FOOTNOTES:
[1] The council met on the 16th, 17th, 20th, 24th and 27th of May, 1692. On the 27th the appointments named (of sixty-seven justices, eight sheriffs, and two coroners) were made. The twenty-eight councillors were also authorized to act as justices in their own localities. This injury to the manuscript was occasioned by its being thrown into the street during the stamp-act riot on the evening of August 26, 1765, when Gov. Hutchinson’s house was sacked. In his subsequent draft, as the date was missing, he did not supply it, but said “At the first general council,” &c. This paragraph commences on page 8 of the manuscript.
P.
[2] The date named for the beginning of the Springfield troubles is probably three or four years too early. Gov. Hutchinson relied for the date of what he supposed to be the earliest witch case in the Massachusetts Colony, on Johnson’s Wonder Working Providence, p. 199, where the date 1645 stands at the head of the page. As I have explained in my reprint of Johnson (pp. xiii.-xv.), these headings are unreliable, and, quite likely, were as often inserted by the printer as by the author. The date in the heading may be true as to some incident recorded on the page and erroneous as to other incidents. Keeping in mind the date when the work was written—from 1649 to 1651—the statement in the text involves no error. This portion was written in 1651. The author says, “There hath of late been more than one or two in this town [Springfield] greatly suspected of witchcraft; yet have they used much dilligence, both in finding them out, and for the Lords assisting them against their witchery, yet have they, as is supposed, bewitched not a few persons, among whom two of the reverend Elders children.” The cases came to examination and trial the same year the narrative was written, 1651, and the testimony offered covers the two previous years.
P.
[3] Johnson.
H.
[4] The name of this woman was not Mary Oliver, but Mary Parsons. She was tried in Boston, May 13, 1651, on the charge of witchcraft and for murdering her own child. She was convicted on the latter charge on her own confession, and sentenced to be hanged. She was reprieved till May 29 (Mass. Rec. iv. p. i. p. 47). In Judd’s History of Hadley (p. 234), it appears that Mary Parsons was again tried for witchcraft in 1661, and discharged. This is doubtless an error in copying or printing 1661 for 1651, when the trial already named took place; for in both instances she was charged with bewitching the children of Mr. Moxon the minister. Mr. Moxon returned to England in 1652.
Hugh Parsons, her husband, had previously been tried and convicted of witchcraft; and the most damaging charges against him had been brought by his wife. Among these were the following:—1. Mrs. P. had an intimate friend Mrs. Smith, to whom she freely expressed her mind. Now Mrs. Smith was a person who went little abroad, and Mrs. P. was sure she would not speak of the secrets committed to her trust; and yet her husband knew all about their conversation. 2. He would be out late nights; and half an hour before he came home, she would hear strange noises about the house. 3. He would come home in a distempered mind, put out the fire, pull off the bed clothes, and throw peas about the house. 4. He would gabble in his sleep, have strange dreams, and say he had been fighting the Devil. The jury found him guilty. The magistrates set aside the verdict, and the case came before the General Court at Boston, May 31, 1652, when he was acquitted (Ibid. p. 96). The numerous and very curious depositions in the Springfield cases may be seen in the Appendix of Drake’s Annals of Witchcraft, 1869, pp. 219-258. Hutchinson (in note, vol. i. p. 165) mentions the case of Hugh Parsons, but not that of his wife. He mentions it again (vol. ii. p. 22), and does not seem to be aware that his Mary Oliver case was that of Parsons’s wife. My references to Hutchinson are to the edition of 1795.
P.