The Witches: Salem, 1692 Part 15

skid off topic: See Wait Still Winthrop to Ashurst, 1699, Collections of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, sixth series (1892): 4650.

"rascally petty tyrant": From "The Revolution in New-England Justified," cited in Breen, The Character of the Good Ruler, 14748.

"by having the windows": C.D., New England's Faction Discovered (London, 1690), 4.

knew only losses: Higginson Family Papers, 202.

"seek the subversion": Hull, Diaries, 217.

all was in disarray: Fisher, Report of a French Protestant Refugee, 17.

"worm" and "underminer of state": See Everett Emerson, Letters from New England: The Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, 16291638 (Amherst: University of Ma.s.sachusetts Press, 1976), 148. Given the convulsive state of Ma.s.sachusetts politics, he was back in office shortly.

an English official had noted: Randolph to Blathwayt, July 2, 1686, Letters and Official Papers, 4: 99.

"Mr. Stoughton is a real friend": CM to IM, cited in Stoughton Sibley entry, 200. CM would extol Stoughton for his "unspotted fidelity"; CM Diary 1: 154. In fairness, he used the same term for Sewall later; see letter of September 17, 1712, NEHGS.

Nocturnal invasions: Kences, "Some Unexplored Relations.h.i.+ps"; Swan, "Bedevilment of Cape Ann"; Magnalia, 2: 62123. The Gloucester minister-who helped elicit Salem confessions-prayed that "those apparitions may not prove the sad omens of some future and more horrible molestations."

velvet saddles: Perley, History of Salem, vol. 3, 127.

Wait Still Winthrop: Dunn, Puritans and Yankees.

festivities surrounding Harvard's commencement: Morison, Harvard College, vol. 2, 46570; Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, 276; David Levin, Cotton Mather: The Young Life of the Lord's Remembrancer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 54; Hall, Worlds of Wonder, 65; Thompson, Cambridge Cameos, 37, for the pineapples and anchovies; Hammond diary, P-363, reel 5.3, MHS. Alden's son was as well the worst offender in his cla.s.s, twice fined for breaking windows.

"eat up the poor": Winthrop to Henry Ashurst, July 25, 1698, Collections of the MHS, sixth series, vol. 5, 1892, xix.

Phips might defraud: Barnes, "Phippius Maximus," 278.

prominent Dutch merchant: See Evan Haefeli's invaluable "Dutch New York and the Salem Witch Trials: Some New Evidence," Proceedings of the AAS 110 (October 2000): 277308; Jacob Melyen letter book, AAS. Melyen was also friendly with Sewall, who registered no concerns about "foolish people." I am grateful to Joroen Janssen, David Sonnenberg, and Lili Lynton for translation a.s.sistance.

"dismal outcries": Calef in Burr, 359.

"the horrible crime": R, 466.

"declare for whom": Stoughton, New England's True Interest, 24.

"inexorable persecutions" to "unexperienced men": Cited in Tracts and Other Papers Relating Princ.i.p.ally to the Origin, Settlement and Progress of the Colonies of North America (New York: Peter Smith, 1947), vol. 4, 52, 57.

"The widow Glover": SS Diary, 1: 183.

"abated in our love": Stoughton, New England's True Interest, 21.

"impudently demanding": CM to John Cotton, August 5, 1692, Silverman, Selected Letters, 40.

precious resource: The angry words Sewall exchanged with his father-in-law stemmed from his having been too profligate with February firewood; see Hull, Diaries, 253. On laws to forestall timber shortages, see David Grant Smith, "Crossing Boundaries: s.p.a.ce, Place, and Order in 17th Century Topsfield, MA," unpublished ma.n.u.script, Harvard Divinity School, 2009, 1015. Already by 1653 the settlers had turned "close, clouded woods" into goodly cornfields; see also Johnson, Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence, 37.

All occupied land: Upham, Salem Witchcraft, 354; RFQC, 2: 204.

simple oak gallows: Interview with Richard Trask, April 1, 2013.

"You are a liar" to "blood to drink": Calef in Burr, 358. In her superb Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Ma.s.sachusetts (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 11516, Christine Leigh Heyrman notes that the threat was not new.

terrible moans: See CM, Useful Remarks: An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men (Boston, 1723).

G.o.d were working in miracles: CM to John Cotton, August 5, 1692, Silverman, Selected Letters, 40.

"Sometimes," confessed the abashed: R, 481; CM in Burr, 243.

VIII. IN THESE h.e.l.lISH MEETINGS.

On Andover: Philip Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover Ma.s.sachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970); Abbot, Our Company Increases; Enders Anthony Robinson, Andover Witchcraft Genealogy (Andover, MA: Goose Pond Press, 2013); Marjorie Wardwell Otten, The Witch Hunt of 1692 (n.p., n.d.); Jeremy M. Sher, "Brand of Infamy: The Andover Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692" (senior thesis, Princeton, 2001); Sarah Loring Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover (Boston: Houghton, 1880).

"Doubt is not a pleasant": Voltaire to Frederick William, November 28, 1770, in Voltaire in His Letters (New York: Putnam's, 1919), 232.

grandiose designs: Roger Wolcott to Henry Wolcott, July 25, 1692, Connecticut Historical Society.

Servants accused mistresses: See Nelson, "Persistence of Puritan Law," 337, for a man accused of witchcraft by a servant. Benjamin C. Ray discusses accusations leveled at the less wealthy in "Teaching the Salem Witch Trials" in Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002), 26. Demos, The Enemy Within, 84, makes the point that no Native American was prosecuted. Nor were any Jerseyans accused with the exception of Philip English. Abbot, Our Company, explores ethnic tensions in Andover, which might have accounted for the targeting of Scotswomen like Carrier, and, by marriage, Foster. Sher, "Brand of Infamy," 98, observes that it was odd Thomas Carrier was not accused when he was the father of four witches and the husband of another. Sher points out that Carrier had in fact returned to town before the smallpox, which leveled her family (45). She had however also survived.

both defended and accused: James Holton, from Ray, "The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations," 463, and R, 945.

trivial matters added up: WOW, 152.

spousal abuse: Demos notes that that went in both directions; A Little Commonwealth, 95.

perfect conviction rate: Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 687.

a Salem man: Roger Wolcott to Henry Wolcott, July 25, 1692, Connecticut Historical Society. Joseph Ballard complained of the Laceys; his brother, constable John Ballard, had arrested Carrier in May.

"pains and pressures": R, 469; Brattle in Burr, 180. Rosenthal, Salem Story, 54, thinks the girls summoned would have been Ann Putnam Jr. and Mary Walcott. Norton, "George Burroughs," 233, prefers Mercy Lewis and Betty Hubbard. All had proved their ability to diagnose by the summer. We know Hubbard and Walcott signed indictments against Foster; R, 634. It is possible Foster was arrested before the Salem visionaries even arrived in Andover.

She soon enough began: R, 467. John Hale asked if he might remain: JH, 47.

Mary Lacey: R, 47178; yet more disturbing question than the one posed in June: R, 392.

the witches' meeting: Reconstructed largely from testimony of Mary Toothaker, R, 49192; Mary Barker, R, 55961; William Barker Sr. (who caught the cloven foot), R, 56166; the Laceys and Carriers, R, 47982; Sarah Bridges, R, 55354; Susannah Post, R, 555; Sarah Wardwell, R, 57778; Elizabeth Johnson Jr., R, 543; Elizabeth Johnson Sr., R, 568; Ann Foster, R, 47177; Mary Warren, R, 350; JH in Burr, 419; Lawson, appendix to Christ's Fidelity. Abigail Williams added the vampiric twist, R, 173. There are nearly fifty accounts in all. CM would retroactively insert Frenchmen and Indian chiefs into the meetings "to concert the methods of ruining New England"; he claimed to have heard as much from a confessed witch; Burr, 28122. See Benjamin C. Ray's fine "They Did Eat Red Bread Like Man's Flesh," Common-Place 9 (July 2009). SP's field may have made sense for a diabolical gathering for reasons still audible today; with a swampy lowlands nearby, it hosted pond frogs, said by Josselyn, New-England's Rarities, 76, to "chirp in the spring like sparrows, and croak like toads in the autumn.

eighteen-year-old Richard and sixteen-year-old Andrew: R 47983; Roger Wolcott to Henry Wolcott, July 25, 1692, Connecticut Historical Society. Twelve-year-old Phoebe Chandler would testify that when Richard Carrier looked her way in meeting, she experienced "a strange burning in the stomach" and missed all but two words of the subsequent prayers and psalms. The symptoms sound familiar even if they are not generally attributed to the evil eye; R, 511.

"dreadful shapes": CM in Burr, 236.

French fall shoes: R, 574. He lured fourteen-year-old William Barker Jr. and Joanna Tyler with clothes as well; R, 571, 661. Pardon her sins: R, 560; revenge on her enemies, R, 547; "abundance of satisfaction": R, 608; Mary Lacey Jr. could count on glory: R, 474, 569. In an earlier case, the devil tempted a woman into witchcraft by acting as her much-loved dead child; Demos, Entertaining Salem, 170. "abolish all the churches": Barker, R, 563. Interestingly, no one seems to have applied for eternal youth.

he composed a pet.i.tion: R, 486. He would have known he had been on an earlier docket as well. The couple had been sent to Salem in time for the initial trial.

"and their feet": R, 480.

"doth carry things": R, 573.

"barbarous and inhumane": William H. Whitmore, ed., The Colonial Laws of Ma.s.sachusetts (Boston, 1889), 187.

Already their estates: Calef in Burr, 361.

devil insolently copied them: CM made the same point; Burr, 245.

credited Catholicism: IP, 179.

"It is also true": IP, 175. IM included a summary of the Knapp case in IP, as would CM in Magnalia.

"had as good be hanged": RFQC, 4: 7882.

Alden's friends: SS Diary, 1: 293; interview with David Hall, May 18, 2014.

airy, second-floor library: Morison, Harvard College, vol. 2, 42830; the August answer: R, 392. "rare and extraordinary": Proceedings of the MHS, vol. 17 (1879), 268.

Joshua Moody: Calef in Burr, 371; R, 918. Moody had been Willard's Harvard tutor; he had coauth.o.r.ed an appeal for the charter restoration with IM and supplied wonder tales in the past, reporting on the Goodwins. See Sibley, 37477.

Philip English: Katharine Dana English, "Facts About the Life of Philip English of Salem," typescript, 1943, PEM; William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962), vol. 2, 2225; George F. Cheever, "Philip English," EIHC (1860), vol. 1, 67181; vol. 2, 21204, 23772; vol. 3, 17120; Henry W. Belknap, "Philip English, Commerce Builder," Proceedings of the AAS 41 (1931): 1724; Phyllis Whitman Hunter, Purchasing Ident.i.ty in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 4052; Bryan F. Le Beau, "Philip English and the Witchcraft Hysteria," Historical Journal of Ma.s.sachusetts (January 1987): 120. Le Beau, 4, beautifully unpacks the Beale testimony vs. R, 500 and supplies the figure of seventeen court appearances. See also RFQC, 6: 34648, for an English suit, and RFQC, 7: 108, on his conviction that debtors should pay their debts. On the French in Salem, Gildrie, "Salem Society," 192. Susannah Shelden appears to have handled the campaign against the Englishes, although that may be an illusion of the surviving doc.u.mentation, which is meager.

a nosebleed so severe: R, 500; the Salem servant, R, 523. Haefeli, "Dutch New York," 306, has the Aldens and Englishes in New York by early October.

"as much divided": Fletcher to Blathwayt, November 10, 1693, CO 5/1083, PRO. Fletcher knew something of persecution himself, having, as a Protestant, been dismissed from the Irish army seven years earlier.

"in all times": John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (Boston, 1630).

"some are stewards": Stoughton, New England's True Interest, 14. As Winthrop had it, "For once in the history of the world, the sovereign places were filled by the sovereign men." On the tiers of servitude, Towner, "'A Fondness for Freedom,'" 202. "There is a monarchy": CM, Batteries Upon the Kingdom of the Devil, 6, also WOW, 45. Gildrie, "Salem Society," 186, observes that wealth and status were not coterminous.

on the clergy and social status: The point is David Hall's in Faithful Shepherd, 68, 152. Ministers ranked among the top 15 percent of colonists (183). It helped, notes Hall, that they const.i.tuted fine matches for merchant daughters.

"altogether unbecoming": RFQC, 4: 136.

"the second seat": Cited in Warren, Loyal Dissenter, 33.

"Whoever is for a parity": William Hubbard, The Happiness of a People in the Wisdom of Their Rulers (Boston, 1676), 8.

a distinct elite: See Dunn, "The Barbados Census," 10. Generally on the Barbados planters, Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).

Exceeding one's rank: Boston dog-owning too was regulated, by a 1697 edict.

piece of silk: Barbara Ritter Daily, "'Where Thieves Break Through and Steal,' John Hale vs. Dorcas h.o.a.r, 16721692," EIHC 128 (October 1992): 258.

"it being so cold": Moody in Sibley, 373.

One Rowley man: R, 675.

Elizabeth Colson: R, 626.

Martha Tyler and "Well, I see" to "did not confess": R, 694. To confuse matters, Martha Sprague was also known as Martha Tyler; R, 773.

"than say anything" to "from the Indians": R, 49194. She was not alone in her anxiety; IM worried that his faith itself might be a delusion.

"a flock in the wilderness": Scottow, A Narrative, 14.

"a branch of the plot": Andros Tracts, 1: 18.

"flying rabble": Lincoln, Narratives of the Indian Wars, 80; in "a corner of the world," CM, The Present State, 38; "dragons of the wilderness," CM, Fair Weather, 91; "juice of toads," CM, Little Flocks, 15.

"apt to believe": Cited in Grandjean, "Reckoning," 152. On inventing enemies for harmony's sake, Hall, Faithful Shepherd, 24547; similarly, James Axtell, The School Upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 35.

"O do not quarrel": CM, The Present State, 40.

"distress and danger": Ibid., 28. Richard G.o.dbeer underlines the similarity between a Mather sermon and an anti-Andros tract in The Devil's Dominion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 189.

"The most rigid discipline": Thomas Macaulay, History of England (London: Heron Books, 1967), 1: 12930.

"the poor people": WOW, 81.

"b.l.o.o.d.y and barbarous": Stoughton to the Council of Trade and Plantations, September 30, 1697, CO 5/859, no. 124, PRO.

Anthony Checkley: He later claimed to be generally in the dark regarding his powers and duties and pleaded for better instructions; R, 829. The salary too was all vagueness. Checkley added a line that every NE minister could have borrowed: "I am willing to serve you if you do not starve me." See Anne Powell, "Salem Prosecuted: The Role of Thomas Newton and Anthony Checkley in the Salem Witchcraft Crisis" (undergraduate paper for Mary Beth Norton, Cornell, 1993).

a ma.s.sive earthquake: CM very much had Revelation on his mind these months; e-mail with David Hall, July 6, 2014; CM to John Cotton, August 5, 1692, in Silverman, Selected Letters, 4041. "pulled into the jaws": WOW, 61.

"You shall oftener hear": WOW, 8283.

"It would break": WOW, 102. The expression was formulaic; he used it as well of the Goodwin children in their fits, as did his father, of the imprisoned Andover matrons.

Tipping his hand: WOW, 100, 104. Like so many images, the fine infernal thread turns up in Lawson as well. CM and Lawson shared the "brand plucked from the burning," an uncommon phrase; they were in close touch over these months. In Magnalia, 1: 187, CM included court details that had appeared nowhere else, among them burned rags in mouths and poison stains on pillows.

"We know not" to "in the dark": WOW, 84.

out of his depth: R, 540.

"rampant hag" and the Carrier trial: CM in Burr, 24144. Her indifference: R, 512.

wrists seemingly soldered: From Wigglesworth comes a thrilling description of h.e.l.l: "With iron bands they bind their hands and cursed feet together"; see Bruce C. Daniels, Puritans at Play (New York: St. Martin's, 1995), 39.

"The more there were": Hale in Burr, 421.

a powerful pet.i.tion: R, 53336. They included the names of some who had signed depositions against them; R, 534, 539.