The day before his execution he was removed from the jail of Hertford, under the escort of one hundred men of the Oxford Blues, commanded by seven officers; and being lodged in the jail of St. Albans, was put into a chaise at five o’clock the next morning, with the hangman, and reached the place of execution about eleven, where his wife and daughter came to take leave of him. The minister of Tring assisted him in his last moments, and he died exhibiting all the marks of unfeigned penitence.
He was executed on the 24th of August 1751, and his body afterwards hung in chains at a place called Gubblecut, near which the offence was committed.
It is not a little remarkable that, at so recent a period, so many people as composed this mob should be found so benighted in intellect, and utterly uninformed, as to be guilty of so miserable and so glaring a piece of absurdity and wickedness as that which was proved in the evidence against the prisoner. In former ages, it is true, not only the people, but even the authorities of the land, believed in witchcraft and sorcery; but it is indeed extraordinary that in the eighteenth century a scene such as that described could have been permitted to occur at a village within thirty miles of the metropolis.
The following copy of an indictment, furnished us by a friend who took it from the American Court record, must prove a matter of curiosity to the reader at the present enlightened era:—
“Essex, ss. (a town in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, in New England.)
“The jurors of our sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen (King William and Queen Mary), present, that George Burroughs, late of Falmouth, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, clerk (a Presbyterian minister of the Gospel), the 9th day of May, and divers other days and times, as well before as after, certain detestable arts, called witchcraft and sorceries, wickedly and feloniously hath used, practised and exercised at and in the town of Salem, in the county aforesaid, upon and against one Mary Walcot, single woman, by which said wicked arts the said Mary, on the day aforesaid, and divers other days and times, as well before as after, was, and is tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented against the peace,” &c.
A witness, by name Ann Putnam, deposed as follows:—On the 8th of May, 1692, I saw the apparition of George Burroughs, who grievously tormented me, and urged me to write in his book, which I refused. He then told me that his two first wives would appear to me presently and tell me a great many lies, but I must not believe them. Then immediately appeared to me the forms of two women in winding-sheets, and napkins about their heads, at which I was greatly affrighted. They turned their faces towards Mr. Burroughs, and looked red and angry, and told him that he had been very cruel to them, and that their blood called for vengeance against him; and they also told him that they should be clothed with white robes in heaven when he should be cast down into hell, and he immediately vanished away. And as soon as he was gone, the women turned their faces towards me, and looked as pale as a white wall; and told me they were Mr. Burroughs’s two wives, and that he had murdered them. And one told me she was his first wife, and he stabbed her under the left breast, and put a piece of sealing-wax in the wound; and she pulled aside the winding-sheet and showed me the place: she also told me that she was in the house where Mr. Daris, the minister of Danvers, then lived when it was done. And the other told me that Mr. Burroughs and a wife that he hath now, killed her in the vessel as she was coming to see her friends from the eastward, because they would have one another. And they both charged me to tell these things to the magistrates before Mr. Burroughs’s face; and if he did not own them, they did not know but they should appear this morning. This morning, also, appeared to me another woman in a winding-sheet, and told me that she was Goodman Fuller’s first wife, and Mr. Burroughs killed her, because there was a difference between her husband and him.
Upon the above, and some other such evidence, was this unfortunate man condemned and executed.
The days are now, happily, past, when such monstrous absurdities are heard of.