Giles Corey lived previously, for some time, in the town of Salem. He sold his house there in 1659. The contract with a carpenter for building his farmhouse is preserved. It was stipulated to be erected "where he shall appoint." While the carpenter was getting out the materials, he selected and bought the farm, on which he lived ever afterwards. The house was to be "twenty feet in length, fifteen in breadth, and eight feet stud." Nothing strikes us more, as strange and unaccountable, than the small size of houses in those days. One would have thought, that, where wood was so plenty and near at hand, and land of no account, they would have built larger houses. In a letter, dated Nov. 16, 1646, from Governor Winthrop to his son John, of Connecticut, he gives an account "of a tempest (than which I never observed a greater);" and mentions that the roof of "Lady Moody's house, at Salem," with all of the chimney above it, was blown off in two parts, and "carried six or eight rods. Ten persons lay under it, and knew not of it till they arose in the morning." The house had a flat roof, was of one story, and nine feet in height! Lady Deborah Moody was a person of high position, a connection of Sir Henry Vane, and a woman of property. She bought Mr. Humphreys' great plantation. But, like Townsend Bishop, she was dealt with, and compelled to quit the colony, on account of her doubts about infant baptism. Winthrop calls her a "wise and anciently religious woman." She went to Long Island, where her influence was so important, that Governor Stuyvesant consulted her in his administration, and conceded to her the nomination of magistrates. It seems very strange that such a lady should have had a house only nine feet high. The early houses were built either as temporary structures or with a view to enlargement. Perhaps Lady Moody intended to add a story to hers. They were low-studded for warmth. The farm-houses generally were designed to be increased in length, when convenience required. The chimney was very large, placed at one end, and so constructed, that, on the extension of the building, fire-places could be opened into it on the new end. A building of twenty feet was prepared to become one of forty feet in width or length, as the case might be; and then the chimney would be in the middle of it.
As has been intimated, Corey was in bad repute. Either he was a lawless man, or much misunderstood. I am inclined to the latter opinion. He belonged to that class of persons, instances of which we occasionally meet, who care little about the opinions or the talk of others. On one occasion, he was going into town with a cartload of wood. He met Anthony Needham, in company with John Procter whose house he had just passed. Procter accosted him thus: "How now, Giles, wilt thou never leave thy old trade? Thou hast got some of my wood here upon thy cart." Corey answered, "True, I did take two or three sticks to lay behind the cart to ease the oxen, because they bore too hard." This shows the free way in which Procter bantered with Corey, and the slight account the latter made of it. But the thing before long got to be too serious to be trifled with. It became the fashion to charge all sorts of offences against Corey; and, whatever any one lost or mislaid, he was considered as having abstracted it. The gossip against him was quite unrestrained, and created a bitter and angry feeling in the neighborhood. In the winter of 1676, a man named Goodell, who had been working on Corey's farm, was carried home to his friends by Corey's wife, in a feeble state of health, and died soon after. It was whispered about, and before long openly asserted, that he had come to his death in consequence of having been violently beaten by Corey, who was accordingly arrested and brought to trial for killing the man. There was a great excitement against him. He probably had punished the man severely for some alleged misconduct; and it was charged that the castigation had been so unmerciful and excessive as to have broken down his constitution and caused his death. There was conflicting evidence going to show that the man had been beaten, for some misconduct, after he had returned to his family. It was a circumstance in favor of Corey, that his wife had taken the invalid to his home; and there was no evidence of any ill feeling between her and the sick man during a stop they made at Procter's house on their way. The death, too, it was supposed by some, might have resulted from ordinary disease, and not from whipping, either at Corey's or at home. The result was, that, notwithstanding the prejudice against Corey, he was discharged on paying a fine; showing that the Court did not consider it a very serious offence. We shall hear of this affair again.
In the year 1678, there was a suit at law between Corey and a man named John Gloyd, a laborer on his farm, on a question of wages. The case was, by agreement of the parties, passed out of court into the hands of arbitrators mutually chosen. John Procter was one of the arbitrators, and, as it would seem, chosen as the friend of Gloyd: Nathaniel Putnam and Edmund Bridges were the others; one of them chosen by Corey, and the other mutually agreed upon. They brought in their award. Its precise character is not stated; but the circumstances indicate that it was favorable to Gloyd. The conduct of Corey on this occasion shows, that, though a rough man perhaps, and liable, from his peculiar ways, to be harshly spoken of, he had, after all, a generous, forgiving, and genial nature. Nathaniel Putnam and Edmund Bridges state, that, when they brought in their award, "it was greatly to the satisfaction of the parties concerned; and Giles Corey did manifest as much satisfaction, and gave as many thanks to every one of us, as ever we heard; and Goodman Corey did manifest, to our observation, as much satisfaction to John Procter as he did to the rest of the arbitrators." Captain Moore, being by when the award was brought in, says, "I did see and take notice of the abundance of love manifested from Corey to Procter, and from Procter to Corey: for they drank wine together; and Procter paid for part, and Corey for part."
This remarkable overflow of affection between these two men is rendered interesting, not merely by the collisions into which, before and after, their impulsive and imprudent natures brought them, but by the part they were destined to enact in an impending tragedy, which was to bring them to a fearful end in a manner and on a scene that will arrest the notice of all ages, and attest to their strong characters and heroic spirit. The passage has a unique interest, and is worthy of a painter.
It happened unfortunately, that, a few days after the loving embraces of these hardy men, Procter's house took fire. According to their habit, some of the neighbors at once started the idea, that Corey had set fire to it because of the award of the arbitrators, of whom Procter was one. Under the excitement of the conflagration, with his usual rashness, and forgetting the pledges of reconciliation that had just passed between them, Procter fell in with the accusation, and Corey was brought to trial. It appeared, in evidence, that John Phelps and Thomas Fuller, who lived on the western borders of the village, near Ipswich River, coming along the road towards Procter's Corner about two hours before daylight, on the way probably to Salem market, saw his roof on fire, gave the alarm, and stopped to help put it out. Thomas Gould and Thomas Flint thought it must be the work of an incendiary, or of "an evil hand," as they expressed it, from the place where it took and the hour when it occurred. On the other hand, it was testified by James Poland and Caleb and Jane Moore, that they heard John Procter say that his boy carried a lamp and set the fire by accident. This was said by him, probably before the idea of Corey's agency in the matter had been put into his head. The prisoner proved an alibi by the most conclusive evidence, which is so curious, as giving an insight of a farmer's life at that time, and of Corey's domestic condition, that it may well be inserted.
Abraham Walcot testifies, that, "Tuesday night last was a week, I lodged at Giles Corey's house, which night John Procter's house was damaged by fire; and Giles Corey went to bed before nine o'clock, and rose about sunrise again, and could not have gone out of the house but I should have heard him; and it must have been impossible that he should have gone to Procter's house that night; for he cannot in a long time go afoot, and, for his horse-kind, they were all in the woods. And further testifieth, that said Corey came home very weary from work, and went to bed the rather." His wife testified that he was in bed from nine o'clock until sunrise.
John Parker, one of Corey's four sons-in-law, testified as follows: "I being at work with my father, Goodman Corey, the day Goodman Procter's house was on fire. I going home with my father the night before, he complained that he was very weary, and said he would go to bed. I did, on our way going, ask him whether or no he would eat his supper: my father answered me again, no, he could not eat any thing that night; and so went to bed, and so I left him abed. And, the next morning, my father came to me about sun-rising, and asked me to go with Abraham Walcot to fetch a load of hay; and my father said he would try whether or not he could cart up a load of peas. I do also testify that he had no horse-kind near at home at that time."
John Gloyd, the hired man, with whom he had the lawsuit that had been settled a day or two before by arbitrators, testified, in corroboration of Parker, and to show that the latter could not have had any thing to do with the fire, that he slept in the same room with said Parker that night, and that he came to bed between nine and ten o'clock in the evening, and never rose until the break of day. Gloyd's wife testified to the same effect. There turned out to be no evidence against Corey whatever, but abundant proof of his innocence. The hard-working, "weary" old man was triumphantly acquitted. He thought, however, from this high-handed and utterly groundless attempt to wrong and ruin him, and from calumnious general statements that had been made against him in the course of the trial, that it was time to put a stop to the malignant and mischievous slanders which had been current in the neighborhood. He instituted prosecutions of Procter and others for defamation, and recovered against them all. After this, we hear no more of him until he experienced religion and was received into the First Church. Whether he and Procter became reconciled again is not known. Probably they did; for they seem to have had points of attraction, and each of them traits of kind-heartedness and generosity, under a rather rough exterior. The manner in which they bore themselves in their last hours is a matter of history, and stamps them both with true manliness.
The incidents which have now been related, and the peculiar traits of this man, are perhaps sufficient to account for the fact, that he was spoken of as a person of "a scandalous" life. He had afforded food for scandal; and it is not surprising, that, in a rural community, where but few topics for talk occur beyond the village boundaries, all should have participated, more or less, in criticising his ways, and that the various difficulties into which he had been drawn, and the charges against him, should have made him the object of much prejudice. His wife Martha was also a noticeable character. She was a professor of religion, a member of the village church, and found her chief happiness in attendance upon public worship and in private devotions. Much of her time—indeed, all that she could rescue from the labors of the household—was spent in prayer. She was a woman of spirit and pluck, as we shall see.
Another notability of the village was Bridget Bishop. In 1666—then the widow Wasselbe—she was married to Thomas Oliver. After his death, she became the wife of Edward Bishop, who is spoken of as a "sawyer." This term did not describe the same occupation then to which it is almost wholly applied now. Firewood, in those days, was not, as a general thing, sawed, but chopped. The sawyer got out boards and joists, beams, and timber of all kinds, from logs; and before mills were constructed, or where they were not conveniently accessible, it was an indispensable employment, and held a high rank among the departments of useful industry. It was in constant requisition in shipyards. It was a manly form of labor, requiring a considerable outlay of apparatus, and developing finely the whole muscular organization. The implement employed, beside the ordinary tools, such as wedges, beetles, the broad-axe, chains, and crowbar, was a strong steel cutting-plate, of great breadth, with large teeth, highly polished and thoroughly wrought, some eight or ten feet in length, with a double handle, crossing the plate at each end at a right angle. It was worked by two men, and called a "pit-saw," because sometimes the man at the lower handle stood in a deep pit, dug for the purpose, and called a "saw-pit." But, among the early settlers, the usual method was to make a frame of strong timbers. The log to be sawed was raised by slings, or slid up an inclined plane, and placed upon cross-beams. Above it, a scaffolding was made on which one man stood; the other stood on the ground below. They each held the saw by both hands, and worked in unison. The log was pushed along by handspikes as they reached the cross-timbers, and wedges were used to keep the cleft open, that the saw might work free. So important was this business considered, that, from time to time, the General Court regulated by law the rates of pay to the sawyer. If a farmer had suitable woodlands, he provided in many cases a saw-frame or saw-pit of his own, got out his logs, and worked them into boards or square timber for sale. This was a profitable business.