During the week that follows, Ann is further afflicted by the same apparition “biting, pinching, and pricking me.” Meanwhile, too, her friend Abigail Williams (another in the victim group) is “exceedingly perplexed with the apparition of Rebecca Nurse . . . pulled, pinched, and almost choked . . . [and] hurried into violence to and fro in the room . . . sometimes making as if she would fly, stretching up her arms . . . and crying âwhish! whish! whish!' . . . and [running] to the fire . . . to throw fire brands about the house.” Indeed, Abigail's encounter extends much furtherâto observing “this apparition at a sacrament [the Black Mass?] . . . sitting next to [a figure . . . the Devil?] with a high-crowned hat,” and to hearing her boast of “committing several murders.”
But this is just an opener. At midafternoon on Friday, March 18, again in the Putnam household, Ann Putnam Sr. is resting in bed “after being wearied out in helping to tend my poor afflicted child,” when all at once she feels “almost pressed and choked to death.” Thus begins a series of excruciating “tortures,” inflicted first by the shape of Martha Corey (another Village woman suspected of witchcraft) and then, more especially, by Rebecca
Nurse. The worst come on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, when (according to Ann Sr.'s later testimony) “she appeared to me only in her shift [i.e. nightgown] and brought a little red book . . . urging me vehemently to write [in it] . . . and because I would not . . . she threatened to tear my soul out of my body.”
Parts of this extraordinary scene are witnessed by a visiting clergyman, Reverend Deodat Lawson, who would write about it in a book published shortly afterward: “She
[
Ann Sr.
]
desired me to pray with her . . . but after a little time was taken with a fit . . .
[
and
]
was so stiff she could not be bended . . . but began to strive violently with her arms and legs.” After some minutes, Ann Sr. gathers herself to fight back, and hurls a volley of scathing words at her spectral adversary: “Be gone! Be gone! Be gone! Are you not ashamed . . . to afflict a poor creature so? What hurt did I ever do to you in my life? You have but two years to live and then the Devil will torment your soul; for this your name is blotted out of God's book. . . . Be gone, for shame, are you not afraid of that which is coming upon you? I know, I know, what will make you afraid: the wrath of an angry God, I am sure that will make you afraid! Be gone, do not torment me. . . .” Soon Ann Sr. is again “sorely afflicted [with] her mouth drawn to one side and her body strained, for about a minute.” Finally, she asks Lawson to read from a certain scriptural passageâthe Book of Revelations, chapter 3âbecause “I am sure you [i.e. Nurse's apparition] cannot stand before that text!” At this the minister does “something scruple,” since such practice seems uncomfortably close to traditional magicâin the parlance of the time, a charmâbut decides to “do it . . . once for an experiment.” Almost immediately, Ann Sr. is freed from her suffering.
These eventsâthe affliction by Rebecca Nurse's apparition of at least three different personsâquickly become the subject of much agitated discussion around the Village. The fits of the victim group, some of them dating back to the previous month, have built an atmosphere of intense public concern; Rebecca is the sixth person to fall under suspicion so far. But her case is unusual in one important respect: she has numerous local supporters, friends and relatives ready to come to her defense. In due course, four of these friendsâIsrael and Elizabeth Porter, Daniel Andrew, and Peter
Cloyce, upstanding citizens allâare “desired to go to . . . [her] house,” and speak with her personally, to break the news of the accusations made against her. The circumstances are poignant and difficult. Rebecca, age 71, has been bedridden for some time; her visitors find her “weak and low.” They ask her “how it [is] . . . otherwise with her” (referring to her spiritual condition). She gamely replies that she feels “more of God's presence in this sickness than [at] some [other] times, but not so much as she desired.” Indeed, her piety is fully manifest; she cites “many . . . places of scripture” that give her great comfort. Then, “of her own accord,” she raises the matter of “the affliction [i.e. the witchcraft] amongst them,” and expresses her sympathy for its several young victims. She regrets being too ill to visit them, for she has “pitied them with all her heart, and . . . [prayed] for them.” Eventually, and as gently as possible, Rebecca's friends come to the point and tell her “that she was spoken of also [as a witch].” She feels “as it were amazed,” and sits quietly trying to understand. Presently she says, “If it be so, the will of the Lord be done.” But then, a moment later: “As to this thing [the witchcraft accusation
],
I am [as] innocent as the child unborn.” She ends, in good Puritan fashion, by turning the matter back on herself and wondering aloud: “What sin hath God found out in me, unrepented of, that he should lay such an affliction on me in my old age
?
” An affliction it truly isâhardly less so than what the bewitched victims are concurrently suffering. And there is worse to come.
Â
Rebecca Nurse was born in the English town of Great Yarmouth, in 1621, to a couple named William and Johannah Towne. The Townes emigrated to Massachusetts when Rebecca was still a girl, and established themselves on a small farm in Topsfield, just north of the Salem line. Across that line in years to come, William Towne would repeatedly find himself “in controversy” with various Salem Village residents, especially some from the large and locally influential Putnam clan; for the most part, the issue was poorly-drawn boundaries between one farm and another. Otherwise little is known of the family's situation in that period, except that Goodwife Towne was suspected by some of being a witch. Since witchcraft was believed to be a heritable condition, passed through families from one generation to the next, this would be a factor in her daughter Rebecca's own vulnerability to accusation later on.
Coming of age in the 1640s, Rebecca married a young artisan in Salem; his name was Francis Nurse. Together they would raise eight children. Local records afford passing glimpses of their doings: occasional lawsuits filed for and against them (debt, trespass, slander), the taking of a foster child into their household “in charity,” Francis's occasional service as a juryman and constable. Taken together, these bits suggest a gradual rise in status and property. Then, in 1678, came something more substantial: Francis Nurse emerged as the purchaser of a fine 300-acre “estate” from a Boston clergyman named James Allen. The terms were unusual: Nurse was given 21 years to discharge the principal (a hefty total of 400 pounds), while in the meantime paying a modest annual rent. The land was in Salem Village, to which the entire family then moved from its previous home in the Town center. In fact, this transaction would have a troubled history, including numerous legal challenges that played out in local courts over the next several years. Allen, who still held official title, bore the brunt here, but inevitably the Nurses were also drawn in. Thus, they became increasingly embroiled with various neighbors who would later step forward among Rebecca's accusers in the witch trials.
Still, from all signs the family prospered in its new venue. Francis became a vigorous participant in the local economy and his wealth as recorded on the tax rolls rose markedly. In time, he managed to settle most of his now-grown children within the ambit of his own property. Rebecca was a member in good standing of the church and a figure of deep respect within the wider Village community. A contemporary would subsequently note many “testimonials of her Christian behavior, both in the course of her life and at her death, and her extraordinary care in educating her children, and setting them good examples.” âââ
On March 23, in the direct aftermath of Ann Putnam Sr.'s most searing affliction, two men swear out a formal complaint against Rebecca Nurse, and an order is given for her “examination” the next morning. The setting will be the Village meetinghouse, with magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin presiding, Reverend Samuel Parris (the local minister) acting as recorder, and Rebecca's supposed victims (now numbering about ten) primed to give evidence against her.
As the proceedings begin, the meetinghouseâa simple, boxlike structure, 34 feet long by 28 feet wide by approximately 25 feet tallâis filled with onlookers from the Village and beyond. They are arrayed in rows on narrow benches, and in two balcony-style galleries overhead; the examiners and other officials sit behind a long communion table at the front. In such cramped surroundings, the mood of anxious expectation grows steadily, almost palpably, deeper. Then, as if on cue, Ann Putnam Jr. and Abigail Williams fall into fits and writhe about on the floor in apparently excruciating pain. Under questioning by Hathorneâ“Have you been hurt by this woman?”âboth point plaintively toward Rebecca; they mean that her specter, projected out from her person as they alone can see, is directly attacking them. Soon additional accusers rise to speak. A certain Goodman Kenny alleges that “since this Nurse came into the house,” he has twice been “seized with an amazed condition.” And Edward Putnam describes the previous afflictions of his sister-in-law (Ann Sr.) and niece (Ann Jr.). To every such charge Rebecca responds with heartfelt denials. Thus: “I can say before my Eternal Father I am innocent and God will clear my innocency.” And: “I never afflicted no child, never in my life.” But these have little effect.
Ann Putnam Sr.: Did you not bring the black man [Satan] with you? Did you not bid me tempt God and die? How oft have you ate and drunk with your own demon?
Rebecca: Oh Lord help me.
At this she spreads her hands in a gesture of despair; immediately her victims undergo fresh paroxysms of “torment.”
Hathorne: Do you not see what a solemn condition these are in? When your hands are loose, their persons are afflicted.
Two more, Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, join the chorus of
accusation. And Ann Putnam Sr. suffers another “grievous fit . . . insomuch as she could hardly move hand or foot”; presently she is “carried out.” The overall result is “an hideous screech and noise” so loud that it can be heard “at a great distance” from the meetinghouse. The magistrates struggle to regain control.
Hathorne: It is very awful to all to see these agonies, and you an old professor [of religion, i.e. a church member] thus charged with contracting with the Devil . . . and yet to see you stand with dry eyes, when there are so many wet . . .
Rebecca: You do not know my heart.
Back and forth it goes, with yet more of her accusers falling into fits. At one point Hathorne mentions “an odd discourse [gossip] in the mouths of many [Villagers],” to the effect that her recent “sickness” was actually the result of wounds received when the afflicted and others struck back at her apparition. As to “wounds,” she replies, “I have none but old age.” Meanwhile, the afflicted claim to see “a black man whispering in [Rebecca's] ear, and birds [her familiars]
”
fluttering around her.
Hathorne: Do you think these suffer voluntarily or involuntarily?
Rebecca: I cannot tell.
Hathorne: They accuse you of hurting them, and if you think it is not unwillingly but by design, you must look upon them as murderers.
Rebecca: I cannot tell what to think.
As she nervously shifts her weight from one foot to the other, the fits of her accusers are renewed in ways that mimic her own motion.
Hathorne: Is it not an unaccountable case that when you are examined these persons are afflicted?
Rebecca: I have got nobody to look to but God.
She wrings her hands helplessly, and the afflicted are beset with additional, and corresponding, “fits of torture.”
Hathorne: Do you believe these afflicted persons are bewitched?
Rebecca: I do think they are.
The magistrates order Reverend Parris to read from testimony given by Ann Putnam Sr. about her prior struggles with Rebecca's apparition.
Hathorne: What do you think of this?
Rebecca: I cannot help it; the Devil may appear in my shape.
The proceeding is drawing to a close now, amid a bedlam of affliction and accusation. At the end of his transcript, Parris notes the difficulties he has encountered in writing, from “great noises by the afflicted and many speakers.” And he adds a final “memorandum” to underscore the way the accusers have responded to Rebecca's every movement with directly mirroring torment. For example: “Nurse held her head on one side, and Elizabeth Hubbard . . . had her head set in that posture, whereupon . . . Abigail Williams cried out, âSet up Goody Nurse's head [or else] the maid's [Hubbard's] neck will be broken,' and when some set up Nurse's head . . . Betty Hubbard's was immediately righted.” Who could imagine a more vivid demonstration of the witch's injurious, and utterly coercive, power?
Indeed, for all who watch and listen there in the meetinghouse this has been a shattering experience. As Reverend Lawson would later write: “The whole assembly was struck with consternation, and they were afraid that those that sat next to them were under the influence of witchcraft.” In short: no one is safe, no one can be trusted, everyone must be on guard.
Â
It would be a mistake to make any one set of people entirely responsible for the persecution of Rebecca Nurse, but members of the Putnam clan do seem to have been disproportionately represented among her accusers. Of 18 surviving depositions given against her at her eventual trial, ten included one or more Putnams as signatories. Thus, their family's history deserves some particular attention.