Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (12 page)

A trial by water
The experiment is being watched by three gentlemen on the river bank; a young man observes from the roof of a nearby
watermill. In the background a cart wheel has broken, scattering sacks of
grain, perhaps because the driver was distracted by the water trial. It is
not clear whether the hog on the riverbank is eyeing one of the sacks or
the witch suspect’s ordeal—perhaps both. Meanwhile two other hogs are
swimming in the river, much to the consternation of a man who is floating rather precariously in a barrel, presumably to observe the experiment
at close quarters and to assist the woman if she sinks and so proves her
innocence.
(Source: From
Witches Apprehended, Examined and Executed
[London, 1613]. This item is reproduced by kind permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.)

We do not know if John Bishop, the minister at Stamford, did approve of ducking, but officials at Fairfield complied with Mercy Disborough’s request. On 2 June both women were bound hand and foot and then thrown into the water. According to those present, Elizabeth Clawson bobbed up and down like a cork and when they tried to push her down she immediately buoyed up again. Mercy Disborough also failed to sink. If the test was trustworthy, both women were guilty. 

But William Jones knew from his reading that this technique, though practiced for centuries, was now extremely controversial. Increase Mather addressed the issue in his
Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences
. The minister acknowledged that some educated authors defended ducking, their justification being, as William Jones paraphrased it, that “the witch, having made a compact with the Devil, hath renounced her baptism, hence the antipathy between her and water.” But Increase Mather rejected this line of reasoning. “All water is not the water of baptism,” he wrote, “only that which is used in the very act of baptism.” There was, he explained, no natural explanation for witches’ bodies being more inclined to float: “The bodies of witches have not lost their natural properties; they have weight in them as much as others. Moral changes and viciousness of mind make no alteration as to these natural properties which are inseparable from the body.” If the experiment worked it must be because either God or the Devil had intervened. Since the Bible made no mention of any such technique having been ordained by God, ducking must be an invention of the Devil. And, as Increase Mather pointed out, there was no reason to trust that the Father of Lies was providing reliable information. “The matter is ultimately resolved into a diabolical faith. And shall that cast the scale, when the lives of men are concerned? Suppose the Devil saith these persons are witches, must the judge therefore condemn them?” Such practices, he declared, were akin to witchcraft itself, relying as they did on a diabolical agency.

Equally problematic, the deputy-governor’s notes suggested, were claims by afflicted persons that they had seen images of the witches who caused their torments:

2. Another insufficient testimony of a witch is the testimony of a wizard who pretends to show the face of the witch to the party afflicted in a glass. But this he counts diabolical and dangerous. The Devil may represent a person innocent.

Sometimes local “cunning folk” who claimed to have powers of divination were asked by their neighbors to help identify who was causing the bewitchment. But theologians warned that God had not granted such powers to mankind, so that even seemingly benign “cunning” must come from the Devil. If diabolical, it could not be trusted: as Mister Jones wrote in his notes, “the Devil may represent an innocent person.”

No one had reported using “cunning” of this sort to expose the witches in Stamford and Compo. But Katherine Branch’s testimony about specters that she claimed to have seen during her fits and the information these specters gave her could be placed in the same category. Even if Kate herself could be trusted, which some doubted, these revelations came not from God but the Devil. How could such evidence be trusted? Mister Jones and his colleagues were well aware that the trials taking place further north in Massachusetts were under attack precisely because of their reliance on spectral testimony. In June 1692 twelve ministers had submitted to the Massachusetts governor and his council a joint statement of which William Jones may have seen a copy. The clergymen rejected spectral evidence as a sound basis even for committing suspects, let alone convicting them, because it was “received only on the Devil’s authority.” An anonymous pamphlet printed in Philadelphia a few months later made a similar point: “What credit is legally to be given to a thing which a human person swears merely upon the Devil’s information?”

Experts also rejected the claim that illness or misfortune following an argument between a suspected witch and her alleged victim provided an adequate basis for conviction:

3. If after curses and threats mischief follow or if a sick person likely to die take it on his death that such a one has bewitched him, those are strong grounds of suspicion for strict examination but not sufficient for conviction.

William Jones knew that most of the testimony provided by Stamford and Compo residents related to mishaps that occurred after quarrels with one or other of the accused. He agreed with the legal experts that circumstantial evidence of this kind was hardly firm ground on which to stand when condemning someone to death. Still, it may well have struck him as unfortunate that such evidence was accepted as “strong grounds of suspicion” for a formal inquiry and yet rejected as a proof of conviction: that line of reasoning amounted to raising public expectations that a witch would be held accountable, only then to dash them. Mister Jones could not have looked forward to the challenge of explaining to those who believed in the guilt of Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough why most of the testimony against them was legally “insufficient.”

The deputy-governor now shifted his attention to the kinds of evidence that experts found compelling as a basis for conviction. His memorandum listed in one compact paragraph a series of “sufficient proofs,” at least one of which must be satisfied in order to justify conviction. This list followed closely the guidelines provided by William Perkins and Richard Bernard in their legal manuals. It was also consistent with Connecticut law and the procedure followed by courts throughout New England.

The two proofs sufficient for conviction are either 1st the voluntary confession of the party suspected, which is adjudged sufficient proof by both divines and lawyers. Or 2nd the testimony of two witnesses of good and honest report, avouching one of two things in their knowledge before the magistrate, either 1st that the party accused hath made a league with the Devil or 2nd hath done some known practices of witchcraft. Arguments to prove either must be: if they can prove the party hath invoked the Devil for his help (this part of the worship the Devil binds witches to); or if the party hath entertained a familiar spirit in any form (mouse, cat, or other invisible creature); or if they affirm upon oath the party hath done any action or work which enforce the compact with the Devil such as to show the face of a man in a glass, or used enchantments, or such feats. Divining of things to come, raising tempests, or causing the form of a dead man to appear, or the like, sufficiently proves a witch.

The list seemed logical enough in the abstract, but as William Jones related each option to the evidence available against the two women on trial, his head must have begun to spin.

According to the memorandum, a court should convict only if it had clear proof that the accused was in league with the Devil. Each of New England’s capital laws drew on specific biblical passages for their inspiration; the Puritan authorities treated the Bible as a legal as well as devotional guide. Connecticut’s law against witchcraft focused on the witch’s relationship with “a familiar spirit” appointed by Satan to carry out malevolent deeds on the witch’s behalf: 

If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death. (Exod: 22.18; Lev: 20.27; Deut: 18.10,11.)

The law’s wording reflected a theological perspective, treating the crime as a form of heresy in which the offender forsook Christianity, committed to serve the Devil, and in return was allotted a familiar spirit, or demon, to do the witch’s bidding. Either the accused must confess to having signed a covenant with the Devil, or there must be at least two reliable witnesses who could testify that the accused had indeed entered a compact with Satan or had inflicted harm through occult means that must involve the Devil’s assistance.

Given the religious principles that inspired settlement throughout New England, and the regularity with which ministers reaffirmed those principles in their sermons, one might have expected that the evidence presented in witchcraft cases would be framed in theological terms and so fit well with legal requirements. Yet William Jones was well aware that such had not been the experience of New England magistrates. Most witnesses in witch trials were preoccupied with practical issues. They believed that a neighbor had used occult powers to bring about illness or misfortune and they wanted that neighbor punished. They described in graphic detail their disagreements with the accused and the damage that she subsequently inflicted on them. But few witnesses expressed any interest in where a witch’s power came from or her spiritual allegiance; they rarely mentioned the Devil.

Even as most trials ended in acquittal, ordinary folk continued to focus on witchcraft as a practical menace, not as a spiritual betrayal. They may have been motivated partly by stubborn resistance to pressure from the courts, or they may not have understood fully why so many trials were failing to result in conviction. But whatever the reasons, when New Englanders talked about witchcraft, most of them did so in terms of the practical threat that it posed: it seemed at such times that ordinary folk cared not a whit about the Devil, only about their dead sheep.

This was not good news for conscientious magistrates like Mister Jones, who wanted to defend his neighbors against the scourge of witchcraft and yet had to abide by legal standards of proof. Even confessions were now extremely controversial. At the Salem trials, over fifty individuals had confessed to joining a Satanic conspiracy dedicated to overthrowing God’s kingdom in New England. But during the summer of 1692 a growing number of these women and men had recanted, claiming that officials had used intimidation and, in some cases, physical torture to extract confessions from them. One man wrote in a petition to five prominent ministers that when his son refused to confess, “they tied him neck and heels till the blood gushed out at his nose, and would have kept him so twenty-four hours, if one more merciful than the rest had not taken pity on him and caused him to be unbound. It is credibly believed and reported that this was the occasion of making others confess what they never did.” Some defendants claimed that they confessed in order to save their lives: the court in Salem was staying the execution of those who cooperated with its proceedings; only those who refused to confess and give the names of other witches were hanged.

In light of these embarrassing revelations, if either Goody Clawson or Goody Disborough did confess to witchcraft, the magistrates responsible for their trials would have to take great care that their statements were completely voluntary and seen to be so. But both women insisted when first questioned back in May that they had nothing to do with Katherine Branch’s fits and neither showed any sign of confessing to the other bewitchments of which they had been accused since then. Given their obstinacy, the court needed “witnesses of good and honest report” to testify that the accused had “made a league with the Devil” or had “done some known practices of witchcraft.”

Yet there was hardly any reliable evidence before the court to suggest that Elizabeth Clawson or Mercy Disborough had conversed with Satan. To be sure, Katherine Branch claimed that the Devil had appeared to her “in the shape of three women, Goody Clawson, Goody Miller, and Goody Disborough.” She told the court that Satan wanted her to become a witch and that unless she did so the women who appeared to her in spectral form would kill her. Many people had heard Kate relate what she saw during her fits, yet she was the sole source for all that information and the law required that there be two independent witnesses for each incriminating incident. In any case, the information Kate gave was highly suspect: a significant number of Stamford residents doubted that the young woman’s fits were genuine; and even if she was seeing specters, how could anyone be sure that the Devil was not misleading her?

The deputy-governor would also have recalled that earlier that summer Kate had a conversation with the afflicting specters during which she told them that two ministers, John Bishop of Stamford and Thomas Hanford of Norwalk, had recently visited her and warned her not to yield to the Devil. A careful examination of the depositions would have revealed to Mister Jones that Kate did not mention the Devil at all until after the ministers paid her a visit. There were those who suspected that Kate had incriminated Goody Clawson to please her master and mistress. Had she also introduced talk of the Devil into her descriptions so as to accommodate her well-meaning minister? William Jones doubtless appreciated the ministers’ efforts to arm Kate against the forces of evil. But as a magistrate he may well have worried that her testimony might not be entirely spontaneous.

Other than Katherine Branch, only one witness had suggested that either of the accused had dealings with the Devil. According to Ann Godfrey, Mercy Disborough told her about a confrontation in which a neighbor “told her that her god was the Devil,” an accusation that Mercy had rejected with indignation. Once imprisoned, Goody Disborough claimed that she herself was tormented by the Devil and bewitched. The conversation that Ann Godfrey reported could be seen as legitimate grounds for examination, but on its own it was hardly sufficient to prove that Mercy Disborough was indeed guilty of worshiping Satan.