In the Devil's Snare (41 page)

For instance, Hill,
Delusion of Satan,
192–93; Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem
Possessed, 33, 190; and Hoffer, Devil’s Disciples, 58, 100, barely mention the Andover confessors. Only Chadwick Hansen, in “Andover Witchcraft and the Causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials,” in
The Occult in America: New Historical
Perspectives, ed. Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow (Urbana, Ill., 1983), 38–57, has focused on that town and its residents.

Those who advance a “disease” hypothesis, although I believe them mistaken, at least understand that the Salem episode requires special explanation (see n. 3, above). Richard Weisman, in
Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th Century
Massachusetts
(Amherst, Mass., 1984), poses this question (see esp. chapter 9), but he offers no definitive answer.

Thus John P. Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early
New England
(New York, 1982), examines all New England witchcraft cases other than Salem, whereas books such as Hoffer, Devil’s Disciples, or Hill, Delusion of
Satan,
look only at Essex County in 1692. (Few prosecutions for witchcraft occurred outside of New England or the Puritan settlements on Long Island, and few have written about such cases.) Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
combines analyses of Salem cases with others, but focuses on similarities rather than differences. Hoffer, Devil’s Disciples, xv, remarks on Salem’s uniqueness, but refers only to differences in size and chronology from other episodes.

These patterns are clearly described in both Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
chapter 3, and Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
chapter 2, although the two authors differ in their interpretations of similar data. The same patterns characterized most witchcraft accusations in Europe; see Briggs,
Witches & Neighbors,
passim.

See Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
351–55 and 509–13, on the Hartford cases. Demos counts eleven charged with witchcraft but declares that more people were accused. However, David D. Hall, who has published the surviving Hartford records in his
Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England,
2d ed. (Boston, 1999), 147–63, 355–58, identifies only eight people charged at Hartford.

See Christina Larner,
Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland
(Baltimore, 1981), passim, esp. chapter 5, on the Scottish trials. Alan Macfarlane,
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England
(London, 1970), examines cases in Essex County, England, including the witch-hunt led by Matthew Hopkins, the so-called Witch-Finder General, in 1644–1645. The only major witchcraft episode in the English-speaking world later than Salem was a 1697 outbreak in Paisley, Scotland.

Cf. the list of accused witches in cases other than Salem in Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
402–409, with that of the Salem accused in Weisman,
Witchcraft,
Magic, and Religion
, 209–16. Fewer than 20 of the more than 140 accused lived outside of Essex County.

See the tables in Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
154; and Karlsen,
Devil in the
Shape of a Woman,
184–85, for age and sex breakdowns of accusers. As Karlsen points out, ibid., 183, even if one includes those at Salem in the total, only about 10 percent of New England witchcraft accusers were afflicted by specters.

The accusations of members of this last group have mystified most scholars of Salem, who have cited them as a sign of the accusers’ irrational overreaching. The argument in this book is quite different. I contend, as shall be seen, that the afflicted had good reason for such accusations.

On such patterns, see Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
48–51; Demos,
Entertaining Satan,
402–409; and Weisman,
Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion,
191–203. See also Clive Holmes, “Popular Culture? Witches, Magistrates, and Divines in Early Modern England,” in Steven L. Kaplan, ed., Understanding
Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century
(Berlin, 1984), 85–111.

See Norton,
Founding Mothers & Fathers,
120–23, for the more common reaction to young women’s legal complaints. Also Mary Beth Norton, “ ‘Either Married or Too Bee Married’: Women’s Legal Inequality in Early America,” in Carla Pestana and Sharon Salinger, eds.,
Inequality in Early America
(Hanover, N.H., 1999), 34–36.

Jane Kamensky,
Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New
England
(New York, 1997), 171, and chapter 6, passim.

The standard pattern of continued suspicion is exposed in many of the cases described by both Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
and Demos,
Entertaining Satan.
Many of the records of the compensation committees have been published in
SWP
3: 975–1046.

York Deeds
12, pt. 2:273; 18:262; 17:37; 12, pt. 1:67; 16:145. (All preceding numbers are the original folios, not pages.
York Deeds
does not consistently supply the latter.) James Ross was the cousin of the accuser Mercy Lewis. These depositions were solicited by potential purchasers of Maine lands, who needed to clear title to the properties they planned to buy. Volumes 12 through 18 contain many other similar depositions.

See Kences, “Some Unexplored Relationships,”
EIHC
120: 180–87, on the military service of Essex County men in both wars.

See chapter 2, pp. 56–57.

Personal communications. Bremer has pointed out to me that an early spiritual diary kept by Waitstill’s grandfather, the elder John Winthrop, has also disappeared and is believed by the editors to have been destroyed by the same nineteenth-century descendant, who was very concerned about maintaining the family’s good name.

Some authors of books on Salem, most notably the witch-descendants Enders A. Robinson and Persis McMillen, have argued that the accusations themselves represented a conspiracy of some Essex County families against other Essex County families. See Robinson,
The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692
(New York, 1991) and
Salem Witchcraft and Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables
(Bowie, Md., 1992); and McMillen,
Currents of Malice: Mary Towne Esty and Her
Family in Salem Witchcraft
(Portsmouth, N.H., 1990).

Bernard Rosenthal, who is re-editing the trial records, has properly warned me against assuming that the documents known at this time constitute the full surviving record. After all, he, I, and others working with him have recently unearthed previously unknown materials that are cited herein and which will be included in the forthcoming volumes.

CHAPTER ONE UNDER AN EVIL HAND

Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
230 (see 230–31 passim); Floyd to Massachusetts Governor and Council, 27 January 1691/2,
DHSM
5:314. See also
DHSM
5:326–27; and the detailed description of the attack and its aftermath in Charles E. Banks,
History of York, Maine
(1931; reprint, Baltimore, 1967) 1: 287–300.

George Burroughs et al. to Massachusetts Governor and Council, 27 January 1691/2,
DHSM
5:316. Although four other men also signed the letter, its religious tone suggests strongly that Burroughs himself wrote it.

Samuel Parris, “Meditations for Peace,” 18 November 1694, in Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft
(1972; reprint, Boston, 1993), 297.

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins
of Witchcraft
(Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 37–39; Richard Gildrie,
Salem, Massachusetts, 1626–1683: A Covenant Community
(Charlottesville, Va., 1975), 116–17 and passim.

Documents in Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft
, 229–34, 237–39, record the process of separation. See also Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed,
40–43.

Quotation: Examination of William Barker Sr., 29 August 1692,
SWP
1:66. On the problems of successive ministers: Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed,
45–79 passim. On Bayley, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
240–55.

Quotation: Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed,
51 (see, in general, 48–53).

See Larry Gragg, A Quest for Security: The Life of Samuel Parris, 1653–1720 (Westport, Conn., 1990), 1–54.

Ibid., 42–43, 60–68; James F. Cooper and Kenneth P. Minkema, eds., The
Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, 1689–1694
(Boston, 1993), 2–3, 18–19. According to James F. Cooper (personal communication, 26 October 2000), ministers could not baptize infants until they had been ordained, and so no Village clergyman prior to Parris could offer congregants the sacrament of baptism. The church records from 1689 through 1691 are published in Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
268–77; for the baptism decision, see 271. Late in 1691 the church had 62 members and the Village approximately 215 adult residents, as estimated by Boyer and Nissenbaum.

Cooper and Minkema, eds.,
Sermon Notebook,
184–85. The notebook comprises some of Parris’s sacrament-day sermons.

Despite enormous effort by many people, including Larry Gragg (personal communication), myself, and my research assistants, it has proved impossible to identify Abigail Williams or her precise relationship to Samuel Parris. She was most likely related to him through his wife, Elizabeth Eldridge, whom he met and married in Boston, because most of his own relatives lived in England. Her age is given as eleven or twelve in various sources. On his daughter, see Marilynne K. Roach, “ ‘That Child, Betty Parris’: Elizabeth (Parris) Barron and the People in Her Life,”
EIHC
124 (1988): 1–27.

Many authors have placed the onset of the girls’ fits in February, yet the evidence for mid-January is clear. The initial complaints against the first three accused witches, dated February 29, 1691/2, allude to “Sundry” afflictions “within this two moneths” (
SWP
1:358); and on Wednesday, March 2, Tituba referred to “Six weeks & a little more fryday night” [January 15] as shortly “before Abigail was Ill” (
SWP
3:753). I posit that Abigail’s fits began first partly because she was older, and a leader; and partly because Tituba used the onset of Abigail’s fits as her marker. Had Betty sickened first, the reference would more logically have been to her.

John Hale,
A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft . . .
(1702) in Burr,
Narratives,
413. Another and often quoted early description of the girls’ afflictions is in Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:4–5, but (unlike Hale) Robert Calef did not himself witness their behavior.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
413; Salem church records, 27 March 1692, in Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
278.

On Griggs, see Harriet S. Tapley, “Early Physicians of Danvers,” Historical
Collections of the Danvers Historical Society
4 (1916): 73–88; H. Minot Pitman, “Early Griggs Families of Massachusetts,” NEHGR 123 (1969): 172; Anthony S. Patton,
A Doctor’s Dilemma: William Griggs & The Salem Witch Trials
(Salem, Mass., 1998); and Anthony S. Patton, “The Witch Doctor,” Harvard Medical
Alumni Bulletin
72, no. 3 (Winter 1999): 34–39. (Thanks to Tony Patton for supplying me with copies of his writings on Griggs.) William Griggs’s name does not appear on a December 1684 tax list for Salem Village but is on one drawn up in July 1689 (Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
329, 354). That he was self-taught is suggested by the fact that he was termed “Goodman,” not “Master,” unlike most physicians of higher status; and that he might not have been able to write, although he surely could read. In 1674, for example, he signed a petition with a mark rather than a signature (
EC Ct Recs
5:360–61). For his wife’s and son’s church memberships: Richard D. Pierce, ed.,
The Records of the First
Church of Boston, 1630–1868, CSM Pubs
39 (1961), 1:58, 63–64.

Parris, “Meditations for Peace,” 18 November 1694, in Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
297; Cooper and Minkema, eds.,
Sermon
Notebook,
188, 193.

Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:5; Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
414. Although Hale’s account does not make the chronology entirely clear, such private fasts would most logically have preceded public accusations. Another clergyman who undoubtedly participated was Nicholas Noyes of Salem Town.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
413. The other roughly contemporary accounts are Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE,
3:5–6; and Deodat Lawson,
A Brief
and True Narrative of . . . Witchcraft, at Salem Village . . .
(1692), in Burr,
Narratives,
162–63. For the statement that Tituba and John were enslaved and husband and wife, see
SWP
1:208. Cf. Bernard Rosenthal,
Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials
of 1692
(New York, 1993), 26–27, on making the witchcake. An excellent discussion of traditional countermagic is Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and
Religion in Early New England
(New York, 1992), chapter 1.

Salem church records, 27 March 1692, in Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
278–79.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
414. Hale is the only contemporary narrator to describe the consultation and the initial interrogation of Tituba, which suggests that he participated in both.

The most extended treatment is Elaine Breslaw,
Tituba, Reluctant Witch of
Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies
(New York, 1996), which argues that she was brought from the South American mainland to Barbados as a child and sold to Parris there. The only recent historian to contend that she was African (Yoruba, to be precise) is Peter Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciples: Makers of the Salem
Witchcraft Trials
(Baltimore, 1996). Useful commentaries on Tituba are Chadwick Hansen, “The Metamorphosis of Tituba, or Why American Intellectuals Can’t Tell an Indian Witch from a Negro,”
NEQ
47 (1974): 3–12; and Bernard Rosenthal, “Tituba’s Story,”
NEQ
71 (1998): 190–203.