2 Witchcraft in Salem Quiz

PDF page 187: Three years later, in spring 1692, when a new royal charter had just been issued and tension spread throughout Massachusetts, several girls in Salem Village, what is now Danvers, became ill. Among those afflicted were the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris. After the girls began to have fits, which a minister described as “beyond the power of natural disease to effect,” and were closely questioned, they admitted that they had been experimenting with the occult under the tutelage of Tituba, a West Indian servant and possibly a slave, in the Parris household. The fact that the devil was at work in society was part and parcel of the Puritan belief system, and they tended to blame the works of the devil for all the misdoings in society. Indeed, Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan minister in Boston, was famous for his pronouncements on witches. In his book, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689 and reprinted in 1691), he examined the case of a mason in Boston, whose children had been possessed by the devil and encouraged to steal from neighbors; the woman accused of witchcraft was executed. Mather was determined “after this, never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches. I shall count that man Ignorant who shall suspect, but I shall count him down-right Impudent if he Assert the Non-Existence of things which we have had such palpable

PDF page 187: Three years later, in spring 1692, when a new royal charter had just been issued and tension spread throughout Massachusetts, several girls in Salem Village, what is now Danvers, became ill. Among those afflicted were the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris. After the girls began to have fits, which a minister described as “beyond the power of natural disease to effect,” and were closely questioned, they admitted that they had been experimenting with the occult under the tutelage of Tituba, a West Indian servant and possibly a slave, in the Parris household. The fact that the devil was at work in society was part and parcel of the Puritan belief system, and they tended to blame the works of the devil for all the misdoings in society. Indeed, Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan minister in Boston, was famous for his pronouncements on witches. In his book, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689 and reprinted in 1691), he examined the case of a mason in Boston, whose children had been possessed by the devil and encouraged to steal from neighbors; the woman accused of witchcraft was executed. Mather was determined “after this, never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches. I shall count that man Ignorant who shall suspect, but I shall count him down-right Impudent if he Assert the Non-Existence of things which we have had such palpable

PDF page 187: Three years later, in spring 1692, when a new royal charter had just been issued and tension spread throughout Massachusetts, several girls in Salem Village, what is now Danvers, became ill. Among those afflicted were the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris. After the girls began to have fits, which a minister described as “beyond the power of natural disease to effect,” and were closely questioned, they admitted that they had been experimenting with the occult under the tutelage of Tituba, a West Indian servant and possibly a slave, in the Parris household. The fact that the devil was at work in society was part and parcel of the Puritan belief system, and they tended to blame the works of the devil for all the misdoings in society. Indeed, Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan minister in Boston, was famous for his pronouncements on witches. In his book, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689 and reprinted in 1691), he examined the case of a mason in Boston, whose children had been possessed by the devil and encouraged to steal from neighbors; the woman accused of witchcraft was executed. Mather was determined “after this, never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches. I shall count that man Ignorant who shall suspect, but I shall count him down-right Impudent if he Assert the Non-Existence of things which we have had such palpable

PDF page 187: Three years later, in spring 1692, when a new royal charter had just been issued and tension spread throughout Massachusetts, several girls in Salem Village, what is now Danvers, became ill. Among those afflicted were the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris. After the girls began to have fits, which a minister described as “beyond the power of natural disease to effect,” and were closely questioned, they admitted that they had been experimenting with the occult under the tutelage of Tituba, a West Indian servant and possibly a slave, in the Parris household. The fact that the devil was at work in society was part and parcel of the Puritan belief system, and they tended to blame the works of the devil for all the misdoings in society. Indeed, Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan minister in Boston, was famous for his pronouncements on witches. In his book, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689 and reprinted in 1691), he examined the case of a mason in Boston, whose children had been possessed by the devil and encouraged to steal from neighbors; the woman accused of witchcraft was executed. Mather was determined “after this, never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches. I shall count that man Ignorant who shall suspect, but I shall count him down-right Impudent if he Assert the Non-Existence of things which we have had such palpable

PDF page 187: Three years later, in spring 1692, when a new royal charter had just been issued and tension spread throughout Massachusetts, several girls in Salem Village, what is now Danvers, became ill. Among those afflicted were the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris. After the girls began to have fits, which a minister described as “beyond the power of natural disease to effect,” and were closely questioned, they admitted that they had been experimenting with the occult under the tutelage of Tituba, a West Indian servant and possibly a slave, in the Parris household. The fact that the devil was at work in society was part and parcel of the Puritan belief system, and they tended to blame the works of the devil for all the misdoings in society. Indeed, Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan minister in Boston, was famous for his pronouncements on witches. In his book, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689 and reprinted in 1691), he examined the case of a mason in Boston, whose children had been possessed by the devil and encouraged to steal from neighbors; the woman accused of witchcraft was executed. Mather was determined “after this, never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches. I shall count that man Ignorant who shall suspect, but I shall count him down-right Impudent if he Assert the Non-Existence of things which we have had such palpable

PDF page 188: When the girls of Salem Village confessed that they had been studying the occult and were perhaps the victims of witchcraft, they were ordered to reveal their afflicters. They pointed to Tituba who, upon being whipped, named her two accomplices: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. These two women made perfect victims for what is considered by most historians to have been mass adolescent hysteria, as Sarah Good was a homeless beggar and Sarah Osborne had long been suspect because of her refusal to attend church services. Non-conformity was not a value in Puritan society, and anyone who was outside the mold was viewed suspiciously. A special court was established to hear the cases, in which the girls were the main witnesses. During the cross examination of the “witches,” the girls threw themselves on the floor and writhed and groaned. The initial accusations were only the beginning, and as the girls received more and more attention, they pointed their fingers at additional residents of Salem Village and nearby Ipswich, whom they claimed to have seen riding broomsticks, sitting in trees, floating through the air, appearing as wolves, and anything else they imagined that witches would be able to do. If rational residents accused the girls of nonsense, they, too, became victims of the accusers. Before the hysteria ended in the summer of 1693, more than one hundred persons had been cited and nineteen put to death. Of those executed, eighteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old farmer, was pressed to death. One of the victims, George Burroughs, was a Congregational minister; fourteen

PDF page 188: When the girls of Salem Village confessed that they had been studying the occult and were perhaps the victims of witchcraft, they were ordered to reveal their afflicters. They pointed to Tituba who, upon being whipped, named her two accomplices: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. These two women made perfect victims for what is considered by most historians to have been mass adolescent hysteria, as Sarah Good was a homeless beggar and Sarah Osborne had long been suspect because of her refusal to attend church services. Non-conformity was not a value in Puritan society, and anyone who was outside the mold was viewed suspiciously. A special court was established to hear the cases, in which the girls were the main witnesses. During the cross examination of the “witches,” the girls threw themselves on the floor and writhed and groaned. The initial accusations were only the beginning, and as the girls received more and more attention, they pointed their fingers at additional residents of Salem Village and nearby Ipswich, whom they claimed to have seen riding broomsticks, sitting in trees, floating through the air, appearing as wolves, and anything else they imagined that witches would be able to do. If rational residents accused the girls of nonsense, they, too, became victims of the accusers. Before the hysteria ended in the summer of 1693, more than one hundred persons had been cited and nineteen put to death. Of those executed, eighteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old farmer, was pressed to death. One of the victims, George Burroughs, was a Congregational minister; fourteen

PDF page 188: When the girls of Salem Village confessed that they had been studying the occult and were perhaps the victims of witchcraft, they were ordered to reveal their afflicters. They pointed to Tituba who, upon being whipped, named her two accomplices: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. These two women made perfect victims for what is considered by most historians to have been mass adolescent hysteria, as Sarah Good was a homeless beggar and Sarah Osborne had long been suspect because of her refusal to attend church services. Non-conformity was not a value in Puritan society, and anyone who was outside the mold was viewed suspiciously. A special court was established to hear the cases, in which the girls were the main witnesses. During the cross examination of the “witches,” the girls threw themselves on the floor and writhed and groaned. The initial accusations were only the beginning, and as the girls received more and more attention, they pointed their fingers at additional residents of Salem Village and nearby Ipswich, whom they claimed to have seen riding broomsticks, sitting in trees, floating through the air, appearing as wolves, and anything else they imagined that witches would be able to do. If rational residents accused the girls of nonsense, they, too, became victims of the accusers. Before the hysteria ended in the summer of 1693, more than one hundred persons had been cited and nineteen put to death. Of those executed, eighteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old farmer, was pressed to death. One of the victims, George Burroughs, was a Congregational minister; fourteen

PDF page 188: When the girls of Salem Village confessed that they had been studying the occult and were perhaps the victims of witchcraft, they were ordered to reveal their afflicters. They pointed to Tituba who, upon being whipped, named her two accomplices: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. These two women made perfect victims for what is considered by most historians to have been mass adolescent hysteria, as Sarah Good was a homeless beggar and Sarah Osborne had long been suspect because of her refusal to attend church services. Non-conformity was not a value in Puritan society, and anyone who was outside the mold was viewed suspiciously. A special court was established to hear the cases, in which the girls were the main witnesses. During the cross examination of the “witches,” the girls threw themselves on the floor and writhed and groaned. The initial accusations were only the beginning, and as the girls received more and more attention, they pointed their fingers at additional residents of Salem Village and nearby Ipswich, whom they claimed to have seen riding broomsticks, sitting in trees, floating through the air, appearing as wolves, and anything else they imagined that witches would be able to do. If rational residents accused the girls of nonsense, they, too, became victims of the accusers. Before the hysteria ended in the summer of 1693, more than one hundred persons had been cited and nineteen put to death. Of those executed, eighteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old farmer, was pressed to death. One of the victims, George Burroughs, was a Congregational minister; fourteen

PDF page 188: When the girls of Salem Village confessed that they had been studying the occult and were perhaps the victims of witchcraft, they were ordered to reveal their afflicters. They pointed to Tituba who, upon being whipped, named her two accomplices: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. These two women made perfect victims for what is considered by most historians to have been mass adolescent hysteria, as Sarah Good was a homeless beggar and Sarah Osborne had long been suspect because of her refusal to attend church services. Non-conformity was not a value in Puritan society, and anyone who was outside the mold was viewed suspiciously. A special court was established to hear the cases, in which the girls were the main witnesses. During the cross examination of the “witches,” the girls threw themselves on the floor and writhed and groaned. The initial accusations were only the beginning, and as the girls received more and more attention, they pointed their fingers at additional residents of Salem Village and nearby Ipswich, whom they claimed to have seen riding broomsticks, sitting in trees, floating through the air, appearing as wolves, and anything else they imagined that witches would be able to do. If rational residents accused the girls of nonsense, they, too, became victims of the accusers. Before the hysteria ended in the summer of 1693, more than one hundred persons had been cited and nineteen put to death. Of those executed, eighteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old farmer, was pressed to death. One of the victims, George Burroughs, was a Congregational minister; fourteen

PDF page 188: of the nineteen executed were women.

PDF page 189: a Hole, or Grave, between the Rocks, about two feet deep... Before he was hung, Reverend Burroughs recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly, an act that witches were not supposed to be able to perform. The mass hysteria that was the witchcraft “scare” ended in the fall of 1693, when well-connected people, including the wife of Governor Phipps, were accused and the educated elite of Boston began to pressure the Governor to set aside spectral evidence. Even Increase Mather wrote in 1693 that the devil could take the shape of an innocent person and that it was better that ten witches go free than one innocent person be condemned. But while many of the ministers of Massachusetts Bay eschewed the proceedings after the fact, none spoke up until the hysteria had consumed the colony for eighteen months. Influenced by the writings of ministers such as Cotton and Increase Mather, they could in fact see the workings of the devil in Massachusetts; it was far easier to blame the Devil than to look too closely at the society Puritan orthodoxy had created. When the mass hysteria ended in 1693, it coincided with the end of the Holy Commonwealth and the decline of the “city on a hill.” Compared to the witch hunts that occurred in Europe at about the same time, the one in Salem Village was mild and had at least some humane features, if the word humane can be applied to a witch hunt. In the first place, the Salem witches were hung and not burned to death, and, in the second, most of those involved in the furor later confessed their mistakes. Twenty years later, the Massachusetts courts annulled the convictions and granted indemnity to the victims and their families.