In the Devil's Snare (9 page)
TWO SERMONS AND A DIABOLIC SACRAMENT
On Thursday, March 24, a regular lecture day in Salem Village, Samuel Parris ceded his pulpit to his predecessor, Deodat Lawson. A few months later, Lawson published an expanded version of his sermon, “Christ’s Fidelity the only Shield against Satans Malignity,” in an edition dedicated to the examining magistrates and the ministers of the Salem Town church, Nicholas Noyes and John Higginson. A group of other clergymen, including Increase and Cotton Mather and Samuel Willard, signed a preface recommending the “Weighty, profitable, and Seasonable Truths” contained in the sermon. Thus Lawson’s words can be taken as representing the views of many other ministers at this early stage of the crisis.
48
Lawson began the printed text as he most likely began the sermon, with a brief address aimed specifically at the Village congregation. God had singled them out “by giving liberty to Satan, to range and rage amongst you,” he declared. Most “astonishing” was the involvement of people they had believed to be “real members of His Mystical body” but who now had been represented as Satan’s “Instruments . . . against their Friends and Neighbors.” He prayed that the community would be delivered from “the pernicious consequences of Satan’s malicious Operations.” In particular, he commended Samuel Parris to their “Spiritual sympathy”; the pastor needed their assistance, given the “awful circumstances” in his own household.
49
The sermon itself focused on Satan as “the Fountain of malice.” Because the devil was an angel, though a fallen one, he had powers far beyond those of any “meer mortal,” and he employed those powers to attack humans’ souls and bodies. He targeted people’s minds, creating “strange and frightful Representations to the Fancy, or Imagination, and by violent Tortures of the body, often threatning to extinguish life.” Members of the congregation had around them “sundry Examples” of Satan’s “Lower Operations,” Lawson pointed out. “And whosoever, hath carefully observed these things, must needs be Convinced, that the Motions of the Persons Afflicted . . . are the meer effects of Diabolical Malice and Operations, and that it cannot rationally be imagined, to proceed from any other cause whatsoever.” Lawson did not doubt that during that fourth week of March he had witnessed the devil’s handiwork, and he believed that no one else should doubt it either.
50
The devil, both “indefatigable” and “implacable,” would use whatever means he could to advance his aims, Lawson went on to assert. Satan’s extraordinary powers allowed him to attack people either directly or “by imploying some of mankind or other creatures.” To conceal his aims, he tended to use the latter method when dealing with human beings, contracting with witches “that they shall be the Instruments by whom he may more secretly Affect, and Afflict the Bodies and Minds of others.” If he could recruit church members into his ranks, so much the better: they “may the more readily pervert others to Consenting unto his subjection.” Once people submitted to the devil, he could then—as he had in the Village—“use their Bodies and Minds, Shapes and Representations, to Affright and Afflict others.”
51
Satan especially targeted God’s own “Covenant People,” Lawson declared, but they could rest assured that he could go no farther in attacking them than God permitted. The Lord was “lengthening the Chain of the Roaring Lyon . . . so that the Devil is come down in great wrath,” but he did so “to Serve his own most Holy Designs, in the World.” The minister then explicated what he saw as those “Holy Designs” in the present case. God was speaking to Villagers “with an unusual and amazing loudness,” calling on them to ask themselves, “What meaneth the Heat of this great Anger?” The Lord insisted on “True and unfeigned Reformation” of the “Provoking Evils” into which his people had fallen. In an extraordinary passage, Lawson then addressed any in his audience who might “by Covenant explicite or implicite” have agreed to serve the devil. “All Mankind is now . . . set against you,” he proclaimed, and so too are God and Christ. “You are utterly undone forever, . . . . Doomed to those Endless, Easeless, and Remediless Torments” unless God chose to be merciful. Such a fate awaited witches even if they somehow managed to “Evade, the Condemnation of mans Judgment, and escape a violent death by the Hand of Justice.”
52
Hearing their former pastor speak such remarkable words must have reinforced the fears Villagers had felt during the examinations earlier in the day. Who among them—which of their longtime neighbors or acquaintances, even their relatives—had secretly allied themselves with Satan? Whom could they trust? And could they halt the spread of the afflictions?
Lawson suggested answers for the last question at least, although he offered no assistance with the first two. Villagers, regenerate and unregenerate alike, needed to change their behavior. Possibly God had dispatched “this Fire of his Holy displeasure, to put out some Fires of Contention, that have been amongst you.” Perhaps they had given Satan a crucial opening by employing countermagic against the afflictions and by engaging in other occult practices. Anyone who tried such experiments, he warned, was “in great Danger to become a prey unto Satans malice, being . . . seduced by his subtilty into an intire subjection to his Infernal powers.” Lawson also cautioned his audience against “Rash Censuring of others,” aiming his advice explicitly at the families of the afflicted and the accused. If the innocent come under suspicion, he observed, the cause was “GODS pleasure supreamly permitting, and Satans Malice subordinately troubling,” not “Ill will, or disrespect” on the part of one party or the other. “Reflecting on the Malice or Envy of your Neighbours” would only “have uncomfortable and pernicious influence, upon the Affairs of the place, . . . bringing in Confusion and every evil work.”
53
The cleric exhorted different groups of his listeners to “special Dutyes” at this time of crisis.
54
Villagers generally should show “Compassion towards, those poor afflicted persons, that are by Divine Permission, under the Direful Influences of Satan’s malice.” The magistrates should see themselves as “Father[s]” to the afflicted, doing “all that in you Lyes, to Check and Rebuke Satan.” The afflicted should take comfort in being “the visible Covenant People of GOD” and have faith that Christ would triumph in the end. And all should defend themselves against the devil’s operations by every possible means. God had turned “this poor Village” into “the Rendezvous of Devils, where they Muster their infernal forces appearing to the afflicted, as coming Armed, to carry on their malicious designs.” Thus Villagers had to “ARM; ARM; ARM” and enlist as “faithful Souldiers under the Captain of our Salvation, that by the Shield of FAITH, ye and we All may Resist the Fiery Darts of the Wicked.” Lawson, the one-time chaplain to colonial troops in Maine, and his audience both could well have linked those metaphorical “Fiery Darts” to Wabanaki arrows.
Lawson concluded his sermon by alluding to God’s “Unsearchable” providence and people’s inability to comprehend his aims in visiting such afflictions on them. “Yet may we say in the midst of the terrible things which he doth in righteousness; He alone is the GOD of our Salvation.” Accordingly, Villagers needed to “Repent of every Sin, that hath been Committed; and Labour to practice, every Duty which hath been Neglected.” Then the Lord would deliver “his Poor Sheep and Lambs, out of the Jaws, and Paws, of the Roaring Lyon.”
If their former pastor’s message to them thus ended on a hopeful note, in that sincere repentance could possibly alleviate their current troubles, residents of Salem Village received no such assurance from their current minister three days later. Samuel Parris marked Sunday, March 27, a regular sacrament day, with a discourse on John 6:70: “Have I not chosen you twelve, & one of you is a Devil.” On learning the text for the day, Sarah Towne Cloyce strode out of the meetinghouse. According to a witness, she “flung the doore after her violently, to the amazement of the Congregation.” Sarah Cloyce’s behavior that Sabbath seems to have called her to the attention of the afflicted. Eight days later, she joined her older sister Rebecca Nurse in the ranks of the accused.
55
Parris’s uncompromising March 27 sermon was, he noted, “Occasioned by dreadfull Witchcraft broke out here,” with two church members being “vehemently suspected for shee-Witches.”
56
The church contained devils as well as saints, and Christ knew who, and how many. Indeed, “we are either Saints, or Devils, the scripture gives us no medium.” (Where he thought that Manichean view placed those in his audience who did not belong to the church, he did not reveal.) In any event, “none are worse than those that have been good, & are naught: & might be good, but will be naught.” Parris directed his listeners to be “deeply humbled” by the presence of witches in their midst. Urging them to pray “that God would not suffer Devils in the guise of Saints to associate with us,” he also advised them to ask the Lord to ensure that no “true Saint” would ever be falsely accused. As a preface to the day’s celebration of communion, he warned any devils among them against partaking of the Lord’s Supper. If any did so, they would “incurr the hottest of Gods wrath.” No one, he asserted, could “maintain communion with Christ, & yet keep up fellowship with Devils.”
In the course of his sermon, Parris directly addressed the defenses offered by the two women whose examinations he had witnessed and recorded. Speaking to Martha Corey’s contention that she could not be a witch because she was a “Gospel Woman,” the minister argued that since devils could be found in churches, “Let none then build their hopes of Salvation meerly upon this, that they are Church-members.” And in response to Rebecca Nurse’s observation that “the Devil may appear in my shape,” he admitted that although Satan would undoubtedly “if he could” misrepresent “the best Saints” in that way, “it is not easy to imagine that his power is of such extent, to the hazard of the Church.” Thus Parris utilized the common belief in God’s authority over Satan—a point Lawson had stressed—to maintain that it was unlikely that the Almighty would allow the devil to display deceptive apparitions of saints to the afflicted. In adopting that line of argument, he accepted the implications of Richard Bernard’s statement earlier in the century that the unregenerate (but not, by inference, the regenerate) could be falsely represented in spectral form.
In spite of differences in the tone of their sermons, Lawson and Parris concurred on essentials. The devil was abroad in Salem Village. Church members could be found among the witches. The afflicted were innocent victims of Satan’s wrath, deserving the pity and sympathy of others. God governed all these events; by permitting the devil such latitude, he intended to convey a message to Villagers—and perhaps, by implication, to other New Englanders as well. They should search their hearts and seek genuine repentance for their sins in order to relieve their troubles.
To facilitate such reflections, Salem, both Town and Village, observed a public fast for the afflicted on Thursday, March 31.
57
What happened in the visible world that day was not recorded; the texts of the sermons preached (and who preached them) are unknown. But Abigail Williams described the activities in the invisible world, revealing that the witches celebrated a sacrament with “Red Bread and Red Drink” in the pasture next to her uncle’s house. In a fit the next day, Mercy Lewis recounted that the witches at the sacrament “would have had her eat some: but she would not.” Instead, she had turned away her head, insisting, “That is not the Bread of Life, that is not the Water of Life; Christ gives the Bread of Life, I will have none of it!”
Mercy also reported seeing “a White man” accompanied by “a great Multitude in White glittering Robes” in her fit, where she thought herself in “a Glorious Place.” Demonstrating that she, like Ann Carr Putnam, was well acquainted with the Bible, she indicated that the “Multitude” had sung Revelation 5:9 and Psalms 110 and 149. The first verse of Psalm 110 was that upon which Parris had preached frequently in the preceding months, so the text would have been familiar to her. Both the sixth verse of that psalm and the seventh verse of Psalm 149 referred to God’s judgments against the heathen, mentioning his “two-edged sword” and the “dead bodies” that would fall in his wake “in the day of his wrath.” Revelation 5:9 contained “a new song” revealing how the lamb that had been slain “hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.” Surely not by chance did Mercy choose texts so appropriate to the experience of her own family and so expressive of her desire for revenge against the heathen Wabanakis who had killed them.
THE PROCTORS, THEIR MAID, AND SARAH CLOYCE
Following the reports of the diabolic sacrament near Parris’s house, people began to see gatherings of recognizable specters in a variety of settings. In early April, a young man named Stephen Bittford was spending the night at the house of James Darling, Mercy Lewis’s uncle by marriage. He later deposed that at midnight, “being parfittly awake,” he saw standing in the room near him both Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor, “whom I very well knew.” He then experienced a “very grate paine” in his neck, producing stiffness that lasted for several days. About the same time or perhaps a few days later, Benjamin Gould, a yeoman in his mid-twenties from Salem Town, saw in his room the apparitions of Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth and John Proctor, Martha and Giles Corey, Sarah Cloyce, and Rachel Griggs, the doctor’s wife. Gould’s naming of Goody Griggs had no discernible impact—no one else ever seems to have seen her among the witches, and the accusation was never acted upon—but John and Elizabeth Proctor’s names kept resurfacing, not just in these but also in other contexts.
58
For example, Abigail Williams repeatedly cited Goody Proctor as one of her afflicters in late March and early April, charging that Proctor’s specter, together with that of Rebecca Nurse, “almost pulled out” her bowels on several occasions. Mercy Lewis identified Elizabeth as one of her tormentors on March 26, and Betty Hubbard named her the first week of April. Any of these, or perhaps Mary Walcott, could have been the afflicted person who at Nathaniel Ingersoll’s on March 28 reacted to the gossip about a likely accusation of Elizabeth Proctor by making “sport” of seeing her apparition, thus eliciting a sharp rebuke from Goody Ingersoll. Then on April 4, Abigail complained of John Proctor as well, saying to his specter, “are you come to, you can pinch as well as your wife.” She repeated her accusation of John two days later and, Samuel Parris noted, “the like I hear at Tho. Putmans house.”
59
John Proctor, about sixty years old in 1692, married his third wife Elizabeth in 1674. John had immigrated with his parents from England to Ipswich, where he still owned part of the family property. Elizabeth, born in Lynn, was the sister of the militia captain William Bassett. Tavern owners in Salem Farms on the Ipswich Road, the Proctors attended church services in Salem Town rather than the Village. The family was both prosperous and large (six children from his first two marriages, five from the third). Elizabeth ran the tavern while John and his oldest son, Benjamin, managed the farm.
60
Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, as was indicated in chapter 1, seems to have been singled out initially because her grandmother was thought to have been a witch, but the accusation of her husband most likely stemmed from a different source: his attitude toward the Proctors’ maidservant, Mary Warren. That Warren suffered torments in March emerged from a conversation between John Proctor and Samuel Sibley early in the morning of March 25. John informed Samuel that he was en route to the Village “to fetch home his jade he left her there last night.” He would “thresh the Devil out of her,” he told Sibley, remarking that the afflicted persons “should rather be had to the Whipping post,” for “if they were let alone so we should all be Devils & witches quickly.” Indeed, he revealed, “when she was first taken with fits he kept her close to the Wheel & threatened to thresh her, & then she had no more fits till the next day he was gone forth,” when in his absence she again fell into fits.
61
Since Samuel Sibley was Mary Walcott’s uncle (and his wife had suggested the making of the witchcake), he surely repeated the story of John Proctor’s skepticism about the afflictions many times during the next few days in a variety of Village settings. He and those to whom he spoke would have been shocked, their suspicions aroused, by Proctor’s callous attitude toward the tortured young people in their midst. As John Hathorne had implied during the examination of Rebecca Nurse, a lack of sufficient concern for the afflicted could indicate complicity in their torments.
Two brief passages in Mary Warren’s later testimony underscore John Proctor’s adamant opposition to the role she played early in the crisis. On one occasion “her Master threttned her to burn her out of her fitt,” she recalled, possibly by thrusting “hot tongs downe her throat.” Another time, she recounted, while she was in the midst of a fit he told her, “if ye are Afflicted I wish ye were more Afflicted.” When she asked why, he responded, “because you goe to bring out Innocent persons.” Samuel Sibley and Mary Warren were undoubtedly not the only people to whom John Proctor expressed such opinions about the falsity of her accusations, and word of his attitude would have spread quickly through the Village.
62
The absence of Warren’s name from the legal record before March 25, despite the fact that she had been previously afflicted, raises an important issue already touched on briefly in another context: the crucial role of adult men in legitimizing the complaints of the afflicted persons. Sergeant Thomas Putnam, Jonathan Walcott, and Samuel Parris all believed in the validity of the fits suffered by the children and young women in their households. Accordingly, they (and in the Putnam case, other male relatives) took notes on the behavior of the afflicted and pressed forward with formal legal complaints against suspected witches. But John Proctor had little sympathy for, or patience with, Mary Warren. Without support from her master, she could not press charges against anyone, and so information about her early sufferings emerged retrospectively for other reasons. The afflicted persons—and others, like Benjamin Gould—proffered initial accusations, but those charges were pursued only if they made sense to a number of adult male gatekeepers. The heads of the households in which afflicted young people resided composed the first such gatekeeping level; the next comprised the examining magistrates, and the third the judges and jurors.
63
John Proctor did not believe Mary Warren. Therefore any accusation she made while living in his household went nowhere. Gould’s vision of Goody Rachel Griggs among the specters likewise failed to meet the initial test, one applied by men who associated with Griggs’s husband. Gould’s was but the first of many accusations proposed but not pursued to the point of formal complaint.
Charges not followed up, afflictions not recorded—the existence of such phenomena leads to another important question: what made an accusation credible to male gatekeepers? That question had a variety of possible answers, some of which have already been suggested: a long-standing reputation as a witch or a relationship to a suspected witch, hostility between the families in question, explicit lack of sympathy for the afflicted. There would be others, too, some of which (as shall be seen in subsequent chapters) had direct links to the war against the Wabanakis.
Whenever Mary Warren’s sufferings began, and whomever she accused, early in April her torments eased. Probably on Sunday, April 3, Warren put up a “note for thanks in publick” at the meetinghouse in gratitude for her improved condition, despite John Proctor’s stated opposition to such “Bills for publick prayer.” According to Edward Putnam, the other afflicted people then insisted that “she had signed the book; and that was the reason she was better.” Mary Warren’s role in the crisis was about to change: starting as one of the afflicted, she would become a confessed witch—but not before her master and mistress had first faced formal charges.
64
On April 4, Jonathan Walcott and his uncle Nathaniel Ingersoll appeared before Hathorne and Corwin to file formal complaints against Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyce on behalf of themselves and “Severall of theyr Neighbours.” The two women, the complainants stated, had done “great hurt & damage” to Mary Walcott, Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, and a new sufferer, John Indian. The justices, departing from their usual practice of responding quickly to such complaints, delayed issuing a warrant until Friday, April 8. The likely reason for that delay emerged from the details of their directions to the constable: he was to bring the accused to “the publike Meeting house in the Towne” on Monday, April 11. For the first time during the crisis, an examination would take place in the Town, not the Village, and Hathorne would not be the chief examiner. Some of the colony’s council would attend the proceedings, which would be conducted by Thomas Danforth, the deputy governor. Undoubtedly, making such arrangements took some time.
65
Sarah Towne Cloyce, formally charged alongside Goody Proctor on April 4 and examined with her a week later, was approximately twenty years younger than her sister Rebecca Nurse. Born in Salem about 1641, she first wed Edmund Bridges Jr. of Topsfield. In the early 1680s, as an impoverished widow with five children, she married the widower Peter Cloyce. Both joined the Salem Village church, he as an original member in 1689, she the following year. Her second husband had been born in Watertown, but he and several of his brothers moved to Maine, where they lived until fleeing to Essex County during King Philip’s War. Peter remained in Salem Village thereafter, but his brother Thomas returned to Falmouth, where he was killed in 1690. Thomas Cloyce’s wife Susanna was the sister of Philip Lewis, Mercy’s father. In other words, Sarah Cloyce and Mercy Lewis were closely related by marriage; Sarah was the sister-in-law of Mercy’s paternal aunt.
66
Probably for that reason, Mercy Lewis did not take an active role in accusing Sarah Cloyce, although she did participate in the prosecution of Rebecca Nurse and a third Towne sister, Mary Easty, who was accused later in April. Testimony about Sarah Cloyce having afflicted Mercy came not from her but from Ann Jr. Indeed, on the one occasion Mercy evidently named Sarah Cloyce, she quickly recanted. Ephraim Sheldon attested on April 10 that he had earlier witnessed one of Lewis’s fits at Ingersoll’s tavern. “I heard her cry out of Goodwife Cloyce and when she came to herselfe she was asked who she saw. she answered she saw no body they demanded of her whether or noe she did not see Goodwife Nurse or Goodwife Cloyce or Goodwife Gory [sic]. she answered she saw no body.”
67
According to Samuel Sewall, one of those present, “a very great Assembly” attended the examination of the accused witches in the Salem Town meetinghouse on the morning of April 11. Hathorne, Corwin, Danforth, and Sewall were joined as presiding magistrates by Isaac Addington (the colony’s secretary) and two other councilors. Once again, Samuel Parris took notes. Nicholas Noyes opened the proceedings with a prayer, and John Higginson closed them similarly. In his diary, Sewall observed only that “ ’twas awfull to see how the afflicted persons were agitated.”
68
Thomas Danforth began with John Indian, inquiring, “who hurt you?”
69
John accused both Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor of repeatedly choking him and urging him to sign their books. Goody Cloyce eventually broke in with a question: “when did I hurt thee?” “A great many times,” John replied. “Oh! you are a grievous liar,” retorted Sarah. But John persisted, stating that she had most recently tortured him “yesterday at meeting.”
Danforth next turned to Mary Walcott, who claimed that Goody Cloyce had also tormented her, sometimes accompanied by Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and “a great many I do not know.” After Walcott fell into a fit, Danforth addressed Abigail Williams, asking her about the witches’ sacrament she had witnessed near her uncle’s house. This time she gave more details: about forty witches attended, and the “deacons” were Sarah Cloyce and Sarah Good. She had actually spoken to Goody Cloyce, asking her, “Is this a time to receive the Sacrament, you ran-away on the Lords-Day, and scorned to receive it in the Meeting-House, and, Is this a time to receive it?” Abigail also disclosed that another witch meeting had occurred in the interim near Ingersoll’s tavern. Since Nathaniel was a deacon, the witches seemed to be flaunting their contempt for the Village’s religious leadership. Goodwives Cloyce, Nurse, Corey, and Good had all participated in the latter meeting, Abigail announced. At that, Sarah Cloyce asked for some water and, Parris recorded, she “sat down as one seized with a dying fainting fit.” Several afflicted persons then had fits, and some exclaimed, “Oh! her spirit is gone to prison to her sister Nurse.”
The deputy governor then directed his attention to Elizabeth Proctor.
70
Admonishing both her and the afflicted to tell the truth, “as you will answer for it before God another day,” he questioned Walcott, Lewis, Putnam Jr., and Williams about whether Proctor had hurt them; all were struck dumb and could not respond. But John Indian assured Danforth that “this is the woman that came in her shift and choaked me.” When Ann Jr. was once again able to speak, she declared that Proctor’s specter “saith she hath made her maid [Mary Warren] set her hand to it.” Abigail then chimed in, asking the accused, “Did not you tell me, that your maid had written?” Goody Proctor denied everything. “I take God in heaven to be my witness, that I know nothing of it, no more than the child unborn.”
After Abigail and Ann Jr. both had fits, the examination descended into chaos. The girls claimed to see Elizabeth Proctor’s apparition on the beam in the meetinghouse, then accused John Proctor, there to support his wife, of committing witchcraft as well. “Immediately, many, if not all of the bewitched, had grievous fits,” noted Parris. Some of the afflicted shouted that Goodman Proctor was “going to take up Mrs. Pope’s feet.—And her feet were immediately taken up,” Parris interjected. John Proctor declared his innocence, but Abigail accused him of attacking Bathshua Pope, who quickly “fell into a fit.”
Danforth instructed Goodman Proctor, “The children could see what you was going to do before the woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for the devil is bringing you out.” Abigail predicted that Proctor would hurt Goody Vibber, then Mary Walcott, then others. All had fits. Meanwhile, Parris remarked, Betty Hubbard “was in a trance during the whole examination.” And the minister, continuing his close observation of his afflicted niece, added at the end of his transcript a description of how she touched Goody Proctor’s hood “very lightly” during her examination “with open and extended fingers” after trying to strike her with a fist. “Immediately,” Parris recorded, “Abigail cried out, her fingers, her fingers, burned, and Ann Putman took on most greviously, of her head, and sunk down.”