Through sorcery, Mr. Mather thought witnesses were occasionally prevented from giving evidence in courts of justice against witches, and even judges were sometimes so overawed by the culprits' looks that they could not discharge their duties with firmness. A witch could, by a cast of her evil eye, strike people to the ground, and by the same visual organ kill cattle. Men and beasts were also bewitched into madness. To such an extent, we are told, were people tormented by witches in New England, that the Church appointed days of prayer on behalf of afflicted persons. And so peculiar were diseases, that the physicians declared their patients' troubles were preternatural. That being so, a little ingenuity, strengthened with spite, enabled the afflicted or the afflicted's friends to trace the disorder to the malevolence of a certain witch or witches.
In the trial of Susan Martin, in 1692, among other absurdities of circumstantial evidence relied on, was that her skirts were not draggled when out on a wet day, while the clothes of other women travelling with her were bespattered and clotted with mud.
Writers of no mean order, including clergymen, believed in the existence of witches, ghosts, and goblins, and boldly defended the proceedings in New England against the victims put to death for their alleged diabolical deeds through the agency of Satan.
Witchcraft spread alarm over Sweden in the seventeenth century. The news of particular acts of witchcraft coming to the king's ear, his Majesty appointed commissioners to inquire into the matter. From a public register of 1669 and 1670, we ascertain that the commission, consisting of clergymen and laymen, were instructed to visit Mobra and inquire into frightful proceedings there. The commissioners met at the parson's house to hear complaints. Both the minister and people of fashion complained, with tears in their eyes, of the miserable condition they were in, from the calamity of witchcraft. They gave the commissioners strange instances of the devil's tyranny among them—how, by the help of witches, he had drawn hundreds of children to him; how he had been seen going in visible shape through the country; how he had wrought upon the poorer people, by presenting them with meat and drink. The inhabitants begged earnestly, yet in the most respectful manner,
"The Lords Commissioners to root out this hellish crew, that rest and quietness might be regained; and the rather, because the children who used to be carried away in the district of Elfdale, since some witches had been burnt there, remained unmolested."
An elaborate report of the peculiar proceedings says:—
"That day," i.e. the 13th of August, "the last humiliation-day instituted by authority for removing of this judgment, the commissioners went to church, where there appeared a considerable assembly.... Two sermons were preached, in which the miserable case of those people, that suffered themselves to be deluded by the devil, was laid open....
"Public worship being over, all the people of the town were called together to the parson's house; nearly three thousand of them attended.
"Next day the commissioners met again, consulting how they might withstand this dangerous flood. After long deliberation, they resolved to execute such as the matter of fact could be proved upon. Examination being made, there were discovered no less than threescore and ten witches in the village. Three and twenty of whom, freely confessing their crimes, were condemned to die. The rest pleading not guilty, were sent to Fabluna, where most of them were afterwards executed.
"Fifteen children, who likewise confessed they were engaged in the witchery, died as the rest; six and thirty youths, between nine and sixteen years of age, who had been less guilty, were forced to run the gauntlet; twenty more, who had no great inclination, yet had been seduced to those hellish enterprises, because they were very young, were condemned to be lashed with rods upon their hands for three Sundays together at the church door; and the aforesaid six and thirty were also doomed to be lashed this way once a week for a whole year together. The number of the seduced children was about three hundred.