VII.
ADVICE OF THE MINISTERS, FURTHER CONSIDERED. COTTON MATHER'S PLAN FOR DEALING WITH SPECTRAL TESTIMONY.
The Advice of the Ministers is a document that holds a prominent place in our public history; and its relation to events needs to be elucidated.
In his Life of Sir William Phips, Cotton Mather has this paragraph: "And Sir William Phips arriving to his Government, after this ensnaring horrible storm was begun, did consult the neighboring Ministers of the Province, who made unto his Excellency and the Council, a Return (drawn up, at their desire, by Mr. Mather, the younger, as I have been informed) wherein they declared."—Magnalia, Book II., page 63.
He then gives, without intimating that any essential or substantial part of the declaration, or Advice, was withheld, the Sections not included in brackets.—Vide, pages 21, 22, ante.
It is to be observed that Phips is represented as having asked the Ministers for their advice, and their answer as having been made to his "Excellency and the Council." There is no mention of this transaction in the Records of the Council. Phips makes no reference to it in his letter of the fourteenth of October, which is remarkable, as it would have been to his purpose, in explaining the grounds of his procedure, in organizing, and putting into operation, the judicial tribunal at Salem. It may be concluded, from all that I shall present,—Sir William, having given over the whole business to his Deputy and Chief-justice, with an understanding that he was authorized to manage it, in all particulars,—that this transaction with the Ministers may never have been brought to the notice of the Governor at all: his official character and title were, perhaps, referred to, as a matter of form. The Council, as such, had nothing to do with it; but the Deputy-governor and certain individual members of the Council, that is, those who, with him, as Chief-justice, constituted the Special Court, asked and received the Advice.
Again: the paragraph, as constructed by Mather, just quoted, certainly leaves the impression on a reader, that Phips applied for the Advice of the Ministers, at or soon after his arrival. The evidence, I think, is conclusive, that the Advice was not asked, until after the first Session of the Court had been held. This is inferrible from the answer of the Ministers, which is dated thirteen days after the first trial, and five days after the execution of a sentence then passed. It alludes to the success which had been given to the prosecutions. If the Government had asked counsel of the Ministers before the trials commenced, it is inexplicable and incredible, besides being inexcusable, that the Ministers should have delayed their reply until after the first act of the awful tragedy had passed, and blood begun to be shed. Hutchinson expressly says: "The further trials were put off to the adjournment, the thirtieth of June. The Governor and Council thought proper, in the mean time, to take the opinion of several of the principal Ministers, upon the state of things, as they then stood. This was an old Charter practice."—History, ii., 52.
It has been regarded as a singular circumstance, that after such pains had been taken, and so great a stretch of power practised, to put a Court so suddenly in operation to try persons accused of witchcraft, on the pretence, too, recorded in the Journal of the Council, of the "thronged" condition of the jails, at that "hot season," and after trying one person only, it should have adjourned for four weeks. Perhaps, by a collation of passages and dates, we may reach a probable explanation. In his letter to "the Ministers in and near Boston," written in January, 1696, after considering briefly, and in forcible language, the fearful errors from which the Delusion of 1692 had risen, and solemnly reminding them of what they ought to have done to lead their people out of such errors, Calef brings their failure to do it home to them, in these pungent words: "If, instead of this, you have some by word and writing propagated, and others recommended, such doctrines, and abetted the false notions which are so prevalent in this apostate age, it is high time to consider it. If, when authority found themselves almost nonplust in such prosecutions, and sent to you for your advice what they ought to do, and you have then thanked them for what they had already done (and thereby encouraged them to proceed in those very by-paths already fallen into) it so much the more nearly concerns you. Ezek., xxxiii., 2 to 8."—Calef, 92.
Looking at this passage, in connection with that quoted just before from Hutchinson, we gather that something had occurred that "nonplust" the Court—some serious embarrassment, that led to its sudden adjournment—after the condemnation of Bridget Bishop, while many other cases had been fully prepared for trial by the then Attorney-general. Newton, and the parties to be tried had, the day before, been brought to Salem from the jail in Boston, and were ready to be put to the Bar. What was the difficulty? The following may be the solution.