How many confessed to witchcraft
And being motivated with her poverty and his fair promises of riches and revenge of her enemies, took him for her master and renounced Christ. Page Two, Third Paragraph: Item, she confesses that upon a complaint of a woman of the frowardness [person who is difficult to deal with] of her father-in-law and her earnest desire to be quit of him, she made a picture of wax and raised a spirit at a waterside beside a brier bush [prickly shrub], desiring her to enchant it to serve for his destruction, and send it to the said woman to be put under his bed sheet or bed head.
Page 4, Second Paragraph: Item, she confesses that she raised the devil by her evocations [act of summoning the spirits] to ask if a gentlewoman should live or die. He appeared to her in likeness of a black dog before supper, she being alone. All three women were put in jail.
With the seed of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed for the next few months. Charges against Martha Corey, a loyal member of the Church in Salem Village, greatly concerned the community; if she could be a witch, then anyone could. Magistrates even questioned Sarah Good's 4-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and her timid answers were construed as a confession.
The questioning got more serious in April when Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and his assistants attended the hearings. Dozens of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were brought in for questioning. The first case brought to the special court was Bridget Bishop, an older woman known for her gossipy habits and promiscuity. When asked if she committed witchcraft, Bishop responded, "I am as innocent as the child unborn. Five days later, respected minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter imploring the court not to allow spectral evidence—testimony about dreams and visions.
The court largely ignored this request and five people were sentenced and hanged in July, five more in August and eight in September. On October 3, following in his son's footsteps, Increase Mather, then president of Harvard, denounced the use of spectral evidence: "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned. Governor Phipps, in response to Mather's plea and his own wife being questioned for witchcraft, prohibited further arrests, released many accused witches and dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October Phipps replaced it with a Superior Court of Judicature, which disallowed spectral evidence and only condemned 3 out of 56 defendants.
Phipps eventually pardoned all who were in prison on witchcraft charges by May But the damage had been done: 19 were hanged on Gallows Hill, a year-old man was pressed to death with heavy stones, several people died in jail and nearly people, overall, had been accused of practicing "the Devil's magic. Following the trials and executions, many involved, like judge Samuel Sewall, publicly confessed error and guilt.
On January 14, , the General Court ordered a day of fasting and soul-searching for the tragedy of Salem. Quakers , for example, were easy targets. Most of the accused were Godfearing individuals and respected townspeople. After the hysteria was over, Massachusetts recognized the witch trials for what they were and began a centuries-long process of atonement. Judges, juries, and accusers publicly apologized, but the apologies were of little comfort to affected families.
By the state had exonerated the accused from all wrongdoing and offered monetary compensations to surviving family members. In the Massachusetts state legislature officially cleared the names of the last of the accused witches. The Crucible itself has met with censorship in some communities and has been banned from some schools.
This article was originally published in Elizabeth Purdy, Ph. Hoffer, Peter Charles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Norton, Mary Beth. Roach, Marilyn K. New York: Cooper Square Press, Kluft, David. Elizabeth R. Salem Witch Trials [electronic resource].
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