In the Devil's Snare (27 page)

At about the same time, another Boston minister also stepped forward to question the use of spectral evidence in the trials. The Reverend William Milborne, a former resident of Bermuda who ministered to the town of Saco, Maine, between 1685 and 1688, must have known George Burroughs well during the latter’s part-time sojourn in nearby Black Point during those same years. Milborne, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Boston, worked with Wait Winthrop and other members of the court and council for the overthrow of Andros in April 1689, but that past association did not soften his criticism of his former allies in June 1692. Instead of raising his objections in the context of a sermon, Milborne drafted two petitions, one of which survives. He planned to present both to the new Massachusetts assembly, which convened on June 8.
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Like the ministers’ joint statement, Milborne’s petition focused primarily on the “several persons of good fame and of unspotted reputation” who had been committed to jail during the current crisis. Unquestionably, George Burroughs would have been included in such a category, along with John Alden, John Floyd, Rebecca Nurse, and a few others. “Bare specter testimonie” supported charges against “many whereof we cannot but in Charity Judge to be Innocent,” the petition alleged, expressing the opinion that “if said specter testimonie pass for evidence [we] have great grounds to fear that the Innocent will be condemned.” In such circumstances, no one could be wholly exempt from “the like accusation,” Milborne asserted. The petition concluded with a request that the assembly members “by your votes” provide that “no more credence be given thereto than the word of God alloweth.”
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The document, which reputedly garnered “several” signatures besides Milborne’s own, prematurely came to the attention of the governor and council, which on June 25 summoned Milborne to appear before them to explain his connection to such “Seditious and Scandalous Papers or writings” containing “very high Reflections upon the Administrations of Publick Justice within this their Majesties Province.” After Milborne admitted that he had written the papers and signed one of them, he was ordered to post £200 bond for his good behavior or to be jailed. Presumably, he chose the former course of action, and he seems to have been effectively silenced thereafter.
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In addition to the general complaints about the prosecution of people with good reputations that emerged in mid- to late June, the fate of one such person in particular sparked a major campaign. After June 3, with Rebecca Nurse facing four indictments for witchcraft, her family used the nearly month-long hiatus in court proceedings to gather evidence. In early May, they had drafted and circulated a statement attesting to her good character, but its thirty-nine signatures had not prevented her indictment. So now they chose another tack: questioning the credibility of the accusers.
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Goody Nurse had been indicted for bewitching four people during her March 24 examination “and divers other dayes & times as well before as after”: Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott, Betty Hubbard, and Abigail Williams. Of this group, the Nurses attacked the last two. James Kettle declared that Betty had told him “severall untruthes” on a Sunday in late May. Joseph Hutchinson Sr. recounted an undated conversation with Abigail Williams about her interactions with the devil. Parris’s niece described in detail two different books, both “rede as blode,” which “the blacke man” (“the devell”) had repeatedly brought to her. “I asked her if shee was not afraid to see the devell,” Hutchinson reported. “Shee said at the first shee was and did goe from him but now shee was not a fraid but Could talke with him as well as shee Could with mee.”
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Although Hutchinson did not make his meaning explicit, he implied that Abigail’s easy ability to converse with Satan hinted at an alliance with him— or at least that her conduct raised doubts about her veracity. Once more a key question had been raised about the standing of an afflicted accuser that could be extended to them all: Were they entirely innocent? Could their ready communication with Satan and the witches reveal their complicity with the evil angels? Could they really be believed when they insisted they had never signed the devil’s book?

The other attacks on the accusers’ character were more blunt and direct. Former employers of Mercy Lewis, in a statement that is unfortunately badly torn, seem to have accused her of “stand[ing] stifly” to “untruth[s]” while she lived with them in Beverly two and a half years earlier. Robert Moulton described how Susannah Sheldon “Controdict[ed]” herself when she told conflicting stories about crossing a stone wall: first she said “the witches halled her Upone her bely through the yeard like a snacke [snake] and halled her over the stone walle,” but next she declared simply that “she Came over the stone wall her selfe.” Sheldon had also claimed “that she Rid Upone apoole to boston and she said the divel Caryed the poole.” Such a statement, like Abigail’s, implied that she was more likely to be a witch than bewitched. Most vulnerable, though, was Sarah Vibber. The Nurses collected four separate statements from her current and former neighbors describing her as an “unruly turbulent” person who was “double tongued” and could “fall into fitts as often as she plesed.” As the second court session approached, the family had thus armed itself with ammunition to deploy against some of Goody Nurse’s accusers.
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The Nurse Family Campaign

No one has previously connected the undated attacks on the accusers to each other or to the Nurse family, yet they were almost certainly solicited by the Nurses in June, after Rebecca’s indictment but before her trial. Most of the statements have discernible links to the Nurses. Joseph Hutchinson Sr., an ally of Francis Nurse and an opponent of Samuel Parris, signed the petition on behalf of Goody Nurse circulated by Francis in early May. Samuel Nurse, the eldest son of the family, witnessed Robert Moulton’s statement against Susannah Sheldon. And that the Nurses targeted Sarah Vibber for special attention became evident at Rebecca’s trial, when a statement by Sarah Nurse, discussed later in this chapter, revealed that she had been carefully scrutinizing Goody Vibber.
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The depositions summarized above without clear ties to the Nurse family are those questioning the truthfulness of Mercy Lewis and Betty Hubbard. Yet viewing them as a part of the campaign seems justified because
only
the Nurses, among all the families of the accused, took documented steps to attack the credibility of the core group of accusers. (Some other families also produced petitions signed by supporters.) The Nurses, moreover, acted far more aggressively on behalf of Rebecca than other families acted for suspects from their households. Only they, for example, are known to have asked Stephen Sewall for copies of court records after a trial.
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THE SECOND SESSION OF THE COURT OF OYER AND TERMINER

When the court reconvened on Tuesday, June 28, the prosecutor Thomas Newton continued to focus his (and its) attention primarily on “usual suspects” who resembled Bridget Bishop. Over the next five days, the grand jury took testimony in eight cases and the petty jury or juries held five trials. Of the nine suspects who came before the court that week, six—Sarah Good, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wilds, Martha Carrier, and Dorcas Hoar—had long been regarded as witches. As for the other three, two (Elizabeth and John Proctor) were related to a reputed witch (Elizabeth’s grandmother Ann Burt), and even Rebecca Nurse faced two allegations of maleficium, although both were of relatively recent origin.
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Newton started with Sarah Good, the embittered, destitute Villager who had been one of the first three accused witches. He prepared carefully for the grand-jury hearing and the trial; the surviving documents include a paper headed “Titabes Confession & Examinacon against her selfe & Sarah Good abstracted,” which covers not only that subject but also lists witnesses and summarizes relevant information about Good from four more confessions. To the grand jury, Newton presented several different types of testimony: reports of past incidents of maleficium attributed to Sarah Good, sworn statements by the afflicted, and evidence of recent bewitchments and spectral activity involving the defendant. During the grand-jury session, Mary Warren had fits, which Susannah Sheldon attributed to Sarah Good’s specter. Susannah also declared that she had seen Good’s apparition use “invisible hands” to take a “sauser” from a table in the jury room and place it out of doors. Samuel Parris’s deposition could well have been particularly persuasive. The Salem Village pastor reaffirmed in person the truth of what he, Thomas Putnam, and Ezekiel Cheever had sworn before Hathorne and Corwin on May 23. Parris not only described the sufferings of his daughter Betty and niece Abigail, along with Ann Putnam Jr. and Betty Hubbard, during the examination of the first three accused witches on March 1, but he also affirmed that when Tituba began to confess and was herself thereafter tortured she “openly charged” Good and Sarah Osborne “as the persons that afflicted her the aforesaid Indian.” The grand jury then issued three indictments against Sarah Good, for afflicting Betty Hubbard and Ann Putnam Jr. on March 1 (and before and after), and for attacking Sarah Vibber on May 2 (and before and after).
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Sarah Good’s trial began that Tuesday and seems to have continued into the next day. First the afflicted, then confessors, then witnesses to maleficium would have been called to testify. The jury heard Putnam Jr. and Walcott swear that they had been tortured by Good’s apparition and that they had also seen her specter assault others. Goody Vibber described her own affliction and that of her child, indicating as well that she had seen Good’s specter tormenting both Mercy Lewis and John Indian during the April 11 examinations in Salem Town. An afflicted person, probably Vibber, claimed to have been stabbed “in the breast” during the court session by a knife held by Good’s apparition. After court officials found part of a knife blade on her, a young man identified the blade as one he had broken and thrown away the day before. Robert Calef, reporting this incident, noted that the young man was “dismist” and the witness merely “bidden by the Court not to tell lyes” before being allowed to resume her testimony. To Calef and modern observers alike, the story illustrates the court’s unwillingness to question its basic assumptions about the truthfulness of the complainants; to the judges, it probably constituted a minor distraction.
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Deliverance Hobbs, her stepdaughter Abigail, and Mary Warren undoubtedly repeated the parts of their confessions that pertained to Goody Good: Deliverance, that she saw Good at the witch meeting in Parris’s pasture presided over by George Burroughs; Abigail, that she knew that Good was a witch and had been prevented by Good from confessing fully on April 19; and Mary, that Good had asked her to sign her book. The most detailed statement, though, would have been Tituba’s. She charged Good with hurting the children (especially Ann Jr.), with having forced her to torment them as well, and with taking her riding on a pole. Additionally, Tituba declared that she had seen Good’s name in the devil’s book. Newton could also have pointed out to the petty jury that Sarah’s young daughter Dorcas had confessed, disclosing her mother’s involvement with witchcraft, and that Sarah Good’s statement implicating Sarah Osborne in the torturing of the children revealed her own culpability. Good’s charge constituted an implicit confession of guilt, Newton believed, since she was not afflicted yet knew about such spectral activity, for “none here sees the witches but the afflicted and themselves.”
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Finally, Sarah Good’s neighbors told their stories of maleficium and of recent spectral manifestations. Samuel and Mary Abbey, with whom the Goods had once lived, attested that she had behaved “very crossely & Mallitiously, to them & their Children” ever since they expelled the “Turbulant” woman and her family from their household two and a half years earlier. Goody Good subsequently employed witchcraft to kill their livestock, the Abbeys charged. The son and grandson of Zechariah Herrick described problems with cattle that had followed Herrick’s refusal to allow the Goods to live in his house. Samuel Sibley and Marshal Joseph Herrick both repeated tales about Good’s spectral movements shortly after her examination, and witnesses attested to Susannah Sheldon’s strange experiences with tightly bound hands. Whether Newton referred to the report of the jury of women that found nothing preternatural on the defendant’s body on June 2 is uncertain. Also not clear is what Sarah Good argued in her own defense. Perhaps she contended, as she did informally on March 2, that too much of the evidence against her depended on the word of an Indian, and questioned whether the prosecutor had actually found the required two witnesses to each of her purported acts of witchcraft. But whatever she said, it was in vain, and she was convicted.
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On Wednesday, June 29, the court turned its attention to Susannah Martin, the elderly Amesbury widow initially complained against two months earlier. Newton seems to have presented only a brief case to the grand jury, including just two of the many depositions describing her past malefic activities. But on the basis of sworn testimony from several accusers and Samuel Parris, the grand jury issued indictments against her for afflicting Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcott before, during, and after her May 2 examination.
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Cotton Mather chose to include an account of Goody Martin’s trial in
Wonders of the Invisible World
. When the bewitched testified, Mather observed that “there was an extraordinary Endeavour by
Witchcrafts,
with Cruel and frequent Fits, to hinder the poor Sufferers from giving in their Complaints.” The judges, he indicated, accordingly displayed “much Patience” in eliciting their testimony. To buttress those agonizingly extracted statements, the court also heard from adults who had witnessed earlier torments. Thomas Putnam, his brother Edward, and Nathaniel Ingersoll described under oath the events at Martin’s May 2 examination and asserted that “we have seen the marks of severall bittes and pinchs which [the afflicted] said susannah martin did hirt them with.” Since no confessors had named Martin, the justices proceeded to hear the extensive maleficium evidence against her, much of it gathered the previous month by Robert Pike. Six witnesses who had deposed before Pike in Salisbury journeyed to Salem to reaffirm their testimony in person, and others appeared at the trial for the first time. For the most part, these men and women told familiar tales of mysterious appearances by Martin’s specter, usually at night and sometimes in animal shapes; of her muttered threats and their subsequent losses of livestock; and of a variety of negative consequences that resulted whenever they angered her.
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Yet Joseph Ring’s story differed dramatically from the rest. Ring, a twenty-seven-year-old Salisbury resident and war veteran, described several diabolic encounters with the specter of Thomas Hardy, who carried him to “mery meetting[s]” also attended by Susannah Martin’s specter. Ring owed Hardy, a man who lived on Great Island (in the middle of the Piscataqua River), a gambling debt incurred just before they left with a militia troop to try to relieve the besieged Fort Loyal at Casco Bay in May 1690. After the militia failed to save the fort’s occupants from their terrible fate, Ring was repeatedly haunted by visions of Hardy, along with “a company of several other creaturs” of “hidious shapes” who made “dreadfull noyse” as they rode together on horseback along Essex County roads. Hardy “threatned to tear him in peeces,” Ring told the court; and on occasion the spectral militia “did fors him away with them into unknown places where he saw meettings and festings and dancing and many strange sights.” Hardy, remarked Mather, had trapped Ring in “a snare of Devillism,” as demons carried him “from one
Witch-meeting
to another, for near two years together.” The court and Mather focused on Goody Martin’s reported presence at “several of those hellish Randezouzes,” but she hovered on the periphery of Ring’s account. Far more important for him were the recurrent frightening encounters with Hardy’s “company” of apparitions, who, with their threat to “tear him to peeces,” revealed their alliance with the same Wabanakis who had destroyed Fort Loyal. Ring’s obsession with the threat the French and Indians posed to northern New England and to him personally thus manifested itself in demonic visions of the invisible world.
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Because it supported his case, Thomas Newton probably also introduced into evidence the report of the jury of women from June 2, which implied that Goody Martin had been sucked that day by an animal familiar. Finally, she was given a chance to defend herself. Mather reported that “her chief Plea was,
That she had led a most virtuous and holy Life,
” a characterization he rejected out of hand. Instead, he pronounced her “one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked Creatures in the World.” She was, of course, convicted.
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The judges then took up a case in which the outcome would have appeared considerably less certain: that of Goodwife Rebecca Nurse. Not only had her family busily collected relevant evidence both for her and against her accusers, but Rebecca herself took a significant step on her own behalf. The day before, she had petitioned the court, challenging the findings of the women’s jury that examined her body earlier in the month. One of those women, she asserted, indeed the one “known to be, the Moaste Antient Skillfull prudent person of them all as to Any such Concerned,” had disagreed with the others, declaring that everything she saw on Nurse’s body arose from “A naturall Cause.” Rebecca informed the judges that she had explained to the jurors the source of the apparent irregularity, “decending partly from an overture of Nature and difficult Exigences that hath Befallen me In the times of my Travells [childbirths].” She asked that a new women’s jury be convened to reexamine her body, suggesting the names of some she deemed “Moast Grand wise and Skillfull” to participate on it. “Being Conscious of My owne Innocency,” she concluded, “I Humbley Begg that I may have Liberty to Manifest it to the wourld partly by the Meanes Abovesaid.” A statement from her daughters, Rebecca Preston and Mary Tarbell, probably accompanied the petition. They expressed their willingness to testify that their mother had been “trobled with an Infirmity of body for many years,” which the women’s jury had misinterpreted. But the court apparently did not comply with this request.
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The proceedings began with testimony by the afflicted and their adult supporters. Ann Jr. swore to her own torments and the sufferings she had watched Nurse’s apparition inflict on others. Parris, Ingersoll, and Ann’s father described under oath the events of Nurse’s examination on March 24. Adults also attested to seeing on Ann’s body the marks “of bite and Chane” and to finding “pins thrust into her flesh,” tortures she attributed to Goody Nurse. Other witnesses probably repeated in court what they said to the grand jury on June 2: Walcott, that Nurse’s specter had confessed to several murders; Abigail Williams, that she had seen the defendant’s apparition “at a sacrament sitting next to [the man] with an high crowned hat, at the upper end of the Table”; Ann Sr., that Nurse’s specter had tormented her repeatedly in mid-March.
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Some of the testimony pertained to recent troubles attributed to Goodwife Nurse. Parris and John Putnam Sr. recounted Mercy Lewis’s witchfinding at Jonathan Putnam’s on June 18; John Putnam Jr. and his wife Hannah described the heartrending death of their baby from “strange and violent fitts” on April 15. Deliverance Hobbs and Mary Warren would have repeated their accounts of seeing Nurse at witch meetings led by George Burroughs, revealing that she had been one of the “deacons” who distributed the bread and wine. And the widow Sarah Holton told the one classic story of malefice presented at Rebecca Nurse’s trial. Sarah recalled that, following a confrontation with Goody Nurse three years earlier (“because our piggs gott into hir field”), her husband Benjamin had experienced “strange and violent fitts acting much like to our poor bewicthed parsons.” After months of “languishing,” he had died “a cruel death,” but “the Doctor that was with him could not find what his distemper was.”
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In contrast to earlier defendants, Rebecca Nurse must have offered more than a pro forma defense. In addition to the petition signed by thirty-nine people who declared that in all the years they had known her “we never had Any: cause or grounds to suspect her of Any such thing as she is now Acused of” and the statements impeaching the witnesses, the Nurses presented a document signed by John Putnam Sr. and his wife Rebecca, revealing their belief that their daughter Rebecca Sheppard and son-in-law John Fuller (both said by ghosts to have been killed by Goody Nurse) had died from “a malignant fever” rather than witchcraft. Nathaniel Putnam Sr., another of Sergeant Thomas Putnam’s uncles, joined the petitioners in confirming Rebecca Nurse’s good character. And at the trial itself new negative information emerged about one of the complainants. Sarah Nurse, Rebecca’s adult daughter, declared that during the proceedings she saw Goody Vibber “pull pins out of her Close and held them betwene h[er] fingers and Claspt her hands round her knese and then she Cryed out and said goody Nurs prict her.”
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