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Authors: Mary Beth Norton
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Distempers, . . . much less Children; and for so long time, and yet undiscovered by their Parents and Relations.” 59
During the three-day trial, neighbors offered maleficium tales to supplement the reports of afflictions. After the defendants had been given a chance to respond to the charges, Sir Matthew Hale instructed the jury that they had to answer two questions: Were the children bewitched? Had the prisoners done it? “That there were such Creatures as
Witches
he made no doubt at all,” he informed the jurors, both because the scriptures said so and because “the wisdom of all Nations” (including the laws of England) declared witchcraft to be a crime. He then admonished them that
“to Condemn the Innocent, and
to let the Guilty go free, were both an Abomination to the Lord.”
The jury took just thirty minutes to convict the women. Soon thereafter, the afflictions ceased, and the next day the young people were able to affirm to the court the truth of “what before hath been Deposed by their Friends and Relations.” Amy Denny and Rose Cullender were hanged three days later, still refusing to confess. 60
The introduction prepared by the anonymous editor of
A Tryal of Witches
reveals one reason why the Bury St. Edmunds case took on such importance in the thinking of people in Essex County in 1692. Sir Matthew Hale, he declared, was a jurist notable for “his Integrity, Learning, and Law, . . . who not only took a great deal of paines, and spent much time in this Tryal himself; but had the Assistance and Opinion of several other very Eminent and Learned Persons.” New Englanders revered Hale, who later became Lord Chief Justice and who authored influential treatises on the law, not only for his jurisprudence but also for his sincere piety. Although a member of the Church of England, he was noted for his religiosity and for his close friendship with the well-known Puritan divine Richard Baxter. Therefore, New Englanders, like the anonymous editor, could well conclude that
A Tryal of
Witches
was “the most perfect Narrative of any thing of this Nature hitherto Extant” and turn to Hale’s precedents for guidance at a time of crisis. Those precedents allowed the admission of testimony about the spectral affliction of children and teenagers, coupled such accounts with traditional stories of the bewitchment of humans and livestock, and employed a touch test to help determine guilt—all elements that were to play a major role in the Salem convictions. New England magistrates might not be noted for their legal learning (none were trained lawyers), but the great Sir Matthew Hale himself seemed to legitimate their conduct of the trials. 61
The other obvious precedent lay much closer to Salem in both time and space. Four of the six children of the pious Boston mason John Goodwin began suffering from fits during the summer of 1688. The Reverend Joshua Moodey of Boston’s Third Church described the children (aged five to thirteen, two boys and two girls) as “grievously tormented, crying out of head, eyes, tongue, teeth breaking their neck, back, thighs, knees, legs, feet, toes etc. & then they roar out, Oh my head, oh my neck.” Their cries were “most dolorous and affecting,” Moodey recounted, but when the pain passed (usually in about an hour) they could “eat, drink, walk play, laugh as at other times.” In Cotton Mather’s opinion as expressed in his narrative of the incidents in
Memorable Providences,
“the whole Temper and Carriage” of the children rendered it unlikely that they would “Dissemble,” and furthermore “it was perfectly impossible for any Dissimulation of theirs to produce what scores of spectators were amazed at.” 62
Investigation showed that the oldest of the four, Martha, had fallen ill first, following an argument with the family’s Irish laundress, whom Martha had accused of stealing some linen. The woman’s mother, Goody Glover, “an ignorant and scandalous old Woman”
During the three-day trial, neighbors offered maleficium tales to supplement the reports of afflictions. After the defendants had been given a chance to respond to the charges, Sir Matthew Hale instructed the jury that they had to answer two questions: Were the children bewitched? Had the prisoners done it? “That there were such Creatures as
Witches
he made no doubt at all,” he informed the jurors, both because the scriptures said so and because “the wisdom of all Nations” (including the laws of England) declared witchcraft to be a crime. He then admonished them that
“to Condemn the Innocent, and
to let the Guilty go free, were both an Abomination to the Lord.”
The jury took just thirty minutes to convict the women. Soon thereafter, the afflictions ceased, and the next day the young people were able to affirm to the court the truth of “what before hath been Deposed by their Friends and Relations.” Amy Denny and Rose Cullender were hanged three days later, still refusing to confess. 60
The introduction prepared by the anonymous editor of
A Tryal of Witches
reveals one reason why the Bury St. Edmunds case took on such importance in the thinking of people in Essex County in 1692. Sir Matthew Hale, he declared, was a jurist notable for “his Integrity, Learning, and Law, . . . who not only took a great deal of paines, and spent much time in this Tryal himself; but had the Assistance and Opinion of several other very Eminent and Learned Persons.” New Englanders revered Hale, who later became Lord Chief Justice and who authored influential treatises on the law, not only for his jurisprudence but also for his sincere piety. Although a member of the Church of England, he was noted for his religiosity and for his close friendship with the well-known Puritan divine Richard Baxter. Therefore, New Englanders, like the anonymous editor, could well conclude that
A Tryal of
Witches
was “the most perfect Narrative of any thing of this Nature hitherto Extant” and turn to Hale’s precedents for guidance at a time of crisis. Those precedents allowed the admission of testimony about the spectral affliction of children and teenagers, coupled such accounts with traditional stories of the bewitchment of humans and livestock, and employed a touch test to help determine guilt—all elements that were to play a major role in the Salem convictions. New England magistrates might not be noted for their legal learning (none were trained lawyers), but the great Sir Matthew Hale himself seemed to legitimate their conduct of the trials. 61
The other obvious precedent lay much closer to Salem in both time and space. Four of the six children of the pious Boston mason John Goodwin began suffering from fits during the summer of 1688. The Reverend Joshua Moodey of Boston’s Third Church described the children (aged five to thirteen, two boys and two girls) as “grievously tormented, crying out of head, eyes, tongue, teeth breaking their neck, back, thighs, knees, legs, feet, toes etc. & then they roar out, Oh my head, oh my neck.” Their cries were “most dolorous and affecting,” Moodey recounted, but when the pain passed (usually in about an hour) they could “eat, drink, walk play, laugh as at other times.” In Cotton Mather’s opinion as expressed in his narrative of the incidents in
Memorable Providences,
“the whole Temper and Carriage” of the children rendered it unlikely that they would “Dissemble,” and furthermore “it was perfectly impossible for any Dissimulation of theirs to produce what scores of spectators were amazed at.” 62
Investigation showed that the oldest of the four, Martha, had fallen ill first, following an argument with the family’s Irish laundress, whom Martha had accused of stealing some linen. The woman’s mother, Goody Glover, “an ignorant and scandalous old Woman”
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