Moreover, it sufficed for Adam and Garde that they were here, in the land of the living, together, and though it made the rover feel sad to think of the loss of his last beef-eater, the faithful old Halberd.
CHAPTER XIII.
GOODY IN THE TOILS.
The worthy Puritan citizens of Boston fêted Governor Phipps in one breath and asked him to make concessions of his powers to his council in the next. They worked themselves weary with enthusiasm over his advent and then they wore him out with exactions, with their epidemic of persecuting witches and with the faults they found with his methods of life and government.
Sir William had not been long in his new harness, when he was heard to wish he again had his broadax in hand and were building a ship of less dimensions than one of state. A little of his old love for his calling and the men it had gathered about him was expressed in a dinner which he gave to ship-carpenters, from whose ranks he was proud to have risen, as he told them and told the world. He had a hasty temper, as a result of having been so long a captain on the sea, accustomed to absolute obedience at the word of command. Yet his squalls of anger were soon blown over, leaving him merry, honest and lovable as before.
Unfortunately Governor Phipps was largely under the influence of Increase Mather and his son, the Reverend Cotton Mather, who were both as mad fanatics on the topic of religion and witchcraft as one could have found in a day’s walk. The influence over Phipps had been gained by the elder Mather in England, where he and Sir William were so long associated in their efforts to right their colony and its charter.
Witchcraft persecutions, having fairly run amuck in England, Increase Mather had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for observing the various phenomena developed by this dreadful disease. He arrived in Boston after Randolph had succeeded far beyond the dreams of his own malice in starting the madness on its terrible career. The field offered an attraction not to be withstood, by either of the Mathers. They were soon fairly gorging themselves on the wonders of the invisible world, testimonies and barbarous punishments.
Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton was an active figure in all this lamentable business. Phipps was dragged into the maelstrom bodily. He pitied the frightened wretches in the prisons and secretly instructed his jailers to be remiss in their duties of chaining, ironing and otherwise inflicting needless punishment on these helpless mortals.
The more effectually and quietly to turn the fearful tide, so appallingly engulfing the minds of the wrought-up populace, Phipps organized a court of Oyer and Terminer, wherein he sat himself, with seven magistrates, to try the wretched old women, dragged screaming to the farcical examinations. At these trials, devilish children swore away the lives of fellow-creatures, abandoned alike by their kind and by their God. In this court of his own making, William Phipps was slowly and surely putting a stop to the mania, for the horrors of some of the executions sent a thrill of fright and dread through the whole of Boston.
Exercising his power of pardoning, and then expending his own money to assist them to flee from the state, William Phipps saved so many defenseless women that he fairly broke the fabric of the awful mania in twain. Early after his arrival, however, he was called away to Plymouth. No sooner was his back turned than the zealots pounced, tooth and nail, upon a new crop of witches and hailed them before the court, on trial for their lives, in haste before the Governor should return to work his leniency upon them.