[5] Vol. i. p. 150. [Hutchinson’s references to his earlier vol. are to the ed. of 1764.]
H.
[6] Margaret Jones was executed June 4, 1648, and was therefore by more than two years, so far as now appears, the first case of conviction and execution for witchcraft in the Massachusetts Colony. The case is reported in Winthrop’s Journal, ii. p. 326, and Hale’s Modest Inquiry concerning Witchcraft, p. 17. Mr. Hale relates incidents not recorded by Winthrop. On the day of her execution, he, then twelve years of age, went to her cell, “in company with some neighbors who took great pains to bring her to confession and repentance; but she constantly professed herself innocent of that crime.”
P.
[7] No writer on this subject seems hitherto to have given the name of the person who suffered at Dorchester. Mr. John Hale, in Modest Inquiry, 1697, p. 17, thus alludes to the matter: “Another that suffered on that account sometime after was a Dorchester woman. And upon the day of her execution Mr. Thompson [Wm. Tompson], minister of Brantry and J. P. her former minister took pains with her to bring her to repentance. And she utterly denyed her guilt of witchcraft, for she had when a single woman played the harlot, and being with child, used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin and shame; and although she did not effect it, yet she was a murderer in the sight of God for her endeavors, and shewed great penitency for that sin; but owned nothing of the crime laid to her charge.” Mr. Drake in his Annals of Witchcraft, and the History of Dorchester, make no mention of this case.
I think I have found a clue to the name of this Dorchester woman. Increase Mather, in his Remarkable Providences, 1684, gave some of the cases of witchcraft which had occurred in New-England. He sent a copy of this book to his brother Nathaniel, a minister in Dublin. In a letter, dated Dec. 31, 1684, Nathaniel Mather acknowledged the receipt of the book, and says: “Why did you not put in the story of Mrs. Hibbins witchcrafts and the discovery thereof; and also of H. Lake’s wife, of Dorchester, whom as I have heard the Devil drew in by appearing to her in the likeness, and acting the part of a child of hers then lately dead on whom her heart was much set; as also another of a girl in Connecticut, who was judged to die a real convert, though she died for the same crime?—stories, as I have heard them as remarkable for some circumstances as most I have read.” (Mather Papers, Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. xxxviii. p. 58.) Mr. Mather probably heard these stories before he went abroad. The precise date of his departure does not appear. It was, however, before March 23, 1650-51, when he writes from London. There was a Henry Lake residing in Dorchester in 1678, who, with his children, was named as the residuary legatees in the will of Thomas Lake, a prominent citizen of the town, who died Oct. 27, 1678 (History of Dorchester, p. 125). Mr. Savage (Geneal. Dict.) says there was a Henry Lake, currier, in Salem, in 1649, “who may have been the Henry Lake of Dorchester”; but he makes no mention of his wife being executed for witchcraft.
The details of the case as related by Mr. Mather are quite unlike those related by Mr. Hale. One or both of the statements must be incorrect. The error I think must be in that of Mr. Hale. Mr. Mather was a resident of Dorchester, and a graduate of the college in 1647. He gives the name of the person accused, and was so situated as to be familiar with all the incidents. Mr. Hale was a resident of Charlestown, and in 1650 was but fourteen years of age. He did not know the name of the person, and gives the same incidents to a Springfield case. He says, p. 19: “There was another executed of Boston anno 1656 [Mrs. Hibbins] for that crime; and two or three of Springfield, one of which confessed, and said the occasion of her familiarity with Satan was this: She had lost a child, and was exceedingly discontented at it, and longed Oh that she might see her child again! And at last the Devil in likeness of her child came to her bed-side and talked with her, and asked to come into the bed to her that night and several nights after, and so entered into covenant with Satan and became a witch. This was the only confessor in those times in this government.” If any person, other than Mary Parsons, was executed at Springfield for witchcraft, no details have come down to us. Increase Mather probably omitted to mention the cases of Mrs. Hibbins and Mrs. Lake, with which he must have been familiar, in deference to the feelings of their friends then living.
P.
[8] This was the case of Mrs. Kendal, of Cambridge, who was executed for bewitching to death a child of Goodman Genings, of Watertown. The principal evidence was that of a Watertown nurse, who testified that the said Kendal did make much of the child, and then the child was well, but quickly changed in color and died a few hours after. The court took this evidence without calling the parents of the child. After the execution the parents denied that their child was bewitched, and stated that it died from imprudent exposure to cold by the nurse the night before. The nurse soon after was put in prison for adultery, and there died, and so the matter was not further inquired into. Hale’s Modest Inquiry, p. 18.
Rev. Lucius R. Paige, of Cambridgeport, has recently found in the Middlesex court records, 1660, another alleged case of witchcraft in Cambridge, which was tried that year. Winifred Holman, an aged widow, was accused by her neighbors, John Gibson and wife, their son John Gibson, Jr., and their daughter Rebecca, wife of Charles Stearns. Actions of defamation were commenced against these parties, and on the trial, they, by way of justification, presented their supposed proofs of witchcraft, some details of which may be seen in Hist. and Geneal. Register, vol. xxiv. p. 59. Probably other cases were tried in the courts of that period, of which nothing is now known. John Dunton, in 1683, said there had been twenty cases of witchcraft recently tried in the colony. (Letters, p. 72.)