Witchcraft

IN the seventeenth century, a belief in witches and witchcraft was almost universal. The Church of Rome, more than three hundred years ago, sanctioned punishments for the exercise of witchcraft; and after that, thousands of suspected persons were burned alive, drowned or hanged. During the sixteenth century, more than one hundred thousand accused and convicted persons perished in the flames, in Germany alone. In England, enlightened men embraced the belief. The eminent Sir Matthew Hale, who flourished during the civil war, the commonwealth and the period of the restoration of monarchy, repeatedly sentenced persons to death accused of witchcraft. The Puritans brought the belief with them to America. They established laws for the punishment of witches; and before 1648, four persons had suffered death for the alleged offence, in the vicinity of Boston. The ministers of the gospel there were shadowed by the delusion; and, because of their powerful social influence, they did more to foster the wild excitement and produce the distressing results of what is known in history as "Salem witchcraft," than all others.

In 1688, a wayward daughter of John Goodwin, of Boston, about thirteen years of age, accused a servant girl of stealing some of the family linen. The servant's mother, a "wild Irish woman" and a Roman Catholic, vehemently rebuked the accuser as a false witness. The young girl, in revenge, pretended to be bewitched by the Irishwoman. Some others of her family followed her example. They would alternately become deaf, dumb and blind; bark like dogs and purr like cats, but none of them lost their appetites nor sleep. The Rev. Cotton Mather, a credulous and egotistical clergyman (who seems to have believed, with Hubbard, the Puritan historian, that "America was originally peopled with a crew of witches transported thither by the devil"), hastened to Goodwin's house to allay the witchery by prayer. Wonderful were the alleged effects of his supplications. The devil was controlled by them for the time. Then four other ministers of Boston and one of Salem, as superstitious as himself, joined Mather, and they spent a whole day in the house of the "afflicted" in fasting and prayer, the result of which was the "delivery" of one of the family from the power of the witch. This was sufficient proof for the minds of the ministers that there must be a witch in the case, and these deluded clergymen prosecuted the ignorant Irish woman as such. She was bewildered before the court, and spoke sometimes in her native Irish language, which nobody could understand, and which her accusers and judges construed into involuntary confession. Mather and his clerical associates had the satisfaction of seeing the poor old Irish woman hanged as a witch, "for the glory of God."

Skeptics ridiculed Mather. He defended his cause by the assertion of alleged facts. He called the "afflicted" daughter of Goodwin to his study, when the artful girl thoroughly deceived him. The devil would allow her to read "Quaker books, the Common Prayer and Popish books," but a prayer from the lips of Mather, or the reading of a chapter of the Bible, threw her into convulsions. The credulous parson believed all he saw and heard, and cried from his pulpit, with outstretched arms and loud voice, "Witchcraft is the most nefarious high-treason against the Majesty on High. A witch is not to be endured in heaven or on earth." Mather's discourse on the subject was scattered broadcast among the people by means of the printing-press; and with it went out his narrative of the events in the Goodwin family, which led to greater tragedies in the spring and summer of 1692, when an epidemic disease resembling epilepsy broke out in Danvers (then a part of Salem), and spread rapidly. The physicians could neither control nor cure it; and with the sermon and statements of Mather before them, they readily ascribed the malady to the work of witches.

A niece and daughter of the parish minister at Danvers were first afflicted. Their strange and unaccountable actions frightened other young women, who soon exhibited the same symptoms, such as convulsions and spasmodic swellings in the throat, undoubtedly produced by hysterics. A belief quickly spread over Salem and throughout the province that evil spirits having ministering servants on earth had been permitted to overshadow the land with an awful visitation. Terror took possession of the minds of nearly all the people, and the dread made the malady spread widely.