The last execution for witchcraft in Massachusetts took place in 1692, as we have seen; indeed, twenty of the total of twenty-six cases fell within the limits of that one year. There were no witch trials in New England in the eighteenth century. The annals of Europe are not so clear. Six witches were burned in Renfrewshire in 1697.[190] In England, Elinor Shaw and Mary Phillips, “two notorious witches,” were put to death at Northampton in 1705 (or 1706).[191] In 1712 Jane Wenham was condemned to death for witchcraft, but she was pardoned.[192] Two clergymen of the Church of England, as well as a Bachelor of Arts of Cambridge,[193] gave evidence against her. Just before the arrest of Jane Wenham, Addison in the Spectator for July 11, 1711, had expressed the creed of a well-bred and sensible man of the world: “I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any particular Instance of it.” Blackstone, it will be remembered, subscribed to the same doctrine, making particular reference to Addison.[194] Prompted, one may conjecture, by the stir which the Wenham trial made, the Rev. J. Boys, of Coggeshall Magna, in Essex, transcribed, in this same year, from his memoranda, A Brief Account of the Indisposition of the Widow Coman. This case had occurred in his own parish in 1699, and he had given it careful investigation. Both in 1699, when he jotted down the facts, and in 1712, Mr. Boys was clearly of the opinion that his unfortunate parishioner was a witch. His narrative, which remained in manuscript until 1901,[195] may be profitably compared with Cotton Mather’s account of his visit to Margaret Rule in 1693.[196] Such a comparison will not work to the disadvantage of the New England divine. Incidentally it may be mentioned that the mob “swam” the widow Coman several times, and that “soon after, whether by the cold she got in the water or by some other means, she fell very ill, and dyed.” Let it not be forgotten that this was six years after the end of the witchcraft prosecutions in Massachusetts. In 1705 a supposed witch was murdered by a mob at Pittenween in Scotland.[197] In 1730, another alleged witch succumbed to the water ordeal in Somersetshire.[198] The English and Scottish statutes against witchcraft were repealed in 1736,[199] but in that same year Joseph Juxson, vicar, preached at Twyford, in Leicestershire, a Sermon upon Witchcraft, occasioned by a late Illegal Attempt to discover Witches by Swimming,[200] and in 1751 Ruth Osborne, a reputed witch, was murdered by a mob in Hertfordshire.[201] The last execution for witchcraft in Germany took place in 1775. In Spain the last witch was burned in 1781, In Switzerland Anna Göldi was beheaded in 1782 for bewitching the child of her master, a physician. In Poland two women were burned as late as 1793.[202]
That the belief in witchcraft is still pervasive among the peasantry of Europe, and to a considerable extent among the foreign-born population in this country, is a matter of common knowledge.[203] Besides, spiritualism and kindred delusions have taken over, under changed names, many of the phenomena, real and pretended, which would have been explained as due to witchcraft in days gone by.[204]
Why did the Salem outbreak occur? Of course there were many causes—some of which have already suggested themselves in the course of our discussion. But one fact should be borne in mind as of particular importance. The belief in witchcraft, as we have already had occasion to remark, was a constant quantity; but outbreaks of prosecution came, in England—and, generally speaking, elsewhere—spasmodically, at irregular intervals. If we look at Great Britain for a moment, we shall see that such outbreaks are likely to coincide with times of political excitement or anxiety. Thus early in Elizabeth’s reign, when everything was more or less unsettled, Bishop Jewel, whom all historians delight to honor, made a deliberate and avowed digression, in a sermon before the queen, in order to warn her that witchcraft was rampant in the realm, to inform her (on the evidence of his own eyes) that her subjects were being injured in their goods and their health, and to exhort her to enforce the law.[205] The initial zeal of James I. in the prosecution of witches stood in close connection with the trouble he was having with his turbulent cousin Francis Bothwell.[206] The operations of Matthew Hopkins (in 1645-1647) were a mere accompaniment to the tumult of the Civil War; the year in which they began was the year of Laud’s execution and of the Battle of Naseby. The Restoration was followed by a fresh outbreak of witch prosecution,—mild in England, though far-reaching in its consequences, but very sharp in Scotland.
With facts like these in view, we can hardly regard it as an accident that the Salem witchcraft marks a time when the Colony was just emerging from a political struggle that had threatened its very existence. For several years men’s minds had been on the rack. The nervous condition of public feeling is wonderfully well depicted in a letter written in 1688 by the Rev. Joshua Moodey in Boston to Increase Mather, then in London as agent of the Colony. The Colonists are much pleased by the favor with which Mather has been received, but they distrust court promises. They are alarmed by a report that Mather and his associates have suffered “a great slurr” on account of certain over-zealous actions. Moodey rejoices in the death of Robert Mason, “one of the worst enemies that you & I & Mr. Morton had in these parts.” Then there are the Indians:—“The cloud looks very dark and black upon us, & wee are under very awfull circumstances, which render an Indian Warr terrible to us.” The Colonists shudder at a rumor that John Palmer, one of Andros’s Council, is to come over as Supreme Judge, and know not how to reconcile it with the news of the progress their affairs have been making with the King. And finally, the writer gives an account of the case of Goodwin’s afflicted children, which, as we know, was a kind of prologue to the Salem outbreak:—“Wee have a very strange th[ing] among us, which we know not what to make of, except it bee Witchcraft, as we think it must needs bee.”[207] Clearly, there would have been small fear, in 1692, of a plot on Satan’s part to destroy the Province, if our forefathers had not recently encountered other dangers of a more tangible kind.
In conclusion, I may venture to sum up, in the form of a number of brief theses, the main results at which we appear to have arrived in our discussion of witchcraft:—
1. The belief in witchcraft is the common heritage of humanity. It is not chargeable to any particular time, or race, or form of religion.
2. Witchcraft in some shape or other is still credited by a majority of the human race.
3. The belief in witchcraft was practically universal in the seventeenth century, even among the educated; with the mass of the people it was absolutely universal.
4. To believe in witchcraft in the seventeenth century was no more discreditable to a man’s head or heart than it was to believe in spontaneous generation or to be ignorant of the germ theory of disease.