Key Players of the Salem Witchcraft Delusion

How their prior knowledge formed their opinions

By Giovanni Alabiso

There has been so much written about the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials that led to the deaths of 25 people who were hanged, crushed or died in jail. And the theories are infinite depending on your perspective and occupational discipline.

A scope of understanding that hasn’t been fully explored is what prior knowledge the key players in the hysteria had prior to the episode. In reviewing the past history of the judges, reverends and influencers of the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials, a pattern emerges: those who had first-hand experience of a previous witchcraft case were apt to express caution whereas those who had second-hand experience were far more willing to condemn their neighbors. 

The pattern emerges when we examine where they grew up whether in England or the colonies, witchcraft cases in their area and published pamphlets available to them about witchcraft cases.

The Salem Witchcraft Judges

The judges simply compounded their errors in jurisprudence based on here-say, gossip, old wives’ tales and fear of the unknown since they had limited guidance of laws and books on the matter of witchcraft. Key judges include Salem’s John Hathorne (great, great grandfather of author Nathaniel Hawthorne) and Jonathan Corwin.

Hathorne was born in Salem in 1641 and had no first-hand knowledge of witchcraft cases in England. His father, William, came from Bray, a small town on the Thames. There was a case in 1579 near Bray where a widow, Elizabeth Stile, confessed to murdering someone with witchcraft.[1] There were two other cases near Bray in 1634 and 1643, but Hathorne had come to Salem in 1630 on the Arbella as part of the John Winthrop Fleet [2] so he would not have known about them.

Corwin was born in Salem in 1640 and did not have any first-hand knowledge of witchcraft cases in England. His father, George, came from Northampton, England and there was a major case in 1612 there. Four women and one man were executed for witchcraft. Two women were accused of causing people to have fits and they were also accused of killing a child with magic.[3] The father was three-years-old at the time of the case but he didn’t leave for the new world until 1635. He would have heard second-hand knowledge of this case.

In 1692, one of Jonathan Corwin’s children was believed to be afflicted by witchcraft. During the trials, Judge Hathorne asks Tituba, the servant of Rev. Samuel Parris who is accused of witchcraft, in a hearing if she hurt Mr. Corwin’s child. She replied that others did, but she did not.[4]

This indicates that one of Corwin’s kids was afflicted or maybe just sick. It may have been a little extra motivation for Corwin, but the truth is six of his children died in infancy before the trials. Another child, Sarah, died at the age of nine before the trials. It could be Anna, who was five years old at the time of the trials, who survives, but dies in 1706 at the age of 18. The point is that the Corwin children were not healthy from birth and died young. Perhaps Corwin thought it was witchcraft afflicting them, causing him to root out the witches to save his child.

Chief Magistrate William Stoughton, who was the deputy governor, operated out of Boston, seldom attending any of the hearings or trials in Salem.

He was born in the colonies in 1631 and again had no first-hand knowledge of English cases. But his father, Israel Stoughton, did come from Coggeshall in Essex that was a hotbed of witchcraft cases in the 1500s & 1600s.

Israel may have known of the famous case in Coggeshall in 1567 of widow Alice Atru, who bewitched to death the valuable horse of neighbor Thomas Richolde and a white pig of Edward Goodaye. She was imprisoned for a year and every quarter was placed in the pillory for six hours.[5]

Coggshall, Essex is in East Anglia that is northeast of London where Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General, accused 300 people of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire from 1644-1647. He collected “evidence” against them to prove they had used harmful magic against their neighbors or livestock. A total of 160 people were hanged.[6]

Israel departed from England in 1630 as part of the Winthrop Fleet so he wouldn’t have known about Matthew Hopkins first hand, but it shows that the area he lived was full of people who were superstitious and believed whole-heartedly that witches existed and could harm you.

Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall was born in 1639 in Ipswich, MA. His father was Major Richard Saltonstall and his grandfather was Sir Richard Saltonstall, who came here on the Arbella with John Winthrop. Sir Richard stayed here briefly and returned to England, travelling all over England in service to the king.

He was from Huntwick in Yorkshire, about 200 miles north of London, that was another hotbed of witchcraft cases. There were eight cases of witchcraft that Sir Richard knew about before 1630 so he may have told those stories to his sons, but he was back in England when Nathaniel was born.

Nathaniel settles in Haverhill and is the only judge to recuse himself from the trials after Bridget Bishop was convicted. There is no written evidence as to his thoughts about the trials. But it is important to note that he was not connected to any of the other judges by marriage or business. It appears that Nathaniel took umbrage with the proceedings and wanted no part of it. He speaks out against the trials and there are murmurs that he may be a witch, but no accusations ever come to fruition.

Judge Bartholomew Gedney was born in Salem in 1640 so he had no knowledge of English cases. But his father, John, grew up in Norwich, Norfolk County, England that was also part of the hotbed of witchcraft superstition. [7]

Judge Samuel Sewall, the youngest of all the Salem judges, was born in 1652 in Bishopstoke, about 75 miles southwest of London. It is near Eastleigh in the county of Hampshire north of the city of Southampton. There were no local witchcraft cases in his hometown, but there were several cases in nearby counties of Dorset, Wilshire, West Sussex and Surrey that he heard about before he came to the colonies at the age of nine.

It is interesting to note that while he only had second-hand knowledge of witchcraft cases in England that he was the only judge to apologize for his role in church on January 14, 1697. He wore a shirt made of hair under his regular clothes as his penance.

He was much more progressive than the other judges but had to temper his thoughts as the 1692 fervor raged. He wrote what is believed to be the first anti-slavery essay in America in 1700 called The Selling of Joseph.[8] In 1725, he wrote another famous essay about the rights of women called Talitha Cumi,[9] that is a bible phrase in Aramaic that means “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” These essays give us some insight into the progressive nature of Sewall.

Judge John Richards was baptized in Somerset, England in 1624 and came to Salem at the age of eight. There was a case in near Somerset in Ditcheat in 1584. Margaret Cooper is visited by a creature about 18 inches tall that drags her off the bed and throws her under it, before pushing her head betwixt her legs and throwing her down the stairs. Six witnesses, including her husband, all testified and believed it was the devil.[10] Nobody was blamed for this instance but this fantastic tale was repeated for years.

Judge Peter Sargent was born about 1650 and came to Massachusetts from London in 1667. He eventually held positions of constable and councilor in Boston and was connected by marriage to Governor William Phips, Judge Jonathan Corwin and Deputy Governor William Stoughton.

Sargent knew about many witchcraft trials in England because all the publications were printed and distributed in London. Most notable would be the pamphlets by Hopkins from 1645-47 as well as The Witch of Wapping (1652) and the Witch of Edmonton (1622).[11] However, there is no written record of Sargent ever expressing his thoughts on the 1692 Salem cases.

Judge Thomas Danforth, who presided in the second court, was born in 1623 and came to the new world in 1634. There was a case in his village in 1591. Alice Stampede was accused and convicted of bewitching to death two married women – Margaret Cook and Margaret Irelond. The widow was sentenced to death but then her sentence was changed to imprisonment. [12]

Danforth was sympathetic to the Salem individuals accused, perhaps because his influence was that Stampede’s death sentence was commuted. He was also opposed to spectral evidence that was ruled out for the second court by Gov. William Phips.

Judge Waitstill Winthrop was born in 1642 in Boston, but reportedly never attended a hearing or trial in the first court that convicts everyone. His name appeared as “present” during hearings in the second court, resulting in the release of Mary Lacey Jr.[13] and Mary Watkins[14] at the tail end of the trials in 1693.

We don’t have any of Winthrop’s thoughts or writings about the witchcraft trials. The fact that he doesn’t attend a trial in the first court might be because he was elected as captain in the Military Company of Massachusetts in June 1692[15] limiting his availability.

Waitstill’s father is John Winthrop the younger, who became governor of Connecticut that had witchcraft trials from 1647-1662. He was an alchemist and considered an expert on witchcraft. While he was governor from 1657-1676, he would step in and exonerate convicted witches. It is somewhat interesting that he was never accused of witchcraft himself, but he held a lot of respect.

Waitstill’s grandfather is John Winthrop, the 12-term governor of Massachusetts who landed in Salem on the Arbella with his 11-ship fleet in 1630.

John Winthrop the elder was born in Groton in Suffolk County in 1588, living in Edwardstone. Again, Suffolk became a hot bed of witchcraft in the 1640s after Winthrop had come to Salem. But the climate seems to be highly susceptible to accusations of witchcraft since John the elder left England in 1630 due to religious persecution, economic hardship and political turmoil.[16] His desire was to create the model Puritan society aka the “City on a Hill.”

He imparted these morals and high standards to his sons and grandsons, who did the same. It seems that John the Younger’s son, Waitstill, consulted his father about the witchcraft hysteria in Salem and perhaps was advised not to get involved. Again, Waitstill only gets involved to clear two people at the tail end of the trials when the tide has clearly turned after Governor William Phips exerts his authority to end the trials.

Interestingly, Waitstill marries Kathrine Eyre in 1707.[17] She is the sister of Thomas Brattle, who writes the famous “Reverend Sir”[18] letter that helps end the Salem Witchcraft Trials. The letter was targeted at Rev. Cotton Mather, but not specifically addressed to him. The letter attacked the Salem Witchcraft Trials, was widely circulated and read by many who concurred his Brattle’s conclusions.

Would Waitstill Winthrop have been allowed to marry Katherine had he been a staunch supporter of the trials?

The Reverends

Reverend Increase Mather and Reverend Cotton Mather, father and son, respectively, preached together at the North Square Church (not the ‘one if by land and two by sea’ old North Church) in Boston. While they had similar views, the father and son began to go in different directions as the trials progressed. The father started to doubt that people are witches, while the son comes to the conclusion that witches are real.

Both were born in Boston so neither had any first-hand knowledge of cases in England. But they would have been familiar with the Boston cases from 1648 to 1688. The father certainly had first- and second-hand knowledge of those cases, while the son had mostly second-hand knowledge of all those cases, except the 1688 Goody Glover case where he was fully involved.

Both father and son discussed their religion extensively and had learned a lot about English witchcraft cases from Reverend Richard Mather, the father of Increase Mather, who was born in Lowton, Lancashire in 1598.

There was considerable religious conflict in Lancashire as several Roman Catholics lived under the control of Protestants. This led to fear of neighbors and one of the most sensational English witchcraft trials to that date – The Pendle Witches – in 1612.

A total of 12 people were accused of witchcraft. Nine women and two men went to trial while one of the accused died in jail. Of the 11 who were tried, 10 were convicted and hanged. The other was found not guilty.[19]

In 1634, Pendle erupted again with over 20 people accused of witchcraft following accusations by 10-year-old Edmund Robinson. They were convicted but the king overturned their convictions upon appeal. Robinson confessed to fabricating his testimony so the accused were spared from execution.[20]

Around the same time, Rev. Richard Mather, was suspended for non-conformity in England.[21] He emigrated to Massachusetts aboard the James in 1635, because of the religious conflict and a disdain for the accusations of witchcraft all around him.

There is no doubt that the stories of the Pendle witches were discussed in the Mather household as well as the Boston cases. They were the most known cases in England. The fact that the second Pendle case was discovered to be fabricated led to doubt.

Ann Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy[22] was also known to them. Hutchinson wasn’t accused of witchcraft, but was excommunicated in 1638 by Rev. John Cotton, who was Increase Mather’s future father-in-law and Cotton Mather’s future grandfather.

Rev. Cotton Mather was much-maligned for his role in the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials because he had supported the careful use of spectral evidence. His book Memorable Providences[23] recounts the 1688 Goody Glover case that was relied on heavily by the judges in 1692. The sentiment against Cotton was so strong that Harvard College rejects Cotton from following his father’s footsteps as president in 1701 due to his involvement in the trials.

Rev. Cotton Mather’s belief in witchcraft was fortified by his interaction with Mercy Short, an afflicted 15-year-old who was staying at a home in the North End of Boston in July of 1692.[24] He went to visit her and heard a short conversation she had with the specter of Rev. George Burroughs, who was known to be in Maine.

Short told Burroughs that she'd rather burn for a few hours than burn for an eternity in Hell. Burroughs then told her she would die in a fire that would consume Boston. A few hours later, a fire started at the Kings Head Tavern at the corner of North and Lewis Streets that was one block from Mather's meeting house. A total of 20 buildings burned before it was put out.

Rev. Increase Mather is a close advisor to Governor William Phips and had a strong hand in Phips appointment. They returned together to Boston from England in May 1692 with a new charter written in 1691 that united Massachusetts. But they discover that a hysteria of witchcraft has erupted in Salem three months earlier.

Rev. Increase Mather eventually conveys his opinion in a treatise-style essay that it “would be better that ten witches go free than the blood of a single innocent be shed.”[25] This advice contributes to the governor’s decision to end the trials.

The course of the Mather father and son adheres to the pattern. Increase had more first-hand knowledge and eventually errs on the side of caution. Cotton had first-hand knowledge but it was somewhat circumstantial leaning toward second-hand knowledge. He is all in on the Salem Witchcraft Trials and the use of spectral evidence in certain cases.

Rev. William Milborne was born around 1642 in Somerset, England. The family migrated to the colonies and his name shows up in the Saco/Biddeford, Maine area in 1653. He removed to Boston, got married and was associated with the Old South Meeting House.

Milborne, a Baptist minister in Boston, actively opposed the Salem Witch Trials from the start by writing and petitioning the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1692, challenging the legitimacy of "spectral evidence," leading to his arrest for publishing scandalous papers.[26]

He was jailed for a short period of time and fined £200 ($40k today).[27] He became a key figure in the growing dissent against the court's flawed proceedings. He was part of a vocal group of ministers and citizens who questioned the trials, highlighting the dangers of relying on unsubstantiated, supernatural testimony -- a stance that eventually helped shift opinion against the hysteria. 

It is hard to grasp if there was any first-hand experience for Milborne or if any of the accused were members of his church, associates or friends. His father, Rev. Luke Milborne, who was a member of the “Fanatiks of East Sheen,” may have been the reason.

Luke was a member of this group that included John Ireton, who was knighted by Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England. The group was heavily anti-Catholic and jailed people without warrant or trial. William may have equated actions of his father with the actions of the witchcraft court in 1692.[28] 

Rev. Francis Dane was born in 1615 in Bishop’s Stortford, England. He came to the Mass Bay Colony in 1636. His hometown was 36 miles north of London in Hertfordshire. In 1606, Johane and Anne Harrison, a mother and daughter from nearby Royston, were condemned to death after being accused of cursing, creating familiars and causing illness and death in their community.[29]

Dane clearly heard of this case and others near Chelmsford in Essex County, UK, 20 miles east of his hometown, where the first woman executed for witchcraft in England, Agnes Waterhouse, was executed in 1566.[30] Chelmsford was a focal point for executions and Essex County, UK was part of the witchcraft hotbed where over 650 people were accused.

In North Andover in 1658, Rev. Dane testifies in defense of John Godfrey, who was charged with injuring the wife of Job Tyler by Satanic acts.[31] Godfrey was a thief who was often drunk and cursed, but that didn’t make him a witch. The case of witchcraft was dismissed. It is interesting to note that Tyler was a key accuser in the Salem witch hysteria in 1692 that engulfed North Andover.

In October 1692, Rev. Dane was one of many signers of a letter to the governor and general court publicly denouncing the witchcraft trials.[32]

The authorities and influencers

Another local leader who railed against the trials was Robert Pike, who was born in Landford, Wiltshire about 1616. The Pike family came to the colonies in 1635 when Robert was 19-years-old. His father and brothers were some of the first settlers of Newbury and Salisbury, Massachusetts along the Merrimack River.

It is believed that Robert and his brothers had some sort of education prior to coming to the colonies. There is no evidence of a formal education back in England. There were grammar schools back in Wiltshire teaching boys from age seven into their early teens, but no evidence exists to suggest that the Pikes attended. Their father, John, had a solid education but was listed as a common laborer on the manifest of the James.

The elder Pike was “evidently a man of some considerable education, for he was elected by the town of Newbury for several years to act as judge on small matters.” [33]

The estate of the elder Pike lists a handful of books.[34] It stands to reason that the Pike children could read at an early age and had access to that collection. The education of the sons likely comes from the father, but we can’t be certain where the father obtains his education.

Robert Pike very much followed in his father’s footsteps. He held several different roles in the town of Salisbury and was appointed by the General Court to “end small cases” in 1644. This made him roughly the equivalent of a justice of the peace.[35]

Two years later, he was named as leader of the local militia. In 1648, he was elected to the post of Deputy to the General Court of Boston. He was re-elected 10 times and once served as a magistrate. During King Philip’s War from 1675-1678, he held the post of Sergeant Major that was responsible for protecting the area North of Boston.[36]

In short, he was highly respected by his peers but came under scrutiny a few times. In the 1650s, he voted against the passage of laws against Quakers, who came to the colony proselytizing their religion. And there was an incident where quaker women who were under arrest were released by him.

During the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials, he was appointed as an assistant to the General Court and conducted depositions, including those against Susannah Martin of Amesbury. Soon enough, Mary Bradbury was accused.

He knew her and her husband Thomas, who served as second in command of the militia of the North of Boston under him. He was also related to the Bradburys because his son married the Bradbury’s daughter. They were all early settlers of Salisbury.

The Bradburys had the support of Pike, several witnesses and an overwhelming number of the townsfolk. Pike took her sworn statement and wrote a letter to Judge Jonathan Corwin attacking the basic logic of the witchcraft trials.[37] Yet, she was convicted by the court. This made Pike realize that the court was not operating with the high standards that it should. The Bradburys escaped to Maine, perhaps with help from Pike.

Pike was familiar with the case of Ann Gunter that occurred in 1605 in North Moreton, UK. While it happened 11 years before he was born, it was a well-known case having been heard in Oxford by King James I.[38]

Gunter was 20 years old and was afflicted by sundry acts of witchcraft. Her and her father accused several people, many of whom were neighbors with whom the father had disputes. The father was a man of importance and got an audience with the King, who took a keen interest in the case. The King questioned the girl himself and determined she was lying. She gave a full confession, implicating her father, who confessed to save his daughter.

Despite the hearings being held over 60 miles away, it was a story that Pike had heard as a young boy in Wiltshire. A man named Benedict Allen, a “gentleman from Calne”, Wiltshire near where the Pikes lived, witnessed Ann Gunter’s fits.

Allen reported to the locals how pins were “wrung out of her breast, some with the head & some with the points forward” and also that “she had voided some pins downwards as well by her water or otherwise.”[39]

The author of the book wrote “That such evidence should be given by a gentleman resident in a township separated by some distance from North Moreton demonstrates that Anne's sufferings, as was common in possession cases, were witnessed by a large number of people.”[40]

Pike heard these tales second-hand in Wiltshire that circulated due to Allen. The key take-a-way was that the girl was lying. This knowledge played a role during his opinions and actions during the Salem Witchcraft Trials in 1692.

Robert Calef, a wealthy cloth merchant in Boston, was born in 1648 in Stanstead, Suffolk, England. It is not clear when he came to the colonies, but he was here as of 1668 at the age of 20. He openly criticized the Salem witchcraft trials in his book, More Wonders of the Invisible World[41], that was completed around 1697 and published thereafter. The book was a rebuttal to the accounts in Rev. Cotton Mather’s book, Wonders of the Invisible World, that recounted the stories of the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials.

Calef attended some of the witchcraft trials in 1692 but doesn’t seem to have written a lot about them during the trials. He based much of the information in his book from the families of the accused and his own memory.

He was a member of Boston’s South Church where Rev. Samuel Willard preached. He was opposed to the Salem witchcraft trials and wrote Some Miscellany Observations on our present Debates respecting Witchcrafts in 1692. This influenced Calef. And John Willard, who was executed for witchcraft in Salem in August 1692, was a distant relative of the reverend. This strengthened Calef’s opinion.

But Calef’s beliefs formed much earlier. Two of the most notorious trials to be held in England were in Bury St. Edmunds[42], just a few hours away on horseback from Stanstead, where Calef was born.

The first trial there occurred in 1645 when 18 people (16 women, two men) were accused of witchcraft and hanged. This involved the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. There’s no doubt that Calef would have heard these stories or read many of the pamphlets written about it.

Several years later in 1664 when Calef was 16, there was a second major trial in which Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, of Lowestoft, were accused of afflicting seven children, who suffered from illness, fits, paralysis, vomiting pins and nails.  The children also said the two women appeared to them as ghosts or specters.[43]

The trial is remarkably similar to the Salem Witchcraft Trials and had considerable influence amongst the Salem judges nearly 30 years later. The Bury St. Edmunds and Lowestoft cases were known to the judges because of the pamphlet “A Tryal of Witches” by Sir Matthew Hale, who was an influential English lawyer.

Calef and the family were in America four years after the second Bury St. Edmunds trial. Perhaps this trial helped influence their decision to come to the colonies. And when Calef attended the Salem Witchcraft Trials, it reminded him of the Bury St. Edmunds trial.

Thomas Brattle is another key player who brings down the trials. He was born in 1658 to Captain Thomas Brattle who was involved in the founding of the South Church that advocated for ecclesiastical reforms from the strict Puritan church. The younger Thomas was exposed to this, resulting in a non-traditional Puritan upbringing. These teachings influenced another church member named Samuel Sewall, a judge during the trials who apologized for his role. 

Brattle went to Boston Latin School where he met Cotton Mather, who would become one of the key reverends during the Salem hysteria. The two disagreed on many points. Brattle went on to Harvard, as did Mather, and graduated with an associate bachelor’s degree in math and science. He later got involved in architecture and astronomy. It is fair to say he was curious, questioning and enlightened.

He clearly did not have any first-hand prior knowledge of English witchcraft cases. The case of Anne Hibbins of Boston (Dorchester), the 4^th woman executed in Boston, occurred two years before he was born and may be the only case he had heard about in his younger years.

Hibbins got in an argument with carpenters who she claimed overcharged her. She sued and won. However, the church excommunicated her for her “restless and abrasive” actions and for transgressing the authority of her husband. Once her husband died, the carpenters accused her of witchcraft, leading to her execution.[44]

Brattle also learned some information from his father, the captain, who served as a Councilor in Boston in 1671 with Thomas Lake, the son of Alice Lake, who was the third witchcraft conviction in Boston between 1648 and 1652.[45] He was 30 years old when the Goody Glover case happened in 1688. He would have had first-hand knowledge but no writings of his exist.

These cases influenced Brattle who penned the famous “Reverend Sir” letter in early October 1692.[46] The letter was aimed at Rev. Cotton Mather with whom Brattle had arguments with in their teenage days.

The letter is widely circulated and read by many. It systematically attacks the logic of the trials and very foundations of the whole of the evidence used to imprison and hang the accused witches. Many people concur with Brattle’s arguments and it was a pivotal point in ending the trials.

Brattle’s more liberal attitude is exemplified by his eventual co-founding of the Brattle church in the 1690s that is in opposition to the ideology of the church being run by the Mathers.

Governor William Phips, who was unwittingly thrust into the trials, is another key player. He accepted the position of Governor from William and Mary when nobody had knowledge of what was brewing in Salem.

Phips was born in the District of Maine in 1651 in a town called Woolrich near the mouth of the Kennebec River. He removed to Boston at the age of 18 to become an apprentice to a ship’s carpenter. He stayed in Boston after the apprenticeship, got married and returned to Maine in 1675. He built small boats but he had an eye for adventure and started his quest in the early 1680s to find sunken treasure in the Caribbean.

The future governor does not appear to have encountered any cases of witchcraft nor cared about cases of witchcraft. He was an adventurer who wanted to make his mark. He found the treasure of the Concepción in the Caribbean for King James II worth over 200,000£ ($60M today). He himself received 11,000£ ($3.3M today) and was knighted by the King, receiving the post of Provost Marshall General under Sir Edmund Andros, who was running New England after the previous charter was revoked.

Phips returned to Boston in the summer of 1688. Andros was not happy with Phips, who had a lot of support from New Englanders. A few weeks later, Phips went back to England with Rev. Increase Mather to argue for restoring the old charter. The Glorious Revolution then occurs in late 1688 where the King is ousted by William and Mary. Andros is then removed in a local Coup d’Etat.

Phips was a master of politics and switched sides, joining forces with Mather in opposing Andros. Eventually, William and Mary granted a new charter in 1691 to Mather and appointed Phips as the first royal governor.

Phips arrived in Boston with the new charter in May 1692 and inherited the problem of witchcraft trials about three months after the diagnosis of Reverend Samuel Parris’ daughter and niece. He really did not want to be involved in the trials and appointed his deputy governor, William Stoughton, as chief magistrate of the court of Oyer and Terminer created specifically to hear the cases of the witchcraft trials. Phips returned to Maine to build a fort in Pemmaquid to defend the colony from attacks on various settlements by the French and Abenaki.

Phips’ indifference to the trials appears to be similar to others who had first-hand knowledge of witchcraft. He only gets truly involved in the Salem Witchcraft Trials when his wife is accused. King’s Attorney Anthony Checkley reports inconsistencies in the trials and the governor of New York attempts to take back Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket that was just given to Massachusetts in the new charter from William and Mary. Stoughton, who was willing to give up the islands, gets in a yelling match with Phips, pitting the top two leaders in the state against each other.

Phips shuts down the court of Oyer and Terminer in late October, declared spectral evidence to be invalid and started a new court in January 1693. The new court found three people guilty of witchcraft. They were scheduled to be executed February 1, 1693 along with five holdovers from the first court. But Phips gave them an 11^th hour reprieve because he didn’t believe these people were witches.

The reprieve and the accusation against his wife along with New York Governor Benjamin Fletcher’s request that the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket that were given to Massachusetts in the 1691 charter be returned to New York infuriates Phips. Deputy governor William Stoughton agreed with Fletcher leading to vociferous arguments with Phips. After a few months, Phips has had enough and ended the trials for good, coming out on the positive side of history.[47]

Many of these key players would have known about the five witchcraft cases in Massachusetts that were Margaret Jones (1648), Elizabeth Kendall (between 1647 & 1651), Alice Lake (1652), Ann Hibbins (1656) and Goody Glover (1688)

It is possible that all of them could have had second-hand knowledge of the cases through the 1650s. But they would have first-hand knowledge of the Goody Glover case of 1688 – four years before Salem’s outbreak. Perhaps some of them attended hearings or visited the family. Maybe all of them had access to Rev. Cotton Mather’s book that described the 1688 case.

What is interesting to note is that the Goody Glover case is eerily similar to the Salem case. The Goodwin children act out in 1688 and Dr. Oakes, who lived two houses down from the Goodwins, diagnosed the children as being afflicted by witchcraft.

In 1692 in Salem Village, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece of Rev. Parris, respectively, acted out in similar ways. Dr. Griggs diagnosed that the girls were “under an evil hand.”

Did the young girls have access to Rev. Cotton Mather’s book about the Goodwin witchcraft case? Did they hear the stories? Did Rev. Parris fill their heads with this knowledge not to start it again but as a disciplinary measure. Who knows? But the cases mirror each other.

The 1688 Boston case and 1692 Salem Cases mirror the 1664 Bury St. Edmunds case that was written about in a pamphlet called “A Tryal of Witches” by Sir Matthew Hale. Was this pamphlet in the possession of some people in Boston? Is it possible the Bury St. Edmunds case set the tone for these two later cases? Would the Boston and Salem cases have not happened if not for this pamphlet?

In conclusion, the pattern that emerges from all of this is that those who were opposed to the trials had some sort of first-hand knowledge that involved the persecution of others without proper grounds. It was those who had second-hand knowledge who relied on coincidence, fear and superstition that tended to believe the extreme accusations of the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials.

Giovanni Alabiso is the owner of Salem Historical Tours, LLC in Salem, Massachusetts that provides walking tours about the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials. He has provided tours in Salem and Boston. He has researched the trials for 15 years.

[1] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[2] The Winthrop Fleet of 1630. Charles Edward Banks (1930)

[3] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[4] SWP No. 125: Tituba

[5] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[6] Ibid

[7] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[8] The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial. Samuel Sewall, 1700, Database 53 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

[9] Talitha Cumi, Samuel Sewall, 1725, Sewall Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society).

[10] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering.

[11] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[12] Ibid

[13] SWP, 170.21

[14] SWP, 170.29

[15] Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company records

[16] Puritans and Censorship, EBSCO, 2003,

[17] Katherine Winthrop (nee Brattle, nee Eyre, www.geni.com/people/Katherine-Winthrop/6000000026053751567

[18] Reverend Sir, Thomas Brattle, October 8, 1692

[19] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[20] Ibid

[21] Richard Mather, Lynn Richardson, 2023, EBSCO

[22] Hall, David; The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638. A Documentary History, 2003, Duke University Press

[23] Memorable Providences, Rev. Cotton Mather, 1689

[24] The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. Marilynne Roach (2002)

[25] Cases of Conscience, Rev. Increase Mather, September 1692

[26] National Archives (Great Britain), CO5/785, pp. 336-337.

[27] Ibid

[28] Jacob Leisler's Atlantic World in the Later Seventeenth Century: Essays on Religions, Militia, Trade and Networks. Jacobs, Jaap (2009). 

[29] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering (2013)

[30] Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: a documentary history (2nd ed.) Alan Charles Kors; Edward Peters, eds. (2001). 

[31] Early Records of the Tyler Family of Andover. Charlotte Helen Abbott.

[32] SWP No. 167.2

[33] Daniel Hendrick of Haverhill, Mass. And His Descendants. Charles T Hendrick (1923)

[34] Ibid

[35] Ibid

[36] Ibid

[37] Petition in support of Mary Bradbury, July 22, 1692, Massachusetts Court of Oyer & Terminer records 

[38] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[39] The Bewitching of Anne Gunter. James Sharpe (1999)

[40] Ibid

[41] More Wonders of the Invisible World. Robert Calef (1700)

[42] Witch Hunt. The Persecutions of Witches In England. David & Andrew Pickering. (2013)

[43] Ibid

[44] The Case of Ann Hibbins Executed for Witchcraft at Boston in 1656. William F. Poole Joshua Scottow Papers, University of Nebraska (2005).

[45] Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706. George L. Burr. (1914)

[46] Reverend Sir, Thomas Brattle, October 8, 1692

[47] The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. Marilynne Roach (2002)