In the Devil's Snare (55 page)

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:153. The eight confessors who named Burroughs before his trial can be identified from the surviving documents in the case; seven extant depositions and two recorded oral testimonies refer to his strength. Thus it would appear that the extant documentary record in the case is complete, or nearly so. Mather referred to John Gaule,
Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and
Witchcrafts
(London, 1646), which questioned many traditional means of identifying witches and which is discussed in chapter 1, above. He did not mention that a men’s jury found no witch’s mark on Burroughs’s body, and thus that the clergyman had passed one of the tests Gaule accepted. (See
SWP
1:159–60.)

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:153–55, in part summarizing statements by Ann Jr. (
SWP
1:164), Lewis (ibid., 1:169), and Warren (ibid., 1:173). Mather failed to explain how the minister’s teeth marks could be distinguished from those of others.

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:156–57. Which afflicted person had this experience in the courtroom cannot now be determined, but it was surely one of the four who had seen such visions already. All of them, of course, had direct (Lewis, Sheldon) or indirect (Putnam Jr., Walcott) ties to Burroughs in Maine.

Lawson, 1704 edition of
Brief and True Narrative
, in Upham,
Salem Witchcraft
2:529.

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:157–58; Lawson, 1704 edition of
Brief and True
Narrative
, in Upham,
Salem Witchcraft
2:535–36. For relevant parts of the confessions, see
SWP
1:172–73, 2:343, 491, 523, 528, 3:767. More details on Richard Carrier’s naming of Burroughs have been published in Trask, ed.,
Devil hath been
raised,
157, 159; and see, on Deliverance Hobbs’s confession, SWP/SJC/PEM 1:31, a fragment not published in
SWP
.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry
, in Burr,
Narratives,
421. Perhaps this confessor was Ann Foster, because Hale twice talked to her in the Salem prison, before and after Burroughs’s trial (ibid., 418).

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:158–59; Increase Mather,
Cases of Conscience
Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men, Witchcrafts, . . .
(Boston, 1693), unpaginated afterword. But Robert Calef later claimed that Burroughs’s strength had been evident to his acquaintances even in his youth (Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
2:9). The case of the Lancashire witches, which involved extensive confessions and which provided important precedents for Michael Dalton and thus for Joseph Keble in discussing the law of witchcraft, is recounted in G. B. Harrison,
The
Trial of the Lancaster Witches . . .
(London, 1929), incorporating an edition of Thomas Potts,
The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster
(London, 1613).

SWP
1:160–62.

Ibid., 1:160–61. Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE,
1:159. Stephen Sewall also noted that two witnesses testified about his strength by “word of mouth”—Major Browne, to holding out the gun; Thomas Evans, to carrying barrels from a canoe without help—but without written texts it is impossible to tell whether Browne or Evans had actually witnessed or merely heard about these feats (
SWP
1:178). Greenslade’s belated testimony was suspiciously and remarkably comprehensive, suggesting the possibility of his committing perjury in a desperate move to save his mother. He could have justified it to himself, perhaps, by the thought that Burroughs had already been executed and so could not be hurt by his testimony.

Original testimony:
SWP
1:176, 162–63; Mather’s summary:
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:160–61. The strawberrying story is recorded only in
WIW;
it seems to have been offered orally by Sarah’s brother, Thomas Ruck (see
SWP
1:178).

Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:161–62, 159. Cf. Gaule,
Select Cases,
80–81.

This paragraph and the next are based on Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:162–63. The section Burroughs most likely used challenged the common argument that because God had allowed Satan to torment Job, he also permitted witches to send Satan to afflict men. Even if God can do it, does that mean a witch can do the same? Ady inquired. “If God should permit it, where do we read that a Witch hath any such power or command over the Devil, or any such league or covenant with the Devil? or that God permits the Devil to be at the command of a Witch?” See Ady,
A Perfect Discovery of Witches . . .
(London, 1661), 119; and also a related legal argument on 172.

Residents of Wells to Mass. Governor and Council, 28 May 1692,
DHSM
5:342–43; Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
421. The council sent a new minister to Wells on 8 July (see CO 5/785, f 92), but Wells did not acquire its first formal church and a properly ordained minister until October 1701. See First Church of Wells, Maine, Records, 1701–1811, photostat, LCMD.

This paragraph and the next are based on Mather, “A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World,” 4 August 1692, in Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:49–136 passim (quotations: 55, 57–58, 109, 94–95, 101–102, 106–107). For an example of the sort of criticism to which Mather was responding, see Robert Pike to Jonathan Corwin, 9 August 1692, in Upham,
Salem Witchcraft
2:538–44 (discussed at length in chapter 8, below).

SWP
1:213–14, for Mary Clarke, who was complained against on 3 August by Robert and John Swan of Andover for afflicting Robert’s son Timothy. Margaret Scott may have been accused as early as the first week of July, but she does not seem to have been arrested until after another complaint on 26 July; she was examined on 5 August. See ibid., 3:727; and Trask, ed.,
Devil hath been raised,
162. Mary Post must have confessed before 4 August , and she was eventually indicted for afflicting Timothy Swan in July (
SWP
3:925–26), but other dates are unknown.

See, on Usher’s treatment, “Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., 1692,” in Burr,
Narratives,
178. Hezekiah Usher’s papers have not survived, but some of his brother’s are contained today in the Jeffries Family Papers, MHS; see vol. 2, f 147, and vol. 4, ff 148, 149 for material pertinent to Hezekiah or his partnership with John. John Usher was involved in Maine and the fisheries (see ibid., vol. 15, ff 33, 34; and
DHSM
6:271). He arrived in New Hampshire to take up his new post before 12 August 1692; his return to America from more than two years spent in London might possibly have triggered the accusation of his brother (“Diary of Lawrence Hammond,”
MHS Procs,
2d ser., 7 [1891–92]: 163). For his attempts to raise taxes from Maine for Andros: John Usher, “Account Rates in this Government Standing outt . . . [for 1687 and 1688],” William Blathwayt Papers, BL 238, HL. The quoted words are from “Reasons Humbly offered . . . by William Vaughan . . . against John Usher . . . ,” May 1703, Rawlinson Papers C 128, f 1a, British Library, transcript, LCMD. Bridget Usher left her business affairs in the hands of Samuel Sewall; his published letterbook,
MHS Colls
51 (1886): 78–79, 86, 97, 138 and n., and passim, includes material relevant to her estranged husband.

Sarah Carrier:
SWP
1:201–202; Thomas Jr.: ibid., 1:203. Thomas’s three victims were Sarah Phelps, Walcott, and Putnam Jr. Sarah Phelps, b. 1682, was the oldest child of Samuel Phelps, a weaver, and his wife, Sarah Chandler. Capt. Thomas Chandler, Sarah Phelps’s grandfather, led the Andover militia in the Second Indian War; his sister, Hannah, became the third wife of the Reverend Francis Dane after the death of her first husband in 1681. Hannah Chandler Dane, Sarah’s great-aunt, was accordingly the stepmother of Abigail Dane Faulkner and Elizabeth Dane Johnson, both later accused as witches. See Sarah Loring Bailey,
Historical Sketches of Andover . . .
(Boston, 1880), 84–85, 96–97, 118. One of the few studies of this late phase of the crisis is Chadwick Hansen, “Andover Witchcraft and the Causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials,” in Howard Kerr and Charles Crow, eds.,
The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives
(Urbana, Ill., 1983), 38–57. A useful study focusing largely on the contents of the Andover confessions is Richard P. Gildrie, “The Salem Witchcraft Trials as a Crisis of Popular Imagination,”
EIHC
128 (1992): 270–85.

SWP
2:503–505 passim. She named Richard Carrier and Mary Lacey Sr. Such confessions involving witches’ sabbats both resembled and differed from their European counterparts. See the excellent discussion of confession patterns in Robert Rowland, “ ‘Fantasticall and Devilishe Persons’: European Witch-Beliefs in Comparative Perspective,” in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, eds.,
Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries
(Oxford, 1990), 161–90.

SWP
1:327; “The Examination of Daniell Emes,” 13 August 1692, Miscellaneous Manuscripts Bound, MHS. Post also listed Mary Toothaker, Martha Carrier, Ann Foster, and “Chandler,” otherwise unknown, as participants in her “company.” Eames has never before been identified as one of those who faced prosecution for witchcraft in 1692; I located the documents pertaining to his case in the MHS.

This and the next paragraph are based on “Brattle Letter,” in Burr,
Narra
tives, 177; Calef, MWIW, in WDNE 3:38–39. George L. Burr concluded, and I concur, that Brattle’s account suggests that he most likely attended the execution. Stoughton and Sewall were not there; see Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary
1:294. Mather seems to have told Sewall that Burroughs’s speech on the gallows “did much move unthinking persons,” leading to “their speaking hardly concerning his being executed.” On 18 August, complaints were filed against Ruth Wilford and Mistress Frances Hutchins of Haverhill for afflicting Walcott, Putnam, and Swan, but few documents survive about either (
SWP
2:459–61).

Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:43;
SWP
1:178, 2:467.

SWP
1:149–50.

Rebecca Eames: ibid., 1:279–82. In a second confession on 31 August Rebecca named Abigail Faulkner and Mary Toothaker in addition to her son. The timing of the first afflictions of the three girls is difficult to determine, but see ibid., 2:546, suggesting the date 20 August. They were afflicted before 25 August, in any event, since a number of examinations and confessions on that day refer to their prior torments.

Enders A. Robinson,
Salem Witchcraft,
302, 306–11, sorts out the tangled relationships described in this and the following paragraph. Rose’s mother was Hannah Eames Foster, daughter of Rebecca and sister of Daniel. Mary Bridges was also related by marriage to Sarah Towne Cloyce; John Bridges, Mary Tyler Post’s second husband, was the brother of Sarah’s first husband, Edmund Bridges (ibid., 316–17).

Quotations:
SWP
3:647, 1:134–35. For the examinations in general, see ibid., 3:643–44 (Hannah Post), 1:139–40 (Sarah Bridges), 1:134–35 (Mary Bridges Jr.), 3:647–48 (Susannah Post). One or more of the Post-Bridges confessors named as witches Abigail Faulkner, Martha Emerson, Mary Clarke, Frances Hutchins, Ruth Wilford, Rebecca and Daniel Eames, Ann Foster, and Martha Carrier, along with Sarah Parker (the daughter of Mary Parker, accused later), and someone named “Church,” probably Sarah Churchwell, who was also referred to thus by Ann Pudeator (ibid., 3:709).

The three were John Jackson Sr. and Jr., and John Howard, all of neighboring Rowley. The Jacksons were the sisters’ distant relatives by marriage, for John Sr. was the brother of the executed witch Elizabeth Jackson Howe, whose husband was Sarah Bridges’s uncle (and thus the stepuncle of the other three). Howard’s examination does not survive, but all three men were interrogated on 27 August. See ibid., 2:465–70, for the Jacksons. Those confronting the Jacksons were Walcott, Warren, Putnam Jr., Sprague, Foster, Lacey Jr., Richard Carrier, Sarah Bridges, and Hannah and Susannah Post.

Ibid., 1:63, 59–60, 2:545–46. Also accused, arrested, and questioned a few days later was William’s sister-in-law, Abigail Barker (the wife of Ebenezer), but little documentation on her case has survived (see ibid., 1:57).

Ibid., 1:65–66, 68. See also John Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
420, for Hale’s comments on Barker’s confession and its evident validity.

Quotations:
SWP
1:68, 328; 2:500. See, in general, ibid., 2:499–502, 509–10, for the statements of Elizabeth Johnson and her son Stephen. If her daughter Abigail made a similar statement, it is no longer extant. Deliverance Dane, a sister-in-law of Abigail Faulkner and Elizabeth Johnson, was also accused and arrested, but the Rev. Francis Dane, Abigail and Elizabeth’s father, though accused, was never charged (ibid., 2:616)
.

Ibid., 2:501; ibid., 1:75–76 (for correct date, see ibid., 2:633); ibid., 3:783, 781 (for the Wardwell confessions, see ibid., 2:387–88, 3:781–82, 783–84, 791–92 passim). The confessors were Hannah Post, Mary Lacey Jr., and Sarah Bridges. Samuel Wardwell was initially from Exeter, New Hampshire, and his wife Sarah Hooper Hawkes came from Reading. Through her first marriage she was distantly related to John Proctor and Elizabeth Hart (accused and jailed in mid-May). See Robinson,
Salem Witchcraft,
313–22.

SWP
2:631–32. The confessors participating in this examination were Mary Warren, Sarah Churchwell, Hannah Post, Sarah Bridges, Mary Lacey Jr., and Mercy Wardwell. Mary Parker’s daughter Sarah and nieces Rebecca Aslet Johnson and Sarah Aslet Cole were accused later, along with Rebecca’s daughter, also Rebecca. For information on these families: Robinson,
Salem Witchcraft,
251–55. Note that
SWP
erroneously intermingles evidence in the unrelated cases of Alice and Mary Parker.