The Land We Live In Part 2

The Puritan Immigration--Wealth and Learning Seek These Sh.o.r.es--Charter Restrictions Dead Letters--A Stubborn Struggle for Self-government-- Methods of Election--The Early Government an Oligarchy--The Charter of 1691--New Hamps.h.i.+re and Maine--The New Haven Theocracy--Hartford's Const.i.tution--The United Colonies--The Clergy and Politics--Every Election Sermon a Declaration of Independence.

John Endicott's settlement at Salem, and the large immigration which followed the granting of a royal patent to the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company, together with the transfer of the charter and corporate powers of the company from England to Ma.s.sachusetts, led to the growth of a powerful Puritan commonwealth which overshadowed and ultimately absorbed the feeble settlement at Plymouth. The natal day of New England was that on which John Winthrop landed at Salem, with nine hundred immigrants in the summer of 1630, bringing not merely virtue, muscle and brawn, such as carried the Pilgrims through their appalling experience, but wealth and substance, learning and art, men to command as well as men to obey. From that time, except during the season of depression which followed King Philip's war, New England went steadily forward in population, prosperity and political power. Her rulers were well able to meet and defeat their would-be oppressors in the field of diplomacy, and now defying, now ignoring and again pretending to yield to royal dictation, Ma.s.sachusetts never gave up the principles which animated her founders, or the purpose which prompted them to abandon homes of comfort and even of luxury, and establish new inst.i.tutions in a new world. The Ma.s.sachusetts settlers were forbidden by the terms of their charter to enact any laws repugnant to the laws of England. This restriction was a dead letter from the very beginning. Indeed, literally construed, it would have defeated the very object of Puritan emigration--to escape from the rule of a hierarchy established under English laws. As Ma.s.sachusetts was for many years the leading colony of the north of English origin, and probably made more of an impress than any other colony and State upon our national character, it may be of interest to quote here a sketch of its political inst.i.tutions and their changes in the colonial period.

The charter of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company authorized the election of a governor, deputy governor and eighteen a.s.sistants on the last Wednesday of Easter. Endicott, the first governor, was chosen by the company in London in April, 1629, but in October of the following year it was resolved that the governor and deputy governor should be chosen by the a.s.sistants out of their own number. After 1632, however, the governor was chosen by the whole body of the freemen from among the a.s.sistants at a general court or a.s.sembly held in May of each year. The deputy governor was elected at the same time. The charter, as already mentioned, provided also for the annual election of a.s.sistants or magistrates, whose number was fixed at eighteen. Besides the officers mentioned in the charter, an order of 1647 declared that a treasurer, major-general, admiral at sea, commissioners for the United Colonies, secretary of the General Court and "such others as are, or hereafter may be, of like general nature," should be chosen annually "by the freemen of this jurisdiction." The voting took place in Boston in May at a court of election held annually, and freemen could vote at first only in person, but eventually by proxy also, if they desired to do so. In both Ma.s.sachusetts and New Plymouth all freemen had originally a personal voice in the transaction of public business at the general courts or a.s.semblies which were held at stated intervals. One of these was known as the Court of Election, and at this were chosen the officers of the colony for the ensuing year. As the number of settlements increased, it became inconvenient for freemen to attend the general courts in person and they were allowed to be represented by deputies. As it was impossible for all freemen when the colony became more populated, to attend the courts of election, the deputies were at length permitted to carry the votes of their townsmen to Boston.

The governor, as well as the other officers in Ma.s.sachusetts, were first chosen by show of hands, but about 1634 it was provided that the names should be written on papers, the papers to be open or only once folded, so that they might be the sooner perused. Afterward the voting was by corn and beans, a grain of Indian corn signifying election, and a black bean the contrary. The offence of ballot-box stuffing seems to have existed, or at least was provided against even among the early Puritans, for it was enacted that any freeman putting more than one grain should be fined ten pounds--a large sum of money in those days.

The Ma.s.sachusetts colonial government has been called a theocracy. As a matter of fact it was an oligarchy, the political power residing in but a small proportion of even the church-going freemen. This is shown in the remonstrance addressed to the colony by the royal commission appointed under King Charles II. to investigate the governments of the New England colonies. Said the Commissioners to Ma.s.sachusetts:

"You haue so tentered the king's qualliffications as in making him only who paieth ten s.h.i.+llings to a single rate to be of competent estate, that when the king shall be enformed, as the trueth is, that not one church member in an hundred payes so much & yt in a toune of an hundred inhabitants, sca.r.s.e three such men are to be found, wee feare that the king will rather finde himself deluded than satisfied by your late act."

During the rule of Dudley and Andros the whole legislative power of Ma.s.sachusetts was lodged in a council, appointed by the crown through its governor, and popular election in the New England colonies was limited to the choice of selectmen at a single meeting held annually in each town, on the third Monday in May.

The ultimate result of the revolution of 1688 in England was to unite Ma.s.sachusetts and New Plymouth under the Charter of 1691. By virtue of this instrument, "the Great and General Court of a.s.sembly" was to consist of "the Governor and Council or a.s.sistants for the time being, and such Freeholders of our said Province or Territory as shall be from time to time elected or deputed by the Major parte of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the respective Townes and Places." The governor, deputy governor and secretary and the first a.s.sistants were appointed. After the first year, the a.s.sistants were to be annually elected by the General a.s.sembly. Under this charter, with the exception of the deputies, the only elective officers whose functions were at all general in their nature were the county treasurers, and they were chosen upon the basis of the town rather than upon the basis of the provincial suffrage.

New Hamps.h.i.+re owed its original settlement to John Mason, a London merchant, who was a.s.sociated with Sir Ferdinand Gorges in obtaining a grant of land in 1622, from the Merrimac to the Kennebec and inland to the St. Lawrence. Gorges and Mason agreed to divide their domain at the Piscataqua. Mason, obtaining a patent for his portion of the territory, called it New Hamps.h.i.+re, in commemoration of the fact that he had been governor of Portsmouth in Hamps.h.i.+re, England. The Rev. Mr. Wheelwright, brother of Anne Hutchinson, founded Exeter. The New Hamps.h.i.+re settlements were annexed by Ma.s.sachusetts in 1641, and remained dependent on that colony until 1680, when New Hamps.h.i.+re became a royal province, ruled by a governor and council and house of representatives elected by the people.

The settlers of New Hamps.h.i.+re were mostly Puritans, and thoroughly in sympathy with the political-religious system of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Ma.s.sachusetts obtained jurisdiction over Maine through purchase from Gorges, and that territory remained attached to Ma.s.sachusetts until 1820.

Vermont had no separate existence until the Revolution.

The colonies of Connecticut and New Haven were in full sympathy with the religious and political system of Ma.s.sachusetts. The first meeting of all the "free planters" of New Haven was held on the fourth day of June, 1639, for the purpose "of settling civil government according to G.o.d, and about the nomination of persons that might be found by consent of all, fittest in all respects for the foundation work of a church." The meeting was opened with prayer. There was some debate as to whether the planters should give to free burgesses the power of making ordinances, but it was ultimately decided to do so. The minutes of the meeting show that this decision was arrived at on the authority of several pa.s.sages from the Bible--such as "Take you wise men and understanding, and know among your tribes and I will make them rulers over you," and "Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom the Lord thy G.o.d shall choose; one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." The model followed in the governmental organization was the liveries of the city of London which chose the magistrates and were themselves elected by the companies.

Accordingly, the planters of New Haven elected a committee of eleven men, and gave them power to choose the seven founders of the theocracy they had decided to establish. The seven founders met as a court of election in October of the same year and admitted upon oath several members of "approved churches." After reading a number of pa.s.sages from the Bible bearing on the subject of an ideal ruler, they proceeded to the election of a chief magistrate and four deputy magistrates. The franchise in all cases was confined to church members. In the Hartford colony, which was Connecticut proper, the earliest mention of elections is found in the Fundamental Orders of 1638, which have become famous as the first written const.i.tution framed on the American continent. It was enacted that a governor and six magistrates should be chosen annually by the freemen of the jurisdiction. A deputy governor was also chosen. The Charter of Charles II., which placed the New Haven and the Hartford colonies under one government, provided for the same general officers, together with twelve a.s.sistants, a secretary and a treasurer being added in 1689.

In 1643, the four colonies of Ma.s.sachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven formed a confederation for defence against the Indians and also the Dutch, who had claimed that a portion of what is now the State of Connecticut was included within their jurisdiction. The confederation was called the United Colonies of New England, and its affairs were managed by a board of eight commissioners, two from each colony. The commissioners could summon troops in case of necessity and settle disputes between the colonies. This union proved most effective in the subsequent war with King Philip. It was the germ of American confederation.

The election sermon was a prominent feature of election day in the Puritan colonies. The clergyman to deliver the sermon was selected by the freemen, and it was considered a great honor to be chosen for the office.

The preacher often dealt with public questions, and especially during the troublous times which preceded the Revolution. Instead of pastors being blamed for interference in politics the General Court sometimes sent a general request to all ministers of the gospel resident in the colony asking them to preach on election day before the freemen of each plantation a sermon "proper for direction in the choice of civil rulers."

The pulpit in that age held the place now occupied by the newspaper editorial page, so far as vital questions affecting the body politic were concerned. The clergy were, as a cla.s.s, learned and eloquent, and the freemen looked to them for guidance in political as well as religious problems, and it cannot be denied that the ministers never shrank from the responsibility put upon them. They stood up for the colonies against king and parliament, against royal menace and muskets, and for years before the Continental Congress p.r.o.nounced for freedom every election sermon was a declaration of independence.

CHAPTER VII.

Where Conscience Was Free--Roger Williams and His Providence Colony-- Driven by Persecution from Ma.s.sachusetts--Savages Receive Him Kindly --Coddington's Settlement in Rhode Island--Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. Grant Charters--Peculiar Referendum in Early Rhode Island.

"Take heart with us, O man of old, Soul-freedom's brave confessor, So love of G.o.d and man wax strong, Let sect and creed be lesser.

"The jarring discords of thy day In ours one hymn are swelling; The wandering feet, the severed paths All seek our Father's dwelling.

"And slowly learns the world the truth That makes us all thy debtor.-- That holy life is more than rite, And spirit more than letter.

"That they who differ pole-wide serve Perchance one common Master, And other sheep he hath than they That graze one common pasture."

WHITTIER.

One New England community stood apart from all the rest. Roger Williams, a learned and able minister, supposed to have been born in Wales, came to Boston in 1630, accompanied by his wife, Mary, an Englishwoman. Williams denied the right of the magistrates to interfere with the consciences of men, and also held that the Indians should not be deprived of their lands without fair and equitable purchase. His stand in favor of soul-liberty was a novelty in that age when State and Church were regarded as inseparable, the only difference on this question between Ma.s.sachusetts and England being as to the character of the public wors.h.i.+p which the State should enforce upon consciences willing and unwilling. The doctrine of Roger Williams, therefore, seemed to the Boston authorities to strike at the very foundation of all government, and in particular of their government. In the autumn of 1635, when Roger Williams was pastor of the church at Salem, the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts ordered him to quit the colony within six months. Afterward suspecting that Williams was preparing to found a new colony, the Boston magistrates resolved to deport him to England, and a vessel was sent to Salem to take him away.

Williams received timely warning, and fled from his home in mid-winter, and made his way through the wilderness to the sh.o.r.es of Narragansett Bay. He was joined by five companions, and at a fine spring near the head of Narragansett Bay they planted a colony, and Williams called the place "Providence," in grateful acknowledgment of G.o.d's providence to him in his distress. Williams and his companions founded a pure democracy, with no interference with the rights of conscience. Indeed, they carried this principle to an extreme at which even in these days most people would hesitate, for one member of the colony was disciplined because he objected to his wife's frequent attendance on the preaching of Mr.

Williams to the neglect of her household duties. Rhode Island became a refuge for the victims of Puritan intolerance, without regard to their belief or unbelief, and was therefore held in hatred and contempt by the Boston people. This very hatred was the salvation of Rhode Island, the government of England being favorably inclined to the colony on account of the stubborn and independent att.i.tude of Ma.s.sachusetts toward the home authorities.

The name "Rhode Island" requires mention here of the fact that Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were originally separate settlements.

In 1638 William Coddington, a native of Lincolns.h.i.+re, England, and for some time a magistrate of Boston, was driven from Ma.s.sachusetts along with others who had taken a prominent part on the side of Anne Hutchinson, in the controversy between that brilliant woman and the dominant element of the church. Coddington and his eighteen companions bought from the Indians the island of Aquitneck, or Rhode Island, and made settlements on the sites of Newport and Portsmouth. A third settlement was founded at Warwick, on the mainland, in 1643, by a party of whom John Greene and Samuel Gorton were leaders. Roger Williams went to England in the same year, and in 1644 he brought back a charter which united the settlements at Providence and on Rhode Island in one colony, called the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The charter was confirmed by Oliver Cromwell in 1655, and a new charter was granted by Charles II. in 1663. Under the Parliament charter of 1664 Providence, in 1647, sent a "committee" to Portsmouth to join with committees from other towns in order to form a government. The fifth "act and order"

established by this convention provided that each town should send a committee to every general court, and these, like the deputies in Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth, could exercise the powers of the freemen in all matters excepting the election of officers. The committee from each town was to consist of six members.

A peculiar feature of early Rhode Island government was the jealousy with which the people retained in their own control the law-making power.

Matters of general concern were proposed in some town meeting, and notice of the proposition had to be given to other towns. Towns which approved of the proposition were ordered to declare their opinion at the next general court through their committees. If the court decided in favor of the proposition a law was pa.s.sed which had authority only until ratified by the next general a.s.sembly of all the people. The general court was also allowed to debate matters on its own motion, but its decisions must be reported to each town by the committee representing that town. A meeting of the town was held to debate on the questions so reported and then the votes of the inhabitants were collected by the town clerk and forwarded with all speed to the recorder of the colony. The latter was to open, in the presence of the governor, all votes so received, and if a majority voted affirmatively the resolution of the court was to stand as law until the next general a.s.sembly. This complex method was repealed in 1650, and instead, it was ordered that all laws enacted by the a.s.sembly should be communicated to the towns within six days after adjournment.

Within three days after the laws were received the chief officer of each town was to call a meeting and read them to the freemen. If any freeman disliked a particular law he could, within ten days, send his vote in writing, with his name affixed, to the general recorder. If within ten days the recorder received a majority of votes against any law, he was to notify the president of that fact and the latter in turn was to give notice to each town that such law was null and void. Silence as to the remaining enactments was a.s.sumed to mean a.s.sent.

After 1658, the recorder was allowed ten days instead of six, as the period within which the laws must be sent to the towns. The towns had another ten days for consideration, and then if the majority of the free inhabitants of any one of them in a lawful a.s.sembly voted against a given enactment, they could send their votes sealed up in a package to the recorder. If a majority from every town voted against the law it was thereby nullified; but unless this was done within twenty days after the adjournment of the court the law would continue binding. In 1660, three months were allowed for the return of votes to the recorder. Instead of a majority of each town, a majority of all the free inhabitants of the colony was sufficient to nullify a law. The charter of King Charles II.

restricted the privilege of voting to freeholders and the eldest sons of freeholders.

CHAPTER VIII.

Puritans and Education--Provision for Public Schools--Puritan Sincerity --Effect of Intolerance on the Community--Quakers Harshly Persecuted--The Salem Witchcraft Tragedy--History of the Delusion--Rebecca Nourse and Other Victims--The People Come to Their Senses--Cotton Mather Obdurate to the Last--Puritan Morals--Comer's Diary--Rhode Island in Colonial Times.

It is to the credit of the Puritans that promptly upon their settlement in Ma.s.sachusetts they made provision for education. Many of the Puritans were learned men, and some of them graduates of Cambridge in England, and when a school was established at Newtown for the education of the ministry, the name of the place was changed to Cambridge. When John Harvard endowed the school in 1638 with his library and the gift of one half his estate--about $4000, but equal to much more than that amount at the present day--the school was erected into a college and named Harvard College after the founder. The central aim and purpose of Puritan education was religious. The schools were maintained so that the children could learn to read the Bible, and also incidentally the printed fulminations of the ministers and magistrates. The Ma.s.sachusetts school law of 1649 set forth in the preamble that, "it being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these later times persuading men from the use of tongues, so that at the least a true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded with false glossing of saint-seeming deceivers, and that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers," therefore, etc. Every towns.h.i.+p was required to maintain a school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a grammar-school, with a teacher qualified to fit youths for the university. This school law was enacted likewise in the other Puritan colonies. While its object was to strengthen the hold of religion, as expounded by the Puritan ministry, upon the people, its general effect was to spread intelligence along with learning, and to break down the barriers of intolerance. It is a significant fact, however, and in accordance with the lessons of more recent history, that the seat of the highest education was not always the seat of the highest intelligence. The witchcraft delusion found a haven in Harvard when the common sense of a common-school educated people rejected it by a decisive majority.

The Puritan was stern and cruel because he was thoroughly in earnest. He believed his religion to be true, and that the only path to salvation lay through rigid compliance with Puritan doctrine. Believing as he did he was logical; he was humane. The non-Puritan was, in his view, a pestilence to be got rid of by the most heroic measures if necessary. In acting on this principle he was kind, in his judgment, to the many whom he saved from pollution and d.a.m.nation by the sacrifice of the few. The devil, to the Puritan, was terribly personal, and Cotton Mather's horror of witchcraft was grounded in a sincere belief in that personality. The forces of evil were always active, and the Puritan believed in combating them in the most vigorous and trenchant fas.h.i.+on. The Scripture enjoined upon him to pluck out his own eye if it offended, and it was natural that he should not hesitate to sacrifice others when they offended. With all his severity he took good care to let transgressors know what they had to expect, and he felt the less compunction, therefore, in inflicting penalties deliberately incurred. Life for the Puritan was a very serious affair, and levity a crime only milder than non-orthodoxy. Gaming even for amus.e.m.e.nt was rigidly prohibited. It was a criminal act to kiss a woman in the street, even in the way of chaste and honest salute. The heads of households were called to account if the daughters neglected the spinning-wheel. The stocks and the whipping-post were seldom unoccupied by minor offenders, while the hangman was kept busy with criminals of deeper dye. It should be needless to say that there was a good deal of hypocrisy, and that public repentance was often simply a means for escaping from social ostracism and obtaining admission to the pastures of the elect. Hubbard intimates as much in what he says about Captain John Underhill.

The laws enacted were based on the Mosaic code, and of Mosaic severity in dealing with offences against morality and religion. It is to be remembered, however, that down to the second quarter of the present century the code of England itself was Draconic, although immoralities punished by death in Ma.s.sachusetts were not regarded as crimes in the older country.

The most painful event connected with the harsh religious system of the Puritans was the execution in 1659 of two Quakers, Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, of England, who had come to Ma.s.sachusetts to preach their doctrines. The first two Quakers to arrive in Boston were Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, who landed here in 1656. They were forthwith arrested, and examined for witch-marks, but none being found and there being no excuse therefore for putting them to death as agents of Satan, they were kept in close imprisonment, and the jailer and citizens were forbidden to give them any food, the object apparently being to starve them to death. The windows of the jail were boarded up to prevent food from being handed into them and also to prevent the prisoners from exhorting pa.s.sers-by. A citizen named Upshall, who gave money to the jailer to buy nourishment for the captives, was fined $100, and ordered to leave the colony within thirty days, and was sentenced to pay beside $15 for every day he should be absent from public wors.h.i.+p before his departure--evidently that he might be compelled to listen to pulpit denunciations of his wickedness in saving from starvation two fellow-human beings who wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d in a different fas.h.i.+on from their persecutors. The exile was denied an asylum in Plymouth, and followed the example of Roger Williams by seeking a refuge among the Indians, who treated him kindly. The two Quaker women were transported to Barbadoes, and the captain of the vessel which had brought them to Boston was required to bear the charges of their imprisonment. The religious books which they had in their possession when arrested were burned by the common hangman.

The Quakers continued to come in considerable numbers to America, being welcomed in some of the colonies, and persecuted in others, but nowhere so severely as in Ma.s.sachusetts. When Stephenson and Robinson were hanged at Boston, Mary Dyer, widow of William Dyer, late recorder of Providence plantations, was taken to the scaffold with them, but reprieved on condition that she should leave the colony in forty-eight hours. In the following year Mary Dyer returned to Boston, and was at once arrested and hanged. These proceedings excited general horror in the mother country, and Charles II. sent a letter stating it to be his pleasure that the Quakers should be sent to England for trial. The General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts thereupon suspended the laws against Quakers, and those in prison were released and sent out of the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Next to the persecution of the Quakers no feature of Puritan history is so prominent as the Salem Witchcraft Tragedy, which, although it occurred near the close of the seventeenth century, so strikingly ill.u.s.trates the intellectual and religious conditions of the Ma.s.sachusetts colony that it may properly be described here. Belief in witchcraft was not by any means confined to Ma.s.sachusetts. The statutes of England, as well as of the American colonies, dealt with the imaginary crime. Among the intelligent and educated cla.s.ses, however, both in Europe and America, the subject was generally considered of too doubtful a nature to be dealt with by the infliction of the penalties which the law prescribed. In Ma.s.sachusetts, where everybody had some education, the majority of the people, although deeply and almost fanatically religious, had their doubts about the reality of the diabolical art, and the belief, strangely enough, seems to have been most intense and aggressive in the highest intellectual quarters, among ministers and men of superior education and commensurate influence. It was this that gave the witchcraft delusion its awful power for evil, and enabled a few vicious children afflicted with hysteria or epilepsy to bring a score of mostly reputable persons to an ignominious death, to ruin more than that number of homes and to spread consternation throughout the commonwealth.

The Salem delusion began in the house of Mr. Parris, the minister at Danvers. Parris had two slaves, an Indian and his wife, t.i.tuba, the latter half negro and half Indian. t.i.tuba taught the children various tricks. While practicing these tricks, some of them became hysterical and acted in a peculiar manner. It was suggested that they were bewitched, and they were asked who had bewitched them. They indicated a woman named Sarah Goode, who was generally disliked. She was arrested and imprisoned.

This seems to have gratified the children, who soon after had convulsions in the presence of another victim, one Giles Corey. Corey stood mute under the accusation, and was tortured to death by pressing. The cases attracted attention, and at the instance of Cotton Mather and others, Governor Phipps designated a special court to try persons accused of witchcraft. Malice, greed and craft promptly supplied more victims for the court and the hangman. Doctors discovered what they called witch-marks, such as moles or callosities of any kind, and after the children or others alleged to have been bewitched had performed the usual contortions, the accused were swiftly convicted. Francis Nourse and his wife, Rebecca, had a controversy about the occupation of a farm with a family named Endicott. The Endicott children went into hysterics and charged that Rebecca Nourse had bewitched them. Although as good and pure a woman as there was in the colour, Rebecca was convicted, hanged on Witches' Hill, and her body cast into a pit designed for those who should meet her fate. Mr. Parris, the minister, thought it necessary to preach a sermon fortifying the belief in witchcraft, and when Sarah Cloyse, a sister of Rebecca, got up and went out of the meeting-house, regarding the sermon as an insult to the memory of her murdered sister, she was also denounced and arrested. The Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather, one of the lights of Puritanism, and son of Dr. Increase Mather, president of Harvard University, was most active and violent in the prosecutions.

Among the victims was the Rev. Stephen Burroughs, a learned minister of exemplary life, who was accused of possessing a witch's trumpet. Mather witnessed the hanging of Burroughs, and when the latter on the scaffold offered up a touching prayer, Mather cried out to the people that Satan often transformed himself into an angel of light to deceive men's souls.

The Rev. Mr. Noyes, standing by at the execution of eight accused persons, exclaimed: "What a sad thing it is to see eight fire-brands of h.e.l.l hanging there!" A committee was appointed to ferret out witches, and children were readily found to court the notoriety and interest which a share in the work attracted. When the accusers began to utter charges against the wife of Governor Phipps and relatives of the Mathers, the authorities took a different view of the monster which they had evolved out of their superst.i.tious imaginings. Public opinion, which had been fettered by fear and amazement at the hideous proceedings, began to find expression in protest against any further sacrifice. Many of the accusers recanted their testimony, and said that they had given it in order to save their own lives, dreading to be accused of witchcraft themselves.

The General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts appointed a general fast and supplication "that G.o.d would pardon all the errors of His servants and people in a late tragedy raised among them by Satan and his instruments."

Judge Sewall, who had presided at a number of the trials, stood up in his place in the church and begged the people to pray that the errors which he had committed "might not be visited by the judgment of an avenging G.o.d on his country, his family and himself." The Rev. Mr. Parris was compelled to leave the country. Cotton Mather, however, adhered steadfastly to his belief in witches. He said, among other things equally astounding to the common sense even of that day, that the devil allowed the victims of witchcraft to "read Quaker books, the Common Prayer and popish books," but not the Bible. At the instance of Cotton Mather, and that of his father, Increase Mather, the president of Harvard, a circular was sent out signed by Increase Mather and a number of other ministers in the name of Harvard College, inviting reports of "apparitions, possessions, enchantments and all extraordinary things wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated," to be used "as some fit a.s.sembly of ministers might direct." But few replies to the circular were received. The people of Ma.s.sachusetts had muzzled the monster, and did not care to turn it loose again. A monument was recently erected to Rebecca Nourse on the hill where she perished, and her descendants have an organization which holds annual meetings in commemoration of their hapless ancestor.