In the Devil's Snare (53 page)

Mather, WIW, in WDNE 1:174; “Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., 1692,” in Burr,
Narratives,
187–88.

Brattle’s summary of the court’s procedure is printed in “Brattle Letter” in Burr,
Narratives,
174–75. All five cases Mather recounts in detail in
WIW
fit the same pattern (see
WDNE
1:152–200). Lawson’s comments on individual trials appear passim in the 1704 edition of his
Brief and True Narrative,
which Charles W. Upham printed in an appendix to volume 2 of his Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1867).

SWP
2:588.

Ibid., 3:839 (Putnam statement); 3:830-34 (Willard indictments); 2:588–91 (Nurse indictments). The undated indictments against both were signed by John Ruck, suggesting they were issued during the first court session. Some but not all of the deaths listed by Ann Carr Putnam on 2 June 1692 can be located in
SVR.
In addition to the adults Lydia Wilkins (d. 27 January 1688/9) and Samuel Fuller (d. 1 January 1688/9), she attributed the deaths of Aaron Way’s child (31 March 1689), Sarah Putnam (d. 17 December 1689), and two children of Ezekiel Cheever (15 February 1689/90) to Willard, with the assistance of Hobbs.

Childin:
SWP
2:375, 599; Vibber: ibid., 2:684; Tookey: ibid., 3:759–62 passim (quotations 759, 761–62). His other accusers were Warren, Sheldon, and Walcott. For his service in Black Point in August 1677: George M. Bodge,
Soldiers in King
Philip’s War,
3d ed. (Boston, 1906), 339. For more about Tookey, see
EC Ct Recs
8:330–38. On 6 June, the magistrates questioned two more suspects, Mary Ireson of Lynn and Ann Dolliver of Gloucester and Salem Town. The records of their examinations, hitherto unknown, were recently discovered by Ben Ray in the BPL, interleaved in a copy of Upham’s
Salem Witchcraft;
Ireson’s is at p. 211, Dolliver’s at p. 194. Both women were said to be accompanied by the “black man,” and they were both probably jailed. For biographical information: Robinson,
Devil
Discovered,
332 (Dolliver), 349–50 (Ireson). For the May 24 accusation of Ireson, incorrectly identified, see
SWP
3:765.

SWP
2:672–73, 1:263 (quotation 672). Elizabeth Booth appeared as a grand-jury witness on 30 June to describe these visions, so they were taken seriously by the authorities. Of the deaths she listed, some (e.g., Hugh Jones, Elizabeth Shaw) had also been the subject of accusations by others, but only two can be traced in
SVR:
Michael Shaflin (12 December 1686) and Robert Stone Jr. (16 June 1688).

Quotation: Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:30; Vibber:
SWP
2:481. Vibber’s language in this deposition suggests that Mary Walcott might also have been present at the hanging. The judges all attended a council meeting in Boston on June 10, and so it is unlikely they were in Salem for the execution (council minutes, 10 June 1692, CO 5/785, f 166).

Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
238–39 (see, in general, 232–39).

SWP
2:598–99, 606, 370–71, 374. Thanks to Ben Ray for supplying biographical information on Jemima Rea.

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:208. Alice Parker was hanged on 22 September; see chapter 8.

SWP
3:802–803, undated testimony by Edward and Sarah Bishop and Mary Easty, with a related statement, 1 June 1692, by Mary English. Mistress English explicitly attested to hearing “the Same words” as the others, dating Warren’s utterances at approximately one month earlier, or after her first confessions in late April but before her more detailed statement of May 12. Warren later accused both Goody Easty and Philip English.

“Return of Several Ministers . . . ,” printed in Thomas Hutchinson,
The
History of Massachusetts from the First Settlement Thereof in 1628, until the Year 1750,
3d ed. (Boston, 1795), 2:52; Council minutes, 13 June 1692, CO 5/785, f 90.

Worthington C. Ford, ed., Diary of Cotton Mather (New York, 1957), 1:151. For Stoughton’s position, and criticism of it from England, see Hutchinson,
History of Massachusetts
2:28.

This paragraph and the next two are based on “Return of Several Ministers,” in Hutchinson,
History of Massachusetts
2:52–53.

Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:159. See also ibid., 156–57.

Quotation: Ford, ed.,
Mather Diary,
1:151. Even so, a 1 August 1692 statement by the Cambridge Association, a group of eight clergymen including Cotton Mather and Samuel Willard, essentially adopted Mather’s 31 May formulation: the devil could represent an innocent person, but “such things are rare and extraordinary, especially when such matters come before civil judicature.” See “Records of the Cambridge Association,”
MHS Procs
17 (1879–1880): 268.

Sewall sermon notebook 1691–1692, “Mr. Willard. June 12.92. PM,” ff 139–41, Sewall Papers, MHS.

Edward Bromfield sermon notebook, v. 6 (15 June–7 August 1692), “Samuel Willard: 1 Pet 5:8,” n.d. [19 June, probably p.m.], Bromfield Papers, MHS; transcription by Mark Peterson, typescript pp. 9–11. For an article on Willard’s sermons in the summer of 1692 based on Bromfield’s notes, see Stephen L. Robbins, “Samuel Willard and the Spectres of God’s Wrathful Lion,”
NEQ
60 (1987): 596–603; and, on all the sermons Bromfield recorded, see Mark Peterson, “ ‘Ordinary’ Preaching and the Interpretation of the Salem Witchcraft Crisis by the Boston Clergy,”
EIHC
129 (1993): 84–102.

David W. Voorhees, “ ‘Fanaticks’ and ‘Fifth Monarchists’: The Milborne Family in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World,”
New York Genealogical and
Biographical Record
129 (1998): 70–74. William’s brother, Jacob, the son-in-law of Jacob Leisler of New York, was executed with Leisler in May 1691. If George Burroughs was indeed a Baptist, as Bernard Rosenthal has suggested (see
Salem Story,
chapter 7), that would have given Milborne another reason to come to his defense.

The petition has been printed in J. Wingate Thornton, comp., “Witchcraft Papers—1692,”
NEGHR
27 (1873): 55. See below, chapter 7, n. 28, for the speculation that the other petition he wrote might also have survived, albeit unrecognized.

Council minutes (as upper house of assembly), 25 June 1692, CO 5/785, f 168. Printed in part in George H. Moore, “Notes on the History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts, with Illustrative Documents,”
AAS Procs,
new ser., 2 (1882–83): 171n.

The undated petition supporting her,
SWP
2:592–93, must have circulated in early May because one of the signers was Daniel Andrew, who fled after being accused on May 15.

Indictments: ibid., 2:588–91; Kettle: ibid., 2:457; Hutchinson: ibid., 3:853.

Ibid., 2:537, 3:731, 1:79–80. For Hutchinson’s relationship to the Nurses, see ibid., 2:592, and Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed: The Social
Origins of Witchcraft
(Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 57–58, 65, 70, and passim. Admittedly, the statement about Mercy Lewis is so badly torn that it might have supported rather than challenged her. But the most logical reading of the document (and its missing words) is as an attack, and it most logically would have originated as such. The key sentences read, with brackets representing the torn material and my conjectures for the lost contents: While she lived with us “we did then Judg that [in m]atter of consione of speaking the truth [—] and untruth she would stand stifly to [her lies]”; “I Knew her when [she lived with my sister and all] of my neighbours and I all wayes tooke her to [be a liar] as the above writen evidences hath decribed” (
SWP
2:537).

Sarah Nurse statement:
SWP
1:80; Samuel Nurse signature as witness: ibid., 3:731.

See Sewall’s notation on an indictment, ibid., 2:588.

Some authors indicate that Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned from the court before its second session. I found no document recording the date of his resignation, although Thomas Brattle claimed that Saltonstall left the court at an unspecified time, being “very much dissatisfyed with the proceedings of it” (“Brattle Letter,” in Burr,
Narratives,
184). The court seems to have planned to try John Willard at this session, but for unknown reasons his trial was postponed to the third session; see
SWP
3:835–36. Rosenthal discusses this set of trials in quite a different way in
Salem Story
, chapter 5.

“Titabes Confession . . . ,”
SWP
2:362–64; Sheldon: ibid., 2:374; Parris: ibid., 3:757; indictments: ibid., 2:365–67. That “Titabes Confession” was prepared for the trial is evident from its listing of the witnesses for each of the three indictments (see ibid., 2:364). Good’s spectral attack on Vibber on May 2 was described in chapter 5, above. Sarah Osborne, it will be recalled, had died in jail six weeks earlier. Other indictments could have been issued, but the content of “Titabes Confession” suggests that the record of indictments in this case is complete.

Ibid., 2:373, 377 (see also 366); Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:33–34. Mercy Short (“Mrs Thatchers maid”) did not appear to testify against Sarah Good, probably because her mistress, herself accused as a witch, refused to permit it. In addition to any personal motives, Mistress Thacher, like her second husband, could have been skeptical of witchcraft accusations (see his letter to church leaders, 27 February 1653/4, printed in
MHS Colls
41 [1871]: 375–77). I concluded Vibber was probably responsible for the subterfuge with the knife because of the similar behavior with a pin reported by Sarah Nurse; see below.

This speculative reconstruction is based on the contents of “Titabes Confession . . . ,”
SWP
2:362–63. For the statements in the original confessions, see ibid., 3:798, 801 (Warren); 2:407–409, 1:172 (Abigail Hobbs); 2:423, 1:92 (Deliverance Hobbs); and 3:747–55 passim (Tituba). It will be recalled that Newton asked for Tituba to be sent from Boston to Salem for the first session of the court; he surely renewed that request (or simply kept her in Salem in the interim) so he could use her testimony against Sarah Good.

Maleficium stories: ibid., 2:368–69, 375; recent manifestations: 2:370–71, 377; Good’s 2 March statements (to Samuel Braybrook): 2:372. For a maleficium tale presented to the grand jury but not, apparently, at the trial, see ibid., 369; in it, the cause and effect seem tenuous, and possibly Newton jettisoned it for that reason.

Indictments: ibid., 2:555–56; grand-jury testimony: ibid., 571–72. Other indictments have possibly been lost. Also, the foreman of the grand jury may not have fully annotated the documents in this case.

Quotations: Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:175;
SWP
2:573–74. Parris also testified, buttressing part of the statement by the Putnams and Ingersoll.
SWP
2:558–69, 571–73, 577–78 reprints the maleficium depositions, which are adequately summarized by Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:177–86. Deodat Lawson attended Martin’s trial; see the appendix to the 1704 edition of his
Brief and True Narrative,
in Upham,
Salem Witchcraft
2:534.

SWP
2:564–66; Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:186–87.

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:187. See the women’s jury report,
SWP
1:106–108.

SWP
2:606–607, 603. Possibly Nurse’s trial preceded Martin’s; the sequence is not recorded. But both occurred on June 29, and Newton probably dealt with the easier prosecution (Martin’s) first. (Mather gives the date for Martin’s, and Nurse’s can be dated by her daughter Sarah’s statement,
SWP
1:80.)

Ibid., 2:595–99, 602–605 passim (quotations, in order: 599, 602, 597).

Ibid., 2:598, 601, 600. Confessions: ibid., 1:92, 2:423. Abigail Hobbs did not name Goody Nurse as a witch-meeting participant in her June 1 confession, but she did charge Nurse with choking her (ibid., 1:172).

Ibid., 2:592–94; 1:80–81.

Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:37. Calef states that the incident occurred at one of the late June trials, but does not specify which one.

Ibid., 3:34–37; see also
SWP
2:607–608.

Quotation: Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:37; and see
SWP
2:607–608, 588.

Quotation: Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:34. On earlier patterns of accusations, trials, and convictions, see Carol F. Karlsen,
The Devil in the Shape
of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England
(New York, 1987), chapter 2; and John P. Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft in the Culture of Early New England (New York, 1982).

SWP
2:436–37.

Quotations: Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:188–89 (see 188–94 passim);
SWP
2:441. On the death of Hannah Perley: ibid., 2:437–39, 442–43, 447, 454; statements on Howe’s behalf: ibid., 440–44; bewitched horses: ibid., 444–46, 450, 453–54; beer: Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:191–92 (summarizing some evidence not contained in
SWP
).

SWP
3:810–12 (quotations 812).

Quotations: ibid., 807–808. For Reddington’s story and its consequences: ibid., 810, 812–18. Ephraim Wilds, the Topsfield constable, informed the justices that he feared Deliverance Hobbs had named his mother as a witch in “revenge” for his having arrested Deliverance and her husband on April 21, but since Deliverance first accused Sarah on April 17, Ephraim’s “serous thoughts maney tims sence” were misplaced (ibid., 809).

Ibid., 2:662–64, 678–80; 1:186–87; 2:392–93. Perhaps other indictments were issued but have not survived; it is impossible to tell.

Ibid., 3:956 (arrest of Bradbury), 1:127 (Ann Jr.’s statement), 1:123, 126, 128 (other afflictions at the examination). Walcott also saw a vision of Ann Jr.’s uncle John accusing Mary Bradbury (ibid., 1:128).