“To the Honorable Judge and Bench, now sitting in Salem, and the Rev. Ministers; This petition humbly sheweth; That whereas your poor petitioner being condemned to die, doth humbly beg of you to take into your judicious and pious consideration, that your poor and humble petitioner knowing my own innocency (blessed be the Lord for it) and seeing plainly the subtility and wiles of my accusers towards myself, cannot but judge charitably of others, who are going the same way to death with me, if the Lord step not mightily in.
“I was confined a whole month, on accusation of witchcraft, and then cleared by the afflicted persons, as some of your Honors know, and in two days time I was cried out upon by them again, and have been since confined, and now am condemned to die. The Lord above knows my innocence, and it will be known at the great day by men and angels. I petition to your Honors, not for my own life, for I know I must die, and my appointed time is set. I question not but your Honors do to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witches, and would not for the world be guilty of innocent blood; but by my own innocency I know you are in the wrong way. May the Lord in mercy, direct you in this great work.
“I would humbly beg that your Honors would be pleased to examine some of those confessing witches; I being confident that there are some of them who have belied themselves and others, as will appear, if not in this world, I am sure it will in the world to come, whither I am going.
“They say that myself and others have made a league with the devil; we cannot confess. The Lord knows they belie me, as I question not they do others; the Lord alone who is the searcher of all hearts knows, as I shall answer at his judgment seat, that I know not the least thing of witchcraft, therefore I cannot, I durst not, belie my own soul.
“I beg your Honors not to deny this my humble petition, from a poor dying innocent person, and I question not but the Lord will give a blessing to your endeavors.
“Mary Easty.”
This touching and modest declaration Mary Easty sealed with her blood. Her husband, Captain Isaac Easty, was a soldier, and then stood in arms against the French and Indians, and to defend the country and the same power which forced away his wife from her once happy home and family, and without regard to her known piety and virtue, carted her up Witch Hill and hung her on the limb of a tree.
Of the other persons hung on the 22d of September 1692, few particulars have come down to us, either in history or by tradition. It was the last execution and its atrocity manifestly weakened the authority of Phipps’ bloody witch court, and the credit of the Parris afflicted band. It swelled the number of victims to twenty, nineteen of whom had now been hung on that fatal gallows-tree, in after ages an object of peculiar superstitious dread; and their bodies, unhonored even by funeral decencies, though not unwept by private affection, were cast with public ignominy into untimely graves about its roots. But the tree withered, as was supposed, thunder-smitten, and stood for years with leafless, outstretched branches and shattered trunk, until burned to the ground by the descendants in the third and fourth generation of those who suffered on it. In superstitious minds tempests and torrents could not wash away the blood from the unhallowed hill whereon it grew, and the soil was cursed and barren of all wholesome vegetation.
But all were not executed who were tried and sentenced. Besides Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Falkner of Andover was saved by her delicate family condition. At her trial the court took the confession of her little daughter, ten years old, against her. But Dorcas Hoar of Beverly, Rebecca Eams of Boxford, Abigail Hobbs of Topsfield, Mary Bradbury of Salisbury, and Ann Foster and Mary Lacy of Andover, all flattered their persecutors by a confession of the charges against them, and thus escaped death.
This whole slaughter of the innocent under the similitude of legal forms, was the work of little more than three short months. A sudden bereavement, indeed, of near and loved friends. When, however, a lawful court was established, this sham tribunal, happily for the country, came to an end. And it is some consolation to know that it was entirely discontinued with the regular jurisprudence of the country.