William Beale eventually swore that he believed Philip English bewitched him because of that testimony. English had come to him in spring 1690 “in A fauneing & flattering manner” to offer money in return for supporting him in the case, Beale recalled in August 1692. He, though, had not only indicated that he would appear on the other side, but had also recruited Goodman Farrar as an additional witness against English. As he was discussing the Hollingsworth land title with Farrar, Beale remembered, “my nose gushed out bleedeinge in A most extraordinary manner.” And there was more maleficium to come. Explaining how he had seen English’s “plaine shape” in his bedroom in late March 1691, and how he had struggled on that occasion “not to thinke that hee was a wich,” Beale revealed that his prayer to “Our omnipotent Jehovah for his blessing & protecktion” had caused the apparition to vanish. Shortly before that spectral vision, one of his sons died from “A stoping in his throate” and soon afterwards another expired suddenly, in a way his nurses had “admired & wondred” at. Although Beale did not make his reasoning explicit, the implication was obvious: the witch Philip English had caused his sons’ deaths in retaliation for William’s opposition to his land claims.
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Beale’s testimony against Philip English resembled many other tales of witchcraft recited by witnesses in the 1692–1693 Salem trials. In all of them, a colonist imputed to a suspect injuries that occurred after the witch was angered in some way, usually (but not always) because the witness had refused to comply with a request. But had Susannah Sheldon not encountered Philip English’s apparition in the Salem Town meetinghouse on April 24 and renewed her accusation several times thereafter, Beale would probably never have publicly voiced his suspicions of the wealthy Mr. English. Only in the context of the war against the French and the Wabanakis did Philip English become a plausible candidate for the designation “witch.” Under normal circumstances, his claims to his wife’s uncle’s land would have aroused resentment, even anger—but not witchcraft accusations.
In most cases of maleficium brought to light during the 1692 crisis, similar dynamics were at work, but they involved people, especially women who, like Bridget Bishop, had long-standing reputations for witchcraft. Unlike the accusation of English, they did not originate with an afflicted person from Salem Village. As was indicated at the beginning of this chapter, by late April the names of many suspected witches had surfaced in Essex County’s gossip networks. Wagging tongues conveyed the tales orally from other towns to Salem Village, where the afflicted then turned them into formal charges.
SOME “USUAL SUSPECTS”
On Saturday, April 30, Jonathan Walcott and Sergeant Thomas Putnam filed formal witchcraft charges against Philip English and George Burroughs, along with the teenage Sarah Morrell of Beverly and the widows Lydia Dustin of Reading, Susannah Martin of Amesbury, and Dorcas Hoar of Beverly. The authorities could not immediately proceed against the men, because Burroughs was living miles away in Wells, and English had fled to Boston, where he hid in the home of a friend until located and arrested at the end of May. Little is known about Morrell, although she might have been related to Isaac Morrill, the “jarzy man” suspected of conspiring against the colony in 1690. The records of the case against Lydia Dustin have not survived, but Robert Calef later reported that she had been thought to be a witch for “20 or 30 Years” and that it was said of her, “if there were a Witch in the World she was one.” In that respect, she resembled Dorcas Hoar and Susannah Martin, the other older women accused with her.
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Susannah North Martin, in 1692 a sixty-seven-year-old widow, had been suspected of malefic practices by her neighbors in Amesbury and Salisbury for more than three decades. William Brown told the court that his wife, Elizabeth, had years earlier accused Martin of pricking her repeatedly with spectral “nayls & pinns.” After formally complaining against Martin, Goody Brown began suffering from “a strang kind of distemper & frensy uncapibl of any rasional action,” a condition that had persisted for decades, and two doctors diagnosed bewitchment. Robert Pike, who recorded William Brown’s deposition, personally attested to the accuracy of Brown’s characterization of his wife’s circumstances. Many similar depositions detailing Martin’s witchcraft were eventually considered at her trial.
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Thus when Susannah Martin appeared for her examination at the Salem Village meetinghouse on Monday, May 2, her reputation surely preceded her.
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“Many had fits” as soon as she entered the room, Parris recorded. Abigail Williams identified the examinee as Goody Martin, some were struck dumb, and Ann Jr. threw a glove at her. Martin “laught,” calling the behavior “folly.” Is “the hurt of these persons” folly? a shocked Hathorne inquired. After Lewis, Walcott, and the newest member of the group, Susannah Sheldon, accused her of afflicting them, the magistrate asked Goody Martin for her reaction to the charges. First denying practicing witchcraft or consenting to the tortures, she contended (as had Sarah Osborne) that the devil “can appear in any ones shape.” Next Martin went on the attack, declaring that she did not think her accusers were bewitched, that “they may lye for ought I know,” and indeed that the afflicted might be “dealing in the black art.”
Martin thus proposed publicly for the first time a line of attack to which the accusers were indeed vulnerable: the charge that they themselves were witches, or at least that they consorted too closely with the devil. The ready communication of the afflicted with the invisible world certainly suggested the possibility that they might have joined the ranks of Satan’s allies, and the accusers’ awareness of that fact probably accounted for their repeated insistence that they had responded negatively to the witches’ importunities to sign their books and enlist in the devil’s legions. Above all else, the afflicted Villagers had to distinguish themselves from Satan’s allies, interpreting the invisible world for their fellow colonists but simultaneously maintaining a firm distance from it.
Accordingly, they (including John Indian and Betty Hubbard) quickly suffered new torments following Martin’s attempt to turn the tables. Some cried out that Martin’s specter was “upon the beam” and others that “the black man” was whispering in her ear, both visions that had come to be regarded as indicating a person’s guilt. Moreover, the afflicted added a new behavior to their repertoire: first Abigail, then others “could not come near her.” John Indian, for example, “was flung down in his approach to her.” Asked for an explanation, Martin ventured, “It may be the Devil bears me more malice than an other,” but Hathorne had a different interpretation: “God evidently discovers [reveals] you.” To emphasize the point he added, “all the congregation think so.”
The afflicted also reacted by having fits when Dorcas Hoar was brought in for her examination that same day. Several accused the Beverly widow of having attacked them spectrally on April 24 or 25; in addition, Hubbard and Walcott asserted that her apparition had admitted choking “her own husband.” They thus showed themselves to be well acquainted with a story that must have made the rounds after William Hoar died “very sudingly” the previous winter. The coroner’s jury appointed to investigate the death asked that the corpse be stripped. Jurors later reported that Goody Hoar then “brake out in a very greate pashtion,” wringing her hands and stamping her feet on the floor. You “wiked wretches,” she cried, “what doe you think I have murdered my husband?”
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After Dorcas denied having any part in her husband’s death, Sheldon made the surprising and unusual allegation that Dorcas Hoar “came in with two cats, & brought me the book, . . . & told me your name was Goody Bukly,” thus transforming the accusation of the Village resident Sarah Buckley she had offered a few days earlier into a complaint against Goody Hoar.
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Hathorne vigorously pursued the reinterpreted vision, pressing Hoar about “those cats that suckt your breast” and inquiring about her association with Goody Buckley. “I never knew her,” Dorcas asserted, but Goodman William Buckley, a Village shoemaker, “testifyed that she had been at the house often.” Goody Hoar hastily explained, “I know you but not the woman,” although “many by-standers” accused her of distorting the truth.
Meanwhile, most of the afflicted (including Sarah Vibber, “free from fits hitherto” that day) asserted that “a black man” was speaking to Goody Hoar, directing her not to confess. “They say the Devil is whispering in your ear,” Hathorne informed her. “I cannot help it if they do se it,” Hoar responded. After Susannah Sheldon and others repeated the claim about the spectral conversation, Dorcas retorted sharply, “There is some body will rub your ears shortly.” The afflicted “immediately” complained of being “rubbed,” Parris observed, and the magistrate proclaimed it “unusual impudence to threaten before Authority.” As was the case with Goody Martin, several afflicted persons who “were carried towards her” could not approach Goody Hoar at all. Asked to explain, she declared, “I do them no wrong, they may come if they will.” But Parris remarked at the end of his notes that “the afflicted were much distressed” throughout the examination.
The women first identified as witches by Katherine Branch in Stamford, Connecticut, during that last week of April fit the same pattern as Dustin, Hoar, and Martin. Evidence gathered in the Connecticut cases showed that the maidservant’s initial charges targeted women who had long been gossiped about as possible practitioners of maleficium. Elizabeth Clawson, who was engaged in a long-running feud with Katherine’s master, Daniel Wescott, was thought to have caused the deaths of some livestock and at least one baby. Neighbors believed that Mercy Disborough too had bewitched the children and livestock of her enemies. Over the next few months the Connecticut magistrates continued to investigate Katherine’s allegations, but in the absence of other afflicted complainants they moved cautiously and with the traditional careful deliberation.
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A CONFEDERATE OF THE DEVIL
On April 30, a “perticuler Order from the Governor & Council” called for the arrest of George Burroughs of Wells, “he being Suspected for a confederacy with the devil in opressing of Sundry about Salem.” That directive from Major Elisha Hutchinson in Portsmouth to the marshal of Maine and New Hampshire revealed that Hathorne and Corwin consulted their fellow magistrates before moving against the minister. The decision to act on the reported spectral visions of the clergyman had thus been reached at the highest level of the colony’s government. Only Burroughs among the 1692 accused received such treatment, which once more underscores his significance in the minds of his judges and accusers alike.
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The marshal quickly carried out his orders. By May 2, he had brought Burroughs to Portsmouth, and two days later he turned his prisoner over to the “Authority” to be held at the tavern of Thomas Beadle in Salem Town until he could be questioned. Even before the clergyman physically returned to Essex County, his specter again began appearing to the afflicted. First he came to Walcott, who “formerly well knew” him and described him as “biting pinching and almost choaking me urging me to writ in his book.” Then Hubbard, who had not seen or known the minister before, declared that on the night of May 3 the specter of “a little black beard man” wearing “blackish aparill” and identifying himself as “borrous” offered her a book with “lines . . . read as blod.” Thereafter the apparition came to her “every day & night very often” until his examination on May 9. Echoing his earlier words to Ann Jr., he informed Betty that “he was above a wizard; for he was a conjurar.” He urged Betty to run away and to sign his book, threatening to kill her and “tortoring me very much by biting and pinching squesing my body and runing pins into me.”
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On Thursday, May 5, George Burroughs returned to speak spectrally with Ann Jr. After “greviously” tormenting her and futilely pressing her to write in his book, he predicted to her that “his Two first wives would appeare to me presently and tell me a grat many lyes but I should not beleve them.” Sure enough, the little girl recounted, she was “immediatly . . . gratly affrighted” by the sight of “Two women in winding sheats and napkins about their heads.” The women’s specters, “very red and angury,” told Burroughs’s apparition that “he had been a cruell man to them, and that their blood did crie for vengance against him.” After they prophesied that “he should be cast into hell,” his specter vanished. They then turned to Ann and explained that Burroughs had murdered both of them—the first in the Salem Village parsonage, the second (with the assistance of his current wife) on shipboard as she was returning from Maine to her family in the Village. “They both charged me that I should tell these things to the Magestraits before Mr Burroughs face,” Ann declared, disclosing that the specters had foretold their possible reappearance at that time if the clergyman did not admit his misdeeds.
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That same day a Salem resident, Elizar Keyser, saw what he believed to be a “diabolicall apperition” after he encountered George Burroughs in the makeshift prison at Thomas Beadle’s. Keyser first met Captain Daniel King, a frontier militia leader, who insisted that the minister was “a Child of god, a Choice Child of god, and that God would Clear up his Inocency.” King urged Keyser to visit Burroughs’s chamber to speak with him, presumably so that he too would become convinced of the clergyman’s innocence. But Keyser demurred, initially claiming that “it did not belong to such as I was to discourse [with] him he being a Learned man,” then reluctantly admitting the real reason for his reticence: “my Opinion or feare was, that he was, the Cheife of all the persons accused for witchcraft or the Ring Leader of them all.” And if that was true, then “his Master meening the divell had told him before now, what I said of him”—Keyser, in short, had already told others that he believed Burroughs was the witches’ leader. Because King seemed to be “in a passion,” though, Keyser complied with his wishes and met with Burroughs, who “did steadfastly fix [his] eys upon mee.” That night, Keyser saw “very strange things appeare in the Chimney . . . [and] quaver with a strainge Motion,” followed by a light “aboute the bigness of my hand . . . which quivered & shaked” and was seen by his maidservant as well. He had no doubt that he had experienced a supernatural phenomenon.
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Two days later Mercy Lewis, Burroughs’s former maidservant, joined others in conversing with the clergyman’s specter. On the evening of May 7, she recounted, the apparition brought her “a new fashon book” and told her she could write in it, “for that was a book that was in his studdy when I lived with them.” Not recognizing the book, she refused. Burroughs then boasted that “he could raise the divell” and admitted bewitching “Mr. Sheppards daughter” (Ann Jr.’s second cousin). When Mercy asked how he could bewitch someone in the Village while being held in Salem Town, he revealed that “the divell was his sarvant and he sent him in his shapp to doe it.” Burroughs also confessed that he had recruited Abigail Hobbs and “severall more” into Satan’s forces, and he repeatedly tortured Mercy, “as if he would have racked [her] all to peaces,” telling her that he would kill her unless she signed his book.
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About the same time, Susannah Sheldon too encountered the apparition of her one-time pastor. Confirming his identity, he helpfully explained that he was “borros which had preached at the vilage,” simultaneously threatening to starve or choke her to death or “tear [her] to peesses” if she would not sign his book. On the night of May 8, he appeared to ask if she were planning to testify against him the next day; when she said yes, he menacingly declared “hee would kil [her] beefoar morning.” Earlier that same day, he had also appeared to Mary Walcott, to whom he revealed more details of Hannah Burroughs’s death. “He would have kiled his first wife and child: when his wife was in travil but he had not power,” the spectral cleric revealed to Walcott. So instead “he keept hir in the kithin tell he gave hir hir deaths wound.” Walcott, like Ann Jr., saw the specters of Burroughs’s first two wives “in their winding sheets,” crying for vengeance against him.
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Even on the very day of his examination Burroughs did not cease his spectral activity. He pinched Goody Vibber’s arm as she was en route to the Village for the examination; never having met him before, she could not identify his apparition until she saw him in person later. Meanwhile, he appeared to Susannah at Ingersoll’s tavern to confess that he had not only killed his two wives but also “two of his own children” and “three children at the eastward.” As for Mercy, that morning he tried bribery in addition to threats: he “caried me up to an exceeding high mountain and shewed me all the kingdoms of the earth and tould me that he would give them all to me if I would writ in his book,” Mercy revealed. Once again, though, she resolutely refused: “I tould him they ware non of his to give and I would not writ if he throde me down on 100 pitchforks.”
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Those who attended the examination of George Burroughs in Salem Village on Monday, May 9, magistrates and people alike, would have been well aware of all his spectral appearances during the preceding ten days; indeed, he was specifically questioned about most of them during the interrogation. Joining Hathorne and Corwin in presiding over the session were the councilors William Stoughton and Samuel Sewall, who could well have been selected because of their prior acquaintance with George Burroughs. Sewall knew the minister at Harvard, and at least once (in November 1685) he had hosted him at dinner. Stoughton would have met him when he went to Falmouth in September 1688 to try to negotiate a hostage exchange with the Wabanakis, if he had not known him before.
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A detailed transcript of the examination either was not kept or does not survive, but an existing summary shows that the first part of the interrogation was conducted “in private none of the
Bewitched
being present.” In that initial phase, Burroughs was asked about reputed failures to take communion and to have his children baptized, both of which he admitted. He was also questioned about reports that his Falmouth house was “haunted” and that he had forbidden his second wife to communicate with her father without his approval, both of which he denied. All these tales would have reached the magistrates through gossip networks. The very existence and accessibility of such stories demonstrated that Burroughs’s various activities had long fascinated the residents of northern New England.
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Then Burroughs was brought into the presence of the afflicted, and “many (if not all of the Bewitched) were greivously tortured,” notes the summary. Not surprisingly, the minister’s former congregants, Susannah and Mercy, took the lead, with Susannah first testifying about her vision of his wives “in their winding sheets” accusing him of murder. She also referred to “the soldiers,” but what exactly she said has been lost; presumably, she repeated Ann Jr.’s charge that he had bewitched some of Andros’s forces in 1688–1689. When Mercy’s statement about her spectral encounter with him was about to be read, “he lookt upon her & she fell into a dreadful & tedious fit.” The same then happened to both Mary and Betty when their statements were introduced. Next, Ann Jr. and Susannah attested that he had asked them to write in his book. Called upon to respond to these charges, Burroughs characterized them as “an amazing & humbling Providence, but he understood nothing of it.” He also observed wonderingly that “when they begin to name my name, they cannot name it.”
After Ann Jr. and Susannah both declared that “his 2 wives & 2 Children did accuse him,” the afflicted were “so tortured” that the judges ordered some of them removed. Sarah Vibber, still present, attested that “he had hurt her, tho she had not seen him personally before as she knew.” The magistrates then reviewed other evidence against him. They ordered Elizar Keyser’s statement read, along with the confessions of Abigail and Deliverance Hobbs, and they took additional testimony from men who had known George Burroughs in Casco. Most of these new depositions pertained to demonstrations of the clergyman’s unusual strength. Finally, John Putnam Sr. testified about Burroughs’s relationship with his first wife in the early 1680s, when the couple had lived in his house.
The content of the examination showed that the presiding magistrates prepared for it with great care. They had already gathered significant evidence against George Burroughs, not only gossipy reports and prior statements of the afflicted (both of which had been employed in earlier examinations, although to a lesser extent) but also formal witness testimony offered at the examination itself—a unique occurrence. A good part of that testimony, moreover, pertained to events in Maine years earlier. Some statements (the record is unclear) could have been offered in the form of depositions, but at least two men from the northeastern frontier testified in person on May 9. Everything the magistrates did, in short, singled George Burroughs out for special attention.
So too did the actions of the bewitched. George Burroughs’s first spectral confession to Ann Jr. on April 20 established two important patterns and his second appearance to her on May 5 added another. As has been shown, the afflicted began to see his shape repeatedly and with increasing frequency as his examination date approached. His numerous appearances signaled his importance and demonstrated both his ubiquity and his power. In addition, his specter and eventually others started to confess to the afflicted not only that they were witches but also that they had committed other crimes, most commonly murder. Before April 20, specters had appeared to the afflicted people and had tormented them to try to enlist them in Satan’s ranks, but they had not confessed to other offenses. After Burroughs’s apparition confessed to Ann Jr., so too did many others admit guilt to her and the other afflicted persons.
And the spectral visions of Ann Jr. on May 5 originated still another new and important aspect of the crisis. As has been indicated, she saw not only George Burroughs but also the ghosts of his two former wives, who accused him of killing them and directed her to inform the magistrates about his crime. They thus became the first of many dead people whose spirits rose from their graves (often in their winding sheets, as in Ann Jr.’s vision) to charge suspected witches with murder. In his
Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences
in 1684, Increase Mather had revealed that the ghosts of the dead could sometimes appear to the living in an attempt to right terrible wrongs, especially murders “not discoverable in any other way.” The people who received such visions, declared the elder Mather, had a special responsibility to carry the messages of the dead to the ears of the living.
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Accordingly, the core group of young female accusers took on new roles in the crisis after April 20, especially following May 9. As was seen in chapter 1, English legal experts concurred that a confession of guilt was the best proof of a witch’s identity. Yet the magistrates had for the most part failed to persuade the accused to confess. Only a few of the examinees so far—Tituba, Dorcas Good, Mary Warren, Abigail and Deliverance Hobbs—had formally admitted their guilt, while many more, including George Burroughs himself, insisted on their innocence in the face of what appeared to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The contest with Satan in the visible world had reached an impasse. In the invisible world, however, specters proved far more accommodating. Burroughs’s apparition freely admitted killing his first two wives to Ann Jr., Mercy, Susannah, and Mary, among others. His confession had then been validated by the ghosts of his dead wives, who revealed to Ann Jr. and others (including Mary) not only the fact of the murders but also the details of how they had been carried out. The clergyman also acknowledged working in concert with the Indians by bewitching Sir Edmund Andros’s troops. Thus in the invisible world the afflicted, in effect, assumed the role of magistrates. They listened to the testimony of spectral witnesses (the murder victims) and extracted the confessions that Hathorne and Corwin could not.