Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II With an Account of...

— 79 ==

— 13 ==

— 0 ==

"George Jacobs."

When Edward Bishop and his wife Sarah were arrested, household goods which were valued by the sheriff himself at ten pounds,—he refusing that sum for their restitution,—six cows, twenty-four swine, forty-six sheep, were taken from his farm. The imprisonment of himself and wife (prior to their escape) aggregated thirty-seven weeks. Ten shillings a week for board, and other charges and prison fees amounting to five pounds, were assessed upon his estate, and taken by distraint. A family of twelve children was left without any to direct or care for them, and the product of the farm for that year wholly cut off.

There were taken from the estate of Samuel Wardwell, who was executed, five cows, a heifer and yearling, a horse, nine hogs, eight loads of hay, six acres of standing corn, and a set of carpenters' tools. From the estate of Dorcas Hoar, a widow, there were taken two cows, an ox and mare, four pigs, bed, bed-curtains and bedding, and other household stuff.

Persons apprehended were made to pay all charges of every kind for their maintenance, fuel, clothes, expenses of transportation from jail to jail, and inexorable court and prison fees. The usual fee to the clerk of the courts was £1. 17s. 5d., sometimes more; sometimes, although very rarely, a little less. He must have received a large amount of money in the aggregate that year. The prisoners were charged for every paper that was drawn up. If a reprieve was obtained, there was a fee. When discharged, there was a fee. The expenses of the executions, even hangmen's fees, were levied on the families of the sufferers. Abraham Foster, whose mother died in prison, to get her body for burial, had to pay £2. 10s.

When the value of money at that time is considered, and we bear in mind that most of the persons apprehended were farmers, who have but little cash on hand, and that these charges were levied on their stock, crops, and furniture in their absence, and in the unrestrained exercise of arbitrary will, by the sheriff or constables, we can judge how utterly ruinous the operation must have been.

[G] Love's Labour's Lost, act v., sc. 1.

[H] There are several other depositions in these cases, that may perhaps be explained under the head of nightmare. The following are specimens; that, for instance, of Robert Downer, of Salisbury, who testifies and says,—

"That, several years ago, Susanna Martin, the then wife of George Martin, being brought to court for a witch, the said Downer, having some words with her, this deponent, among other things, told her he believed that she was a witch, by what was said or witnessed against her; at which she, seeming not well affected, said that a, or some, she-devil would fetch him away shortly, at which this deponent was not much moved; but at night, as he lay in his bed in his own house, alone, there came at his window the likeness of a cat, and by and by came up to his bed, took fast hold of his throat, and lay hard upon him a considerable while, and was like to throttle him. At length, he minded what Susanna Martin threatened him with the day before. He strove what he could, and said, 'Avoid, thou she-devil, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!' and then it let him go, and jumped down upon the floor, and went out at the window again."

Susanna Martin, by the boldness and severity of her language, in defending herself against the charge of witchcraft, had evidently, for a long time, rendered herself an object of dread, and seems to have disturbed the dreams of the superstitious throughout the neighborhood. For instance, Jarvis Ring, of Salisbury, made oath as follows:—

"That, about seven or eight years ago, he had been several times afflicted, in the night-time, by some body or some thing coming up upon him when he was in bed, and did sorely afflict him by lying upon him; and he could neither move nor speak while it was upon him, but sometimes made a kind of noise that folks did hear him and come up to him; and, as soon as anybody came, it would be gone. This it did for a long time, both then and since, but he did never see anybody clearly; but one time, in the night, it came upon me as at other times, and I did then see the person of Susanna Martin, of Amesbury. I, this deponent, did perfectly see her; and she came to this deponent, and took him by the hand, and bit him by the finger by force, and then came and lay upon him awhile, as formerly, and after a while went away. The print of the bite is yet to be seen on the little finger of his right hand; for it was hard to heal. He further saith, that several times he was asleep when it came; but, at that time, he was as fairly awaked as ever he was, and plainly saw her shape, and felt her teeth, as aforesaid."

Barnard Peach made oath substantially as follows:—

"That about six or seven years past, being in bed on a Lord's-day night, he heard a scrambling at the window, and saw Susanna Martin come in at the window, and jump down upon the floor. She was in her hood and scarf, and the same dress that she was in before, at meeting the same day. Being come in, she was coming up towards this deponent's face, but turned back to his feet, and took hold of them, and drew up his body into a heap, and lay upon him about an hour and a half or two hours, in all which time this deponent could not stir nor speak; but, feeling himself beginning to be loosened or lightened, and he beginning to strive, he put out his hand among the clothes, and took hold of her hand, and brought it up to his mouth, and bit three of the fingers (as he judges) to the breaking of the bones; which done, the said Martin went out of the chamber, down the stairs, and out of the door. The deponent further declared, that, on another Lord's-day night, while sleeping on the hay in a barn, about midnight the said Susanna Martin and another came out of the shop into the barn, and one of them said, 'Here he is,' and then came towards this deponent. He, having a quarter-staff, made a blow at them; but the roof of the barn prevented it, and they went away: but this deponent followed them, and, as they were going towards the window, made another blow at them, and struck them both down; but away they went out at the shop-window, and this deponent saw no more of them.

And the rumor went, that the said Martin had a broken head at that time; but the deponent cannot speak to that upon his own knowledge."

Any one who has had the misfortune to be subject to nightmare will find the elements of his own experience very much resembling the descriptions given by Kembal, Downer, Ring, and Peach. The terrors to which superstition, credulity, and ignorance subjected their minds; the frightful tales of witchcraft and apparitions to which they were accustomed to listen; and the contagious fears of the neighborhood in reference to Susanna Martin, taken in connection with a disordered digestion, an overloaded stomach, and a hard bed, or a strange lodging-place,—are wholly sufficient to account for all the phenomena to which they testified.

[I] The facts and considerations in reference to the authorship of the letter to Jonathan Corwin may be summarily stated as follows:—

The letter is signed "R.P." Under these initials is written, "Robert Pain," in a different hand, and, as the ink as well as the chirography shows, at a somewhat later date. R.P. are blotted over, but with ink of such lighter hue that the original letters are clearly discernible under it. A Robert Paine graduated at Harvard College, in 1656. But he was probably the foreman of the grand jury that brought in all the indictments in the witchcraft trials; and therefore could not, from the declarations in the letter itself, have been its author. The only other person of that name at the time, of whom we have knowledge, was his father, who seems, by the evidence we have, to have died in 1693. (That date is given in the Harvard Triennial for the death of Robert Paine, the graduate; but erroneously, I think, as signatures to documents, and conveyances of property subsequently, can hardly be ascribed to any other person.) Robert Paine, the father, from the earliest settlement of Ipswich, had been one of the leading men of the town, apparently of larger property than any other, often its deputy in the General Court, and, for a great length of time, ruling elder of the church. "Elder Pain," or Penn, as the name was often spelled, enjoyed the friendship of John Norton, and all the ministers far and near; and religious meetings were often held at his house. We know nothing to justify us in saying that he could not have been the author of this paper; but we also know nothing, except the appearance of his name upon it, to impute it to him.

The document is dated from "Salisbury." So far as we know, Elder Paine always lived in Ipswich; although, having property in the upper county, he may have often been, and possibly in his last years resided, there. It is, it is true, a strong circumstance, that his name is written, although by a late hand, under the initials. It shows that the person who wrote it thought that "R.P." meant Robert Paine; but any one conversant especially with the antiquities of Ipswich, or this part of the county, might naturally fall into such a mistake. The authorship of documents was often erroneously ascribed. The words "Robert Pain" were, probably, not on the paper when the indorsement was made, "A letter to my grandfather," &c. Elder Robert Paine, if living in 1692, was ninety-one years of age. The document under consideration, if composed by him, is truly a marvellous production,—an intellectual phenomenon not easily to be paralleled.

The facts in reference to Robert Pike, of Salisbury, as they bear upon the question of the authorship of the document, are these: He was seventy-six years of age in 1692, and had always resided in "Salisbury." The letter and argument are both in the handwriting of Captain Thomas Bradbury, Recorder of old Norfolk County. On this point, there can be no question. Bradbury and Pike had been fellow-townsmen for more than half a century, connected by all the ties of neighborhood and family intermarriage, and jointly or alternately had borne all the civic and military honors the people could bestow. The document was prepared and delivered to the judge while Mrs. Bradbury was in prison, and just one month before her trial. Pike, as has been shown (p. 226), was deeply interested in her behalf. The original signature ("R.P.") has the marked characteristics of the same initial letters as found in innumerable autographs of his, on file or record. There are interlineations, beyond question in Pike's handwriting. These facts demonstrate that both Pike and Bradbury were concerned in producing the document.

The history of Robert Pike proves that he was a man of great ability, had a turn of mind towards logical exercises, and was, from early life, conversant with disputations. Nearly fifty years before, he argued in town-meeting against the propriety, in view of civil and ecclesiastical law, of certain acts of the General Court. They arraigned, disfranchised, and otherwise punished him for his "litigiousness:" but the weight of his character soon compelled them to restore his political rights; and the people of Salisbury, the very next year, sent him among them as their deputy, and continued him from time to time in that capacity. At a subsequent period, he was the leader and spokesman of a party in a controversy about some ecclesiastical affairs, involving apparently certain nice questions of theology, which created a great stir through the country. The contest reached so high a point, that the church at Salisbury excommunicated him; but the public voice demanded a council of churches, which assembled in September, 1676, and re-instated Major Pike condemning his excommunication, "finding it not justifiable upon divers grounds." On this occasion, as before, the General Court frowned upon and denounced him; but the people came again to his rescue, sending him at the next election into the House of Deputies, and kept him there until raised to the Upper House as an Assistant. He was in the practice of conducting causes in the courts, and was long a local magistrate and one of the county judges.

He does not appear to have been present at any of the trials or examinations of 1692; but his official position as Assistant caused many depositions taken in his neighborhood to be acknowledged and sworn before him. While entertaining the prevalent views about diabolical agency, he always disapproved of the proceedings of the Court in the particulars to which the arguments of the communication to Jonathan Corwin apply,—the "spectre evidence,"—and the statements and actings of "the afflicted children." There are indications that sometimes he saw through the folly of the stories told by persons whose depositions he was called to attest. One John Pressy was circulating a wonderful tale about an encounter he had with the spectre of Susanna Martin. Pike sent for him, and took his deposition. Pressy averred, that, one evening, coming from Amesbury Ferry, he fell in with the shape of Martin in the form of a body of light, which "seemed to be about the bigness of a half-bushel." After much dodging and manœuvring, and being lost and bewildered, wandering to and fro, tumbling into holes,—where, as the deposition states, no "such pitts" were known to exist,—and other misadventures, he came to blows with the light, and had several brushes with it, striking it with his stick. At one time, "he thinks he gave her at least forty blows."

He finally succeeded in finding "his own house: but, being then seized with fear, could not speak till his wife spoke to him at the door, and was in such a condition that the family was afraid of him; which story being carried to the town the next day, it was, upon inquiry, understood, that said Goodwife Martin was in such a miserable case and in such pain that they swabbed her body, as was reported." He concludes his deposition by saying, that Major Pike "seemed to be troubled that this deponent had not told him of it in season that she might have been viewed to have seen what her ail was." The affair had happened "about twenty-four years ago." Probably neither Pressy nor the Court appreciated the keenness of the major's expression of regret. It broke the bubble of the deposition. The whole story was the product of a benighted imagination, disordered by fear, filled with inebriate vagaries, exaggerated in nightmare, and resting upon wild and empty rumors. Robert Pike's course, in the case of Mrs. Bradbury, harmonizes with the supposition that he was Corwin's correspondent.

Materials may be brought to light that will change the evidence on the point. It may be found that Elder Paine died before 1692: that would dispose of the question. It may appear that he was living in Salisbury at the time, and acted with Pike and Bradbury, they giving to the paper the authority of his venerable name and years. But all that is now known, constrains me to the conclusion stated in the text.

[J] As an illustration of the oblivion that had settled over the details of the transactions and characters connected with the witchcraft prosecutions, it may be mentioned, that when, thirty-five years ago, I prepared the work entitled 'Lectures on Witchcraft; comprising a History of the Delusion in 1692,' although professional engagements prevented my making the elaborate exploration that has now been given to the subject, I extended the investigation over the ordinary fields of research, and took particular pains to obtain information brought down by tradition, gleaned all that could be gathered from the memories of old persons then living of what they had heard from their predecessors, and sought for every thing that local antiquaries and genealogists could contribute. I find, by the methods of inquiry adopted in the preparation of the present work, how inadequate and meagre was the knowledge then possessed. Most of the persons accused and executed, like Giles Corey, his wife Martha, and Bridget Bishop, were supposed to have been of humble, if not mean condition, of vagrant habits, and more or less despicable repute.

By following the threads placed in my hands, in the files of the county-offices of Registry of Deeds and Wills, and documents connected with trials at law, and by a collation of conveyances and the administration of estates, I find that Corey, however eccentric or open to criticism in some features of character and passages of his life, was a large landholder, and a man of singular force and acuteness of intellect; while his wife had an intelligence in advance of her times, and was a woman of eminent piety. The same is found to have been the case with most of those who suffered.

The reader may judge of my surprise in now discovering, that, while writing the "Lectures on Witchcraft," I was owning and occupying a part of the estate of Bridget Bishop, if not actually living in her house. The hard, impenetrable, all but petrified oak frame seems to argue that it dates back as far as when she rebuilt and renewed the original structure. Little, however, did I suspect, while delivering those lectures in the Lyceum Hall, that we were assembled on the site of her orchard, the scene of the preternatural and diabolical feats charged upon her by the testimony of Louder and others. Her estate was one of the most eligible and valuable in the old town, with a front, as has been mentioned, of a hundred feet on Washington Street, and extending along Church Street more than half the distance to St. Peter's Street. At the same time, her husband seems to have had a house in the village, near the head of Bass River. It is truly remarkable, that the locality of the property and residence of a person of her position, and who led the way among the victims of such an awful tragedy, should have become wholly obliterated from memory and tradition, in a community of such intelligence, consisting, in so large a degree, of old families, tracing themselves back to the earliest generations, and among whom the innumerable descendants of her seven great-grandchildren have continued to this day. It can only be accounted for by the considerations mentioned in the text. Tradition was stifled by horror and shame. What all desired to forget was forgotten.

The only recourse was in oblivion; and all, sufferers and actors alike, found shelter under it.

[K] The looseness and inaccuracy of persons in reference to their own ages, in early times, is quite observable. In depositions, they speak of themselves as "about" so many years, or as of so many years "or thereabouts." A variance on this point is often found in the statements of the same person at different times. Neither are records always to be relied upon as to precision. In the record-book of the village church, Mr. Parris enters the age of Mrs. Ann Putnam, at the date of her admission, June 4, 1691, as "Ann: ætat: 27." But an "Account of the Early Settlers of Salisbury," in the "New-England Historical and Genealogical Register," vol. vii. p. 314, gives the date of her birth "15, 4, 1661." Her age is stated above according to this last authority; and, if correct, she was not so young, at the time of her marriage, as intimated (vol. i. p. 253), but seventeen years five months and ten days. It is difficult, however, to conceive how Parris, who was careful about such matters, and undoubtedly had his information from her own lips, could have been so far out of the way. Her brother, William Carr, in 1692, deposed that he was then forty-one years of age or thereabouts; whereas, the "Account of the Early Settlers of Salisbury," just referred to, gives the date of his birth "15, 1, 1648." It is indeed singular, that two members of a family of their standing should have been under an error as to their own age; one to an extent of almost, the other of some months more than, three years.

[L] The following passage is from the parish records:—

"On the 3d of February, 1693, a warrant was issued for a meeting of the inhabitants of the village, signed by Thomas Preston, Joseph Pope, Joseph Houlton, and John Tarbell, of the standing annual committee, to be held Feb. 14, 'to consider and agree and determine who are capable of voting in our public transactions, by the power given us by the General-court order at our first settlement; and to consider of and make void a vote in our book of records, on the 18th of June, 1689, where there is a salary of sixty-six pounds stated to Mr. Parris, he not complying with it; also to consider of and make void several votes in the book of records on the 10th of October, 1692, where our ministry house and barn and two acres of land seem to be conveyed from us after a fraudulent manner.'"

At this meeting, it was voted, that "all men that are ratable, or hereafter shall be living within that tract of land mentioned in our General-court order, shall have liberty in nominating and appointing a committee, and voting in any of our public concerns."

By referring to the account, in the First Part, of the controversy between the inhabitants of the village and Mr. Bayley, "the power" above alluded to, "given us by the General Court," will be seen fully described. In its earnestness to fasten Mr. Bayley upon "the inhabitants," the Court elaborately ordained the system by which they should be constrained to provide for him, and compelled to raise the means of paying his salary. As no church had then been organized, the General Court fastened the duty upon "householders." The fact had not been forgotten, and the above vote showed that the parish intended to hold on to the power then given them. This highly incensed the Court of Sessions. It ordered the parish book of records to be produced before it, and caused a condemnation of such a claim of right to be written out, in open Court, on the face of the record, where it is now to be seen. It is as follows:—

"At the General Sessions of the Peace holden at Ipswich, March the 28th, 1693. This Court having viewed and considered the above agreement or vote contained in the last five lines, finding the same to be repugnant to the laws of this province, do declare the same to be null and void, and that this order be recorded with the records of this Court.

"Attest, Stephen Sewall, Clerk."