In the Devil's Snare (26 page)

Bridget Oliver Bishop, the first convicted witch, provides an excellent example of this altered climate of opinion, for (with one undated exception) the maleficium tales told at her trial all originated between 1678 and 1686. No one from Salem Town had voiced a recent complaint against her. The same group of negative stories had been circulating for at least six years, but the authorities did not regard them as sufficiently compelling to bring her to trial for a second time until the afflicted Villagers translated long-standing Town gossip into complaints of spectral tortures. Then, in the context of fears of a combined assault from the visible and invisible worlds, and with witches and Indians coordinating their attacks on New England, the accusations took on a new and convincing urgency.

The conjunction of two events could have heightened Essex County concerns. On Friday, June 10, Bridget Bishop was hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem, without, remarked Robert Calef, “the least Confession of any thing relating to Witchcraft.” The judges probably did not attend the execution, but at least one of the afflicted accusers, Sarah Vibber, was there.
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On Saturday, June 11, a large band of Wabanakis (led by Madockawando, Moxis, Edgeremet, Worombe, and others), accompanied by some French officers and men, attacked Wells, which was but lightly defended. Settlers took refuge in the garrison; some men were on board sloops in the harbor. The enemy assaulted both the ships and the garrison, but could take neither, despite a two-day-long battle that continued into Sunday night. Eventually, they burned the town and killed all the livestock they could find, while terming the garrison’s defenders cowards for refusing to come out to fight. Cotton Mather later wrote that in their frustration the Wabanakis “fell to Threatning and Raging, like so many Defeated Devils.” They took a captive from the town “out of Gun-Shot,” torturing him “after a manner very Diabolical” in the sight of the horrified people in the garrison. “They Stripped him, they Scalped him alive, and after a Castration . . . they Slit him with Knives, between his Fingers and his Toes; They made cruel Gashes in the most Fleshy parts of his body, and stuck the Gashes with Firebrands, which were afterwards found Sticking in the wounds.” Thus, concluded Mather, “they Butchered One poor Englishman, with all the Fury that they would have spent upon them all.”
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Did anyone view the attack as revenge for Goody Bishop’s execution? It would have been easy for New Englanders to reach such a conclusion, but no such reasoning is recorded in surviving documents.

QUESTIONS AND CAVEATS BEGIN

Following the hanging of Bridget Bishop, afflictions in Salem Village ceased almost entirely for two full weeks. Between June 10 and June 24, specters tortured only three victims, and no new suspects were jailed. Of those three sufferers, just one—Susannah Sheldon—was included in the core group. The first victim was Jonathan Putnam, Sergeant Thomas’s younger cousin. When his sudden illness appeared attributable to witchcraft, the family called in Mercy Lewis, who the previous month had identified the apparitions tormenting members of the Wilkins clan. This time, she named Rebecca Nurse and Martha Carrier as those responsible for Jonathan’s condition. Three days later, Jemima Rea, the eleven-year-old daughter of a King Philip’s War veteran, likewise accused Rebecca Nurse—along with her sister Sarah Cloyce and a third woman—of causing her “strange fitts.” Finally, on Tuesday, June 21, Sheldon charged the specters of Lydia Dustin and Sarah Good with conducting a concerted campaign against her. The two apparitions had not only tormented her but had repeatedly tied her hands with cord, witnesses revealed, and objects had been mysteriously and frequently transported out of the house in which she was staying temporarily. (As was becoming commonplace, Sheldon’s afflictions had physical manifestations. That continued into the following week, when she once again accused Goody Good of having bound her hands so tightly she could not easily be freed.)
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Although such events must have aroused much talk in the Village, the fact that their number and frequency were so reduced, and that the main group of accusers (with the notable exception of Sheldon) now appeared relatively free of torments, might have suggested to some that the height of the crisis had passed. Perhaps the death of Goody Bishop had served the purpose of freeing the afflicted from at least some of their sufferings, just as the conviction and execution of the Lowestoft witches in England had cured the children who complained against them. Indeed, Cotton Mather later wrote in
Wonders of
the Invisible World,
a Salem Town woman who had angered Bridget Bishop a decade earlier, and who subsequently became “Froward, Crazed . . . [and] unreasonable,” had begun to recover with the arrest of Bishop and Alice Parker. She then regained her sanity entirely after the two women were executed.
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And perhaps the slight easing of tensions, the halt in what had been an unrelenting daily round of new bewitchments, formal accusations, and examinations, allowed some of the residents of Essex County and Boston to contemplate at slightly greater distance the bewildering events that had surrounded them for the past five months. Whether for that or some other cause, the weeks just prior to the second session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer witnessed the development of the first tentative criticisms of the proceedings.

Few surviving documents reveal any challenges to the magistrates prior to the execution of Bridget Bishop. Four suspected witches did attack Mary Warren’s credibility about two weeks after her May 12 confession, charging that she had earlier repeated “Severall times” in the Salem Town jail that “hir Head was [so] Distempered that Shee Could not tell what Shee Said” when she was afflicted. “I thought I saw the Apparission of A hundred persons,” Mary had revealed, but when she recovered “Shee Could not Say that Shee saw any of [those] Apparissons at the time Aforesaid.” Therefore, she had exclaimed, “the Majestrates Might as well Examine Keysars Daughter that has Bin Distracted Many Yeares . . . as well as any of the Afflicted persons.” But the joint statement would have been seen as self-interested (even though those who signed it had not been accused by her at the time), and nothing indicates that the judges took it seriously.
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After Goody Bishop’s hanging, however, and despite the fact that she had long been regarded as a witch, concerns about the witchcraft prosecutions began to surface, albeit in limited and sporadic ways. Such concerns took three forms: caveats voiced by the colony’s clergymen, both singly and collectively; a petition campaign that was decisively squelched by the arrest of its chief instigator; and a concerted effort by members of the Nurse family to prevent Rebecca’s conviction in the wake of her indictment for witchcraft.

Probably at its meeting of June 13, the Massachusetts council decided to ask “several ministers” for their opinions “upon the present witchcraft in Salem village.” Why the council requested that advice was not recorded, but that it did so suggests that questions had already been raised about the nature of the proceedings. The council meeting was attended by Governor Phips and four of the judges—Stoughton, Winthrop, Sewall, and Sergeant—and so the appeal for the clergy’s guidance came from a near quorum of the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
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On June 15, the clergymen responded with a lengthy document, the “Return of Several Ministers,” which conveyed an ambiguous message. Perhaps, like one of their number, Cotton Mather, they did not necessarily concur with “the
Principles,
that some of the Judges had espoused,” but at the same time acknowledged “their exemplary
Pietie,
and the
Agony
of Soul with which they sought the Direction of Heaven” and therefore “could not but speak honourably of their
Persons,
on all Occasions.” And the most important “principle” a magistrate “espoused” with which the clergy disagreed was that advanced by the revered chief judge, William Stoughton: that specters could not represent the shapes of innocent people. Accordingly, the ministers couched their response in careful language, on the one hand supporting the justices’ overall efforts but on the other raising some specific questions, especially about the interpretation of spectral evidence.
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Acknowledging the “deplorable” condition of “our poor neighbours, that are now suffering by molestations from the invisible world,” they thanked “our honourable rulers” for their attempts “to defeat the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country.”
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But, they warned, in pursuing prosecutions the judges should exercise “a very critical and exquisite caution,” for fear of being misled by “things received only upon the devil’s authority.” Too much “credulity” could lead to “a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan [could] get an advantage over us.” In particular, when people “formerly of an unblemished reputation” had been accused, the ministers recommended that “all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those that may be complained of.”

For specific advice on detecting witchcraft and on identifying and convicting those responsible, the clergymen referred the judges to “such judicious writers as [William] Perkins and [Richard] Bernard,” thus reconfirming contemporary observations (discussed in chapter 1) about the impact in 1692 of the writings of these two men in particular. Following Bernard, they counseled the magistrates against too much “noice, company and openness” during initial examinations. Moreover, only tests of undoubted “lawfulness” should be employed to uncover witches. Like Perkins and Bernard, they drew a distinction between “presumptions” that could lead to an inquiry and the proof necessary for conviction. Evidence for either presumptions or convictions “ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused person’s being represented by a spectre unto the afflicted,” they pointed out, “inasmuch as it is an undoubted and a notorious thing, that a demon may, by God’s permission, appear, even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man.” The ministers also expressed doubt whether “alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused, [are] an infallible evidence of guilt”; such changes instead could result from “the devil’s legerdemain.” Perhaps giving “remarkable affronts” to the devils by “our disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force and strength is from them alone” might even put a stop to the current “dreadful calamity,” they averred.

But after having called into question several of the tactics the magistrates were employing in their dealings with suspects, the clergymen retreated in their last paragraph when they returned to the praise of the magistrates with which they began. “Nevertheless,” they concluded, “we cannot but humbly recommend unto the government, the speedy and vigourous prosecutions of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the directions given in the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes of the English nation, for the detection of witchcrafts.”

In addition to summarizing what the “several ministers” said, it is also important to point out what they did
not
say. They did not contest the validity of the sufferings of the afflicted young people, nor did they challenge the belief that those torments originated in the invisible world. They did not dispute the reality of the girls’ spectral visions, but instead asked whether those visions (“the devil’s authority”) could be trusted unhesitatingly. While urging “exceeding tenderness” toward accused people with good reputations, they said nothing about those persons who have been termed herein “usual suspects”—women (and a few men) who had long been thought to be witches.

The justices in fact might well have interpreted much of the ministers’ statement, not simply its final paragraph, as an endorsement of their efforts. The clergymen had told them that they were doing good work in combating the “abominable witchcrafts” afflicting Essex County. If asked, the judges would surely have denied placing too much emphasis on “barely the accused person’s being represented by a spectre unto the afflicted” in the one trial they had already conducted. As Cotton Mather’s narrative showed, spectral evidence and touch tests constituted only part of the case against Bridget Bishop—confessions and testimony about past maleficium also played a major role in her conviction. In addition, since Goody Bishop could hardly have been seen as someone “formerly of an unblemished reputation,” the justices might even have thought that most of the clergy’s recommendations did not apply to their treatment of her. Robert Calef thus with some reason later charged that the “Return of Several Ministers” gave “as great or greater Encouragement to proceed in those dark methods, than cautions against them.”
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Yet still the document might have raised some doubts in the mind of a careful reader, especially one who had perused Cotton Mather’s May 31 letter to John Richards. Even though Mather later claimed not only that he agreed with the joint statement’s contents, “but it was
I
who drew it up,” the clergymen disputed some of the positions he had taken just two weeks earlier. He had essentially endorsed using as evidence “alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused,” when he mused that the witches “make their own bodies to be their puppets.” Further, his position on whether the devil could represent an innocent person as a spectral shape was not as clear-cut as the group’s: he had indicated that such a thing would happen, but rarely and under special circumstances, whereas the group statement said nothing about incidence. Then, too, that key question was not one on which Richard Bernard or William Perkins offered the judges much guidance. As will be recalled from chapter 1, Bernard had indicated that the devil might mischievously represent an “unregenerate” innocent person as a specter, but he had said nothing about whether a guiltless regenerate church member could be so represented. Perkins had not discussed the issue at all.
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Surely Samuel Willard too participated in drafting the “Return of Several Ministers.” And his sermons on the text of 1 Peter 5:8 on June 12 and 19— bracketing the drafting of that statement—reflected greater skepticism about the witchcraft prosecutions than had the one he delivered on May 29. That Sunday, of course, he almost certainly did not know that John Alden, a member of his congregation, had been formally accused the day before in Salem Village. The homilies he delivered in mid-June, after Captain Alden had been jailed, thus had a different tone from that of his first treatment of the subject. On June 12, he stressed Satan’s “Subtilty,” instructing his listeners (who included Judge Sewall), “dont believe the Devil” and warning that “if it were possible he would deceive the very Elect.” Emphasizing that Satan exhibited “peculiar rage” against the “children of God,” he explained that the devil “emproves every opportunity against them.” Their adversary’s “malice,” Willard declared, was exerted with greatest force “where the Gospel comes. Here he raises all his Powers & dos his utmost to oppose.”
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The June 19 sermon applied such general statements to a specific instance, that of John Alden, who, though unnamed, was clearly the topic of Willard’s discourse (which also probably addressed the complaints against Mistress Margaret Thacher, the widow of his predecessor). The clergyman exclaimed about how Satan defamed good folk as a part of his campaign against God’s people. Inveighing against the “raising of scandelus reports,” he asserted that “thos that cary up & downe such reports are the devills brokers.” And then he broached the crucial question: “wether the devill cane represent the person of a good man doing a bad action.” Responding unambiguously to his own inquiry and directly challenging the position adopted by Justice Stoughton, Willard asserted that “the devil may reprisent an inosent, nay a godly person, doing a bad ackt.” Terming such an event an “extraordinary dispensation of providence,” he told his congregation that “it calls us to selfe examination, selfe abasing,” especially those “nextly concerned.” The Bible made it clear that “the devill cane do this upon divine permission & will do it with out he be prevented by god.” Satan could accordingly take on “the Image of any man in the world,” Willard insisted, without “the consent of the party in thus reprisenting it.” The devil, moreover, did not need to employ witches to attack his victims. No one thinking “rationally,” he contended, could reject the conclusion that Satan “cane perswade the person aflicted that it is done by the person thus reprisented.” Willard closed his sermon by reassuring the congregation that God was “just & ritious still,” despite such “darke” and “unacountable” occurrences, and he urged his listeners “not to be daunted” by the devil’s recent assaults.
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