The Penguin Book of Witches (20 page)

The shift in accusation from the local women of Salem Village to deposed minister George Burroughs marked a dramatic change in both tenor and scope for the Salem episode. This expansive transformation is one reason that Salem would be better understood as a regional panic rather than one tied to a specific community. Hubbard’s testimony claimed that Burroughs had told her he was “above a wizard, for he was a conjurer.”

In the historiographic tendency to interpret witch trials as proxies for other, real conflicts, the fact that witchcraft itself was a category of reality for early modern Christians gets lost. The villagers of Salem were undoubtedly responding to a series of circumstances that intersected in the crucible (to borrow a turn of phrase) of a witch trial. But for them the threat of witchcraft was not a substitute for, or an overlaid scrim atop, their frontier anxieties and destructive religious and class conflicts. For the Salem Villagers, and those Puritans in the surrounding communities who were as touched by the panic as the village itself was, witchcraft was an organizing principle of how the universe worked. George Burroughs
was a wizard
. He was an instrument in the Devil’s arsenal for attacking the godly, an arsenal that
also
included Indian attacks and internal discord. Even those individuals who, like Susannah Martin or Martha Cory, evinced doubt as to the bewitchment of the afflicted girls, only expressed doubt in terms of the location of the Devil’s agency. The reality of the Devil was never in question. The reality of his ability to effect change in human lives was also never in question. For the Salem magistrates in charge of the prosecutions, the idea of a deposed minister as a ringleader of witches was a hallmark of the Devil’s awesome, and God-granted, power in the human realm.

Hubbard versus Burroughs
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May the 9th, 1692

Elizabeth Hubbard, aged about 17 years, saith that the last second day at night, There appeared a little black-haired man to me in blackish apparel. I asked him his name and he told his name was Burroughs. Then he took a book out of his pocket and opened it and bid me set my hand to it. I told him I would not. The lines in this book was red as blood. Then he pinched me twice and went away. The next morning he appeared to me again and told me he was above a wizard for he was a conjurer and so went away. But since that he hath appeared to me every day and night often. And[scored out] and urged me very much to set my hand to his book and to run away telling me if I would do so I should be well and that I should need fear nobody and withal tormented me several ways every time he came except that time he told me he was a conjuror. This night he asked me very much to set my hand to his book or else he said he would kill me, withal torturing me very much by biting and pinching, squeezing my body and running pins into me also. On the 9th May 1692, being the time of his examination, Mr. George Burroughs or his appearance did most grievously afflict and torment the bodies of Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewes, Ann Putnam, and Abigail Williams for if he did but look upon them he would strike them down or almost choke them to death. Also several times since he has most dreadfully afflicted and tormented me with variety of torments and I believe in my heart that Mr. George Burroughs is a dreadful wizard and that he has very often tormented me and also the above named persons by his acts of witchcraft.

Jurat in Curia

Elizabeth Hubbard declared the above written evidence to be the truth upon her oath that she had taken. This she owned before the jury of inquest, August 3, 1692.

The Salem trials were conducted by a special tribunal that was established to deal with the legal backlog that had built up after the expiration of the Massachusetts Bay Charter. Oyer and Terminer means “to hear” and “to determine.” The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was under way in Britain,
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and in 1692 the newly restored monarchy had other priorities besides the legal problems of a small backwoods settlement. The lack of a charter, and therefore the lack of the legal authority to conduct a trial, explains the unusually long delay between the accusations first levied in January and the first trials, finally held in May. Normally in colonial courts, a trial would follow a complaint almost immediately. In other witch trials, the accused would have been executed within a month. By the time the Court of Oyer and Terminer was established and the witch trials could move forward, the jails in Salem and Boston were overflowing with accused witches. Together with the public nature of the preliminary examinations, it has been thought that the delay in holding a trial contributed to the massive spread of accusations across Essex County.

The Special Order for Oyer and Terminer
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Upon consideration that there are many criminal offenders now in custody, some whereof have lain long and many inconveniences attending the thronging of the jails at this hot season of the year, there being no judicatories or court of justice yet established.

Ordered: That a special commission of Oyer and Terminer be made out unto William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, and Peter Sergeant, esquires. Assigning them the said William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathanael Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, and Peter Sergeant, esquires, to be justices, or any five of them (whereof the said William Stoughton, John Richards, or Bartholomew Gedney, esquires, to be one), to enquire of, hear and determine for this time according to the law and custom of England and of this Their Majesties’ province, all and all manner of crimes and offences had made, done or perpetrated within the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex and of either of them.

William Phips.

Captain Stephen Sewall of Salem is nominated and appointed to officiate as clerk of the special Court of Oyer and Terminer.

William Phips.

Mr. Thomas Newton is appointed to officiate as attorney for and on behalf of Their Majesties at the special Court of Oyer and Terminer.

William Phips.

Truth be told, more people were accused in Andover, Massachusetts, than in Salem, Massachusetts. Andover’s Martha Carrier, according to her accusers, was the center of that witch conspiracy, called, at one point, “Queen of Hell.” Like most accused witches, Martha was not old but at thirty-eight, solidly middle aged, a woman not on the margins of her community, but at the height of her social power. In the accusation of Martha Carrier, the Salem panic entered its second major iteration, spreading well beyond the purview of Salem Village and igniting a regional fervor.

As with previous examinations, dramatic interjections of the afflicted girls and other bystanders pepper the narrative. Notably, the girls also said that they could see a “black man” speaking in her ear. Rather than necessarily implying African heritage, the word “black” here can be understood as a moral category, implying evil, but it could also refer to the actual appearance of the man, which the colonists used to denote the native people in New England. Such terminology reinforced the already established association between Satan and his native confederates in the Puritan mind.

THE EXAMINATION OF MARTHA CARRIER
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The Examination of Martha Carrier, 31 May 1692

[Q]:
Abigail Williams, who hurts you?

[Abigail Williams]:
Goody Carrier of Andover.

[Q]:
Elizabeth Hubbard, who hurts you?

[Elizabeth Hubbard]:
Goody Carrier.

[Q]:
Susan Sheldon, who hurts you?

[Susan Sheldon]:
Goody Carrier. She bites me, pinches me, and tells me she would cut my throat if I did not sign her book.

Mary Walcott said she afflicted her and brought the book to her.

[Q]:
What do you say to this you are charged with?

[Martha Carrier]:
I have not done it.

Susannah Sheldon cried,
She looks upon the black man.

Ann Putman complained of a pin stuck in her.

[Q]:
What black man is that?

[A]:
I know none.

Ann Putman testified there was.

Mary Warren cried out she was pricked.

[Q]:
What black man did you see?

[A]:
I saw no black man but your own presence.
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[Q]:
Can you look upon these and not knock them down?

[A]:
They will dissemble if I look upon them.
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[Q]:
You see you look upon them and they fall down.

[A]:
It is false. The Devil is a liar.

[A]:
I looked upon none since I came into the room but you.

Susannah Sheldon cried out in a trance,
I wonder what could you murder. 13 persons?

Mary Walcott testified the same that there lay 13 ghosts.

All the afflicted fell into the most intolerable outcries and agonies.

Elizabeth Hubbard and Ann Putman testified the same that she had killed 13 at Andover.

[A]:
It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks that are out of their wits.
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[Q]:
Do not you see them?

[A]:
If I do speak you will not believe me.

You do see them,
said the accusers.

[A]:
You lie. I am wronged.

There is the black man whispering in her ear, said many of the afflicted.

Mercy Lewis in a violent fit was well upon the examinant’s grasping her arm.

The tortures of the afflicted was so great that there was no enduring of it, so that she was ordered
away and to be bound hand and foot with all expedition. The afflicted in the meanwhile almost killed to the great trouble of all spectators, magistrates and others.

Note. As soon as she was well bound they all had strange and sudden ease.

Mary Walcott told the magistrates that this woman told her she had been a witch this 40 years.

Sarah Ingersoll’s statement provides good evidence that the afflicted girls might have been intentionally faking, or at the very least subject to pressure from the magistrates not to recant once they had levied an accusation. Sarah Churchill, who was part of the group of accusing girls, was a servant in George Jacobs Sr.’s house. Churchill, according to Ingersoll, admitted that she had lied in her testimony and that she had been frightened into testifying by one of the ministers. She recognized that she had made a mistake initially but did not see a way to tell the truth once the lie had been told.

Statement Concerning Faked Afflictions
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The deposition of Sarah Ingersoll, aged about 30 years. Saith that seeing Sarah Church after her examination, she came to me crying and wringing her hands seeming to be much troubled in spirit. I asked her what she ailed. She answered she had undone herself. I asked her in what. She said in belying herself and others in saying she had set her hand to the Devil’s book whereas she said she never did. I told her I believed she had set her hand to the book. She answered crying and said, No, no, no. I never. I never did. I asked then what had made her say she did. She answered because they threatened her and told her they would put her into the dungeon and put her along with Mr. Burroughs. And thus several times she followed me up and down telling me that she had undone herself in belying herself and others. I asked her why she did not [illegible] writ it. She told me because she had stood out so long in it that now she darest not. She said also that if she told Mr. Noyes but once she had sat her hand to the book he would believe her but if she told the truth and said she had not sat her hand to the book a hundred times he would not believe her.

Sarah Ingersoll

Anna Andrus

By late 1692, voices critical of the Salem trials began to grow in number and influence. The last eight of the nineteen executed witches were hanged on September 22, but by that time several prominent ministers had already begun to question the assumption that the Devil could not assume the shape of an innocent person. In October of 1692, theologian Increase Mather published
Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men
, which claimed that spectral evidence of the kind used to condemn those executed was unreliable for the prosecution of witches. Later that same month, prominent merchant Thomas Brattle circulated a letter that sharply criticized the methods used by the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Partly in response to these two texts, Governor William Phips finally dissolved the Court on October 29, 1692.
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The magnitude of the Salem witch crisis and the near-immediate reversal by some of the participants after the trials drew to a close—most notably Judge Samuel Sewall, afflicted girl Ann Putnam, and minister John Hale—can sometimes leave the impression that Salem formed a final conflagration of witch superstition that burned itself up in one great paroxysm, leaving North American legal, religious, and intellectual life abruptly free of early modern biases and misconceptions. Such an impression is hardly accurate. While no witch trial in North America—or Europe, for that matter—would ever again approach the magnitude and fatality of the Salem episode, witch belief did not disappear. It merely changed form.

Enough questions arose about the conduct of the legal proceedings at Salem that courts grew more cautious in their willingness to prosecute witches. The legal anxiety specifically concerned the vexing question of whether spectral evidence should be used only to open inquiry into a witch’s crimes, or whether it should also be admissible in determining her ultimate guilt. The spectral evidence debate revolved around differing theological opinions on whether the Devil could assume the shape of an innocent person. Cotton Mather, drawing from the published accounts of the Bury St. Edmunds trial of 1662, felt that he could not, but that spectral evidence alone should not be the sole basis for conviction; his father, Increase Mather, argued that it was possible for the Devil to frame innocent people, and it would be better for a witch to go free than for an innocent person to be falsely convicted. Skeptics like Thomas Brattle argued that treating the actions of a person’s shape as equivalent to the actions of the person was insupportable. With so many unsettling questions about the burden of proof in the Salem trial, the legal system no longer seemed able to deal credibly with witches. But the legal system’s shortcomings did not necessarily imply a sudden shift in popular consciousness.

Gradually, over the course of the eighteenth century, witchcraft moved from being a legal problem to being a purely cultural one. One example of this transition appears in the passage of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which redefined the crime from witchcraft, understood as a covenant with the Devil,
to
claiming to practice
witchcraft, that is, to a matter of fraud. But if witchcraft was no longer a crime against God and man and was instead a matter of unscrupulous cunning folk taking advantage of credulous people, then belief in witchcraft hadn’t exactly disappeared. Witches still stalked the Atlantic Anglophone eighteenth-century world, both in the form of Salem-related aftermath, in a few isolated trials, in newspaper stories, and eventually, in folklore.
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