The following entry is the first indication I find in his diary, of sensitiveness or compunction for the part he took in the witchcraft trials. It was made December 24, 1696, while his little Sarah lay dead in his house: “Sam [his son] recites to me, in Latin, Matthew xii. from the 6th to the end of the 12th verse. The 7th verse [Quod si nossetis quid sit, misericordiam volo, et non sacrificium, non condemnassetis inculpabiles] did awfully bring to mind the Salem tragedy.”

The entire confession of Judge Sewall, its date and attending circumstances, will correct erroneous impressions concerning it. The subject matter confessed covers but one point: “the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem.” The court was opened June 2, 1692. We cannot be in doubt as to the nature of the guilt then contracted. It was the adoption of a rule of the court, by which the records made, and depositions received, at the preliminary examinations (which consisted almost wholly of spectral evidence), were introduced, sworn to, and received as legal testimony in the trials of the accused. Out of this rule, which was wholly illegal, grew all the fatal results of the Salem trials. Judge Sewall was a parishioner of Samuel Willard, of the Old South Church in Boston, who regarded such evidence as the “Devil’s testimony”; and whose judicious conduct during the trials is worthy of the highest commendation. He was the intimate friend of Increase and Cotton Mather, who both held similar views. Three days before (March 31), Cotton Mather had written to John Richards, one of the judges, cautioning him against the use of spectral testimony. The letter, although addressed to his own parishioner, was doubtless intended for, and considered by, the whole court, and is called, by himself and his son, the “letter to the judges.” The letter says: “If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of diabolical representations, the door is opened for the devils to obtain, from the courts in the invisible world, a license to proceed unto most hideous desolations upon the repute and repose of such as have been kept from the great transgression. Perhaps there are wise and good men, that may be ready to style him that shall advance this caution, a witch advocate; but, in the winding up, this caution will certainly be wished for.” (Mass. Soc.’s Hist. Coll., xxxviii. p. 393.) In the face of such influences and associations Judge Sewall gave his voice in the court for legalizing spectral testimony!

But for his confession we might never have known the position of Judge Sewall on the matter of spectral evidence, then the great question of debate in the Province; or have surmised the position of his three Boston associates, Richards, Winthrop and Sergeant. Saltonstall, living in Haverhill, did not attend the sittings of the court. The views of chief justice Stoughton in favor of admitting spectral testimony are well known; and those of the three Salem members of the commission, Hathorne, Corwin and Gedney, we have before us in the records of their examinations, than which nothing more atrocious can be imagined. If the four Boston members had stood out against the views of Stoughton and the Salem members, there had been a tie in the commission. Judge Sewall says, that, in the guilt contracted, “he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of.” How can this be? Was it a morbid utterance of his desponding mind; or has it an historical significance? He was not at the head of the court, nor its most influential member. Nothing appears to show that he was zealous, as Stoughton was, on this point. The remark would be explained, if he alone, of the Boston judges, went over to Stoughton’s views; and, by a majority vote, fixed the policy of the court. I know of no evidence outside the confession to sustain this hypothesis; and it is here thrown out only for the purpose of eliciting further information as to the position of the other three Boston judges. Brattle intimates that the members of the court were not a unit in their views. He says, “But although the chief judge and some of the other judges be very zealous in these proceedings,” &c. I have seen no evidence that Richards, Winthrop, or Sergeant, after the policy of the court was fixed, did not sustain the action of their associates. The two theories respecting diabolical agency, which were then the subject of debate, I have treated at some length in North American Review, vol. cviii. pp. 337-397.

P.

[74] October 17, 1711, the General Court passed an act reversing “the several convictions, judgments, and attainders against the” persons executed, and several who were condemned but not executed, and declaring that to be null and void. In December of the same year, £578. 12s. were appropriated to pay the damages sustained by persons prosecuted for witchcraft in 1692. The act reversing the attainder shows that the popular belief in the diabolical nature of the witchcraft troubles had not abated twenty years after those events transpired. The act is in Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. ii. pp. 216-218. It commences thus: “Forasmuch as in the year of our Lord 1692, two several towns within this Province were infested with a horrible witchcraft, or possession of devils,” &c. “The influence and energy of the evil spirits so great at that time acting in and upon those who were the principal accusers and witnesses;” and that “some of the principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious conversation”—were the reasons assigned for the reversal of the attainder.

As showing Gov. Hutchinson’s latest opinions on the question, whether the manifestations at Salem village were wholly the result of fraud and imposture, I append a supplementary paragraph with which he closes the narrative in his final draft.

“The opinion which prevailed in New-England for many years after this tragedy, that there was something preternatural in it, and that it was not all the effect of fraud and imposture, proceeded from the reluctance in human nature to reject errors once imbibed. As the principal actors went off the stage this opinion was gradually lessened; but perhaps it was owing to a respect to the memory of their immediate ancestor, that many do not seem to be fully convinced. There are a great number of persons who are willing to suppose the accusers to have been under bodily disorders which affected their imaginations. This is kind and charitable, but seems to be winking the truth out of sight. A little attention must force conviction that the whole was a scene of fraud and imposture begun by young girls, who at first, perhaps, thought of nothing more than being pitied and indulged, and continued by adult persons who were afraid of being accused themselves. The one and the other, rather than confess their fraud, suffered the lives of so many innocents to be taken away through the credulity of judges and juries.”

P.

Transcriber’s Notes