Six Women of Salem (51 page)

On Saturday, September 3, Ann Putnam likely saw her daughter Annie off with Elizabeth Hubbard and the other visionary girls, escorted the sixteen or so miles to Gloucester, this time to help Goodwife Eleanor Babson and Mistress Mary Sargent, the magistrate’s wife, grown women of respectable families. Annie returned with the news that two more culprits had been identified—or rather their identity verified, as the afflicted women already had a good idea who tormented them.

Consequently, Goodwives Margaret Prince and Elizabeth Dicer were in Salem on Monday to face the magistrates and the throng of convulsing witnesses. These included Mary Warren, Elizabeth Hubbard (struck dumb as the Prince woman’s specter had foretold back in Gloucester), sisters Elizabeth and Alice Booth with their sister-in-law Elizabeth Booth (now four months gone with child two months after she had married their brother George), and several confessors from Andover, including Mary Lacey Jr., some of confessor Mary Bridges’s daughters, and Samuel Wardwell.

Thirteen years earlier Elizabeth Dicer, when she lived in Salem, called Mary English’s mother “a black-mouthed witch and a thief” and been fined for the slander. Now
she
was the suspected witch. Thus, accusing one’s neighbor did not make one immune to other neighbors’ suspicions.

When Goodwife Mary Taylor was arrested with other Reading women on the Sabbath, accused mainly by her neighbor, the widowed Mrs. Mary Marshall, Goody Taylor commented, “who ever lived to se it would finde Mrs Marshals cace like Mary Warins.” Evidently, Mary’s attempt to define her fits as distractions was fairly well known, the news being common knowledge in Reading, which was about twelve miles west of Salem. “There was a hott pott now,” Goody Taylor continued, “ & a hottr pott preparing for her here after.”

Now, in court, Mary Warren fell at Goody Taylor’s glance and required the suspect’s touch to revive. Warren had to have heard the statement repeated and heard the defendant’s explanation that “by the hotter pott,” she meant “that if Mrs Marshall wronged her hell would be prepared for her”—another reminder of what happened to liars and false witnesses.

Samuel Wardwell’s brother-in-law William Hooper had died August 8, not long after quarreling with Goody Taylor. Hooper’s house burned shortly afterward, with the body inside prior to the funeral. Wardwell blamed Taylor for causing both the death and the fire, badgering her in court as he stood among the afflicted witnesses—though he himself was not afflicted—and briefly assuming the role of hectoring magistrate. (British courtroom procedure at that time allowed more audience participation than would later be thought wise.) Goody Taylor, like so many from Andover, confessed.

Wardwell was equally aggressive against two other Reading women accused of causing Hooper’s death: Goodwives Jane Lilly and Mary Coleson. According to Mary Warren, Goody Lilly sometimes visited the Procter’s house—fellow witches all—but Lilly “denyed that ever she had had any conferrance with Procter or his wife” or had anything to do with Hooper’s death. Despite the convulsing afflicted all about her, neighbors’ accusations, and Wardwell’s bullying, Jane Lilly declared that “if she confessed any thing of this she shoud deny the truth & wrong her own soul.” By now fewer of the accused had the fortitude to stand firm in their own innocence.

Dorcas Hoar, a widow from Beverly whose family had pilfered from their neighbors, including Reverend Hale, for years, was tried and found guilty in Salem on Tuesday, September 6. The trial of Ann Pudeator, the grand jury having indicted her for afflicting Mary Warren during the July hearing, began the same day around noon—the witnesses were summoned for twelve o’clock—and continued into the following day.

Alice Parker, already questioned at her May 12 hearing, was examined anew late on September 6. (The reason for this is not at all clear, as she had already been jailed. Perhaps, like Pudeator, she may have been released and arrested a second time, as Mary Esty certainly had been. Such a development would have stunned Mary Warren.)

Parker’s specter was also reportedly active, for Annie Putnam would testify the following day that Parker’s specter hurt Mary Warren and the rest of the afflicted “last night in the Court.” Sarah Bibber, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard were present as well, choked and squeezed by that spirit. But Mary Warren was its particular victim, and Goody Bibber said that she saw Mary struggle as Parker’s vengeful specter “did choke sdd Warin the last night & griped her abo[u]t the waste.”

Fellow confessors Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hobbs also said they witnessed this attack. Abigail added that “she has seen. Alice Parker afflict Mary Warin when sd Warin was at prison. [A]lso I have seen her afflict An Putnam by choking of them.”

Thomas Putnam wrote a statement for himself and William Murray, who also took occasional notes for the court, that they had witnessed the torments of Mary Warren, Mary Walcott, and others on September 6 during Alice Parker’s examination and that the men believed that the defendant really did strike the afflicted with her glance and recover them by her touch on that occasion and “has often hurt the above said parsons by acts of wicthcraf.”

When the grand jury indicted Alice Parker on September 7 for tormenting Mary Walcott and Mary Warren, the latest spectral attacks counted for more than the similar assaults in May, so the clerk adjusted the date on the documents from May 12 to September 6:

The Juriors for our Sovr Lord and Lady the King and Queen doe p[re]sent That Allice Parker Wife of John Parker of Salem In the County of Essex aforsaid ffisherman, the
Twelfth
sixt day of
May
September . . . [has practiced] Certaine detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries Wickedly Mallitiously & felloniously . . . against one Mary Warren of Salem Aforesaid Single Woman by which said Wicked Acts the said Mary Warren . . . was and is Tortured Aflicted Consumed Wasted Pined and Tormented.

In June, when the jury of matrons examined several of the accused women for witch-marks, they reported nothing unusual on Goody Parker. Now, three months later, several people had their suspicions about her. John Westgate had sworn a statement before John Hathorne on June 2 and swore to it again before the grand jury September 7. According to Westgate Goody Parker had stormed into Samuel Beadle’s tavern looking for her husband one evening eight years earlier.

[she] scolded att and called her husband all to nought, whereupon I . . . tooke her husbands part telling of her itt was an unbeseeming thing for her to come after him to the taverne and raile after thatt rate wth thatt she came up to me and call’d me rogue and bid me mind my owne busines and told me I had better have said nothing.

On his way home that night a fierce black hog pursued him, frightening even his dog, (yet never caught Westgate for all that he had to crawl along a fence-line to get his bearings). Because of his dog’s panicked reaction, the hog, he supposed, “was Either the Divell or some Evell thing not a Reall hog”—either Goody Parker in spectral disguise or some imp she had sent.

John Bullock and Martha Dutch testified about the January incident, when Goody Parker was found unconscious, seemingly dead in the snow. She never responded while Bullock carried her home over his shoulder, not even when he dropped her, and not while the neighbors helped put her to bed. But afterward, said Bullock, “She rises up & laughs in o[u]r faces.” Moreover, this wasn’t the only time she was discovered in this condition. Even though such spells were known to have natural causes, hers now seemed all the more suspicious under the circumstances.

Widow Martha Dutch remarked on Goody Parker’s gloomy foreknowledge of who would or would not survive sea voyages. Two years previously, as they had watched a returning vessel tack into Salem Harbor, Goody Dutch had remarked, “[Wha]t a great mercy itt was for to see Them Come home well and Through mercy . . . my husband had gone & Came home well many Times & I . . . did hope he would Come whome This voyage well alls[o].”

To which Goody Parker answered, “[N]o Never more in This world.”

And that was exactly what happened, Goody Dutch testified, “for he died abroad as I sertinly heare.”

Quaker Samuel Shattuck, who had already testified against Bridget Bishop for bewitching his son, blamed Alice Parker for worsening the boy’s condition back in 1684:

[Young Sam, already] Supposed to have bin under an ill hand for Severall years before was taken in a Strange & unuceall [i.e., unusual] maner as if his vitalls would have broak out his breast boane drawn up to gather to the uper part of his brest his neck & Eys drawne Soe much aside as if they would never Come to right againe he lay in So Strange a maner tht the Docter & others did beleive he was bewitched.

This happened shortly after Goody Parker had visited, feigning concern.

Shattuck had already tried folk magic against Bridget Bishop—with no reproach from the magistrates that this was imprudent—and he did so again against Alice Parker. Actually, he said, it was “some of the visitors” who cut a lock of the boy’s hair to boil (in order to harm the witch who sent the pain), but this made the child shriek. They next put the hair in a skillet over the fire, but as soon as their backs were turned the hair was thrown out into the empty room. So they put it to boil again, and Goody Parker appeared at the door as if drawn to the place. She had a thin story about coming to sell some chickens, but that tale unraveled over the next few days into contradictions, evasions, and lies.

Finally, Goody Parker and her husband both went to Shattuck’s house, where she demanded to know if he had accused her of bewitching his child. “I told her I did belive She had.”

“[Y]ow are a wicked man,” she retorted. “The lord avenge me of you. The lord bring vengance upon you for this wrong.”

Then she stormed into the sickroom and shouted at Shattuck’s wife, Naomi, calling her “a wicked woman” for saying such things about her. “I hope I Shall See the downfall of you,” she shouted before she left “in a great anger.”

In court, when not convulsing, Mary Warren had a great deal to say about the defendant.

Mary Warren upon oath affirms to the Jury of Inquest that she hath seen Alice Parker afflict Mary Walcot, Elizabeth Hubbard, Ann Putnam, & Goodwife Vibber the last night by choking them & squeezing them. Said Parker has afflicted me, has brought me the book to sign to. She brought me a poppit & a needle & threatened to stab me if I would not stick the needle into the poppit. & she did run the needle a little way into me. Said Parker said she was a cause of the death of Thomas Wastgate [John Westgate’s brother] and crew that was foundered in the sea. She was also a cause of the death of Goodwife Ormes her son that was drowned before their door and was a cause of the death of John Serlese his Barbadian boy. She was the cause also of Michael Chapman’s Death in Boston Harbour. she also told me she bewiched my mother & was a caus of her death also that she bewiched my sister Eliz tht is both deaf & dumb.

The grand jury pronounced Parker’s indictment
billa vera
(a true bill), a case with enough evidence to proceeded to a jury trial before the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

Ann Pudeator, for tormenting Mary Warren on July 2, was likewise held.

On September 8 William Procter, his father recently hanged as a witch and his mother waiting under a death sentence, faced the grand jury, charged with sending spectral torments against Elizabeth Hubbard and Mary Warren during his May 31 hearing back in Salem Village. Most of his paperwork is lost, so precisely what evidence Anthony Checkley presented to the grand jurors is a matter of guesswork, but something was different about his case, for this time the grand jury pronounced
both
indictments
ignoramus
. William would
not
be tried as a witch. Once he paid his jail bill—if he could—he would be free to go home.

His mother, if she heard the news in time, would have been relieved that at least her son was spared. But the result must have shaken Mary Warren and Elizabeth Hubbard, staggered that the court doubted their testimony. If there were doubt here, what else would be called into question? If the authorities would not believe their assertions, what then? William’s specter attacked the girls afresh, they said, and would continue to do so in the ensuing days. What else could they expect from the son of two convicted witches?

The court tried Rebecca Nurse’s sister Mary Esty and Mary Bradbury on September 9, and both, to Ann Putnam’s relief, were found guilty despite their supporters. Mary Esty and her sister Sarah Cloyce had petitioned the court to allow witnesses to testify on oath on their behalf—Reverend Joseph Capen of Topsfield for one. But the only surviving record in the sisters’ favor is a statement from prison keeper John Arnold and his wife that while the two women were jailed in Boston “thare daportmont wose varey s[o]bere and civell.”

Sarah Cloyce was supposed to come before the grand jury on this same day, but she did not. Sarah’s widowed sister-in-law Mary Towne and her four children had been summoned to testify but tried to avoid appearing. On September 7 Mary Towne wrote,

[W]e are in a straing Condicion and most of us can scars git [out] of our beads we are so wake and not abell to Ried at all as for my dafter Rebaka she hath straing ffits somtimes she is knoked downe of a sodin
and that espachaly If hur ant Easty be but named.

Widow Towne evidently thought better of including the remark about her daughter’s fits at the sound of Aunt Esty’s name and drew a line through that phrase—but did not obliterate it. On the following day the court issued another order for Mary and Rebecca Towne to appear against Mary Esty on September 9, and on that day the niece Rebecca seemed to be tormented by Sarah Cloyce.