Ibid., 3:702, 705–707.
Ibid., 2:385 (complaint), 1:179 (examination). See also John Hale,
A Modest
Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft . . .
(Boston, 1702), 80–81, for a longer description of the poppets and the experiments with them.
Jacob Melijn to Dr. Johannes Kerfbijl, 11 July 1692, Jacob Melijn Letterbook, AAS (in Dutch, translation by Evan Haefeli, in possession of the author). I am deeply grateful to Haefeli for sharing this important unpublished material with me.
Quotation: Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:34; warrant and execution:
SWP
2:377–78.
M. Halsey Thomas, ed.,
The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729
(New York, 1973), 1:293; Cotton Mather, “A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World,” 4 August 1692, in Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:129. The passage in the last sentence, taken from Mather’s sermon delivered two weeks later, refers specifically to how “Private Persons” should regard the Salem accused and appears directly related to the fast at Alden’s house.
DHSM
5:343–44.
CHAPTER SEVEN BURROUGHS THEIR RINGLEADER
Mather, DL, in Lincoln, Narratives, 243–47, passim. See also Marshall W. S. Swan, “The Bedevilment of Cape Ann (1692),”
EIHC
117 (1981): 160–65.
Sighting of Pudeator:
SWP
3:707; Ballard’s action: ibid., 3:971; date: ibid., 2:523 (“thanksgiving day [ July 14] at night”); Lewis and Hubbard:
SWP
2:515. The witch-finders could also have been Mary Walcott and Abigail Williams, because five years later “several Aggrieved Persons” from the Village complained that Samuel Parris had sent inquirers to those girls “to know who afflicted the people in their illnesses.” See Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village
Witchcraft (Boston, 1993), 266. See also Calef’s account of Ballard’s act and its consequences, in
MWIW
, in
WDNE
3:51–52. Most authors have identified the witch-finders as Ann Putnam Jr. and Mary Walcott, following the lead of Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem
Witch Trials
(New York, 1949), 181–82. But Starkey cites no source for her identification, and I have found no document specifying the names of those who first named the tormentors of Elizabeth Ballard. Ann Jr. and Mary Walcott were in Andover twelve days later on July 26, when they identified the specter of Mary Bradbury as the afflicter of Timothy Swan (
SWP
1:121, 125).
Foster’s confession:
SWP
2:342–43 (this document seems incomplete, probably lacking a first page). No record of a complaint against Foster survives, although on July 16 she referred to Timothy Swan and “the rest that complayned of her.” Ballard’s formal complaint against the Laceys, mother and daughter, is dated 19 July (ibid., 2:513). Andrew Foster, Ann’s husband, an original settler of Andover, died in 1685. Elizabeth Ballard died in late July 1692.
John Hale,
A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft
. . . (1702)
,
in Burr,
Narratives,
418.
The Lacey confessions on 21 July are extensive and survive in several versions. The quotations in this paragraph and the next three come from
SWP
2:514, 522–24; and Richard B. Trask, ed., “The Devil hath been raised”: A Documentary
History of the Salem Village Witchcraft Outbreak of March 1692,
rev. ed. (Danvers, Mass., 1997), 157. See, in general,
SWP
2:514, 520–29, 531–33.
SWP
2:524–25, 1:197.
This paragraph and the next are based on ibid., 2:526–30, 1:197–98. In addition to the names of witches and suspected witches, Richard Carrier knew about the reports of a spectral yellow bird. His statement constitutes the only evidence that Elizabeth Parris suffered afflictions.
Ibid., 2:689. “Tying neck and heels” involved tying a prisoner’s hands and feet together behind his back, arching it into an extremely uncomfortable position.
Edward Bromfield sermon notebook, v. 6, notes on Willard’s sermons for 26 July [i.e., June], 10 July, 17 July, 24 July 1692, MHS (Mark Peterson, transcript, pp. 17–20, 33–35, 44–47, 52–54); “Joshua Moodey,”
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates
1:367–80. For the reputed accusation of Ann Jacobs Moodey, see Joshua Broadbent to Francis Nicholson, 21 June 1692, abstracted in J. W. Fortescue, ed., Calendar of State
Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies
(London, 1901), 13:653. Broadbent, who wrote from New York, included garbled information about the crisis, and it is unclear whether his information about an accusation of Ann Moodey was accurate, for it cannot be confirmed in another source.
SWP
2:689.
The council met eleven times between 13 June and 26 July. Attendance records exist for ten of those meetings. Phips and Sewall were present at all ten; Stoughton and Winthrop at nine; Sergeant and Richards at eight; Corwin and Gedney at two; and Hathorne at one. See council minutes, 13 June–26 July 1692, CO 5/785, ff 90–96 passim. Phips’s biographers are the only other scholars who have realized how long the governor was in Boston that summer, but they do not ascribe the same importance to his presence that I do; see Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid,
The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651–1695
(Toronto, 1998), 144–52.
See Phips to William Blathwayt, 21 July 1692, vol. 5, fol. 1, William Blathwayt Papers, CW; and the related letter, Isaac Addington to same, 16 July 1692, ibid., vol. 5, fol. 3. Addington promised that Phips would provide in his letter a full “Account of the present State of Affaires here,” which suggests that he thought Phips was going to inform colonial officials about the witchcraft crisis at that time, but Phips did not do so.
Quotations:
SWP
1:210; 30 July date: M. Halsey Thomas, ed.,
The Diary of
Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729
(New York, 1973), 1:293. On Benjamin Fletcher and the Salem fugitives in New York, see more below. See also, for reputed details of this escape, Enders A. Robinson,
The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692
(New York, 1991), 216.
Susanna Hathorne, Philip and Mary English’s great-granddaughter (who, ironically, married a descendant of John Hathorne), told this story, with some additional unlikely details, to the Reverend William Bentley of Salem in May 1793. See
The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts
(Gloucester, Mass., 1962), 2:24–25; and a formal version of the story prepared later by Bentley and printed in
WDNE
3:179–81 (quotations from this latter source). Philip English later said that he was jailed for about nine weeks in Boston (
SWP
3:989), so since he was captured on May 30, that would date their flight to the first week of August. For the daughters, see John Noble, ed., “Some Documentary Fragments Touching the Witchcraft Episode of 1692,”
CSM Pubs
10 (1904–1906): 18–20. Among the unlikely details in the oral history is the claim that William Phips conspired in the Englishes’ escape, giving them letters of introduction to Governor Fletcher. But Fletcher did not arrive from England to take up his post as governor until late August, long after the couple fled from Salem, and Fletcher and Phips had an acrimonious relationship, which is evident from their surviving correspondence. I tried unsuccessfully to locate letters from New York that would confirm the accounts that the fugitives associated with Fletcher there, but for a reference to the Englishes and Carys (and John Alden, whose escape is discussed in the next chapter) being in New York in October, see Jacob Melijn to Johannes Kerfbijl, 5 October 1692, Jacob Melijn Letterbook, AAS (in Dutch, trans. by Evan Haefeli).
Phips to William Blathwayt, 21 July 1692, vol. 5, fol. 1, Blathwayt Papers, CW; Phips to Winthrop, 25 July 1692, box 24, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS; Phips to Stoughton, 27 July 1692,
DHSM
5:345–46; Phips to Checkley, 27 July 1692, MA 40:264, MSA. The council approved Checkley’s appointment at its meeting on 26 July; see CO 5/785, f 96. The new prosecutor’s sister-in-law was Lydia, daughter of Joshua Scottow, and his wife was a daughter of John Wheelwright, so he had close familial ties to the northern frontier.
Emerson:
SWP
1:307–309; Bridges: ibid., 131–32. The other two accused witches in late July were Hannah Bromage (or Brumidge) and Mary Green, both of Haverhill. Little is known about either. See ibid., 143–44, 3:960–61 (Bromage): ibid., 2:379–80 (Green); and Trask, ed.,
Devil hath been raised
, 158. Bromage offered a partial and tentative confession. The fullest biographical information about the two is in Enders A. Robinson,
Salem Witchcraft and Hawthorne’s House
of the Seven Gables
(Bowie, Md., 1992), 328–29. More is known about Mary Bridges (ibid., 301–303). Several of the daughters and a stepdaughter of Goody Bridges would also be accused and confess; see below.
This paragraph and the next two are based on
SWP
3:767–69; see ibid., 1:193, for her son Allen’s war wound. How Mary Toothaker knew the exact number of witches given by Goody Foster is not clear. The magistrates could have supplied it in an unrecorded leading question, or she could have learned of it through gossip.
Henry A. Hazen,
History of Billerica, Massachusetts
(Boston, 1883), 127; cf. map between 16 and 17. Some warning of this attack might have been given; see the notation, verso, on the 30 July summons for Billerica witnesses against Martha Carrier, in Salem, Mass., Witchcraft Papers, MHS (omitted from the published version,
SWP
1:188–89). In August 1695, though, Mary Toothaker was killed and her young daughter captured in yet another attack. (See
Vital Records of Billerica,
Massachusetts
[Boston, 1908], 400.)
Cotton Mather to John Cotton, 5 August 1692, in Kenneth Silverman, ed.,
Selected Letters of Cotton Mather
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), 40.
Easty indictments:
SWP
1:290–91; Corey: ibid., 256–57. The WPA transcriber did not record the “billa vera” (true bill) notation on the Corey indictment for bewitching Lewis in the Salem, Mass., Witchcraft Papers, MHS, so it does not appear in
SWP
. Of course, other indictments might have been issued but not survived. See Bernard Rosenthal,
Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
(New York, 1993), chapter 6, for another discussion of this set of trials.
Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:200, 195;
SWP
1:191–92, 194–96.
Maleficium stories:
SWP
1:189–90, 193–94, Allen Toothaker: ibid., 192–93; Mather’s account:
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:195, 199–200. For references to Martha Carrier in the confessions of the Foster-Laceys and Martha’s sons, see
SWP
2:342–44, 514, 522–24, 526–27, 529, 531–33.
Indictments:
SWP
3:830–34 (those numbered 5 and 6 are missing); Ann Jr.: ibid., 3:850–51; Ann Sr.: ibid., 3:839; Parris et al.: ibid., 3:840–41 (see also 3:845); Vibber: ibid., 3:841. See the list of “Evidences against John Willard,” ibid., 3:836, which includes Ann Sr., who probably testified orally.
Ibid., 3:842–49 passim (quotations 842–45).
Carrier: ibid., 2:529, 1:197; “Evidences against John Willard,” ibid., 3:836. See also, on Jacobs having named Willard, Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:43.
Indictments:
SWP
2:662–63, 678–80; Holton: ibid., 688–89; Booth: ibid., 672–73, 689, 692. See also statements of the afflicted: ibid., 666–69, 670–73, 684–86, 688; statements by Parris, Putnam, et al.: ibid., 671, 675, 686–88.
Confessions: ibid., 1:92, 172, 197; 2:413, 423, 529; 3:799–800; DeRich: ibid., 2:482.
This paragraph and the next are based on ibid., 2:664, 681–82. “Pleading her belly” would commonly save a woman from execution until after she gave birth. Both petitions are undated, but the second is addressed to the “Court of Assistants now Sitting In Boston” and refers to the Proctors as “under suspition” of witchcraft, not as having been convicted. The Court of Assistants no longer existed after mid-May, but the new council would have been the equivalent body. The first assembly session under the new charter ran from June 8 to early July; the second session did not convene until September, so this petition predated the court’s third session by at least a month. Accordingly, I think it possible that this was the second petition drafted in June by William Milborne, one of the two that resulted in his being fined on June 25 and the one he did not himself sign.
Indictments: ibid., 2:477–79; quoted testimony: ibid., 2:486, 481; reports of examination of his body: ibid., 2:480, 1:159; Jacobs’s confession: Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:43.
This paragraph and the next are based on
SWP
1:164–67 passim (Ann Jr. and supporters); 170 (Hubbard); 174 (Walcott); 167–68 (Vibber); 168–69 (Lewis); Elizar Keyser, deposition, grand jury, 3 August 1692, Pierpont Morgan Library (the printed version in
SWP
1:177 omits the crucial words “told her that” contained in this copy).
Warren:
SWP
1:173, corrected by the original, Salem, Mass., Witchcraft Papers, MHS (most significantly, the WPA transcriber wrote “Mis Cory,” whereas the name is obviously “Cary”); indictments:
SWP
1:154–58; Maine evidence: 1:161–62.
Quotations: Cotton Mather to John Cotton, 5 August 1692, in Silverman, ed.,
Selected Letters,
40; Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:153; Deodat Lawson, appendix to the 1704 edition of Brief and True Narrative, printed in Charles W. Upham,
Salem Witchcraft
(Boston, 1867), 2:535. That Hale attended seems likely from his detailed knowledge of the trial; see below. Governor Phips was in Boston on 1 August and reached Pemaquid by 11 August. Even allowing several days for the stop he made at Casco Bay to bury the bones of the May 1690 dead and to carry off cannon from Fort Loyal, he could have attended Burroughs’s trial on 5 August before departing for the eastward, since the prevailing winds made for easy sailing along the coast in that direction. A modern sloop can make the voyage from Boston to Pemaquid in just two long days; Phips could have reached Casco in a day or two, and then Pemaquid in another day. (Thanks to David M. Brown for this information.) It is hard to imagine that a man with Phips’s investment in the trials and ties to Maine (indeed to Burroughs himself) could have resisted attending on 5 August. See Thomas Church,
The History of Philip’s War . . . Also, of the
French and Indian Wars, at the Eastward . . . ,
ed. Samuel D. Drake (Exeter, N.H., 1839), 209–12, for the timing of Phips’s voyage.