Gov. Simon Bradstreet, 1603-1697
Unwarrantable Usurpation
Names of the Court and Jury
The Province took formal charge in re April 11, 1692. Simon Bradstreet was governor. He had been honored with thirteen annual elections by the people to that office. He was then eighty-six years of age, the “Grand Old Man” of his time. He struck the keynote at first in an opinion that the witch evidence was insufficient. With honor crowned he passed into history as “The Old Charter Governor.”
The high action of Deputy-Governor Danforth and his Counsel, who were the court, gave éclat to the proceedings and consternation filled the county. In October, 1691, a new charter was signed, and Sir Wm. Phipps was appointed governor. He arrived in Boston with the new charter, Saturday, May 14, 1692. William Stoughton was made deputy-governor, in place of Thomas Danforth.
In this change from popular government Increase Mather, an early president of Harvard College, was a “power behind the throne.” The new charter had his approval and Sir Wm. Phipps, its first governor, was his nominee. Phipps was “a well-meaning man, inclined to superstition,” and Mather admired his “incompetency.” Stoughton was a man “of cold affections, proud, self willed, and covetous of distinction, and universally hated by the people.” He was appointed deputy-governor to please Cotton Mather, son of Increase. Cotton in his race for glory ran amuck. He was a man of “overweening vanity,” panting for fame, and the strenuous mover in the trials. He harangued the populace and sermonized on witchcraft; he wrote a book: “The Trials of Witches,” and even on horseback, at the hanging of Rev. George Burroughs, he harangued the people gathered there, lest they interfere and rob the gallows.
| Increase Mather Father | Cotton Mather Son |
By the new charter courts of justice were to be established by the General Court. The witch trials were, therefore, stranded and must remain in statu quo, apparently, for several months, while awaiting the action of the General Court. The Governor, however, by “an unwarrantable usurpation of authority,” organized a court of final hearing, called Oyer and Terminer, to act in the pending cases.