Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (9 page)

As Goodman Finch was relating this chain of events to Goody Newman in the street outside her house, Thomas Penoir and his wife, Lydia, joined them. After greeting their neighbors, the Penoirs listened intently as the conversation continued.

“About two years past,” confided Goody Newman, “I also had a difference with Goody Clawson and angry words passed between us. The next day we had three sheep die suddenly. 
When we opened them up we couldn’t find anything amiss to explain their deaths. Some of our neighbors told us then they thought the creatures were bewitched.” Goodwife Penoir nodded. “I remember you telling me about that. Goody Clawson was angry because your daughter had taken some fruit from her orchard.” “That’s right,” said Goody Newman. “She told me at the time, ‘If you allow your children to steal when they are young, what will they be like when they grow up?’ Do you recall that?” “I do,” said Goody Penoir, “and I’m ready to swear to it.”

As news of Katherine Branch’s accusations against Elizabeth Clawson spread through Stamford’s tightly knit community, the Wescots were not alone in recalling past disagreements with Goody Clawson and the afflictions that followed. Nor would this be the first time that Stamford residents explained mysterious ailments in terms of grudges between neighbors and even within families. Older townsfolk remembered well the curmudgeonly William Graves. Some thirty years before, Goodman Graves had refused to hand over his daughter Abigail’s inheritance, as he had promised, on her marriage to Samuel Dibble. The angry young husband brought a lawsuit against his father-in-law. Goodman Graves denied having made the promise and told his son-in-law that he would regret the lawsuit as long as he lived.

“Now do not threaten, father,” Samuel replied, “for threatened folk live long.”

“Well you shall never live the longer for it,” declared Goodman Graves with a scowl.

Abigail tried to persuade her husband to be more “yielding,” as she put it. “You do not know,” she warned, “what he can do to us.”

“I fear no man,” Samuel Dibble retorted—rashly as it turned out.

What followed became town legend. Abigail was pregnant and about a fortnight before she was due to give birth, William Graves paid his daughter a visit. “Abigail,” he declared, “fit thyself to meet the Lord. For if you are not delivered of the child quickly, I believe you will die.”

Several neighbors who were present saw the look of consternation that Abigail gave her husband on hearing her father’s grim warning. There followed a long and exceptionally difficult labor during which Abigail suffered much trembling and claimed to be bitten all over. The midwives in attendance shook their heads and muttered that this was no ordinary childbirth. The young couple feared that Abigail was bewitched and that her father was responsible.

William Graves agreed that his daughter was under an evil hand, but denied that he was the culprit. He declared that if Abigail died he would want everyone in the town to come and lay hands on her body: when the murderer touched her corpse, the body would move and so expose the miscreant. There was general relief in Stamford when Abigail gave birth successfully and survived, not only for her sake and the child’s: the prospect of a postmortem investigation with Goodman Graves watching closely as his neighbors lined up to lay hands on his daughter’s corpse sent shivers down many a spine. Soon afterward local magistrates conducted an inquiry into allegations that William Graves had bewitched his daughter, but they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

As fear of witchcraft again cast its shadow over Stamford, the allegations this time came from not one but many households. 
Once Katherine Branch named her tormentors, beginning with Elizabeth Clawson, townspeople gathered in knots of righteous anxiety to relive their many ugly encounters with Goody Clawson and to vent their long-festering suspicions against her.

It made good sense to folk such as John Finch, Mary Newman, and Thomas and Lydia Penoir that they should explain their misfortunes in terms of bewitchment by vengeful neighbors. Much that occurred in their lives was mysterious and unnerving: physicians and midwives were all too often perplexed by their neighbors’ ailments; loved ones, livestock, and crops frequently sickened for no apparent reason. But such adversities were incomprehensible only until one looked beyond the natural realm. In common with other New England settlers, the people of Stamford believed that supernatural forces intruded constantly into their lives. The Reverend Bishop taught that all adversities were sent by the Almighty to punish sinners, warn of His anger, and test faith through adversity. Whosoever inflicted the harm, it should be understood as God’s will. But some of the pastor’s flock were more inclined in times of affliction to seek out the more immediate and human causes of their problems. 
The people of Stamford did not need a minister to teach them that just beyond the range of the eye there glimmered a realm of occult forces that, if harnessed by malevolent folk, could inflict grievous harm. Personal experience and shocking stories that passed from household to household, from community to community, from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and from generation to generation taught that enemies in their midst could wield dark skills with ghastly results.

Enmities tended to be intense and festering in communities such as Stamford, for the simple reason that everyone’s welfare depended on personal cooperation. Day-to-day life involved innumerable informal exchanges and favors between neighbors, relatives, friends, and sometimes enemies. Mary Newman would have obtained most of the household goods that she did not produce herself from her neighbors: perhaps she had exchanged some of the soap she recently made for a dozen of Goodwife Penoir’s candles. Thomas Penoir may have been about to ask several neighbors for help as he put up a new barn, just as over the years he had helped them when they needed extra hands or went through hard times. No doubt he could talk with them when they met at the next town meeting, or perhaps before then at the local tavern.

Stamford’s minister taught that mutual assistance was a spiritual as well as practical necessity. Brothers and sisters in Christ should be knit together not only by day-to-day needs but also by godly affection and their common religious quest. Theirs was first and foremost a community of souls, the Reverend Bishop declared. The people of Stamford should reinforce each other’s faith, watch over each other in mutual stewardship, and rein each other in when temptation seemed to be luring them into sin.

That emphasis on community support created intense pressure. When requests for help were denied and when neighbors argued, resentments and recriminations often lingered. People knew that conflict threatened to undermine the values on which their community was built: discord was, as the Reverend Bishop often reminded them, an opening to the Devil, who was always looking for ways to poison the well of God’s vineyard. No one wanted to be held responsible for that happening.

Those who refused a neighbor’s request or quarreled with other townsfolk often felt guilty about their behavior. Some would look inward, examine their consciences, and try to mend their ways. Others preferred to focus on the anger of those they had wronged: they would watch for any misfortune that could be laid at the aggrieved party’s door and then conclude that they were the victims of a neighbor’s vengeful temper. Goody Clawson acted as if she was the injured party when the Newmans’ daughter stole from her orchard, but the Newmans saw things differently. When they found three sheep inexplicably dead the very next day, their quarrel with Goody Clawson and the ever-present threat of occult attack coalesced to provide a logical explanation for their misfortune—witchcraft.

Similar resentments and suspicions swirled around Mercy Disborough as the residents of Compo recalled disputes with their sharp-tongued neighbor and the misfortunes that ensued. 
About a year ago, thirty-nine-year-old Henry Grey recalled, one of his calves had began to act very strangely, running around in distress as if trying to escape from something and roaring in the oddest way for six or seven hours at a time. A lamb had also sickened without warning and died within the hour. When they skinned it, the creature looked as if it had been bruised or pinched on the shoulders, something he had never seen before. 
Then, in the spring of 1692, one of Goodman Grey’s cows drowned in a swamp. Soon afterward another suddenly weakened for no apparent reason, refused to eat, and collapsed.

Henry Grey had quarreled on several occasions with the Disboroughs and suspected that Goody Disborough was bewitching his livestock. She had told Goodman Grey’s neighbors Thomas and Elizabeth Benit that she could not abide him ever since he received some apples from her mother and claimed that they weighed less than she told him. That was eighteen years ago. 
More recently, in early 1692, Henry Grey’s relationship with the Disboroughs had taken a turn for the worse. He needed a kettle and bargained for one with the Disboroughs. It seemed new when he first saw it, with fresh hammer strokes clearly visible on the metal surface. But within minutes of returning home with it, the kettle changed its appearance; it now looked old and battered, with several punctures that had been filled in with nails. 
Goodman Grey returned it, which did not please the Disboroughs. Goody Disborough was especially angry and many hard words passed between them. It was after that confrontation that one of Goodman Grey’s cows drowned and another collapsed.

Thomas Benit was not in the least surprised when he heard about this sequence of events. “Do you recall,” asked Benit, turning to his wife, “when Mercy Disborough told me she’d make me as bare as a bird’s tail? That was two or three years ago, just before our livestock began to die. Soon afterward I found two calves in the creek, both dead. A fortnight later I lost full thirty lambs, all doing well till then, and not long after that another two calves—they seemed well enough when I last looked in on them at night and yet they were dead the next morning.”

This drawing of English witch suspect Jennet Dibble captures effectively the stereotype of the witch as a willful, crabby, and unforgiving older woman.
(Source: Drawing in india ink from “A Discourse of Witchcraft” by Edward Fairfax, written between 1621and 1623, courtesy of the British Library.)

Elizabeth Benit nodded, recalling the hardship that losing so many livestock had caused them. Mercy Disborough could not be made to pay for the animals, but now perhaps a different kind of justice would be meted out by the magistrates. “Remember, husband, what daughter Elizabeth told us two summers ago.”

Goodman Benit remembered well. Their daughter had accompanied Ann Godfrey, perhaps foolishly, to see how Goody Disborough would react on being told that neighbors suspected her of witchcraft. “Henry Grey’s wife thinks you bewitched their oxen,” Goody Godfrey told Disborough, “and that you made four of them jump over the fence. She also says you bewitched their beer, so that it burst out of the barrel.”

Mercy Disborough was not pleased. She began to vent bitterly about the rumors and allegations that her neighbors were spreading. “A woman came to my house recently,” she complained, “when I was in the midst of devotion. She reviled me and asked what I was doing. ‘Praying to my God,’ I said. Then she asked me who my God was and told me my God was the Devil. I bade her get out and go home to pray to her God. I know not if she did pray or not, but God met with her. She died a hard death for reviling me.”

After they took leave of Goody Disborough the two young women returned to the Benits’ home, where Elizabeth revealed to Ann Godfrey a crucial fact that neither she nor Goody Disborough had chosen to mention during their exchange.

“The woman Goody Disborough spoke of was my sister and I heard about the words that Goody Disborough said passed between them. She did indeed die a hard death.”

“I think that we should go back,” said Ann, “and talk with her again.”

“Why would you want to do that?” asked Thomas Benit. “You should leave well alone, or Mercy will do you some mischief.”

That night Goody Godfrey could not sleep. She heard a strange noise in the house and also a commotion outside, as if an animal were being attacked. The next morning she and her husband found one of their heifers lying dead near the door.

Damaging though these stories were, there was much more besides. Many of Goody Disborough’s neighbors had heard that she could sometimes be persuaded to unbewitch her victims, clear proof of occult powers. In the late 1680s, one of John Grumman’s children had suddenly sickened; neither he nor his wife could tell what was wrong. They suspected foul play. John Grumman’s nephew, Thomas Benit, Jr., told him that he should visit Goodwife Disborough. After all, anyone with any sense could tell that she was a witch.

Goodman Grumman was well aware that the Benits had quarreled with Goody Disborough. Because he and the Benits were related, she might be taking revenge by harming his child. But he flatly refused to confront her, explaining to his nephew that doing so might make the situation worse. Young Benit decided to take matters into his own hands. He strode over to Mercy Disborough’s house and told her without ceremony to come and unbewitch his uncle’s child. “Or else,” he declared, “I’ll tear your heart out.”