The Enemy Within Read online

There is a funeral the next day, at which the people of Windsor grieve their loss. Stiles, though a bachelor, has many relatives living nearby; their sorrow and anger run deep. A week or two later, Stiles’s will is read, his estate tallied and taken to probate. He was not without means; his personal inventory includes several parcels of land, a few cattle, some carpentry tools, a musket and two swords, “2 pair of silk garters” and one “silk girdle,” six loads of hay, 90 bushels of corn, 200 pumpkins, “half a canoe,” and both “money and wampum.” But he also stands liable for a long list of debts, some of them quite substantial, most owed to a man named Thomas Gilbert. Within days, his property is dispersed, his accounts settled. Slowly, and very incompletely, the town tries to heal.

  Another month passes. In the meantime, the magistrates who make up Connecticut’s General Court, the colony’s highest governing body, appoint a jury to conduct a “grand inquest” into Stiles’s death. In early December the Court convenes in regular session, and receives the jury’s report. Its conclusion is straightforward: “This jury finds that the piece [ firearm] that was in the hands of Thomas Allen, going off was the cause of . . . death.” The court then hands down a formal indictment: “that thou, Thomas Allen . . . didst suddenly, negligently, carelessly cock thy piece, and carry the piece just behind thy neighbor, which piece being charged and going off . . . slew thy neighbor, to the great dishonor of God, breach of the peace, and loss of a member of this commnonwealth.” Allen confesses the facts as presented, and is found guilty of “homicide by misadventure.” (We would say: accidental murder, or manslaughter.) For his “sinful neglect and careless carriages” the court orders him to pay a fine of 20 pounds, a large sum in that time and setting. In addition, his father must submit a bond to guarantee the young man’s “good behavior” throughout the following twelve months, with the special proviso “that he shall not bear arms for the same term.”

  This sudden, shattering “misadventure” in their midst has unsettled the people of Windsor very deeply. Talk of it does not abate. Questions linger and multiply. To be sure, the surface details are clear enough: Allen’s carelessness, his proximity to Stiles, all the mechanics of poorly carried gun, cocked trigger, inadvertent firing, speeding bullet, torn and bleeding body. Yet how much does this finally explain? After all, the two men might not have been positioned exactly so. And Allen, neglectful though he was, might still have held his gun in such a manner as to preclude its lethal discharge. And the men might have trained in a different place, on a different day; indeed, Stiles might have been sick, or traveling, or otherwise removed from the scene. Moreover—and here perhaps is the single most tormenting piece—even if everything else had been just as it was, the bullet might have gone in a thousand different directions; only one would yield such an awful result. Henry Stiles’s death was the product of innumerable small and highly specific contingencies. Why—why—why had they all converged this way? Surely, such an extraordinary, and tragic, outcome cannot be ascribed to mere chance.

  How best, then, to understand it? God’s will, they wonder? Or, perhaps more likely, the Devil’s? Does it not, in fact, bear some clear marks of maleficium? The good people of Windsor will ponder all this, for months—indeed, years—to come.

  Windsor had been founded more than a decade before by a little band of settlers from Massachusetts in search of good land on which to build a new community. Most had lived for a few years in the Bay Colony town of Dorchester (adjacent to Boston). They traveled to Connecticut largely as a group. Their leader in every sense, spiritual and otherwise, was a clergyman named John Warham. They were farmers and craftsmen, wives and children and servants; for the most part, they were arrayed in families. Their surnames bespoke their solid English stock: Stebbins, Drake, Gibbons, Moore, Hawkins, Tilton, Bissell, White, Grant, Torrey, Young, Stiles (the unlucky Henry’s family line), Allen (including young Thomas), and Gilbert (with Thomas as family head, and Lydia, his wife).

  The fertile lands on the west side of the Connecticut River provided the opportunity they were seeking; after some negotiation with the local Indians, they staked their claim and settled in. Their village plan conformed to what would become the New England pattern: house lots arrayed from north to south along a main street, fields and pastures farther out. They grew corn, some wheat, and garden crops; later their yield would include hops and tobacco. They also raised livestock, scattering herds of cows and sheep from one end of town to the other.

  Most of all, these early Windsorites were what their English peers called “Puritans.” That is, they were religious radicals of a particular kind. In a broad sense, they were heirs to the Protestant Reformation; the starting point for many of their beliefs was the 16th-century Swiss theologian John Calvin. Their English mother church had not—so they contended—sufficiently rid itself of “papist” corruptions; reform must proceed much further. Their concerns embraced doctrine, worship, and church governance, in roughly equal measure. A more direct and personal relation to God, a deepened sense of human sinfulness, simplified ritual, and a decentralized system of ecclesiastical administration: such were the goals they held in view.

  Their cosmology, their picture of the universe, was a distilled version of ideas held throughout the Christianized world. Human history, they believed, unfolds in the shadow of overarching warfare: between God and the forces of righteousness on the one hand, and Satan and his own “infernal legions” on the other. At some point the struggle must end in God’s complete triumph, with an all-decisive Day of Judgment immediately to follow. Many Puritans thought that point was close at hand; hence they spoke of theirs as an “End Time,” and looked eagerly for signs of its actual arrival. In such a climate of opinion, all of life was intensified; all was potentially meaningful. God’s purposes, and Satan’s too, informed each and every fragment of experience.

  As the seasons pass, the people of Windsor continue to brood on Henry Stiles’s death—its causes and meaning for their own lives. In so doing, they carefully evaluate key parts of the dead man’s personal history. For example: during most of the previous two years, he had lived as a lodger in the home of Thomas Gilbert; he slept there in a room of his own, took his “diet” (meals) there, kept his “goods” there. This was, in itself, unusual: few, if any, other local men were similarly circumstanced. But so, too, was his bachelorhood unusual; few if any other men did not have wives and households of their own. Might this have made him—in some way hard to understand later on—also unusually vulnerable?

  But there are other, more ominous, questions to raise here. As his inventory clearly showed, Henry Stiles, the lodger, had borrowed significant sums of cash and property from the Gilberts, his landlords; he is, to his dying moment, deeply in their debt. Did they perhaps press him to repay? And was he unable or unwilling to respond? Was there not, in fact, some open bitterness between the two parties? Had they not been heard, from time to time, shouting in anger across the Gilberts’ dining table? And were they not observed to “slight” one another when seated on adjacent benches in the meetinghouse ? Indeed, was it not a threat—maybe even a curse—that Goody Gilbert had flung at Stiles when they arrived together for Sabbath service one day last summer? And what of Goodwife Gilbert as a person—her qualities, her “carriages”? Didn’t she sometimes seem too querulous, too “forward,” too quick to anger, too slow to sympathize? Hadn’t her neighbors suffered strange “losses” and difficulties, now and then, after dealing with her? Didn’t one or two of them even suggest darkly that she might have been in league with . . . ? The questions, the suspicions, the bits and pieces of gossip will go on and on. And eventually they will all come out in the same place.

  November 28, 1654; again the court is convened at Hartford. But this is not a regular session; instead it is announced as “special.” Three years have passed since the first hearing on Stiles’s death; now there will be another. A new jury is sworn “by the ever living God . . . [to] faithfully present . . . what criminal offense you shall judge me
et.” The room is crowded with anxious spectators, including many who have made the ten-mile trip down from Windsor. The magistrates preside at the front, from heavily-framed armchairs set on a raised platform. Below them stands a middle-aged woman, her legs in ball and chain—evidently a defendant. Today there is one matter, and one only, on the court’s agenda. The clerk reads aloud: “Lydia Gilbert, thou art here indicted . . . that, not having the fear of God before thy eyes, thou hast of late years, or still dost, give entertainment to Satan, the great enemy of God and mankind; and by his help hast killed the body of Henry Stiles, besides other witchcrafts, for which, according to the law of God and the established law of this commonwealth, thou deservest to die.”

  The jury has been taking evidence in support of these charges for weeks; many Windsor townsfolk have come forward to testify. The damage and danger attributed to Goodwife Gilbert spans a broad range: spoiled food, the loss of cattle, illness and injury in several of her neighbors. But Henry Stiles’s death is the clincher; that is what brings her to the present moment. Clearly, she had a motive to attack him, even kill him. (Remember all he owed her, and the angry words that passed between them.) Likely, too, she had the means; her prior “witchcrafts” are proof enough. Yes, she might well have agreed to “give entertainment to Satan”; and Satan, for his part, must have given in return—the extraordinary power to perform maleficium. Now, at last, a deeper cause of Stiles’s death can be openly acknowledged. The bullet that took his life was not simply a random mischance; to the contrary, its course was carefully and purposefully guided. Here, then, is the sum of it: a spiteful witch has used a young man’s carelessness to murder another whom she hated. The jury declares: “The party abovementioned is found guilty of witchcraft.” Therefore, Lydia Gilbert, “thou deservest to die.”

  And a few days later, she does. On the gallows, with a rope pulled tight around her neck.

  Postscript: Many of the records from the Gilbert witchcraft case have not survived; historians can never reconstruct the full story. But we may at least imagine a further piece or two. . . .

  Even with the question of cause—motivated cause—resolved, another remains: Why had God allowed this awful tragedy to happen, in the first place? Witchcraft, like all else in the universe, needs God’s permission. So . . . why now? And why here, in Windsor? The person best able to answer is, of course, the minister, John Warham. And he makes it the topic of a sermon soon after Lydia Gilbert’s execution.

  On the day appointed, the meetinghouse is filled with local parishioners, deeply shaken by all they have been through. What will Reverend Warham say to them? His message is neither surprising nor pleasant to hear, but it does carry a purgative force. The gist is that the Windsor townsfolk must themselves bear part of the blame. More and more, in recent months, they have strayed from the paths of virtue: overvaluing secular interests while neglecting spiritual ones, “tippling” in alehouses, “nightwalking,” and, worst of all, engaging one another in repeated “controversy.” In such circumstances Satan always finds an opening; on such communities God necessarily brings retribution. The recent witchcraft episode is His warning to the people of Windsor to mend their ways, and a reminder that He still watches over them.

  The questions that so troubled them have finally received a complete response; its several parts stretch out before them, links in a long chain. From Henry Stiles’s violent death, to Thomas Allen’s careless mishandling of his gun, to Lydia Gilbert’s spite and powers as a witch, to Satan’s eager, and evil, intervention, to God’s permission, oversight, and ultimate justice. Most of them feel calmer now, and reassured. Time to resume the routines of everyday, their faith in the cosmic balance at last restored.

  CHAPTER V

  Witch-hunting in the American Colonies, 1607-92

  Much of the early “settlement” phase of American history is shrouded in obscurity. Records are few, and historians’ access correspondingly limited. We do know a good deal about the leaders, their broad goals and strategies, but we have little that illuminates the lives of the rank and file.

  Still, we can visualize, infer, imagine—starting with the process of migration itself. Tiny (by our standards) sailing ships, crammed with people, animals, “goods.” Sickness, including near-constant nausea for the many who had never previously been to sea; sometimes death. Intense feelings of anticipation, hope, puzzlement, worry, and (for at least a few) suicidal despair. No doubt individual settlers were fortified, to some extent, by the Old World heritage they carried with them—in their heads and hearts as well as their shipping trunks and boxes. They were Europeans, through and through: English (by far the largest number), French, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, and a small scattering of others. They were Protestants (again, the largest number), Catholics (most of those headed to one place in particular, the colony of Maryland), and Jews (just a handful). In a great many ways, they reflected the traditional stock from which they were sprung. To be sure, they did not constitute an entirely representative sample: “Puritans,” for instance, were disproportionately included, and “gentlefolk” (persons of high rank and privilege) were scarcely to be found at all. Still, when considered from the broadest possible perspective, their values and opinions, their habits of thinking and doing, fell within the usual range for European folk of their era.

  The first of several migration bursts coincided in time (the early 17th century) with the peak of the great European witch craze. Hence the migrants themselves would surely have known witchcraft—and feared witchcraft, and maybe experienced, or even practiced, witchcraft—firsthand. As well, they would have carried it with them to their new homes overseas. Indeed, the Devil troubled them, both literally and figuratively. An elderly New Englander, reflecting late in life on his decision to migrate some 50 years before, remembered the hope “that I should be more free here than there [i.e. Old England] from temptations”; in fact, however, “I found here a devil to tempt, and a corrupt heart to deceive.” Were there individual passengers, aboard the first transatlantic ships, suspected of performing witchcraft? That does seem a reasonable presumption. Evidence from a generation or two later suggests that ocean travel may actually have primed witchcraft suspicion in special ways. In 1654, on a ship traveling from London to Maryland, sailors spread a “rumor . . . [that] one Mary Lee, then aboard the said ship, was a witch.” At first the captain rebuffed their urging “that a trial might be had of her”; but then, as “cross winds” rose to impede the voyage and “the ship grew daily more leaky—almost to desperation,” his attitude changed. The sailors were permitted to “search her body,” and quickly discovered “the mark of a witch upon her . . . [whereupon] they importuned the Master [Captain] to put her to death.” He replied that “they might do what they would, and went into his cabin.” And so, “laying all their hands to the execution of her,” they proceeded finally to “hang her as a witch.” A similar scene was enacted a few years later on a boat sailing to Virginia. Details of this one have not come down to us but, according to a later summary filed in a local court, “An old woman named Katherine Grady . . . [was] accused of witchcraft . . . [and] hung from a yard’s arm,” supposedly at the “clamorous demand of . . . passengers during the progress of a violent storm.”

  In sum: bad weather, sickness, confining conditions, uncertainty about the future, and real danger in the present must together have served to heighten anxiety and suspicion during sea journeys. Always there were shipboard prayers, fervent pleadings for divine mercy (especially in the face of ocean storms). And, alongside such outward, openly voiced entreaties, there would have been—there had to be—inward, perhaps unvoiced, imprecations against the Devil and his human confederates. God and Satan; angels and demons; pious folk and “foresworn” witches; the saved and the damned; righteousness and sin: these pairings were omnipresent and indivisible.

  Such matters must have preoccupied settlers of every ethnic and religious group, no matter what their specific New World destination. If we had so
me way to peel back the years, and to visit wherever we liked in 17th-century North America, we would find many signs of witchcraft belief. We might land, say, in a Massachusetts village, and accost one or another inhabitant as he walked along the rutted street: What can you tell us, Goodman Jones, of witchcraft in your town? And he would have stories to offer, perhaps about his own experiences or (at a minimum) those of his neighbors. ’Twas Whitsuntide when my cow fell a-roaring, and her belly swelled strangely, and she died after a fortnight, and I could never tell the reason of it, but thoughts of witches kept running in my mind. We could stop at an “ordinary” (tavern) by a crossroads in the tidewater region of Virginia and eavesdrop from a seat near the back wall. And, sooner or later, the conversation would turn to whatever had recently gone bump in the night. Last Sabbath eve Mr. Watson was kept up to all hours with great noises like stones flung upon the roof of the house, and looked out and saw nobody; and he said there was a Devil abroad. We could linger at a public well in Albany (then a thriving little entrepôt up the Hudson River from New York) where local women gathered to draw water; their chat, too, might move in the same direction. Goodwife Gerritsen’s daughter is fallen into fits and complains of Mistress Sanders for afflicting her. Again, most of this lies beyond the reach of any surviving records, and may never have been written down in the first place. But some of it does turn up, at least indirectly, in witchcraft cases from later on. And all of it belonged to the prevalent popular mentality on both sides of the Anglo-Atlantic world.

  The same mentality conditioned the response of colonists to the native people they would encounter upon coming ashore. Indeed, it had framed expectation throughout Europe even before such encounters began. From well back in the 16th century, a large and constantly expanding literature of New World travel had cast American Indians as “Devil worshipers.” The notorious English explorer-pirate Francis Drake, for example, reported seeing a native group dance in “hellish” costumes on a beach with the aim (so he believed) of destroying his ships. Similarly, Captian John Smith—he of the legendary “rescue” by the Indian princess Pocahontas—regarded Virginia’s Powhatan tribe as being very much “in league with Satan.” And Reverend Alexander Whitaker, an early visitor to the same region, wrote at length to a colleague at home about the strange “antics” of Indians. “All these things,” he concluded, “make me think that there be great witches among them, and that they are very familiar with the Devil.” Farther to the north, Governor William Bradford remembered, in his history Of Plymouth Plantation, how Indian “powwaws” had greeted the little settler band he led by gathering “in a horrid and devilish manner . . . to curse and execrate them with their conjurations.” Even Roger Williams, long regarded as uncommonly sympathetic to native cultural ways, declared flatly that Indian “priests [are] . . . no other than our English witches.”