The Penguin Book of Witches (28 page)

8
.
Goodwife Wright can’t win in this instance. On the one hand she is being consulted about Alice Beylie’s husband, and whether he or Alice will die first. Such a question suggests that Goody Wright might be a source of authority the way a cunning woman would be. And yet despite this authority, Goody Wright has gotten in trouble for offering such an opinion, and so she declines to do so. It’s impossible to say what Alice’s motivations are for relaying this exchange—is she angry that Goody Wright knows who will die first but won’t say? Even declining to answer leaves Goody Wright open to suspicion, and it is partly her implied authority that renders her suspect.

JANE JAMES, MARBLEHEAD, MASSACHUSETTS,
1646

1
.
John Putnam Demos,
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)
,
249.

2
.
Transcribed from
Records of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County,
Massachusetts State Archives, document 1-56–1.

MARGARET JONES, CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS,
1648

1
.
David Hall,
Witch-hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 21.

2
.
Owen Davies
, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), 29–30.

3
.
Transcribed from
John Winthrop’s Journal
,
History of New England, Volume 2
,
1630–1649,
Winthrop Papers bound manuscripts
,
Massachusetts Historical Society
.
Microfilm reel 35
,
document 5.

4
.
Demos,
Entertaining Satan
, 402.

5
.
Margaret Jones is another possible example of cunning folk in the North American history of witchcraft. It is difficult not to read Winthrop’s account of her crimes as a problem of effectiveness rather than substance. If Jones were thought to have a beneficial touch rather than a malignant one, would her reputation have suffered? Gifford and Perkins would have said she should be made to suffer either way. Is she a witch or a failed cunning woman?

6
.
For either “licorice” (sometimes spelled “liquorice”) or “liquors,” though precise determination is difficult to make.

7
.
Margaret Jones makes a mistake that will appear often in North American witchcraft trials, in that she makes a remark that could be construed in a neutral way—that is, that her patient shouldn’t rely on anyone else because her medicine or care is the best—but which is later construed as a threat or prediction. The error lies in Margaret’s claim to authority and seeming dismissal of the services that might be offered by her rivals. Margaret’s accusers seem to share Perkins’s uneasy relationship with authoritative speech and the appearance or claim of skill, particularly when coming from someone who, like Margaret Jones, does not occupy a position of power and respect within her community.

8
.
Margaret Jones knows secrets. Margaret Jones, in effect, knows too much. Her knowledge is unnatural, and Perkins would point to her knowledge as a sign of her seeking power and authority that God does not want her to have.

9
.
Margaret Jones is found to have a mysterious “teat” in her “secret parts,” which more than one historian has suggested was likely the clitoris. See Elizabeth Reis, “The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England,”
The Journal of American History
82:1 (June 1995): 15–36.

10
.
To “use means” is another way of saying that she used technique, or witchcraft, that is, that Margaret Jones exercised some specific skill in the task of curing the unnamed woman in Winthrop’s account.

11
.
Images of Hale’s original text may be viewed via the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ModestEnquiry/images.01/source/17.html.

12
.
Hall,
Witch-hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England
, 21.

13
.
Hale is suggesting that Margaret Jones was found out as a witch through the intervention of folk magic, namely, the idea that a bewitched object, if burned, would either punish or summon the witch responsible, because of the correspondence established between the witch’s body and the bewitched object. In addition to having a personality that would make her an attractive prospect as a witch—her “rayling,” which carried on right until her death, according to Winthrop—Jones also might have been an economically marginal figure, as evidenced by Hale’s account of her past as a thief. Her gender, comportment, and economic status set Margaret Jones up as a fairly archetypal example, but even with witchcraft serving as a proxy for those other pressing issues, the presence of cunning-folk-informed magical practice remains paramount. Margaret Jones was undone by a charm.

RALPH AND MARY HALL, SETAUKET, NEW YORK,
1665

1
.
While Setauket is on Long Island and today belongs to New York, when Ralph and Mary Hall were tried the settlement was part of Connecticut. See Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
409.

2
.
Judith Richardson,
Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 18–19.

3
.
Transcription from unbound manuscript, handwritten by Judge Gabriel Furman, Witchcraft Collection, unbound manuscripts, #4620. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

4
.
East Setauket, on the northern shore of Long Island.

5
.
This account echoes the language used by William Perkins, who characterizes witchcraft as an art. The tricky distinction with felony witchcraft is that it is both a crime of method and a crime of outcome. In this instance, Ralph and Mary Hall are accused of causing the death of their neighbor George Wood. But they are not accused of murder—they are accused of using “wicked and detestable arts” to bring about his death.

6
.
“Live voice,” that is, in person.

7
.
Ralph and Mary Hall are fairly typical of North American accused witches if we consider the nature of their crimes, which specifically involve the harming of children and the negative impact on the health of a neighbor. Ralph Hall is the earliest example of a male witch that I have been able to find in colonial North America. Ralph’s gender makes him somewhat special, as women vastly outweighed men both in the abstracted conception of who likely witches were, and in the actual historical record. Ralph Hall, however, was typical of male accused witches in that he was associated with—married to—a woman who was also accused. Notably, while the court agrees that Mary’s actions are worthy of suspicion, they find that evidence against Ralph is insufficient for charging him. Instead, he is instructed to guarantee the appearance of his wife.

8
.
Magnalia Christi Americana: the Ecclesiastical History of New England
, published by Cotton Mather in London in 1702. This text represented Mather’s attempt to distance himself from some of what had happened at Salem and addresses the central theological problem of that trial, namely whether the Devil could assume the shape of an innocent person. Initially Mather had supposed that the Devil could assume the shape of anyone, innocent or guilty, in contrast to the belief of his father, Increase Mather. However, as the tide of public opinion about Salem turned in the decade immediately following the trial, Cotton Mather backed away from his earlier assertions.

9
.
The OED edition of 1916 defines “venefick” as “Practicing, or dealing in, poisoning; acting by poison; having poisonous effects,” though the usage is rare enough that this passage quoted from the
Magnalia
is one of only three quoted examples. The OED holds the noun form of the word to be “One who practices poisoning as a secret art; a sorcerer or sorceress; a wizard or witch.”

EUNICE COLE, HAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS, LATER NEW HAMPSHIRE,
1647–1680

1
.
Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
171.

2
.
Transcribed from
Records of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County,
Massachusetts State Archives,
Document 1-93–1.

3
.
Transcribed from
Massachusetts Archives Collection,
Massachusetts State Archives, Document 135: 2, 2.

4
.
True copy by me.

5
.
A transcription of these documents has previously been published by David Hall, though a few words were left out. Hall does not identify Thomas Mouton’s wife’s first name—Sobriety—though it is added in superscript in the original document. See Hall,
Witch-hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England
, 215.

6
.
At this point in Eunice Cole’s career she has an established reputation as someone who is difficult to deal with. She also, as evidenced by her presentment for biting a constable, will express her anger in a physical way. But the Boultons are starting to suspect that Eunice’s attitude might be only part of the problem. At this juncture they stop short of suggesting that she was able to overhear their discussion using magical means, though the implication is there.

7
.
Transcribed from
Massachusetts Archives Collection,
Massachusetts State Archives, Document 135: 3, 3.

8
.
David Hall attributes this testimony to Edward Rawson, but the original text suggests otherwise.

9
.
A witch’s teat could show up anywhere, as in this case, under the left breast of an aging woman. Goody Cole could have been suffering from skin tags. Less important than identifying the skin eruptions from a modern medical standpoint is the fact that the search for the witch’s teat on a suspected person creates the ideal set of circumstances for confirmation bias, in which evidence will only be gathered that reinforces a previously held position. If Eunice Cole was suspicious enough to warrant being searched for a witch’s teat, then they were bound to find one—wherever and whatever it was.

10
.
The OED has the verb form of “flea” meaning “to remove fleas,” with the earliest appearance being 1610. OED, 1896 edition.

11
.
Witches were typically suspected of interfering with such small-scale, yet personally devastating, situations as sick children and dead livestock. A confrontation about cows, and the question of their health and care, is what leads Abraham Drake to regard Eunice Cole’s prediction about his cattle falling sick as a threat, which was then carried out by invisible means.

12
.
Eunice Cole was apparently convicted after this 1656 trial, and historian Carol Karlsen writes that she spent the better part of the next twelve to fifteen years in the Boston jail. See Carol F. Karlsen,
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England
(New York: Norton, 1987, 1998), 53.

13
.
Transcribed from Samuel Drake collection,
Trials for witchcraft in New-England: original manuscript records, including affadavits in the cases against Eunice Coles, 1656; John Godfrey, 1659, etc,
Houghton Library Special Collection, Harvard University, MS Am 1328.1-1.

14
.
Lost?

15
.
Eunice Cole appears in this account not just as an impoverished woman but as a grasping one who irritates her community with her need.

16
.
Transcribed from
Massachusetts Archives Collection,
Massachusetts State Archives, Document 135, 4.

17
.
Plums.

18
.
“Would you like some candy, little girl?” That line is enough of a trope in contemporary American culture that it shows up everywhere from ironic Internet come-ons to Faith No More song lyrics. In this instance, Eunice Cole—marginalized, widowed, and already tried once as a witch in 1656 and imprisoned, with her property seized by the colony, living in destitution—is charged with trying to tempt the child Ann Smith into living with her. She offers her plums—a sweet enticement in the days of seasonal fruit—and failing that, she tries to physically drag Ann Smith back home with her.

19
.
Transcribed from
Massachusetts Archives Collection,
Massachusetts State Archives, document 135, 5.

20
.
A pearmain is either a variety of pear or an heirloom variety of apple that grows shaped like a pear. OED, September 2005. Another deposition identifies the tree as a persimmon.