The Enemy Within Read online

  Nothing could have seemed more shocking than to have a minister unmasked as a witch—in fact, “above a witch . . . a conjuror,” or (as was said elsewhere) a wizard. Abigail Hobbs would quickly confirm this revelation; from then on, the awful details poured out. In addition to his numerous killings, Burroughs was accused of organizing large meetings of his witch confederates, of going about in company with the Devil (in typical guise as “a black man”), of recruiting many additional witches, and of becoming himself a primary afflicter of the accusing girls.

  Who was George Burroughs? He had been born in Virginia, in 1653, the son of a prosperous English merchant, but through most of his childhood had lived with his mother in the town of Roxbury, Massachusetts. He had attended Harvard College, graduating in the class of 1670. He had then begun a career in the ministry, though without being formally ordained. He had spent most of his adult years in the province of Maine (which was then annexed to Massachusetts), serving several local congregations there. Additionally, and crucially, he had served for three years (1680-83) as pastor of Salem Village, in the course of which he and some of his parishioners became bitterly antagonized; his tenure at Salem ended with lawsuits and his decision to return to Maine. He had indeed been married three times, and widowed twice, and was described as being “very sharp” toward each of his wives. His failure to gain ordination, his occasional absence from communion, his apparent disinterest in baptizing his children all made good grist for local gossip mills. Further suspicions were raised by his unusual, even “preternatural” physical strength. (He was reported, for example, to have shouldered large casks “of molasses or cider” without difficulty, and to have lifted a “very heavy gun . . . of six-foot barrel [by] putting the forefinger of his right hand into [its] muzzle, and so held it out at arm’s end only with that finger.”) Seen in retrospect, he was something of a marked man.

  The charges against him came to the fore at an extraordinary examination of other witch suspects before a large crowd gathered in the Village meetinghouse on April 22. Deliverance Hobbs, mother of Abigail, was herself accused—and was then persuaded to offer her own elaborate confession. She recounted, in particular, “a meeting [of witches] yesterday” where Burroughs “was the preacher, and pressed them to bewitch all in the Village . . . assuring them they should prevail.” Eight more suspects were examined at, or just after, the April 22 hearing; never before had such a large number been brought in at once. By month’s end the total of the newly accused had reached 15; in May and early June another 39 were added to the list. Given a total population (for Town and Village together) of just over 1,000, these figures were extraordinary. They reflected, as well, a steady climb in the social position of those accused. Among the new targets were Philip English, an extremely wealthy Salem merchant with trading contacts all around the Atlantic basin, and his wife, Mary; Mistress Elizabeth Cary, of Charlestown, wife of a prosperous shipowner and mariner; Captain John Alden, son and name-sake of the famous Pilgrim settler and himself a leading merchant; and others whom the record did not specifically identify, but including “some [with] great estates in Boston” and even certain “gentlemen of the Council, Justices of the Peace, ministers, and several of their wives.”

  As accusations mounted, so too did the pace of spectral sightings, especially within the core group of young accusers. At home, along the roadways, in the local tavern: “apparitions” might accost them at any time. Moreover, the format of these encounters was changing, at least in part. Previously, witch-specters were bent simply on attack: now, however, they would often pause to boast of their various crimes (especially killings). Indeed, some of the specters were actually victims of those crimes—returned now to inform the living of what they had suffered. Thus, George Burroughs’s two deceased wives appeared before Ann Putnam Jr. and others, “in winding sheets and [with] napkins about their heads,” and described the manner of their deaths in gruesome detail. (“He stabbed her under the arm, and put a piece of sealing wax on the wound,” and so on.) Soon such ghostly visitations would become a regular part of the larger crisis.

  The effect was to elevate still further the role of the afflicted, since their access would henceforth extend to both sides of the spectral combat—to witches and victims alike. They ranked now as witch-finders supreme, while the importance of formal examination shrank in direct proportion. Increasingly, the very purpose of the meetinghouse hearings was to provide a stage for the “actings” of bewitchment. And these grew ever more loud, more abandoned, more insistent, more terrifying. Special investigatory techniques were added to the standard repertoire, including, for example, a “touch test.” Magistrates would order a suspect to touch the afflicted as a means of relieving their torments—usually with instantaneous and gratifying results.

  As always, the impact of such vividly personal dramas rippled out into the community at large, where ordinary citizens pursuing their everyday business might come to see themselves as additional victims of Satanic assault. Thus, one Salemite was mysteriously “struck . . . a very hard blow . . . on my breast” while traveling on horseback with his wife; later, by the roadside, he observed a woman in the process (so he later said) of turning herself into a cow. Another man, upon entering an unlighted room in his home, “did see very strange things appear in the chimney . . . which seemed . . . to be something like jelly . . . and quavered with a strange motion.” Yet another found his mare in a strangely injured state, as if “she was ridden with a hot bridle.” And another believed “my sow was bewitched . . . [for] on a sudden she leapt up about three or four feet high . . . and gave one squeak, and fell down dead”; moreover, when he touched the corpse, his hand became “so numb and full of pain . . . that I could not do any work . . . [for] several days after.” And still another, after being (supposedly) stared down by one of the witch suspects, was “taken in a strange condition, so that I could not dine, nor eat anything . . . for my water [urine] was suddenly stopped, and I had no benefit of nature, but was like a man on a rack.”

  These misadventures went on and on, regenerating and deepening the climate of fear. There were also anxieties of a different sort. In late May rumors flew about that several local residents of French background were plotting to “go for Canada and join with the French . . . [to] come down . . . upon the backside of the country to destroy all the English.” Mortal peril on every side, assault from both the visible and the invisible worlds: such was the prospect confronting them. There was but one plausible line of response. Be vigilant. Trust no one. Fight the Devil, and his dastardly minions, with all your strength. The Salem witch-hunt has often been described, through the succeeding centuries, as an instance of “mass hysteria”; and, for the events of that fateful spring, the term does seem to fit.

  The Trials Phase

  Meanwhile, the process was moving toward a new stage—from accusation and investigation to actual trial proceedings. But before these could begin, certain institutional arrangements must be put in place. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was just now emerging from several years of political turmoil, during which its charter—its very right to exist—had been revoked, and its system of governance temporarily suspended. In 1691 a new charter was secured, followed soon after by the appointment of new leadership. The governor would be a one-time gunsmith and ship captain named Sir William Phips. (Born and raised in the province of Maine, Phips had recently been knighted for various services to the Crown.) The designated members of the Governor’s Council were all familiar figures in the local elite, including several magistrates at the center of the witch-hunt.

  Phips arrived in Boston from England in the tense days of mid-May, with the jails already full of the accused and further charges emerging nearly every day. It was up to him, with the assistance of his councillors, to craft legal machinery for resolving the crisis. Their choice was a “Commission of Oyer and Terminer” (a term borrowed from French legal parlance, meaning “to hear and determine”). Nine judges were appointed to sit on this s
pecial court; at its head was the new lieutenant governor, a famously stern and uncompromising lawmaker named William Stoughton. (One of the others was Boston merchant Samuel Sewall, whose diary would provide a lasting—and very personal—commentary on key courtroom events.) While these preparations went forward, witnesses and confessors were asked to confirm their previous testimonies. Further accusations were added to the original list, and several of the core accusers underwent a fresh round of affliction.

  With the empaneling of a jury at month’s end, all was in readiness for the first full-fledged trial. The setting was an upstairs courtroom in the Salem Town House. The proceedings opened at midmorning on June 2, in an atmosphere of the keenest possible anticipation. The lead-off defendant, chosen because the evidence against her seemed especially broad and damning, was Bridget Bishop of Salem Town. Unfortunately, the official records of this and succeeding trials have not survived, but important details are known through subsequent writings. Typically, the proceedings began with an appearance by several of the afflicted, whose “torments” might now be reenacted for the benefit of both judges and jurors. Next came the confessors, primed to reconfirm their crucially important accounts of spectral collaboration with the accused. The final part of the prosecution’s agenda involved the calling of witnesses attesting to various maleficia in years past. All in all, it made for a tight and potentially unanswerable case.

  The trial of Goody Bishop included each of these elements. The afflicted accusers thrashed about in anguish, all the while complaining that “the shape of the prisoner did oftentimes grievously pinch them, choke them, bite them.” The confessor Deliverance Hobbs described Bishop’s participation in “a general meeting of the witches, in a field at Salem Village,” an event that had featured “a diabolical sacrament in bread and wine.” No fewer than ten neighbors and acquaintances recalled past misfortunes—illnesses in people and cows, accidents, disappearances—following quarrels with the defendant, some dating back nearly two decades. There were some additional flourishes, too: the supposed discovery in her cellar of “poppets,” and a report by a court-appointed committee about “preternatural excrescences” (witch marks) appearing on her body. Cotton Mather would comment later that her guilt was “evident and notorious to all beholders.” In very short order, the jury brought in its verdict—guilty as charged—and the magistrates pronounced sentence. A week later, she was hanged.

  Bishop’s trial was followed by the first real pause in the pace of the witch-hunt. Over the next several weeks, spectral sightings, afflictions, and accusations became much less frequent (though they did not cease entirely). Perhaps the elimination of an important suspect brought a sense of relief, a generalized lowering of tension; or perhaps some participants were sobered by the high stakes of what they were about. Indeed, it was now that an initial round of doubts and questions began to rise, however tentatively, toward the surface of public consciousness.

  In mid-June the governor and his Council asked members of the clergy for their opinions about the proceedings to date. (This in itself implied the beginnings of doubt.) The result was a long, carefully worded, and manifestly ambivalent document entitled “The Return of Several Ministers.” On the one hand, the ministers praised the court’s “exemplary piety and . . . agony of soul . . . [in seeking] the direction of Heaven.” On the other, they raised some troubling questions about the “principles” behind the actual conduct of the trials. They seemed especially concerned that persons “of an unblemished reputation” were becoming ensnared by the witch-hunt; in such cases, they affirmed, “a very critical and exquisite caution” must be exercised. But their most pointed and difficult question—one that would loom increasingly large in the weeks to come—was about the reliability of spectral evidence. Chief Justice Stoughton (like many others) believed that God would not allow the Devil to represent innocent people as specters; hence, wherever and whenever such representation occurred, guilt was certain. But the ministers demurred, declaring it “an undoubted and a notorious thing that a demon may, by God’s permission, appear in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous, man.” To take such a position was to challenge a vital weapon in the hands of the prosecution.

  And there was more. At around the same time another minister (not involved in the “return”) gathered signatures on a pair of petitions to the colony’s legislative assembly. These, too, noted the way “persons of good fame and unspotted reputation” had come under suspicion. And these, too, construed “bare specter testimony” as liable to mean “that the innocent will be condemned.” A third line of opposition emerged in the struggle of the Nurse family to defend its own Rebecca; there the main strategy was to attack the credibility of the foremost accusers.

  But the thrust of these convergent efforts was decisively—if temporarily—turned back. The Court of Oyer and Terminer simply ignored the questions put forward in the ministers’ “return.” The two petitions meant for the assembly were officially condemned as being “scandalous and seditious”; their chief author was rebuked and put on notice against further attempts of the same sort. And the trial of Rebecca Nurse proceeded as before. The time for wholesale reconsideration and regret would come, but not yet.

  On June 28 the court met for its second full session; there would be five separate trials this time. The defendants, in order of their appearance, were: Sarah Good (one of the three initial suspects at Salem Village), Susanna Martin (Amesbury), Rebecca Nurse (Salem Village), Elizabeth Howe (Topsfield), and Sarah Wilds (also Topsfield). All were convicted, on the usual mix of evidence—“torments” in the core accusers, charges by one or more confessors, testimony about past maleficia. All were condemned to die. Moreover, hearings were conducted and indictments handed down for four additional suspects, and new examinations begun with several more. A few days later a Dutchman temporarily living in Boston wrote to a friend in New York, describing at length the panicked atmosphere that now prevailed “throughout the countryside.” He particularly lamented “the gullibility of the magistrates” in allowing “trivial circumstances to be taken as substantially true and convincing testimony against the accused.” The root of it all, he felt, was nothing more or less than “superstition and mistakes.”

  But his was a lone voice, impossible to hear amidst the rising gale of accusation. On July 12, two weeks after their trial, the court issued death warrants for the five women most recently convicted; a week later they were hanged. This was the first of several multiple executions—and it produced a tumultuous scene. There was the usual procession to Gallows Hill, where crowds of onlookers jostled for position. Clergy were present as well, hoping to extract last-minute confessions. When Reverend Nicholas Noyes, minister of the church in Salem Town, pressed that idea on Sarah Good, it brought a scathing—and unforgettable—retort. “I am no more a witch than you are a wizard,” she shot back, “and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink.” God will give you blood to drink: soon there would be enough to gag on.

  After another brief pause, the trials moved into their truly climactic phase. The entire crisis has been associated ever since with Salem, its undoubted source point. But it also encompassed many of the neighboring Essex County communities, and now it made its most far-reaching impact, on the town of Andover. There, throughout the summer months, a constable’s wife named Elizabeth Ballard lay ill from mysterious causes. In due course, the possibility of witchcraft was raised, and two of the young accusers from Salem (probably Mercy Lewis and Elizabeth Hubbard) were invited in “to tell what it was that did afflict her.” (The source of this information is a letter from a Boston merchant, written some months after the fact. The same man would also comment that “poor Andover does now rue the day that ever the said afflicted went among them.”)

  After a half-day’s journey by carriage through the intervening countryside, the witch-finders reached Andover and began their work on July 14. They directed suspicion toward three women in a single family: an elderly widow named An
n Foster, her married daughter, and her teenage granddaughter. Under harsh questioning, the widow confessed, the others followed suit shortly thereafter. Then, together, the three of them spun out a vast web of incriminating testimony. Once again the primary focus was spectral activity with other witches. Their accounts overflowed with lurid details: of large witch conclaves (“near a hundred in company”); of encounters with Satan, appearing sometimes “in the shape of a horse” or as “a black man . . . [with] a high-crowned hat,” and always exhorting them “to make more witches if we can”; of making and using “poppets”; of traveling about “above the trees . . . upon a pole”; of hearing a kind of roll call of “77 witches’ names”; of watching their confederates suckle “imps”; of child-murders, and magical swords, and the infamous “red book,” and extravagant talk of “throwing down the kingdom of Christ, and setting up the Devil on his throne.” It went on and on, prompted at every turn by eager questions from behind the magistrates’ bench.

  Meanwhile, in Salem, the Court of Oyer and Terminer was preparing to hold its third session; begun on August 2, and lasting four days, this one would yield five more convictions. The most important—not to say sensational—of the new trials was that of Reverend Burroughs, by now considered “the head and ringleader of all the supposed witches in the land.” Burroughs went into the dock on August 5 before “a vast concourse of people”; the latter included clergy from several neighboring towns and, quite likely, Governor Phips himself. According to subsequent accounts, “about thirty testimonies were brought in against him.” There were the usual “actings” of the afflicted girls, with special emphasis on injury from “biting.” (Their bodies appeared to show imprinted wounds exactly corresponding to Burroughs’s teeth, “which could be distinguished from those of other men.”) There were spectral sightings of the “ghosts” of his deceased victims, some of whom “looked red, as if the blood would fly out of their faces with indignation at him.” There were new accounts of his “preternatural strength”; though of small stature—one witness called him “puny”—he had performed such “extraordinary lifting” and other feats “as could not be done without a diabolical assistance.” Finally, there were lengthy reports of his central role at the numerous witch gatherings: of his preaching the Devil’s message and administering a kind of inverted “sacrament.” (He was even said to own a “diabolical trumpet” useful in summoning his “horrible crew” of followers to action.)