Six Women of Salem (37 page)

1
June
1692

Mary English Aged about
39
years Testifyeth that about a Month agoe at Sallem That I heard the Said Mary Warrine to Spake the Same words (as is Testifyed too by Edward Bishop Sarah Bishop And Mary Easty) that She Said that the Majestrats might as well Examen Keysers Daughter that had bene Distracted many years And take Notice of what She Said as well as any of the Eflicted persons &c

as witnes my hand Mary English

There. The court
had
to listen to that.

One way or another the two papers found their way into the official files, but just how is a puzzle considering the four were suspected of adhering to the Prince of Lies.

Prior to this, perhaps Mistress English had been able to secure a private sleeping room for herself, one of the spaces along the common dungeon’s outside wall, and this would offer not only a measure of privacy but also a small window. This would cost more than the usual room and board fee charged to the prisoners, but Mary had a good head for business and a reputation for speaking up. She could well have been in contact with her staff in Salem. Someone had to be watching the children, and as later generations had it, her servants were loyal. Once Philip was with her in Boston as well they could see about better accommodations. The law, as Mary English would learn, had searched the home of merchant George Hollard, one of Philip’s Boston colleagues, but they found nothing the first time. What gossip did not yet know was that Philip had hidden under a pile of dirty laundry in Hollard’s house, a place the constables did
not
examine. But Philip would join Mary in the Boston jail before the day was out.

That prisoners would be brought to Salem on the first of June was common knowledge to anyone following events. In Salem Village that same day Ann Putnam felt attacked once again by the specter of her enemy, Rebecca Nurse. While the real Goody Nurse circled the marshes with the other prisoners, the tormenting spirit lit into Ann, snarling its intention to murder her at last for her defiance and bragging of the local people it had killed. More frightening still were the ghosts of murdered children that appeared, clamoring for vengeance.

Thomas Putnam wrote an account of his wife’s vision to give to the authorities. The Nurse specter had choked Ann, it said, also declaring,

that now she was come out of prison she had power to afflet me and that now she would afflect me all this day long and would kil me if she could and she also tould me that she and hir sister Cloyes and  Ed Bishops wife [i.e., Sarah, not Bridget] of Salem village had kiled young Jno putnams child because yong Jno putnam had said that it was no wonder they ware wicthes for their mother was so before them and because they could not aveng themselues on him they did kill his child. and Immediatly their did appere to me six childeren in winding sheets which caled me aunt: which did most greviously affright me. and they tould me that they ware my sisters Bakers children of Boston and that gooddy nurs and Mistris Cary of Chalstown and an old deaf woman att Boston had murthered them and charged me to goe and tell thes things to the majestrats or elce they would tare me to peaces for their blood did crie for vengeance.

The ghosts of Ann’s sister Mary Bayley and three of her children, all in grave clothes, all accusing Goody Nurse of their murders, soon joined those violent ghosts.

John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, preparing for the trials, interviewed some of the confessors—Deliverance Hobbs and her stepdaughter Abigail as well as Mary Warren—while Thomas Newton took notes. After Abigail described the specter of Reverend Burroughs as he threatened to make her join the great witch meetings in Reverend Parris’s field, Mary Warren told how Burroughs announced that Devilish witch-sacrament with a trumpet blast and tried to make her join them. This had happened “in prison in Salem about a fortnight agone.” Goodwives Nurse Procter, Parker, Pudeator, and Dustin as well as Abigail Soames were in his troupe along with Goodman Procter “& others unknowne.” While she deposed, specters of Rebecca Nurse and Philip English invaded the room, with Nurse choking the three women and English running a pin into Mary’s hand.

At some point this day Constable John Putnam informed the witnesses against Rebecca Nurse to report to the court by eight o’clock the following day, Thursday, June 2: Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Susanna Shelden, Mercy Lewis, Ann Putnam Jr., and Ann Putnam Sr. Constable Putnam also warned Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, Susanna Shelden, Mercy Lewis, Ann Putnam Jr., and Nathaniel Putnam to appear in court as witnesses against John Willard at nine o’clock the same morning—but not Elizabeth Hubbard or Mrs. Ann Putnam, for all that she thought he had killed her infant daughter.

Ghosts continued to accost Ann Putnam, as fierce as the witch specters. Two dead neighbors from Will’s Hill, Lydia Wilkins and Samuel Fuller, materialized at her bedside the morning of June 2. John Willard had killed them, they told her with savage desperation, aided by Martha Corey and William Hobbs. If she would not tell Mr. Hathorne about this, they would tear her to pieces and appear in the courtroom themselves, they told her. Their murders
must
be made known. “I knew [them] when they were living & it was Exactly thier resemblance & Shape,” Ann told Thomas, who recorded this incident as well. The specter of John Willard appeared also to brag of those and other murders, for he had killed seven children in the Village, including “this deponents Child. Sarah 6 weeks old.”

One after another the inhabitants of the Invisible World invaded the visible world, terrifying and vengeful. But she had to be brave—as brave as her daughter. She
had
to go on.

Some hours into the morning of June 2, their first full day back in Salem, five of the women were examined for witch-marks (presumably apart from the male prisoners). Nine local matrons and a male surgeon looked them over, hunting for what might be the Devil’s marking of his own, something normally hidden under clothing: Bridget Bishop, Sarah Good, Susannah Martin (none of whom would have submitted meekly to this), Alice Parker, Rebecca Nurse, and Elizabeth Procter.

The jury of women gingerly or more roughly fingered the subjects to determine by sight and touch what imperfection—a mole, a scar, a wart—might be natural or might be an old wound where a devil branded a convert to mark possession, just as farmers notched their cattle’s ears in patterns of ownership, or might be a sore spot where an imp familiar had suckled bloody nourishment, drawing life and strength from the witch-host in Hellish parody of mother’s milk. Such matters were obscure, and the interpretations of such marks subject to debate.

They observed that Susannah Martin’s breasts were “very full; the Nibbs [nipples] fresh & starting,” odd for an older woman—though not so odd for an uncovered woman if the room were cold. The midwives would have discovered the more ordinary fact that Goody Procter was with child. They especially noticed that she, along with Nurse and Bishop, had, as the surgeon John Barton wrote, “a preternaturall Excresence of flesh between the pudendum and Anus much like to tetts [teats] & not usuall in women, & much unlike to the other three that hath been searched by us.” Later Court Clerk Stephen Sewall, added that these excrescences “were in all the three women neer the same place.”

Her excrescence, Rebecca Nurse explained, was due to difficult childbirth episodes. The eldest matron, a well-known midwife agreed that the imperfections looked natural, but none of the other women on the jury agreed. The prisoners pulled their clothes back together, and the surgeon went off to examine John Procter and Giles Corey with a jury of men, where they found nothing unusual.

Bridget Bishop, meanwhile, was taken from the prison to face the Grand Jury. Where her husband, daughter, or son-in-law were is open to question. Had anyone visited her in jail? Had anyone brought her a change of clean clothes? Was there anyone who did not believe her to be guilty?

Flanked by guards with staffs of office, preceded by the sheriff, they left the jail and passed through the gate to the lane. Onlookers would not have skipped this opportunity to gawk. The route to the court must have been lined with people, both locals and out-of-towners. From the lane they turned into the main street, making their way past the staring crowd, past the Ship Tavern—she had had trouble with those neighbors before—toward the town square by the pump and the meeting house. It was supposed to be under repair, but the workmen were absent, probably neglecting their job for the prospect of her trial’s entertainment. Bridget glanced toward that large building as they approached, just as something inside it made a great bang. The procession paused while men were sent into the meeting house to see what had happened. A board studded with nails, they reported back, had fallen from its place—
just
when the prisoner had looked in that direction—and the board was not particularly near where it had been originally, as if it had been thrown by some invisible presence rather than just come loose and dropped. This left the guards and crowd wondering if some entity had come to rescue one of its own.

But no rescue came, and Bridget was urged around the corner and up the rise to the town house. Two stories high plus a garret, the brick building stood in the middle of the street with Bridget’s home to the right and Reverend Nicholas Noyes’s to the left. Salem stored firefighting equipment in the town house attic, and the local grammar school occupied ground level. (If school was in session, there would be little concentration today. Translating the Latin of Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
could not be as gripping as eavesdropping on the war between God and Satan upstairs.) Town meetings and selectmen meetings ordinarily gathered upstairs, as did the Quarterly Court. Now the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened there to try the multitude of witch cases. Bridget’s would be the first.

While Bridget was being transferred from the jail, Chief Justice William Stoughton administered “in open Court” the oaths of office to Thomas Newton as their Majesties’ attorney general, who promised to “act truly and faithfully on their Majesties behalf, as to Law and Justice doth appertain, without any favour or Affection,” and to Stephen Sewall to perform the duties of clerk of the court.

The eighteen grand jury members also needed to take their oaths, for this body would consider all the cases and determine which of them ought to proceed to the trial jury or be dismissed. Unfortunately, their names are lost except for that of the foreman, John Ruck, a Salem town merchant and brother of Reverend Burroughs’s late second wife.

Stoughton presumably withdrew after the oaths, for judges did not preside at grand jury sessions, and the officers fetched Bridget Bishop to face the jurors, the attorney general, and her accusers. There may not have been a general audience for this part of the proceedings. Without the judges or onlookers, the grand jury hearings were evidently somewhat more subdued than the hearings had been or the petty jury trials would be.

Various witnesses, if they had not already done so, swore before John Hathorne that their written statements were true. Attorney General Newton had collected the written accounts and the examination notes from Bridget’s hearing in order to decide just what evidences he would present to the grand jury and which alleged victims to name in the indictments.

Once Bridget was brought up the staircase to the packed courtroom—all eyes on her, a wave of whispers at her appearance—Newton produced five indictments, of which four remain, for Bridget’s supposed torments against Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Ann Putnam Jr. He had prewritten forms ready, a Latin heading dating the document in the fourth year of William and Mary’s reign (1692) and phrased in standard legal language, handwritten with blanks left for the names of accused, victim, dates, and other specifics. On number five, for Annie Putnam, Newton wrote in the spaces as follows (here in italics):

Anno Regni Regis et Reginæ Willim et

Mariæ nunc Angliæ &tc Quarto:

Essex ss

The Jurors for our Sovereigne Lord & Lady the King & Queen prsents that
Bridgett Bishop alis Olliver the wife of Edward Bishop of Salem in the County of Essex
Sawyer
the
Nyneteenth
Day of
April
in the
ffourth
Year of the Reigne of our Sovereigne Lord & Lady William and Mary By the Grace of God of England Scottland ffrance & Ireland King & Queen Defendrs of the ffaith &tc and divers other Dayes & times as well before as after certaine Detestable Artes called Witchcrafts & Sorceries, Wickedly and felloniously hath used Practised & Exercised at and within the Towneship of Salem, aforesd in upon and agt one
Ann puttnam of Salem Village in the County aforesd singlewoman
by which said wicked Arts the said
Ann puttnam
the
sd Nyneteenth
Day of April in the
ffourth Year
abovesd and divers other Dayes & times as well before as after was & is hurt, tortured, Afflicted Pined Consumed wasted & Tormented agt the Peace of our said Sovereigne Lord & Lady the King and Queen and against the forme of the Statute in that Case made & Provided.

Below this Newton wrote the names of the witnesses to this charge, listing the same five afflicted people on all the other indictments—Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard—all of whom had reported seeing the specters torment each other. There were also the names of three nonafflicted observers who had been present at Bridget’s hearing to see the reactions of the five and hear them name the accused—Samuel Parris, Nathaniel Ingersoll, and Thomas Putnam. These men did not claim to have seen the specters.