Category Archives: October

10/1692

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Oct 29: The Governor does the right thing

Today in Salem: Governor Phips is locked in his office, avoiding the judges, recalling the desperate letter he’d written to the King. But of course he hasn’t heard back yet. Phips had sent his plea less than three weeks ago. The King would have had to write back immediately for his response to cross the Atlantic in time. Still, Phips had hoped.

“My enemies are seeking to turn it all upon me,” he’d written. “I depend upon your friendship, and desire you will please to give a true understanding of the matter if any thing of this kind be urged or made to use of against me.”

If the King would only tell him what to do, then Phips wouldn’t have to decide himself. But now he’s run out of time, and as dreadful as it feels, he knows what the right thing is to do.

When he finally emerges from his office, an assistant judge is waiting for him, and once again poses the question. Will the Court sit in three days?

The Governor looks up and takes a breath before speaking.

“It must fall,” he says.

“What does it mean, though?” The assistant judge has relayed the news to the Chief Justice, who is still angry after yesterday’s cold and stormy journey. “How do we proceed?” the assistant asks. “There are still so many in jail, waiting for trials, some even condemned already.”

But the Chief Justice doesn’t know. Neither do the jail keepers, the prisoners, the ministers, or the citizens. No one knows what will happen next. They know only one thing.

The Court is dissolved.

Tomorrow in Salem: The End

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Oct 28: A powerless judge

Today in Salem: A naked judge stands before the fire, shivering and damp, wrapped in a rough woolen blanket and hoping for something warm to eat. He is the second most powerful man in the colony, the Chief Justice and next in command to the Governor. In this moment, though, he is in a borrowed bedroom with a borrowed blanket, cold and wet and without clothing, powerless over what has brought him here.

Bound for Boston, he’d left home in the early morning, riding into a rainstorm that quickly became a downpour and then a gusting deluge. The journey had been challenging from the start, but it’s become impossible to continue. So he’s sent his servant back to retrieve some dry clothes, and now has little to do but wait and think.

He is certain of one thing: The Devil is threatening the Church throughout all of New England, and is using witchcraft to do it. And he, the Chief Justice, has been fierce in the fight against it. He’s led 24 trials and authorized 24 executions. Nearly 100 other accused witches are in jail waiting for trials, with more accusations every day. Clearly there is much work to be done, and he will not stop until every witch in New England has been found and destroyed.

The Governor seems less committed, though. He’s spent much of the last few months in Maine, fighting the frontier wars. He hasn’t attended a single hanging. Reprieves are given and taken away impatiently, depending only on who he speaks with that day. He seems bored, anxious, and indecisive.

In four days the Court is scheduled to begin its next session, with several trials already scheduled. But rumors abound that the Governor will stop the Court from sitting. The Chief Justice has asked him several times whether the rumors are true, but the Governor has been evasive, changing the subject or avoiding him entirely.

Still shivering, the Chief Justice decides to confront the Governor forcefully, as soon as he gets to Boston. It’s a simple question: Yes or no? Will the witchcraft trials continue?

Tomorrow in Salem: The Governor does the right thing

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Oct 23: An impossible reconciliation

Today in Salem: It’s the Sabbath, and the Rev Samuel Parris is preaching from the Song of Solomon about the love between friends, made even sweeter when they reconcile after their differences. The analogy is not lost on his congregation, but the wounds of the last few months are too deep to heal so easily.

In jail, the pregnant Elizabeth Proctor feels her baby roll and twist. Like his father, she thinks. Always moving. She imagines him as a diligent child, a strong young man, then a godly husband and father. She grieves profoundly, though. She will not live to see him as anything more than a days-old infant. How many times will she put the baby to breast before she faces the noose?

In the State House, Governor Phips is avoiding the judges, all of whom are peppering him with questions. Court is due to resume in ten days, but the judges have sniffed out his ambivalence. If he allows the Court to proceed unchecked, then he will have defied the ministers and many influential citizens. Reining in the Court, though, defies the judges. It’s simply not possible to please everyone, and whatever he does will be held against him. And so he dithers.

Tomorrow in Salem: A powerless judge

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Oct 22: Walking and waiting

Today In Salem: Samuel Parris is pacing in the parsonage, feeling nothing short of consternation. Attending church is no longer mandatory, according to the General Court. The Sabbath is still a holy day, and only truly essential tasks are allowed. But church is not one of them, not anymore.

Governor Phips is also pacing, but nervously, walking in quiet steps from room to room at the State House. At the other court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the witchcraft trials are in limbo until he decides whether to continue. He is surrounded by opinions, most of them angry, and many of them directed at him. He has written to the King for advice, but it will be weeks before he hears a response, and the next court session is due to start in eleven days. He would very much like to avoid being responsible for this decision.

At the prison, nearly 100 people do not have room to pace, but they fidget and worry nonetheless. What will happen if the court is suspended? They’re certain they won’t be released, not so easily. Five of them are already condemned to die. The others are awaiting trial. But if the court is not suspended, how long will they be here? And is execution the only way out?

Tomorrow in Salem: An impossible reconciliation

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Oct 19: Hearts of stone

Today in Salem: Melancholy, she said. She’d had a baby, then had a fit of sickness and felt melancholy. So she’d left the baby in the care of her older children while she took long walks in her orchards, taking comfort in the scent of ripening apples and praying that God would forgive her. That was twelve years ago, she said, ten since the baby had died.

She pauses and looks up at the prominent Rev Increase Mather, who, after receiving so many petitions to let the confessors recant, has come to the jail to hear the women’s stories for himself. He’s certain at least some of them are guilty. But all of them?

“Go on,” he says to the woman.

Now she’d been accused, she said, and the judges had pressed her to confess. They said she must be guilty, that she knew the time when she’d consorted with the Devil, she just needed to tell them. And, well, that spell of melancholy must have been it. Even if she truly in her heart did not believe she was guilty of witchcraft – which she didn’t – the judges would not relent. So she told them about it. The judges had seized on it, she’d confessed in fear, and now she was in jail.

Mather nods as if he sympathizes, but his expression is stern as he turns to the next woman, and the next, and the next, each saying that she’d confessed out of fear and under pressure.

Meanwhile even more petitions are arriving in the Court. The ruthless Judge Hathorne has begun putting them in a pile on the corner of his table, held down by a smooth stone that his ten-year-old son had slid into his pocket. It was a rare moment of playfulness on the boy’s part, and Hathorne had disciplined him for it. But he’d kept the stone. He doesn’t know why.

Tomorrow in Salem: Walking and waiting

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Oct 18: The afflicted girls are reduced

Today in Salem: The ruthless judge Hathorne is holding a lengthy piece of paper at arm’s length, squinting at the curled words and skimming for the most important details. He has no patience for the wherefores and whatnots, but this petition has been signed by 26 men, including two ministers. What do they want?

“His Excellency” (yes yes) … “Righteous God” (yes of course) … “Honourable Assembly” (yes) …

Ah. Here it is. Their wives and friends have confessed to witchcraft, but “have wronged themselves and the truth in their confessions.” Now they wish to recant. (no surprise, others have said the same thing)

And, “our neighbors are like to be impoverished & ruin’d by the great charge they are at to maintain such of their familyes as are in Prison.” (true but again this isn’t new)

Finally, the thing that makes him stop. “Children.” For the first time, the afflicted girls are called children. “And we know not who can think himself safe, if the Accusations of children and others who are under a Diabolicall influence shall be received against persons of good fame.”

It is true that some of these girls are exceedingly young, some just 9 or 10 years old. And ordinarily they would be severely restricted from speaking even meekly in church, or court, or even the tavern. But it’s been months now of nearly constant shrieking, hysteria, and accusations. Somehow the children have become the most powerful members of the community, and no one has been spared – not even the governor’s wife.

Will it ever end?

Tomorrow in Salem: Hearts of stone

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Oct 13: The Sheriff is stopped, while others ask for mercy and advice

Today In Salem: A horse running at breakneck speed must be slowed before he is stopped. Likewise the witchcraft hysteria, which has been racing out of control for months now. It cannot be stopped, not yet. But it is being slowed.

Until now, the Sheriff has been busy, visiting the families of the convicted and confiscating cattle, crops, household goods, clothing, farm tools, and anything else he can touch or hold in his hands. Despite his ruthless enthusiasm, though, he’s only doing what English law tells him to. It’s one way they fund the jails.

Today, though, the Court puts a stop to it, returning to an old Colonial law that forbids confiscations. Never mind that tax revenue is far short of what it should be, or that the King will surely undo the change. For today, the Sheriff’s gleeful raids are at an end.

Meanwhile, the Court is also considering a letter that arrived yesterday from nine men, asking for the conditional release of their wives and daughters:

We beg your honours favour and pitty in affording what Relieff may be thought Convenient as for the matter of our Trouble: it is the distressed Condition of our wives and Relations in prison at Salem who are a Company of poore distressed creatures as full of inward grieff and Trouble as thay are able to bear … Besides that the wants of food Convenient: and the coldness of the winter season that is coming may soon dispatch such out of the way … besides that The exceeding great Charges and expences that we are at upon many accounts which if put all together our familys and estates will be brought to Ruin. … We do not petition to take them out of the hands of Justic but to Remain as prisoners under bond in their own familys wher thay may be more tenderly Cared for.

Finally, the Governor himself, concerned about his reputation, has defended himself in a letter to the King, and asks for advice, promising to stop all proceedings until he hears back:

When I first arrived I found this province miserably harrassed with a most Horrible witchcraft or Possession of Devills … There were many committed to prision upon suspicion of Whichcraft before my arrivall.

As soon as I came from fighting against their Majesties Enemyes and understood what danger some of their innocent subjects might be exposed to, if the evidence of the afflicted persons only did previle either to the committing or trying of any of them … I put a stop to the proceedings of the court and they are now stopt till their Majesties pleasure be known.

Tomorrow in Salem: The afflicted girls are reduced

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Oct 10: Summary: The beginning of the end

The story of “Today In Salem” will end on Halloween, three weeks from today, when Governor Phips finally stands up and exercises his authority. It’s about time. In the last seven months, 19 people have been hanged, one has been pressed and tortured to death, and as many as twelve have died in prison. Still waiting: Eight more people who’ve been sentenced to hang, plus the nearly one hundred others who are still in prison, waiting for trials.

The tide has been turning, though. Over the last few months, two judges and one constable have quit in protest, and hundreds of people have signed petitions on behalf of the accused. Ministers have advised caution, judges have refused to conduct some arrests, and children are being bailed out of prison.

All of that momentum has led us to this week’s tipping point, when the prominent Rev Increase Mather – the most influential Puritan minister in the colony – has said that it would be better for ten witches to live than for one innocent person to die.

For now, though, the Governor is still dithering, even though his own wife has been accused. It’s a lot to stand up to. The Chief Justice is raging, intent on finding and destroying every last witch in New England. The afflicted girls are still making accusations. And powerful families like the Putnams believe them.

Still. The Governor has heard the Rev Mather’s message: It’s better that ten suspected witches should live, than that one innocent person should die. Is it possible? Have innocent people died?

Tomorrow in Salem: The Sheriff is stopped, while others ask for mercy and advice

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Oct 5: PETITION from 6 confessors to recant

Today in Salem: The Chief Justice receives a petition from 6 women who are in prison after confessing to witchcraft. They’re actually innocent, they say. Can they recant their confessions? They were so terrified, the petition says, that they just agreed to whatever the judges said. Then they added details that they imagined the judges wanted to hear.

Many petitions, from tens to hundreds of people, have been presented in the past, but only one has been granted – that for the shorn Dorcas Hoar. Still, that was recently, so perhaps the Chief Justice will grant them this simple request.

Tomorrow in Salem: Children of the Light