PAGE CONTENTS
| i. SALEM WITCH TRIALS |
| ii. THE WüRZBURG WITCH TRIALS | iii. BIDEFORD WITCH TRIALS |
| iv RAMSELE WITCH TRIALS |
| iv BASQUE WITCH TRIALS |
Salem witch trials
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"Salem Witches" redirects here. For the minor league baseball team, see Salem Witches (NEL).
1876 illustration of the courtroom; the central figure is usually identified as Mary Walcott
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court of trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties of colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. The episode has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of religious extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process, and governmental intrusion on individual liberties.
Despite being generally known as the "Salem" witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in a variety of towns across the province: Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover and Salem Town. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities. At least five more of the accused died in prison. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Village, but also in Ipswich, Boston and Charlestown, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man (Giles Corey) who refused to enter a plea was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so.
Contents
1 Background
1.1 Political context
1.2 Local context
1.3 Economic context
1.4 Religious context
1.5 Social context
2 The events
2.1 The initial outbreak
2.2 Accusations and examinations before local magistrates
2.3 Formal prosecution: The Court of Oyer and Terminer
2.4 The Superior Court of Judicature, 1693
3 Legal procedures used
3.1 Overview
3.2 Spectral evidence
3.3 The witch cake
3.4 The touch test
3.5 Contemporary commentary on the trials
4 Aftermath and closure
4.1 Reversals of attainder and compensation to the survivors and their families
4.2 Memorials by descendants
5 In literature, media and popular culture
Background
Because of the unusual size of the outbreak of witchcraft accusations, various aspects of the historical context of this episode have been considered as specific contributing factors.Political context
Governor William Phips (1651–1695)The original 1629 Royal Charter of Massachusetts was canceled in 1684, when King James II installed Sir Edmund Andros as the Governor of the Dominion of New England. Andros was ousted in 1689 when King James II was dethroned in the "Glorious Revolution," and William and Mary ascended to the throne in England. Simon Bradstreet and Thomas Danforth were elected Governor and Lieutenant Governor. At this same time, tensions erupted between the English colonists settling in "the Eastward" (the present-day coast of Maine) and the French-supported Wabanaki Indians of the region, in what would come to be known as King William's War, following only 13 years on the heels of the devastating King Philip's War with the Wampanoag and other indigenous tribes in southern and western New England. In October 1690, William Phips led an unsuccessful attack on Quebec, and many English settlements along the coast continued to be attacked by Indians, including a particularly the Candlemas Massacre, an assault on York on January 25, 1692. A new charter for the Province of Massachusetts had not been given final approval in England until October 16, 1691.News of the appointment of Phips as the new governor reached Boston in late January[4] and a copy of the new charter arrived in Boston on February 8, 1692.Phips was formally voted governor on Election Day, May 4, 1692. Phips arrived in Boston ten days later, on May 14. On May 16, Phips was sworn in as Governor and William Stoughton as Deputy Governor. One of the first orders of business for the new Governor and Council on May 27, 1692, was the formal nomination of county justices of the peace, sheriffs, and the commission of a Special Court of Oyer and Terminer to handle the large numbers of people who were "thronging" the jails.
Boyer and Nissenbaum have postulated that without a valid charter, there was no legitimate form of government to try capital cases until Phips arrived with the new charter,but this has been disputed by David Konig, who points out that between charters, according to the Records of the Court of Assistants, a group of 14 pirates were tried and condemned on January 27, 1690 for acts of piracy and murder in August and October 1689.
Local context
Map of Salem Village, 1692In 1689, Salem Village was finally allowed by the church in Salem Town to form their own separate covenanted church congregation and ordain their own minister, after many petitions to do so. Salem Village was torn by internal disputes between neighbors who disagreed about the choice of Samuel Parris as their first ordained minister, and about the choice to grant him the deed to the parsonage as part of his compensation.
Economic context
Increasing family size fueled disputes over land between neighbors and within families, especially on the frontier where the economy was based on farming. Changes in the weather or blights could easily wipe out a year's crop. A farm that could support an average-sized family could not support the many families of the next generation, prompting farmers to push farther into the wilderness to find land, encroaching upon the indigenous people. Due to the strongly religious nature of the Puritans, religious fervor added tension to the mix. Loss of crops, livestock, and children, as well as earthquakes and bad weather, were typically attributed to the wrath of God.Religious context
Reverend Cotton Mather (1663–1728)The Puritans were a number of religious groups that sprang up during the 17th century as opposition to the Church of England. Puritans opposed many of the traditions of the Church of England, notably the Book of Common Prayer, but also ceremonial rituals such as the use of priestly vestments (cap and gown) during services, the use of the Holy Cross during baptism and kneeling during the sacrament. The colony of Massachusetts at the time was heavily influenced by Puritan thought, but was not a theocracy. A few Protestants (such as Roger Williams) prior to this period had contended that this level of religious involvement in the State was contrary to the pure teachings of the New Testament, in which the church was separate from the state (Mt. 22:21; 1Cor. 5:12, 13 1 Pet. 2:13, 14), and unrepentant sinful behavior that merited serious spiritual discipline was administered by supernatural means (Acts 5:1–10; 1 Cor. 5:1–4; 1 Tim. 1:20).
The Puritans believed in the existence of an invisible world inhabited by God and the angels including the Devil (who was seen as a fallen angel) and his fellow demons. To Puritans, this invisible world was as real as the visible one around them.
In his book Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689), Cotton Mather describes strange behavior exhibited by the four children of Boston mason John Goodwin and attributed it to witchcraft practiced upon them by an Irish washerwoman, Mary Glover. Mather, a minister of Boston's North Church (not to be confused with the Episcopal Old North Church of Paul Revere fame), was a prolific publisher of pamphlets and a firm believer in witchcraft.
Social context
The patriarchal beliefs that Puritans held in the community added further stresses. Women, they believed, should be totally subservient to men. By nature, a woman was more likely to enlist in the Devil's service than was a man, and women were considered lustful by nature. In addition, the small-town atmosphere made secrets difficult to keep and people's opinions about their neighbors were generally accepted as fact. In an age where the philosophy "children should be seen and not heard" was taken at face value, children were at the bottom of the social ladder. Toys and games were seen as idle and playing was discouraged. Girls had additional restrictions placed upon them and were trained from a young age to spin yarn, cook, sew, weave, serve their husbands and bear their children, while boys were able to go hunting, fishing, exploring in the forest, and often became apprentices to carpenters and smiths.In accordance with Puritan beliefs, the majority of accused 'witches' were unmarried or recently widowed land-owning women; according to the law if no legal heir existed upon the owner's death, title to the land would revert to the previous owner, or (if no previous owner could be determined) to the colony. This made witch-hunting a possible method of acquiring a profitable piece of property.
The events
Because of the number of cases involved, timelines are very helpful to clarifying the unfolding of the specifics of this event. Most start with the afflictions of the girls in the Parris household in January/February 1692 and end in May 1693 with the last trials, but some start earlier to place the trials in a wider context of other witch-hunts, and some end later to include information about restitution.Main article: Timeline of the Salem Witch Trials
The initial outbreak
The parsonage in Salem Village, as photographed in the late 19th centuryPresent-day archaeological site of the Salem Village parsonage
In Salem Village in 1692, Betty Parris, age 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, age 11, the daughter and niece (respectively) of the Reverend Samuel Parris, began to have fits described as "beyond the power of Epileptic Fits or natural disease to effect" by John Hale, minister in nearby Beverly. The girls screamed, threw things about the room, uttered strange sounds, crawled under furniture, and contorted themselves into peculiar positions, according to the eyewitness account of Rev. Deodat Lawson, a former minister in the town. The girls complained of being pinched and pricked with pins. A doctor, historically assumed to be William Griggs, could find no physical evidence of any ailment. Other young women in the village began to exhibit similar behaviors. When Lawson preached in the Salem Village meetinghouse, he was interrupted several times by outbursts of the afflicted.
The first three people accused and arrested for allegedly afflicting Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, 12-year-old Ann Putnam, Jr., and Elizabeth Hubbard were Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. Sarah Good was homeless and known to beg for food or shelter from neighbors. Sarah Osborne had sex with her indentured servant and rarely attended church meetings. Tituba, as a slave of a different ethnicity than the Puritans, was an obvious target for accusations. All of these outcast women fit the description of the "usual suspects" for witchcraft accusations, and no one stood up for them. These women were brought before the local magistrates on the complaint of witchcraft and interrogated for several days, starting on March 1, 1692, then sent to jail (Boyer 3).
Other accusations followed in March: Martha Corey, Dorothy Good (mistakenly called Dorcas Good in her arrest warrant) and Rebecca Nurse in Salem Village, and Rachel Clinton in nearby Ipswich. Martha Corey had voiced skepticism about the credibility of the girls' accusations, drawing attention to herself. The charges against her and Rebecca Nurse deeply troubled the community because Martha Corey was a full covenanted member of the Church in Salem Village, as was Rebecca Nurse in the Church in Salem Town. If such upstanding people could be witches, then anybody could be a witch, and church membership was no protection from accusation. Dorothy Good, the daughter of Sarah Good, was only 4 years old, and when questioned by the magistrates her answers were construed as a confession, implicating her mother. In Ipswich, Rachel Clinton was arrested for witchcraft at the end of March on charges unrelated to the afflictions of the girls in Salem Village.
Accusations and examinations before local magistrates
Magistrate Samuel Sewall (1652–1730)In April, the stakes rose. When Sarah Cloyce (Nurse's sister) and Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor were arrested, they were brought before John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, not only in their capacity as local magistrates, but as members of the Governor's Council, at a meeting in Salem Town. Present for the examination were Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, and Assistants Samuel Sewall, Samuel Appleton, James Russell, and Isaac Addington. Objections by John Proctor during the proceedings resulted in his arrest that day as well.
Within a week, Giles Corey (Martha's husband, and a covenanted church member in Salem Town), Abigail Hobbs, Bridget Bishop, Mary Warren (a servant in the Proctor household and sometime accuser herself), and Deliverance Hobbs (stepmother of Abigail Hobbs) were arrested and examined. Abigail Hobbs, Mary Warren, and Deliverance Hobbs all confessed and began naming additional people as accomplices. More arrests followed: Sarah Wildes, William Hobbs (husband of Deliverance and father of Abigail), Nehemiah Abbott Jr., Mary Eastey (sister of Cloyce and Nurse), Edward Bishop, Jr. and his wife Sarah Bishop, and Mary English, and finally on April 30, the Reverend George Burroughs, Lydia Dustin, Susannah Martin, Dorcas Hoar, Sarah Morey, and Philip English (Mary's husband). Nehemiah Abbott Jr. was released because the accusers agreed he was not the person whose specter had afflicted them. Mary Eastey was released for a few days after her initial arrest because the accusers failed to confirm that it was she who had afflicted them, and then she was rearrested when the accusers reconsidered.
Deposition of Abigail Williams v. George Jacobs, Sr.
In May, accusations continued to pour in, but some of those named began to evade apprehension. Multiple warrants were issued before John Willard and Elizabeth Colson were apprehended, but George Jacobs Jr. and Daniel Andrews were not caught. Until this point, all the proceedings were still only investigative, but on May 27, 1692, William Phips ordered the establishment of a Special Court of Oyer and Terminer for Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex counties to prosecute the cases of those in jail. Warrants were issued for even more people. Sarah Osborne, one of the first three accused, died in jail on May 10, 1692.Warrants were issued for 36 more people, with examinations continuing to take place in Salem Village: Sarah Dustin (daughter of Lydia Dustin), Ann Sears, Bethiah Carter Sr. and her daughter Bethiah Carter Jr., George Jacobs, Sr. and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs, John Willard, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Abigail Soames, George Jacobs, Jr. (son of George Jacobs, Sr. and father of Margaret Jacobs), Daniel Andrew, Rebecca Jacobs (wife of George Jacobs, Jr. and sister of Daniel Andrew), Sarah Buckley and her daughter Mary Witheridge, Elizabeth Colson, Elizabeth Hart, Thomas Farrar, Sr., Roger Toothaker, Sarah Proctor (daughter of John and Elizabeth Proctor), Sarah Bassett (sister-in-law of Elizabeth Proctor), Susannah Roots, Mary DeRich (another sister-in-law of Elizabeth Proctor), Sarah Pease, Elizabeth Cary, Martha Carrier, Elizabeth Fosdick, Wilmot Redd, Sarah Rice, Elizabeth Howe, Capt. John Alden (son of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of Plymouth Colony), William Procter (son of John and Elizabeth Procter), John Flood, Mary Toothaker (wife of Roger Toothaker and sister of Martha Carrier) and her daughter Margaret Toothaker, and Arthur Abbott. When the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened at the end of May, this brought the total number of people in custody for the court to handle to 62.
Cotton Mather wrote to one of the judges, John Richards, on May 31, 1692, voicing his support of the prosecutions, but cautioning him of the dangers of relying on spectral evidence and advising the court on how to proceed.
Formal prosecution: The Court of Oyer and Terminer
Chief Magistrate William Stoughton (1631–1701)The Court of Oyer and Terminer convened in Salem Town on June 2, 1692, with William Stoughton, the new Lieutenant Governor, as Chief Magistrate, Thomas Newton as the Crown's Attorney prosecuting the cases, and Stephen Sewall as clerk. Bridget Bishop's case was the first brought to the grand jury, who endorsed all the indictments against her. She went to trial the same day and was found guilty. On June 3, the grand jury endorsed indictments against Rebecca Nurse and John Willard, but it is not clear why they did not go to trial immediately as well. Bridget Bishop was executed by hanging on June 10, 1692.
In June, more people were accused, arrested and examined, but now in Salem Town, by former local magistrates John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, and Bartholomew Gedney who had become judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Roger Toothaker died in prison on June 16, 1692.
At the end of June and beginning of July, grand juries endorsed indictments against Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Procter, John Procter, Martha Carrier, Sarah Wilds, and Dorcas Hoar. Only Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin and Sarah Wildes, along with Rebecca Nurse, went on to trial at this time, where they were found guilty, and executed on July 19, 1692. In mid-July as well, the primary source of accusations moved from Salem Village to Andover, when the constable there asked to have some of the afflicted girls in Salem Village visit with his wife to try to determine who caused her afflictions. Ann Foster, her daughter Mary Lacey Sr., and granddaughter Mary Lacey Jr. all confessed to being witches. Anthony Checkley was appointed by Governor Phips to replace Thomas Newton as the Crown's Attorney when Newton took an appointment in New Hampshire.
In the beginning of August, grand juries indicted George Burroughs, Mary Eastey, Martha Corey, and George Jacobs, Sr., and trial juries convicted Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, Sr., George Burroughs, John Willard, Elizabeth Procter, and John Procter. Elizabeth Procter was given a temporary stay of execution because she was pregnant. Before being executed, George Burroughs recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly, supposedly something that was impossible for a witch, but Cotton Mather was present and reminded the crowd that the man had been convicted before a jury. On August 19, 1692, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., George Burroughs, John Willard, and John Procter were hanged.
Petition for bail of 11 accused people from Ipswich, 1692
In September, grand juries indicted eighteen more people. The grand jury failed to indict William Procter, who was re-arrested on new charges. On September 19, 1692, Giles Corey refused to plead at arraignment, and was subjected to peine forte et dure, a form of torture in which the subject is pressed beneath an increasingly heavy load of stones, in an attempt to make him enter a plea. Four pleaded guilty and eleven others were tried and found guilty. On September 22, 1692, eight of those convicted were hanged, reportedly called the "Eight firebrands of Hell" by Salem minister Nicholas Noyes. One of the convicted, Dorcas Hoar, was given a temporary reprieve, with the support of several ministers, to make her confession before God. Aged Mary Bradbury escaped. Abigail Faulkner Sr. was pregnant and given a temporary reprieve (some reports from that era say that Abigail's reprieve later became a stay of charges, when the courts realized that sentencing Abigail to death would also kill her unborn child, which had committed no crime).
Mather was asked by Governor Phips in September to write about the trials, and obtained access to the official records of the Salem trials from his friend Stephen Sewall, clerk of the court, upon which his account of the affair, Wonders of the Invisible World, was based.
This court was dismissed in October by Governor Phips, although this was not the end of the trials.
The Superior Court of Judicature, 1693
The personal seal of William Stoughton on the warrant for the execution of Bridget BishopIn January 1693, the new Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize and General Gaol Delivery convened in Salem, Essex County, again headed by William Stoughton, as Chief Justice, with Anthony Checkley continuing as the Attorney General, and Jonathan Elatson as Clerk of the Court. The first five cases tried in January 1693 were of the five people who had been indicted but not tried in September: Sarah Buckley, Margaret Jacobs, Rebecca Jacobs, Mary Whittredge, and Job Tookey. All were found not guilty. Grand juries were held for many of those remaining in jail. Charges were dismissed against many, but sixteen more people were indicted and tried, three of whom were found guilty: Elizabeth Johnson Jr., Sarah Wardwell, and Mary Post. When Stoughton wrote the warrants for the execution of these women and the others remaining from the previous court, Governor Phips pardoned them, sparing their lives. In late January/early February, the Court sat again in Charlestown, Middlesex County, and held grand juries and tried five people: Sarah Cole (of Lynn), Lydia Dustin & Sarah Dustin, Mary Taylor , and Mary Toothaker. All were found not guilty, but were not released until they paid their jail fees. Lydia Dustin died in jail on March 10, 1693. At the end of April, the Court convened in Boston, Suffolk County, and cleared Capt. John Alden by proclamation, and heard charges against a servant girl, Mary Watkins, for falsely accusing her mistress of witchcraft. In May, the Court convened in Ipswich, Essex County, held a variety of grand juries who dismissed charges against all but five people. Susannah Post, Eunice Frye, Mary Bridges Jr., Mary Barker, and William Barker Jr. were all found not guilty at trial, putting an end to the episode.
Legal procedures used
Overview
Examination of a Witch (1853) by T. H. Matteson, inspired by the Salem trialsAfter someone concluded that a loss, illness or death had been caused by witchcraft, the accuser would enter a complaint against the alleged witch with the local magistrates.If the complaint was deemed credible, the magistrates would have the person arrested and brought in for a public examination, essentially an interrogation, where the magistrates pressed the accused to confess.
If the magistrates at this local level were satisfied that the complaint was well-founded, the prisoner was handed over to be dealt with by a superior court. In 1692, the magistrates opted to wait for the arrival of the new charter and governor, who would establish a Court of Oyer and Terminer to handle these cases.
The next step, at the superior court level, was to summon witnesses before a grand jury.
A person could be indicted on charges of afflicting with witchcraft, or for making an unlawful covenant with the Devil. Once indicted, the defendant went to trial, sometimes on the same day, as in the case of the first person indicted and tried on June 2, Bridget Bishop, who was executed on June 10, 1692.
There were four execution dates, with one person executed on June 10, 1692, five executed on July 19, 1692 (Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe & Sarah Wildes),[26] another five executed on August 19, 1692 (Martha Carrier, John Willard, George Burroughs, George Jacobs, Sr., and John Proctor), and eight on September 22, 1692 (Mary Eastey, Martha Corey, Ann Pudeator, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Alice Parker, Wilmot Redd, and Margaret Scott). Several others, including Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor and Abigail Faulkner, were convicted but given temporary reprieves because they were pregnant. Though convicted, they would not be hanged until they had given birth. Five other women were convicted in 1692, but sentence was never carried out: Ann Foster (who later died in prison), her daughter Mary Lacy Sr., Abigail Hobbs, Dorcas Hoar, and Mary Bradbury.
Giles Corey was pressed to death during the Salem witch trials in the 1690s
Giles Corey, an 80-year-old farmer from the southeast end of Salem (called Salem Farms), refused to enter a plea when he came to trial in September. The judges applied an archaic form of punishment called peine forte et dure, in which stones were piled on his chest until he could no longer breathe. (British law had, in reality, abolished this practice twenty years earlier.} After two days of peine fort et dure, Corey died without entering a plea. His refusal to plead has sometimes been explained as a way of preventing his estate from being confiscated by the Crown, but according to historian Chadwick Hansen, much of Corey's property had already been seized, and he had made a will in prison: "His death was a protest... against the methods of the court".This echoes the perspective of a contemporary critic of the trials, Robert Calef, who claimed, "Giles Corey pleaded not Guilty to his Indictment, but would not put himself upon Tryal by the Jury (they having cleared none upon Tryal) and knowing there would be the same Witnesses against him, rather chose to undergo what Death they would put him to."
Not even in death were the accused witches granted peace or respect. As convicted witches, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey had been excommunicated from their churches and none was given proper burial. As soon as the bodies of the accused were cut down from the trees, they were thrown into a shallow grave and the crowd would disperse. Oral history claims that the families of the dead reclaimed their bodies after dark and buried them in unmarked graves on family property. The record books of the time do not mention the deaths of any of those executed.
Spectral evidence
Title page of Cases of Conscience (Boston, 1693) by Increase MatherMuch, but not all, of the evidence used against the accused was spectral evidence, or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence centered on whether a person had to give permission to the Devil for his/her shape to be used to afflict. Opponents claimed that the Devil was able to use anyone's shape to afflict people, but the Court contended that the Devil could not use a person's shape without that person's permission; therefore, when the afflicted claimed to see the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil. Increase Mather and other ministers sent a letter to the Court, "The Return of Several Ministers Consulted," urging the magistrates not to convict on spectral evidence alone (spectral evidence was later ruled inadmissible, which caused a dramatic reduction in the rate of convictions and may have hastened the end of the trials). A copy of this letter was printed in Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience, published in 1693. The publication A Tryal of Witches, was used by the Magistrates at Salem, when looking for a precedent in allowing spectral evidence.[30] Finding that no lesser person than the jurist Sir Matthew Hale had permitted this evidence, supported by the eminent philosopher, physician and author Thomas Browne, to be used in the Bury St Edmunds witch trial and the accusations against two Lowestoft women, held in 1662 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England, they also accepted its validity and the trials proceeded.[31] Other evidence included the confessions of the accused, the testimony of a person who confessed to being a witch identifying others as witches, the discovery of poppits, books of palmistry and horoscopes, or pots of ointments in the possession or home of the accused, and the existence of so-called witch's teats on the body of the accused. A witch's teat was said to be a mole or blemish somewhere on the body that was insensitive to touch; discovery of such insensitive areas was considered de facto evidence of witchcraft, though in practice, the witch's teat was usually insensitive by design, with examiners using secretly-dulled needles to claim that the accused could not feel the prick of a pin.
The witch cake
At some point in February 1692, likely between the time when the afflictions began but before specific names were mentioned, a neighbor of Rev. Parris, Mary Sibly (aunt of the afflicted Mary Walcott), instructed John Indian, one of the minister's slaves, to make a witch cake, using traditional English white magic to discover the identity of the witch who was afflicting the girls. The cake, made from rye meal and urine from the afflicted girls, was fed to a dog.According to English folk understanding of how witches accomplished affliction, when the dog ate the cake, the witch herself would be hurt because invisible particles she had sent to afflict the girls remained in the girls' urine, and her cries of pain when the dog ate the cake would identify her as the witch. This superstition was based on the Cartesian "Doctrine of Effluvia", which posited that witches afflicted by the use of "venomous and malignant particles, that were ejected from the eye", according to the October 8, 1692 letter of Thomas Brattle, a contemporary critic of the trials.
Reverend Samuel Parris (1653–1720)
According to the Records of the Salem-Village Church, Parris spoke with Sibly privately on March 25, 1692 about her "grand error" and accepted her "sorrowful confession." That Sunday, March 27, during his Sunday sermon, he addressed his congregation about the "calamities" that had begun in his own household, but stated, "it never brake forth to any considerable light, until diabolical means were used, by the making of a cake by my Indian man, who had his direction from this our sister, Mary Sibly," going on to admonish all against the use of any kind of magic, even white magic, because it was essentially, "going to the Devil for help against the Devil." Mary Sibley publicly acknowledged the error of her actions before the congregation, who voted by a show of hands that they were satisfied with her admission of error.
Other instances appear in the records of the episode that demonstrated a continued belief by members of the community in this effluvia as legitimate evidence, including accounts in two statements against Elizabeth Howe that people had suggested cutting off and burning an ear of two different animals Howe was thought to have afflicted, to prove she was the one who had bewitched them to death.
This 19th-century representation of "Tituba and the Children" by Alfred Fredericks, originally appeared in A Popular History of the United States, Vol. 2, by William Cullen Bryant (1878)
Traditionally, the allegedly afflicted girls are said to have been entertained by Parris' slave woman, Tituba, who supposedly taught them about voodoo in the kitchen of the parsonage during the winter of 1692, although there is no contemporary evidence to support the story.] A variety of secondary sources, starting with Charles W. Upham in the 19th century, typically relate that a circle of the girls, with Tituba's help, tried their hands at fortune telling using the white of an egg and a mirror to create a primitive crystal ball to divine the professions of their future spouses and scared one another when one supposedly saw the shape of a coffin instead. The story is drawn from John Hale's book about the trials,[36] but in his account, only one of the girls, not a group of them, had confessed to him afterwards that she had once tried this. Hale did not mention Tituba as having any part of it, nor when it had occurred.
Tituba's race is often cited as Carib-Indian or of African descent, but contemporary sources describe her only as an "Indian." Research by Elaine Breslaw has suggested that she may well have been captured in what is now Venezuela and brought to Barbados, and so may have been an Arawak Indian.[37] Other slightly later descriptions of her, by Gov. Thomas Hutchinson writing his history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 18th century, describe her as a "Spanish Indian."[38] In that day, that typically meant a Native American from the Carolinas/Georgia/Florida. Contrary to the folklore, there is no evidence to support the assertion that Tituba told any of the girls any stories about using magic.
The touch test
The most infamous employment of the belief in effluvia – and in direct opposition to what Parris had advised his own parishioners in Salem Village – was the touch test used in Andover during preliminary examinations in September 1692. As several of those accused later recounted, "we were blindfolded, and our hands were laid upon the afflicted persons, they being in their fits and falling into their fits at our coming into their presence, as they said. Some led us and laid our hands upon them, and then they said they were well and that we were guilty of afflicting them; whereupon we were all seized, as prisoners, by a warrant from the justice of the peace and forthwith carried to Salem" Rev. John Hale explained how this supposedly worked: "the Witch by the cast of her eye sends forth a Malefick Venome into the Bewitched to cast him into a fit, and therefore the touch of the hand doth by sympathy cause that venome to return into the Body of the Witch again".Contemporary commentary on the trials
Rev. Increase Mather (1639–1723)Various accounts and opinions about the proceedings began to appear in print in 1692.
Deodat Lawson, a former minister in Salem Village, visited Salem Village in March and April, 1692, and published an account in Boston in 1692 of what he witnessed and heard, called "A Brief and True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages Relating to Sundry Persons Afflicted by Witchcraft, at Salem Village: Which happened from the Nineteenth of March, to the Fifth of April, 1692".
Rev. William Milbourne, a Baptist minister in Boston, publicly petitioned the General Assembly in early June, 1692, challenging the use of spectral evidence by the Court. Milbourne had to post £200 bond or be arrested for "contriving, writing and publishing the said scandalous Papers".
On June 15, 1692, twelve local ministers—including Increase Mather, Samuel Willard, Cotton Mather—submitted The Return of several Ministers to the Governor and Council in Boston, cautioning the authorities not to rely entirely on the use of spectral evidence, stating, "Presumptions whereupon persons may be Committed, and much more, Convictions whereupon persons may be Condemned as Guilty of Witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more considerable, than barely the Accused Persons being Represented by a Spectre unto the Afflicted".
First page of "Some Miscellany Observations On our present Debates respecting Witchcrafts, in a Dialogue Between S. & B.", attributed to Samuel Willard.
Sometime in 1692, minister of the First Church in Boston, Samuel Willard anonymously published a short tract in Philadelphia entitled, "Some Miscellany Observations On our present Debates respecting Witchcrafts, in a Dialogue Between S. & B." The authors were listed as "P.E. and J. A." (Philip English and John Alden), but is generally attributed to Willard. In it, two characters, S (Salem) and B (Boston), discuss the way the proceedings were being conducted, with "B" urging caution about the use of testimony from the afflicted and the confessors, stating, "whatever comes from them is to be suspected; and it is dangerous using or crediting them too far".
Title page of Wonders of the Invisible World (London, 1693) by Cotton Mather
Sometime in September 1692, at the request of Governor Phips, Cotton Mather wrote "Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches, Lately Executed in New-England," as a defense of the trials, to "help very much flatten that fury which we now so much turn upon one another". It was published in Boston and London in 1692, although dated 1693, with an introductory letter of endorsement by William Stoughton, the Chief Magistrate. The book included accounts of five trials, with much of the material copied directly from the court records supplied to Mather by Stephen Sewall, his friend and Clerk of the Court.
Cotton Mather's father, Increase Mather, published "Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits," dated October 3, 1692, after the last trials by the Court of Oyer & Terminer, although the title page lists the year of publication as "1693." In it, Mather repeated his caution about the reliance on spectral evidence, stating "It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned". Second and third editions of this book were published in Boston and London in 1693, the third of which also included Lawson's Narrative and the anonymous "A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches, sent in a Letter from thence, to a Gentleman in London."
A wealthy businessman in Boston and fellow Harvard graduate, Thomas Brattle circulated a letter in manuscript form in October 1692, in which he criticized the methods used by the Court to determine guilt, including the use of the touch test and the testimony of confessors, stating, "they are deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evill spirit; and therefore unfit to be evidences either against themselves, or any one else"
Aftermath and closure
Although the last trial was held in May 1693, public response to the events has continued. In the decades following the trials, the issues primarily had to do with establishing the innocence of the individuals who were convicted and compensating the survivors and families, and in the following centuries, the descendants of those unjustly accused and condemned have sought to honor their memories.Reversals of attainder and compensation to the survivors and their families
Title page of A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft by John Hale (Boston, 1702)The first hint that public call for justice was not over happened in 1695, when Thomas Maule, a noted Quaker, publicly criticized the handling of the trials by the Puritan leaders in Chapter 29 of his book Truth Held Forth and Maintained, expanding on Increase Mather by stating, "it were better than one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a Witch".For publishing this book, Maule was imprisoned twelve months before he was tried and found not guilty.
Rev. Samuel Willard of Boston (1640–1707)
On December 17, 1696, the General Court ruled that there would be a fast day on January 14, 1697, "referring to the late Tragedy, raised among us by Satan and his Instruments."On that day, Samuel Sewall asked Rev. Samuel Willard to read aloud his apology to the congregation of Boston's South Church, "to take the Blame & Shame" of the "late Commission of Oyer & Terminer at Salem". Thomas Fiske and eleven other trial jurors also asked forgiveness.
Robert Calef, a merchant in Boston and long-time public adversary of Cotton Mather, republished Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World in 1700 with additional material added to it, broadly criticizing the proceedings, under the title More Wonders of the Invisible World,bringing the issue back into public debate. John Hale, a minister in Beverly who was present at many of the proceedings, had completed his book, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft in 1697, but it wasn't published until 1702, after his death, and perhaps in response to Calef's book. Expressing regret over the actions taken, Hale admitted, "Such was the darkness of that day, the tortures and lamentations of the afflicted, and the power of former presidents, that we walked in the clouds, and could not see our way."
Various petitions were filed between 1700 and 1703 with the Massachusetts government, demanding that the convictions be formally reversed. Those tried and found guilty were considered dead in the eyes of the law, and with convictions still on the books, those not executed were vulnerable to further accusations. The General Court initially reversed the attainder only for those who had filed petitions, only three people who had been convicted but not executed: Abigail Faulkner Sr., Elizabeth Proctor, and Sarah Wardwell. In 1703, another petition was filed, requesting a more equitable settlement for those wrongly accused, but it wasn't until 1709, when the General Court received a further request, that it took action on this proposal. In May 1709, 22 people who had been convicted of witchcraft, or whose relatives had been convicted of witchcraft, presented the government with a petition in which they demanded both a reversal of attainder and compensation for financial losses.
Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley (1647–1720)
Repentance was evident within the Salem Village church. Rev. Joseph Green and the members of the church voted on February 14, 1703, after nearly two months of consideration, to reverse the excommunication of Martha Corey. On August 25, 1706, when Ann Putnam Jr., one of the most active accusers, joined the Salem Village church, she publicly asked forgiveness. She claimed that she had not acted out of malice, but was being deluded by Satan into denouncing innocent people, and mentioned Rebecca Nurse in particular, and was accepted for full membership.
On October 17, 1711, the General Court passed a bill reversing the judgment against the 22 people listed in the 1709 petition (there were seven additional people who had been convicted but had not signed the petition, but there was no reversal of attainder for them). Two months later, on December 17, 1711, Governor Joseph Dudley also authorized monetary compensation to the 22 people in the 1709 petition. The amount of 578 pounds 12 shillings was authorized to be divided among the survivors and relatives of those accused, and most of the accounts were settled within a year, but Phillip English's extensive claims weren't settled until 1718.
Finally, on March 6, 1712, Rev. Nicholas Noyes, and members of the Salem church reversed Noyes' earlier excommunications of their former members, Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey.
Memorials by descendants
Rebecca Nurse's descendants erected an obelisk-shaped granite memorial in her memory in 1885 on the grounds of the Nurse Homestead in Danvers, with an inscription from Whittier. In 1892 an additional monument was erected in honor of 40 neighbors who signed a petition in support of Nurse.Not all the condemned had been exonerated in the early 18th century, and so in 1957, descendants of the six people who had been wrongly convicted and executed but who had not been included in the bill for a reversal of attainder in 1711, or added to it in 1712, demanded that the General Court formally clear the names of their ancestral family members. An act was passed pronouncing the innocence of those accused, although it listed only Ann Pudeator by name. The others were listed only as "certain other persons," phrasing which failed specifically to name Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice Parker, Wilmot Redd and Margaret Scott.
Trials-related family-history groups offer places where descendants can memorialize their ancestors while sharing ideas and information about their research. The Associated Daughters of Early American Witches was founded in 1987 in California. It invites members who are women and able to prove descent from an ancestor who was accused of witchcraft including those at the Salem trials. Bloodlines of Salem was founded in 2007 in Utah. It welcomes members who are able to prove descent from a trials participant or who choose simply to support the group.
The Salem Witch Trials Memorial Park, in Salem
The 300th anniversary of the trials was marked in Salem and Danvers by a variety of events in 1992. A memorial park was dedicated in Salem with a stone bench for each of those executed in 1692. Speakers at the ceremony in August included Arthur Miller and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.Danvers erected its own new memorial,[and reinterred bones unearthed in the 1950s, assumed to be those of George Jacobs, Sr., in a new resting place at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead.
In 1992, The Danvers Tercentennial Committee also persuaded the Massachusetts House of Representatives to issue a resolution honoring those who had died. After much convincing and hard work by Salem school teacher Paula Keene, Representatives J. Michael Ruane and Paul Tirone and others, the names of all those not previously listed were added to this resolution. When it was finally signed on October 31, 2001, by Governor Jane Swift, more than 300 years later, all were finally proclaimed innocent.
Though the modern religion of Wicca practices a form of witchcraft, there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that Wicca itself existed prior to the 1950s. As such, any connection with the Salem-era trials is tenuous, at best, though the oft-repeated phrase 'Never again the Burning' has sprung up as an acknowledgement of the Trials and a symbol of solidarity with those who were persecuted during that era. However, no one was burned in the Salem witch trials- most were hanged while Giles Corey was crushed to death.
Medical theories about the reported afflictions
Main article: Medical and psychological explanations of bewitchmentThe cause of the symptoms of those who claimed affliction continues to be a subject of interest. Various medical and psychological explanations for the observed symptoms have been explored by researchers, including psychological hysteria in response to Indian attacks, convulsive ergotism caused by eating rye bread made from grain infected by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (which is the natural substance from which LSD is derived), an epidemic of bird-borne encephalitis lethargica, and sleep paralysis to explain the nighttime attacks alleged by some of the accusers,. Other modern academic historians are less inclined to believe that the cause for the behavior was biological, exploring instead motivations of jealousy, spite and a need for attention to explain behavior they contend was simply acting.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Würzburg witch trial
which took place in Germany in 1626–1631, is one of the biggest mass-trials and mass-executions seen in Europe during peace time; 157 men, women and children in the city of Würzburg were burned alive at the stake; 219 are believed to have been executed in total in the city itself; 900 were burnt altogether, counting the territory around the city. They were judged for sorcery and witchcraft and for having made a pact with the Devil.Contents
1 Background and context
2 The trials
3 The alleged witches
4 See also
5 References
Background and context
The first persecutions in Würzburg started with the consent of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, Prince bishop of Würzburg, and reached its crescendo during the reign of his nephew and successor Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg. They started in the territory around the city in 1626 and evapourated in 1630. As so often with the mass trials of sorcery, the victims soon counted people from all society; also nobles, councilmen and mayors. This was during a witch hysteria that caused a series of witch trials in South Germany, such as in Bamberg, Eichstätt, Mainz and Ellwangen.In the 1620s, with the destruction of Protestantism in Bohemia and the Palatinate, the Catholic reconquest of Germany was resumed. In 1629, with the Edict of Restitution, its basis seemed complete. Those same years saw, in central Europe at least, the worst of all witch-persecutions, the climax of the European craze.
Many of the witch-trials of the 1620s multiplied with the Catholic reconquest. In some areas the lord or bishop was the instigator, in others the Jesuits. Sometimes local witch-committees were set up to further the work. Among prince-bishops, Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg of Würzburg was particularly active: in his reign of eight years (1623–31) he burnt 900 persons, including his own nephew, nineteen Catholic priests, and children of seven who were said to have had intercourse with demons. The years 1627–29 were dreadful years in Baden, recently reconquered for Catholicism by Tilly: there were 70 victims in Ortenau, 79 in Offenburg. In Eichstatt, a Bavarian prince-bishopric, a judge claimed the death of 274 witches in 1629. At Reichertsofen an der Paar, in the district of Neuburg, 50 were executed between November 1628 and August 1630. In the three prince-archbishoprics of the Rhineland the fires were also relit. At Coblenz, the seat of the Prince-Archbishop of Trier, 24 witches were burnt in 1629; at Schlettstadt at least 30—the beginning of a five-year persecution. In Mainz, too, the burnings were renewed. At Cologne the City Fathers had always been merciful, much to the annoyance of the prince-archbishop, but in 1627 he was able to put pressure on the city and it gave in. Naturally enough, the persecution raged most violently in Bonn, his own capital. There the chancellor and his wife and the archbishop’s secretary’s wife were executed, children of three and four years were accused of having devils for their paramours, and students and small boys of noble birth were sent to the bonfire.
The craze of the 1620s was not confined to Germany: it raged also across the Rhine in Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté. In the lands ruled by the abbey of Luxueil, in Franche-Comté, the years 1628–30 have been described as an “épidémie démoniaque.” “Le mal va croissant chaque jour,” declared the magistrates of Dôle, “et cette malheureuse engeance va pullulant de toutes parts.” The witches, they said, “in the hour of death accuse an infinity of others in fifteen or sixteen other villages.”
The trials
In August, 1629, the Chancellor of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg thus wrote (in German) to a friend:As to the affair of the witches, which Your Grace thinks brought to an end before this, it has started up afresh, and no words can do justice to it. Ah, the woe and the misery of it--there are still four hundred in the city, high and low, of every rank and sex, nay, even clerics, so strongly accused that they may be arrested at any hour. It is true that, of the people of my Gracious Prince here, some out of all offices and faculties must be executed: clerics, electoral councilors and doctors, city officials, court assessors, several of whom Your Grace knows. There are law students to be arrested. The Prince-Bishop has over forty students who are soon to be pastors; among them thirteen or fourteen are said to be witches. A few days ago a Dean was arrested; two others who were summoned have fled. The notary of our Church consistory, a very learned man, was yesterday arrested and put to the torture. In a word, a third part of the city is surely involved. The richest, most attractive, most prominent, of the clergy are already executed. A week ago a maiden of nineteen was executed, of whom it is everywhere said that she was the fairest in the whole city, and was held by everybody a girl of singular modesty and purity. She will be followed by seven or eight others of the best and most attractive persons. . . . And thus many are put to death for renouncing God and being at the witch-dances, against whom nobody has ever else spoken a word. To conclude this wretched matter, there are children of three and four years, to the number of three hundred, who are said to have had intercourse with the Devil. I have seen put to death children of seven, promising students of ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen. Of the nobles--but I cannot and must not write more of this misery. There are persons of yet higher rank, whom you know, and would marvel to hear of, nay, would scarcely believe it; let justice be done . . . P. S.--Though there are many wonderful and terrible things happening, it is beyond doubt that, at a place called the Fraw-Rengberg, the Devil in person, with eight thousand of his followers, held an assembly and celebrated mass before them all, administering to his audience (that is, the witches) turnip-rinds and parings in place of the Holy Eucharist. There took place not only foul but most horrible and hideous blasphemies, whereof I shudder to write. It is also true that they all vowed not to be enrolled in the Book of Life, but all agreed to be inscribed by a notary who is well known to me and my colleagues. We hope, too, that the book in which they are enrolled will yet be found, and there is no little search being made for it.
These witch trials seem to have been a phenomenon resulting from a great mass hysteria; people from all walks of life were arrested and charged, regardless of age, profession or sex, for reasons ranging from murder and satanism to humming a song with the Devil, or simply for being vagrants and unable to give a satisfactory explanation of why they were passing through town. Thirty-two of them appear to have been vagrants, and many others themselves believed they were witches and worshipped Satan.[citation needed]
At least 157 people were executed in the city. The actual number was in fact larger, as Hauber, who preserved the list in Acta et Scripta Magica, adds that the list is far from complete and that there were a great many other burnings too many to specify. In the territory outside the city, several hundreds of people were burned also, and the total number is estimated to have been about 900.
Already in 1616-1617, there had been a first wave of witch trials in the city, and an isolated witch trial in 1625, which gave way to the great hysteria in 1626. The great witch hysteria of Würzburg started in 1626, and stopped in 1631, though the documents of the executed are from the period 1627-29. In 16 July 1631, Philip Adolf died, and when the city was taken by king Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden the same year, the witch trial was put to an end. The executed are listed to have been 157 people until February 1629; after this, the executions are not documented. They are estimated to have been 219 in the city itself, but 900 total in the areas under the authority of the Prince Bishop. It has been called the greatest witch trial ever to have occurred in Franconia, though the famous Bamberg witch trials of 1626-1630 was a close second with 300 executions.
This was not the biggest recorded execution of witches; in the Fulda witch trials in 1603–1605, 205 people were burned, and in the Trier witch trials in 1587–1593, 368 people were executed, but it is an example of the many great mass witch trials that were held in primarily Germany, France and Switzerland.
A Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, was more radically converted by his experience as a confessor of witches in the great persecution at Würzburg. That experience, which turned his hair prematurely white, convinced him that all confessions were worthless, being based solely on torture, and that not a single witch whom he had led to the stake had been guilty. Since he could not utter his thoughts otherwise—for, as he wrote, he dreaded the fate of Tanner—he wrote a book which he intended to circulate in manuscript, anonymously. But a friend secretly conveyed it to the Protestant city of Hameln and it was there printed in 1631 under the title Cautio Criminalis.
The alleged witches
Many victims are not mentioned by name; below follows some names to give an example of the variety of people being burned."Three play-actors".
"Four innkeepers".
"Three common councilmen of Wurszburg".
"Fourteen vicars of the Cathedral".
"The burgomasters lady" (The wife of the mayor).
"The apothecarys wife and daughter".
"Two choristers of the cathedral".
Gobel Babelin, "The prettiest girl in town".
"The wife, the two little sons and the daughter of councillor Stolzenberg."
Baunach, "The fattest burgher (merchant) in Wurzburg".
Steinacher, "The richest burgher in Wurzburg".
The seventh burning
"A wandering boy, twelve years of age".
"Four strange men and women, found sleeping in the market-place".
The thirteenth/fourteenth burning
" A little maiden nine years of age".
" A maiden still less (than nine)".
" Her (The little girl's) sister, their mother and their aunt".
" A pretty young woman of twenty-four".
The eighteenth burning
"Two boys of twelve".
"A girl of fifteen".
The nineteenth burning
" The young heir of the house of Rotenhahn", aged nine.
A boy of ten.
A boy, twelve years old.
Bideford witch trial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaA plaque commemorating the executions on the wall of Rougemont Castle in Exeter.
The Bideford witch trial resulted in the last ever hangings for witchcraft in England. Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards were tried in 1682 in the town of Bideford, England. Much of the evidence against them was hearsay, although there was a confession by Lloyd, which she did not fully recant even with her execution imminent.
It is sometimes said that Alice Molland was the last person to be hanged for witchcraft in England; the only evidence for this comes from a single book, Side-lights on the Stuarts by J Inderwick; although Molland was sentenced to hang, there is no evidence that the sentence was carried out.
Contents
1 Investigation of Temperance Lloyd
1.1 Anne Wakely's evidence
1.2 Thomas Eastchurch's evidence
1.2.1 Image magic
1.3 William Herbert's statement
1.4 Temperance Lloyd's evidence
1.5 Exeter
2 Investigation of Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards
2.1 Anthony Jones's shaking fit
2.2 Confession of Mary Trembles
2.3 Statement by William Edwards
2.4 Statement by Joan Jones
2.5 Dorcas Coleman's statement
Investigation of Temperance Lloyd
On Saturday, July 1682, Thomas Eastchurch, a Bideford shopkeeper, complained to some of the town’s constables that Temperance Lloyd had been practicing witchcraft. The constables arrested Temperance Lloyd and locked her in the old chapel at the end of the bridge, where she remained until taken before the justices on the Monday morning. The charges were: "suspicion of having used some magical art, sorcery or witchcraft upon the body of Grace Thomas and to have had discourse or familiarity with the devil in the likeness or shape of a black man." Grace Thomas thought that Temperance Lloyd was responsible for her illness, because the previous September, Lloyd had wept with joy and expressed pleasure in seeing that had Thomas regained her health.Anne Wakely's evidence
Another woman, Anne Wakely, had seen a magpie fly to Thomas's chamber window. Suspecting witchcraft, she questioned Lloyd, and found her in the company of another. They found "in her secret parts two teats hanging nigh together like unto a piece of flesh that a child had sucked. And that each of the teat was about an inch in length."All the other evidence against Lloyd was hearsay, mostly claims to have overheard confessions by her. There were six such statements, including a claim by Anne Wakely that Lloyd was visited by the "black man" in the form of a bird. Wakely also said that Lloyd told her the black man had sucked at her extra teats.
Thomas Eastchurch's evidence
Thomas Eastchurch’s statement was held to be important, as he was a respected town gentleman; however, again his evidence was simply that he overheard Lloyd confess while she was in Bideford lock-up the previous day. He stated that she confessed to meeting "something in the likeness of a black man" who tempted her to go and torment Grace Thomas. Eastchurch claimed that at first she refused but then agreed, following him to Thomas's home where the black man told her to pinch Thomas several times. She is then said, on leaving the house, to have seen a tabby cat go into Eastchurch's shop; she believed it to be the Devil.At a later date, she met the black man again, who told her to kill Thomas, "whereupon Temperance did go to his house with the black man and that she went into the chamber where Grace Thomas lay, and further did confess that she did pinch and prick Grace Thomas again in several parts of her body, declaring with both of her hands how she did do it, and that thereupon Grace Thomas did cry out terribly." The black man, according to Eastchurch's statement, had told Lloyd she would be invisible during this attack. He also claimed that another, similar attack on Thomas followed.
Eastchurch then gave evidence that Grace Thomas sought medical help for her complaints.
Image magic
His wife Elizabeth, Grace’s sister, stated that Thomas found nine pricks in her knee, and suspecting witchcraft, confronted Lloyd, who replied that she had pricked a piece of leather nine times.The justices gave their permission for Lloyd to be questioned by the rector, Michael Ogilby. Although she confessed to turning into a cat, stealing a doll and placing it in Thomas's bedchamber, she denied using image magic despite specific questioning by Ogilby.
William Herbert's statement
William Herbert was the final witness against Temperance Lloyd. On 2 February 1671, he had heard his father William "declare on his deathbed that Temperance Lloyd... had bewitched him unto death." After he died, William saw marks on his body, and had Lloyd charged with witchcraft; she was acquitted at the ensuing trial.Temperance Lloyd's evidence
On July 3, Temperance Lloyd was herself questioned by the justices, and she admitted all the charges made against her. The following day, in prison she admitted killing William Herbert, Lydia Burman and Anne Fellow, and blinding Jane Dallyn in one eye. She admitted all of this as she believed she was still under the black man's protection.Exeter
On July 8, Temperance Lloyd was committed to Exeter Gaol to await trial for witchcraft. At the trial she maintained her guilt.At the execution, she tried to give a reason for her actions: "the Devil met me in the street, and bid me kill her, and because I would not he beat me about the head and back."
Investigation of Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards
Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards were investigated after a local woman, Grace Barnes, blamed Trembles for her illness. On 18 July 1682, Mary Trembles was denounced to the authorities and consequently arrested, along with Susanna Edwards, who had accompanied Trembles while they were begging for food (there was a food shortage in the country at the time).It is possible that, after Barnes was taken ill that night, she felt guilty about denying the women food, and so she transferred her guilt by accusing the two women of witchcraft.
At the inquiry, Grace Barnes’s husband John spoke first, accusing Trembles of hurting his wife by witchcraft. William Edwards also spoke, claiming to have overheard a confession by Susanna. People came to see the two women while they were in the town lock-up.
Anthony Jones's shaking fit
During Edwards's questioning, Anthony Jones, husband of Joan, drew attention to Edwards's nervously wringing her hands. He accused her of "now tormenting some person or other." He said her reply was, "Well enough, I will fit thee." He then left the Guildhall to help bring Grace Barnes to bear witness. On returning, Anthony Jones cried out "Wife, I am now bewitched by this devil!" and was overcome by a shaking fit during which he "leapt and capered like a madman", after which he fell unconscious for half an hour. It is possible that he faked the entire incident.Confession of Mary Trembles
After this disturbance, Grace Barnes did not make her statement; instead the justices questioned Mary Trembles. She answered all their charges, confessing to witchcraft, but blaming Susanna Edwards for initiating her. Edwards followed with a confession of witchcraft, adding that she also tormented Dorcas Coleman, another local woman.The following day, Wednesday, July 19, Anthony Jones was sufficiently recovered from his fit to make his own statement, giving a report of the previous morning’s events. Later that day, Mary and Susanna were both searched for any suspicious marks on their bodies, then they were sent to Exeter to join Temperance Lloyd while awaiting their trial. Grace Barnes in her statement repeated the story and added that she had some suspicion of Susanna Edwards because she would often call on her husband’s house for frivolous reasons, or sometimes none at all.
Statement by William Edwards
Most of the evidence against the two women came from the statements of William Edwards and Joan Jones, who both claimed to be reporting what they had overheard. William Edwards said that the previous day, July 17, he did hear Susanna Edwards to confess that the Devil had carnal knowledge of her body, and "that he had sucked her in her breast and in her secret parts. And further saith that he did hear her say that she and Mary Trembles did appear hand in hand invisible in John Barnes’s house where Grace the wife of John Barnes did lie in a very sad condition. And further saith that he did then also hear Susanna to say that she and Mary Trembles were at that time come to make an end of her."
Statement by Joan Jones
Joan Jones claimed to have overheard Edwards making a full confession of witchcraft to a visitor from Torrington. She then reported this matter to the justices. After the man, John Dunning, had left the Guildhall (curiously without giving evidence), Jones elaborated on what she claimed to have heard: that Trembles asked Edwards how she had become a witch, and Edwards had replied that a man wearing clothes "all of black" had offered that she would never be in want if only she did one thing for him - and that when she asked what, in God's name, that might be, the man vanished.Jones then stated that she heard Tremble and Edwards discuss pricking Grace Barnes, and further claimed of Edwards: that the devil carried about Edwards's spirit; that the devil, in the form of a boy, suckled at her breast; and that the devil had had sex with her four times.
Jones also reported that Tremble argued with Edwards, accusing her of being made to be (or seem) a witch, and that she would lay the blame for this on Edwards.
Mary Trembles, in her confession, blamed Edwards for initiating her into witchcraft; Edwards in turn blamed Temperance Lloyd. Public opinion also turned more against Lloyd - "the woman that has debauched the other two."
While the two were in Exeter Gaol, stories of their dealing with the devil continued to circulate; a pamphlet of the time says, "They also asserted that the devil came with them to the prison door and there left them."
Dorcas Coleman's statement
In late July four late statements were admitted to the record. The only one adding significant matter to the case was that of Dorcas Coleman, who recalled an illness she had suffered in 1680. A doctor was unable to help, and suggested witchcraft, perhaps to excuse his medical failings. Susanna Edwards was then called, and Coleman accused her of being her tormentor.
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Ramsele witch trial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Ramsele witch trial, which took place in 1634, is one of the few known Swedish witch trials before the great witch mania of 1668-1676.
In the year of 1634 a man and several women were put on trial in the city of Ramsele in Ångermanland in Norrland in Sweden. This was during a period of starvation, and they were accused of having stolen milk from their neighbors.
The man was said to have stabbed a knife in a wall and, uttering "terrible prayers," milked the wall through the knife. It had been claimed that the women had used small animals, hares and undefined creatures to milk cattle in their neighbor's barns. The women were pointed out by Barbro Påvelsdotter from Sandviken, who was the first to be arrested, and confirmed to have been with her to Blockula.
Unfortunately, few records exist about this trial. In 1635, the vicar, Mr Elias, complained about the economic loss he had suffered because of the witches spells, and in 1636, the executioner Håkan of Säbrå received payment for "Having burned one warlock and four witches". It is most likely that they were beheaded before they were burned, as no known witch in Sweden, with the exception of Malin Matsdotter, was burned alive.
The real witch-hunt came to Sweden late, and didn't break out until 1668. It then reached its peak with the Torsåker witch trials. Witch trials were known in Sweden before 1668, but they were few and often ended with an acquittal or a mild sentence, not execution, such as the case of Brita Pipare Stockholm in 1593. This is one of the few known examples of a "mass trial" of sorcery in Sweden before the great witch hunt in the 1670s; before 1668, there are few examples in Sweden of witch trials where more than two people were executed at the same time. Another example is the Finspång witch trial in 1617, where seven women were executed.
by Wikipedia
Basque witch trials
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaFrancisco de Goya's Witches Sabbat, 1798
The Basque witch trials of the 17th century represent the most ambitious attempt at rooting out witchcraft ever undertaken by the Spanish Inquisition. The trial of the Basque witches at Logroño, near Navarre, in northern Spain, which began in January 1609, against the background of similar persecutions conducted in Labourd by Pierre de Lancre, was almost certainly the biggest single event of its kind in history. By the end some 7,000 cases had been examined by the Inquisition.
Contents
1 Process
2 Skepticism
3 Discussion
4 Memory
Process
Although Logroño is not a Basque city, it was the setting for an Inquisition tribunal responsible for the Kingdom of Navarre, Alava, Guipuscoa, Biscay, La Rioja and the North of Burgos and Soria[1]. Among the accused were not only women (although they predominated), but also children and men, including priests guilty of healing with nóminas,[1] amulets with names of saints.[2] The first phase ended in 1610, with a declaration of auto de fé against thirty-one of the accused, twelve or eleven of whom were burned to death (five of them symbolically, as they had died before auto da fé).Thereafter proceedings were suspended until the inquisitors had a chance to gather further evidence, on what they believed to be a widespread witch cult in the Basque region. Alonso Salazar Frias, the junior inquisitor and a lawyer by training, was delegated to examine the matter at length. Armed with an Edict of Grace, promising pardon to all those who voluntarily reported themselves and denounced their accomplices, he traveled across the countryside during the year 1611, mainly in the vicinity of Zugarramurdi, near the French border, where a cave and a water stream (Olabidea or Infernuko erreka, "Hell's stream") were said to be the meeting place of the witches.
As was usual in cases of this kind, denunciations flowed in. Frías finally returned to Logroño with "confessions" from close on 2,000 people, 1,384 of whom were children between the ages of seven and fourteen, implicating a further 5,000 named individuals.[1] Most of 1,802 people[3] witnesses retracted their statements before Salazar, attributing their confessions to torture. The evidence gathered covered 11,000 pages in all. Only six people out of 1,802 maintained their confessions and claimed to have returned to sabbaths.
In the stir of the events, proceedings were started in Hondarribia too (1611), some 10 km away from Zugarramurdi, against presumable female witches accused of casting spells on living creatures and meeting in Jaizkibel in akelarres led by a he-goat shaped Devil. Interestingly, according to evidence given by a witness as a attested in the document, "the Devil summoned in the Gascon language those from San Sebastian and Pasaia, and in Basque those from Irun and Hendaye, addressing a few words to them..."
Skepticism
Although the belief in Basque witches was widespread among the Spanish populace, the Spanish Inquisition of the Basque Region was more inclined to persecute Protestants, Conversos (baptized descendants of Jews and Moors), and those who illegally smuggled banned books into Spain. As far back as 1538 the Council of Inquisition had warned judges not to believe all that they read in Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous witch-finding text. In March 1610, Antonio Venegas de Figueroa, the Bishop of Pamplona, sent a letter to the Inquisition in which he claimed that the witch hunt was based "on lies and self-delusion"[5] and that there had been little knowledge of witchcraft in the region before the outset of the trials.Contrary to the usual picture of the Inquisition, ready to believe all and every confession of wrongdoing, Frías, the youngest judge in a panel of three, was also skeptical about the whole thing, saying that he had found no substantive proof of witchcraft on his travels, in spite of the manifold confessions. More than that, he questioned the whole basis of the trials. Because of this disagreement on how to proceed, the matter had to be referred to the Inquisitor-General in Madrid. The senior judges, Alonso Becerra y Holquin and Juan del Valle Alvarado, even went so far as to accuse their colleague of being "in league with the Devil". Some of Frías' objections are remarkable, considering the atmosphere of the times, and are therefore worth quoting:
The real question is: are we to believe that witchcraft occurred in a given situation simply because of what the witches claim? No: it is clear that the witches are not to be believed, and the judges should not pass sentence on anyone, unless the case can be proven with external and objective evidence sufficient to convince everyone who hears it. And who can accept the following: that a person can frequently fly through the air and travel a hundred leagues in an hour; that a woman can get through a space not big enough for a fly; that a person can make himself invisible; that he can be in a river or the open sea and not get wet; or that he can be in bed at the sabbath at the same time... and that a witch can turn herself into any shape she fancies, be it housefly or raven? Indeed, these claims go beyond all human reason and may even pass the limits permitted by the Devil.
The Inquisitor-General appeared to share his view that confession and accusation on their own were not enough. For some time the central office of the Inquisition had been sceptical about claims of magic and witchcraft, and had only sanctioned the earlier burnings with considerable reluctance, and only because of the reported mood of panic from Logroño. In August 1614 it ruled that all of the trials pending at Logroño should be dismissed. At the same time it issued new and more rigorous rules of evidence, that brought witch-burning in Spain to an end, long before the Protestant North.
Discussion
The background and circumstances leading to the events unleashed are not unknown to us, dismissing for the most part esoteric and magical approaches. In a wider context of religious persecution and conflict in the whole Europe, Catholic Church aimed at suppressing old popular customs and ways that could contend and question official ideology and manners. In the Basque Country, where the language provided a stronger shelter for old semi-pagan believes and against Church's authority and control, midwives and herbalist played an important role, besides holding a social status and carrying a popular wisdom that didn't go down well with the authorities.The so-called sabbaths and akelarres may have been meetings out of reach of the official religious and civil authorities. The punters to the meetings would eat, drink, talk and dance, namely party, sometimes all night long in the forest or caves, at times taking to consuming mind and spirit altering herbs and ointments.
Memory
The "Cave of the Witches" near Akelarre in Zugarramurdi.It was reported that the witches of Zugarramurdi met at the meadow of Akelarre (Basque for "meadow of the he-goat"). Even today aquelarre[7] is the Spanish word for a black sabbath. The village of Zugarramurdi holds the Witchcraft Museum highlighting the appalling events of the early XVIIth century, where the memory of the victim villagers is dignified.
Akelarre was a 1984 Spanish film by Pedro Olea, about these trials. Zugarramurdi now celebrates the witches with a feast by the cave on Midsummer's eve, June 23, the folk date for the summer solstice.
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