The Enemy Within Read online

  But from here on, their experiences would differ dramatically. Sarah did not recoup and regain her birthright prominence; she and James remained in the ranks of ordinary folk, of modest means and standing. (Two of her Lyman brothers fared much better, rising to become pillars of Northampton’s local elite, while a third spiraled sharply downward into “distemperature”—mental incompetence—and a “very low condition.”) Nor was Sarah fortunate in her childbearing. Four of her five eldest children died young, including the infant son whose illness would figure in the 1656 slander trial.

  The extant records will not disclose whatever it was that Mary and Sarah held deepest in their heads and hearts. But if witchcraft cases were typically thought to involve envy, which they were—and if Mary Parsons was later remembered as being “haughty” and a magnet for “jealousy,” which she was—then the grounds for the building suspicion against her do come at least partially into focus.

  And Sarah Bridgman was especially well positioned to make the most painful of personal comparisons here. Why, Sarah might well have asked herself, why had Mary prospered, both materially and maternally, so much more than she? Was it just God’s will? Or was it, perhaps, Satan’s?

  August 1674. Northampton is again abuzz with talk of witchcraft. And Mary Parsons is again at the center of it.

  A young woman of the town has died rather suddenly—and, in the opinion of many, “very strangely.” She was only 22 at the time of death, married a year or so before, the mother of an infant son. Her given name? Mary (yet another). Her surname ? Bartlett (from Samuel Bartlett, her husband). Her maiden name (from her birth family)? Bridgman. Mary Bartlett was the daughter of Sarah and James Bridgman.

  Sarah had died a few years before; James survives, though town records mention his “weakness of body.” Now it is James, together with Samuel Bartlett—father and husband of the supposed victim—who press the new accusations against Mary Parsons. Within days of the younger Mary’s death, they declare to the county court their shared belief that “she came to her end by some unlawful and unnatural means . . . viz. by some evil instrument.” A month later the court hears “diverse testimonies” from others as well. Samuel comes forward again, “to show the ground of his suspicions.” James sends a written statement “entreating that diligent inquisition be made concerning the death of . . . his daughter.” Mary Parsons also comes in, albeit without a direct invitation. As the record will later note: “She having intimation that such things were bruited about, and that she should be called in question . . . she voluntarily appeared in court, desiring to clear herself of such an execrable crime.”

  There are still more hearings over the winter. These include numerous additional testimonies, “some of them being demonstrations of witchcraft . . . and reflecting upon Mary Parsons as being guilty that way.” The accused submits renewed protestations “of her own innocency . . . and how clear she was of such a crime . . . and the righteous God knew her innocency.” The court appoints a committee of “soberdized, chaste women” to conduct a body search on Mary, to see “whether any marks of witchcraft might appear.” (No record of their conclusions survives.)

  After all this is done, the case passes to the colony’s highest legal authority, the Court of Assistants in Boston. And there, in the following spring, it enters its final stage. An imposing lineup of magistrates presides, including business associates and (presumably) friends of her husband; but her fate rests with a trial jury of ordinary citizens. The indictment is formally read: “Mary Parsons, the wife of Joseph Parsons . . . being instigated by the Devil hath . . . entered into familiarity with the Devil, and committed several acts of witchcraft on the person or persons of one or more.” The evidence is reviewed yet again. And Mary, standing “at the bar, holding up her hand,” again declares her innocence. After careful deliberation the jury returns its verdict: “not guilty . . . And so she [is] discharged.”

  Did this put an end to it? Would the long-running suspicions against Mary Parsons at last dry up? Or would they be sustained, in spite of a pair of court decisions to the contrary nearly two decades apart?

  Mary had reached middle age. Joseph, considerably her senior, would die within a few more years; but she herself would live on for another 30. Throughout her widowhood, she would be more than amply provided for. Joseph’s estate was one of the largest to have been probated so far anywhere in Massachusetts; it included land holdings in six different townships, together with goods, cash, and credit to a value of more than 2,000 pounds. And Mary was a chief beneficiary. Meanwhile, her grown sons and daughters were themselves moving quickly and easily into the tight circle of the provincial elite.

  Might not all this wealth and social standing have served as a barrier, a shield, against further accusation? In fact, there would be no more official action linking Mary to witchcraft—no court prosecutions, certainly. She may, just possibly, have been suspected of causing the “mysterious” illness and death of a Northampton neighbor in 1678; the evidence seems murky. But unofficial action is, in any case, a different matter: consider the following.

  In January 1702, two magistrates at Spring field hear a complaint by a certain Mr. Peletiah Glover against a slavewoman named Betty Negro, for using “bad language” to his young son. Betty has told the boy “that his grandmother . . . killed two persons over the river, and . . . killed Mrs. Pynchon and half-killed the colonel, and his mother was half a witch.” The mother in question is Hannah Glover, née Parsons—wife of Peletiah Glover, and daughter of Mary Parsons. If the daughter is rated “half a witch,” this can only mean that Mary herself counts even now—in local gossip and rumor—as a full-fledged example.

  She is old, and not far from her end. But clouds of mistrust surround her still.

  PART THREE

  SALEM

  Chapter VII approaches the notorious witch-hunt at Salem through the experience of one of its first targets, the elderly and exemplary matriarch Rebecca Nurse. Few stories in this entire array are more poignant than hers.

  Chapter VIII takes a long view of the same subject, following the train of witchcraft-related events from their seemingly modest beginning, through an extraordinary peak of “panic fear,” to eventual, uncertain retreat. It offers as well a survey, and summary, of the numerous different ways Americans have tried ever since to understand this dark moment in their history.

  Chapter IX traces the career of Reverend Cotton Mather, a widely acknowledged leader of New England Puritanism. Long excoriated for his role at Salem, Mather emerges here as a highly complex figure—an advocate for forceful prosecution at some points, a voice of caution at others, and a rueful (though not personally apologetic) part of the community-wide postmortem that followed the end of the trials phase.

  CHAPTER VII

  Rebecca Nurse: A “Witch” and Her Trials

  March 13, 1692; a Sunday evening. At her home in Salem Village (Massachusetts), a 12-year-old girl named Ann Putnam Jr. suddenly comes upon the apparition of a witch and is at once “afflicted.” In the days just previous, Ann has been attacked by several other spectral witches—she is part of a little circle of young victims repeatedly driven to “fits”—but not by this one. At first she does “not know . . . her [the new apparition’s] name,” even while remembering “where she used to sit in our meetinghouse.” Some hours later the name will come: Rebecca Nurse.

  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 ‘whish! whish! whish!’ . . . and [running] to the fire . . . to throw fire brands about the house.” Indeed, Abigail’s encounter extends much further—to 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 passage—the Book of Revelations, chapter 3—because “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 magic—in the parlance of the time, a charm—but decides to “do it . . . once for an experiment.” Almost immediately, Ann Sr. is freed from her suffering.

  These events—the affliction by Rebecca Nurse’s apparition of at least three different persons—quickly 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 friends—Israel and Elizabeth Porter, Daniel Andrew, and Peter Cloyce, upstanding citizens all—are “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 is—hardly less so than what the bewitched victims are concurrently suffering. And there is worse to come.

  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.” ◆◆◆

  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 meetinghouse—a simple, boxlike structure, 34 feet long by 28 feet wide by approximately 25 feet tall—is 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 Hathorne—“Have you been hurt by this woman?”—both 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 . . .