The evidence against Mrs. Morse was frivolous to the last degree, without any of the force and effect given to support the prosecutions in Salem, twelve years afterwards, by the astounding confessions of the accused, and the splendid acting of the "afflicted children;" yet she was tried and condemned in Boston, and sentenced there on "Lecture-day." The representatives of the people, in the House of Deputies, cried out against her reprieve. She was saved by the courage and wisdom of Governor Bradstreet, subsequently a resident of Salem, where his ashes rest. He was living here, at the age of ninety years, during the witchcraft prosecutions in 1692; but, old as he was, he made known his entire disapprobation of them. It is safe to say, that, if he had not been superseded by the arrival of Sir William Phipps as governor under the new charter, they would never have taken place. Notwithstanding all this,—in spite of the remonstrances, at the time, of Brattle, and afterwards of Hutchinson,—Boston and other towns (earlier, if not equally, committed to such proceedings) have, by a sort of general conspiracy, joined the rest of the world in trying to throw and fasten the whole responsibility and disgrace of witchcraft prosecutions upon Salem.
Things continued in the condition just described,—Mrs. Morse in jail under sentence of death; that sentence suspended by reprieves from the Governor, from time to time, until the next year, when her husband, in her behalf and in her name, presented an earnest and touching petition "to the honored Governor, Deputy-governor, Magistrates, and Deputies now assembled in Court, May the 18th, 1681," that her case might be concluded, one way or another. After referring to her condemnation, and to her attestation of innocence, she says, "By the mercy of God, and the goodness of the honored Governor, I am reprieved." She begs the Court to "hearken to her cry, a poor prisoner." She places herself at the foot of the tribunal of the General Court: "I now stand humbly praying your justice in hearing my case, and to determine therein as the Lord shall direct. I do not understand law, nor do I know how to lay my case before you as I ought; for want of which I humbly beg of your honors that my request may not be rejected." The House of Deputies, on the 24th of May, voted to give her a new trial. But the magistrates refused to concur in the vote; and so the matter stood, for how long a time there are, I believe, no means of knowing. Finally, however, she was released from prison, and allowed to return to her own house. This we learn from a publication made by Mr. Hale, of Beverly, in 1697. It seems, that, after getting her out of prison and restored to her home, to use Mr. Hale's words, "her husband, who was esteemed a sincere and understanding Christian by those that knew him, desired some neighbor ministers, of whom I was one, to discourse his wife, which we did; and her discourse was very Christian, and still pleaded her innocence as to that which was laid to her charge." From Mr. Hale's language, it may be inferred that she had not been pardoned or discharged, but still lay under sentence of death, after her removal to her own house: for he and his brethren did not "esteem it prudence to pass any definite sentence upon one under her circumstances;" but they ventured to say that they were "inclined to the more charitable side." Mr. Hale states, that, "in her last sickness, she was in much trouble and darkness of spirit, which occasioned a judicious friend to examine her strictly, whether she had been guilty of witchcraft; but she said no, but the ground of her trouble was some impatient and passionate speeches and actions of hers while in prison, upon the account of her suffering wrongfully, whereby she had provoked the Lord by putting contempt upon his Word. And, in fine, she sought her pardon and comfort from God in Christ; and died, so far as I understand, praying to and relying upon God in Christ for salvation."
The cases of Margaret Jones, Ann Hibbins, and Elizabeth Morse illustrate strikingly and fully the history and condition of the public mind in New England, and the world over, in reference to witchcraft in the seventeenth century. They show that there was nothing unprecedented, unusual, or eminently shocking, after all, in what I am about to relate as occurring in Salem, in 1692. The only real offence proved upon Margaret Jones was that she was a successful practitioner of medicine, using only simple remedies. Ann Hibbins was the victim of the slanderous gossip of a prejudiced neighborhood; all our actual knowledge of her being her Will, which proves that she was a person of much more than ordinary dignity of mind, which was kept unruffled and serene in the bitterest trials and most outrageous wrongs which it is possible for folly and "man's inhumanity to man" to bring upon us in this life. Elizabeth Morse appears to have been one of the best of Christian women. The accusations against them, as a whole, cover nearly the whole ground upon which the subsequent prosecutions in Salem rested. John Winthrop passed sentence upon Margaret Jones, John Endicott upon Ann Hibbins, and Simon Bradstreet upon Elizabeth Morse. The last-named governor performed the office as an unavoidable act of official duty, and prevented the execution of the sentence by the courageous use of his prerogative, in defiance of public clamor and the wrath of the representatives of the whole people of the colony. These facts sufficiently show, that the proceedings afterwards had in Salem accorded with those in like cases, of that and preceding generations; and were sanctioned by the all but universal sentiments of mankind and a uniform chain of precedents.
The trial of Bridget Bishop, in 1680, before the County Court at Salem, for witchcraft, and her acquittal, have already been mentioned in the account of Salem Village, in the [First Part].
In 1688, an Irish woman, named Glover, was executed in Boston for bewitching four children belonging to the family of a Mr. Goodwin. She was a Roman Catholic, represented to have been quite an ignorant person, and seems, moreover, from the accounts given of her, to have been crazy. The oldest of the children was only about thirteen years of age. The most experienced physicians pronounced them bewitched. Their conduct, as it is related by Cotton Mather, was indeed very extraordinary. At one time they would bark like dogs, and then again they would purr like cats. "Yea," says he, "they would fly like geese, and be carried with an incredible swiftness, having but just their toes now and then upon the ground, sometimes not once in twenty feet, and their arms waved like the wings of a bird."
One of the children seems to have had a genius scarcely inferior to that of Master Burke himself: there was no part nor passion she could not enact. She would complain that the old Irish woman had tied an invisible noose round her neck, and was choking her; and her complexion and features would instantly assume the various hues and violent distortions natural to a person in such a predicament. She would declare that an invisible chain was fastened to one of her limbs, and would limp about precisely as though it were really the case. She would say that she was in an oven; the perspiration would drop from her face, and she would exhibit every appearance of being roasted: then she would cry out that cold water was thrown upon her, and her whole frame would shiver and shake. She pretended that the evil spirit came to her in the shape of an invisible horse; and she would canter, gallop, trot, and amble round the rooms and entries in such admirable imitation, that an observer could hardly believe that a horse was not beneath her, and bearing her about. She would go up stairs with exactly such a toss and bound as a person on horseback would exhibit.
After some time, Cotton Mather took her into his own family, to see whether he could not exorcise her. His account of her conduct, while there, is highly amusing for its credulous simplicity. The cunning and ingenious child seems to have taken great delight in perplexing and playing off her tricks upon the learned man. Once he wished to say something in her presence, to a third person, which he did not intend she should understand. He accordingly spoke in Latin. But she had penetration enough to conjecture what he had said: he was amazed. He then tried Greek: she was equally successful. He next spoke in Hebrew: she instantly detected the meaning. At last he resorted to the Indian language, and that she pretended not to know. He drew the conclusion that the evil being with whom she was in compact was acquainted familiarly with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but not with the Indian tongue.
It is curious to notice how adroitly she fell into the line of his prejudices. He handed her a book written by a Quaker, to which sect it is well known he was violently opposed: she would read it off with great ease, rapidity, and pleasure. A book written against the Quakers she could not read at all. She could read Popish books, but could not decipher a syllable of the Assembly's Catechism. Dr. Mather was earnestly opposed to the order and liturgy of the Church of England. The artful little girl worked with great success upon this prejudice. She pretended to be very fond of the Book of Common Prayer, and called it her Bible. It would relieve her of her sufferings, in a moment, to put it into her hands. While she could not read a word of the Scriptures in the Bible, she could read them very easily in the Prayer-book; but she could not read the Lord's Prayer even in this her favorite volume. All these things went far to strengthen the conviction of Dr. Mather that she was in league with the Devil; for this was the only explanation that could be given to satisfy his mind of her partiality to the productions of Quakers, Catholics, and Episcopalians, and her aversion to the Bible and the Catechism.
She exhibited the most exquisite ingenuity in beguiling Dr. Mather by the force of a charm, the power of which he could not resist for a moment,—flattery. He thus describes, with a complacency but thinly concealed under the veil of affected modesty, the part she played, in order to give the impression—which it was the great object of his ambition to make upon the public mind—that the Devil stood in special fear of his presence:—
"There then stood open the study of one belonging to the family, into which, entering, she stood immediately on her feet, and cried out, 'They are gone! they are gone! They say that they cannot,—God won't let 'em come here!' adding a reason for it which the owner of the study thought more kind than true; and she presently and perfectly came to herself, so that her whole discourse and carriage was altered into the greatest measure of sobriety."