FRAGMENT OF EXAMINATION OF REBECCA NURSE,
In Handwriting of Rev. Samuel Parris.[144]
Knowing the world believed in witchcraft, our horror at the atrocities of '92 is moderated by the probability that nothing less than the shedding of innocent blood could have annihilated the delusion. The king believed in it, the governor and judges believed in it, and the most sensible and learned gave ample credence to it. Queen Anne wrote a letter to Phips that shows she admitted it as a thing unquestioned.[145] The clergy, with singular unanimity, recognized it.
THOMAS BEADLE'S TAVERN, 1692.
The revulsion that followed equaled the precipitation that had marked the proceedings. One of the judges made public confession of his error.[146] Officers of the court were persecuted until the day of their death.
There is one hard, inflexible character, that was never known to have relented. William Stoughton, lieutenant-governor, presided at these trials. It is related that once, on hearing of a reprieve granted some of the condemned, he left the bench, exclaiming, "We were in a way to have cleared the land of these. Who is it obstructs the course of justice I know not. The Lord be merciful to the country."
This pudding-faced, sanctimonious, yet merciless judge had listened to the heart-broken appeals of the victims, raising their manacled hands to heaven for that justice denied them upon earth. "I have got nobody to look to but God." "There is another judgment, dear child." "The Lord will not suffer it." Others as passionately reproached their accusers, but all were confounded, because all were believers in the fact of witchcraft.[147]
Whether Witch Hill be the first or last place visited, it is there Salem witchcraft culminates. There is seen, in approaching by the railway from Boston, a bleak and rocky eminence bestrown with a little soil. Houses of the poorer sort straggle up its eastern acclivity, while the south and west faces remain as formed by nature, abrupt and precipitous. The hill is one of a range stretching away northward in a broken line toward the Merrimac. On the summit is a tolerably level area of several acres. Not a tree was growing on it when I was there. The bleak winds sweep over it without hinderance.