CH. I.] PROGRESS OF THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. minister, but had for some reason become unpopular both with his flock and his fellow-ministers, whose convictions and self-conceit he had wounded, by declaring his entire disbelief in the possibility of the crime for which they were putting so many to death. Among other things, he was accused of displaying preternatural strength-of course through the assistance of the devil. He staggered, however, the more reasonable portion of the crowd present at his execution, by solemnly and fervently repeating the Lord's Prayer, which it was supposed no wizard could do. The tears of the spectators began to flow, and they gave signs of rising to stop the execution, but the dangerous sympathy was arrested by Cotton Mather, who, riding to and fro, carefully reminded them that Burroughs was not an "ordained" minister, and that to deceive the unwary, Satan often put on the 159 place. The accusations began to assume too serious and sweeping a shape to permit them much longer to be enter tained, since even the ministers and those in highest place in state and church were marked out as guilty of this crime. Many who had confessed had courage to recant. Having been, as they said, suddenly seized as prisoners, and "by reason of the sudden surprisal amazed and affrighted out of their reason, and exhorted by their nearest relatives to confess, as the only means. of saving their lives, they were thus persuaded into compliance. And indeed the confession was no other than what was suggested to them by some gentlemen, who, telling them that they were witches and that they knew they were so, made them think it was so; and their understandings, their reason, their faculties, almost gone, they were incapable of judging of their condition; and being moreover prevented by hard measures from making their defence, they confessed to any thing and every thing required of them." The scales began to fall from the eyes of a deluded people. Remonstrances now poured in against condemning persons of exemplary lives upon the idle accusations of children; the evident partiality of the judges, their cruel methods of compelling confessions, their total disregard of recantations however sincere, at length appeared in their true light. On the opening of the next court, in January, 1693, the grand jury dismissed the greater part of the cases, 1693. and those who had already been sentenced to death were reprieved, and A reaction, however, ere long took ultimately released. Mather was as appearance of an angel of light. At the next two sessions of the court, in September, fourteen women and one man were sentenced to death. One old man of eighty refused to plead, and by that horrible decree of the common law, was pressed to death. Although it was evident that confession was the only safety in most of cases, some few had courage to retract their confessions: some eight of these were sent to execution. Twenty persons had already been put to death; eight more were under sentence; the jails were full of prisoners; and new accusations were made every day. In such a state of things the court adjourned to the first Monday in November. tonished and confounded at this so unlooked-for result, and, although he admitted that "the most critical and exquisite caution" was required in discriminating on this subject, inasmuch as the devil might assume the appearance of an innocent person; yet he stoutly contended for the reality of the crime, and the justice which had been dealt both to those who were really guilty, and also those who, by confessing falsely, had only got what they deserved. He strove hard to discover fresh cases, but received a mortifying check from the efforts of one Robert Calef, a citizen of Boston, "a coal sent from hell to blacken him, a malignant, calumnious, and reproachful man," whose stubborn common sense persisted in denying the existence of the crime, and who especially provoked Cotton Mather's ire by exposing the imposture of a girl visited by the Mathers as an "afflicted" one, and readily imposing upon the learned but credulous ministers. Some two years after, a circular was sent out inviting reports of apparitions and the like; but, as Cotton Mather laments, there was hardly, in ten years, half that number of responses to his application. to have changed their views as to the work in which they had been engaged, and though some eminent European opinions helped to confirm them in their cherished sentiments on this subject, yet a number of the prominent actors did express deep contrition: no more blood was shed; no more horrible cruelty was practised on accusations of witchcraft. "Thus terminated," says Grahame, "a scene of fury and delusion that justly excited the astonishment of the civilized world, and exhibited a fearful picture of the weakness of human nature in the sudden transformation of a people renowned over all the earth for piety and virtue into the slaves or associates, the terrified dupes or helpless prey, of a band of ferocious lunatics and assassins."* The frontier warfare, meanwhile, con tinued with unsparing severity on both sides. Indian cunning, treachery, and cruelty were all urged on and directed by French science and skill. "To these causes of suffering," says Dr. Dwight, in an interesting passage in his Travels, "were superadded the power of all such motives as the ingenuity of the French could invent, their wealth furnish, or his life to deeds of mercy. Sewall, one of the judges, Thus this fearful scourge was removed, and heresy and blasphemy, together by the frankness and sincerity of his undisguised conwith witchcraft, ceased to appear as capital crimes on the statute book of Massachusetts. No more lives were sacrificed, and although the Mathers, Stoughton, and others,* do not appear *"The inexorable indignation of the people of Salem village, drove Parris from the place; Noyes regained favor only by a full confession, asking forgiveness always, and consecrating the remainder of fession, recovered public esteem. Stoughton and Cotton Mather never repented. The former lived proud, unsatisfied, and unbeloved; the latter attempted to persuade others and himself, that he had not been specially active in the tragedy. But the public mind would not be deceived. His diary proves that he did not wholly escape the rising impeachment from the monitor within; and Cotton Mather, who had sought the foundation of faith in tales of wonders, himself had temptations to atheism, and to the abandonment of all religion as a mere delusion.""-Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. iii., p. 98. * History of the Colonies," vol. i., p. 281. their bigotry adopt. Here all the implements of war and the means of sustenance were supplied; the expedition was planned; the price was bidden for scalps; the aid of European officers and soldiers was conjoined; the devastation and slaughter were sanctioned by the ministers of religion; and the blood-hounds, while their fangs were yet dropping blood, were caressed and cherished by men regarded by them as superior beings. The intervals between formal attacks were usually seasons of desultory mischief, plunder, and butchery; and always of suspense and dread. The solitary family was carried into captivity; the lonely house burnt to the ground; and the traveller waylaid and shot in the forest. It ought, however, to be observed, to the immortal honor of these people, distinguished as they are by so many traits of brutal ferocity, that history records no instance in which the purity of a female captive was violated by them, or even threatened." The veteran Colonel Church was engaged in retaliatory expeditions, in which indiscriminate slaughter was practised with as little compunction as by the French and Indians. In 1694, the settlement at Oyster River in New Hampshire-the present town of Durham-was attacked, and nearly a hundred persons killed or made captives of. Two years subsequently, 1694. 1696. in 1696, D'Iberville, a distinguished Canadian naval officer, arrived from France with two ships and some troops, and having been joined by the party under command of Villebon and the Baron St. Castin, in August, 1696, laid siege to and took the fort at VOL. I.-23 161 Pemaquid. The loss of the fort caused the breaking up of all the old settlements in the neighborhood. D'Iberville, in the spring of 1697, sailed for Hudson's Bay, recovered a fort from the English, and captured two English vessels. In March, 1697, the savages fell upon Haverhill, in Massachusetts, and killed or carried into captivity some forty persons. The heroism of Mrs. Dustin is honorably commemorated in our early history. Only a week before, she had become a mother. The nurse, trying to escape with the new-born infant, fell into the 1697. hands of the savages, who, rushing into the house, bade the mother arise instantly, while they plundered the house and afterwards set it on fire. They then hurried her away before them, together with a number of other captives, but ere they had gone many steps, dashed out the brains of the infant against a tree. The mother's heart would have sunk, but she thought of her surviving children, and summoned up strength to march before the savages towards the Canadian frontier. She saw her companions, as they sunk one by one with exhaustion, brained by the tomahawk of the savages, and their scalps taken as trophies to the Christian governor of Canada. After sojourning, in prayerfulness and anguish of spirit, with the Indian family to which she was allotted, she pursued with them her onward course towards an Indian rendezvous, where, as she was told, she would have to run the gauntlet through a row of savage tormentors. A desperate resolution took possession of her mind: might she not lawfully slay the murderers of her babe, effect thus her own deliverance, and rejoin her husband and children, if haply they were yet alive? One night, when now more than a hundred miles from Haverhill, having prevailed upon the nurse and a boy, also a prisoner, to join her, this brave woman arose, and with only such help as this, dispatched all the Indians with their own hatchets, except two of the youngest, took their scalps, and retraced the long journey through the woods back to Haverhill. Through such trying scenes as these, were the mothers of our people called upon to pass. Frontenac still continued his struggle with the Iroquois. Although now seventy-four years old, he personally conducted an expedition, and carried the wars into the territory of the Onondagas and Oneidas, cutting up their corn and burning their villages. It was a melancholy spectacle to see a man of noble descent, and of heroic spirit, himself near the end of life, giving his sanction to torture an Indian prisoner, a hundred years old, with all the refinements of savage cruelty! "A most singular spectacle indeed it was," says Charlevoix, "to see upwards of four hundred tormentors raging about a decrepit old man, from whom, by all their tortures, they could not extract a single groan, and who, as long as he lived, did not cease to reproach them with being slaves of the French, of whom he affected to speak with the utmost disdain. On receiving at last his deathstroke, he exclaimed, 'Why shorten my life? better improve this opportunity of learning how to die like a man !" The last year of the war was very trying. A severe winter and very great scarcity of provisions were ag gravated by a constant apprehension. of attack on Boston by a French fleet; but happily no result came of this this expedition; and towards the close of 1697, the peace of Ryswick was proclaimed, and the first intercolonial war was brought to an end. 1697. Each party, by the terms of the treaty, retained the territories possessed before the war, thus leaving the colonial dependencies of both nations in much the same position as they were antecedent to the severe struggle, save that a spirit of deadly hatred had been engendered, which was ready to break out into active cruelty at any favorable moment His address Board of Trade and Plantations - Enforcement of acts - Lord Bellamont governor of Massachusetts and popularity — Piracy - Bellamont's death Dudley his successor - Dispute about the salary of the governor Second intercolonial war— Preparations Indians under De Rouville-Deerfield and Haverhill massacres Expedition against Canada - Unsuccessful-Annapolis taken - Expedition under Walker- Combined attack projected - Failure and loss-Feelings of the colonists-Results of the peace of UtrechtParties on the subject of currency and commerce — Public bank in majority-Colonel Shute governor - Disputes Piracy suppressed-Small pox and inoculation Burnet governor-Dispute about the salary Appeal to the king-Language of the Board of Trade- Belcher successor of Burnet Colonists victorious in the salary dispute - Troubles on the frontier-Rasles and Norridgewock Indians- Lovewell Retaliation The New England Courant - Franklin - Belcher displaced Shirley appointed governor A popular magis trate Boundary disputes with New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island settled - Third intercolonial war Capture of Louisburg-Spirit of the Bostonians - Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. 1696. JUST before the peace of Ryswick, on the complaint of English merchants that the acts of trade had been violated by the colonists, there was established the BOARD OF TRADE AND PLANTATIONS. "This was a permanent commission, consisting of a president and seven members, known as 'Lords of Trade,' who succeeded to the authority and oversight hitherto exercised by plantation committees of the Privy Council. Subsequently the powers of this Board were somewhat curtailed, but down to the period of the American Revolution it continued to exercise a general oversight of the colonies, watching the Assemblies with a jealous eye, struggling hard to uphold the prerogatives of the king and the authority of parliament, laboring to strengthen the hands of the royal governors, and systematically to carry out the policy of rendering America completely subservient to the narrow | ११ views which then prevailed of the commercial commercial interests of the mother | country.' Accordingly the acts of trade were urged anew, and the hands of all revenue officers in the colonies strengthened: vice admiralty courts were also established, with the right of appeal to the king in council. Lord Bellamont, an Irish nobleman of agreeable manners and polished demeanor, was appointed to the governorship of Massachusetts, the duties of which office, after the death of Phipps in 1695, had been discharged by Stoughton, lieutenant governor. Lord Bellamont having left New York, arrived in Boston in May, 1699, and by his address soon suc- 1699. ceeded in gaining the good will of all parties. In imitation of the practice of the Irish lord lieutenant, Bellamont Hildreth's "History of the United States," vol. ii., p. 197. |