Read Online The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff - Free Book Online
Authors: Stacy Schiff
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household staff—doubtless also lonely to him. He quickly began lobbying for ownership of the parsonage and its land. The request was not inappropriate but it was premature; towns made such grants to their ministers after longtime service. The Salem villagers demurred.
Less than a year after his ordination, Parris compiled a numbered list of complaints, which he attempted to read to his congregants. Tempers twice prevented him from finishing. He managed finally to air his grievances at a special meeting in his parlor. Neither the house nor the fence and pasture nor the salary nor the firewood supply met with his approval. Already the eight-year-old parsonage was in dire need of repairs. His fence was rotten and on the verge of collapse. Brush overran two-thirds of his pasture. He could not subsist on an unpaid salary. Firewood he left until last. After much trouble on his part, he had received two small loads in three weeks. It was now the end of October. Without wood, he warned his congregants, they would hear no further Scripture. “I cannot preach without study. I cannot study without fire. I cannot live quietly without study,” Parris explained. He demanded a speedy consideration of each matter and “a loving and Christian answer, in writing.” The air was icy with grievances, taut with apprehension and frustration, discomforts his family inevitably shared. They greeted the disgruntled parsonage visitors and heard the raised voices, the outraged stomp of boots. The minister found his congregants insulting in the extreme. To his petition Parris affixed a line in his signature brand of high-handed self-pity: “Let me add if you continue contentious, your contentions will remove me either to the grave, or some other place.” He understood that his parishioners hadbeen kinder to his predecessors. None had fared as poorly. Nor presumably were his predecessors as sensitive to the cold as was he, after nearly a decade in the tropics.
The villagers met repeatedly to discuss their minister’s predicament. Within months of his ordination, his salary was in arrears; as early as the fall of 1690, a movement was afoot to dismiss him. The committee to collect his salary voted late in 1691 not to do so. He was also out of wood. A bitterness seeped into the sermons. The parsonage meanwhile grew colder and colder, as he emphasized from the pulpit. Were it not for a visiting Salem town deacon who made a last-minute delivery, Parris informed his congregants on October 8, he would have frozen. He made no appeal for the relief of his family, acutely aware of the challenges to his authority and presumably shivering as well in the rabid weather; November brought heavy snows and howling winds. Parris informed the committee that came to see him early that month that they should be more mindful of him than of other people. Having dug out from banks of snow, he complained on November 18 that he “had scarce wood enough to burn ’til tomorrow.” It did not help that the winter of 1691–1692 was especially arctic. Bread froze in communion plates, ink in pens, sap in the fireplace. The chimney delivered icy blasts. Parris preached to a chorus of rattling coughs and sniffles, to the shuffling of cruelly frostbitten feet. For everyone’s comfort he curtailed his afternoon sermon of January 3, 1692. It was simply too cold to go on.
Village quarrels aside, Parris had ample reason to complain. His was grueling work for which he was little prepared. He had taken on several occupations at once. The minister in a “little village” read divinity one minute and trimmed his mare the next, left off repairing the garden fence to preside over a prayer meeting. Parris might well hang a map of the world in his parsonage, he might appear to be the village intellectual, having at Harvard translated the Old Testament into Hebrew and Greek, but he devoted himself equally to turnip-sowing, cider-making, and squirrel-killing. “So perplexing it is to
Less than a year after his ordination, Parris compiled a numbered list of complaints, which he attempted to read to his congregants. Tempers twice prevented him from finishing. He managed finally to air his grievances at a special meeting in his parlor. Neither the house nor the fence and pasture nor the salary nor the firewood supply met with his approval. Already the eight-year-old parsonage was in dire need of repairs. His fence was rotten and on the verge of collapse. Brush overran two-thirds of his pasture. He could not subsist on an unpaid salary. Firewood he left until last. After much trouble on his part, he had received two small loads in three weeks. It was now the end of October. Without wood, he warned his congregants, they would hear no further Scripture. “I cannot preach without study. I cannot study without fire. I cannot live quietly without study,” Parris explained. He demanded a speedy consideration of each matter and “a loving and Christian answer, in writing.” The air was icy with grievances, taut with apprehension and frustration, discomforts his family inevitably shared. They greeted the disgruntled parsonage visitors and heard the raised voices, the outraged stomp of boots. The minister found his congregants insulting in the extreme. To his petition Parris affixed a line in his signature brand of high-handed self-pity: “Let me add if you continue contentious, your contentions will remove me either to the grave, or some other place.” He understood that his parishioners hadbeen kinder to his predecessors. None had fared as poorly. Nor presumably were his predecessors as sensitive to the cold as was he, after nearly a decade in the tropics.
The villagers met repeatedly to discuss their minister’s predicament. Within months of his ordination, his salary was in arrears; as early as the fall of 1690, a movement was afoot to dismiss him. The committee to collect his salary voted late in 1691 not to do so. He was also out of wood. A bitterness seeped into the sermons. The parsonage meanwhile grew colder and colder, as he emphasized from the pulpit. Were it not for a visiting Salem town deacon who made a last-minute delivery, Parris informed his congregants on October 8, he would have frozen. He made no appeal for the relief of his family, acutely aware of the challenges to his authority and presumably shivering as well in the rabid weather; November brought heavy snows and howling winds. Parris informed the committee that came to see him early that month that they should be more mindful of him than of other people. Having dug out from banks of snow, he complained on November 18 that he “had scarce wood enough to burn ’til tomorrow.” It did not help that the winter of 1691–1692 was especially arctic. Bread froze in communion plates, ink in pens, sap in the fireplace. The chimney delivered icy blasts. Parris preached to a chorus of rattling coughs and sniffles, to the shuffling of cruelly frostbitten feet. For everyone’s comfort he curtailed his afternoon sermon of January 3, 1692. It was simply too cold to go on.
Village quarrels aside, Parris had ample reason to complain. His was grueling work for which he was little prepared. He had taken on several occupations at once. The minister in a “little village” read divinity one minute and trimmed his mare the next, left off repairing the garden fence to preside over a prayer meeting. Parris might well hang a map of the world in his parsonage, he might appear to be the village intellectual, having at Harvard translated the Old Testament into Hebrew and Greek, but he devoted himself equally to turnip-sowing, cider-making, and squirrel-killing. “So perplexing it is to
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