Tag Archives: Bridget Bishop

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Apr 19: A storm of accusations

Today in Salem: The normally cantankerous Giles Corey is swaying in front of the judges, his hands tied, bewildered. Prophesies? Suicide? He was just arrested yesterday afternoon, not knowing why he’s been accused. Now the cruel magistrate Hathorne is leaning in, relentless in his questions.

wheat field

Just last week, Giles had helped escort his gospel woman wife Martha from the jail in Salem to Boston, and promised to visit her next week. Now the judges want to know: Was he really just promising a simple visit? Or was he prophesying his own arrest? Does he realize that prophesies are a kind of magic? Giles protests, saying he’d run out of money for the ferry and was just telling his wife goodbye.

More important, several witnesses testify they’ve heard Giles say he’s tempted to do away with himself. The judges remind him that self-murder is a much greater sin than witchcraft. If Giles is willing to take his own life, wouldn’t he be even more willing to practice witchcraft? Giles denies everything.

The afflicted girls writhe and convulse as usual through more questions about his wife’s criticisms, his lame ox, and what was that ointment Martha had in their house? The judges send Giles to jail to wait for trial.

rainbow trees

Giles had been arrested with three other people, and now the judges turn their attention to the wild child Abigail Hobbs. The afflicted girls are suddenly quiet, staying calm throughout her examination.

“I have been very wicked,” Abigail says. “I hope I shall be better, if God will help me.” She goes on to admit to everything: signing the Devil’s book, using her specter to hurt the girls, and – most alarmingly – that this began in faraway Maine. The Devil has been operating on a far grander scale than the judges and ministers of Salem had realized. This would change everything. (What the judges don’t know is that Abigail’s statement today will set off a chain of events that, by tomorrow night, will link the witches’ and the Wabanakis’ assaults on New England. During the next seven weeks, fifty-four people will be formally accused of witchcraft, a sharp increase from the ten who’d been complained against in the seven weeks that ended two days ago.)

With the slave Tituba and the 4-year-old Dorcas Good, Abigail Hobbs becomes the third person to confess to witchcraft, and is sent to jail.

cat with shadows

When the third prisoner, the Proctors’ servant Mary Warren, approaches the bar, the afflicted girls – her former friends – are so violently seized that only one of them can speak.

Everyone in the Village knows the story: Mary had been afflicted herself, but soon was cured. Then she said the other girls were lying, and now the girls have turned around and accused her of witchcraft.

How is this possible? The judges demand an answer. How can Mary be afflicted, then an afflicter? She must have been a witch the entire time. Mary crumples to the floor, trying to confess through gritted teeth. The afflicted girls say that specters are trying to prevent Mary from confessing, and her distress is so acute that the judges send her away to recover before they ask more questions.

dying flower

Finally, the unruly Bridget Bishop approaches the bar. If Giles was bewildered, Abigail forthcoming, and Mary paralyzed with fear, Bridget is nothing short of exasperated. She rolls her eyes when the girls convulse, which only makes things worse.

“I am innocent to a witch,” she says. “I know not what a witch is.” But the judges turn it back on her. If she doesn’t even know what a witch is, how does she know she isn’t one? After more shrieking and accusations from the girls, Bridget is sent back to jail to wait for future trial.

Tomorrow in Salem: A minister works for the Devil, and the servant Mary Warren’s story changes again

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Apr 16: NEW SPECTERS: Mary Warren & Bridget Bishop

Today in Salem: It’s been nearly two weeks since the Proctors’ servant, Mary Warren, said publicly that the other girls were lying. People believed her. She’d been afflicted herself, but after beatings and harshness from her masters, she’d been ”cured,” and posted a note of gratitude on the meeting house door.

The other girls, her former friends, had stood back and listened as she spoke about them. And they’ve shunned her since. But now Mary’s specter is afflicting them, and it’s clear why she said they were lying: she herself is being deceptive. She’s guilty of witchcraft, and using the guise of an innocent person to inflict torment. So today, finally, four of the girls accuse her of using her specter to inflict harm.

Also accused: a Town woman that many had heard of but few in the Village had met: the unruly Bridget Bishop. She’d been in and out of court several times over the years for fighting, calling her husband names on the Sabbath, stealing brass from a local mill owner, and was accused of witchcraft when her abusive husband died and she inherited his large estate (with almost nothing left for their children). That had been several years ago, but the stain has never left her, and now her specter has come back to life.

WHO was Bridget Bishop?

Bridget Bishop, age 60, was an unruly woman who, 20 years earlier, had been brought to court with her husband for fighting. Both of them were fined and ordered to be whipped if they didn’t pay the fine on time. Eight years later they were still fighting, and Bridget was brought to court for calling her husband names like “old rogue” and “old devil” on the Sabbath Day (never mind that he deserved it). This time they were ordered to stand back-to-back in the public marketplace, gagged, with pieces of paper labeled with their offense and fastened to each of their foreheads.

Bridget’s husband died a short time after that, and she inherited his sizable estate, worth about £70. But her daughter and two stepsons received only twenty shillings each. Immediately her stepsons accused her of bewitching their father to death.

Her notoriety continued when repairmen knocked down a cellar wall and found “several poppets made up of rags with hogs’ bristles with headless pins in them with the points outward.” The repairmen never actually produced the poppets – something like today’s voodoo dolls – but their testimony alone was evidence of black magic.

Five years later she was accused by the afflicted girls of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, but history doesn’t tell us what brought her to their attention. The important thing is that no one was surprised, and she quickly became the person the court was most focused on.

NOTE – Bridget is often described as a tavern owner who let loud, young people drink and play “shovel board” until the wee hours. This actually refers to her daughter-in-law, Sarah Bishop, who was also accused of witchcraft.

Tomorrow in Salem: The wild child Abigail Hobbs