Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/60

 George Burroughs, entered upon his duties in 1680; but he found the parish in a most unsettled and irritable state of feeling. The personal friends of Mr. Bayley—for he had many strong partisans—concentrated all their bitterness and hostility upon the head of his innocent successor; added to this were the troubled pecuniary relations between him and his parish, which were never clearly adjusted, and, in sheer despair of ever obtaining an impartial and fair settlement with his demoralized people, he, too, resigned his situation and left the village.

The Rev. Deodat Lawson was the next incumbent. He commenced his ministry in 1684—how long he held it is uncertain; but he, too, finding it impossible to evoke any harmony out of the discord in the parish, relinquished the situation and removed back to Boston, being afterward settled at Scituate, New England.

The next minister (and this brings us to the period of the witchcraft delusion) was the Rev. Samuel Parris. Possibly warned by the fate of his three predecessors, he was very strict and exacting in making his terms