American History: Salem Witch Trials 1692

If you come to Salem during the tourist season, this is a very common sight on the streets of the old town. "Cry Innocent!" is a well known theatrical performance about the Salem witch trials. This electrifying production is one of the very few tourist attractions that are actually based on the events of the 1692 witch hysteria in Salem. Don't miss it! This video shows the pretrial street action, which is an integral part of the performance.

The central characters of the Salem witchcraft episode are the so-called "afflicted children" responsible for most of the accusations and much of the spectral evidence testimony presented against the victims. They are often referred to as children because---with the exception of two individuals---all of this group were under the age of twenty at the time the episode began.
Why were children regarded as reliable sources of intelligence about suspected witches? Quite simply because, in English tradition, there was a long-standing precedent of using children to identify likely suspects.

In her book, A Mirror of Witchcraft, historian Christina Hole, mentions English villages during the Cromwelliam era which used children with "spectral sight" as witch-finders. Some of these children became quite famous in their own time and their activities were published in contemporary accounts of the English witch hunts of the 1650's.

Closer to New England, bewitched children had been used as sources of supernatural information in the famous Hartford witchcraft trials of the 1660's, and in the popular, published Cotton Mather account of the Goodwin children and Mary Glover in Boston in 1688.
The first two "afflicted" persons were Parris' daughter and neice, nine-year-old Elizabeth "Betty" Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams. After days of displaying characteristics of aberrant behavior including claims of sharp pain, paralyzation, choking, crawling under furniture, staring-into-space, making non-sensical noises and crying out, they were prayed over by Reverend Parris and several local ministers. When this failed to cure them, the local physician, Dr. William Griggs was called in to examine the girls. His diagnosis was that their malady was of a spiritual nature. They were under the "evil hand" of witchcraft.

Ultimately the group of "afflicted" would grow to include many more children. All of these would claim to be "tortured, wasted, pined and consumed" by the spells and invisible specters of local residents who were witches. Altogether, the "afflicted children" would accuse over two hundred individuals, most of whom would escape prosecution. Nearly fifty would save their lives by confessing to the crime of witchcraft, and begging the community's forgiveness.(This group would be asked to turn "state's evidence" and help the court ferret out more suspects.) Twenty would lose their lives through the actions of Salem's Court of Oyer and Terminer, nineteen by hanging and one (Giles Corey) by the torture of pressing.

Besides Elizabeth Parris (9) and Abigail Williams (11), the other afflicted children included: Elizabeth Hubbard (18); Mary Warren (17); Mercy Lewis (19); Mary Walcott (16); Elizabeth Booth (16); Elizabeth Churchill (20) and Susannah Sheldon (18). Three middle-aged women were also adult participants as afflicted witnesses to spectral evidence. These were Ann Putnam, Sr., Gertrude Pope and Sarah Bibber.

Prior to the return of newly appointed Massachusetts governor, Sir William Phips and the accompanying new provincial charter, no trials could be held for capital crimes in the colony. For this reason, between February 29 and May 25, 1692, pre-trial examinations were conducted by two, Essex County civil magistrates, Hon. John Hathorne and Hon. Jonathan Corwin.

The purpose of these hearings was to sift through the various accusations being made by the afflicted children and determine if there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial. If a trial was needed, the accused witch would be held in jail until the arrival of the new governor and charter. For this reason there were no convictions or executions between February and May.

Upon the return of Governor Phips, and the formidable Boston cleric, Reverend Increase Mather,on May 14, 1692,
steps were immediately taken by the colonial government to create a special court to try the numerous (over 50) pending witchcraft cases.

On May 25 a Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to determine) was commissioned by Phips. The presiding Chief Justice of this court was Deputy Governor William Stoghton. The six Associate Justices of the Court of Oyer and Terminer were: Samuel Sewell, William Sargent, Waite Winthrop and John Richards, all of Boston. To these were added Bartholomew Gedney of Salem and Nathaniel Saltonstall of Haverhill. By June, 1692, Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned his judicial appointment. His place was quickly filled by Hon. Jonathan Corwin, the same magistrate who had conducted the pretrial examinations prior to the governor's arrival in the colony.

What is interesting about the composition of the bench of the witch trial court is the overwhelming presence on Bostonian justices, with only Bartholomew Gedney, and later, Jonathan Corwin representing Salem.

The Shakespearean reference characterizing the Salem witch trials as the "worst" historical event, certainly might be reasonably argued by some. In a sense, the trials of 1692 were the most outrageous travesty of justice to befall the Puritan community. It involved hundreds of falsely accused individuals and over twenty related deaths by execution, torture and unjust imprisonment.

Were there other events which exceed the Salem trials in their overall social impact and negative effect? Unquestionably, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

The New England Puritan community was devastated on a far greater scale by the tragic and deadly King Philip's War conflict which raged during 1675-1676. During this disasterous event, thousands of native people and colonial settlers were displaced, entire native villages and frontier towns were destroyed and abandoned, and hundreds lost their lives.

As with the trials of 1692, the Puritan ministers reasoned that this event was an outpouring of divine wrath upon a community which had turned its back upon its mission to establish a "city upon a hill" and had broken its covenant with God.

In actuality it represented the last organized effort by an alliance of New England tribes of native people to drive the English colonists back from the frontier and stem the westward expansion of settlers. Besides the ruthless slaughter, the King Philip's War was noted for the inhumane and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Many colonists were taken to French Canada and sold, while many natives, including the "praying Indians" of Natick and elsewhere,were forcibly confined in detention centers located on islands in Boston Harbor.

To the Puritans, the greatest difference between the threat of the King Philip's War and the Salem witchcraft outbreak was the perceived enemy. In the former crisis, the "enemy" was visible and could be confronted directly and killed by conventional means, while in the latter, the enemy was insidious, invisible and of a spiritual nature. For this reason the Salem trials may have left a more devastating effect upon the collective subconscious of the Puritan community than the threat of King Philip (Metacomet) and his hundreds of warriors.

Contemporary people are often incredulous that any form of belief system could have ever been regarded as so dangerous as to constitute a capital crime. For such persons it is difficult to imagine a society where norms of both social and religious behavior were determined by the laws of the state.

Concerning this point, it is important to remember that during this period, the strength of a society or nation state was closely associated with its uniformity of religious belief. Whatever the faith of a monarch happened to be, Protestant or Catholic, such would also be the faith of the population of his kingdom. This was the norm.

At this time, the solidarity of religious belief of a nation's people was perceived as a strength. Diversity of belief--even among various sub-sects of reformed Protestantism--was viewed as an essential weakness in the fabric of society. The one notable exception to this practice was the Dutch Republic, which had only recently achieved its independence from Roman Catholic, Habsburg Spain. In fact, Holland was the only European nation which was essentially tolerant of religious diversity throughout most of its existence.

In England, until the reign of King James II(1685-1689), the population was expected to belong to and worship as members of the Church of England. Thus English law, prior to 1688, prohibited all other forms of worship except that of the state church.

That is not to say that England did not possess many religious dissidents and non-conformists as well as a significant community of Jews and Roman Catholics. But these minority groups understood that they were always at risk. They were generally regarded as less than loyal subjects since the monarch was the head of the Church of England, and to break away from that Church was to call your loyalty as a subject into question. It was an intolerant age.

Witchcraft, as a crime defined by the law codes of most European nations of this time, was achieved by persons who had deliberately attempted to communicate with Satan. Such communication was attempted to establish a relationship whereby individuals would exchange their soul to Satan for supernatural powers. Such individuals were regarded as a threat to society because they had agreed to perform malefic, harmful, often destructive, anti-social acts at Satan's request.

Naturally, implicit in such legal codes was the generally accepted belief in the existence of God, Satan and other spiritual beings comprising what Reverend Cotton Mather would characterize as "the invisible world".

Beyond this perceived societal danger, the political loyalty of alleged witches was clearly in question because they had, by definition, betrayed all religious institutions including the predominant state church. Thus to the legal minds of the 1500's and 1600's, witchcraft was a form of secular treason, a form of anti-social behavior, always punishable by death under secular legal codes whenever discovered. For this reason, such cases were not tried in ecclesiastical but state courts which enforced secular statutes and their prescribed punishments.

For these reasons the secular legal records of most European states--Spain, France,Switzerland, the Italian and German ststes, Scotland and of course, England-- from the 1400's through the 1600's, are full of cases of thousands of individuals charged with the crime of witchcraft. Salem is a New England manifestation of this horrific and widespread phenomenon, and when compared to Europe, a relatively minor one.