What is asserted is that Ann Glover was put to death not so much because she was reputed a witch, as for the certainty that she was a Catholic. All we know of her is in the words of her enemies and executioners, except what is found in the scant record of Robert Calef, who exposed himself to utter ruin by his defence of her. The little we know, however, confirms the truth of my assertion.
It was only when all attempts to move Mrs. Glover’s “obstinate Papacy” had failed, that she was first accused of witchcraft in 1682. That the Goodwins were in the league “to bring her out of the burning”—that is, to induce her to forswear the Faith—may be inferred with safety from what took place in 1687. When her daughter was accused of theft by Martha Goodwin, she does not say, “You may have us whipped, but we are innocent of stealing”: this she had asserted before. She cries out: “You may have us whipped, but we won’t go to the sermons.” Does not this outburst unfold a tale of antecedent persecution suffered for religion’s sake?
A fast “had greatly relieved the Goodwin children”; the tempest they had aroused was lulled, and what happened? “The magistrates, long annoyed by the presence of an obstinate Papist in Boston, ordered Goody Glover to be taken into custody,” says Drake. At her trial there was not even such evidence to prove her a witch as would satisfy the gullible magistrates. It was only when Goody Glover made the declaration that she would die a Catholic that “the jury brought her guilty.”
It went hard with the magistrates and Cotton Mather that a poor old Catholic, a “scandalous Irishwoman,” withstood the doctrine of the self-reputed “saints”; and even now Goody Glover could have saved her life had she “relented.” The magistrates went to her on her last night alive, to beat down her opposition by questions of her soul. They failed, and Cotton Mather took their place.
He was above the law in the cheerless Colony. When, in 1692, the jury brought in poor Rebecca Nourse innocent of witchcraft, he had them sent to reconsider the evidence: at his beck they found her guilty. Then the governor, Sir William Phipps, pardoned her. In defiance of the pardon, Cotton Mather had her hanged, and saw her die on Witches’ Hill at Salem; and, “sitting on his black horse, he rebuked those who did bewail her; for she was an excellent woman.”
In view of this exhibition of his arbitrary power, is it too much to say that, had Goody Glover “relented,” in his vainglory over the conquest of a broken-down old woman, Cotton Mather would have had her set free? But the old Irishwoman conquered Cotton Mather. “She died a Catholic”; and, imitating her Divine Master, she died forgiving her enemies,—all those from whom she had suffered grievous wrong.
CAPT. DANIEL NEILL, AN ARTILLERY OFFICER OF THE REVOLUTION.
BY GEN. J. MADISON DRAKE[[5]].
It has never been generally known that the first cannon shot at the enemy, after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by Congress, at Philadelphia, on the evening of July 4, 1776, was fired in Elizabeth, N. J., then known as Elizabethtown, and as the present time seems opportune for the revivication of local incidents in the war for independence, I will narrate an exciting episode to awaken additional interest.
Up to February, 1776, the state of New Jersey, or province as it then was, had no artillery organization, and the importance of that arm of the service being acutely felt, the Provincial Congress, in session at Burlington, on the 13th of that month, adopted the following resolution: