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| Witches in 1493 |
I recently had a book signing for my novel, Rebel
Puritan, and I was asked whether my historical fiction is based in Salem
during the witchcraft frenzy. Though my
novel takes place in 17th-century New England, it occurs mostly in
Rhode Island several decades before the Salem tragedy. However, I get many such questions.
I am now writing the sequel to Rebel Puritan, and
my real-life protagonist, Herodias Long, apparently lived until 1705. I admit that I searched through Rhode
Island’s records for a case of witchcraft to use in Herodias’ story. After all, fine Salem witchcraft tales, such
as Kathleen Kent’s The Heretics Daughter
and The Afflicted Girls by Suzi
Witten, have attracted many readers. Why
not borrow some for my sequel?
Rhode Island let me down. Though there was a 1647 death penalty for
witchcraft in Rhode Island, there were no executions. There was not a single trial. Not even an accusation!
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| Bringing a witch to justice |
Witchcraft
is as old as humanity, but I confine this account to colonial New England. The Pilgrims brought Europe’s beliefs with
them, and when they wrote a code of laws in 1636, one of the five crimes for
which a person would be put to death was “forming
a solemn compact with the devil by way of witchcraft.”
Puritans arrived ten years after the Pilgrims, and they also had stern
witchcraft laws. In spring 1647 John
Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts, wrote in his journal, “One ___ of Windsor [CT] was arraigned and
executed at Hartford for a witch.”
One year later, three Massachusetts women were convicted and
executed. As John Palfrey wrote, “These cases appear to have excited no more
attention than … any other felony, and no judicial record of them survives.”
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| A Puritan witch |
Margaret Jones was one of the executed women, and
Governor Winthrop described some of the deathly evidence against her. She had a “malignant touch” and persons whom she “stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure … were taken with
deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.” She used herbal remedies such as aniseed,
which should have been harmless, yet had “extraordinary
violent effects.” And thirdly,
Margaret told people that if they did not use her remedies, they would never be
healed, and her predictions often came true.
Considering that doctors of the day used such dubious ingredients as
mercury and snails, and relied on bloodletting, it’s amazing that anyone
survived.
John Josselyn’s book, New England’s Rarities Discovered, was published in 1672. He comments that in the region “there be witches too many … that produce
many strange apparitions if you will believe report.” Notice the date: Josselyn’s book appeared two
decades before the Salem witchcraft accusations.
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| Bridget Bishop's 1692 hanging |
Witchcraft accusations, trials, and hangings occurred in the Puritan
colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Hampshire on a
near-yearly basis. The accusations came
to a horrific climax in 1692 when 160 persons were charged with
witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, and
one was crushed to death in a futile attempt to make him plead guilty.
It didn’t take much to be suspected. In 1656 Ann Hibbins was hanged in Boston,
Massachusetts as a witch (contrary to popular belief, witches were not burned
in America). She met a pair of
neighbors, and accurately guessed that they were talking about her. Incredibly, that was enough to get her tried
and executed.
Ann Hibbins’ husband died a year before she was
tried. That alone imperiled Goodwife
Hibbins. A goodly proportion of accused
witches were middle aged women or elderly widows. Festering ill-will often broke to the surface
after a quarrelsome woman’s husband died.
Accusers and accused: witchcraft was a peculiarly
female provenance. Out of 116 persons on
a list of accused witches, 37 were male.
79 of them were women, most of them elderly or middle-aged. Witchcraft
accusations gave women a public voice they rarely possessed. They accused and gave depositions, and acted
out their possessions in court.
Ministers, governors, and judges treated them with respect, sometimes
with deadly results.
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| A Monstrous Birth |
Puritans
were superstitious folk, and they examined every unusual event for its divine
meaning. An earthquake, bad storm, or a deformed
newborn was a sign that God was very displeased. It was up to them to figure out why. If a witch was the reason for God's wrath, she would be dispatched, and quickly.
In contrast, look at Rhode Island, which was not
Puritan. Though over 300 persons were accused
of witchcraft in17th century New England, only 3 of them were Rhode
Island residents!! Those three accusations
weren’t even made in Rhode Island.
The 1640 accusation against Anne Hutchinson and
two men of “Aquiday Island” widely
cited online is merely a slanderous suspicion. John Winthrop, Massachusetts’
Puritan governor, wrote in his then-private journal that a Mr. Hales was so
taken with Mrs. Hutchinson’s heresies that “it
gave suspicion of witchcraft.” If Rhode
Island’s government was aware of Winthrop’s notion it took no notice.
So, why was Rhode Island immune to the witchcraft
hysteria? The people who lived there in
the first 70 years were the same Englishmen who lived in Puritan Massachusetts
and Connecticut. They grew up with the
same belief system and superstition brought over from England. Where were Rhode Island’s accusations?
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| Anne Hutchinson's heresy trial |
I suspect that the reason lies in Rhode Island’s origins. Providence was first settled in 1636 by Roger
Williams and a handful of followers who were ejected from Massachusetts as
heretics and troublemakers. In 1638-9 an
influx of refugees arrived after Anne Hutchinson was convicted of heresy in
Boston. She was excommunicated and
banished. Several of her followers were
also ejected, and many opted to escape Puritan persecution. Nearly all went to Rhode Island, where they founded
the towns of Portsmouth and Newport.
Rhode Islanders knew what it was like to experience
baseless accusations and discrimination.
Tolerance was not just a notion – it was a way of life. Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and Hugenots were
welcomed in Rhode Island. There
certainly were disputes between neighbors in that tiny colony. Thankfully they did not erupt into deadly
accusations of witchcraft and Satan-worship.
Here is an incomplete list of witchcraft
investigations from 1651 well into the 20th century:
History
of New England
John Palfrey 1878
The
Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut John M. Taylor
Entertaining
Satan John Putnam
Demos 1982
Images from:
