The True Story vs. Myth of Witchcraft. William Godwin
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Many were seized with fits, exhibited frightful contortions of their limbs and features, and became a fearful spectacle to the bystander. They were asked to assign the cause of all this; and they supposed, or pretended to suppose, some neighbour, already solitary and afflicted, and on that account in ill odour with the townspeople, scowling upon, threatening, and tormenting them. Presently persons, specially gifted with the “spectral sight,” formed a class by themselves, and were sent about at the public expence from place to place, that they might see what no one else could see. The prisons were filled with the persons accused. The utmost horror was entertained, as of a calamity which in such a degree had never visited that part of the world. It happened, most unfortunately, that Baxter’s Certainty of the World of Spirits had been published but the year before, and a number of copies had been sent out to New England. There seemed a strange coincidence and sympathy between vital Christianity in its most honourable sense, and the fear of the devil, who appeared to be “come down unto them, with great wrath.” Mr. Increase Mather, and Mr. Cotton Mather, his son, two clergymen of highest reputation in the neighbourhood, by the solemnity and awe with which they treated the subject, and the earnestness and zeal which they displayed, gave a sanction to the lowest superstition and virulence of the ignorant.
All the forms of justice were brought forward on this occasion. There was no lack of judges, and grand juries, and petty juries, and executioners, and still less of prosecutors and witnesses. The first person that was hanged was on the tenth of June, five more on the nineteenth of July, five on the nineteenth of August, and eight on the twenty-second of September. Multitudes confessed that they were witches; for this appeared the only way for the accused to save their lives. Husbands and children fell down on their knees, and implored their wives and mothers to own their guilt. Many were tortured by being tied neck and heels together, till they confessed whatever was suggested to them. It is remarkable however that not one persisted in her confession at the place of execution.
The most interesting story that occurred in this affair was of Giles Cory, and Martha, his wife. The woman was tried on the ninth of September, and hanged on the twenty-second. In the interval, on the sixteenth, the husband was brought up for trial. He said, he was not guilty; but, being asked how he would be tried? he refused to go through the customary form, and say, “By God and my country.” He observed that, of all that had been tried, not one had as yet been pronounced not guilty; and he resolutely refused in that mode to undergo a trial. The judge directed therefore that, according to the barbarous mode prescribed in the mother-country, he should be laid on his back, and pressed to death with weights gradually accumulated on the upper surface of his body, a proceeding which had never yet been resorted to by the English in North America. The man persisted in his resolution, and remained mute till he expired.
The whole of this dreadful tragedy was kept together by a thread. The spectre-seers for a considerable time prudently restricted their accusations to persons of ill repute, or otherwise of no consequence in the community. By and by however they lost sight of this caution, and pretended they saw the figures of some persons well connected, and of unquestioned honour and reputation, engaged in acts of witchcraft. Immediately the whole fell through in a moment. The leading inhabitants presently saw how unsafe it would be to trust their reputations and their lives to the mercy of these profligate accusers. Of fifty-six bills of indictment that were offered to the grand-jury on the third of January, 1693, twenty-six only were found true bills, and thirty thrown out. On the twenty-six bills that were found, three persons only were pronounced guilty by the petty jury, and these three received their pardon from the government. The prisons were thrown open; fifty confessed witches, together with two hundred persons imprisoned on suspicion, were set at liberty, and no more accusations were heard of. The “afflicted,” as they were technically termed, recovered their health; the “spectral sight” was universally scouted; and men began to wonder how they could ever have been the victims of so horrible a delusion. 227
190. Hutchinson on Witchcraft.
191. I Samuel, xv, 23.
192. Doctrine of Divorce, Preface.
193. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, p. 746.
194. Alciatus, Parergon Juris, L. VIII, cap. 22.
195. Danaeus, apud Delrio, Proloquium.
196. Bartholomaeus de Spina, De Strigibus, c. 13.
197. Biographie Universelle.
198. Biographie Universelle.
199. Hospinian, Historia Sacramentaria, Part II, fol. 131.
200. Bayle.
201. Paulus Jovius, Elogia Doctorum Virorum, c.101.
202. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, Lib. II, Quaestio xi, S. 18.
203. Delrio, Lib. II, Quaestio xxix. S. 7.
204. Wierus, Lib. II, c.v. S. 11, 12.
205. Cent. I, cap. 70.
206. De Praestigiis Demonum, Lib. II, cap. iv, sect. 8.
207. Durrius, apud Schelhorn, Amoenitates Literariae, Tom. V, p.50, et seqq.
208. Memoirs, p. 14.
209. Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, Letter IV.
210. Appendix to Johannes Glastoniensis, edited by Hearne.
211. Camden, anno 1693, 1694.
212. Pitcairn, Trials in Scotland in Five Volumes, 4to.
213. King James’s Works, p. 135.
214. King James’s Works, p. 135, 136.
215. Truth brought to Light by Time. Wilson, History of James I.
216. Fuller, Church History of Britain, Book X, p. 74. See also Osborn’s Works, Essay I: where the author says, he “gave