Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/182

 inflict torment on the former, who declared themselves haunted by their spectres, and solicited to subscribe a covenant with the devil, and on their refusal pricked and injured. The husband of Elizabeth Procter, one of the accused, having boldly accompanied her into court, the possessed cried out upon him also. "There is Goodman Procter going to take up Mrs. Pope's feet!" cries one of them, and "her feet are immediately taken up." "He is going to Mrs. Pope!" cries another, and "straightway Mrs. Pope falls into fits." One Bishop, a farmer, had brought round a possessed servant by the application of a horsewhip, and had rashly hinted that he could with the like remedy cure the whole company of the afflicted. For this scoffing, as it was denounced, he soon found himself in prison. Between fanaticism and terror the minds of the accused appear to have become unhinged; many, staggered by the results ascribed to their agency, for a while believed themselves, it would seem, to be what they were called; and others, finding no safety but in confession, gave fraudulent and circumstantial narratives of interviews with the devil, and of riding through the air on a broomstick; and these confessions, reacting upon minds already fully persuaded of the reality of the crime, tended to fortify them still farther in their delusion, and to give birth to a still widening circle of accusations and confessions. By the time that Governor Phipps arrived, there were nearly a hundred persons already in prison, and the excitement was still rapidly on the increase.

The new governor, who was very considerably under the influence of Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather, proceeded vigorously in the work which he found ready to his hands. He put the prisoners in irons, and organized a special court for the trial of cases, with Stoughton, the lieutenant governor as president. In the beginning of June, the court assembled, and in a few days ordered for hanging an old woman, convicted on evidence such as we have noted above, evidence—if the word be not prostituted by this use of it—which to people in the possession of their senses, seems to be the perfection of nonsense and absurdity. At a second session of the court, June 30th, five women were tried and convicted. One of these, Rebecca Nurse, a woman of excellent character, was acquitted at first, but at the outcry of the accuser, was condemned and hung with the rest. Some few dared to resist and hurl defiance at their accusers. "You are a witch, you know you are!" said minister Noyes to Sarah Good. "You are a liar!" was the indignant retort; "and if you take my life God will give you blood to drink!" But most of those accused made confession or set afloat new accusations.

At. the third session of the court, early in August, six prisoners were tried and convicted, the husband of Elizabeth Procter and John Willard being of the number. The conduct of Willard and Procter, at the time of execution, was well calculated to arouse a maddened and deluded community to reflection. The case of Burroughs is very remarkable. He was himself a