T S he tory of the S W T alem itch rials "We Walked In Clouds and Could Not See Our Way." Bryan F. Le Beau Creighton University Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Le Beau. Bryan F, The story of the Salem witch trials : “We walked in clouds and could not see our way.” / Bryan F. Le Beau. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-13-442542-1 1. Trials (Witchcraft)—Massachusetts—Salem. 2. Salem (Massachusetts)—History—Sources. I. Title. KFM2478.8.W5L43 1998 345.744'50288—dc21 97-5456 CIP Editor-in-Chief: Charlyce Jones Owen Production Editor: Jean Lapidus Prepress and Manufacturing Buyer: Lynn Pearlman Copy Editor: Michele Lansing Photo Research: Rona Tuccillo Cover Design: Rosemarie Votta Cover Image: A painting by T. H. Matteson, titled Examination of a Witch, 1855. Photographer: Mark Sexton. From the Peabody Essex Museum, neg. #17292. Sub-title: from John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702). (See Bibliography) This book was set in 10.5/12.5 Century Schoolbook by BookMasters, Inc. and was printed and bound by Courier Companies, Inc. The cover was printed by Phoenix Color Corp. © 1998 by Prentice-Hall, Jng> Simon & Schuster/A Viacom Company Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America 10 987654321 ISBN D-13-4425H2-1 Prentice-Hall International (UK) Limited, London Prentice-Hall of Australia Pty. Limited, Sydney Prentice-Hall Canada Inc., Toronto Prentice-Hall Hispanoamericana, S.A., Mexico Prentice-Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi Prentice-Hall of Japan, Inc., Tokyo Simon & Schuster Asia Pte. Lid., Singapore Editora Prentice-Hall do Brasil, Ltda., Rio de Janeiro To John Philip English Contents Preface ix 1 "A Biography of a Terrible But Perfectly Normal Superstition" The Origins of European Witchcraft 2 The Development of European Witchcraft 4 The Great European Witch-hunt 7 A Summary View of Witch-hunts in England 18 2 "Having Familiarity with the Devil" Witch-hunts in Seventeenth-Century America 24 vi Contents Witch-hunts in Seventeenth-Century New England 26 Some Notable Witch Trials in Seventeenth-Century New England 34 The Pattern of Witch-hunt Activity in Seventeenth-Century New England 43 3 "The Evil Hand" Is upon Them 49 A Glimpse at Salem’s Past 49 The First Signs of the Devil 60 The Hearings Begin 68 4 "Is Not This a Brand Plucked From the Burning?” 75 The Cases of Martha and Giles Corey and Dorcas Good 75 The Case of Rebecca Nurse 83 Deodat Lawson’s Lecture Day Sermon 87 Sarah Cloyce Is Charged 90 Mary Easty Is Summoned 93 The Pace Quickens 95 5 "If They Are Let Alone We Should All Be Devils and Witches" 101 The Cases of Elizabeth and John Proctor 101 Mary Warren Tries to Recant 106 Bridget Bishop and Abigail Hobbs Are Charged 109 Seven of the Nine Are Formally Charged 112 Contents vii The Ordeal Begins for Mary and Philip English 116 The “Black Minister” Is Apprehended 121 Dorcas Hoar Is Jailed 128 6 "God Will Deliver Us Out of the Hands of Unmerciful Men" 129 The Case of George Jacobs Sr. 129 John Willard Changes Sides 133 Daniel Andrew Is Charged 137 The Carys Escape 138 John Alden Is Arrested 140 The Andover Witch-hunt 142 7 "God Will Give You Blood to Drink" 152 The Court of Oyer and Terminer Is Established 155 Bridget Bishop Is Tried 158 The Court Completes Its First Session 165 The First Mass Execution and Its Effects 170 8 "What a Sad Thing It Is to See Eight Firebrands of Hell Hanging T here" 17 3 The Case of George Burroughs 173 The Proctors Are Condemned 175 The Cases of George Jacobs Sr., John Willard, and Martha Carrier 177 The Hangings of August 19 178 The Trials of September: The Cases of Martha Corey and Mary Easty 181 viii Contents The Ordeal of Giles Corey 183 The Mood in September 1692 187 The Confessions of 1692 189 9 "It Were Better That Ten Suspected Witches Should Escape, Than That One Innocent Person Should Be Condemned" Voices Are Raised in Opposition to the Trials 196 Phips Dismisses the Court of Oyer and Terminer 201 The Jails Are Emptied 206 The Superior Court of Judicature 208 The Magistrates and the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Guilty As Charged? 211 10 "Ruined in the Mistaken Management of the Terrible Affair Called Witchcraft" Cotton Mather and His “Wonders of the Invisible World” 216 Salem in Ruins 223 The Repenting Begins 230 Settling Up 236 Epilogue Notes A Select Bibliography Appendix Index Preface Between June 10 and September 22,1692, nineteen people were hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. One man was pressed to death, and over 150 others from twenty-four towns and villages went to jail, where four adults and one infant died and some remained until the following May. Compared to other witch-hunts in the Western world, it was a minor affair, or as one histo­ rian has put it, “a small incident in the history of a great superstition.”1 It was the largest of its kind in the British colonies of North America, however, and it has never lost its grip on either the popular or scholarly imagination. Historians often protest that too much time has been spent and too many pages have been written on the Salem witch trials, but they neverthe­ less continue to fill library shelves with books on the subject and to engage in sometimes heated debate over its causes. And there is no indication that any of this is likely to end soon. Nor should it, as the Salem witch trials remain one of the most interesting, indeed dramatic, as well as meaningful, episodes in history. Still, we wonder how such a tragic event could have ever occurred. It would be impossible to review all of the answers historians have offered to this question. The most persuasive have pointed to the eco­ nomic, political, social, and religious turmoil into which New England was plunged at the end of the seventeenth century; to New Englanders’ beliefs that the turmoil from which they suffered had resulted from their fall from grace as God’s chosen people, thereby making them vulnerable to a “conspiracy of witches and the Devil;” to the mistreatment of the Salem village youngsters who first fell victim to some form of psychic, if not spiritual, affliction, promoting un­ controllable fear on the part of some and fraud on the part of others; to the Court’s inappropriate use of evidence in hearings for the accused against which there was hardly any defense; to inordinate pressure brought to bear upon the accused to confess and name their accomplices in order to escape almost certain execution; and, finally, to the failure of authorities to act earlier and more deci­ sively when serious questions were raised regarding the conduct of the Court. These explanations are central to this book. As far as it is possible in any single volume, this book provides a syn­ thesis of the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials. It goes to con­ siderable length to place the events of 1692 into a historical context, both of seventeenth-century New England and of the Great European Witch-hunt, which lasted some three centuries. Without such context, when viewed in iso­ lation, the events of 1692 are impossible to understand. It employs a narra­ tive format that ^as once popular among historians but that has fallen out of ix X Preface favor. Such an approach is intended to make the subject more accessible to the reader, to recapture some of the drama that has held people spellbound for so long, and to suggest yet another way of looking at the event. As Larry Gragg has reminded us, to fiilly appreciate what happened in 1692, we must “explore the particular decisions made by the individuals involved and their conse­ quences?2 When all other avenues of interpretation have been exhausted, we are left with the fact that individuals and individual decisions matter. The first chapter of this book provides a brief history of European witch­ craft. It seeks its origins in pagan antiquity and in the perspective Christians developed about the Devil during the first centuries of its formation. It shows that European witchcraft was mostly a creation of the Early Modem Period, or from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, and that it was in this period that the practice of witchcraft came to be seen not only as dangerous but also heretical and threatening to church and state. The concluding pages of chapter one focus on witch-hunts in England, in reference to which the most direct comparisons can be made to developments in New England. Chapter two narrows our focus to seventeenth-century America. After some brief allusions to the fate of supposed witches in the Spanish, French, and Dutch, as well as other British colonies, it discusses the treatment of witches in New England. Two points are made. First, that what was commonly believed to be witchcraft was practiced in seventeenth-century New England, as it was elsewhere in the Western world. Second, although what happened in 1692 far exceeded anything that occurred before in New England, there were precedents for the Salem witch trials. The chapter concludes with some dis­ cussion of those precedents, as well as of the state of affairs in the second half of the seventeenth century that led colonists to conclude that they were the victims of diabolical assault. Chapter three discusses the origins of the Salem witch trials. It begins by exploring the difficulties Salem village faced in the closing decades of the seven­ teenth century. It explains the problems the Reverend Samuel Parris had with his congregation and community, and the goings-on in his home during the win­ ter of 1691-1692 that sparked the flames that consumed Salem village. It con­ cludes with an account of the initial terrors of the young women of Salem village and the first charges of witchcraft they brought against the most likely suspects. Chapters four through six provide an overview of the principal arrests and preliminary examinations of those taken into custody before the Salem town magistrates. They show how what might have been just another local and lim­ ited scare, similar to the dozens that had preceded it in seventeenth-century New England, became the region’s only true witch-hunt. Emphasized are key hearings, major developments, decisive decisions, and important turning points. Shown is how those charged by the young girls who led the prosecution came in­ creasingly from higher rungs on the social ladder. And, included for comparative purposes, chapter six contains an account of developments in Andover, Massa­ chusetts, the site of the single largest witch-hunt outside of Salem. Chapters seven through nine cover what were actually the Salem witch trials. It is at this juncture in the story that, although the preliminary hear­