Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham

'have thought it their duty on occasion of these crimes, the greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted with the general and uniform feelings of the people of this province with regard to them; it being moreover a question in which are concerned the glory of God and the relief of your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from the threats and menaces of this sort of persons, and who feel the effects of them every day in the mortal and extraordinary maladies which attack them, and the surprising damage and loss of their possessions.' They then review the various laws and decrees of Church and State from the earliest times in support of their convictions: they cite the authority of the Church in council and in its most famous individual teachers. Particularly do they insist upon the opinions of St. Augustin, in his City of God, as irrefragable. 'After so many authorities and punishments ordained by human and divine laws, we humbly supplicate your Majesty to reflect once more upon the extraordinary results which proceed from the malevolence of this sort of people; on the deaths from unknown diseases which are often the consequence of their menaces; on the loss of the goods and chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of truth, and confirmed moreover by the confessions of the accused parties themselves, and that, Sire, with so much agreement and conformity between the different cases, that the most ignorant persons convicted of this crime have spoken to the same circumstances and in nearly the same words as the most celebrated authors who have written about it; all of which may be easily proved to your Majesty's satisfaction by the records of various trials before your parliaments.'—Given in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. Louis XIV., with an unaccustomed care for human life, resisting these forcible arguments, remained firm, and the condemned were saved from the stake.

154. Accommodating himself to modern refinement, the devil usually discards the antiquated horns, hoofs, and tail; and if, as Dr. Mede supposed, 'appearing in human shape, he has always a deformity of some uncouth member or other,' such inconvenient appendages are disguised as much as possible. As Goethe's Mephistopheles explains to his witch:

      'Culture, which renders man less like an ape,

       Has also licked the devil into shape.'

155. Le Sage's Diable Boiteux, who so obligingly introduces the Spanish student to the secret realities of human life, is, it may be observed, of both a more rational and more instructive temperament than the ordinary demons who appear at the witches' revels to practise their senseless and fantastic rites.

156. Narratives of Sorcery, &c., by Thomas Wright, who quotes the authorised reports. Sir Walter Scott refers to 'An account of what happened in the kingdom of Sweden in the years 1669, 1670, and afterwards translated out of High Dutch into English by Dr. Anthony Horneck, attached to Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus. The translation refers to the evidence of Baron Sparr, ambassador from the court of Sweden to the court of England in 1672, and that of Baron Lyonberg, envoy-extraordinary of the same power, both of whom attest the confessions and execution of the witches. The King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His judges and commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and children to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence as was brought before them; but whether the actions confessed and proved against them were real, or only the effect of a strong imagination, he was not as yet able to determine."'

      Chapter X.

       Table of Contents

      Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America—Puritan Intolerance and Superstition—Cotton Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'—Demoniacal Possession—Evidence given before the Commission—Apologies issued by Authority—Sudden Termination of the Proceedings—Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators—The Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution on a large Scale in Christendom—Philosophers begin to expose the Superstition—Meritorious Labours of Webster, Becker, and others—Their Arguments could reach only the Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society—These only partially Enfranchised—The Superstition continues to prevail among the Vulgar—Repeal of the Witch Act in England in 1736—Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the Eighteenth Century—Trial of Jane Wenham in England in 1712—Maria Renata burned in Germany in 1749—La Cadière in France—Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722—Recent Cases of Witchcraft—Protestant Superstition—Witchcraft in the Extra-Christian World.

      A review of the superstitions of witchcraft would be incomplete without some notice of the Salem witches in New England. An equally melancholy and mischievous access of fanatic credulity, during the years 1688-1692, overwhelmed the colony of Massachusetts with a multitude of demons and their human accomplices; and the circumstances of the period were favourable to the vigour of the delusion. In the beginning of their colonisation the New Englanders were generally a united community; they were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had been thus infected they were too busily engaged in contending against the difficulties and dangers of a perilous position to be able to give much attention to differences in religious belief. But soon the purity of their faith was in danger of being corrupted by heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political and religious tyranny in England, and the dominant sect in North America almost as severely oppressed Anabaptists and Quakers in the colonies as they themselves, religious exiles from ecclesiastical despotism, had suffered in the old world. They proved themselves worthy followers of the persecutors of Servetus. Other enemies from without also were active in seeking the destruction of the true believers. Fierce wars and struggles were continuously being waged with the surrounding savages, who regarded the increasing prosperity and number of the intruders with just fear and resentment.

      Imbued as the colonists were with demoniacal prepossessions, it is not so surprising that they deemed their rising State beset by spiritual enemies; and it is fortunate, perhaps, that the wilds of North America were not still more productive of fiends and witches, and more destructive massacres than that of 1690-92 did not disgrace their colonial history. From the pen of Dr. Cotton Mather, Fellow of Harvard College, and his father (who was the Principal), we have received the facts of the history. These two divines and their opinions obtained great respect throughout the colony. They devoutly received the orthodox creed as expounded in the writings of the ancient authorities on demonology, firmly convinced of the reality of the present wanderings of Satan 'up and down' in the earth; and Dr. Cotton Mather was at the same time the chief supporter and the historian of the demoniacal war now commenced. It was significantly initiated by the execution of a papist, an Irishman named Glover, who was accused of having bewitched the daughters of a mason of Boston, by name Goodwin. These girls, of infantile age, suffered from convulsive fits, the ordinary symptom of 'possession.' Mather received one of them into his house for the purpose of making experiments, and, if possible, to exorcise the evil spirits. She would suddenly, in presence of a number of spectators, fall into a trance, rise up, place herself in a riding attitude as if setting out for the Sabbath, and hold conversation with invisible beings. A peculiar phase of this patient's case was that when under the influence of 'hellish charms' she took great pleasure in reading or hearing 'bad' books, which she was permitted to do with perfect freedom. Those books included the Prayer Book of the English Episcopal Church, Quakers' writings, and popish productions. Whenever the Bible was taken up, the devil threw her into the most fearful convulsions.

As a result of this diagnosis appeared the publication of 'Late Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft and Possession,' which, together with Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits,' a work Mather was careful to distribute and recommend to the people, increased the fever of fear