Castle in 1665, wrote in his diary, concerning the 
 law that expelled Quakers from the jurisdiction on 
 pain of death, " The reason for that law was, be- 
 cause God's people could not worship the true and 
 living God in our public assemblies without being 
 disturbed by them. Some of them presumed to 
 return, to the loss of their lives for breaking 
 that law which was made for our peace and 
 safety." 
 
 Such was the plainly-uttered theory of their 
 proceedings. They committed their woful error 
 in the misjudgment of facts. Their fears were 
 overdrawn. They magnified eccentricities into 
 crimes, and regarded what was simply annoying as 
 a solemn danger. In the riot of swift events, their 
 practice often outran their principles ; and, in the 
 firm belief that New England was a theocracy, 
 they were not guiltless of the very wrongs from 
 which they had fled. 
 
 The first notice of the Quakers in Massachusetts 
 was an order of the General Court of 1656, ap- 
 pointing a " publick day of humiliation to seek the 
 face of God in behalf of our native country, with
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 23 
 
 reference to the abounding of errors, especially 
 those of the Ranters and Quakers." Hardly was 
 the day passed when a vessel from Barbadoes, " The 
 Swallow," Simon Kempthorn captain, arrived in 
 " the Road before Boston," with two Quaker women 
 on board, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher. Officers 
 visited the vessel, and, searching their trunks, 
 found about a hundred Quaker books. The 
 Council thereupon, "tendering the preservation 
 of the peace and truth," did order, 
 
 First, that all such corrupt books be burned in 
 the market-place by the common executioner. 
 
 Second, that the said Ann and Mary be kept in 
 close prison until such time as they be transferred 
 out of the country. 
 
 Third, that the said Simon Kempthorn is en- 
 joined to transport, or cause to be transported, the 
 said persons from hence to Barbadoes, from whence 
 they came ; and, for the more effectual performance 
 thereof, he is to give security in a bond of one hun- 
 dred pounds sterling. 
 
 While they were in jail, a board was nailed up 
 before the window, that no one might hold com- 
 munication with them. Nicholas Upsall, an aged 
 citizen, was deeply interested in their behalf, and 
 purchased food for them every week, "lest they
 
 24 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 should be starved." After five weeks' confine- 
 ment, they re-embarked for Barbadoes. 
 
 The maiden Mary continued her romantic travels. 
 " Being moved of the Lord " to deliver a message 
 to the Sultan of Turkey, she entered upon a jour- 
 ney towards the Sublime Porte. She toiled along by 
 land from the coasts of Morea to the city of Adri- 
 anople. This part of her journey, about six hun- 
 dred miles, she made alone, " without abuse or in- 
 jury." At Adrianople, she found the grand vizier 
 encamped with all his army. She discovered means 
 of announcing her arrival, which was done in. these 
 words : " An English woman hath a message from 
 the great God to the great Turk." She was soon 
 invited to his tent, and with the aid of three inter- 
 preters " uttered her mind." He listened " with 
 much gravity and soberness," and offered her a 
 guard for her further progress. She declined it, 
 and departed for Constantinople alone, " whitherto 
 she came without the least hurt or scoff." In 
 George Bishope's book, which 'was published 
 in 1 66 1, with the title, " New England judged 
 by the Spirit of the Lord," Mary was said to 
 fare better among the heathens than among the 
 Christians, " to the glory of the great Turk, and 
 his great renown, and your everlasting shame and
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 25 
 
 contempt ! " The Orientals regarded lunatics as 
 inspired: therefore they overwhelmed the Quak- 
 ers with prodigious quantities of genuflections and 
 salams. They bowed them out of the country, 
 never to be troubled by them again. 
 
 No sooner had these two unwelcome visitors de- 
 parted than another vessel, sailing from London, 
 brought eight more Quakers to our inhospitable 
 shore. Their treatment was similar to that of the 
 first party. After eleven weeks of suffering in the 
 jail, they embarked again " for no place but Eng- 
 land." Their behavior was said to be " uncivil." 
 Mary Prince shouted out a malediction upon the 
 governor as he was going by the prison from his 
 place of worship : she also wrote him a letter " filled 
 with opprobrious stuff." The governor sent for her 
 to come to his own house. He had invited two 
 ministers to be present, and, " with much tender- 
 ness," they endeavored to induce her to desist from 
 her extravagances. To this exhortation she re- 
 turned the grossest reproaches, calling them " hire- 
 lings, deceivers of the people, Baal's priests, the 
 seed of the serpent," &c. Such, it appears, was 
 their usual style of addressing all rulers in State 
 and Church. 
 
 Thus far, action against the Quakers had pro-
 
 26 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 ceeded upon the general law against heresy. The 
 emergency seemed to require some special legisla- 
 tion. The Federal Commissioners at their annual 
 meeting, Sept. 17, 1656, recommended such legisla- 
 tion to the four United Colonies. The General 
 Court of Massachusetts promptly acted in the 
 matter. On the i4th of October, the first law was 
 passed against the Quakers. They are called " a 
 cursed sect, who take upon them to speak and write 
 blasphemous opinions, despising governments, 
 reviling magistrates and ministers, and seeking to 
 turn the people to their pernicious ways." The 
 law forbade " the master of any ship, bark, pink, or 
 catch," to bring Quakers " into any harbour, creek, 
 or cove of the jurisdiction," upon pain of a hun- 
 dred pounds' fine. It prohibited the Quakers 
 themselves from coming on pain of immediate 
 imprisonment and severe castigation. Such was 
 the excitement into which the government had been 
 thrown by the events of the summer, that this law 
 was published in the market-place, and through the 
 streets of Boston, by beat of the drum. When it 
 was proclaimed at the door of Nicholas Upsall, 
 "the good old man," says Joseph Besse in his 
 "Sufferings of the Quakers," published in 1753, 
 " grieved in spirit, publically testified against it,"
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 27 
 
 demanding "that they take heed what they did, 
 lest they be found fighters against God." This 
 was considered seditious language ; and poor 
 Upsall, who had before been excommunicated 
 from the Church, was now fined twenty pounds, 
 and ordered to leave the country within a 
 month. His fine was partly abated at the re- 
 quest of his wife, and he was permitted to stay in 
 Sandwich until the rigor of winter was passed. He 
 then was welcomed " to a warm house " by an In- 
 dian prince in Rhode Island. In three years, he 
 returned from his exile, and, refusing to retract his 
 offensive speeches, he was again remanded to the 
 Boston prison. After being there two years, " he 
 drew so many persons to him," that he was trans- 
 ferred to the Castle. Soon, however, permission 
 was granted him to dwell with his brother in Dor- 
 chester, " provided he do not corrupt any with his 
 pernicious opinions." This was the end of his sad 
 persecutions, and here he ended his stormy life in 
 an eventide of comparative peace. 
 
 But the new law was not to be a dead letter. 
 The next year, 1657, Mary Clark left her husband 
 and six children in London, and sailed across the 
 Atlantic, " that she might warn these persecutors to 
 desist from their iniquity." She delivers her mes-
 
 28 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 sage, is scourged, and committed to prison for 
 twelve weeks. She is then sent away. Christopher 
 Holder, one of the eight who had been reshipped 
 to England, appeared again in Salem, and " spoke 
 a few words in meeting after the priest had done." 
 This " speaking a few words in meeting" we shall 
 find hereafter, was a most startling disturbance to 
 the solemn Puritans. George Fox, previous to this, 
 when a Rev. doctor had preached upon the theme, 
 
 X 
 
 " Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye, buy without 
 money and without price," was "moved of the 
 Lord " to cry out, " Come down, thou deceiver : dost 
 thou bid people to come to the waters of life freely, 
 and yet thou takest three hundred pounds a year 
 of them ? " In the Salem church, Holder was 
 "haled back by the hair of his head, and his 
 mouth violently stopped with a glove and hand- 
 kerchief thrust thereinto." The next day he was 
 "had to Boston." He received thirty stripes, 
 and the jailer's custody for nine weeks. He con- 
 tinued to disturb public worship in various places, 
 suffering repeated imprisonments, and at length the 
 loss of his right ear. 
 
 The law of 1656 checked the influx of Quakers, 
 but did not stop it entirely. It was amended Oct. 
 14, 1657, to this effect: "Every one who know-
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 29 
 
 ingly entertained a Quaker should pay forty shil- 
 lings for each hour of hospitality. Quaker men, 
 if they returned after the first expulsion, should 
 have one ear cut off; if they returned again, they 
 should lose the other. Quaker women, in each 
 case, were to be severely whipped ; and for every 
 Quaker, he or she, that should a third time herein 
 again offend, they should have their tongues thrust 
 through with a hot iron." The first of these muti- 
 lations was inflicted in three instances only, the 
 others not at all. 
 
 The populace murmured against such inhumani- 
 ties. They were thrown into a tumult of rebellion 
 when the story of a strange outrage burst forth from 
 the prison-walls. One William Brend, said "to be 
 of a turbulent spirit, and forward to abuse men 
 with his tongue," had addressed this communica- 
 tion to the magistrates : " The Lord of this Campe, 
 whom y e world derides, persecutes, and in scorne 
 calls Quakers, will by them dash y e nations to 
 pieces ; therefore repent for opposing y e Lord 
 in any of his servants by fines, imprisonments, and 
 banishments. This is a message sent from y e 
 most high God of heaven and earth into New Eng- 
 land ; though you will not believe it, you shall 
 know it." This poor enthusiast, according to
 
 3<3 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 Quaker authorities, endured terrific abuses from 
 the " inhumane gaoler." Though " a man in years, 
 he put him in irons, neck and heels so close 
 together that there was no more room left between 
 each than for the lock that fastened them." Thus 
 he kept him from five in the morning till after nine 
 at night, " being the space of sixteen hours." The 
 next morning, he brought him to the mill to work. 
 Brend refused, " having been kept five days with- 
 out eating, and unmercifully beaten with a rope." 
 Then the " butcherly fellow " "began to beat anew, 
 and laid fourscore and seventeen more blows on 
 him ; " so that his back and arms were bruised and 
 black. " His whole flesh had become a jelly," 
 and " his senses were stopped." -He would have 
 died, " had it not pleased God miraculously to heal 
 him." The noise of such brutality flew through 
 the town. The governor sent his own surgeon to 
 the prison to afford what aid he could ; and the 
 magistrates for they feared a mutiny "set up 
 a paper on the meeting-house door, and up and 
 down the streets," declaring their abhorrence of 
 the outrage, and promising to punish the jailer. 
 "But," says Besse, "this paper was soon taken 
 down at the instigation of the high priest, John 
 Norton, who did not stick to say, ' William Brend
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 31 
 
 endeavoured to beat our gospel ordinances black 
 and blue ; if he then be beaten black and blue, it 
 is but just upon him ; and I will appear in his 
 behalf that did so.' " 
 
 Under the presidency of Endicott, the Federal 
 commissioners met again in Boston, in 1658. It 
 was this session which propounded to the several 
 courts their most sanguinary laws. When the 
 court of Massachusetts met, a memorial was pre- 
 sented by twenty-four citizens, praying for the legis- 
 lation they proposed. They quoted the example 
 of other Christian states ; referred to the ineffect- 
 ual remedies hitherto employed ; announced the 
 principle of se dcfendendo ; and, finally, put the 
 question, " whether it be not necessary," if Quak- 
 ers continue to obtrude themselves, " to punish so 
 high incorrigibleness in such and so many capital 
 evils with death." 
 
 The provision of a threat of death against ban- 
 ished persons had been the resort of Massachusetts 
 through a long course of years. It had heretofore 
 never once failed of its object. " There can be 
 no doubt," says Palfrey, " that among those who 
 favored this new enactment, there was a confi- 
 dent persuasion that the terror of the law would 
 accomplish all that was desired, and would pre-
 
 32 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 vent any occasion for its execution." "The ob- 
 ject of this severity," says Bancroft, " was not to 
 persecute, but to exclude them." 
 
 On the 20th of October, their most extreme 
 measure was adopted. Thenceforward, persons 
 convicted by special jury of belonging to "the per- 
 nicious sect of Quakers should be sentenced to 
 banishment, on pain of death." 
 
 The House which passed this implacable act 
 consisted of twenty-five members. When it was 
 first put to vote, it was promptly rejected. Upon 
 a motion to reconsider, a long and excited debate 
 ensued. At length, it was carried in the affirma- 
 tive, by a vote of thirteen to twelve. One voice 
 was wanting to avert the calamity. This fact so 
 troubled good Deacon Wozel, who was absent be- 
 cause of illness, that " he got to the court weeping 
 for grief," and said, " If he had not been able to 
 go [walk], he would have crept upon his knees 
 rather than such a law should pass." 
 
 The government had crossed the Rubicon. It had 
 taken a position which it could not abandon with- 
 out humiliation, or maintain without cruelty. The 
 court seemed in some degree sensible of the im- 
 port of their act. In deference to the public senti- 
 ment opposing them, they voted that a paper be
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 33 
 
 composed and printed "to manifest the evil of the 
 tenets of the Quakers, and the danger of their 
 practices." This business was assigned to " John 
 Norton, Teacher, of Boston." It was published 
 at the public charge, and bore the title, "The 
 Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies 
 of the Present Generation ; or, A brief Tractate 
 concerning the Doctrine of the Quakers, " 
 "which doctrine," says Cotton Mather, "was in 
 this tract solidly confuted ; and perhaps it had 
 been better if this had been all the confutation, 
 which I add because I will not I cannot make 
 myself a vindicator of the severities that followed." 
 But desperate souls were abroad, men who looked 
 upon this menace as an invitation, and sprang for- 
 ward at once to avail themselves of the chance of 
 martyrdom. Marmaduke Stevenson, a young man 
 then in. Barbadoes, heard of the " bloody law," and 
 took passage immediately for New England. He 
 reached Rhode Island, and found there his friend, 
 William Robinson, to whom, in the language of a 
 letter from the cell in which he lay condemned 
 to die, " the word of the Lord had come expressly, 
 and commanded me to pass to the town of Bos- 
 ton, my life to lay down." " After a little time," 
 as a similar letter asserted, "the word of the
 
 34 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 Lord came to Marmaduke also, saying, ' Go to 
 Boston with thy brother, William Robinson." The 
 two accordingly went. Mary Dyer, " a comely, 
 grave woman, the mother of several children," like- 
 wise was " moved of the Lord to come from Rhode 
 Island to make them a visit." Nicholas Davis 
 also was one of the party. A delicate little 
 girl, only eleven years old, thrilled with the fine 
 enthusiasm, came all the way " from, her father's 
 house in Providence to bear witness against your 
 persecuting spirit." The court decided that she 
 was too young for trial ; and a sturdy, kind-hearted 
 judge agreed to carry her safely home. The four 
 others were arrested, and straightway banished, on 
 pain of death. Nicholas and Mary " found free- 
 dome to depart ; " but the other two were " con- 
 strained in the love and power of the Lord to try 
 your bloody law unto death." They hovered about 
 Salem a few weeks, and then, in the midst of quite 
 a troop of Friends, marched into Boston with un- 
 faltering steps. They reversed the precept of the 
 Master, " When they shall persecute you in one 
 city, flee ye into another." They certainly courted 
 the fatal event. Alice Cowland, one who came 
 with them, brought some " linnen," as she showed 
 the governor, " wherein to wrap the dead bodies
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 35 
 
 of them who were to suffer." Mary Dyer recpn- 
 sidered her duty, and was also " soon espied " in 
 Boston. 
 
 Here, then, were three heroic fanatics, who had 
 committed a mortal offence. It was done with the 
 clear intention of defying a statute-law. What 
 ought to be the course of the makers of that law, 
 when driven to such an extremity ? Drop it at 
 once, we say ; cast off your rash enactment ; forbid 
 the suicide ; let no judgment convert a mad-cap 
 into a martyr's crown. Possibly the invaders ex- 
 pected this victory in the final encounter. Better, 
 far better, that they had obtained it, than that one 
 life should be lost in a mere contest of excited 
 wills ! 
 
 But those iron men with whom they dealt knew 
 not how to bend. The government felt that it 
 could not yield. John Endicott said to them in 
 the open court, " We have made many laws to keep 
 you from amongst us. I do not desire your death." 
 He briefly reverted to the danger they brought to 
 their peace-loving State, and then, " speaking 
 faintly," says Bishope, " as a man whose life was 
 departing from him," pronounced the sentence, 
 " You shall be had back to the place from whence 
 you came, and from thence to the place of execu-
 
 36 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 tion, to be hanged on the gallows till you are 
 dead." 
 
 The 2yth of October, 1659, is a dark day in the 
 calendar of New England. As the afternoon began 
 to decline, these three persons, " led by the back 
 way," because they " were afraid of the fore way, 
 lest it should affect the people too much;" guarded 
 by a band of two hundred men, armed with hal- 
 berds, and by a troop of horse, with drums beating 
 to drown whatever they might say ; " walking hand 
 in hand, Mary being the middlemost," took up 
 their solemn march to the gallows. It stood upon 
 Boston Common, perhaps beneath the Great Elm. 
 The two men, one after the other, climbed the lad- 
 der, and were hanged. They died with exalted 
 hearts. The last words of Robinson were, " I suf- 
 fer for Christ, in whom I live, and for whom I die." 
 Stevenson said, " This day shall we be at rest with 
 the Lord." Mary Dyer then stepped up the lad- 
 der. The halter was put about her neck ; her face 
 was covered with a handkerchief; she was just 
 to be turned off, when a faint cry arrested the 
 hangman's act. It was this : " Stop ! stop ! she 
 is reprieved ! " "A reprieve ! a reprieve ! " was 
 shouted back and forth by a hundred willing voices. 
 The execution immediately stopped. But she,
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 37 
 
 whose mind was already, as it were, in heaven, 
 stood still, and said, " she was there willing to suf- 
 fer as her brethren did, unless they would annul 
 their wicked law." Could there be a deeper pathos 
 than that ? Her own son, who was secretary of 
 state in Rhode Island, had come to Boston to in- 
 tercede in her behalf. The magistrates could not 
 refuse him ; and he bore his dauntless mother back 
 to their home. 
 
 At this point, the resentment and compassion of 
 the people overleaped all restraint, and burst out in 
 ominous threats. The court, still sitting, felt com- 
 pelled to justify their action. Two declarations 
 were drawn up, one to be printed, and the other 
 to be sent to the several towns. They are pre- 
 served in the Massachusetts Records. They plead 
 the cause of the judges in these words : " Altho' 
 the justice of our proceedings against William 
 Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and Mary Dyer, 
 supported by the authority of this court, and the 
 laws of the country, and the laws of God, may 
 rather persuade us to expect encouragement and 
 commendation from all prudent and pious men, 
 than convince us of any necessity to apologize for 
 the same, yet, forasmuch as men of weaker parts, 
 out of pity and commiseration (a commendable 
 
 4
 
 38 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 and Christian virtue, yet easily abused, and sus- 
 ceptible of sinister and dangerous impressions), for 
 want of full information, may be less satisfied, and 
 men of perverse principles may take occasion 
 hereby to calumniate us, and render us bloody per- 
 secutors, to satisfy the one, and stop the mouth 
 of the other, we thought it requisite to declare, 
 that, about three years since, divers persons pro- 
 fessing themselves to be Quakers . . . arrived in 
 Boston, whose persons were only secured to be sent 
 away by the first opportunity without censure or 
 punishment, although their design was to under- 
 mine and ruin . . . the peace and order here estab- 
 lished. Accordingly, a law was made prohibiting 
 Quakers from coming into this jurisdiction on pen- 
 alty of the house of correction till they be sent 
 away. Notwithstanding which, by a back door, 
 they found entrance ; . . . the penalty was there- 
 fore increased : which also being too weak a defence 
 against their impetuous and fanatic fury, a law was 
 made, that such persons should be banished on 
 pain of death, according to the example of England 
 in their provision against Jesuits. . . . The consid- 
 eration of our gradual proceedings will vindicate us 
 from the clamorous accusation of severity, our own 
 just and necessary defence calling upon us (other
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 39 
 
 measures failing) to offer the points which these per- 
 sons have violently and wilfully rushed upon, and 
 thereby are become felons de se, which might have 
 been prevented, and the sovereign law, salus populi, 
 been preserved. Our former proceedings, as well 
 as the sparing of Mary Dyer upon an inconsider- 
 able intercession, will manifestly evince that we de- 
 sire their life absent rather than their death present." 
 
 The second document also reviews their legisla- 
 tion, and then presents the following reasons for 
 insisting upon the extreme penalty : 
 
 i st. The doctrine of the 'sect destroys the fun- 
 damental truths of religion. 
 
 2d. They renounce openly the command of God 
 to obey magistrates. 
 
 3d. If death may be lawfully exacted for breach 
 of confinement, it certainly may for breach of 
 banishment. 
 
 4th. As a householder may repel an intruder 
 with the sword, so may a government. 
 
 5th. A parent defends his family against a pes- 
 tiferous visitor : thus should rulers defend their 
 subjects against moral contagion. 
 
 6th. This is not the persecution of Christians ; 
 for Christians, when persecuted in one city, flee into 
 another.
 
 4O THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 This twofold plea went forth to the people. It 
 was thoughtfully drawn, and indicated truly that 
 the court was not impelled alone by either 
 eyeless bigotry or mad vexation. Probably it 
 convinced some of the disaffected : no doubt it was 
 thoroughly believed by the upright men who pro- 
 claimed it. Authorities in jurisprudence of the 
 present day have testified that " they had upon their 
 side that sort of rigid justice which proceeds upon 
 the established rule that a perfect right may be 
 maintained at any cost to the invader." But, in 
 answer to such a proposition, our hearts affirm that 
 life is too precious a thing to be trampled upon by 
 the heel of meagre consistency, and humanity ought 
 never to be surrendered to a principle of logic. 
 Defeat in such conditions would have been more 
 noble than success. 
 
 In the mellowed light of history, with reference 
 to this entire contention, we can all see the truthful- 
 ness of those ancient verses of the " Simple Cobbler 
 of Agawam : " 
 
 " They seldom lose the field, but often win, 
 That end their wars before their wars begin." 
 
 Mary Dyer could not be at rest. The next spring 
 " she was moved to return to the bloody town of Bos-
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 41 
 
 ton." Her husband wrote beseechingly to Endicott, 
 that he had not seen her above this half-year ; that 
 she had journeyed secretly and speedily all about, 
 and at length had come to Boston. " Unhappy 
 journey, may I say, and woe to that generation 
 that help one another to hazard their lives, for I 
 know not what end, and to what purpose ! " 
 
 Endicott was loath to condemn her. He even 
 crossed his nature enough to suggest to her the 
 evasion of denying her identity. There had been 
 another Mrs. Dyer in the Province. But she would 
 not equivocate. With wonderful heroism she 
 marched to her fate. When her sentence was pro- 
 nounced upon her, she replied, " I came in obedi- 
 ence to the will of God ; the last General Court 
 desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws, and 
 that same is my work now, and earnest request." 
 On the morning of the next day, she was led forth 
 a second time to the place of execution. They 
 were anxious to save her. Even at the gallows 
 they delayed the execution ; and her life was offered 
 her again and again, if she would only promise 
 to leave the jurisdiction. " Nay, I cannot," was 
 her constant reply ; for " in obedience to the will of 
 the Lord I came, and in his will I abide faithful to 
 death."
 
 42 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 There was but one more victim of this direful 
 enactment. A resident of Barbadoes, named 
 William Leddra, after repeated disturbances in 
 Salem and Newbury, and corresponding chastise- 
 ments, upon his third return in 1661 was brought to 
 trial and doomed to the gallows. He was charged 
 him with contempt for authorities, because he re- 
 fused to remove his hat, and for saying " thee " and 
 " thou." His reply was, " Will you put me to death 
 for speaking good English, and for not putting off 
 my clothes ? " "A man may speak treason in good 
 English," was the sharp response. " Will you return 
 to England ? " they demanded. " I have no busi- 
 ness there," he said. Simon Bradstreet pointed a 
 menacing finger to the scaffold, saying, " Then you 
 shall go there." "Will you put me to death for 
 breathing the air of your jurisdiction? I appeal to 
 the laws of England." Says Mr. Chandler in his 
 " American Criminal Trials," " Twenty years be- 
 fore it had been accounted perjury and treason 
 to speak of appeals to the king." Yet, after this, 
 he was offered his life if he would promise to 
 leave the Province. Still refusing, he was con- 
 signed to his fate. He wrote to his friends from 
 his prison-cell, the day before his death, a letter 
 full of pure and charming sentiment. " The sweet
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 43 
 
 influences of the morning star, distilling into my in- 
 nocent habitation, have so filled me with the joy of 
 the Lord, in the beauty of holiness, that my spirit 
 is as if it did not inhabit a tabernacle of clay, but is 
 wholly swallowed up in the bosom of eternity." 
 He took tender leave of his fellow-captives, and 
 went to the gallows in a gentle and saintly way. 
 A stranger in the crowd, just arrived by sea, was 
 smitten with overwhelming pity. He cried out, 
 " For God's sake, take not away the man's life, but 
 remember Gamaliel's counsel to the Jews." The 
 captain of the guard bade him hold his peace, and 
 he departed in tears. " All that will be Christ's 
 disciples must take up the cross," Leddra mur- 
 mured at the foot of the ladder. His last words 
 were the prayer of lofty resignation, " Lord 
 Jesus, receive my spirit." 
 
 At the height of Leddra's trial, Wenlock Christi- 
 son, another of the banished, suddenly strode into 
 the court, and took his stand by the side of the 
 prisoner. His appearance sent dismay into the 
 the minds of the judges. He confronted them 
 with wild and dreadful words. " Are not you the 
 man who was banished on pain of death ? " de- 
 manded Endicott, in a troubled voice. " Yea, I 
 am," was the deep-toned reply. " What dost thou
 
 44 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 here, then ? " he said. " I come to warn you that 
 you shed no more innocent blood ; for the blood 
 that you have shed cries to the Lord God for ven- 
 geance to come upon you." Endicott was weary 
 enough of that bloody work ; and here was another 
 victim madly rushing to the altar. Christison had 
 suffered much before this for his obstinate turbu- 
 lence. It was thought that at length he had been 
 effectually dismissed. They committed him once 
 again. 
 
 After three months, when he was brought to trial, 
 a great change had come over the court. At the 
 beginning of that period, they would have passed 
 sentence upon him at once, without disagreement : 
 now they contested the point for more than two 
 weeks. The governor was vexed at what he 
 thought their lack of nerve. Hurling something 
 violently upon the table, he said, " I could find it in 
 my heart to go home [to England] ; I thank God I 
 am not afraid to give judgment." Would that he 
 had been afraid ! The metal of his nature was the 
 stuff of which martyrs are made : it was not tem- 
 pered enough for a martyr's judge. 
 
 A majority was at length obtained for the con- 
 demnation, " provided, nevertheless, that if the said 
 Christison shall at any time before the execution,
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 45 
 
 by writing under his hand, engage that he forthwith 
 depart this jurisdiction, and from thenceforth return 
 no more into it, without having first obtained leave 
 from the General Court or Council, he shall there- 
 upon be discharged." In the Massachusetts Ar- 
 chives may be found this letter : 
 
 I the condemned man doe give forth under my hand 
 that if I may have my libarty, I have freedome to depart this 
 Jurisdiction, and I know not y* ever I shall com into it any 
 
 more. 
 
 WINLOCK CHRISTISON. 
 from y 6 goal in Boston, 
 
 y 6 yth day of y 6 4th mo. 1661. 
 
 But there were signs that the fury of the conflict 
 was nearly spent, that the wild tide of fanaticism 
 had begun to turn. Strong wills had been pitted 
 against each other in a desperate encounter. The 
 Quaker had conquered. His gallant fortitude could 
 not be overawed. The chief men of Boston saw, 
 with astonishment and horror, the dreaded sect 
 increase just in proportion to the number and 
 severity of the laws against them. Said Christison 
 at his trial, " There came five in place of the last 
 man you executed." The authorities were wholly 
 disarmed when even the threat of death, instead of 
 a weapon to repel, proved a magnet to draw them.
 
 46 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 With such indomitable audacity they had no power 
 to cope. 
 
 When the court assembled on the 2 ad of May, 
 the Quakers had assumed the offensive. In the 
 diary of a private citizen, under this date may be 
 found this significant entry : " The Quakers have 
 given out such speeches as gave cause to think they 
 intended mischief unto our magistrates and minis- 
 ters, and threatened fire and sword to be our speedy 
 portion ! " 
 
 The feeling of compassion also, which all along 
 had muttered among the people its growing dissent, 
 now rose in overpowering rebukes. These voices 
 could not be longer braved. This court, therefore, 
 persuaded by such means, though itcould not bring 
 itself at once to a full repeal of its law for capital 
 punishment, enacted an amendment which it well 
 knew would supersede its execution. " Being desi- 
 rous to try all means, with as much lenity as may 
 consist with our safety, to prevent the intrusion of 
 the Quakers, who, besides absurd and blasphemous 
 doctrines, like rogues and vagabonds come among 
 us " [thus shifting their ground of legislation from 
 that of heresy to that of vagrancy], " the Court has 
 ordered that every such vagabond Quaker," ad- 
 judged to be " one that hath not any dwelling or
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 47 
 
 orderly allowance as an inhabitant of this jurisdic- 
 tion, shall be stripped naked from the middle. up- 
 wards, and tied to a cart's tail, and whipped through 
 the town," and so on " till they be conveyed 
 through any of the outmost towns of our Jurisdic- 
 tion." Should they return after being three times 
 
 
 
 thus dealt with, they shall be branded with the letter 
 R on their left shoulder, whipped, and sent away 
 again ; " and," it is added in compliment to their 
 dishonored past, should they return yet again, they 
 are to be made amenable to " the law made anno 
 1658 for their banishment on pain of death." 
 
 No hanging or branding ever took place in con- 
 sequence of this legislation. 
 
 It has been commonly maintained that a man- 
 date from Charles II. put a stop to the ill treatment 
 of Quakers in New England, and that his royal in- 
 tervention alone saved them from utter destruction. 
 This opinion Mr. Palfrey confutes. Several months 
 before his gracious order crossed the sea, our 
 harsher laws had been mollified, and the resolution 
 fully taken to put no more of them to death. The 
 proud magistrates, however, were quite willing to 
 have the king's injunction generally regarded as 
 the motive for the new indulgences rather than any 
 change of judgment on their part. They were more
 
 48 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 stiff than cruel ; and it was easier to bow to the sov- 
 ereignty of Charles than bend to the confession of 
 a mistake. And in one view the royal will just ac- 
 corded with their own : it removed the very men 
 they were most anxious to be rid of. No doubt it 
 
 hastened, and also widened, the returning tide of 
 
 
 
 good feeling. 
 
 Four months before it came, under the new law 
 all the Quakers in prison, twenty-seven in number, 
 were released, and sent out of the jurisdiction with- 
 out punishment. Many of these had come into 
 Boston clad in sackcloth and ashes, pronouncing 
 tremendous woes upon the bloody city. 
 
 As the clemency of the rulers began its gentler 
 sway, for a time at least the vehemence of the dis- 
 turbers seemed to increase. Their antics became 
 even more grotesque than before. George Wilson, 
 one of those first released, paced slowly through 
 the streets of Boston, crying with a loud voice, 
 " The Lord is coming forth with fire and sword to 
 plead with this city." Elizabeth Hooton, an aged 
 English woman, who had been severely whipped 
 three or four times, delivered a similar message in 
 the streets of Cambridge. 
 
 But their favorite place of denouncing was " the 
 steeple-house ; " and their favorite victim was
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 49 
 
 "the man-made minister." The early Puritans 
 had a sacred love for their public worship, and a 
 peculiar reverence for the preacher of righteous- 
 ness. Imagine the horror occasioned by such a 
 scene as this. Four women arrive from Barba- 
 does on the Lord's day. Mary Brewster is their 
 leader. She hurries with them to the door of the 
 South Church. There, casting off her shoes and 
 riding-suit, with hair dishevelled and streaming over 
 her shoulder, in a long robe of sackcloth whose 
 ragged edge frets her bare feet, with her face be- 
 grimed with grease and lampblack, she rushes into 
 the midst of the silent congregation, and, in a quak- 
 ing voice, announces herself as " a Sign of the Black 
 Pox," which was soon to appear in judgment upon 
 them ! She afterwards confessed, that, three years 
 before, this service was laid upon her of the Lord, 
 and that her husband was willing for her to perform 
 it ! Simon Bradstreet, in his warrant, calls their 
 offence " the making an horrible disturbance on 
 the Lord's day, and affrighting the people of the 
 South Church in Boston in the time of the publick 
 dispensation of the word." The constable could 
 not identify her when she was brought before the 
 court ; for he says, " She was then in the shape of the 
 Devil." Owning herself to be the culprit, however,
 
 5O THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 she was whipped "up and 'down the town with 
 twenty lashes." 
 
 During another service, Thomas Newhouse 
 stalked into the broad aisle of the church with two 
 great glass bottles in his hands, and, gloomily turn- 
 ing about, in the face of the whole congregation 
 broke them one against the other, proclaiming in 
 a prophetic manner, " Thus will the Lord break 
 you in pieces." 
 
 Lydia Wardell, " being a young and tender and 
 chaste woman," in obedience to the inward light, as 
 a sign of the spiritual nakedness of her neighbors, 
 with the encouragement of her husband, " though 
 it was exceeding hard to her modest and shame- 
 faced disposition," went into the crowded church 
 without a shred of clothing upon her. Deborah 
 Wilson, " a young woman of very modest and re- 
 tired life, and of sober conversation, as were her 
 parents," was constrained " to go through the town 
 of Salem" in a similar plight, " as a sign." 
 
 The Quaker author, Besse, though writing many 
 years after the excitement of the day, approves 
 these displays, and applauds the poor dupes who 
 made them. Is it strange, however, that the guar- 
 dians of public morals should seek to repress them, 
 even by the whips of justice ? It is related by Gra-
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 51 
 
 hame, that one man, named Faubord, undertaking 
 to imitate Abraham, was really about to offer up 
 his son as a sacrifice ; his neighbors, hearing the 
 cries of the lad, broke into his house just in time 
 to prevent the blasphemous atrocity. 
 
 But in general, it must be allowed, the absurdity 
 of their behavior was harmless. They were pure 
 and lovable in their private lives ; and their public 
 pranks even were free from guile. There was an 
 " inward light." It shed its gentle radiance over acts 
 that would be otherwise dark indeed. It did not 
 cease to shine all through their lurid Sufferings. 
 George Fox had converted his pillory into a pulpit ; 
 and he made so many converts of the gaping crowd 
 that gathered round it, that they liberated him " in a 
 tumultuous manner," and set a clergyman, who had 
 been instrumental in his punishment, in the very 
 position he had occupied. And so they preached 
 in the court and the prison, at the cart's tail, and 
 even on the ladder of death. Day and night an 
 increasing throng gathered about their places of 
 punishment. The Puritans ought to have learned 
 before this that persecution was one of the surest 
 means to propagate a religious persuasion. 
 
 The number of sufferers during the whole period 
 of these severities was comparatively small : it was
 
 52 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 only about thirty. An address to the king, from 
 the pen of a Quaker, before it was entirely ended, 
 gave this summary : " Twenty-two have been 
 banished upon pain of death, three have been 
 martyred, three have had their right ears cut, one 
 hath been burned in the hand with the letter H, 
 thirty-one persons have received ^ix hundred and 
 fifty stripes, . . . one thousand and forty-four 
 pounds worth of goods have been taken from them, 
 and one now lieth in fetters, condemned to die." 
 Edward Burrough, who probably wrote this address, 
 at length obtained access to the royal ear. He 
 spoke to his Majesty thus : "There is a vein of in- 
 nocent blood opened in your dominions, which, if 
 not stopped, may overrun all." Whereupon the 
 king said, " I will stop that vein ; " " not liking," 
 as a student of his character has affirmed, the 
 " annoyance of refusing a request." 
 
 A mandamus was at once prepared 'in these 
 words : 
 
 CHARLES R. 
 
 Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. Having been 
 informed that several of our subjects amongst you, called 
 Quakers, have been and are imprisoned by you, whereof some 
 have been executed, and others (as hath been represented 
 unto us) are in danger to undergo the like : We have thought 
 fit to signify our pleasure in that behalf for the future, and do
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 53 
 
 hereby require, that if there be any of those people now 
 amongst you, now already condemned to suffer death or 
 other corporal punishment, or that are imprisoned, and ob- 
 noxious to the like condemnation, you are to forbear to 
 proceed any further therein, but that you forthwith send the 
 said persons, whether condemned or imprisoned, over into 
 this Our Kingdom of England, together with the respective 
 crimes or offenses laid to their charge, to the end such course 
 may be taken with them here as shall be agreeable to our 
 laws and their demerits ; and for so doing these our letters 
 shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge. 
 
 Given at Our Court at Whitehall the ninth day of Sept., 
 1 66 1, in the thirteenth year of Our Reign. 
 
 To Our trusty and well-beloved John Endicott, Esquire, 
 
 &c. 
 
 By his Majesty's Command, 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS. 
 
 Samuel Shattock, who had formerly been 
 banished from Salem, was commissioned to convey 
 this rescript to the Colony. A ship was at once 
 chartered by a subscription among the Friends \ 
 and Ralph Goldsmith, also a Friend, sailed as cap- 
 tain. After a voyage of six weeks, they arrived in 
 Boston harbor. It was Sabbath day. Several citi- 
 zens, seeing the English colors flying from the mast, 
 at once came aboard, and inquired if they had any 
 letters from England. " No, not to-day," replied 
 Goldsmith, keeping close about the errand of de-
 
 54 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 liverance on which he came. Capt. Oliver, who 
 had commanded the city forces during the excite- 
 ment of the executions, was one of the visitors. 
 " Supposing," says Bishope, " they were most 
 Quakers, he came into Boston, and said, as is re- 
 ported, ' There is Shattock, and the Devil and 
 all ! ' " 
 
 The next morning, Capt. Goldsmith, with Samuel 
 Shattock, the king's deputy, went on shore ; and 
 they two went directly through the town to the 
 governor's house, on Pemberton Square, whither 
 he had removed his official residence at the re- 
 quest of the court, "out of respect to strangers." 
 They knocked at the door. He sent out a servant 
 to know their business. They replied that their 
 message was from the king of England, and they 
 would deliver it to none but himself. " Then they 
 were admitted to go in ; and the governor came to 
 them, and commanded Samuel Shattock's hat to be 
 taken off. Having received the deputy and the 
 mandamus, he laid off his own hat, ordering Shat- 
 tock's hat to be given him again. He then went 
 out into the street, and bade the two Friends follow 
 him." After finding Deputy-Governor Bellingham, 
 and consulting with him, he came back, and uttered 
 the laconic speech, " We shall obey his Majesty's 
 command ! "
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 55 
 
 This utterance was decisive ; and the joyful offi- 
 cers hastened back to the vessel, and gave liberty 
 to the waiting passengers to come ashore. " Out 
 must the Quakers be put of the prisons ; " and 
 that night " they all met together, and offered up 
 praises to God for this wonderful deliverance." 
 
 Thus terminated, on the 25th of November, 1661, 
 the sufferings of the Quakers in America. Later 
 than this, there were instances of extravagance on 
 the one hand, and violence on the other. The 
 court, in a moment of anger, at one time revived 
 and re-affirmed the statute-law against them ; but 
 the penalties were more lightly inflicted, and soon 
 altogether ceased. Several of the odd gambols 
 described above happened after the pressure of 
 persecution was removed. Ere long, however, 
 they had also ceased. In a few years, William 
 Penn, whose courtly grace had already named him 
 "The Quaker King," leaving the gaud and glory 
 of a palace came to the banks of the Delaware, 
 and erected a sylvan throne in the groves of the 
 West. The effulgence of his example threw a 
 milder coloring over Quaker customs throughout 
 the world. 
 
 " It is a hard measure," says a learned barrister, 
 " to visit upojn the colonists of New England the
 
 56 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 sins of all Christendom." Intolerance was the mis- 
 take of the age. Every nation into which the 
 Quaker came persecuted him with peculiar rigor. 
 Of all new sects, the first appearance of this one 
 was most offensive. Its attitude seemed insolent 
 and dangerous. The Quaker denounced the exist- 
 ing worship as an abomination, and government 
 everywhere as treason. Even Roger Williams, 
 "The Apostle of Liberty," contended that there 
 were bounds of civil order that must be preserved, 
 and that the Quakers had certainly transgressed 
 them. The Governor of Rhode Island, which was 
 the " backe door " of their entrance to Massachu- 
 setts, admitted " that their doctrines tend to very 
 absolute cutting down and overturning relations 
 and civil government among men." He could not 
 fight ; he could not swear ; he could not pay tithes. 
 
 " Region, estate, rule civil and divine, 
 Religion, all they seek to undermine." 
 
 This was the feeling of affrighted men. Instead 
 of the broad-brimmed and opulent gentleman, 
 whose mild deportment calms and delights us in 
 the feverish excitement of to-day, the vision then 
 was a wild and dreamy-eyed fanatic, running up 
 and down the earth propagating fatujtous doctrine,
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 57 
 
 and vilifying the most respected men. Taken 
 with "mighty convincements," they invaded the 
 Vatican of the Pope, as well as the Kremlin of 
 the Czar. They had " drawings " to the Moors 
 and the Tartars, and even to the Emperor of China. 
 And their idea of missions was as grotesque as 
 their journeys were romantic. A mission was not 
 the sober inculcation of truth : it was a thunder- 
 clap of execration. They would " deliver," and 
 then depart. Such performances in our day would 
 have opened to them the door of asylums, rather 
 than shut upon them the door of jails. " They 
 were," says Mather, "madmen, a sort of luna- 
 ticks, dasmoniacks, and enurgumens." 
 
 Now, the Puritans knew no better how to treat 
 them than other men. It certainly can be shown 
 that they did treat them no worse. 
 
 Besse gives the names of more than ten hundred 
 Quakers who suffered imprisonment, torture, scour- 
 ging, or transportation in England, and the names of 
 almost two hundred whose sufferings there ended 
 in death. Does such a stupendous fact make it 
 becoming for the mother country to lay upon her 
 daughter the charge of special cruelty? By an 
 Act of Parliament as late as 1662, Quakers were 
 subjected to a heavy fine for holding their meetings,
 
 58 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS/ 
 
 and, for a third offence, were to be transported to 
 a distant colony. In consequence of this law, 
 whole ship-loads were carried into exile. And the 
 mob of England, the very reverse of what was 
 true in America, in spite against the Quakers, 
 used to hound on the magistrate, and redouble the 
 punishment. In one case, the house in which they 
 had met was torn down over their heads. They 
 gathered upon the ruins : they could not be dis- 
 persed by armed men. And there, huddled close 
 together on that woful pile, the rabble seized shov- 
 els to throw the rubbish over them. They were 
 almost buried alive before they were driven off. 
 
 And shall we speak approvingly, even in contrast 
 with our acknowledged fault, of the toleration of a 
 government that adopted an Act of Parliament, 
 July i, 1664, demanding that all above sixteen 
 years of age who should meet for purposes of wor- 
 ship contrary to the established form should be 
 fined or imprisoned, and, for the third offence, 
 should be banished seven years, or pay one hun- 
 dred pounds, and, if they returned without leave, 
 they should suffer death ? Is there any thing darker 
 than this upon the statute-books of Massachusetts ? 
 
 The clamors against the Puritans on the score 
 of persecution are a modern excitement. They
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 59 
 
 are to be blamed for it; but why blamed more 
 than others ? Is it because their virtues are so 
 surpassing ? Among the Chevaliers of Virginia, 
 a law was enacted in terms almost identical with 
 our most reprobated statute. Quakers should be 
 subjected to close confinement until they should 
 abjure their country ; and, for a third return, they 
 were to suffer death. 
 
 In evidence that the court at Whitehall did not 
 at heart condemn our severities, we find a message 
 from Charles II. to this colony, dated nearly a 
 year after the celebrated mandamus. It contained 
 these words : " Wee cannot be understood hereby 
 to direct or wish that any indulgence should be 
 granted to those persons commonly called Quakers, 
 whose principles being inconsistent with any kind 
 of government ; wee have found it necessary to 
 make a sharp law against them, and are well con- 
 tent you shall do the like there." These "sharp 
 laws," as well as the simultaneous arrests in Hol- 
 land, Russia, the islands of the Mediterranean, and 
 the coasts of Algeria, all belonged to one great 
 error, that belted the globe. Which misguided 
 people is to cast stones at the rest ? or is one alone 
 to be selected for the assaults of all ? 
 
 The peculiar character of the New-England
 
 60 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 Plantation, instead of aggravating their crime, in 
 truth is a real palliation of it. They came into the 
 wilderness for the sole purpose of enjoying their 
 religion without hurt or interference. The govern- 
 ment was constructed with this object in view. " The 
 Heart of New England Rent " refers to this fact as 
 the very reason for its rigor. " The profession of 
 the purity of doctrine, worship, and discipline is 
 written upon the forehead of New England." They 
 sought no proselytes ; and they did not endeavor to 
 enforce their views beyond their own jurisdiction. 
 " And now, " says Mather, " if the Quakers them- 
 selves had got into a corner of the world, and with 
 immense toyl and charge made a wjldernesse habit- 
 able on purpose to be undisturbed in the exercise 
 of their worship, they would never bear to have 
 New Englanders come among them and interrupt 
 their publick worship and endeavour to seduce their 
 children from it." The stern dealings of the State 
 of Pennsylvania with some unpleasant intruders at 
 the period in which he wrote seemed to justify this 
 assumption. Beyond all question, a government 
 has a right to thrust out those who interfere with 
 the very object for which it was erected. The 
 United States can suppress the Mormons. It 
 was the evil practice of the age to proceed still
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 61 
 
 further, and attempt to control the opinions of 
 men. 
 
 But religion, their loved religion, was the ob- 
 ject of the first communities in America. With 
 it the wounds of the outcasts were healed, and the 
 tears of their exile were sweetened. " New Eng- 
 land was the colony of Conscience." Every thing 
 was brought to the test of the higher law. Now here 
 were strange men who renounced, as they thought, 
 the authority of the Bible ; who denied the sanctity 
 of the Sabbath ; who called their holy ministry the 
 " seed of the serpent," and their dignified rulers 
 " monsters of iniquity ; " who alleged that an " in- 
 ward light," which seemed from their conduct to be 
 a mere ignis fatuus, was the supreme guide of 
 every soul. It is difficult to say what should be 
 done with such a people. Certainly they ought not 
 to be slain. But is it a wonder, that, as the court 
 itself affirmed, " after all other means had failed to 
 check their impetuous and desperate turbulency, 
 the magistrates judged themselves called, for the 
 defence of all, to keep the passage with the point of 
 the sword held towards them " ? Their wilfully rush- 
 ing upon it was their own act. 
 
 The Quakers, although they despised the sword, 
 were mighty with the pen. They have kept their suf-
 
 62 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 ferings before the world. An almanac, prepared by 
 one of them for the year 1694, has this item of 
 chronology : " Since the English in New England 
 hanged their countrymen for religion, years 36." 
 Their memory was relentless ; but we are glad to 
 acknowledge that their hearts were quick to forgive 
 us. There is beautiful evidence of this in a re- 
 cent issue of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 It was found in the diary of Increase Mather 
 for the year 1676, a period of great distress to the 
 colonists, this simple memorandum : " A vessel 
 from Ireland arrived here, being sent by the Quakers 
 in Dublin, for those that were impoverished by the 
 war here." Yet Quaker authors delight to de- 
 tail the woes they endured : their vivid narratives 
 fill many a capacious volume. They are perfectly 
 trustworthy as far as the facts they relate were 
 understood ; but they can hardly be said to give us 
 uncolored pictures. They are, however, our only 
 authorities for many of the cruelties alleged. 
 Thomas Westgate, writing from England to the 
 colony in 1671, said, " I dare not be an advocate 
 to plead for the cursed generation of Quakers ; yet 
 let me tell you New England suffers much in this 
 country for imprisoning many of them, and 
 putting others of them to death, and I could
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 63 
 
 heartily wish you had printed a narrative of your 
 proceedure with them, together with the grounds 
 thereof." It would no doubt have corrected some 
 misconceptions. 
 
 The sufferers of that time used to predict that 
 dire calamities would come upon their opposers ; 
 and they were fond of tracing out the deaths of 
 their principal persecutors. 
 
 Major Humphrey Atherton, for example, had re- 
 viewed his battalion one afternoon on the Common, 
 and in the dusk of the evening had started for 
 home in "great pomp and pride." His horse on a 
 sudden stumbled, and threw him upon the ground 
 so violently that he was instantly killed, "near 
 the place," observes Besse, " where they usually 
 loosed the Quakers from the cart, after they had 
 whipped them." " Being taken up, and brought 
 into the Court House, the place where he had been 
 active in sentencing the innocent to death, his blood 
 ran through the floor, exhibiting to the spectators 
 a shocking instance of the divine vengeance against 
 a daring and hardened persecutor." 
 
 Richard Davenport, commander of the castle be- 
 fore Roger Clap had been appointed, in the heat of 
 a sultry day, went into his room, and lay down upon 
 his bed for a little rest. "There he was struck
 
 64 THE COMING OF THE QUAKEKS. 
 
 dead in a strange manner, by thunder and light- 
 ning." Instead of regarding this event as a judg- 
 ment of the Lord, should we not acknowledge the 
 special mercy which spared the whole company 
 quartered there, though only a thin partition sepa- 
 rated the room in which he was killed from the 
 magazine of the castle ? 
 
 Upon the accession of Charles II., John Norton 
 had been persuaded, much against his will, to sail 
 with Simon Bradstreet on a mission from the 
 Colony to the new king. They were graciously 
 received at the court, although the fears of the Col- 
 ony had once reported that Norton was confined in 
 the Tower for Charles had reason to be offended 
 with the men of Massachusetts. But George Fox 
 confronted them in London, as did also John 
 Copeland, whose ear had been cut off in Boston. 
 It was rumored likewise, " that William Robinson's 
 father was coming up from the North, to bring 
 them to account for murthering his son." The 
 Colonial agents were, however, not much troubled 
 by these annoyances, and returned safely to America 
 after their business was done. 
 
 Charles spoke honeyed words in his response. 
 " He received the Colonies into his gracious pro- 
 tection, and confirmed their patent and charter."
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 65 
 
 But there were other contents in his royal letter. 
 He decreed that justice in the Colony should always 
 be administered in his name, and that all persons 
 of honest lives should be admitted to the Lord's 
 Supper. These two articles would abrogate at a 
 stroke the independence of their courts and the 
 authority of their churches. They gave intense dis- 
 pleasure to the sensitive Colonists. " There were 
 some who would not stick to say that Mr. Norton 
 had laid the foundation for the ruin of all their 
 liberties." He had done all that he could ; but 
 now he saw that some of " his best friends began 
 to look awry upon him." He was not of a buoyant 
 constitution. He drooped under these neglects. 
 Hitherto he had always rode upon the topmost 
 wave of popular favor. This change distressed 
 him much in private, but did not alter the merit of 
 his public course. He preached in his pulpit, and 
 led the devotions of his church, with the same unpar- 
 alleled eloquence as before. After returning from 
 his accustomed services one Sabbath morning, he 
 was suddenly seized with faintness, and fell to the 
 floor entirely dead. The Quaker, with relentless 
 hand, has written, " He was observed to fetch a 
 great groan, and, leaning his head against the man- 
 tle-piece, was heard to say, ' The hand (or judgment) 
 
 6*
 
 66 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 of the Lord is upon me ' " ! This heavy visitation 
 was also considered a mark of divine vengeance ; 
 but rather let us say with Mather, " Sudden death 
 with him was sudden glory." 
 
 Rugged but kind old John Endicott must also 
 die. For a long time he had been almost the only 
 one remaining, who could describe, with the fond 
 loquacity of a personal remembrance, what rude sur- 
 roundings had greeted that forest-birth of the 
 infant state. He was almost the only one who had 
 seen it rise from its narrow cradle to the wider 
 sphere of its vigorous youth. What miraculous 
 transformations had unfolded before his eyes ! 
 
 For the last sixteen years, he had been the coun- 
 sellor and chief of the Colony. It had been a time 
 of storm. But his fearless and unvarying hand had 
 held a prompt and steady sceptre till the end. No 
 man ever laid it down with more tranquillity and 
 grace. He did not fall by an untimely blow. In 
 the beautiful language of the day, " old age and 
 the infirmities thereof, coming upon him, he fell 
 asleep in the Lord, on the i5th of March, 1665," 
 at the age of seventy-seven ; " and he was with 
 great honor and solemnity interred in Boston," on 
 the 23d of the same month. His frank and in- 
 dependent spirit, and the great services he had
 
 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 67 
 
 rendered the state, won their befitting guerdon in 
 the public esteem. " He died poor," says the diary 
 of Capt. John Hull, " as most of our rulers do, 
 having more attended the public than their own 
 private interests." 
 
 In the unflinching administration of what he 
 thought to be justice, some men had suffered 
 wrongfully ; but, says Palfrey, " he understood him- 
 self "to be severe, only in the assertion of an abso- 
 lute right, and the needful exercise of a public guar- 
 dianship." " For my country and my God," was 
 
 
 
 the motto inscribed upon his motives. Unquali- 
 fied devotion to the one, and unreserved obedience 
 to the other, ever gave to his career a peculiarly 
 buoyant and resolute advance. No faultless cha- 
 racter is claimed for him. His steel-bound nature 
 presented too few apertures for the appeals of the 
 gentler emotions. Yet it may well be doubted 
 whether men less stern in their principles than he 
 could have accomplished, amid all the obstacles 
 that they had to confront, the great work to which 
 Providence had called them, the foundation of a 
 republic strong enough, ere long, to throw its 
 radiant and solid arch across an entire continent. 
 
 " These transient persecutions," in the elegant 
 phrase of Mr. Bancroft, "begun in self-defence,
 
 68 THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS. 
 
 were yet no more than a train of mists hovering of 
 an autumn morning over the channel of a fine river, 
 that diffused freshness and fertility wherever it 
 wound." If those mists have not altogether disap- 
 peared, we can look beneath them over wide and 
 blooming fields which that river continues to 
 enrich.
 
 . II. 
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION,
 
 II. 
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 ALLOWS HILL still haunts the western bor- 
 der of Salem, a grim spectre of the dreadful 
 past. Around its base have clustered the factories 
 and homes of a thriving population, and their build- 
 ings begin to ascend its rocky sides. But the bald 
 and ancient top continues to affront the open sky. 
 Our eye cannot run up that rocky height, without 
 recalling to our heart the most appalling event 
 of Colonial history. There, looming against the 
 summer clouds of 1692, nineteen innocent persons 
 were hanged by the neck till they were dead. The 
 witchraft delusion is not a myth. Its solemn wit- 
 ness stands to-day, reciting as it has from the first 
 the weird story of its wild executions. 
 
 This is almost the only spot that can be identi- 
 fied with the tragedy that was then enacted. The 
 subject was fraught with horror to the minds of the
 
 72 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 original actors. Their faltering lips refused to re- 
 peat to their children the harrowing tale. Hardly 
 one oral tradition has come down from them to the 
 present day. How deep is the pathos of such a 
 silence I Those poor penitents avoided the theme 
 with studious dread, and in their daily converse 
 would pass and repass its local relics without a 
 word. 
 
 But over the broad earth there are many spots 
 that could speak to us in the language of Gallows 
 Hill, and those voiceless fields. Every nation, 
 every age, has brought its hecatomb of victims to 
 the altar of this imaginary crime. It was the lot 
 of our " City of Peace " to render one of the last, 
 though by no means the largest, of these offerings 
 of human life. 
 
 But why should a witch be hunted with the rude 
 vengeance which the records of the older times all 
 reveal ? Can she be worthy of such severity ? Our 
 modern notion of her is a very merry one. A 
 toothless, nervous old lady strides a broomstick, 
 and rides a wayward, rollicking race, over the trees, 
 among black clouds, stirring up little tempests of 
 wind, and landing we don't know where, and don't 
 care how. That is the witch of our ideas : why 
 strive to hurt her ? To be bewitched now-a-days is
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 73 
 
 to be thrilled with a fascination that is pleasant 
 instead of malign. It is not the effect of an " evil 
 eye," but of glances that beam with innocent 
 charms. With us a magical touch is a touch of 
 delight ; enchantment bears the sense of Elysium. 
 Perhaps we should not think it exaggeration to say 
 that the Cupid of the classic story has surrendered 
 his office to the first-class witch of our times. She 
 brews no noxious poison but the philters of harm- 
 less love. She howls no horrid curses ; but she 
 sings in siren tones. She has no " black art " to 
 ply, aided by diabolic powers. With coy and un- 
 vexed management, she brings about her gladsome 
 ends. How comes it to pass that such a dear, 
 handy creature should have been condemned to die 
 by the codes of every civilized country in the 
 world? 
 
 Our reply to such a question must be briefly this. 
 The meaning of the title was altegether different 
 in former times from what it is now. It had ghostly 
 terrors, of which the dawn of modern light has 
 robbed it. We search for its definition. We are 
 amazed to find that it embodies the most lurid 
 notions that the mind has ever conceived. Dr. 
 Ogilvie, in his learned revision of Webster to make 
 the " Imperial Dictionary " of Great Britain, gives a
 
 74 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 lustrous description of its evil import in the sev- 
 enteenth century. " Witchcraft is the practice of 
 witches, sorcery, enchantment, intercourse with the 
 Devil, a supernatural power which persons were 
 formerly supposed to obtain possession of by enter- 
 ing into compact with the Devil. Indeed, it was 
 fully believed that they gave themselves up to him, 
 body and soul, while he engaged that they should 
 want for nothing, and should be able to assume 
 whatever shape they pleased, to visit and torment 
 their enemies, and accomplish their infernal pur- 
 poses. As soon as the bargain was concluded, the 
 Devil was said to deliver to the witch an imp, or 
 familiar spirit, to be ready at call, and to do what- 
 ever it was directed. By the aid of this imp and 
 the Devil together, the witch, who was almost al- 
 ways an old woman, was enabled to transport her- 
 self through the air on a broomstick or a spit, and 
 to transform herself into various shapes, particu- 
 larly those of cats and hares, to inflict diseases on 
 whomsoever she pleased, and to punish her enemies 
 in a variety of ways. The belief of witchcraft is 
 very ancient. It was universally believed in 
 Europe till the sixteenth century, and even main- 
 tained its ground with tolerable firmness till the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. Vast numbers
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 75 
 
 of reputed witches were condemned to be burned 
 every year ; so that in England alone it is computed 
 that no fewer than thirty thousand of them suffered 
 at the stake ! " This great definition, pointed out 
 to us by Mr. S. G. Drake, in his valuable introduc- 
 tion to a fine edition of Mather and Calef, is so 
 clear and precise that we understand at once why 
 that witchcraft was a capital offence. It was the 
 very sin of sins. It was the most accursed iniquity, 
 nothing less than a personal league with the Evil 
 One. It was not merely necromancy or magic, sim- 
 ply a wonder-working art. It was not the vague use 
 of amulets and charms for the purpose of obtain- 
 ing material good. It was not divination alone, 
 which reads the thoughts of alien spirits, and turns 
 the horoscope of coming events. It was not corre- 
 spondence, by these means, with the unseen world, 
 without regard to the character of the correspond- 
 ent. This might be innocent. It might invite 
 the intervention even of the pure angelic spirits. 
 It might involve no great treason against God. 
 But witchcraft was actual alliance with the prince 
 of the power of the air. All nations then believed 
 that mortal men, while still upon the earth, could 
 become his pledged and formal confederates, and 
 could join forces with him, and wicked spirits
 
 76 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 beneath him, for the purpose of warring against 
 the gospel, and defying the King of heaven. Is it 
 strange that this was regarded as the most flagrant 
 of crimes ? In acknowledgment of such a con- 
 tract, Satan, on his part, agreed to exercise his own 
 supernatural powers in their behalf, and also to give 
 to them the same powers, to a greater or less extent, 
 as they proved to be - his worthy supporters. 
 Besides, this " covenant with hell " was thought to 
 convey great advantage to the Prince of hell him- 
 self as well as to his human accomplice. He could 
 not work with his best success in the sphere of this 
 world, without the voluntary co-operation of some 
 of its intelligent inhabitants. A bad man or a bad 
 woman, who consented to be an instrument for his 
 hand, was the mightiest weapon he could hurl 
 against the ranks of the good. To such a federa- 
 tion was ascribed almost unlimited power. " Thou 
 shalt not suffer a witch to live." If the seventeenth- 
 century notion is indeed the one the Scriptures 
 lodged in this word, no wonder the divine denuncia- 
 tion was proclaimed against it. 
 
 In the elaborate work of Mr. C. W. Upham upon 
 this subject, published by Wiggin & Lunt, the power 
 of a witch to afflict whomsoever she will is thus de- 
 scribed : " She could throw them into convulsions,
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 77 
 
 cause them to pine away, choke, bruise, pierce, and 
 craze them, and even subject them to death itself." 
 She had the faculty of " second sight," and was 
 able to communicate information from the spirit- 
 world, like " mediums " of the present day. She 
 could read inmost thoughts, press temptations 
 upon those near or far away, bring up the shades 
 of the departed, and ply the living with infernal 
 arts of every kind. And, worst of all, she could 
 come in her "shape," or apparition, to any persons, 
 however distant from her " bodily presence," and 
 operate upon them as though she were really there ! 
 It was this imagined fact which admitted the possi- 
 bility of " spectral evidence," as it was termed, 
 evidence which proved to be the most disastrous 
 element in the Salem trials. Those persons who 
 were exercised by these malignant energies were 
 said to be " bewitched." 
 
 Now, had such a terrific system of beliefs a 
 groundwork in actual facts ? No : we say boldly, 
 no. There is not one accredited instance of the 
 crime, as then understood, in all history, whether 
 sacred or profane. " The Witch of Endor " was 
 not a witch in their phraseology, but a conjurer 
 only, whom God assisted once by a miracle, to her 
 own great dismay. The Chaldeans and Magi had
 
 78 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 no kin to this tremendous being. The Roman 
 augur and the Grecian pythia were ignorant as 
 infants compared with such a seer. The fortune- 
 teller was common-place, and the exorcist was con- 
 fined to a narrow field of operations, when put 
 beside our ancestral wizard. In such a presence, 
 
 their power was weakness, and their guilt was piety 
 
 
 
 itself. This crime was essential diabolism. Assur- 
 edly, it was never practised. 
 
 But, for two centuries, the whole Christian world 
 believed that it was practised. This belief was a 
 fountain of unutterable woe. We are driven to ask 
 the question, How it was possible for those who 
 bore the form of humanity to acquire such a fiend- 
 like repute. How came they to be even charged 
 with such iniquities ? 
 
 Reginald Scot, an author who wrote so long ago 
 as 1584, attempted to answer this inquiry in a rare 
 and ingenious book, entitled " The Discoverie of 
 Witchcraft." It was written, as the humane man 
 observed, " in behalfe of the Poore, the Aged, and 
 the Simple." Its kind and reasonable suggestions 
 ought to have put the world' on guard against the 
 errors into which it afterwards rushed. In a quaint 
 and racy style, he describes the natural devel- 
 opment of a hideous witch from misfortunes that
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 79 
 
 originally were not faults. " The sort of such as 
 are said to be Witches are Women, which be com- 
 monly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full 
 of Wrinkels, poore, sullen, superstitious, and Pa- 
 pists, or such as know no Religion ; in whose 
 drousie minds, the Divell hath gotte a fine Seat. 
 They are leane and deformed, shewing Melancho- 
 lie in their faces, to the Horror of all that see them. 
 They are doting Scolds, mad, devilish, and not 
 much differing from them that are thought to 
 be possessed with Spirits." Their mode of sup- 
 port is precarious, he implies : " These miserable 
 Wretches are so odious unto all their Neighbors, 
 and so feared, as few dare to offend them, or denie 
 them any thing they aske. . . . They go from 
 House to House, and from Doore to Doore, for a 
 pot full of Milke, Yest, Drinke, Pottage, or some 
 such Reelefe, without the which, they could hardlie 
 live ; neither obtaining for their Service and Paines, 
 nor by their Art, nor yet at the Divel's Hands 
 (with whome they are said to make a perfect and 
 visible Bargaine), either Beautie, Monie, Promotion, 
 Welth, Worship, Pleasure, Honor, Knowledge, 
 Learning, or any other Benefit whatsoever." 
 Witchcraft does not pay, is the view of Reginald 
 Scot. But they become at length hateful to their
 
 8o THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 entertainers. " In the Tract of Time, the Witch 
 weareth odious and tedious to her Neighbors ; and 
 they, againe, are despised and despited of hir, so 
 as sometimes she curseth one, and sometimes 
 another, and that, from the Maister of the House, 
 his Wife, Children, Cattle, &c., to the little Pig 
 that lieth in the Stie. Thus, in Processe of Time, 
 they have all displeased hir ; and she hath wished 
 evil Luck unto them all." Soon after this is 
 started the infernal suspicion. " Some of her 
 Neighbors die or falle sicke, or some of their chil- 
 dren are visited with diseases that affect them 
 strangelie, . . . which, by ignorant Parents, are 
 supposed to be the Vengeance of Witches, . . . 
 according to the common Saing, " Inscitiae Pal- 
 lium Maleficium et Incantatio," Witchcraft and 
 Inchantment is the Cloke of Ignorance. . . . Also, 
 some of their Cattell perish, either by Disease or 
 Mischance. Then they upon whom such Adversi- 
 ties fall . . . doo not onlie conceive but are re- 
 solved that all their Mishaps are brought to passe 
 by hir onlie Means." Now comes the trial. " The 
 Witch on the other Side being called before a Jus- 
 tice, by due Examination of the Circumstances, is 
 driven to see hir Imprecations and Desires, and 
 hir Neighbors' Harmes and Losses to concurre,
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 81 
 
 and, as it were, to take effect ; and so confesseth 
 that she (as a Goddess) hath brought such Things 
 to passe. Wherein, not onlie she, but the Accuser, 
 and also the Justice, are sorelie deceived and 
 abused ; ... as that she hath doone, or can doo, 
 that which is proper onlie to God himselfe." 
 
 Are not these admirable touches of truth ? But 
 wise old Mr. Scot remained unheeded by the peo- 
 ple. For more than a hundred years thereafter, 
 men conducted as though common sense upon this 
 subject had never entered a created brain. Litera- 
 ture upon it was abundant ; but, with hardly anoth- 
 er exception, it only tended to exaggerate the false 
 opinions already held. Bright-hearted Horace, Mr. 
 Upham shows, was wise enough to reject them. 
 
 " These dreams and terrors magical, 
 
 These miracles and witches, 
 Night -walking sprites or Thessal bugs, 
 Esteem them not two rushes." 
 
 But Virgil thus bemoaned his sickly flock, that 
 was under an " evil hand : " 
 
 " They look so thin, 
 
 Their bones are barely covered with their skin. 
 What magic has bewitched the woolly dams ? 
 And what ill-eyes behold the tender lambs ? "
 
 82 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 Scot's work was burned by order of King James 
 of Scotland. This redoubtable monarch then set 
 himself to writing his own book upon the subject. 
 It would have been well had he committed this 
 edition also to the same flaming sepulchre in which 
 he tried to bury the wiser words of his predecessor. 
 But the evil work was printed at Edinburgh in 1597. 
 Its title was simply " Dcemonologie." Though 
 weak in thought, it was strong in credulity; and 
 its royal authorship made it a great power in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 Mr. Wright, in his "Narratives" (London, 1851), 
 has traced the origin of this momentous produc- 
 tion to the troubles that attended the wedding-trip 
 of the royal pair ! 
 
 James was married to Anne by proxy while she 
 was still in her Danish home, and he in the lonely 
 palace of Holyrood. As might be expected, the 
 royal spouse awaited the arrival of the new queen 
 with a good deal of impatience. The return voyage 
 of the noble earl who stood as proxy, and was bear- 
 ing the youthful bride to her anxious lord, was 
 vexatiously delayed. The sea was tempestuous : 
 the ship acted as if she were " bewitched." They 
 were driven, at length, in great stress, upon the 
 bleak coasts of Norway. The bad weather con-
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 83 
 
 tinued : there was danger that they would be 
 obliged to stay there during the entire winter. 
 James could not endure the thought of so long a 
 solitude. Summoning up more courage than it 
 was his wont to exhibit, he set off in search of his 
 wandering wife. He found her, at last, in Norway. 
 They were again married in persona, and, at the 
 re-appearance of spring, re-embarked for Scotland. 
 After a very rough passage, they landed in the 
 dominions of the king, May i, 1590. 
 
 But such supernatural calamities as they had 
 endured involved something mysterious. James 
 was convinced that there was a conspiracy against 
 him. Dr. Fian, a renowned magician, " register to 
 the Devil," and his two hundred witches, had been 
 plotting to drown their connubial Majesties ere they 
 reached terra firma ! Accordingly they were brought 
 to trial. 
 
 The examination of these sad wretches then re- 
 sounded through the kingdom. Agnes Sampsoun 
 testified that she had acted in the following remark- 
 able scene : Accompanied with a great many 
 other witches, she put to sea one evening, each 
 riding in " a riddle or cive, with flaggons of wine, 
 making merrie and drinking by the way in the same 
 riddles or cives " until they reached a kirk some
 
 84 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 distance up the coast. There they landed, " took 
 hands on the lande and daunced this reill or short 
 daunce, singing all with one voice, 
 
 ' Commer goe ye before, commer goe ye, 
 Gif ye wall not goe before commer let me.' " 
 
 Then she confessed that one " Geillis Duncane 
 did goe before them playing this reill or daunce, 
 upon a small trumpe called a Jewes trumpe." 
 James was so excited at this point, that he sent for 
 Duncane, and obliged him to play over before the 
 royal court the witches' reel upon a venerable jews- 
 harp ! 
 
 He expressed at one time some doubts about 
 the truth of Agnes's marvellous stories. Thereupon 
 " she declared unto him the very words which had 
 passed between him and his Queen on the first 
 night of their marriage, with their answers each to 
 other ; whereat the King wondered greatly, and 
 swore by the living God, that he believed all the 
 Devils in Hell could not have discovered the 
 same." 
 
 Though we are told the King " took great de- 
 light " in this trial, and " was made in a wonderful ad- 
 miration," the end of it was tragical in the extreme. 
 Dr. Fian was " byrnt " at the stake. Agnes Samp-
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 85 
 
 soun was taken to the castle-hill, and there bound 
 and " wirreit " (worried) until she was dead ; and 
 almost every one of the two hundred expired in 
 fearful tortures. 
 
 It was as a commentary on this great event that 
 the royal treatise was composed. Such a work 
 could but have a wide and melancholy effect. It 
 riveted the fetters of superstition upon the minds 
 of the people ; and, before a twelvemonth had 
 elapsed, it issued in the destruction of no less 
 than six hundred human lives, condemned for this 
 offence of witchcraft. 
 
 James came to the throne of England in 1603 ; 
 and he immediately propagated through his newly- 
 acquired realms the favorite hobby to which his 
 weak mind was devoted. In the preface of a fresh 
 edition, he informs us of " the fearfull abounding at 
 this time in this country of these detestible slaves 
 of the devil, the witches or enchanters." In conse- 
 quence of this declaration, and of his unflagging 
 zeal, a new and terrible law was enacted, which 
 was not repealed for a hundred and fifty years. - It 
 was the statute which formed the legal basis of the 
 proceedings at Salem. 
 
 Is it strange that measures like these, which 
 stamped a vulgar superstition with the authority of
 
 86 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 law, and the advocacy of a king, should have ren- 
 dered the belief in it well-nigh universal ? But, 
 prior to this, witchcraft had been pronounced a 
 capital crime by the most venerated courts of the 
 earth. 
 
 In 1484, the papal see (Innocent VIII.) issued a 
 bull, charging the Holy Inquisition to pursue with 
 pitiless vengeance all persons guilty of this iniquity. 
 Successive popes re-affirmed his command ; and the 
 pages of history are covered with the horrors which 
 marked its bloody progress down the years for two 
 centuries and a half. During the short space of 
 three months in 1515, five hundred witches were 
 burned at the stake in happy Geneva. For one 
 hundred years, 1580 to 1680, in Germany alone, 
 one thousand persons, on an average, every year 
 were exterminated by the ravages of this imagined 
 iniquity. Before its fatal march was checked, one 
 hundred thousand souls had suffered judicial mur- 
 der in that one country alone. Does this mammoth 
 fact suffer the New-England tragedy of 1692 to 
 stand out in solitary blackness ? 
 
 Executions in Germany had hardly begun to 
 abate, when they had entirely ceased in America. 
 As late as 1 749, a poor and witless nun closed the 
 horrid drama there, by offering up her harmless 
 life.
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 87 
 
 In the reign of Henry VIII., witchcraft was de- 
 clared a felony of the deepest dye ; and Elizabeth 
 signed a bill that imposed upon it the penalty of 
 death. It was not, however, until the accession of 
 James that this monster chimera began its wild riot 
 with thirty thousand victims, not one of whom it 
 released until it had crushed him to death. In 1647, 
 nearly two hundred were executed in England for 
 the crime of witchcraft. Upon the testimony of 
 Mr. Upham, we learn that several suffered death in 
 Great Britain but a few years before the proceed- 
 ings commenced at Salem. Quite a number 
 there were tried by the water ordeal, and were 
 drowned at the very time the executions were occur- 
 ring here ; and, some years after the New World had 
 wholly recovered from its fatal mistake, a large 
 number were sentenced and put to death in various 
 parts of Europe. It cannot be said that these for- 
 eign trials were conducted in any particular less 
 perversely than our own. Cruelty and superstition 
 joined hand in hand ; and together they were ran- 
 ging over the earth. 
 
 The frenzies which have generally laid hold of 
 the popular mind have been unable to assail the 
 best and loftiest spirits of the age. Far over the 
 surging error these clear-eyed watchers have sent
 
 88 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION.. 
 
 forth a voice of wisdom, to guard men against the 
 threatening storm. But, in our studies of the witch- 
 craft delusion, we discover no such pleasing relief. 
 Rare spirits, the most gifted minds of the age in 
 which they lived, have all been involved in this 
 great ocean of error, which at one time enveloped 
 the world. In 1665, Sir Matthew Hale, who was 
 universally admired for the purity of his character, 
 and his varied and ample culture, presided at a 
 trial in Suffolk County, England, which condemned 
 two witches. The proceedings at this court, both on 
 the part of the judge and the accusers, seemed to be 
 patterns of what followed at Salem. The afflicted 
 fell in fearful convulsions upon the floor. They 
 were dumb and deaf and blind in turn, or all at 
 once. They clenched their hands so furiously that 
 the strongest men could not open them ; but, if by 
 chance they barely touched the accused, on a sud- 
 den they would fly apart, and the sufferers would 
 utter piercing shrieks. 
 
 In order to see that this was not a counterfeit 
 distemper and cure, several honored gentlemen took 
 a child, while she was in her fit, to the farther part 
 of the hall, and then conveyed Amy Duny, one of 
 the accused, from the bar out towards the suffering 
 maid. Having blinded her eyes with an apron, a
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 89 
 
 third person touched her hand as though he was the 
 accused. It produced the same effect as the touch 
 of the witch did, before the court ! " whereupon the 
 gentlemen returned, protesting that they did believe 
 the whole transaction of this business was a mere 
 imposture." Notwithstanding this, the prisoners 
 were condemned. Sir Thomas Browne, a name of 
 unrivalled celebrity in his time, appeared in the midst 
 of this trial, and, having been invited to address 
 the court, in an elaborate and ardent speech threw 
 the whole weight of his powerful influence against 
 the accused, and in favor of the reality of witch- 
 craft. There seemed to be but one verdict from 
 all concerned. 
 
 Reports of this famous trial were found in New 
 England in 1692. There is no doubt but that it was 
 regarded as the main text-book at the Salem court. 
 
 Men eminent in the church likewise held to this 
 belief. Richard Baxter, our own beloved guide to 
 the " Saint's Everlasting Rest," says, in his " Dying 
 Thoughts," " I have many convincing proofs of 
 witches, the contracts they have made with devils, 
 and the power they have received from them." 
 Don Villalpando, Advocate Royal in Spain, issued 
 a work of four volumes on "Demonology and 
 Natural Magic." It was republished by order of 
 
 8*
 
 9O THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 Philip III., under sanction of the Holy Inquisition. 
 It established and defined the doctrines of witch- 
 craft held by all the Catholic world. There was 
 no particular of the proceedings here which does 
 not find ample support in its details. 
 
 Towards the close of the century, several saga- 
 cious men probed deep the prevalent error, and, by 
 their publications upon the subject, endeavored to 
 drive it from the popular belief. But their argu- 
 ments were not regarded until after the catastrophe 
 was passed. Every man of this class was called 
 " a witch advocate," or " a gallant of the old 
 hags." Such reformers were, therefore, few and 
 cautious. Witchcraft had the credence of Sir 
 Edward Coke. It was countenanced by Lord 
 Bacon himself. It was maintained in an imposing 
 convocation of bishops. It was preached by the 
 clergy everywhere. More, Calamy, Glanvil, and 
 Perkins, honored ministers, wrote in support of its 
 reality. The educated classes of America were no 
 exceptions to this army of errorists. Nurtured in 
 European institutions, of course they entertained 
 European views. Jurists, physicians, magistrates, 
 and clergymen, and the populace almost without 
 dissent, believed in the theory and the practice of 
 witchcraft, through and through. What was to
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 91 
 
 protect a devoted village, when all the fury of this 
 heaven-wide cloud should burst upon it ? 
 
 Salem Village was the fair country seat of Salem 
 Town. It was five miles distant, on the fruitful 
 plains now occupied by Danvers Centre. It af- 
 forded rich farm-lands to the wealthier settlers, such 
 as Governor Bellingham and Townsend Bishop. 
 They still retained each his " house in town." But 
 as the forests were cleared away, and the engross- 
 ments of agriculture increased, a neighborhood of 
 yeomen was formed there which gradually became 
 a permanent and independent community. In 
 1671, about forty years after the first grants of land 
 were made, they organized a new church, separating 
 from the First Church. Its ancient records, still 
 preserved, are the chief source of the information 
 we have concerning the witchcraft proceedings. 
 
 Among these sturdy freeholders, pending the set- 
 tlement of boundary lines, many contests had 
 arisen. Such had been the limitless expanse at the 
 disposal of the court, that these lines in the original 
 grants had been carelessly defined. But, with 
 British vigor, each pioneer soon began to insist upon 
 his personal rights. In some cases, trees were 
 felled in the day-time by one claimant, which would
 
 92 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 be dragged off and stored for fuel in the night-time 
 by his rival ! Real violence occasionally ensued, 
 as well as costly suits, which, of course, they could 
 ill afford to meet. " The farmers " and the " Tops- 
 field men" became at length embroiled in bitter 
 feuds. These tended to sour their spirits, and were 
 the seeds, it is thought, of the wild animosities of 
 the witchcraft delusion. Parish troubles had also 
 distracted the new society. The first minister, 
 Rev. J. Bayley, through the eight years of his labor, 
 encountered determined opposition. The second 
 minister, Rev. George Burroughs, was opposed by 
 the friends of the first (antiquus mos /), and, after a 
 three years' struggle, had fled to a mission-field on 
 the shores of Casco Bay. He was a modest, 
 pure-hearted man, small of stature, but of amazing 
 physical strength. Certain prodigious feats which 
 he performed were afterwards the occasion of his 
 doom. They were regarded as proof that he had 
 a diabolical confederate. He was summoned back 
 from Maine to be put to death, on the charge of 
 witchcraft. Deodat Lawson was his successor. 
 His pastorate was brief; but afterwards, at the very 
 crisis of the spreading frenzy, he returned, and 
 preached to his former people a sermon full of lurid 
 picturings of the power of Satan, and stern denun-
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 93 
 
 ciations of those in league with him. The whole 
 populace rushed from the church " exceedingly mad 
 against " the accused. 
 
 In 1688 Rev. Samuel Parris became the pastor. 
 1 This is a name more loaded with odium than any 
 other of the age. He was the pontifex maximus 
 of the witchcraft disasters. It is not for us, how- 
 ever, to judge his heart. By no means does it ap- 
 pear that Mr. Upham is right in referring his ac- 
 tivity, through all this terrific drama, to avaricious 
 cunning, and a reckless determination to carry his 
 point in transactions with the parish. Many things 
 look suspicious, it is true ; but there is not one that 
 is absolutely decisive. He was a designing and 
 crafty man, no doubt ; a great manager, ambitious 
 for power, and vain of his parts. He was, besides, 
 very credulous and fanatical. He was a victim of 
 superstition. But so was also the age in which he 
 lived. Have we not seen that the whole world was 
 tinctured with the very infatuation which swept this 
 people on to utmost ruin ? Our main position is, 
 that, in similar circumstances, arrest, conviction, and 
 death would have followed the charge of witchcraft 
 as swiftly and certainly in any other village of 
 Christendom as in Salem. The reasoning would 
 have been the same everywhere. It would have
 
 94 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 been this : " Witchcraft, according to divine and 
 human law, is a capital offence : the accused are 
 guilty of it ; therefore let them be executed." 
 
 Prior to 1692, there had been executions for 
 witchcraft in America. Margaret Jones was sen- 
 tenced by the saintly John Winthrop, and hung in 
 Boston in 1648. Ann Hibbins was sentenced by 
 the revered John Endicott, and hung in 1655. The 
 gentle William Penn presided at a trial in Phila- 
 delphia which convicted two Swedish women of the 
 same offence. They escaped death by a loose phrase 
 in their indictment, and not by any special favor on 
 the part of their judge. Two residents of Spring- 
 field were condemned in 1652. They likewise 
 evaded the penalty. Elizabeth Morse of Rowley 
 would have been executed in 1680 but for the re- 
 prieve of the governor. 
 
 A case, however, occurred in Boston in 1688, 
 which is supposed to have had direct bearing upon 
 the Salem trials. 
 
 A fierce old woman, named Glover, in round 
 language had cursed a little girl in Mr. Goodwin's 
 family for accusing her daughter, who was a laun- 
 dress, of stealing some linen. " She was one of 
 the wild Irish," and no doubt, in her maternal exas- 
 peration, spoke with great vehemence. Soon after,
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 95 
 
 the child fell into fits, which seemed " to have 
 something diabolical in them." One of the sisters 
 and two brothers followed her example, and, though 
 apart from each other, would suffer in just the same 
 place at the same time. " Their jaws, necks, 
 shoulders, elbows, and all their joints," says Hutch- 
 inson, " would appear to be dislocated ; and they 
 would make piteous outcries of burnings, cuts, and 
 blows," the marks of which were afterwards visi- 
 ble. The wrathful woman was charged with " be- 
 witching " them. She was accordingly executed. 
 
 The " Goodwin children " became so celebrated 
 for their marvellous antics, that Cotton Mather took 
 one of them into his own family, and endeavored 
 faithfully to exorcise her. She must have been a 
 wonderful adept in the histrionic art. For many 
 days she played upon the good man's credulity with 
 amusing adroitness. She gayly read off the abomi- 
 nable books of Quakers and Catholics, which the 
 doctor earnestly hated ; but she could not decipher a 
 syllable of the " Assembly's Catechism." She was 
 struck dead at the sight of Cotton's " Milk for 
 Babes," but doted on the "Oxford Jests." She 
 was much in love with the Prayer-Book, but she 
 shivered with horror at sight of the Holy Bible. 
 She would whistle and sing and yell at family
 
 96 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 prayers. She would riot in contortions and pains 
 of every description, now choked by an invisible 
 noose, now baked in an invisible oven, now chilled 
 in invisible water, while her face would blacken or 
 her skin would perspire with heat, or her shivering 
 body would be covered with goose-flesh. Mr. 
 Mather prepared a sermon upon the mysterious 
 developments. It created a profound impression. 
 It was published in a pamphlet, and distributed. 
 It easily filled the country with the belief that this 
 child was indeed " bewitched," the victim of dia- 
 bolical power. 
 
 Such accounts were considered ominous. They 
 were thought to be proofs that Satan, with his con- 
 federate fiends, was about to make an onslaught 
 upon the New World. Baffled in the other hemis- 
 phere, he would make his last stronghold in this. 
 Here was to be fought his most desperate battle 
 for final supremacy. The fearful struggle was at 
 hand. 
 
 Such was the state of feeling, and the posture of 
 affairs, when the outbreak occurred at Salem Vil- 
 lage. Theories of law and medicine and theology, 
 the world over, recognized the reality of witchcraft. 
 The popular belief in it was intense enough to sus- 
 tain almost any imposition bearing its name. The
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 97 
 
 community likewise had local traits which were 
 peculiarly foreboding when considered in connec- 
 tion with such a superstition. They had the vigor 
 of pioneers, and the unfaltering resolution of free- 
 men. They had been accustomed to strife. They 
 had been hardened by what they felt to be wrongs. 
 Above all, they had the moral force of the Puritans. 
 This had brought them across the ocean. This 
 had armed them against the savage. This had 
 carried them through many a conflict. They be- 
 lieved that a new struggle was at hand, more 
 momentous than any in which they had engaged. 
 They believed in God. He was the object of heart- 
 felt homage. His cause was theirs. His cause 
 was imperilled, and to its rescue they rallied. 
 
 Said an author of that day, " The New England- 
 ers are a people of God ; settled in those which were 
 once the Devil's territories, he has tryed all sorts 
 of methods to overturn this poor Plantation, and so 
 much of the Church as was ' fled into this wilder- 
 ness.' But all those Attempts of Hell have hitherto 
 been Abortive : wherefore the Devil is now mak- 
 ing one Attempt more upon us, an Attempt more 
 difficult, more surprising, more snarled with unin- 
 telligible circumstances, than any that we have 
 hitherto encountered ; an Attempt so critical that if
 
 98 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon 
 Days, with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under 
 our Feet." 
 
 During the witchcraft delusion, they felt that they 
 were confronting, face to face, the Prince of the 
 power of the air. With this one idea, a stern, self- 
 sacrificing people threw themselves into the pitiless 
 contest. They determined to do battle to the end, 
 to give no quarter till their detested foe was 
 driven from the land. 
 
 We do well, as students of history, to pause for 
 a moment, and admire the uncompromising consis- 
 tency of those brave men. We have charges of 
 cruelty and fanaticism to bring against them. But 
 there was heroism, yes, devotion, in the stand they 
 took. We see them grievously deceived ; but we 
 need not be blind to the virtues they still possessed. 
 The distressing details cause us to exclaim against 
 strange excesses, and condemn what seemed to be 
 obstinate blindness. We must not apologize for 
 their wanton disregard of counter evidence, and the 
 dictates of common humanity. We cannot dis- 
 abuse our minds of the belief that some of the 
 wily actors wilfully plotted to keep up the excite- 
 ment, and took advantage of this fatal frenzy for 
 objects of personal spite ; but, with no desire to
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 99 
 
 extenuate the follies or denythe sins of our fore- 
 fathers, in reference to the mass of those who were 
 implicated in it we must still give it the name of 
 " the witchcraft delusion." 
 
 An orator before the Historical Society finely 
 said, " The witchcraft madness was no doubt a 
 dreadful passage in a majestic movement of events. 
 Even here, however, the great difference between 
 the people of Massachusetts, and of other communi- 
 ties whose history bears no such stain, is, that what 
 both alike professed to believe, the former more 
 consistently and honestly acted out. Deplore as we 
 may the grievous infatuation, still, more even than 
 we lament and condemn that, may we not find 
 cause to applaud the brave and constant spirit 
 that never would quail before the awful delusion 
 that possessed it ? Set upon by invisible and super- 
 natural foes, they thought of nothing but prompt 
 defiance and inflexible resistance, and the victory 
 which God would give his people." 
 
 Mr. Parris had in his household at Salem Vil- 
 lage several slaves. Two of them were "John 
 Indian" and his wife Tituba. These two were 
 natives of South America. They were saturated 
 with the wild superstitions of the race from which 
 they sprang. They infused pagan elements into
 
 ioo THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 the existing fanaticism, even if they did not origi- 
 nate the entire convulsion. But a circle of young 
 girls, with whom these swarthy creatures had mys- 
 terious interviews, formed the habit of coming regu- 
 larly to the parsonage during the winter of 1691 
 92. This circle used to meet for the purpose of 
 practising the arts of palmistry and magic. They 
 resembled as nearly as possible " the circle " of the 
 modern Spiritualists. They were, however, chil- 
 dren ; and wise warning or sound correction would 
 have broken up their illicit proceedings. Cotton 
 Mather advised, at the beginning, that they be sep- 
 arated " far asunder, and he would singly provide 
 for six of them." Had this advice been followed, it 
 would have averted all the horrors of the Salem 
 Witchcraft. In addition to the Indian slaves, the 
 names of eleven girls are given who were members 
 of the circle. They are referred to continually, dur- 
 ing the prosecutions, as the "afflicted children." 
 Elizabeth Parris was the daughter of the minister. 
 Although only nine years of age, she conducted a 
 leading part in the early stages of the affair. Before 
 it had progressed very far, however, she was judi- 
 ciously sent away from home. Abigail Williams, her 
 cousin, eleven years of age, lived in Mr. Parris's 
 family, and, from the beginning to the end, was one
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 101 
 
 of the most audacious accusers. Ann Putnam, 
 twelve years of age, the daughter of the parish- 
 clerk, must have been a child of astonishing pre- 
 cocity. Her prominence was so odious throughout, 
 that the tomb in which she was laid, at an early 
 death, has been religiously shunned ever since. The 
 dying have often requested not to be laid by her 
 side. Mary Wolcott was the daughter of the 
 nearest neighbor, and the " way through " from her 
 father's house to the parsonage plat can still be 
 detected. She does not appear to have been the 
 worst of the miscreant set, although her activity 
 was noted and disastrous. Mercy Lewis, seventeen 
 years of age, was a servant-girl. Her unfaltering 
 purpose and skilful management throughout made 
 her responsible for much of the distress which came 
 upon the whole community. Others are less con- 
 spicuous than these ; but the whole circle seemed to 
 move with entire unanimity in acts of reckless pre- 
 sumption and appalling malignity. " For myself," 
 says Mr. Upham, " I am unable to determine how 
 much in their conduct may be attributed to credu- 
 lity, hallucination, and the delirium of excitement, 
 or to deliberate malice and falsehood." 
 
 A few females, more elderly than these, occasion- 
 ally attended the mischievous meetings, and finally
 
 iO2 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 became active in the accusations. Before the winter 
 had passed, the circle had grown to be experts in 
 the illicit arts they practised ; and at times they 
 would display their attainments, to the great amaze- 
 ment of spectators. They crept slyly into holes, 
 dropped unconscious upon the floor, made antic and 
 unnatural gestures, and could writhe in dreadful 
 contortions, and utter piercing outcries. At first no 
 mention was made of their tormentors. Gradually, 
 however, the attention of the families with which 
 they met was fully awakened ; and ere long the whole 
 neighborhood was filled with the story of their un- 
 accountable behavior. Their condition became 
 worse and worse. They excited the deepest sym- 
 pathy. Dr. Gregg, the village physician, was called. 
 Baffled by the unknown symptoms, he gave it as 
 his grave opinion that they were " under an evil 
 hand;" that is, that they were "bewitched." This 
 professional decision spread like wildfire. The 
 whole country around became alarmed. Witch- 
 craft was the all-engrossing tropic. Multitudes 
 thronged in to witness the tremendous convulsions 
 of the " afflicted children." A love of notoriety 
 seemed suddenly to awake within them. From 
 that time, perhaps it was their controlling motive. 
 Soon they extended their operations to more public
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 103 
 
 places. Their loud outcries and awful fits dis- 
 turbed prayer-meetings and the services of the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 On the 2oth of March, Mr. Lawson preached in 
 his old pulpit. He has left a description of his ex- 
 perience which only an eye-witness could have com- 
 posed. " There were sundry of the afflicted persons 
 at meeting. They had several sore fits in the time 
 of publick worship, which did something interrupt 
 me in my first prayer, being so unusual. After 
 psalms was sung, Abigail Williams said to me, 
 ' Now stand up, and name your text ! ' And, after 
 it was read, ' It is a long text.' In the begin- 
 ning of sermon, Mrs. Pope, a woman afflicted, 
 said to me, ' Now, there is enough of that ! ' And 
 in the afternoon, Abigail Williams, upon my refer- 
 ring to my doctrine, said to me, ' I know no doc- 
 trine you had ; if you did name one, I forgot it.' 
 In sermon time, when Goodwife C. [orey] was pres- 
 ent, Abigail Williams called out, ' Look where 
 Goodwife C. sits on the beam, her yellow bird 
 betwixt her fingers ' ! Anne Putman, another girl 
 afflicted, said, ' There was a yellow bird sat on my 
 hat as it hung on the pin in the pulpit !' But those 
 that were by restrained her from speaking loud 
 about it."
 
 IO4 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 No wonder such performances " something inter- 
 rupted " him, as they did all others in that sober 
 Puritan audience. Instead of rebuking the dis- 
 turbers, however, almost every one regarded them 
 with pity and solemn awe. A few good people ven- 
 tured to express their disapproval of the rude 
 behavior. They would not go to church to listen 
 to such outrageous insolence. 
 
 They were marked by the offenders for subse- 
 quent vengeance. Mr. Parris was greatly troubled. 
 He summoned the neighboring ministers to his 
 own house ; and there they spent a day in fasting 
 and prayer, in view of these strange dispensations. 
 The children performed before their eyes. The 
 reverend gentlemen were amazed and confounded. 
 They solemnly re-affirmed the opinion of Dr. Gregg. 
 They declared it to be their full belief that the Evil 
 One had confederates in that community, bewitch- 
 ing these poor girls. This second professional 
 decision banished every doubt. " Society at once 
 was dissolved into a wild and excited crowd. Men 
 and women left their fields, their houses, their em- 
 ployments, to witness the awful unveiling of the 
 demoniac power, and to behold the workings of 
 Satan himself upon the victims of his wrath." 
 
 Prompted by the principle that the Devil could
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 105 
 
 operate upon human affairs only through the instru- 
 mentality of human beings in league with himself, 
 the question in all minds, and on every tongue, at 
 once became, " Who, who, are those among us in 
 league with him, afflicting these girls ? " For some 
 time, the girls held back their charges. The excite- 
 ment deepened, and the importunity increased. 
 " Who is it that bewitches you ? " .was the demand 
 now pressing in from every side. At length, timing 
 the announcement with exquisite delicacy, and se- 
 lecting the first victims with admirable skill, one 
 after another cried out, " Good," " Osburn," " Tit- 
 uba." Sarah Good was a poor, " bed-rid " beggar, 
 broken down by ill-fortune, and the object already of 
 many suspicions. Sarah Osburn, " a melancholy, 
 distracted old woman," had lost her good estate by 
 an unhappy second marriage. Her mind was 
 shattered. For a long time, she had been unable 
 to take care of herself. Gossip about her was rife 
 in the community. Tituba was the Indian woman 
 mentioned before. 
 
 On the 2 Qth of February, 1692, warrants were 
 duly issued against these three persons. The com- 
 plainants were four respectable men in the village. 
 It was no child's play with them : it was a war with 
 the Prince of hell. When the examinations came
 
 io.6 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 off, a vast crowd assembled to witness them. It 
 was necessary to adjourn from the village-tavern to 
 the meeting-house. John Hathorne and Jonathan 
 Corwin, two of the most reputable magistrates of 
 the Commonwealth, conducted the examinations. 
 With great gravity, and a solemn prayer, they en- 
 tered upon their task. Sarah Good was first put 
 upon the stand. The examination proceeded in 
 the following form. The prisoner stands on a plat- 
 form in front of the excited assembly. The af- 
 flicted children are all present, and alert. The 
 magistrate puts his questions in this amazing 
 style, 
 
 " Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you famili- 
 arity with ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 " Have you made no contracts with the Devil ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Why do you hurt these children ? " 
 
 "I do not hurt them." 
 
 At certain junctures, the girls fall down, "dread- 
 fully tortured and tormented," not being able to 
 look at the accused without a spasm. If, however, 
 they are brought to her, and made to touch her, the 
 diabolical fluid immediately darts back into the 
 witch ; and they are relieved at once. Such acting
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 107 
 
 could but have an overwhelming effect upon the 
 court and all assembled. The proceedings would 
 then go forward as though conviction was a fore- 
 gone conclusion, and the evidence of the afflicted 
 children absolute proof. 
 
 Tituba, the slave-woman, though denying at first 
 the charge of witchcraft, afterwards acknowledged 
 it. They had searched her body, and found sever- 
 al hard scars. They were said to be made by the 
 Devil, but were, in reality, produced by the sting of 
 the Spaniard's whip in South America. She had 
 obeyed, however, " the black man with a book." 
 But she renounced her compact with him, and all 
 its horrible obligations. She described minutely 
 her infernal operations ; and by her strange and aw- 
 ful fancies, suggested by her heathen youth, added 
 much to the terrors of the occasion. Her behav- 
 ior was probably a part of the plot to drive on the 
 delusion. As soon as she confessed, the afflicted 
 children were calm. These three were all commit- 
 ted to jail for trial. 
 
 Among the evidences of witchcraft, one was the 
 "witch-mark." The Devil was supposed to affix 
 this to the bodies of his confederates, as a seal, 
 and afterwards that spot would become discolored 
 or callous. The law provides that it shall be
 
 io8 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 searched for. At Salem, a committee for each 
 sect permanently discharged this odious and cruel 
 office. They would test the supposed teat by 
 running a pin through it. Some such dead or 
 darkened spot could be found on almost any 
 person. 
 
 Another class of testimony was called " spectre- 
 evidence." It was supposed that the witches could 
 go to those whom they wished to afflict, in the like- 
 ness of any animal, a dog, a hog, a cat, a rat, 
 a toad ; or any birds, particularly yellow-birds. 
 They could likewise go in their own apparition, 
 however far away their actual body was. This 
 power was also recognized in the books of law. 
 With such evidence admitted, the defence of an 
 alibi was entirely void ; and no charge could be 
 disproved which the imagination could invent. 
 
 A witch could also act upon her victims at a dis- 
 tance by means of "puppets." These were little 
 bundles of cloth in any form, or amorphous. What- 
 ever was done to the puppet would be suffered by 
 the party bewitched ; for example, a pin stuck in 
 it would pierce the flesh of the person. A bottle 
 of old rusty pins is preserved in the Court House at 
 Salem, said to have been taken from puppets and 
 the bodies of the afflicted children.
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 109 
 
 But to resume : the excitement was not quelled 
 by these commitments. Tituba had mentioned 
 four others as engaged with her in their Satanic 
 occupations. Two were already in chains. Who 
 were the other two? The girls continued to be 
 tortured. Ere long, " they cried out upon " another : 
 this was Martha Corey, a pious, sweet-tempered 
 lady, wife of old Giles Corey. Her only fault was 
 her disapproval of the actions of the girls. She 
 also was committed ; the accusers, at her examina- 
 tion, executing some of their rarest feats. The 
 success they achieved in this case emboldened 
 them. Their next victim was a lady -without a 
 superior in social esteem and religious character, 
 Rebecca Nourse, a venerated mother in Israel. 
 Several times during the examination, the magis- 
 trates seemed about to give way to the moral effect 
 of her conscious innocence : it was only by the 
 most tumultuous convulsions that the accusers 
 could keep them firm. She was at length com- 
 mitted. 
 
 All caution seemed now to be abandoned. A 
 mere infant, four years old, was next imprisoned 
 for the crime. The Devil had effected a lodgement 
 in Salem Village : this was the overwhelming 
 thought in every mind. At this juncture, Deodat
 
 no THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 Lawson arrived in town, and preached his ever- 
 memorable sermon. 
 
 He took for his text Zechariah iii. 2. He pic- 
 tured the grim warfare of Satan.: he called upon 
 God's people to rally against him. The effect of 
 his discourse was immense : awe, anger, consterna- 
 tion, and frantic zeal, all were augmented in the 
 hearts of the hearers. 
 
 It was truly a masterly effort : its imagery was 
 sublime and terrific. The summons to confront 
 unflinchingly their hellish foe was in the highest 
 style of impassioned eloquence. At once it was 
 printed, and distributed throughout the land. Mr. 
 Parris also took occasion to preach upon the all- 
 engrossing theme. 
 
 It was sacramental day. He announced for his 
 text this awful charge, " Have I not chosen you 
 twelve, and one of you is a devil ? " The sister of 
 Rebecca Nourse was present, a noble-hearted 
 sister, who could not endure such a fling against 
 one who had sat with her, she knew, in sincere and 
 sacred communion at the table of the Lord. She 
 was then chained in a noisome dungeon, awaiting 
 the horrors of a frenzied tribunal. Sarah Cloyse's 
 heart was full : she could not stay in such a lying 
 company. She rose at once, and passed out of
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 1 1 1 
 
 the meeting-house to her home. The congregation 
 were greatly amazed ; but so runs the relation of 
 one who was there. " She was afterwards seen by 
 some in their fits, who said, ' O Goodwife Cloyse, I 
 did not think to see you here ! ' And, being at their 
 red bread and drink [that is, at a diabolical feast], 
 said to her, ' Is this a time to receive the sacra- 
 ment? You ran away on the Lord's day, and 
 scorned to receive it in the meeting-house ; and is 
 this a time to receive it ? I wonder at you.' " Well 
 might they " wonder " at the bare idea of a pure 
 and pious lady like Sarah Cloyse mingling in the 
 festival of devils ? Why did it not seem so strange 
 to her neighbors as to be wholly incredible ? 
 
 But charges were renewed against prominent 
 persons. A special " council " came down from 
 the General Court to examine them. This was an 
 imposing procedure. The council consisted of 
 the deputy governor and five other magistrates. 
 They came displaying all the insignia of office, 
 and forms of State. It was a great day for Salem. 
 The entire population were out. They crowded into 
 " the great and spacious meeting-house," where the 
 grand judiciary was held, instead of at the village. 
 At such a crisis as this, nothing could have been 
 more imprudent than such an extraordinary act.
 
 ii2 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 It added fuel to the flaming excitement of the 
 masses who gazed upon it. For a preliminary ex- 
 amination, simply with a view to commitment, it 
 was unnecessary and reprehensible in the highest 
 degree. Sarah Cloyse was the accused, together 
 with Elizabeth Proctor. The inquisition of the 
 " council " was teasing and frightful. The powers of 
 the prisoners failed. Sarah Cloyse sank down "in 
 a dying fainting fit," and weakly called for water. 
 " Her spirit," screamed the band of the afflicted, 
 " is gone to prison to her sister Nourse " ! Goodwife 
 Proctor was charged with having urged one of the 
 girls to sign the Devil's book. " Dear child ! " ex- 
 claimed the accused in her agony, " it is not so." 
 " There is another judgment, dear child ! " Then the 
 accused turned upon her husband, and declared that 
 he, too, was a wizard. All three were committed, 
 April 2, 1692. 
 
 The witnesses, in their evidence, had ascribed 
 most blasphemous actions to the prisoners. They 
 painted the infernal sacrament in lurid colors. 
 The Devil was ministrant, these poor creatures 
 were deaconesses, and their own blood was the wine. 
 It is passing strange that their youthful imagina- 
 tions were capable of inventing such awful false- 
 hoods. As the testimony came out, all present were
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 113 
 
 horrified : it tended to deepen their resolve to pun- 
 ish the fiendish crime. Four more were committed 
 April 19. One of these four was old Giles Corey. 
 This man had a peculiar repute in our gossiping 
 community. He was a singular character. Some- 
 how he had got a bad name. But it does not ap- 
 pear that he deserved it. He simply dared to dis- 
 regard the conventional manners of the day. He 
 ventured to be odd. He cared not a whit for the 
 small talk and the small customs of those about 
 him. Until 1659, his home was in Salem Town. 
 For thirty years, however, he had been a farmer of 
 the Village. The farm contained more than a 
 hundred acres of excellent land, and he owned 
 meadows also near Ipswich River. The con- 
 tract with his carpenter for building his house is 
 still preserved. It was to be " twenty feet in 
 length, fifteen in breadth, and eight feet stud." 
 Mr. Upham, in his vivid manner, refers in this con- 
 nection, to the general size of houses in those days. 
 One of Winthrop's letters describes a tempest, 
 " than which I never observed a greater," which 
 blew off the roof of Lady Moody's house and all 
 the chimney above it. So sound were the slumbers 
 of that peaceful time, that " Ten persons lay under 
 it, and knew not of it till they arose in the morn- 
 
 o*
 
 1 14 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 ing ! " But the fact comes out, that this fine lady's 
 house was flat roofed, of one story, and nine feet 
 in height ! 
 
 Corey had had many a rough passage in his life. 
 He was a bold man, of exuberant physical strength. 
 He was not inclined to surrender his point, even 
 though he was obliged to resort to violence in 
 order to maintain it. Yet he had a generous and 
 forgiving nature. He was careless about avoiding 
 " the appearance of evil." Going into town one 
 day with a cart-load of wood, a neighbor met him, 
 and shouted out, " How now, Giles : wilt thou never 
 leave thy old trade ? Thou hast got some of my 
 wood here upon thy cart." Corey answered " True, 
 I did take two or three sticks, to lay behind the cart 
 to ease the oxen because they bore too hard." 
 Such peccadilloes, repeated frequently, furnished 
 constant material for the scandal-mongers. 
 
 A hired man, named Goodell, fell sick at his 
 house in the winter of 1676. He was at length 
 carried home to his friends by Goodwife Corey. 
 Soon after he died. It was whispered about, that 
 he had come to his death in consequence of an 
 awful flogging, given him in a passion by Corey. 
 Corey was brought to trial for murder. There 
 was evidence to show that the poor man had
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 115 
 
 been beaten in his own family after his return ; 
 though it could not be denied, that, for a certain 
 fault, he had been severely chastised by his former 
 master. Yet as no cause for ill-will was manifest, 
 and Corey's wife had given him the best of care, 
 notwithstanding the prejudice against the accused, 
 he was finally discharged. This affair came up 
 again, however, in a far different court from that. 
 
 John Gloyd, another laborer on his farm, was 
 a man of sullen and unforgiving temper. They had 
 fallen out with each other a number of times ; but, in 
 1678, a quarrel between them about wages had 
 grown so fierce that they resorted to the law. The 
 case was, however, taken out of court, and put into 
 the hands of referees, mutually chosen. It was 
 decided against Corey by the voice of John Proc- 
 ter, who was the friend of Gloyd. The loser 
 expressed himself perfectly satisfied, and, in his 
 elastic, generous way, enjoyed a treat over the af- 
 fair with Procter ; " for they drank wine together, 
 and Procter paid for part, and Corey for part." 
 
 But a few days had passed, when, one morning 
 before daylight, Procter's house took fire, and was 
 burned to the ground. There seemed to be men 
 about the neighborhood always eager to lay every 
 evil thing that happened to poor Corey's account
 
 ii6 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 He was accused of being the incendiary, and was 
 indicted for trial. By incontestible evidence, an 
 alibi was proved, and Corey was triumphantly 
 acquitted. He thought however, from this high- 
 handed attempt to wrong and ruin him, and from 
 statements at the trial hinting at other current 
 calumnies, that it was time for him to put a stop to 
 the malignant and mischievous slanders which had 
 been flying about concerning him. He instituted 
 proceedings against quite a number of witnesses 
 for defamation of character, and recovered damages 
 against them all. This sharp course, however, did 
 not put his maligners into permanent good humor. 
 
 But, for fourteen years after this event, the hard- 
 working but healthy old man lived in comparative 
 peace. He was now an octogenarian. He had 
 been married three times. Four daughters, chil- 
 dren of his first wife, were all the mistresses of 
 happy households around him. His present wife, 
 Martha, was a woman of prayer. Through her 
 loving influence, no doubt, the weather-beaten, 
 " weary " husband was led to the throne of heaven- 
 ly grace. The consolations of religion began to 
 cheer his long-troubled heart. When the silver of 
 more than eighty years was mantling his head, he 
 advanced to the altar, and made a profession of his
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 117 
 
 faith in the Saviour. In his confession to the First 
 Church, the one with which he united, he spoke 
 of his " scandalous life." His humble words were 
 entirely satisfactory to the Christians there, and he 
 was received to cordial fellowship. His trials 
 seemed at length to have reached a termination. 
 With a peaceful hope in a happy home he was pre- 
 paring to die. But, just before he entered the 
 haven of eternal repose, a storm, more lurid with 
 lightnings and more furious with deadly gales 
 than he had ever encountered, lashed the sea 
 around him, and drove him in its awful rage right 
 upon the rocks. He was wrecked in the fearful 
 surge. 
 
 When his wife was first arraigned for witchcraft, 
 he was himself a firm believer in the prevalent de- 
 lusion. She, however, had been one of the two or 
 three persons, in the entire community who had the 
 sense and boldness to declare " that she did not 
 think that there were any witches." A committee 
 from the church called upon her with suspicions 
 raised by the outcries of the afflicted children. She 
 received them in a smiling manner, and said, " I 
 know what you are come for : you are come to talk 
 with me about being a witch ; but I am none " ! 
 They did not " get on " much in their interview,
 
 n8 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 and left her thoroughly convinced of her knowledge 
 of the Scriptures and of her sprightly politeness. 
 
 But her " shape " continued to torment the girls. 
 She was brought before the magistrates, and, des- 
 pite all her virtues, was promptly committed. 
 While undergoing her final trial, with serene and 
 firm composure, she re-asserted her disbelief in the 
 delusion. All the wiles of the crafty girls could not 
 confound her ; and she listened to her sentence 
 with a heart undismayed by the terrors it de- 
 nounced. 
 
 "Sister Martha Corey," runs a record in Mr. 
 Parris's Church book, after her condemnation, " was 
 this day in public, by a general consent, voted to be 
 excommunicated out of the Church." The pastor 
 and three brethren carried the vote to Salem prison. 
 " Whereupon, after a little discourse, and after 
 prayer, which she was -willing to decline, the 
 dreadful sentence of excommunication was pro- 
 nounced against her." At length she was carried 
 to the scaffold. Calef tells us that " Martha Corey, 
 protesting her innocence, concluded her life with an 
 eminent prayer upon the ladder." 
 
 We cannot refrain from inserting here part of a 
 very quaint but plaintive ballad, which appeared 
 in a Salem paper many a long day since. How
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 119 
 
 true it is that pleasantry and pathos may be linked 
 in one subtle thought ! Irony may also hide a keen 
 point in the feathery stuff. The author is name- 
 less. The piece has been rescued from oblivion by 
 the vigilant Mr. Drake, and is in the safe custody 
 of his opulent work on Witchcraft. We have room 
 for a few lines only. 
 
 Come all New England men, 
 And hearken unto me, 
 And I will tell what did befalle 
 Upon y e Gallows tree. 
 
 In Salem Village was the place, 
 As I did heare them saye, 
 And Goodwyfe Corey was her name, 
 Upon that paynfull daye. 
 
 This Goody Corey was a witch, 
 The people did believe, 
 Afflicting of the Godly ones, 
 Did make them sadlie grieve. 
 
 There were two pyous matron dames, 
 And goodly maidens three, 
 That cryed upon this heynous witch 
 As you shall quicklie see. 
 
 And when before the magistrates 
 For tryall she did stand,
 
 I2O THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 This wicked witch did lye to them 
 While holding up her hand. 
 
 " I pray you all good gentlemen, 
 Come listen unto me, 
 I never harmed those two Goodwyfep 
 Nor yet these Children three. 
 
 " I call upon my Saviour Lord 
 (Blasphemously she sayed), 
 As witness of my innocence, 
 In this my hour of need." 
 
 The Godly ministers were shockt, 
 This witch prayer for to hear. 
 And some did see y*> Black Man there 
 A whispering in her eare. 
 
 She rent her cloaths, she tore her haire, 
 And lowdly she did crye, 
 " May Christ forgive mine enemies 
 When I am called to dye ! " 
 
 Dame Corey lived but six days more, 
 But six days more lived she, 
 For she was hung at Gallows Hill 
 Upon y e Locust tree. 
 
 No doubt the husband of Martha Corey was at 
 first much shocked at her repudiation of all belief 
 in the doctrine of witchcraft. It was thought by
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 121 
 
 the most eminent minds that such unbelief was 
 little better than blank infidelity. 
 
 A member of the Royal Society in England, but 
 a few years before, had written, " Atheism is begun 
 in Sadducism. And those that dare not bluntly 
 say, ' There is no God,' content themselves, for a 
 fair step and introduction, to deny there are spirits 
 or witches ! " Richard Baxter said, about the re- 
 port concerning the " Goodwin children " " The 
 evidence is so convincing, that he must be a very 
 obdurate Sadducee who will not believe." 
 
 Around the family altar, therefore, Giles Corey 
 had probably spoken sharply to his wife, and re- 
 buked her for this lack of faith, in his rough, 
 impetuous way. Perhaps he had likewise made 
 imprudent speeches abroad, and, in his vexation, 
 had fallen into his life-long phrases, saying that 
 "she acted as though the Devil was in her." 
 
 A strange paper has been preserved, which was 
 evidently prepared for use against her at her trial. 
 It was abandoned, however ; for although it shows 
 that Giles believed himself, and every thing about 
 him, to be " bewitched," he was not willing to say 
 that his own wife was the witch. It runs thus : 
 
 " The evidence of Giles Corey testifieth and saith, that 
 last Saturday evening, sitting by the fire, my wife asked me
 
 122 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 to go to bed. I told her I would go to prayer, and when I 
 went to prayer I could not utter my desires with any sense, 
 nor open my mouth to speak. My wife did perceive it, and 
 came toward me, and said she was coming to me. After 
 this, in a little space, I did according to my measure attend 
 the duty. Some time last week, I fetched an ox, well, out 
 of the woods, about noon, and he laying down in the yard I 
 went to raise him, to yoke him ; but he could not rise, but 
 dragged his hinder parts as if he had been hip-shot But 
 after, did rise. Another time, going to my duties, I was in- 
 terrupted for a space, but afterwards I was helped according 
 to my poor measure. My wife hath been wont to set up 
 after I went to bed ; and I have perceived her to kneel down 
 on the hearth, as if she was at prayer, but heard nothing! " 
 
 Such a document could serve no purpose at 
 court ; but what an inlook it gives to the fireside 
 of those two artless old people ! There was the 
 calm and experienced Christian matron, making the 
 " hearth " her closet of prayer, at an hour when no 
 one would intrude ; and there was the bluff, un- 
 chastened convert, who had come late to a religious 
 life, whose mouth had long been used to sentiments 
 not akin to devotion at all. No wonder the poor 
 old man was not an adept in " uttering his desires "! 
 
 Why the girls selected him for their outcries can- 
 not be told ? Perhaps, since his wife's actual com- 
 mitment, a re-action had taken place, and he had
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 123 
 
 manifested his abhorrence of their duplicity. Cer- 
 tain it is, that, if he felt this abhorrence, he would 
 have expressed it without fear or favor. His ex- 
 amination was in the meeting-house of the Village. 
 
 "Giles Corey," said Hathorne, the magistrate, 
 " you are brought before authority upon high sus- 
 picion of sundry acts of witchcraft. Now tell us 
 the truth in this matter." 
 
 " I hope through the goodness of God I shall ; 
 for that matter I never had no hand in, in my life." 
 
 " Which of you have seen this man hurt you ? " 
 
 Four of the girls at once affirmed that he had 
 hurt them. And they proved it on the spot by 
 spasms and awful convulsions. 
 
 " What was the reason," said Goodwife Bibber, 
 " that you were frightened in the cow-house ? " 
 And then the questionist was suddenly seized with 
 a violent fit. " I do not know any thing that fright- 
 ened me ! " All the afflicted were seized, now, with 
 fits, and troubled with pinches. Then the court 
 ordered his hands to be tied. " What ! is it not 
 enough to act witchcraft at other times, but must 
 you do it now, in face of authority ? " 
 
 Overwhelmed by the dread displays before him, 
 involving so much mystery, and evoking the sympa- 
 thy, even of his aged heart, he answers, " I am a poor
 
 124 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 creature, and cannot help it." Upon the motion of 
 his head again, they had their heads and necks 
 affected. Thomas Gold testified that he heard 
 him say that he knew enough against his wife that 
 would do her business. " What was that you knew 
 against your wife ? " The holy courage of his 
 spirit began to rise. The reply befitted the most 
 heroic martyr of that sad time. " IVhy, that of liv- 
 ing to God, and dying to sin ! " " One of his hands 
 was let go, and several were afflicted. He held 
 his head on one side, and then the heads of several 
 of the afflicted were held on one side. He drew in 
 his cheeks, and the cheeks of the afflicted were 
 suckt in." 
 
 One testified something about "temptations he 
 had had to make way with himself." This revealed 
 the fact that a dark struggle had been going on in 
 his mind. Perhaps he was almost driven to suicide 
 by the recollection of the little part he had per- 
 formed in bringing his wife into her awful condition, 
 and his greater part in driving on the public frenzy. 
 Little did he think then of that mode of " making 
 way with himself," to which his splendid will at 
 length should rise, and which was ever after to be 
 lauded in the annals of this delusion as its most 
 guiltless and glorious act.
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 125 
 
 At the same time he was committed, Mary War- 
 ren was sent to jail. She had been one of the 
 most violent accusers. She was suddenly one of 
 the accused. What was meant by this new move ? 
 She would be a spy in the enemies' camp, to warn 
 and aid the girls from that point. Her part was 
 planned for her, no doubt, by the malignant 
 " circle." She acted it out with deliberate cunning 
 from the first. Her apparent defection would in 
 clicate, it was thought, that the girls were not acting 
 in concert. She suffered herself to be convicted, 
 that she might avert suspicion from the rest, while 
 they continued to play their high and dangerous 
 game. Four prisoners, who were comrades with her 
 during her confinement, made a deposition to this 
 effect : 
 
 " We heard Mary Warren several times say, that the ma- 
 gistrates might as well examine Keysar's daughter, that had 
 been distracted many years, and take notice of what she 
 said, as well as any of the afflicted persons." 
 
 As if to avert suspicion of her own imposture, 
 she spoke afterwards of her distempered head, 
 which from time to time would be filled with 
 shapes that tortured her. But, when her public 
 trial came on, she was wholly on her guard. She 
 solemnly affirmed that she had formed a league
 
 126 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 with Satan. She had " signed his book." At the 
 timely moment, however, then and there, she re- 
 nounced her league forevermore. Her confession 
 was wild with fragments of imagined conversation 
 with the Evil One, and was often broken by fits of 
 long duration. Mr. Parris, reporter of the case, 
 makes this memorandum : 
 
 " Note, that not one of the sufferers was afflicted during 
 her examination, after once she begun to confess, though 
 they were tormented before." 
 
 Her struggle with Satan was long and fearful, 
 before she could tear herself from his desperate 
 clutches. At length she was victorious ; and then 
 she gave such a circumstantial and horrid expose^ 
 of the sins of witchcraft, that it confirmed the faith 
 of the eager listeners in its reality, and cleared her 
 easily of all its punishments. She acted her part 
 with dexterous address. 
 
 In descriptions of the diabolical sacrament, a 
 " man in black " had been spoken of. Who was 
 this? High and dreadful disclosures were ex- 
 pected in the response. They were truly at hand, 
 when Rev. George Burroughs was declared a witch, 
 this term being then applied indiscriminately to 
 males and females. He was laboring in his hum-
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 127 
 
 ble field in Maine ; but they despatched the sheriff, 
 arrested him rudely, and committed him for trial. 
 Nothing could have prompted this selection but 
 pure and simple malice. There was existing, how- 
 ever, an old parish-grudge, which leagued well with a 
 desire on the part of the accusers to show the 
 fearful power they could wield. 
 
 The prisons now were almost full of those who 
 had " signed the book " of the Devil, putting them- 
 selves in solemn federation with him. 
 
 In the town of Andover, a good man's wife fell 
 sick. He became convinced, by the physician at- 
 tending, that she was "bewitched." He drove 
 down to Salem Village to ascertain from the " af- 
 flicted children " who was her tormentor. Two of 
 them returned with him to Andover. " Never," 
 says Mr. Upham, " did a place receive such fatal 
 visitors. The Grecian horse did not bring greater 
 consternation to Ancient Ilium. Immediately after 
 their arrival, they succeeded in getting more than 
 fifty of the inhabitants into prison, several of whom 
 were hanged ! " Panic spread everywhere. The idea 
 prevailed, that the only way to prevent an accusa- 
 tion was to become an accuser. The confessing 
 witches were thus greatly multiplied, and the power 
 of the delusion mightily strengthened. Fear was 
 on every face, and distress in every heart.
 
 128 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 Many quit the country altogether. Business 
 was at a stand-still. The conviction settled upon 
 the people that an infernal confederacy had got 
 foothold in the land, and was carrying it over to 
 the power of the Evil One. 
 
 At this crisis, May 14, 1692, Sir William Phips 
 arrived in Boston with a most momentous commis- 
 sion. The government, under the old charter, was 
 abrogated ; and the new charter, making Massa- 
 chusetts a royal province, instead of an indepen- 
 dent colony, commenced its unwelcome sway. 
 
 Rev. Increase Mather, who had been the agent 
 of the State at the royal court for five years, was 
 invited to nominate the officers of the incoming 
 administration. Phips was appointed governor at 
 his suggestion. Concerning his character as a 
 ruler, Hutchinson slyly says, " His conduct when 
 captain of a ship-of-war is represented as very 
 much to his advantage ; but further talents were 
 necessary for the good government of a province." 
 Had he been a great-hearted man, he might, in 
 the exercise of his newly-acquired power, have 
 done much to assuage the growing frenzy. Instead 
 of that, he sent a petty, cruel order down to the 
 jails of Salem, requiring that those imprisoned for 
 witchcraft should be thrown into irons at once.
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 129 
 
 A scrap from the account-book of John Arnold, 
 the jailer, has recently been found. It has these 
 significant items : " May 23. To shackles for ten 
 prisoners ; " " May 29. To one pair of irons for 
 Mary Cox ; " &c. At this time, the prisons in all 
 the vicinity of Salem were full. There had been 
 no final trials at all. Urged by a sense of the 
 emergency, although he had no shadow of author- 
 ity for the act, the governor constituted a special 
 Court of Oyer and Terminer. It was made up of 
 seven judges, armed with his commissions. The 
 deputy -governor, William Stoughton, was chief-jus- 
 tice : most of its members were citizens of Boston. 
 They were impartial men, if any could be found ; 
 although, like their fellow-citizens, they were bond- 
 slaves of the delusion. 
 
 The court was opened at Salem in the first week 
 of June. And now the scenes of the preliminary 
 examinations were to be repeated at a more august 
 tribunal. The character of the evidence was the 
 same ; and the futility of all defence, with the exist- 
 ing laws, was quite as apparent. 
 
 Bridget Bishop was the only one tried at the first 
 session. She was a weak, irascible woman, although 
 in respectable life, occupying the very house in 
 town where the honored author, Mr. Upham, after-
 
 130 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 wards resided. She was convicted by the fits and 
 fancies of the girls ; and, within a week, the dread- 
 ful sentence was executed on Gallows, or Witch, 
 Hill. 
 
 After this first brief act of the bloody drama on 
 which they had entered, the court withdrew to take 
 breath. They wished to examine their position. 
 It was found that there was no statute in the Prov- 
 ince in actual force against witchcraft at the time 
 of the commitments. The old enactment of James 
 the First was regarded as sufficient authority. Just 
 as the special court were upon the point of adjourn- 
 ing, the General Court revived the laws of the first 
 charter, dated 1641. The one against witches was 
 very concise : " If any man or woman be a witch 
 (that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit), 
 they shall be put to death." These laws were 
 drawn up by the celebrated John Cotton. They 
 are termed "The Body of Liberties." In the mar- 
 gin, against this paragraph, are the references, Deut. 
 xiii. 6-10, xvii. 2-6 ; Ex. xxii. 20. By this action, 
 the Legislature adopted the proceedings a* Salem 
 as a Provincial matter, for which the immediate 
 locality was not responsible, but the country at 
 large. 
 
 During the recess of the court, the Governor
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 131 
 
 and Council presented a request to the prominent 
 clergymen of the metropolis for their advice in 
 the existing state of things. Mr. Hutchinson gives 
 us the famous document entire. It conveys the 
 calm opinions of the cultivated and pious men of 
 the day. 
 
 The Return of several Ministers consulted by his Excellency 
 and the Honorable Council upon the present Witchcraft in 
 
 Salem Village. 
 
 BOSTON, June 15, 1692. 
 
 I. The afflicted state of our poor neighbors that are now 
 suffering by molestations from the invisible world, we ap- 
 prehend so deplorable, that we think their condition calls for 
 the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities. 
 
 This justified their intervention. 
 
 II. We cannot but, with all thankfulness, acknowledge 
 the success which the merciful God has given to the sedu- 
 lous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers to 
 defeat the abominable witchcrafts which have been commit- 
 ted in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of 
 those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be 
 perfected. 
 
 This was a courtly compliment. 
 
 III. We judge, that, in the prosecution of these and all 
 such witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite 
 caution, lest, by too much credulity for things received only 
 upon the DeviPs authority, there be a door opened for a long 
 train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage 
 over us ; for we should not be ignorant of his devices.
 
 132 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 This is royal advice. Would that it had been 
 followed ! 
 
 IV. As, in complaints upon witchcraft, there may be mat- 
 ters of inquiry which do not amount unto matters of pre- 
 sumption, and there may be matters of presumption which 
 yet may not be matters of conviction, so it is necessary that 
 all proceedings thereabout be managed with exceeding ten- 
 derness toward those that may be complained of, especially 
 if they have been persons formerly of an unblemished repu- 
 tation. 
 
 Shall we find this " tenderness " in the Salem 
 court ? 
 
 V. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances 
 of such as may lye under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, 
 we could wish that there may be admitted as little as possi- 
 ble of such noise, company, and openness, as may too hastily 
 expose them that are examined, and that there may be noth- 
 ing used as a test for the trial of the suspected, .the lawful- 
 ness whereof may be doubted by the people of God, but 
 that the directions given by such judicious writers as Per- 
 kins and Bernard may be observed. 
 
 Perkins gives sixteen rules for discovering 
 witches epitomized in " Wonders of the Invisible 
 World," London, 1862, p. 30. Any man to-day 
 would willingly be tried by them, if fairly applied. 
 
 VI. Presumptions, whereupon persons maybe committed, 
 and much more convictions, whereupon persons may be 
 condemned as guilty of witchcraft, ought certainly to be
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 133 
 
 more considerable than barely the accused persons being 
 represented by a spectre unto the afflicted ; inasmuch as it is 
 an undoubted and a notorious thing, that a daemon may by 
 God's permission appear even to ill purposes in the shape 
 of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man. Nor can we esteem 
 alterations made in the sufferers by a look or touch of the 
 accused to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently 
 liable to be abused by the Devil's legerdemain. 
 
 The ministers fought against "spectre evi- 
 dence ; " but it was in fact the only fatal evidence 
 that was rendered at all. 
 
 VII. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given 
 the devils, by our disbelieving those testimonies, whose whole 
 force and strength is from them alone, may not put a period 
 unto the progress of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in 
 the accusation of so many persons, whereof some, we hope, 
 are yet clear from the great transactions laid to their charge. 
 
 " A period " would have been put to it, had they 
 obeyed this clerical suggestion. 
 
 VIII. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend 
 unto the government the speedy and vigorous prosecutions 
 of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according 
 to the directions given in the laws of God, and the wholesome 
 statutes of the English nation, for the detection of witch- 
 craft. 
 
 This was the only recommendation obeyed by 
 the magistrates in any particular. 
 
 Such was the renowned " advice " of the fore-
 
 134 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 most preachers of New England to its representa- 
 tive lawyers. Are the principles here announced 
 more bitter than the practices of that bar to which 
 they were sent ? Did they aggravate the existing 
 frenzy ? Did they not rather by every paragraph, 
 except the last and those written for the sake of 
 courtesy, by every paragraph protest against the 
 legalized excess of the day ? It wrongs the minis- 
 try of New England to lay upon them a heavy bur- 
 den of blame for the agonies that were then 
 endured. They believed in witchcraft, it is true ; 
 but they always lifted their voices for moderation 
 and kindness. 
 
 Cotton Mather himself, who has been called the 
 " prime instigator " of those gloomy prosecutions, 
 was the author of this advice from the ministers. 
 In a long letter written by him, May 31, 1692, to 
 John Richards, one of the judges, before the first 
 sentence of death had been pronounced, he " most 
 humbly begs him in the management of the affair, 
 not to lay more stresse upon pure spectre testi- 
 mony than it will bear," saying, " It is very certain, 
 that the divells have sometimes represented the 
 shapes of persons not onely innocent, but also very 
 vertuous." He was even afraid of being accused 
 as an apologist of the sin. " Perhaps there are wise
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 135 
 
 and good men, that may be ready to stile him, that 
 shall advance this caution, A Witch Advocate; but, in 
 the winding up, this caution will certainly be wished 
 for." Devoutely it was wished in " the winding up " 
 that it had been heeded ! 
 
 And he even advanced the almost heretical 
 notion, that a plain confession may not prove the 
 confessor a witch. " A person of a sagacity many 
 times thirty furlongs lesse than yours, will easily 
 preceive what confession may be credible, and 
 what may be the result of only a delirious brain or 
 a discontented heart." No custom was more com- 
 mon than to test the accused, by requiring him to 
 repeat the Lord's Prayer. If he made the slightest 
 slip, it was counted as evidence against him. In 
 the preliminary trials, one had stood the embarass- 
 ing test perfectly, except that she had said unwit- 
 tingly, " Deliver us from a// evil." Here was sup- 
 posed to be a petition designedly perverted to in- 
 clude the punishment to which she was justly 
 exposed. In another attempt, she blundered more 
 impiously, saying, " Our Fatherwhich art in heaven, 
 hollowed be thy name ; " a petition that God's 
 name might be void and dishonored, and " so .a 
 curse rather than a prayer." But Cotton Mather 
 said of this experiment, " Make no evidence of it,
 
 136 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 but onely use it for confounding the lisping witches 
 to give a reason why they cannot, even with prompt- 
 ing, repeat those heavenly composures." He goes 
 one step farther, and suggests a venturesome notion 
 for his day, saying this : " It is worth considering 
 whether there be a necessity alwayes by exterpac- 
 cons by halter or fagott (to punish) every wretched 
 creature that shall be hooked into some degrees of 
 witchcraft ; what if some of the lesser criminalls be 
 onely scourged with lesser punishments ? " 
 
 This invaluable letter, which has come to light in 
 a recent publication of the Massachusetts Histori- 
 cal Society, shows conclusively that the reverend 
 author was not a hard-hearted fanatic, but an ear- 
 nest, thoughtful seeker for a bloodless deliverance 
 from the impending fury. 
 
 Thirty years after, we find him still in advance of 
 his age, advocating, at the risk of his life, the practice 
 of inoculation as a safeguard against small-pox. 
 So odious was this reform to the medical world, 
 that one man, at least, became his mortal foe. He 
 threw into his room a hand-grenade, which would 
 certainly have killed him, had it chanced to ex- 
 plode. 
 
 But his indefatigable pen, which, before he died, 
 had written 382 books, wrote on unchecked. This
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 137 
 
 resolute sentiment was then inscribed : " A spiteful 
 town and poisoned country can't extinguish my 
 poor studies to do good in the world ! " Says Mr. 
 Poole, " The ministers generally, and he espe- 
 cially, favored inoculation, basing their arguments 
 on medical science. The doctors, with one excep- 
 tion, opposed it with the utmost vehemence, on 
 theological grounds. The ministers and the 
 lawyers had stood in about this relation respecting 
 the legality of witch trials." 
 
 The delicate sense of Mr. Longfellow, whose me- 
 lodious verse suggested this little book, discerned, 
 among the first of modern scholars, the real truth 
 about Mather's relation to witchcraft. The words 
 he put into the mouth of this remarkable man are 
 not sharp and bloody words, but those which are 
 eloquent with great compassion and grief. 
 
 The frequent journeys which he made at that time 
 from Boston to Salem were designed for the tender 
 ministrations of the prison-cell, and not to goad 
 on the attorneys of judgment. Their pace was too 
 swift for him already ; and we have the most affect- 
 ing evidence that he was often welcomed to the 
 dungeons of the doomed. 
 
 But we do not claim for the author of " Wonders 
 of the Invisible World " exemption from the com-
 
 138 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 mon delusion. If he was more kind, he was also 
 more credulous, than most of his time. He be- 
 lieved that devils were actually abroad in many a 
 tangible human frame. This business, he wrote, 
 though " managed in imagination, yet may not be 
 called imaginary. The effects are dreadfully reall. 
 Our deare neighbours are most really tormented, 
 really murdered, and really acquainted with hidden 
 things, which are afterwards proved plainly to have 
 been realityes." 
 
 But is it wise for us of to-day to laugh at the 
 notion that there was any thing mysterious in 
 those appalling scenes ? A merry old English judge 
 might dispose of a crazy and scared wretch, who 
 was pronounced a witch because of the romantic 
 fact that she had ridden a broomstick through 
 the air, with such a happy sentence as this : 
 " That she was free to go, and to ride broom- 
 sticks as often as she pleased ; for he knew no 
 law against it " ! But here was something more 
 than broomsticks and aerial journeys. Preternat- 
 ural events were exhibited daily before the eyes of 
 multitudes of sensible and honest people. No 
 doubt there was much fraud and mischief mingled 
 in with these manoeuvres, especially of the girls; 
 but, sifting this completely out by rigid research, will
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 139 
 
 there not still remain a residuum of unexplained 
 mystery ? 
 
 A contemporary author, whom Mr. Chandler 
 quotes approvingly, cannot be charged with great 
 extravagance in the following assumption : " Flashy 
 people may burlesque these things ; but when hun- 
 dreds of the most sober people, in a country where 
 they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest 
 of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the 
 absurd and froward spirit of Sadducism can ques- 
 tion them." 
 
 It is a doctrine of calm philosophy, that the 
 spiritual and natural worlds, acting and re-acting 
 upon each other, are separated by the thinnest veil. 
 While enthusiasm alone credits all the marvels 
 which fly to our ears, that is a stolid mind which 
 denies the existence of every thing it is not able to 
 fathom. Would not men be better to believe in all 
 the sprites that have peopled the realm of fancy, 
 rather than to believe that there is nothing in the 
 universe but dust ? When our senses are shut, 
 there is a world to be observed, which is beyond 
 the senses when they are keen-sighted and awake. 
 With the glad vision of eyeless Milton, we rejoice 
 to find companions in every solitude. It is a beau- 
 tiful thought,
 
 140 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 " Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
 Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." 
 
 In the last week of June the court met again : 
 five were tried and convicted at this session. 
 They were all hanged July 19. One of these 
 was Rebecca Nourse. Her distinguished virtues 
 and saint-like bearing staggered the jurors, as they 
 had the magistrates before. In spite of the mon- 
 strous testimony of the accusers, the clamors of the 
 outside crowd, and the bias of the court itself, they 
 brought in a verdict of " Not guilty." The wrest- 
 ing of judgment at this point seems amazing to us. 
 Immediately all the children and others afflicted, 
 within and without the court, set up a hideous out- 
 cry, and wallowed in horrible antics. One judge ex- 
 pressed himself dissatisfied, then another. Then the 
 chief-justice, who, though a man of rectitude, always 
 seemed to be bent on convictions, suggested that 
 one petty item of testimony had not been duly con- 
 sidered, and sent the jury out again: they returned 
 with a verdict of " Guilty." Surely justice had fled 
 from that court. 
 
 There is a tradition, that the body of this poor 
 woman was sought out, under the secrecy of night, 
 and borne in tender arms across the fields to the 
 burial-plot next her own home. Her sunken grave
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 141 
 
 still is pointed out, and the oaken house in which 
 she lived still stands. 
 
 On the 5th of August, six were tried and con- 
 demned. These were all executed on the igth, 
 excepting one. Rev. George Burroughs, John 
 Proctor, and George Jacobs, Sen., were among this 
 ill-fated band. 
 
 Mr. Burroughs was condemned for " certain de- 
 testable arts, called witchcraft and sorceries, by 
 which Anne Putnam was and is tortured, af- 
 flicted, pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented." 
 At times the children appeared to be struck dumb 
 by his malign power. "What hinders these wit- 
 nesses," demanded Stoughton, " from giving their 
 testimony ? " "I suppose the devil," Burroughs 
 replied. " How comes the devil," was the grim 
 retort, " so loath to have any testimony borne 
 against you ? " He had murdered his two wives, 
 who had already died, and also the wife and 
 daughter of Lawson, his successor as village-pastor. 
 The man was thunderstruck at such unheard- 
 of lies. Said Ann, " One wife he stabbed under 
 her left arm, and put a piece of sealing-wax on the 
 wound ; and she pulled aside the winding-sheet, and 
 showed me the place " ! He was chaplain at the 
 diabolical banquets of the time. And with these
 
 142 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 spectral fancies were also mingled strange stories 
 about his monstrous strength, " being a little man." 
 He had " lifted a gun of six-foot barrel, putting the 
 fore-finger of his right hand into the muzzle of said 
 gun," and holding it out at arms' length, " only with 
 that finger." He had also taken up "a full 
 barrel of molasses with but two of the fingers of one 
 of his hands in the bung," and carried it " from the 
 stage-head to the door at the end of the stage." It 
 is doubtful whether he was condemned for murder 
 or for lifting a "barrel of molasses." 
 
 In company with others he rode in a cart to the 
 fatal hill. Upon the ladder he made a calm and 
 powerful address, refuting the folly of the day 
 " with such solemn and serious expressions as were 
 the admiration of all present." He then offered 
 up a wonderful prayer, concluding with the Lord's 
 prayer, which he repeated correctly with thrilling 
 intonations. Such was his " fervency of spirit," 
 that many were affected to tears, and were at one 
 time resolved to prevent the execution. But, at 
 this moment, " the accusers said the black man 
 stood by and dictated to him ; " and so the rising 
 sympathy was quelled, and the man of God went to 
 his long home. 
 
 It was well known that a confession of witchcraft,
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 143 
 
 and a formal renunciation of it, would clear the 
 accused from its fatal consequences : those only 
 who denied their guilt were obdurate wretches ; 
 others relenting were released. " More than one 
 twenty confessed that they had signed unto a book 
 which the devil showed them, and engaged in his 
 hellish design of bewitching and ruining our land." 
 Now, we need not assume that these confessions 
 were the result solely of the instinct of self-preser- 
 vation. They were not all deliberate falsehoods. 
 In that dread storm of delusion, when masses of 
 horror hung like inky clouds over every home, and 
 a thousand preternatural sounds reverberated in 
 every ear; when a wife and a daughter beloved 
 could accuse the husband and father of the accursed 
 sin, and nearest and dearest friends as was ac- 
 tually the case in several instances were the 
 most positive in their charges, especially when 
 summoned to confront at the court a multitude of 
 faces, pale with fury or with fright, and to account 
 for the more appalling and ghastly antics of the 
 girls, it is more than probable that some were self- 
 deceived, and really believed that they were agents 
 of the diabolical powers. But still more honor is 
 due to those who stood firm in such a trial. They 
 proved themselves possessors of minds that were
 
 144 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 wise and strongly poised, and of characters that 
 were truly sublime. The men who steadily refused 
 to take that lie upon their lips earned well the 
 name of martyrs, noble martyrs to the very spirit 
 of truth. Witch Hill is the Smithfield of America. 
 A petition, signed by a great majority of the 
 neighbors of Proctor, was presented at court in 
 his behalf : it is evidence to show that the severities 
 of the prosecutions are chargeable, not more upon 
 the community of Salem than upon the government 
 at large. He never would have been condemned 
 had their will had its way. Mr. Proctor wrote a 
 letter from his prison-cell to five of the most prom- 
 inent clergymen in the State, imploring their in- 
 tervention for a new trial, and a change of magis- 
 trates. These clergymen were known to be 
 opposed to the excesses of the prosecutions. In- 
 crease Mather was supposed, in heart, to 
 disapprove them altogether. Samuel Williard, of 
 the Old South Church in Boston, " one of the most 
 revered and beloved ministers in the land," was so 
 notable in his opposition to them, that the " afflicted 
 children " actually began to " cry out upon " him. 
 They were speedily hushed by the incredulous 
 court. " Indeed," says Mr. Upham, " the truth is, 
 that the judges, magistrates, and legislature were
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 145 
 
 as much to blame in this whole business as the 
 ministers, and much more slow to come to their 
 senses and make amends for their wrong-doing." 
 
 During September, fifteen were tried and con- 
 victed : eight of these were executed Sept. 
 22. Rev. Mr. Noyes, of the First Church in 
 Salem, turning to the strangled bodies, is repre- 
 sented to have said, " What a sad thing it is to see 
 eight firebrands of hell hanging there ! " It was the 
 last time that his eyes were pained by such a sight. 
 
 Three days before, old Giles Corey had suffered 
 a fate that shocked the hearts of all good men. 
 He had refused to plead to his indictment, and so 
 was pressed to death. 
 
 His object in this refusal was to prevent a trial. 
 He knew it could issue in nothing but a conviction. 
 It would certainly fasten upon his name the stigma 
 of a felony : it would forfeit the right of his chil- 
 dren to his estates. 
 
 During the time of his imprisonment, waves of 
 painful remembrance had rolled upon his soul. 
 His life, he thought, had issued in little good ; he 
 had been always misunderstood ; his influence had 
 been all wrong, though his heart was often right. 
 Since his conversion, there had not been time 
 enough to approve the sincerity of his new profes-
 
 146 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 sion. And then that martyred wife ! Though he 
 had never been opposed to her personally, yet the 
 delusion to which he had at first lent himself so 
 violently had swept her away. Two of his sons- 
 in-law turned against her in that hour of her ex- 
 tremity. With unnatural hearts, they even urged 
 her conviction. Sadly musing on all these facts, 
 his mind gradually settled upon a lofty resolve. 
 He determined to expiate his errors by a deed that 
 would challenge the respect of his fellow-men, and 
 that would perhaps, with an irresistible voice, 
 rebuke the iniquitous court : at least, it would save 
 his property to his children. Forthwith he caused 
 a deed to be drawn up in the prison. It was done 
 with the utmost formality, to make certain the effect. 
 It conveyed to Cleaves and Moulton, the two sons 
 who had been true to his wife, his entire estate of 
 " movables and lands." It was signed and sealed 
 in the presence of competent witnesses, and duly 
 recorded as a complete transaction. Then he was 
 ready to attest his determination not to break this 
 instrument by the attainder of a felon's death. 
 He made up his mind not to be tried. 
 
 He was summoned before the court to plead to 
 his indictment, " Guilty," or " Not Guilty." He ut- 
 tered not one word in reply. There he stood mute
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 147 
 
 as a stone : and no power upon the earth could 
 unseal his iron lips. To have pleaded would have 
 recognized the legality of that tribunal, and have 
 made him, in some sense, a party to their proceed- 
 ings. They represented the passions of the de- 
 luded multitude. He defied their right to give 
 judgment. That dumb mouth spoke in thunder- 
 tones of remonstrance. 
 
 When Giles Corey took this immovable position, 
 but one course seemed open to the court. The 
 usage in England was to give the recusant three 
 separate opportunities to plead, each time announ- 
 cing the dread penalty of continued contumacy. 
 After the third trial, if he still remained speechless, 
 he was remanded to prison, with the sentence of 
 peine forte et dure. He would then be thrown upon 
 his back, and weights of stone or iron would be 
 piled upon him. There he would be kept, some- 
 times for days, the weights gradually increasing, 
 until the sufferer had consented to plead, or had 
 been pressed to death. 
 
 No details of this enormity once only commit- 
 ted in our land have come from the recess of that 
 prison-cell in Salem. The rumor is, that the clos- 
 ing scene of the tragedy was in a secluded field near 
 by ; that the heroic man told them it was no use
 
 148 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 to expect him to plead, they might as well pile on 
 the rocks at once. And so they did ; and so he 
 died, an old man of more than eighty-one 
 years, braving the utmost torture that the human 
 frame can bear, until his body was crushed, and 
 his unconquered spirit had fled forever away. 
 
 A part of the weird ditty quoted before refers 
 to this heroic death : 
 
 " Giles Corey was a wizzard strong, 
 A stubborn wretch was he ; 
 And fitt was he to hang on high 
 Upon y 6 Locust Tree. 
 
 So when before y 6 Magistrates 
 For tryall he did come, 
 He would no true confession make, 
 But was compleately dumbe. 
 
 ' Giles Corey,' said y 6 magistrate, 
 ' What hast thou heare to pleade 
 To these who now accuse thy soule 
 Of Crymes and horrid deed ? ' 
 
 Giles Corey, he sayde not a word : 
 No single word spake he. 
 ' Giles Corey,' sayth y e magistrate, 
 ' We'll press it out of thee.' 
 
 They got them then a heavy beam ; 
 They layde it on his breast ;
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 149 
 
 They loaded it with heavy stones ; 
 And hard upon him prest. 
 
 ' More weight,' now sayd this wretched man : 
 4 More weight,' again he cryed. 
 And he did no confession make ; 
 But wickedlie he dyed." 
 
 This horrible event was one of the last acts in 
 the tragedy. It was too much for a compassion- 
 ate people longer to enact. At this point, we 
 would that the curtain of oblivion might fall, and 
 hide the whole black past from our view. But the 
 hand of remorseless history drags it aside. We 
 must recognize that past as a veritable transaction 
 in the annals of our Puritan State. 
 
 Mr. Upham makes much of the artful adroitness 
 with which the order of incidents was arranged, 
 and the supplies of excitement were furnished at 
 the critical moments throughout. He thinks that 
 some power behind the scenes, perhaps in Ann 
 Putnam's family, perhaps Mr. Parris himself, man- 
 aged the dreadful drama from the beginning. There 
 would be reasons for such a suspicion, did it not 
 involve a personal depravity so inhuman as to be 
 almost incredible. There was, indeed, a sequence 
 of events calculated every way to intensify the 
 frenzy. 
 
 '3*
 
 150 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 But at length the tide was to turn : Reason was 
 to resume her sway. The girls, over-estimating 
 their power, struck too high. They could not make 
 the people believe that Rev. Mr. Williard was guilty. 
 Then a member of Increase Mather's family was 
 accused. Then the wife of Sir William Phips 
 himself, was " cried out upon." Finally, the wife 
 of Rev. Mr. Hale of Beverly was charged with the 
 crime. This act seemed to break the spell. She 
 was a lady known in all the region round, one of 
 such eminent graces, that it could not be that she 
 was a witch. Mr. Hale had been a leading, and, 
 we believe on his own confession, a sincere prose- 
 cutor ; but he knew that his wife was innocent, and, 
 he turned at once his powerful influence against 
 the current. The accusers had perjured themselves : 
 this conviction spread suddenly through the com- 
 munity. The people had been duped. It was all 
 a mistake. Oh what a mistake ! And the wild 
 storm quelled. In a moment that mortal delirium 
 was checked. The whole delusion vanished. 
 
 Gov. Phips saw that a stop must be put to 
 the prosecutions. The Court of Oyer and Ter- 
 miner met no more. The Superior Court, which 
 met in January, 1693, convicted only three out of 
 fifty indicted. These three escaped execution.
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 151 
 
 Other trials resulted uniformly in acquittal. In 
 May, the Govenor, by proclamation, discharged all 
 who were imprisoned for witchcraft. " Such a jail- 
 delivery was never known in New England." The 
 number set at liberty was about one hundred and 
 fifty. Two had died in prison. Twenty, including 
 Giles Corey, had been executed. Many had es- 
 caped from confinement. In all, there must have 
 been nearly three hundred arrested and committed 
 for this imaginary crime. 
 
 The calamitous effects of the delusion were long 
 and painfully felt. Those pure and precious lives 
 could not be recalled to earth. From many a 
 household, domestic happiness had forever fled. 
 The retrospect indeed was fearful. Gentle women 
 had been torn from their families to suffer the 
 rigors of a public trial, if not judicial death. La- 
 boring men had been arrested in their needful toils. 
 The industry of the youthful State had been crip- 
 pled. A whole summer had been lost to the hus- 
 bandmen. Their fields had been left unploughed, 
 and they had no harvests to gather in. The 
 excitement of the hour consumed every other 
 interest. It left them destitute at its departure. ' 
 
 Confidence in the safeguards of the community 
 had also been disturbed. The protecting hand of
 
 152 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 the General Court had not defended the innocent. 
 The calm voice of science had become an accuser. 
 The white ermine of justice had been stained by 
 needless blood. The altars of our holy religion 
 had afforded no asylum to the distressed. Law- 
 givers, physicians, magistrates, and ministers, in- 
 stead of repelling the woful superstition, had 
 united together to strengthen it. It was not well 
 for the various causes they maintained. There was 
 hardly one social good which was not injured by 
 the shock it then received. 
 
 But, amid all that is sorrowful in this dark scene, 
 there are facts which stand out in the pure and 
 pleasant light. 
 
 One is the genuine penitence of those misguided 
 men. It is beautiful to us. Most of the girls 
 turned out ill. Several of them became profligates. 
 Only one, Ann Putnam, made a confession. Chief- 
 Justice Stoughton clung proudly to the position 
 that his decisions were right throughout. Some 
 few of the clergymen contended to the end of life 
 that these were veritable " wonders of the invisible 
 world." Mr. Parris was never known to repent 
 the part he performed. He was soon forced to 
 leave his charge on account of the prejudice then 
 engendered. He died in obscurity. But, with these
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 153 
 
 exceptions, the rest of the prosecutors made most 
 honorable acknowledgments of the injuries they 
 had done. Their expression of feeling was not 
 immediate. Great sorrow sealed their lips. Words, 
 they feared, would kindle the rage, rather than 
 soothe the grief, of those who had suffered such 
 remediless wrongs. But their action at length was 
 unequivocal. 
 
 In 1696, a proclamation for a public fast was 
 issued, especially in view of " the late tragedy," 
 that " God would humble us therefor, and pardon 
 all the errors of his servants and people. That 
 he would show us what we know not, and help us 
 wherein we have done amiss to do so no more." 
 It is couched throughout in most affecting terms. 
 
 Nearly fifty years after, the General Court 
 adopted a measure, appointing a committee to in- 
 quire into the condition of those families which 
 might have suffered in "the calamity of 1692;" 
 reversing the attainders, and expressing a strong 
 desire to compensate them either by money or a 
 township of land. 
 
 The two churches which had been most deeply 
 implicated tearfully revoked the sentences which 
 had excommunicated those convicted of witchcraft, 
 " that they be no longer a reproach to their mem-
 
 154 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 ory, and an occasion of grief to their children." 
 They conducted with marked kindness towards the 
 surviving friends. The clergymen of Essex County, 
 with but one or two exceptions, signed a petition, 
 begging that the infamy of a criminal trial might 
 not rest on the accused, or appear on the court- 
 records. 
 
 And the twelve jurors, whose verdict had been 
 the doom of so many guiltless persons, united in 'a 
 declaration, subscribed by them all, expressing their 
 grief for what they had done. This remarkable 
 paper exhibits the utmost tenderness of conscience, 
 and asks forgiveness of God and men in terms of 
 such heartfelt contrition that it disarms our indig- 
 nation altogether. 
 
 But the conduct of Judge Sewall claims our 
 special admiration in this respect. Through his 
 whole life, after that fatal court, he observed annu- 
 ally, in private, a day of humiliation and prayer, in 
 view of his participation in it. On the day of the 
 general Fast, he rose in his own pew in the Old 
 South, in Boston, and, before the whole congrega- 
 tion, proceeded to the pulpit, and handed the pastor 
 a written confession of the wrong into which he had 
 been led, and an earnest request that his brethren 
 would unite with him in devout supplications that
 
 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 155 
 
 it might not bring down the displeasure of God 
 upon his country, his family, or himself. He re- 
 mained standing during the public reading of the 
 paper. Such an example of noble penitence throws 
 a bright gleam over all that melancholy past 
 
 And now, may not the descendants of a godly 
 ancestry, while they recall the melancholy errors by 
 which the Fathers were beset, be allowed, in the 
 same spirit of trust which distinguished them, to 
 cherish the belief, that even this tragical calamity 
 was permitted for purposes of wisdom and benevo- 
 lence ? When such a moral desolation sweeps over 
 a great society of men, it does not leave them with- 
 out some beneficent results. The thunder-storm 
 does its work ; the atmosphere is cleared ; the sun 
 shines forth at length, revealing not only the spoils 
 of death, but the pure elements of a better life. 
 
 And what was God's good design in permitting 
 this outbreak of a fatal superstition ? For our 
 answer to such an inquiry, we are pointed at once 
 to a great fact, which soon became apparent : by 
 that very fury the superstition itself was forever ex- 
 ploded. No gentler means than this, perhaps, could 
 have accomplished such a happy end. It may be, 
 that those appalling enormities were necessary to 
 drive out the deeply-lodged error from human be-
 
 156 THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 
 
 liefs. We of the present day need not treat it with 
 ridicule or reproaches. In the seventeenth century 
 it was invested with an awful solemnity. It is 
 not for us to denounce that generation. All de- 
 lusion has not yet departed from the earth. There 
 are false and fatal systems of belief among many 
 men to-day. We pray that they may not require 
 so terrible a refutation as did this. But arguments 
 seem powerless to destroy them. In the well-chosen 
 words of another, " Error is seldom overthrown by 
 mere reasoning. It yields only to the logic of 
 events." The learning and wit of all the world 
 combined could not have rooted the witchcraft su- 
 perstition out of the minds of men. A practical 
 demonstration of its deformities and horrors, such 
 as was held up then to the view of the people 
 everywhere, alone could give it a death-blow. This 
 was the final cause of the witchcraft delusion. It 
 makes it one of the greatest landmarks in the 
 moral history of mankind It makes it a fair and 
 trustful augury that God is leading humanity, by 
 every providence, out of the gloom of ages, into the 
 cloudless lustre of the " golden year."
 
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