The Enemy Within (24 page)

Yet another turning point came in mid-April, with the accusation and examination of an apparently wayward teenager from Topsfield named Abigail Hobbs. Ever since Tituba's extraordinary revelations two months earlier, the examiners had been trying to secure a second major confession; they had succeeded only with a four-year-old child (Dorcas Good) and clearly needed more. Hobbs gave them exactly what they were looking for: a detailed account of meeting with the Devil, of making an explicit covenant with him (in exchange for his promise to give her “fine things”), and of agreeing to allow him the use of her “shape” when afflicting his victims. She also admitted to (invisible) collaboration with others among the accused, thus enlarging the conspiracy theme.

Strikingly, none of the key victims experienced “torments” while Hobbs was in the midst of her confessing. Indeed, when she finished, they expressed “compassion [for her] over and over again.” Hobbs was then remanded to prison for subsequent trial; found guilty, she was nevertheless reprieved. She had, perhaps unwittingly, discovered an escape route for those who might later fall “under accusation”: confess, and you may gain some traction with your accusers; confess, and save your skin. A few weeks later this linkage was, in effect, officially ratified when the magistrates advised another suspect that “if I would not confess I would be put down into the dungeon and . . . hanged, but if I would confess I should have my life.” As events played out over the coming months, many confessors to witchcraft were indicted, tried, convicted, and jailed; but none of them were executed.

A recurrent theme in the Hobbs confession, the ministers' sermons, and the formal investigations was the Devil's intense determination to gain additional recruits to his nefarious cause; the witch plot would surely grow as weak-minded persons came, one after another, under his sway. And here lay an opening for local gossip to weave a spreading dragnet of accusation. For example, Bridget Bishop, of Salem Town, had been tried for witchcraft some 12 years before. Though officially acquitted on that previous occasion, the suspicions about her had lingered; now they resurfaced in the explosive atmosphere emanating from the Village nearby. In mid-April she was summoned for examination—whereupon several of the previously afflicted girls immediately “fell into fits.” Her examiners then invoked long-standing rumor that “you bewitched your first husband to death.” This she met with “angry” denials—which, however, availed nothing against the effect of her “evil” reputation.

The list of the accused caught in the same web also included:

Rachel Clinton, of Ipswich. She, like Bishop, had been prosecuted for witchcraft years before; several of her neighbors had accused her of afflicting them, especially a young woman repeatedly “pricked with pins.”

Sarah Wilds, of Topsfield. A deceased sister of her husband's first wife had complained that Wilds “assaulted [her] by witchcraft . . . and afflicted her many times grievously.”

Dorcas Hoar, of Beverly. Her minister would later comment that “when discourses arose about witchcrafts at the village [of Salem], then I heard discourses revived of Goody Hoar's fortune telling.” This latter practice seemed dangerously close to witchcraft; moreover, Hoar's “shape” had appeared at untimely moments here and there in the local community.

Giles Corey, husband of Martha. (As was true elsewhere, most of the men prosecuted in the Salem trials were the spouses of women already charged.) Corey was known for his persistent “miscarriage” (bad conduct), some of which verged on the supernatural.

Wilmot Redd, of Marblehead. She was believed to have bewitched one Mistress Syms following a lengthy quarrel over a missing parcel of linens.

Roger Toothaker, of Billerica. He was a “physician” and adept in the use of counter-magic, supposedly for combating
maleficia;
yet according to local rumor, he had turned those skills around so as to become himself a witchcraft practitioner. (His wife and daughter would also be accused.)

Susanna Martin, of Amesbury. Her alleged bewitchments went back more than three decades, including attacks on a number of her neighbors with invisible but deadly “nails and pins.”

Margaret Scott, of Rowley. Her fellow townspeople remembered the long-ago sufferings of a man named Robert Shilleto, and how he “complained of [ her] . . . for hurting of him, and often said that she was a witch . . . until he died.”

Mary Bradbury, of Salisbury. She had allegedly targeted a ship at sea eleven years previously. Sailors blamed her for raising storms, causing “a leak in the hold,” and spoiling their food supplies; moreover, they “would often say they heard she was a witch.”

Sarah Cole, of Lynn. According to local gossip, she had occasionally bewitched cows in the town herd.

“Discourses” here, “discourses” there: before it was over, many, if not most, Essex County communities had disgorged their own particular witch suspects into the rapidly spiraling mix. The sequencing of these charges within the 1692 witch-hunt was variable; some came earlier, some later. A few were not much pursued, but most led to full-scale trials. Several produced verdicts of guilty, and death on the gallows (Wilds, Corey, Redd, Scott).

On the evening of April 20 came the most astonishing, and frightening, development so far: Ann Putnam Jr. was suddenly confronted with “the apparition of a minister.” She was “tormented,” just as she had been by others before. This time, however, it was much worse: “He tore me all to pieces.” After initially refusing to reveal his identity, her assailant opened up. “He told me that his name was George Burroughs . . . that he had three wives . . . [and] that he had bewitched the first two of them to death . . . that he had killed Mistress Lawson . . . and also killed Mr. Lawson's child . . . [and] had bewitched a great many soldiers to death . . . [and] had made Abigail Hobbs a witch, and several witches more . . . and also . . . that he was above a witch, for he was a conjuror.”

Nothing could have seemed more shocking than to have a minister unmasked as a witch—in fact, “above a witch . . . a conjuror,” or (as was said elsewhere) a wizard. Abigail Hobbs would quickly confirm this revelation; from then on, the awful details poured out. In addition to his numerous killings, Burroughs was accused of organizing large meetings of his witch confederates, of going about in company with the Devil (in typical guise as “a black man”), of recruiting many additional witches, and of becoming himself a primary afflicter of the accusing girls.

Who was George Burroughs? He had been born in Virginia, in 1653, the son of a prosperous English merchant, but through most of his childhood had lived with his mother in the town of Roxbury, Massachusetts. He had attended Harvard College, graduating in the class of 1670. He had then begun a career in the ministry, though without being formally ordained. He had spent most of his adult years in the province of Maine (which was then annexed to Massachusetts), serving several local congregations there. Additionally, and crucially, he had served for three years (1680-83) as pastor of Salem Village, in the course of which he and some of his parishioners became bitterly antagonized; his tenure at Salem ended with lawsuits and his decision to return to Maine. He had indeed been married three times, and widowed twice, and was described as being “very sharp” toward each of his wives. His failure to gain ordination, his occasional absence from communion, his apparent disinterest in baptizing his children all made good grist for local gossip mills. Further suspicions were raised by his unusual, even “preternatural” physical strength. (He was reported, for example, to have shouldered large casks “of molasses or cider” without difficulty, and to have lifted a “very heavy gun . . . of six-foot barrel [by] putting the forefinger of his right hand into [its] muzzle, and so held it out at arm's end only with that finger.”) Seen in retrospect, he was something of a marked man.

The charges against him came to the fore at an extraordinary examination of other witch suspects before a large crowd gathered in the Village meetinghouse on April 22. Deliverance Hobbs, mother of Abigail, was herself accused—and was then persuaded to offer her own elaborate confession. She recounted, in particular, “a meeting [of witches] yesterday” where Burroughs “was the preacher, and pressed them to bewitch all in the Village . . . assuring them they should prevail.” Eight more suspects were examined at, or just after, the April 22 hearing; never before had such a large number been brought in at once. By month's end the total of the newly accused had reached 15; in May and early June another 39 were added to the list. Given a total population (for Town and Village together) of just over 1,000, these figures were extraordinary. They reflected, as well, a steady climb in the social position of those accused. Among the new targets were Philip English, an extremely wealthy Salem merchant with trading contacts all around the Atlantic basin, and his wife, Mary; Mistress Elizabeth Cary, of Charlestown, wife of a prosperous shipowner and mariner; Captain John Alden, son and name-sake of the famous Pilgrim settler and himself a leading merchant; and others whom the record did not specifically identify, but including “some [with] great estates in Boston” and even certain “gentlemen of the Council, Justices of the Peace, ministers, and several of their wives.”

As accusations mounted, so too did the pace of spectral sightings, especially within the core group of young accusers. At home, along the roadways, in the local tavern: “apparitions” might accost them at any time. Moreover, the format of these encounters was changing, at least in part. Previously, witch-specters were bent simply on attack: now, however, they would often pause to boast of their various crimes (especially killings). Indeed, some of the specters were actually victims of those crimes—returned now to inform the living of what they had suffered. Thus, George Burroughs's two deceased wives appeared before Ann Putnam Jr. and others, “in winding sheets and [with] napkins about their heads,” and described the manner of their deaths in gruesome detail. (“He stabbed her under the arm, and put a piece of sealing wax on the wound,” and so on.) Soon such ghostly visitations would become a regular part of the larger crisis.

The effect was to elevate still further the role of the afflicted, since their access would henceforth extend to both sides of the spectral combat—to witches and victims alike. They ranked now as witch-
finders
supreme, while the importance of formal examination shrank in direct proportion. Increasingly, the very purpose of the meetinghouse hearings was to provide a stage for the “actings” of bewitchment. And these grew ever more loud, more abandoned, more insistent, more terrifying. Special investigatory techniques were added to the standard repertoire, including, for example, a “touch test.” Magistrates would order a suspect to touch the afflicted as a means of relieving their torments—usually with instantaneous and gratifying results.

As always, the impact of such vividly personal dramas rippled out into the community at large, where ordinary citizens pursuing their everyday business might come to see themselves as additional victims of Satanic assault. Thus, one Salemite was mysteriously “struck . . . a very hard blow . . . on my breast” while traveling on horseback with his wife; later, by the roadside, he observed a woman in the process (so he later said) of turning herself into a cow. Another man, upon entering an unlighted room in his home, “did see very strange things appear in the chimney . . . which seemed . . . to be something like jelly . . . and quavered with a strange motion.” Yet another found his mare in a strangely injured state, as if “she was ridden with a hot bridle.” And another believed “my sow was bewitched . . . [for] on a sudden she leapt up about three or four feet high . . . and gave one squeak, and fell down dead”; moreover, when he touched the corpse, his hand became “so numb and full of pain . . . that I could not do any work . . . [for] several days after.” And still another, after being (supposedly) stared down by one of the witch suspects, was “taken in a strange condition, so that I could not dine, nor eat anything . . . for my water [urine] was suddenly stopped, and I had no benefit of nature, but was like a man on a rack.”

These misadventures went on and on, regenerating and deepening the climate of fear. There were also anxieties of a different sort. In late May rumors flew about that several local residents of French background were plotting to “go for Canada and join with the French . . . [to] come down . . . upon the backside of the country to destroy all the English.” Mortal peril on every side, assault from
both
the visible and the invisible worlds: such was the prospect confronting them. There was but one plausible line of response.
Be vigilant. Trust no one. Fight the Devil, and his dastardly minions, with all your strength.
The Salem witch-hunt has often been described, through the succeeding centuries, as an instance of “mass hysteria”; and, for the events of that fateful spring, the term does seem to fit.

Meanwhile, the process was moving toward a new stage—from accusation and investigation to actual trial proceedings. But before these could begin, certain institutional arrangements must be put in place. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was just now emerging from several years of political turmoil, during which its charter—its very right to exist—had been revoked, and its system of governance temporarily suspended. In 1691 a new charter was secured, followed soon after by the appointment of new leadership. The governor would be a one-time gunsmith and ship captain named Sir William Phips. (Born and raised in the province of Maine, Phips had recently been knighted for various services to the Crown.) The designated members of the Governor's Council were all familiar figures in the local elite, including several magistrates at the center of the witch-hunt.