There be Witches Too Many

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 17^th-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!

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.”

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.

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.

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 in17^th 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?

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 20^th century:

http://www.spelwerx.com/timeline1651_today.html

History of New England  John Palfrey 1878

The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut  John M. Taylor

Entertaining Satan  John Putnam Demos 1982

Images from:

1)      http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/w/witch/

2)      http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/generic.html

3)      http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/generic.html

4)      http://womenshistory.about.com/od/salempeople/p/bridget_bishop.htm

5)      http://uh.edu/engines/epi603.htm

6)      http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-30-2006-107048.asp