In Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer we have seen two types of the New England woman as leaders of men. The former was perhaps more of a power, the latter of an influence; but each was complement to the other, not in task but in type. It needs no wonderful discernment to see in these women the rise and florescence of the New England spirit which has come down to our own day and has permeated and informed the whole American genius of femininity. Through their descendants--in some cases unworthy of their ancestors, whom they deserted or even betrayed the blood of Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Dyer is with us; but that is of less moment than the survival of their spirit, of the independence of the American woman when convinced of right, of her steadfastness in following her impulses, undeterred by sneers or even bodily perils. Though they were not directly of the Puritan mothers, not directly of the stock which has most numerically survived, the names of Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer are deserving of honorable memorial as among the first founders of the feminine republic of America.
They were pioneers also. Anne Hutchinson was the first woman preacher of whom we have record on these our shores, and she was the first of the many religious "prophetesses" who were to rise up and for a time draw men and women to them because of their personality rather than from any merit in their tenets. It was probably far less that which Mrs. Hutchinson preached than that which she was that brought to her meetings those "seventy or eighty" devoted women who looked upon her as one inspired. Mary Dyer had no following, was, like Him she preached, "despised and rejected of men"; but she was in a sense the protomartyr among women in our country, and she kindled a flame which in another guise rose to a gigantic conflagration when the time came for women to speak fearlessly and openly their thoughts concerning great matters.
That our picture may know some completeness, however, it is needful to glance at the effect of these women and others like them upon the female world of New England. While Anne Hutchinson in some sense stood alone of her sex, Mary Dyer was only one of a great number of devoted men and women, merely singled out by her fate for enduring memory. The women of the Quakers, driven by the Spirit, went through the land preaching, in defiance of all the laws that were fulminated against them. We must not be too sudden or violent in our condemnation of the men who sat in judgment upon these people, for to the Puritan the Quaker represented a peril which in this day we cannot comprehend, while the Puritan had also the excuse for harshness that he owned the land and only desired the Quaker to remain outside his borders. Yet, when this is said, we can but give the most hearty admiration to the superb courage of the people who believed it to be their duty to intrude where they were not desired, and, believing, shrank from no consequence of their faith. Their women, with whom we have most particularly to do, suffered grievously for their devotion; they were whipped at the cart's tail, they were maimed, they were branded, they were even hanged; yet they persisted. By their devotion they not only gained many adherents--rarely open sympathizers, but secret friends--but set a standard for womanhood. Gradually the Puritan camp, under the constancy of their foes, became divided. The majority of the Puritans, and especially of their women, grew more and more virulent as the Quakers persisted in their "intrusion"; but there was among the women an element, ever growing and strengthening, which found inspiration in the methods of those whom they had at first contemned. They had themselves suffered for their faith, though not as these others; and they found a respect for those who shrank from no penalty so that they might testify to their faith and do service. It is after the coming of the Quakers that we find the New England woman more determined, more active, more bound to high ideals. The mark of the despised Quakers remained deeply graven, in effect if not in heredity, on the New England character, especially in its women. Moreover, the example of the female preachers of the Quakers had its effect in urging upon the New England woman hitherto undreamed-of possibilities of making herself heard in the councils of the land. Seeing what women could do as well as bear, the New England woman was made stronger for both, and she did not forget the lesson which came to her through those whom at first she received with hatred and despite.
Such were the great religious feminine uprisings and revolts in New England. Woman had proved that she was capable of establishing at least a partial independence, had shown that she was gradually coming to be a force that would have to be reckoned with in future estimates of the commonwealth. It is true that the fathers of the land did not read the signs of the times and believed the new movement of feminine progress to be but sporadic and of certain termination in the near future; but they had some excuse for their blindness in the existence and nature of another feminine movement which placed the female nature in a most unenviable light,--that of witchcraft.
Under the chronological system which has been adopted--though it has been stretched several times nearly to the breaking-point--it becomes necessary to treat of witchcraft in New England in two separate chapters, the Salem outbreak falling by date within the later period of colonization.
Before we too greatly blame our forefathers and foremothers for their superstition and cruelty in the matter of witchcraft, it may be well to remember a few facts in connection with the subject. Such men as Cranmer, Bacon, Luther, Melancthon, and Kepler have recorded their belief in witchcraft, and as late as 1765 Blackstone wrote: "To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testaments; and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its time, borne testimony either by example, seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits." Blackstone was not unenlightened; and so we can see that a belief in the actual and present existence of witchcraft was not inexcusable in our New England forbears. Belief in witchcraft was prevalent in England down to the nineteenth century; and even in the English Church in the seventeenth century there was a canon which forbade clergymen to cast out devils without being duly licensed to do so, and such licenses were actually issued by the Bishop of Chester. It must also be remembered that America was considered, by virtue probably of the color of its aborigines, to be the peculiar domain of His Satanic Majesty, who delighted in dwelling within its shores. Hence it would have been rather strange if there had not arisen in the colonies accusation of witchcraft. This, however, does not preclude our sympathy with the victims or our conclusions as to the nature of the women who believed in such charges and as to the civilization which condemned the witches to death. For it was usually on charges brought by women against women that there came accusation of witchcraft; the men were rarely more than judges and executioners. Thus the subject falls well within our scope of discussion and narration.
The first New World victim of such an accusation was Margaret Jones, who, in 1648, was condemned at Charlestown, where she lived, and was duly hanged. The ground of accusation seems to have been that Goody Jones, as she was called after the fashion of the day, was a medical practitioner who did not believe in venesection or in the use of violent emetics, but worked her cures by means of herbs and simples, and thus aroused the jealousy and distrust of the regular physicians. The case is instructive as showing the very slight grounds that were sufficient to bring about a charge of witchcraft; and it is also instructive, as demonstrating the childlike credulity of some of the strongest men of the time, that Governor Winthrop, who presided at the trial of Goody Jones, records as a proof of the woman's guilt that at the hour of her execution there came "a very great tempest in Connecticut which blew down many trees." There were at least two other victims within the next two years; but in 1656 we find a case that is really startling, as showing the ranks into which the prevalent superstition could penetrate as a fatality. In that year was hanged on Boston Common Mistress Ann Hibbins, whose husband had been a member of the Council of Assistants and an esquire, and whose brother, Richard Bellingham, was deputy-governor of Massachusetts. We know very little of the merits of this case, which is unfortunate, as the facts would undoubtedly be interesting, looking to the high social standing of the victim. Mistress Hibbins was tried before Endicott, and we may be sure that that stern old Puritan paid no attention to the social position of the accused. We know that the Rev. John Norton, who had breathed fire and flame against the Quakers and was no friend to any who disturbed the peace of the colony, held that Mistress Hibbins was wrongfully done to death and declared that she was condemned "only for having more wit than her neighbors;" and he tells us that the circumstance which held most weight against her was her remark, on seeing two people inimical to her talking together, that she was sure that they were talking about her. It would not seem that magic was needed to suggest such a conclusion; but the judges thought that no one but a witch could have divined such an abstruse fact, and Mrs. Hibbins suffered for her feminine penetration.
Acquittals were not unknown, but they were rare. But whether acquitted or not, those accused of witchcraft, who were not seldom women of extremely refined and gentle natures, were subjected to many indignities as well as great cruelties during the time they rested under suspicion or charge. These outrages, effected for the purpose of proving or testing the witches, were in some cases of such a nature as to make it undesirable to do more than allude to them. In like manner, the punishments on conviction were often carried out in a manner revolting to the delicacy of the condemned. It is recorded, however, that on one occasion, where the accused had confessed to doing most wonderful things, the jury, marvellously gifted with common sense, simply found that said accused had lied in the confession, whereupon the court passed sentence of a fine or a whipping; but such a jury was very rare, and one of the most remarkable features of the whole matter is found in the confessions of the self-styled witches. When Goody Glover, in 1688, was accused of having bewitched a child named Margaret Goodwin, in revenge for an accusation of theft, she was visited in prison by Cotton Mather, and to him she confessed that she had made a compact with the Evil One and was in the habit of frequenting Sabbats held by him. She had been sentenced, and the confession could do her no possible good or harm; it and all of its kind must have been dictated by a sheer hysterical nervousness or else by a fanatical craze for notoriety. Indeed, it was in those days a badge of distinction, albeit a perilous one, to be declared a witch; and next in fame was to enjoy the reputation of having been bewitched by some noted sorceress. Of this latter insanity the above-named Margaret Goodwin was a notable example. Though but a child, she was shrewd enough to enjoy the attention which she excited as a victim of witchcraft; and she steadfastly refused to be cured, even though Cotton Mather, then but a young preacher, took her into his own home for treatment. As a somewhat peculiar and in some ways characteristic product of her time and place Margaret Goodwin deserves a moment's attention from us. She was a perfect little elf in shrewdness and she could act like a Rachel. She was determined that she would not lose the notoriety and the comfortable home which she had found, so she played her part to perfection. Mather hated Quakers, Catholics, and even the Church of England; so Margaret found that she could read most easily Quaker or "Popish" tracts as well as the Book of Common Prayer, but not a word in the Bible or any Puritan work. What symptoms of the workings of the devil could seem surer to a man of Mather's prejudices and sympathies? Then again Margaret could not be prevailed upon to enter Mather's study, and would scream and kick like a young donkey until she was dragged by force into the room, when she would become calm and assert that the devil had just fled from her in the form of a mouse, unable to endure the presence of the sacred works which lined the walls. Probably she had learned these things from the old dames of her native village, with their remnants of Teutonic folklore; but the strange part of the affair was that Cotton Mather, who tells us all these details, had no doubt whatever of the genuineness of the possession. If the accusers of Goody Glover were typical of the credulity and superstition of their age, Margaret Goodwin, with her shrewd ability to make use of the most salient tendencies and prejudices of her benefactor in order to deceive him, was a type of a certain other aspect of Puritanism which has not yet entirely died away--and never will as long as New England possesses individuality of human product. So that even the minx who fooled Cotton Mather to the top of his bent seems to be worthy of rescue from obscurity in this retrospect of the path by which American women have reached their present position and characteristics.
It may be objected to the women whose names appear in this chapter that they were not typical New England women, but were only typical of phases of New England life in the early days of the colonies. Whether or not this allegation be just, we can assuredly learn from their stories and characters much of the atmosphere in which lived the New England woman of the greater part of the seventeenth century. She was at once a product and a producer, a cause and an effect, of her environment. There was constant action and reaction; she molded her time and her time molded her. She lived, as we have seen, if we have rightly understood that which we have read, in an atmosphere of religious turmoil and energy, of purity of purpose and integrity of faith, and of the darkest and most narrowing superstition. All these things acted mentally and spiritually upon the woman of New England. They entered into her life and character; she was energized as well as controlled and directed by them. There was of course no steadfastness, no persistence, of one straitly-hewn type; but there was an ever-recurring tendency, a gradual advance along the line of least resistance. Many were the faults of the Puritan woman: she was cold, she was hard, she was fanatical, she was credulous; but she was virtuous, she was truthful,--in higher sense than mere veracity,--she was faithful,--in deeper sense than mere constancy,--and she was strong with a strength that came to her from resistance to the influences which sought her downfall. And she was deep--deep with the depth of the sea and the forests and the universal spirit of the new land that had made her its child.
She was sternly repressed. Subjection to her husband was a rule of the Puritan woman's life, accepted by her as rightful and even necessary. For it she found Biblical authority, and that was sufficient for her in all things. Yet, though literally and not merely nominally under the rule of her husband, the Puritan woman never thought of herself as a slave, either to a man or a system. Privately she might be a scold and a shrew,--if she had not the fear of the ducking-stool or the scold's bridle before her eyes,--but publicly she was under tutelage, and respected herself, even as she was respected, none the less on that account. It was a matter of time and place; it was a self-imposed condition rather than the survival of barbarism, as it is considered to-day by the theorists of femininity.