The Salem Witchcraft

King Philip's War was followed in New England by a series of interesting events, embracing the actions of Andros, the tyrannical governor, and the effort to abrogate the colonial charters, the wars with the French and Indians known as King William's and Queen Anne's Wars, and the remarkable witchcraft delusion, the only striking instance in this country of a peculiar form of persecution of which the preceding history of Europe is full. We cannot better present the last-named subject than by an extract from Bancroft's "History of the United States," in which it is handled with his usual picturesque ability.

IN the last year of the administration of Andros, who, as the servant of arbitrary power, had no motive to dispel superstition, the daughter of John Goodwin, a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having stolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the laundress, a friendless emigrant, almost ignorant of English, like a true woman with a mother's heart, rebuked the false accusation. Immediately the girl, to secure revenge, became bewitched. The infection spread. Three others of the family, the youngest a boy of less than five years old, soon succeeded in equally arresting public attention. They would affect to be deaf, then dumb, then blind, or all three at once; they would bark like dogs, or purr like so many cats; but they ate well and slept well. Cotton Mather went to prayer by the side of one of them, and, lo! the child lost her hearing till prayer was over. What was to be done? The four ministers of Boston and the one of Charlestown assembled in Goodwin's house, and spent a whole day of fasting in prayer. In consequence, the youngest child, the little one of four years old, was "delivered." But if the ministers could thus by prayer deliver a possessed child, then there must have been a witch; the honor of the magistrates required a prosecution of the affair; and the magistrates, William Stoughton being one of the judges, and all holding commissions exclusively from the English 'king, and 'being irresponsible to the people of Massachusetts, with a "vigor" which the united ministers commended as "just," made "a discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil." The culprit was evidently a wild Irish woman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin, who made the complaint, "had no proof that could have done her any hurt;" but "the scandalous old hag," whom some thought "crazed in her intellectuals," was bewildered, and made strange answers, which were taken as confessions; sometimes, in excitement, using her native dialect. One Hughes testified that, six years before, she had heard one Howen say she had seen Glover come down her chimney. It was plain the prisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord's prayer in English; she could repeat the paternoster fluently enough, but not quite correctly; so the ministers and Goodwin's family had the satisfaction of getting her condemned as a witch, and executed.

Boston had its sceptics as to the reality of this tale of witchcraft but the ministers, and Cotton Mather in particular, did their utmost to inflame the minds of the public on this subject. The Goodwin girl continued bewitched, and Cotton Mather invited her to his house, and made an investigation of the arts of the devil, who proved well skilled in languages, though there was one Indian language which he did not understand, and who could read men's thoughts, though it appeared that "all devils are not alike sagacious." Cotton Mather published a "Discourse" on this subject, and resolved to regard "the denial of devils, or of witches," as an evidence "of ignorance, incivility, and dishonest impudence."

The next prosecution for witchcraft took place in 1692, three years later. Samuel Parris, a minister of Salem village, who had had bitter controversies with a part of his congregation, produced a bewitched daughter and niece. He flogged Tituba, a half Indian, half negro, servant, into confessing herself a witch. Then he accused Sarah Good, a poor, melancholy woman, who was put on trial for witchcraft.]

Yet the delusion, but for Parris, would have languished. Of his own niece, the girl of eleven years of age, he demanded the names of the devil's instruments who bewitched the band of "the afflicted," and then became at once informer and witness. In those days there was no prosecuting officer; and Parris was at hand to question his Indian servants and others, himself prompting their answers and acting as recorder to the magistrates. The recollection of the old controversy in the parish could not be forgotten; and Parris, moved by personal malice as well as by blind zeal, "stifled the accusations of some,"--such is the testimony of the people of his own village,--and, at the same time "vigilantly promoting the accusations of others," was "the beginner and procurer of the sore afflictions to Salem village and the country." Martha Cory, who in her examination in the meeting-house before a throng, with a firm spirit, alone, against them all, denied the presence of witchcraft, was committed to prison. Rebecca Nurse, likewise, a woman of purest life, an object of the special hatred of Parris, resisted the company of accusers, and was committed. And Parris, filling his prayers with the theme, made the pulpit ring with it. "Have not I chosen you twelve," such was his text,--"and one of you is a devil?" At this, Sarah Cloyce, sister to Rebecca Nurse, rose up and left the meeting-house; and she, too, was cried out upon, and sent to prison.