At the very time when this effort was being made still to control the government, in spite of its altered form, events occurred that gave a staggering blow to that unofficial power which the clergy had been accustomed to exert as the acknowledged intellectual leaders of the community. For, in the generation of 1690, the witchcraft frenzy, in which the clergy took a leading part, brought about the same sort of anti-clerical reaction that had been a result of the Quaker persecutions by them in the generation of 1660.

We shall not concern ourselves with the details of the horrible delusion, which, for the last time in New England, caused the blood of innocent victims to be shed as a result of theological beliefs. They may be found amply set forth elsewhere, and concern rather the antiquarian and the psychologist than the historian.[[1144]] For us, the interest lies in their influence upon the intellectual development of the colony, and the growth of its people.

It is quite true that communities in all ages and places have been occasionally subject to being thrown off their mental balance, and during the period of frenzy or panic have committed acts of folly or crime, for which they have subsequently been heartily repentant. But to state a fact is not to explain it; and to find the underlying cause of the psychologic disturbance in northeastern Massachusetts in 1692—during which two hundred persons were accused of being in league with the devil, one hundred and fifty were imprisoned, and twenty-nine put to death,—in such influences as the loss of the charter, or the “harsh aspects of the scenery,” seems to me wholly inadequate, to say the least.[[1145]] The scenery of the native American wild “invited to stern and melancholy musing,” as New England's best-known historian phrases it, for about a thousand miles north and south of Mr. Mather's study in Boston, or the Reverend Mr. Parris's cottage in Salem Village, and would seem to be rather dispersed as the cause of a very localized phenomenon.

It is needless to point out that the belief in witchcraft had been widespread throughout the world; but since the days of King James I, there had been, among English people, only isolated cases, save during the years of the Puritan political supremacy in England and the closing days of that same supremacy in Massachusetts.[[1146]] Of the more than seventy cases in England since the Restoration, the great majority had resulted in acquittals, and in two cases only had the unfortunate victims been executed.

We have seen, in an earlier chapter, the extraordinarily large sphere accorded to the devil in Puritan theology, and that theology's virtual repudiation of science by its considering every event in the universe, from the sun's course in heaven to a spider's falling into the porridge, as a direct interposition of the divine will. While Boyle, Newton, and other founders of the new scientific age in England, were tracing the reign of law, the intellectual leaders of New England were engaged in gathering together collections of “remarkable providences,” ranging in interest from the sudden death of a Sabbath-breaker to the evident marking for destruction, out of a whole library, of a copy of the book of Common Prayer, by a mouse evidently brought up in the “New England way.” Of the moral earnestness of such men there is no question, nor of the abiding stamp which they have left upon the New England consciousness. Happily, much of the good they did has survived, while much of the political and intellectual damage they likewise did, and would have continued to do, had they had their way, has passed.

In 1681, a group of the most eminent of the clergy around Boston determined upon a large coöperative work, to involve the research of many authors, and the labor of some years. It was to be a collection of remarkable providences, of divine judgments, of “thunders as are unusual, strange apparitions, or whatever else shall happen that is prodigious, witchcrafts, diabolical possessions, judgments upon noted sinners,” and the like.[[1147]] Each clergyman was to make diligent search among his congregation, and it is obvious what a stimulant such a wholesale inquiry among the people, by the intellectual leaders of the community, would be toward arousing interest, and intensifying the belief, in such matters. A few years later, Increase Mather published his book on the subject, in which he gave numerous cases of witchcraft and possession, and recited the signs by which it might be known. It became the study of the young Cotton Mather, whom in 1686, at the age of twenty-three, we find wrestling in prayer to cast the devils out of New England, and undertaking to track down those leagued with them.[[1148]]

Interest in the subject continued to be stirred up, and in 1688, the criminal nonsense of some children of Boston, and their accusations against a washerwoman, resulted in her being denounced as a witch. Cotton Mather, who had now found the case for which he had been longing, and in which he might do ghostly battle, took the eldest girl home with him. She played upon the clergyman's colossal vanity, and, on evidence which ought not to have shut up a dog, the unfortunate washerwoman was hanged. Mather now proceeded, by another book and by frenzied sermons, to arouse the fears and superstitions of the crowd. With one of the most noted clergymen in Boston doing all he could to foster it, the belief deepened and spread, and the minds of many, who would not otherwise have given thought to it, were prepared to believe in that “plot of the Devil against New England” which Mather preached.

Early in 1692, some children of Salem feigned the symptoms of which they had heard their elders speak. Two of them belonged to the family of the local clergyman, Mr. Parris, who now entered on the devil-hunt, with a fanaticism which knew no bounds, and an honesty which seems to have been questionable.[[1149]] To his efforts were added those of the Reverend Mr. Noyes. Charge after charge was launched against innocent people, and by the time Phips arrived in the colony as governor, in May, over a hundred persons were already in prison awaiting trial. Vain of his undeserved authority, the appointee and pliant tool of Mather, he immediately appointed an illegal court to try the witchcraft cases, with Stoughton as presiding judge. In the frenzy of superstitious fanaticism[fanaticism] which followed, justice, legal evidence, even a verdict of the jury, were set aside, and victim after victim hurried to the gallows, while one, with horrible tortures lasting several days, was pressed to death under heavy weights.[[1150]] The clergy, formally referred to by the Governor and court for advice, while carefully hedging as to certain particulars, urged the court on to “speedy and vigorous prosecution”; and Mather wrote to one of them, extolling “the noble service” of “Encountering the Wicked Spiritts in the high places of our Air, & of detecting & of confounding of their confederates.”[[1151]] The Reverend Mr. Burroughs, of Wells, who avowed that “there neither are, nor ever were witches,” was condemned; and although the spectators at his hanging were so moved as almost to prevent the sentence from being carried out, Mather, who was witnessing the spectacle from horseback, told the people that the victim was not an ordained clergyman, and that, in any case, the devil often appeared as an Angel of Light.[[1152]]

Testimonial to the Good Character of Rebecca Nourse, executed as a Witch
Original in Massachusetts Historical Society