In the Devil's Snare (47 page)

Bradstreet to “your Lordship,” 20 March 1689/90,
DHSM
5:184 (quotation); Bradstreet to Peter Schuyler et al., 25 March 1690, Livingston Papers. The developing plans for the Port Royal expedition can be traced in
DHSM
5:26–63 passim. By 14 March, the council had made a firm commitment to support the expedition; news of Salmon Falls arrived in Boston five days later (see Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary,
1:254). Because Robert Livingston was one of the emissaries sent from Albany to ask for help from Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Livingston Papers contain a considerable amount of information on his efforts. See also
DHSM
5:63–70;
DHSNY
2:175–77.

Bradstreet to Peter Schuyler et al., 25 March 1690, Livingston Papers; Sewall to Robert Treat, 24 March 1689/90,
DHSM
5:64; Winthrop to John Allyn [c. March 1690],
MHS Colls
53 (1889): 507–508. See also
DHSM
5:184.

Sewall noted the order to the Essex militia on 5 April and the trip to Manhattan from 21 April to 5 May (Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary,
1:256–58); council instructions to Hathorne and Corwin, 24 April 1690,
DHSM
5:86–87. The planning for the Montreal expedition can be traced in
DHSM
5:75–78, 93–94.

“Garrisons, Soldiers, &c, in the Province of Maine,” 30 April 1690,
DHSM
5:91–92; Recommendations to Maine Magistrates by Hathorne and Corwin, 1 May 1690, ibid., 92–93.

Some of those who talked to Hathorne and Corwin thought that the two men had been convinced of the need for the soldiers; see
DHSM
5:99, 102. That the troops left on May 15 can be inferred from Robert Pike to [Governor Bradstreet?], 18 May 1690,
DHSM
5:100. Sewall also noted in his diary that Willard left “the very day before the Attack” (Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary,
1:259). Willard had warned the council of the danger to Falmouth as early as mid-April (ibid., 1:256), but that warning, along with the ominous information about the original target of the Salmon Falls raiders, was ignored. Although the evidence is not entirely clear, it seems that Willard’s men wanted to be relieved (see
DHSM
5:95–96). The council, however, could have replaced them with other troops rather than simply withdrawing them and leaving Falmouth to be defended only by local militiamen.

“Declaration of Silvanus Davis,” n.d. [after 15 October 1690],
DHSM
5:145–46. Mather described the battle in detail in
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
218–20. See also “Mr. Bullivants Journall,”
MHS Procs
16 (1878): 107–108.

Charles Frost et al. to [MG&C?], 22 May 1690, DHSM 5:105, with council order, ibid., 105–106 (see also 101–102, 115–17); “News from New England,” n.d., ibid., 189; Benjamin Bullivant to [John Usher?], 10 July 1690, BL 242, William Blathwayt Papers, HL (also in part in CO 5/855, f 293). “News from New England” was endorsed by an English clerk “1691,” but its contents show it was written shortly after the fall of Falmouth; the original is in CO 5/856, f 378. For the generally accepted figure of 200 people lost, see, e.g., “Extract of a Letter to Mr John Usher from Boston,” 27 May 1690, CO 5/855, f 289.

Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary,
1:259, 251, 260; Bradstreet to Jacob Leisler, 30 May–24 June 1690,
DHSNY
2:259–61. See
DHSM
5:125–26, 135–37, on the Bay Colony’s deployment of additional men on the frontier during the summer.

“Abstract of Letters from Mr. Dudley,” 8 July [1690], CO 5/855, f 328; Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
223–24. The fullest account of the battle and its context is
DHSM
5:131–32.

“Abstract of Letters from Mr. Usher,” 4 and 7 July 1690, CO 5/855, f 324 (printed in
DHSM
5:131–32). For complaints, see, e.g., Nathaniel Saltonstall to [MG&C], 10 July 1690, MA 36:156; John Emerson to Wait Winthrop, 26 July 1690,
MHS Colls
41 (1871): 437–38.

The General Court order for the draft, showing that at most 700 men had volunteered for service under Phips, is MA 81:98. Quotations: Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary,
1:262; Complaints of John Alden, July 1690, EC Ct Recs/WPA, ser. 2, 50: 5/1, 7/1, PEM. The relevant General Court orders about the guns are MA 81:90, 92; and 36:162a.

James Lloyd to [ John Usher], 8 January 1690/1, CO 5/856, ff 355–56, summarizes both disasters. See also the extensive criticism of Phips’s leadership in “News from New England [from] Severall Gentlemen & Merchants . . . ,” ibid., ff 379–80. Many letters to and from Fitz-John Winthrop in box 24, Winthrop Papers, describe the failed Montreal campaign and his subsequent arrest. Some of these have been published in
MHS Colls
48 (1882) passim (quotation, 309); see esp. Winthrop’s journal, 312–18. And see also
DHSNY
2:288–90.

The death of Hope Hood was one of the pieces of news reported in
Publick
Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick
on 25 September 1690; the columns of this first American newspaper, which was immediately suppressed by the government, were dominated by the war. A copy is in CO 5/855, ff 337–38. Church’s account of his campaign is in Church,
History of Philip’s War,
ed. Drake, 177–97; Mather’s is in DL, in Lincoln, Narratives, 225–27. See also Pike to [MG&C], 27 September 1690,
DHSM
5:138–40.

Quotations: Bradstreet to Massachusetts agents in London, 29 November 1690,
DHSM
5:171. Alden’s treaty is in ibid., 164–66. Ten English captives were exchanged for eight Wabanakis—presumably the sachems’ families. On the colonists’ difficulties that fall, see
DHSM
5:156–58, and Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
227.

Bradstreet to Massachusetts agents in London, 29 November 1690,
DHSM
5:167–68, 171. See also the similar reflections of Mather, in
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
214.

Quotations: William Brattle to [Francis Nicholson], 25 March 1691, vol. 4, fol. 1, Blathwayt Papers, CW; Benjamin Davis to same, 19 April 1691, vol. 4, fol. 4, ibid. The report from Portsmouth is Edward Sergentt to Ensign John Hill, 18 February 1690/91, John Hill Papers, NEHGS. For distrusting colonists, see letters of Bradstreet (to Henry Sloughter, 30 March 1691,
DHSM
5:185–86; and to Francis Nicholson, 15 April 1691, vol. 15, fol. 1, Blathwayt Papers, CW).

The preliminaries to the negotiations are detailed in
DHSM
5:188–89, 231–32, and a summary of the proceedings is ibid., 233–35. Quotations: [William Brattle], “An Account of the Treaty with the Indians . . . ,” CO 5/856, f 525. That Brattle authored the “Account” is evident in Brattle to Francis Nicholson, 6 May 1691, vol. 4, fol. 1, Blathwayt Papers, CW, the letter enclosing it. The militia leaders were William Vaughan and Charles Frost.

Pike to [MG&C], 14 June 1691, DHSM 5:246–47 (see also same to same, 19 June 1691, ibid., 254–55). In a rare error, Cotton Mather dated the attack June 9; cf. Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
228.

The parley with the Wabanakis was reported in Francis Hooke to [MG&C], 14 June 1691, DHSM 5:244–45 (quotation 245).

William Vaughan and Richard Martyn to MG&C, 17 June 1691, ibid., 249–50; Francis Hooke to Robert Pike, 19 June 1691, ibid., 256. See also Hooke to [MG&C], 17 June 1691, Thomas Prince Papers, MHS.

Account of the Eastern Expedition, 7 August 1691,
DHSM
5:280–81 (quotations 281); MG&C to —, 9 August 1691, ibid., 284. On the planning for and delays of the expedition, see ibid., 261–72 passim. Another sizable Indian party killed or captured about twenty people at Sandy Beach, N.H., approximately five miles from Portsmouth, in late September (ibid., 296–98).

Burroughs et al. to MG&C, 28 September 1691, ibid., 294; William Vaughan to Simon Bradstreet, 17 November 1691, ibid., 303. See also Burroughs et al. to MG&C, 21 July 1691, ibid., 274.

MG&C to other New England colonies, 30 October 1691, ibid., 300–301 (replies in ibid., 304–309); Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
230. Rhode Island’s governor John Easton sharply criticized Massachusetts and its leadership, expressing sympathy for the Wabanakis and accusing Bay Colony merchants of profiting from arms sales to the French and Indians (
DHSM
5:305–306). James Graham to William Blathwayt, 30 December 1691, vol. 10, fol. 5, Blathwayt Papers, CW, reported the failure of recruiting in Connecticut.

CHAPTER FOUR THE DREADFULL APPARITION OF A MINISTER

For the dates of Abigail Williams’s complaints in mid-April, see
SWP
1:258; 2:597, 667, 688. For the others:
SWP
1:241–42 (Corey); 2:415–16 (Hobbs). The April 18 complaint: ibid., 1:239.

Bridget Bishop had been convicted of quarreling with her second husband, Thomas Oliver, and was also suspected of theft. Because
SWP
and early scholarship confused Bridget Bishop with another Goody Bishop (Sarah) who
did
live in Salem Village, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s
Salem Possessed: The Social
Origins of Witchcraft
(Cambridge, Mass., 1974), and their edited documentary collection,
Salem-Village Witchcraft
(1972; reprint, Boston, 1993), erroneously conflate information about the two women, who were unrelated to each other. Cf.
Salem
Possessed,
192–93, and
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
155–62, with Bernard Rosenthal,
Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
(New York, 1993), 71–75, which (relying on the meticulous scholarship of David L. Greene) explains and corrects earlier mistakes. Some scholars continue to confuse the two women, however.

Hale testified at Hoar’s trial on 6 September 1692; quotation,
SWP
2:399. For another reference to “the Time when there was so much talk of the Witchcraft in this Country,” see John Noble, ed., “Some Documentary Fragments Touching the Witchcraft Episode of 1692,”
CSM Pubs
10 (1904–1906): 18. Abigail Hobbs, though a Topsfield resident, does not fall into the same “outsider” category as Bridget Bishop, because Mercy Lewis knew her in Maine.

Ann’s accusation of Farrar on 8 May caused his arrest on 14 May (
SWP
2:323, 487–88). For the earlier court case from October 1690: EC Ct Recs/WPA/ser. 2, 49:121/1–124/5 (quotations 122/2). Farrar was also related by marriage to Sarah Hood Bassett and Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, both accused witches. Biographical information from Enders A. Robinson,
The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft,
1692
(New York, 1991), 289.

On patterns of accusation of male witches, see John P. Demos, Entertaining
Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
(New York, 1982), 36, 60–62. This and the next two paragraphs are based on
WDNE
3:169–73. I posit that Corey was examined first because no references to the results of the other examinations appear in the transcript of his interrogation. The three other cases considered on April 19 were intertwined.

This paragraph and the next are based on
SWP
3:793–94, 804.

There are two versions of Bishop’s examination, one by Parris, the other by Cheever. This account follows Parris’s primarily, but relies on Cheever’s for three phrases (ibid., 1:83–86).

Ibid., 3:794–95.

This and the next paragraph are based on ibid., 795–99. In jail, the examiners confronted Mary Warren with Giles Corey, thus setting off one of her fits. Before she saw him, Mary accurately described his clothing, “as severall then in Company Can affirm,” remarked an anonymous note-taker (see 796). Thus a test that had not worked with his wife provided seeming proof of his guilt. The April 21 examination of Mary Warren is dated; the other is not, but seems by its contents to have preceded the dated one.

Ibid., 2:409–10. That Abigail Hobbs knew Judah White “very well” suggests that the Hobbs and Ingersoll households were located near each other in Falmouth. See further speculations on this point later in this chapter. Joseph was the son of Lt. George Ingersoll and so was Mary Walcott’s first cousin once removed. As a resident of another town, Abigail could well not have known many specifics of what had happened in Salem Village until she was jailed in the company of Mary Warren. That on April 20 she knew the name Sarah Osborne and details of the devil’s sacrament, whereas on April 19 she evidently did not, certainly implies an intervening exchange of information.

Ibid., 2:406, 411. Abigail Hobbs was born in August 1677; because she did not identify a month or season for her encounter with the devil, it is not clear whether she placed the incident before or after her eleventh birthday. See Topsfield vital records, cited n. 13, below, for her birthdate.

Joseph Dow,
History of the Town of Hampton, New Hampshire
(Salem, Mass., 1893), 2:747–48, identifies William Hobbs of Topsfield as the oldest son of Morris Hobbs of Hampton, but
GDMNH
does not link him to that family. (William cannot be placed in any other known Hobbs or Hobson family of Maine, New Hampshire, or Essex County, however.) The April 1668 petition from Wells signed by both Hobbs and Cloyce is printed in
DHSM
4:218–19. On his residence in Lynn in 1660, see George F. Dow,
History of Topsfield, Massachusetts
(Topsfield, Mass., 1940), 49–50.

Hobbs’s name does not appear on a 1664 tax list, nor evidently anywhere else in town records before November 1668, except for the 1660 land purchase noted in Dow,
History of Topsfield,
49–50. See George F. Dow, ed., “The Early Records of the Town of Topsfield, Massachusetts,”
HCTHS
2 (1896): 7, 10. Hobbs’s assessment for the minister’s rates in November 1681 was below the median level in town, though not at the very bottom (ibid., 37). For the births in the Hobbs family, see
Vital Records of Topsfield
(Topsfield, Mass., 1903), 55–56. His name does appear on a 1687 tax list, which indicates only that he had not sold his property; see
NEHGR
35(1881): 34–35. For Hobbs’s assessment for the minister’s rates in November 1689, see EC Ct Recs/WPA, ser. 2, 50:80/2.