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Authors: Mary Beth Norton

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But at the end of the first week of March there remained the problem of properly identifying the witches responsible for the afflictions in Salem Village. Three had been named by one teenager and three children (who were too young to be wholly trustworthy witnesses), all of whom continued to suffer torments. One of those witches had confessed, naming the other two and also revealing the presence of additional, though still unidentified, witches in Boston and Salem Village. Two new suspects, Elizabeth Proctor and Dorcas Good, had been named but not questioned.

The examining magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, did not yet have to consider whether the evidence they were developing would be sufficient for conviction at a trial. At the time, Massachusetts was being ruled by an ad hoc government established in April 1689 after the overthrow of the autocratic English governor, Sir Edmund Andros, in the colony’s version of the Glorious Revolution. The Salem magistrates probably realized that no suspects would be tried until that interim government had been replaced by a formally reconstituted one, an event they knew would soon occur. In late January 1691 ⁄2, “almost at the same Time” as Bostonians learned of the raid on York, they heard that the Maine-born Sir William Phips had been appointed governor of the colony under a newly issued charter, and two weeks later a copy of the charter itself arrived, causing “much discourse,” according to Samuel Sewall, a Boston merchant and magistrate. Although the ad hoc government had occasionally convicted men for capital offenses, it would have been foolhardy in the extreme to conduct a witchcraft trial knowing that its legitimacy would almost immediately be called into question. Consequently, until Phips arrived to organize the government under the new charter, there was little possibility of proceeding to a trial of anyone who had been, or might be, accused.
67

Even so, Hathorne and Corwin confronted a daunting task. If Tituba’s confession was credible (and certainly John Hale found it so), then they bore the responsibility of uncovering a witch conspiracy of unknown extent. Undoubtedly they sought advice on how to proceed from the best authorities available to them, certainly including Bernard’s
Guide to Grand-Jury Men
and possibly William Perkins’s
A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft . . .
(1608) and John Gaule’s
Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts
(1646). All three authors concurred on the essential points.

William Perkins, for example, stressed that a magistrate should not “proceede upon sleight causes . . . or upon sinister respects,” but must have “speciall presumptions” before examining suspects in witchcraft cases. He listed the “certaine signes” that “at least probably, and conjecturally denote one to be a Witch,” most of which accorded with those identified by Richard Bernard and discussed earlier in this section. “Notorious defamation,” the accusation of a known witch, being a blood relation or “familiar friend” of a known witch, having cursed or quarreled with someone to whom “mischiefe” thereafter occurred: any one of these would constitute “a fit presumption” for a “strait examination.” But Perkins also added another: “The devills marke” on the party in question would be suspicious, “for it is commonly thought, when the devill maketh his covenant with them, he alwaies leaveth his marke behinde him, whereby he knowes them for his owne.” John Gaule agreed that such characteristics could lead to the “probable” identification of a witch, and he added more items to the list, such as the “lewd & naughty” life of a suspect.
68

Magistrates questioning such a suspect had to be alert, the three men warned. “Faltering, faulty, unconstant and contrary Answers; upon judiciall and deliberate examination,” asserted Gaule, were “more infallible” signs of culpability. Perkins too remarked that “if the partie examined be unconstant, or contrarie to himselfe in his deliberate answers, it argueth a guiltie mind and conscience which stoppeth the freedome of speech and utterance.” Bernard, though, gave the fullest directions on how to proceed, indicating that magistrates should question a suspect only after having examined the afflicted (if possible), any knowledgeable relatives and neighbors, a physician, and the suspect’s own family. Moreover, “a godly and learned Divine” should be recruited to prepare the suspect for “confession before Authority, when he or shee is examined.” Then, during the interrogation of the suspect, the magistrates should pay attention to “his or her downe-cast lookes, feare, doubtfull answers, varying speeches, contradictions, cunning evasions, their lying, or defending of this or that speech and deede, or excusing the same. Also to observe, if any words fall from him or her, tending to some confession.” If suspects refused to confess, advised Bernard, they should be confronted with the witnesses against them to see how they responded.
69

Reading such instructions, Hathorne and Corwin could well have felt confident that they were proceeding in accordance with the most authoritative advice available, and that they were making good progress toward their goal. After all, Hathorne’s questioning had elicited an explicit confession from Tituba and, it was thought, an implicit one from Sarah Good. Her identification of Sarah Osborne as the children’s spectral tormentor, the authorities concluded, constituted exactly that implicit admission of guilt Richard Bernard advised magistrates to detect. “None here sees the witches but the afflicted & themselves,” the summary of evidence prepared for Good’s trial later observed, so Sarah Good “not being afflicted must consequently be a Witch.”
70

Yet, fatefully, the examining magistrates ignored one crucial piece of advice offered by Richard Bernard. The afflicted, the individual witnesses, and the suspects, he directed, should be questioned “apart, & not in the hearing one of another.” Only after they had been carefully examined “alone” should they be brought together and the suspects be confronted in person by their accusers. Hathorne and Corwin, though, had already established the precedent of interrogating the accused in the presence of not only the afflicted but also the entire community. In the weeks and months to come, the impact of that procedure was to be both dramatic and wide-ranging.
71

WILLIAM VAUGHAN (PORTSMOUTH) TO MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR AND COUNCIL, FEBRUARY 22, 1691/2:
72

[Ransomed captives taken at York report that] the number of Indians Att York was noe lesse then two hundred able Fighting men, who have been long abroad & whose design was to meet with our men in the Woods haveing been (as they Say) advised by some of Sandy beach Captives that the Bostoners were provideing many Snow Shoes & Design’d a Considerable army out this winter to disrest them at Some of their head quarters which has made them very uneasy this winter & this Compa[ny] has been long out ranging the Woods to meet with ours or their tracts, which failing of they fell upon York[.] that the Indians Say at the fight at Macquait (where Capt Sherbon was Kill’d) if our men had Staid ashore one hour longer they would have left none alive. . . . That Mrs Dumer died in about 10 dayes after she was taken that 5 or 6 were kill’d in their march most children that were unable to travel & soe burthensome to them. That they have Sent 2 captives away to Canada to Satisfie the french with the truth of this Exploit, they formerly not beleiving the Indians report of what Service they doe against us. That the Enemy wants noe Amunition.

CHAPTER TWO

Gospel Women

MARCH 12, 1691/2–APRIL 19, 1692

IF THE FIRST five individuals accused in Salem Village—Tituba, Sarah Osborne, Sarah and Dorcas Good, and Elizabeth Proctor—fit standard profiles and so might have seemed logical suspects to local residents, those named next by the growing group of afflicted persons presented a sharp contrast. Everyone knew that women were more likely than men to be witches, but Martha Pennoyer Rich Corey and Rebecca Towne Nurse, the church members Ann Putnam Jr. named as her spectral torturers during the second week of March, appeared to be respectable matrons. Such iconoclastic accusations must have shocked the Village. That the charges were quickly taken seriously reveals how compelling and credible Villagers found the evident sufferings of the afflicted.

But once all seven females were complained against, it was perhaps not so surprising that in the following weeks the husbands of two and the church-member sister of a third joined them in the ranks of the accused. As was already indicated in the last chapter, experts concurred that people closely related to witches were themselves highly likely to become malefic practitioners. Thus Sarah Towne Cloyce (Rebecca Nurse’s younger sister), Giles Corey, and John Proctor were all complained against by mid-April.

THE ACCUSATIONS OF MARTHA COREY AND REBECCA NURSE

At several unspecified times between March 7 and 12, Ann Putnam told her parents and other relatives that “goode Corie did often appear to her and tortor her by pinching and other wayes.” Her repeated charges led her uncle, Edward Putnam, a deacon of the Salem Village church, and Ezekiel Cheever, also a church member, to decide to call on Goody Corey because she was “in church covenant with us” and they “thought it our duty to goe to her and see what shee would say” in response to Ann’s complaints. Martha, who had joined the Village church in April 1690, lived with her second husband, Giles, in an outlying area of the Village still known as Salem Farms. The prosperous but quarrelsome Giles, about eighty years old in 1692, had married Martha (who was considerably younger) as his third wife in 1685.
1

On the morning of Saturday, March 12, Cheever and Edward Putnam went to Thomas Putnam’s house to announce their intention to visit Goodwife Corey later in the day. They directed Ann to “take good notice” of the clothing Martha Corey’s purported specter was wearing at her next appearance, so they could see whether or not the girl had correctly identified the apparition that troubled her. In the early afternoon, after returning expectantly to the Putnam household, they learned from Ann that in the interim the specter “came and blinded her but told her that her name was Corie and that shee should see her no more before it was night because she should not tell us what cloathes shee had on.”

Probably troubled by the little girl’s report, Cheever and Putnam nevertheless proceeded as planned. When they arrived at their destination around midafternoon, they found Martha Corey alone. “As soone as we came in,” they later recounted, “in a smiling manner shee sayeth I know what you are come for you are come to talke with me about being a witch but I am none I cannot helpe peoples talking of me.” Edward replied that they had come not because of gossip but because Ann had specifically named her. “But does shee tell you what cloathes I have on?” Martha asked, “with very great eagernes” repeating the inquiry when the men—undoubtedly stunned into silence— did not answer immediately. Finally they revealed to Goody Corey what Edward’s niece had said about having been blinded by her apparition. “Shee made but litle answer to this,” the men recalled, “but seemed to smile at it as if shee had showed us a pretty trick.”

Discussions of identifying specters through their clothing must have arisen from Village gossip following Tituba’s confession eleven days earlier. Responding to John Hathorne’s queries, she had described the clothes worn by the specters she saw: the man (perhaps the devil) who had appeared to ask her to serve him was tall and white-haired, wearing either “black” or “Searge” clothing, and one of the two Boston women was dressed in “a black Silk hood with a White Silk hood under itt, with top knotts,” while the other had “a Searge Coat with a White Cap.”
2
No one recorded the ensuing gossip, but it surely focused on how descriptions of clothing could help to reveal the identities of otherwise unknown specters. Martha Corey appeared well aware that people were speculating she might be a witch and that clothes could form a part of the identification. She seemingly hoped to use that potential weapon to her advantage instead of falling victim to it.

The three conversed at some length about the little girl’s complaints and witchcraft in general.
3
Putnam and Cheever expressed their concern about “how greatly the name of God and religion and thee church was dishonured” by Martha’s being accused, but Corey appeared more interested in stopping the pervasive gossip. Her visitors surely could not think her guilty of witchcraft, she insisted, because “shee had made a profession of christ and rejoyced to go and hear the word of god and the like.” Putnam and Cheever responded that “witches had crept into the churches” and that “an out ward profession” was insufficient proof of innocence, but Goody Corey, they reported, “made her profession a cloake to cover all.” When Martha indicated that “shee did not thinke that there were any witches,” they pronounced themselves “fully satisfied” that Tituba, Good, and Osborne were guilty as charged. Martha then derided the three as “idle sloathfull persons,” so that “if they were [witches] wee could not blame the devill of making witches of them.” Despite her skepticism about the three suspects, she exclaimed that “the devill was come down amongst us in great rage and that God had forsaken the earth.” Perhaps she referred to the Indian war, or perhaps she was contending that Satan had afflicted Ann directly, without the intervention of witches.

Martha Corey probably ended the encounter with her fellow church members believing that she had made at least some progress in refuting the charge that she was a witch. She had forcefully reminded her visitors of her standing as a professed Christian and a member of the Salem Village church, had differentiated herself from the “idle sloathfull” folk already accused, and had exposed what she undoubtedly did think was a “pretty trick”—Ann’s explanation for her inability to describe Corey’s clothing accurately. But if Martha interpreted the results of the conversation in that way, Edward Putnam and Ezekiel Cheever came away from it feeling very differently. Upon returning to Thomas Putnam’s they learned that, as the specter had earlier predicted, it had not afflicted Ann in their absence. To them, the “pretty trick” was obvious: the blinding of Ann had prevented the girl from definitively identifying Martha Corey as her tormentor. That the apparition indeed later returned after dark (making an accurate description of her clothing impossible) only confirmed them in that opinion.

What stimulated Village gossip about Martha Corey being a witch is not revealed in surviving records, but Ann surely did not originate the charge. Quite possibly the very church membership of which Martha was so proud led to her accusation. Three years before her marriage to Henry Rich about 1680, Martha had borne a bastard mulatto son, who lived in the Corey household. Her acceptance into the church, given her personal background and the exclusivity of church membership in Salem Village, must have set tongues to wagging. On at least one other occasion in seventeenth-century New England, the admission to church membership of a woman with a checkered sexual past fomented an uproar among her neighbors. The same could well have happened in the case of Martha Corey, causing speculation about the validity of her reputed adherence to Christianity.
4

Sunday, March 13, brought Ann new miseries, but not from Martha Corey’s specter. Instead, the little girl complained of being afflicted by an apparition she could not positively identify: “I did not know what hir name was then,” Ann later deposed, “tho I knew whare she used to sitt in our Meeting house.” A witness elaborated: “she saw the apperishtion of apale fast [
sic
] woman that Sat in her granmothers seat.” Soon, most likely within twenty-four hours, Ann knew the woman’s name: Rebecca Towne Nurse, the seventy-year-old wife of Francis Nurse, a substantial Village yeoman. Goody Nurse belonged to the Salem Town church, although she often attended services in the Village.
5

Many of Goodwife Nurse’s Towne relatives lived in neighboring Topsfield; her natal family had a long-standing dispute with various Putnams over the boundaries of their respective lands and towns. It is not difficult to imagine that Ann had heard about many confrontations between the two extended families, and that Rebecca Nurse’s name came easily to her lips once it was suggested to her. But precisely how that occurred became a subject of contention. Nurse’s son-in-law John Tarbell later inquired at the Putnam house about how Ann learned the unidentified specter’s name. “Who was it that told her that it was goody nurs?” he asked. Tarbell recorded the response: the Putnams’ nineteen-year-old maidservant, Mercy Lewis, replied, “it was goody putnam that said it was goody nurse: goody putnam said it was mercy lewes that told her: thus they turned it upone one an other saying it was you & it was you that told her.” Regardless of the exact origin, the new apparition now had a name.
6

On Monday, Martha Corey called at Thomas Putnam’s, having been asked to do so—by whom is not recorded.
7
Edward Putnam witnessed the consequences. As soon as Goody Corey entered the house, Ann “fell in to grevious feets of Choking blinding feat and hands twisted in a most grevious maner and told martha Cory to her face that she did it, and emediately hur tonge was dran out of her: mouth and her teeth fasned upon it in a most grevious maner.” When at last Ann regained control of her tongue and could speak, she told Martha that “ther is a yellow burd a sucking betwen your fore finger and midel finger I see it.” She moved toward the visitor to see the bird more clearly, but Edward saw Corey put her finger on the place Ann had identified “and semed to give a hard rub,” at which point Ann could see nothing and was again blinded. To anyone who had heard Tituba’s testimony about Sarah Good’s spectral yellow bird sucking her in the same spot, the implication was obvious: the two women shared the same animal familiar. The girl furthermore described how Goody Corey’s specter had “put her hands upon” Bathshua Pope’s face during Sabbath services the previous day, and as Ann demonstrated what she meant “emediately her hands were fasned to her eyes that they Cold not be pulled from them except they should have ben broaken off.”

For Martha, worse was yet to come. Ann reported that she saw “a speet at the fier with a man apon it and Goodey Corey you be a turnning of it.” At that, Mercy Lewis “toock a stick and struck at” the spectral torture scene, which (Ann reported) first vanished, then quickly reappeared. When Mercy declared that she would strike again, Ann warned her, “do not if you love your self,” but Mercy ignored the admonition. She then “Cryed out with a grevious pane in her arme” and Ann disclosed that she had seen Martha Corey’s specter hit Lewis “with an Iron rood.” The two “gru so bad with panes,” Edward recounted, that “we desired goodey Cory to be gone.” This time Martha Corey could not have misinterpreted the meaning of the encounter.

The apparition Ann Putnam Jr. described at the hearth would have resonated deeply with anyone who learned of it. Readers of Cotton Mather’s
Memorable Providences
would surely recall that in 1688 the eleven-year-old John Goodwin had complained of being “roasted on an invisible Spit, run into his Mouth, and out at his Foot, he lying, and rolling, and groaning.” Martha Corey’s turning a spectral spit clearly connected her to the tortures experienced by the Goodwin children. But there was also another obvious link: redeemed captives of the Wabanakis had returned with tales of English settlers being “roasted” to death by slow fires. Such stories would carry particular meaning for those who lived, or had lived, on the northeastern frontier, and who had not only heard the tales but could realistically believe themselves in imminent danger of meeting just such a fate.
8

FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1676; FALMOUTH, CASCO BAY, MAINE.

The little girl called Mercy was about three years old, living with her parents and perhaps a young sibling or two, surrounded by her father’s extended family. Her grandfather George Lewis had brought his wife and three children to Maine from England in the mid-1640s; four more children—including her father, Philip—were born in America. On Wednesday, August 9, some Wabanakis had killed a cow belonging to Captain Anthony Brackett. An Indian named Simon, who had been hanging around Captain Brackett’s farm for several weeks, said he would find the culprits. Early on Friday morning, Simon returned with the men responsible for the killing. They invaded Brackett’s house, took his weapons, and asked him “whether he had rather serve the
Indians,
or be
slain by
them.
” Faced with that choice, Brackett surrendered, along with his wife and children. But his brother-in-law tried to resist and was killed.
9

The Indians moved through the area called Back Cove, striking one farm after another on the mainland north of the peninsula on which the town of Falmouth was situated. At Robert Corbin’s, they surprised him and his brother-in-law Benjamin Atwell while they were haying in the fields, killing them and capturing their wives and several children. They next slew James Ross and his wife, taking some of their children captive. Two men traveling by canoe managed to warn the town, but the losses of people killed and captured mounted as the day wore on. Mercy’s parents escaped with her to an island in the bay, along with their minister George Burroughs and others, but her father’s extended family was hard hit. The dead Benjamin Atwell and James Ross were her uncles by marriage, the captured Alice Atwell and the dead Ann Ross her father’s sisters. Her paternal grandparents were among those slain. Many of her cousins were killed or captured, including all but one of the children of another of her father’s sisters, Mary Lewis Skilling. One more uncle—her father’s brother John—and his wife died later in the war.

Altogether, wrote a survivor five days later, eleven men died and twenty-three women and children were killed or captured at Casco on August 11. “We that are alive are forced upon Mr. Andrews his Island to secure our own and the lives of our families we have but little provision and are so few in number that we are not able to bury the dead till more strength come to us,” he told his mother-in-law in Boston, pleading for assistance of any sort.
10
The help the refugees received permitted them to leave. Mercy and her parents probably moved temporarily to Salem Town, where her uncle-by-marriage Thomas Skilling died a few months later, possibly from a wound suffered in the attack. By 1683, they had returned to rebuild their lives in Casco Bay. She was then ten years old.
11

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