Today in Salem: Seven children emerge from the jail, walking unsurely. Their fathers, uncles, and others have pooled their money to pay a combined £2,000 in bail, and now the men are bringing the children home. The youngest is 8, the oldest 15. All have been in prison for months.
Today in Salem: The Chief Justice receives a petition from 6 women who are in prison after confessing to witchcraft. They’re actually innocent, they say. Can they recant their confessions? They were so terrified, the petition says, that they just agreed to whatever the judges said. Then they added details that they imagined the judges wanted to hear.
Many petitions, from tens to hundreds of people, have been presented in the past, but only one has been granted – that for the shorn Dorcas Hoar. Still, that was recently, so perhaps the Chief Justice will grant them this simple request.
Today in Salem: The Sheriff is busy again, seizing cattle from a family to pay the prison debts of the parents, who’ve been in jail for almost 6 months. For the first time, though, the Sheriff takes pity and leaves a few cattle behind for the family. These he brands on the horns with the help of the oldest son, age 22.
Meanwhile in Boston, an esteemed minister writes an introduction to Increase Mather’s lengthy essay and sends the entire manuscript to the governor, hoping to persuade him to stop or at least slow down the trials. The minister doesn’t know that the governor’s wife has been accused.
Today in Salem: the prominent Rev Increase Mather is furious. Twenty people have died. Eight more have been sentenced. More than one hundred people, including children, are still in prison. This week yet another parent has asked the afflicted girls — rather than God — to say who’s hurting his child. Then two dogs were killed; one of them obviously an innocent animal. And all of this because of the shrieking and swooning of a handful of girls who say they can see specters.
Today Mather has written an essay on the matter, and, as the most influential minister in New England, he intends it to stop the Trials entirely.
“It were better that ten suspected witches should escape,” he’s written, “than that one innocent person should be condemned.”
Now his son, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather, is reading the essay to a group of area ministers. He is a stammerer, and in the best of times speaks slowly. These are not the best of times, though, so he articulates each word even more slowly, in a clear and authoritative voice, so the ministers can hear and consider his father’s main points:
The Devil CAN impersonate an innocent person to hurt others.
Proof is ONLY shown by confession or testimony from two people about real-world evil.
Seeing specters is NOT proof.
Touch tests are DANGEROUS. Asking an accused person to touch and heal the afflicted is a jaw-dropping mockery of the power of Jesus Christ to touch and cure the sick. It also tempts the Devil to touch and hurt that person.
LEARN MORE: These four points are distilled from a 74-page essay. Many details (and much florid writing) have been omitted. But the main points stand.
The essay can be found in its entirety here and is titled:
Cases of Conscience
concerning evil
SPIRITS
Personating Men,
Witchcrafts, infallible Proofs of
Guilt in such as are accused
with that Crime.
By Increase Mather,
President of Harvard College at Cambridge, and Teacher of
a Church at Boston in New-England.
Tomorrow in Salem: SEIZED and SENT: the Sheriff takes cattle, and the ministers send a letter
Today in Salem: A dog is leaping in lopsided circles and bucking like a wild horse as the afflicted girls shriek nearby. A specter is riding him, they cry, and no matter how fast the dog twirls he cannot shake the specter loose. It’s no ordinary specter, though: A judge has recently announced that he is skeptical of the entire witchcraft situation, and will not arrest so much as one more person. Now the judge is in hiding, knowing that he could be accused in retaliation. It’s obvious to the girls: They can see that his furious brother has sent his own specter to attack the girls through a dog.
Finally a Village man finds a gun and shoots the dog, who stops and dies mid-leap, as if he’s hit a wall. But this dog isn’t the only one: Nearby, another dog is shot when an afflicted girl claims he’s the Devil in disguise.
The prominent Rev. Increase Mather is furious. It’s impossible to kill the Devil. Since the dog had in fact died, it was obviously an ordinary and innocent animal. Just like that, Mather’s belief in the afflicted girls is gone.
Tomorrow in Salem: The furious Rev Increase Mather is *done*
Today in Salem: After several weeks away, Governor Phips had returned two days ago astonished to find that his wife has been named as a witch. She has always been a kind and merciful woman, but now she has gone too far, and it’s counting against her. While the Governor was gone, and without any authority, she’d signed a warrant to release a specific woman from prison. Now the woman has disappeared, and the jailer must be fired. Her accusers say it’s obvious: His wife must be a witch, in league with one that she’s set free. What else could explain it?
Privately, the Governor can only hope that his wife hasn’t mentioned the horoscope. Many years ago an astrologer had given it to him unasked for. Then last winter the Governor’s wife had found it and destroyed it, thinking that its predictions were a little too accurate. Would owning a horoscope reflect badly on either of them? Does it matter that he didn’t ask for it? Or that she’d destroyed it as soon as she found it?
Meanwhile, a notable man has brought his sick child all the way from Boston to ask the afflicted girls if a specter is causing the illness. For the first time, though, when the girls formally accuse a specific woman, the judges refuse to arrest her. Then, when the prominent minister Increase Mather hears about it, he confronts the child’s father. Why didn’t he seek help from God in Boston rather than the Devil in Salem?
Today in Salem: The county’s Quarterly Court convenes just in time to help four suffering children. The children’s father, the fortuneteller Samuel Wardwell, was hanged five days ago. Their mother and older sisters are all in prison, having been accused of witchcraft themselves. And yesterday the Sheriff confiscated everything the family owned. The four children, ages 15, 13, 5, and an infant, have been left to shift for themselves.
The town selectman are concerned about them and have asked for advice. Now the Court authorizes them to apprentice the children, even the baby, to four different families. They will be safely cared for while also learning trades. And, like any apprentice, each will be rewarded with clothing when their service ends.
Today in Salem: The Sheriff continues to confiscate all earthly goods and chattel from the widows and men who’ve been hanged for witchcraft. Never mind that the families are left with little or nothing. Witchcraft is a capital crime, and it’s the law for those who are convicted and sentenced: forfeiture of all goods and chattel.
Today the Sheriff visits the family of the fortuneteller Samuel Wardwell, who was hanged four days ago. His wife and oldest daughters are in prison, so only their younger children can protest. It takes the Sheriff’s men the better part of the day, but by nightfall they’ve seized the family’s personal belongings plus cattle, hogs, a horse, carpenter tools, eight loads of hay, and six acres of corn still in the ground because there’s no one to harvest it.
Today in Salem: The Sheriff’s officer is shaking his fist and arguing with the widow Mary Parker’s sons. Two days have gone by since her hanging, and the Sheriff wants to seize everything. Everything. There’s money to be made, and who knows how much longer this will go on?
“This is mine!” the oldest son says, clenching his jaw and pointing past the house and fields. “First my father’s, and now mine!” His father had died years ago and willed his belongings to his children, effective when Mary died. “My mother had nothing!”
It makes no difference. The officer takes the cattle, plus all of the hay and the recently harvested corn. Later the sons complain directly to the Sheriff, but he demands £10 to stop the confiscation. It’s more than the sons have. The Sheriff finally agrees to £6, payable within the month, most of it to pay the bill for Mary’s time in jail.
Tomorrow in Salem: SEIZED: the property of the hanged fortuneteller Samuel Wardwell
Today in Salem: One of the judges is on horseback, picking his way through mud and making his way home. A soaking rainstorm last night has flooded the roads and they’re nearly impassable. Still, he’s grateful for the much-needed rain. The long drought of summer is over, and, although the storm clouds are thick and dark, there’s light behind them.
Tomorrow in Salem: SEIZED: the property of the hanged widow Mary Parker