Rachel Dyer

by John Neal

Brother—brother—we do not sit here to try the possibility of such a thing as witchcraft—please to consider where you are, and what we are.

Speech after speech followed; and it was near midnight, when the chief judge, after consulting with his brethren, proceeded to address the jury.

Ye have heard much that in our opinion does not need a reply, said he, after taking a general view of the case, with much that a brief reply may be sufficient for, and a very little, which, as it may serve to perplex you, if we pass it over without notice, we shall say a few words upon, though it has little or nothing to do with the case before you.

The law you have nothing to do with ... right or wrong, wise or foolish, you have nothing to do with the law. So too ... whatever may be the practice abroad or in this country, and whatever may be the hardship of that practice, you have nothing to do with it. One is the business of the legislature ... of the law-makers; the other the business of the courts, and the judges ... the law-expounders. You are to try a particular case by a particular law; to that, your whole attention is to be directed. If the law be a bad law, that is neither your business nor our business. We and you are to do our duty, and leave theirs to the sovereign legislature.

I propose now to recapitulate the evidence, which I have taken notes of—should I be wrong, you will correct me. After I have gone through with the evidence, I shall offer a few brief remarks in reply to the arguments which have been crowded into the case—I will not say for show—and which, idle as they are, would seem to have had weight with you.

The afflicted, you observe, do generally testify that the shape of the prisoner doth oftentimes pinch them, choke them, and otherwise afflict them, urging them always to write in a book she bears about with her. And you observe too, that the accusers were struck down with a fit before you, and could not rise up till she was ordered to touch them, and that several of their number have had fits whenever she looked upon them.

But we are to be more particular, and I shall now read my notes, and I pray you to follow me.

1. Deliverance Hobbs, who confessed herself a witch, testified that the prisoner tempted her to sign the book again, and to deny what she had confessed; and that the shape of the prisoner whipped her with iron rods to force her to do so, and that the prisoner was at a general meeting of witches at a field near Salem village, and there partook of the sacrament with them.

2. John Cook testified that about five or six years ago, he was assaulted with the shape of the prisoner in his chamber, and so terrified that an apple he had in his hand flew strangely from him into his mother’s lap, six or eight feet distance.

3. Samuel Gray testified that about fourteen years ago, he waked one night and saw his room full of light and a woman between the cradle and bed-side; he got up but found the doors fast, and the apparition vanished—however the child was so frighted, that it pined away and in some time died. He confessed that he had never seen the prisoner before, but was now satisfied that it was her apparition.