plices. The evidence was then thought unexceptionable, and the three were committed to gaol for trial.

March 21.

March 24.

April 3.

Martha Corey and Rebecca Nourse were next cried out against. Both were church-members of excellent character; the latter, seventy years of age. They were examined by the same magistrates, and sent to prison, and with them a child of Sarah Good, only four or five years old, also charged with diabolical practices. Mr. Parris preached upon the text, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Sarah Cloyse, understanding the allusion to be to Nourse, who was her sister, went out of church, and was accordingly cried out upon, examined, and committed. Elizabeth Procter was another person charged. The deputy-governor and five magistrates came to Salem for the examination of the two prisoners last named. Procter appealed to one of the children who was accusing her. "Dear child," she said, "it is not so; there is another judgment, dear child"; and presently they denounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side. A week afterwards, warrants were issued for the apprehension of four other suspected persons; and a few days later for three others, one of whom, Philip English, was the principal merchant of Salem. On the same day, on the information of one of the possessed girls, an order was sent to Maine

April 11.

April 18.

April 30.

for the arrest of George Burroughs, formerly a candidate for the ministry at Salem Village, and now minister of Wells. The witness said that Burroughs, besides being a wizard, had killed his two first wives and other persons whose ghosts had appeared to her and denounced him.

May 10.

Charges now came in rapidly. George Jacobs, an old man, and his granddaughter, were sent to prison. "You tax me for a wizard," said he to the magistrates; "you may as well tax me for a buzzard; I have done no harm." They tried him with repeating the Lord's Prayer, which it was thought impossible for a witch to do. According to Parris's record, "he missed in several parts of it." His accusers persisted. "Well, burn me or hang me," said he, "I will stand in the truth of Christ; I know nothing of the matter, any more than the child that was born to-night." Among others, John Willard was now apprehended. As a constable he had served in the arrest and custody of some of the reputed witches. But he came to see the absurdity of the thing, and was said to have uttered something to the effect that it was the magistrates that were bewitched, and those who cheered them on. Willard was forthwith cried out against as a wizard, and committed for trial.

May 18.

Affairs were in this condition when the King's governor arrived. About a hundred alleged witches were now in gaol, awaiting

May 14.

June 2.

trial. Their case was one of the first matters to which his attention was called. Without authority for so doing, for, by the charter which he represented, the establishment of judicial courts was a function of the General Court, he proceeded to institute a special commission of Oyer and Terminer, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was the hard, obstinate, narrowminded Stoughton. The commissioners applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act was to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation twenty years old, and retracted by its author on his death-bed, had been revived. The court sentenced her to die by hanging, and she was accordingly hanged at the end of eight days. Cotton Mather, in his account of the proceedings, relates that, as she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had given a look towards the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and immediately a dæmon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of it." It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on collected for so extraordinary a spectacle.

June 30.

At the end of another four weeks the court sat again, and sentenced five women, two of Salem, and one each of Amesbury, Ipswich, and Topsfield, all of whom were executed, protesting their innocence. In respect to one of them, Rebecca Nourse, a matron

July 19.

us."

eminent for piety and goodness, a verdict of acquittal was first rendered. But Stoughton sent the jury out again, reminding them that, in her examination, in reference to certain witnesses against her who had confessed their own guilt, she had used the expression, "they came among Nourse was deaf, and did not catch what had been going on. When it was afterwards repeated to her, she said that by the coming among us she meant that they had been in prison together. But the jury adopted the court's interpretation of the words as signifying an acknowledgment that they had met at a witch orgy. The governor was disposed to grant her a pardon. But Parris, who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered and prevailed. On the last communion-day before her execution, she was taken into church, and formally excommunicated by Noyes, her minister. Of six persons tried at the next session of the court, the Reverend George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard College, was one. At a certain point of the proceedings the young people pretending to have suffered from him stood mute. Stoughton asked who hindered them from telling their story. "The Devil, I suppose," said Burroughs. Why should the Devil be so careful to suppress evidence against you?" retorted the judge, and with the jury this encounter of wits told hardly against the prisoner. His behavior at his execution strongly

Aug. 5.

Aug. 19.

impressed the spectators in his favor. "When he was upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to the admiration of all present; his prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord's Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, and such (at least, seeming) fervency of spirit as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that it seemed to many the spectators would hinder the execution." Cotton Mather, who was present on horseback, made them a quieting harangue. The accusers said the Black Man stood and dictated to him.

In the course of the next month, in which the governor left Boston for a short tour of inspection in the Eastern country, fifteen persons six women in one day, and on another, eight Sept. 9. women and one man were tried, con- Sept. 17. victed, and sentenced. Eight of them Sept. 22.

Giles Corey, Sept. 19.

were hanged. The brave eighty years of age, being arraigned refused to plead. He said that the whole thing was an imposture, and that it was of no use to put himself on his trial, for every trial had ended in a conviction, which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that, suffering the penalty of the English common law for a contumacious refusal to answer, -the peine forte et dure,- he was pressed to death with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he intended to protect the inheri