She was “loaded with chains” and placed in a prison. As no provision was made to feed prisoners in Massachusetts at that time, her condition must have been one of great distress. It is said that the Calefs continued to succor her, and there is a statement that a Dame Nourse of Salem, visiting Boston, gave her some aid. Can this be the explanation of Mather’s inexorable pursuit of Rebecca Nourse?
To relieve the tedium of an existence deprived of innocent amusements, the Goodwin children renewed their deceptions, and Cotton Mather, “to relieve the distress of the afflicted John Goodwin, took Martha to his house to live.” Now it was that the cunning mischief-maker befooled Cotton Mather to the top of his bent. Page after page of the ponderous Magnalia is occupied with a grave recital of the pranks played by this child in the minister’s house. “She screamed with pain, and cried that Glover’s chains were about her leg.... To prevent the escape of the prisoner’s spirit, to afflict the child, they put other chains on Glover.... They chained the Papist till she could not move and she did spew blood.”
Martha would not allow the spirit to be confined. She said Goody Glover brought her a horse to ride, and her pastor tells us “she would make all the motions of a person who rides, about the room and up the stairs, like one astraddle of a horse.”
Imagine the impish glee of the child at seeing the most important person in the Colony following her about in her horseplay, with looks of awe! Her terrible precocity taught her to play on his hatred of Mrs. Glover’s creed. “While possessed of the devil and Mrs. Glover,” he says, “she could read Popish books, but not books against Popery.” In the pastor’s study “she would become calm, and no longer afflicted. This was witnessed by divers persons, and many times.” When asked why she was not afflicted in the pastor’s study, the child replied, with a thorough reading of Mather’s greatest weakness—his vanity, “Your study is too holy a place for the devil or Glover to enter.”
The trial of Mrs. Glover was a farce. Pounded with questions on all sides, the poor woman was only able to answer her tormentors in Irish. “This she was instigated to do by the devil,” says Cotton Mather. There be no doubt that, owing to her great age, her sufferings in prison, the confusion of the court, which was added to by the screams of pretended pain from the Goodwin children, Mrs. Glover was temporarily deprived of English, “for which she never had a great facility.” One question, however, she did give answer to in English. They asked her if it was true that she was a Papist, “and showed to her an idol which was secret in her house. She snatched at it with a joy that was diabolical, and said: ‘I die a Catholic!’” Considering the material of which it was composed, it is no wonder that the jury, after this declaration of Faith, found her guilty.
The magistrates visited her in prison that night, “and they found her agreeable to their questions.” They asked her what would become of her soul after she was hanged. The simple and much-tried woman had the humility Cotton Mather lacked. “You ask me a very solemn question, and I can not tell what to say to it. I trust in God,” she replied. Cotton Mather also visited her in prison.... He asked her to say the Lord’s Prayer; for the common belief was that this could not be done by a Catholic or a witch. “She recited the Pater Noster to me in Latin,” he says, “and in Irish, and in English, but she could not end it.” Of course she could not end it in Cotton Mather’s way.
She caused Mather to wonder that she repeated in a voice “marvellous strong” the petition, “deliver us from evil.” He considers this to be a sign that she “reproached the devil for deserting her to be hung.” Poor, befogged man, whose conceit would not permit him to see that it was he himself she petitioned to be delivered from; for he argued with her to destroy her Faith. She refused Mather’s spiritual ministrations, and he feels assured that her “Catholic spirits” will not permit her to accept them, and he predicts to her, her speedy and eternal damnation.
The proffering of these several consolations increased Mather’s habitual satisfaction with himself, and he says: “Comforted at having performed a solemn duty” [the consigning of a soul to perdition], “I returned to my house.” Arrived there, he found the “Maid Martha galloping about the room on the horse, her feet not touching the ground, which was a great wonder.”
Mrs. Glover was hanged on the following day. “There was a great concourse of people to see if the Papist would relent.... Her one cat was there, fearsome to see. They would to destroy the cat, but Mr. Calef would not [permit the cat to be killed]. Before her execution she was bold and impudent [!] making to forgive her accusers and those who put her off.... She predicted that her death would not relieve the children, saying it was not she afflicted them.” This was construed into a threat; and the children continued their sport, till, “a very strict fast being held, they were completely restored.” After recounting the details of this “joyful restoration,” Cotton Mather becomes more than usually prolix in a relation of the piety of his protegés.
It is not denied that before and after the execution of Ann Glover there was a vast number of arrests and executions of reputed witches and wizards in New England, beginning in 1647, under John Winthrop, and culminating in the Salem massacre of 1692. It is not denied that neither age, sex, nor condition was spared. Some were children—one but four years old,—others of eighty and beyond; one was a minister; many were the most reputable people in the Massachusetts Colony.