“R. C.,” the author of the tract, I have no doubt, was Richard Chamberlayne, Secretary of the Province of New-Hampshire in 1682. That he resided at Great Island appears by his signature to several depositions printed in New-Hampshire Hist. Coll., vols. ii. and viii. Chamberlayne and Barefoot were among the prosecutors of Joshua Moody at Portsmouth the next year for not conducting his services according to the English Prayer Book, and occasioned his imprisonment for three months. It appears that Increase Mather was aware that Secretary Chamberlayne had prepared an account of the Walton case, and he wrote to Mr. Moody to procure it, together with a narrative of the Hortando case. Mr. Moody, July 14, 1683, writes to Mr. Mather: “About that at G. Walton’s, because my interest runs low with the Secretary, I have desired Mr. Woodbridge to endeavor the obtaining it; and if he can get it, shall send it by the first; though if there should be any difficulty thereabout, you may do pretty well with what you have already.” (Mather Papers, p. 359.) Mr. Moody writes again, August 23: “My endeavors also have not been a-wanting to obtain the other [the Walton case], but find it difficult. If more may be gotten, you may expect [it] when I come, or else must take up with what you had from me at first, which was the sum of what was then worthy of notice, only many other particular actings of like nature had been then and since. It began on a Lord’s day, June 11, 1682, and so continued for a long time, only there was some respite now and then. The last thing [printed sight] I have heard of was the carrying away of several axes in the night, notwithstanding they were laid up, yea locked up very safe, as the owner thought at least, which was done this spring. [Postscript.] Before sealing of my letter came accidentally to my hand this enclosed that I had from William Morse of Newbury concerning the troubles at his house in 1679. If it may be of use to me, you may please to peruse and return it.” (Ibid. 360.)
The Secretary doubtless declined to furnish the unlovely Puritans at the Bay with his narrative, and, on returning to England, he printed it in London in 1698. The tract shows that Church-of-England men were quite as observant of signs and wonders as the Puritans. “Who that peruses these preternatural occurrences,” asks the writer, “can possibly be so much of an enemy to his own soul and irrefutable reason, as obstinately to oppose himself to, or confusedly fluctuate in, the opinion and doctrine of demons or spirits, and witches?”
The tract is reprinted in Historical Magazine (N.Y., vol. v. pp. 321-327), and is followed (vol. vi. p. 159) with a statement, by Rev. Lucius Alden, on the persons and localities mentioned therein. Brewster’s Rambles about Portsmouth, 2d series, 1869, has a chapter on the subject (pp. 343-351), with Mr. Alden’s statement; but none of these writers seem to be aware that Richard Chamberlayne was the author of Lithobolia. Since writing the above I find the tract under the name of Richard Chamberlain in British Museum Catalogue, 1814, and the title was so copied into Watt and Lowndes.
P.
[22] This was the Hortando case, a brief narrative of which, “sent in by an intelligent person,” is given in Remarkable Providences, pp. 116-118, and Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 453.
“The enclosed I transcribed from Mr. Tho. Broughton, who read to me what he took from the mouth of the woman and her husband, and judge it credible; though it be not the half of what is to be gotten. I expect from him a fuller and further account before I come down to the Commencement.” (Mr. Moody to Mr. Mather, August 23, 1683. Mather Papers, p. 360.) The date, place and attending circumstances make it clear that this was “the narrative sent in by an intelligent person,” which Mr. Mather printed.
P.
[23] Gov. Hutchinson found this case reported in Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 454.
P.
[24] Increase Mather’s Remarkable Providences is the work here alluded to; but the date should have been 1684 and not 1685. The book was issued in the Spring of 1684. Nathaniel Mather, in a letter to the author, dated Dec. 31, 1684, acknowledges receiving a copy on which “was written in your hand 7 ber 16.” (Mather Papers, p. 58.) John Bishop acknowledges the receipt of a copy, in a letter dated June 10, 1684. (Ibid. p. 312.) This erroneous date, and a typographical error in the Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 473, have led some writers to suppose that Cotton Mather wrote his first book on witchcraft in 1685. He was then twenty-two years of age. Before 1686 he published no works except Elegy on Rev. Nath. Collins, 1685, and The Boston Ephemeris, an Almanac for 1683, neither of which are in the printed list of his works. His first writing on witchcraft was issued in 1689.