other persons of good character, and the people could not then be prevailed on to believe him, but believed the girl, when she confessed she had been deluded, and that the devil had tormented her in the shape of good persons; and so she escaped the punishment due to her fraud and imposture.

In 1673, Eunice Cole of Hampton was tried, and the jury found her not legally guilty, but that there were strong grounds to suspect her of familiarity with the devil.

In 1679, William Morse's house, at Newbury, was troubled with the throwing of bricks, stones, &c. and a boy, of the family, was supposed to be bewitched, who accused one of the neighbors; and in 1682, the house of George Walton, a quaker, at Portsmouth, and another house at Salmon-falls (both in New-Hampshire) were attacked after the same manner.

In 1683, the demons removed to Connecticut river again, where one Desborough's house was molested by an invisible hand, and a fire kindled, no body knew how, which burnt up great part of his estate; and in 1684, Philip Smith, a judge of the court, a military officer and a representative of the town of Hadley, upon the same river, (an hypocondriack person) fancied himself under an evil hand, and suspected a woman, one of his neighbors, and languished and pined away, and was generally supposed to be bewitched to death. While he lay ill, a number of brisk lads tried an experiment upon the old woman. Having dragged her out of her house, they hung her up until she was near dead, let her down, rowled her some time in the snow, and at last buried her in it and there left her, but it happened that she survived, and the melancholly man died.

Notwithstanding these frequent instances of supposed witchcrafts, none had suffered for near thirty years, in the Massachusetts colony. The execution of the assistant or councellor's widow in 1655, was disapproved of by many principal persons, and it is not unlikely that her death saved the lives of many other inferior persons. But in 1685, a very circumstancial account of all or most of the cases I have mentioned, was published, and many arguments were brought to convince the country that they were no delusions nor impostures, but the effects of a familiarity between the devil and such as he found fit for his instruments; and in 1687 or 1688, began a more alarming instance than any which had preceded it. Four of the children of John Goodwin a grave man and a good liver, at the north part of Boston, were generally believed to be bewitched. I have often heard persons, who were of the neighbourhood, speak of the great consternation it occasioned. The children were all remarkable for ingenuity of temper, had been religiously educated and were thought to be without guile. The eldest was a girl of thirteen or fourteen years. She had charged a laundress with taking away some of the family linnen. The mother of the laundress was one of the wild Irish, of bad character, and gave the girl harsh language; soon after which she fell into fits, which were said to have something diabolical in them. One of her sisters and two brothers followed her example, and it is said, were tormented

havior of those in England, is so exact, as to leave no room to doubt the stories had been read by the New England persons themselves, or had been told to them by others who had read them. Indeed, this conformity, instead of giving suspicion, was urged in confirmation of the truth of both; the old England demons and the new being so much alike. The court justified themselves from books of law, and the authorities of Keble, Dalton and other lawyers, then of the first character, who lay down rules of conviction, as absurd and dangerous as any which were practised in New-England. The trial of Richard Hatheway, the impostor, before Lord Chief Justice Holt, was ten or twelve years after. This was a great discouragement to prosecutions in England for witchcraft, but an effectual stop was not put to them, until the act of parliament in the reign of his late Ma jesty. Even this has not wholly cured the common people, and we hear of old women ducked and cruelly murdered within these last twenty years. Reproach, then, for hanging witches, although it has been often cast upon the people of New-England, by those of Old, yet it must have been done with an ill grace. The people of NewEngland were of a grave cast, and had long been disposed to give a serious solemn construction even to common events in providence; but in Old England, the reign of Charles the second was as remarkable for gaiety as any whatsoever, and for scepticism and infidelity, as any which preceded it.

Sir William Phips, the governor, upon his arrival, fell in with the opinion prevailing. Mr. Stoughton, the lieutenant-governor, upon whose judgment great stress was laid, had taken up this notion, that although the devil might appear in the shape of a guilty person, yet he would never be permitted to assume the shape of an innocent person. This opinion, at first, was generally received. Some of the most religious women who were accused, when they saw the appearance of distress and torture in their accusers, and heard their solemn declarations, that they saw the shapes or spectres of the accused afflicting them, pursuaded themselves they were witches, and that the devil, some how or other, although they could not remember how or when, had taken possession of their evil hearts and obtained some sort of assent to his afflicting in their shapes; and thereupon they thought they might be justified in confessing themselves guilty.

It seems, at this day, with some people, perhaps but few, to be the question whether the accused or the afflicted were under a preternatural or diabolical possession, rather than whether the afflicted were under bodily distempers, or altogether guilty of fraud and imposture.

As many of the original examinations have fallen into my hands, it may be of service to represent this affair in a more full and impartial light than it has yet appeared to the world.

In February 1691-2, a daughter and a niece of Mr. Parris, the minister of Salem village, girls of ten or eleven years of age, and two other girls in the neighborhood, made the same sort of complaints as Goodwin's children had made, two or three years before. The physicians, having no other way of accounting for the disorder,

pronounced them bewitched. An indian woman, who was brought into the country from New Spain, and then living with Mr. Parris, tried some experiments which she pretended to be used to in her own country, in order to find out the witch. This coming to the children's knowledge, they cried out upon the poor Indian as appearing to them, pinching, pricking and tormenting them; and fell into fits." Tituba, the Indian, acknowledged that she had learned how to find out a witch, but denied that she was one herself. Several private fasts were kept at the minister's house, and several, more public, by the whole village, and then a general fast through the colony, to seek to God to rebuke Satan &c. So much notice taken of the children, together with the pity and compassion, expressed by those who visited them, not only tended to confirm them in their design but to draw others into the like. Accordingly, the number of the complainants soon increased, and among them there were two or three women, and some girls old enough for witnesses. These had their fits too, and, when in them, cried out, not only against Tituba, but against Sarah Osburn, a melancholy distracted old woman, and Sarah Good, another old woman who was bedrid. Tituba, at length, confessed herself a witch, and that the two old women were her confederates; and they were all committed to prison; and Tituba, upon search, was found to have scars upon her back which were called the devil's mark, but might as well have been supposed those of her Spanish master. This commitment was on the 1st of March. About three weeks after, two other women, of good characters and church members, Corey and Nurse, were complained of and brought upon their examination; when these children fell into fits, and the mother of one of them, and wife of Thomas Putman, joined with the children and complained of Nurse as tormenting her; and made most terrible shrieks, to the amazement of all the neighborhood. The old women denied every thing; but were sent to prison; and such was the infatuation, that a child of Sarah Good, about four or five years old, was committed also, being charged with biting some of the afflicted, who showed the print of small teeth on their arms. On April 3d Mr. Parris took for his text, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil.' Sarah Cloyse, supposing it to be occasioned by Nurse's case, who was her sister, went out of meeting. She was presently after, complained of for a witch, examined and committed. Elizabeth Procter was charged about the same time: Her husband, as every good husband would have done, accompanied her to her examination, but it cost the poor man his life. Some of the afflicted cried out upon him also, and they were both committed to prison.

Instead of suspecting and sifting the witnesses, and suffering them to be cross examined, the authority, to say no more, were imprudent in making use of leading questions, and thereby putting words into their mouths or suffering others to do it. Mr. Parris was over officious; most of the examinations, although in the presence of one or more of the magistrates, were taken by him.

[Governor Hutchinson, in the second volume of his History, introduces an examination of several of the accused, which is certified by John Hawthorne and John Corwin, Assistants, but owing to prescribed limits they are here omitted].

No wonder the whole country was in a consternation, when persons, of sober lives and unblemished characters, were committed to prison upon such sort of evidence. The most effectual way to prevent an accusation, was to become an accuser; and accordingly the number of the afflicted increased every day, and the number of the accused in proportion, who in general persisted in their innocency; but, being strongly urged to give glory to God by their confession, and intimation being given that this was the only way to save their lives, and their friends urging them to it, some were brought to own their guilt. The first confession upon the files, is of Deliverance Hobbs, May 11th. 1692, being in prison. She owned every thing she was required to do. The confessions multiplied the witches; new companions were always mentioned, who were immediately sent for and examined. Thus more than an hundred women, many of them of fair characters and of the most reputable families, in the towns of Salem, Beverly, Andover, Billerica, &c. were apprehended, examined and, generally, committed to prison. The confessions being much of the same tenor, one or two may serve for speci

mens.

The examination and confession (8. Sept. 92.) of Mary Osgood, wife of Captain Osgood of Andover, taken before John Hawthorne and other their Majesties justices.

She confesses, that about 11 years ago, when she was in a melancholly state and condition, she used to walk abroad in her orchard; and upon a certain time, she saw the appearance of a cat, at the end of the house, which yet she thought was a real cat. However, at that time, it diverted her from praying to God, and instead thereof she prayed to the devil; about which time she made a covenant with the devil, who, as a black man, came to her and presented her a book, upon which she laid her finger and that left a red spot: And that upon her signing, the devil told her he was her God, and that she should serve and worship him, and, she believes, she consented to it. She says further, that about two years agone, she was carried through the air, in company with deacon Frye's wife, Ebenezer Baker's wife and Goody Tyler, to five mile pond, where she was baptized by the devil, who dipped her face in the water and made her renounce her former baptism, and told her she must be his, soul and body, forever, and that she must serve him, which she promised to do. She says, the renouncing her first baptism was after her first dipping, and that she was transported back again through the air, in company with the forenamed persons, in the same manner as she went, and believes they were carried upon a pole. Q. How many persons were upon the