“In the autumn of 1869, a woman in South Boston who knew me, advised one of her neighbors who was sick of fever to send for me and receive treatment by my hands. The patient’s husband, a robust mechanic, had little faith in helpful efficacy from ‘laying on of hands.’ Still, curiosity or some other motive induced him and three other men to observe my processes and their effects. They witnessed very marked contractions of the sick woman’s muscles, and many spasmodic movements of her limbs. When I ceased working upon my patient, her husband said, ‘Do you suppose you can affectmein the same way?’ My reply was, ‘I don’t know—probably not; but if you desire me to try, I will.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘try.’ ‘Sit down, then, sir, in the chair where your wife sat.’ He did so, and I operated for a short time without perceptible effect, but was soon impressed to say to him, ‘Strike me on the small of the back,’—simultaneously placing my back so that he could give it a fair, hard blow, which he was by no means unwilling to inflict. After his first stroke I called out, ‘Harder!’ After the second, ‘Harder!’ After the third, he wasinstantly cramped up, his arms were hugged in upon and across his chest, the muscles on them were much enlarged, intensely hardened, and not obedient to his will, and he lustily begged, ‘Let me down! let me down! let me down!’ while the other men, the sick wife, and myself laughed till we were exhausted. I had no will in producing, nor any design to effect any such results.“J. W. Crosby.“Boston, April 30, 1874.”
“In the autumn of 1869, a woman in South Boston who knew me, advised one of her neighbors who was sick of fever to send for me and receive treatment by my hands. The patient’s husband, a robust mechanic, had little faith in helpful efficacy from ‘laying on of hands.’ Still, curiosity or some other motive induced him and three other men to observe my processes and their effects. They witnessed very marked contractions of the sick woman’s muscles, and many spasmodic movements of her limbs. When I ceased working upon my patient, her husband said, ‘Do you suppose you can affectmein the same way?’ My reply was, ‘I don’t know—probably not; but if you desire me to try, I will.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘try.’ ‘Sit down, then, sir, in the chair where your wife sat.’ He did so, and I operated for a short time without perceptible effect, but was soon impressed to say to him, ‘Strike me on the small of the back,’—simultaneously placing my back so that he could give it a fair, hard blow, which he was by no means unwilling to inflict. After his first stroke I called out, ‘Harder!’ After the second, ‘Harder!’ After the third, he wasinstantly cramped up, his arms were hugged in upon and across his chest, the muscles on them were much enlarged, intensely hardened, and not obedient to his will, and he lustily begged, ‘Let me down! let me down! let me down!’ while the other men, the sick wife, and myself laughed till we were exhausted. I had no will in producing, nor any design to effect any such results.
“J. W. Crosby.
“Boston, April 30, 1874.”
2. The testimony indicates that hervery simple medicines, such as anise-seed and liquors, produced extraordinary violent effects. This is credible. Extraordinary effects were produced by magnetized handkerchiefs in the days of Paul, and to-day, even pure water, placed beneath the hands of some peculiar mediums, or beneath the tips of their fingers, sometimes absorbs or is made to manifest the medicinal properties of wine, ipecac, or of other substances desired; and such mediums are often very “successful practitioners using only simple remedies.” The action of what they administer need not be psychological in any proper sense of that term: that is, the patient need not be informed, nor have suspicion, that the water is medicated thus; though any persons upon whom the action is very perceptible, probably, must be constitutionally mediumistic. By personal observation we have learned that water may be so medicated by unseen infusion from unseen source, as to taste like, and operate like, either ipecac or wine, according to the properties which some unseen intelligence to whom needs are transparent, and who can sicken or refresh at pleasure, has gathered from the atmosphere orelsewhere and infused into that water. When public vigilance had been roused to suspicion around this woman, it is not improbable that many persons, belligerent devil-ward, sought a test of her powers, and that some of them (susceptible ones) felt or drank in what caused “deafness, or vomiting, or other pains or sickness”—not improbable that on some of them her simples had “violenteffects.” Persons thus affected would make up nearly the whole class from whom witnesses at her trial would be selected. If she had been generally a producer of only pains and sickness, her practice would soon have dwindled to nothing, and she would have lived on without molestation. “A successful practitioner,” simply as such, would never have been arraigned.
Upham detected the significant fact in the case, that her simple remedies were so efficacious as to make her a successful practitioner; yes;—but was simply successful medical practice the chief reason why her neighbors charged diabolism? What amount of success in alleviating the sufferings that flesh is heir to would invoke public vengeance? How much beneficence did one then need to perform before public sentiment, would reprobate its author? Could such faculties and agents alone as are normally and ordinarily used, enable a woman to achieve such success in curing diseases, healing wounds, and alleviating pains, as to arouse an intelligent and religious community to arrest and try her for a capital offense against the well-being of society? Never. Did the historian notice his own back-handed imputation of atrocious diabolism upon the population of Charlestown when he led his readers to infer that they persecuted one of their numberunto an ignominious death, solely because “she was a successful practitioner using only simple remedies”? Whether he saw it or not, his explanation made her neighbors take the life of this woman because of the good works she had done among them. Some theory of explanation which will exempt us from the necessity of assenting to gratuitous aspersions of the sagacity and sentiments of justice pertaining to our ancestry in the mass, is very desirable. Margaret Jones was a very successfulhealing medium, and therefore her works were mysteries.
Having noticed the only two allegations in this case which the historians have deemed worthy of specification or had courage to adduce, and having seen that Hutchinson ascribed her persecution to her own anger flowing out through her hands, while Upham ascribed it to her great success as a healer, we will just note the fact that the former historian generally indicated an abiding apprehension that those whowere persecutedfor the crime in question, were the parties most to be blamed; while the latter, oftener than otherwise, throws the chief blame upon thepersecutors. In this instance the earlier historian makes her anger,—a trait which is blamable,—while the latter makes her beneficence,—a commendable characteristic,—the chief exciting cause to her condemnation and execution.
We proceed to examine other original charges more difficult to solve plausibly on the hypotheses of Hutchinson and Upham than were anger and successful medical practice; charges not amenable to any philosophy entertained by those expounders.
3. “She used to tell such as would not make use ofher physic that they would never be healed; and, accordingly, their diseases and hurts continued; with relapses against the ordinary course,” &c. It is very common in our day for clairvoyance to see, or—more broadly and instructively—it is common for mediumistic faculties tosenseand feel sure, that the existing tendency of a patient’s disease will soon terminate in death, if not checked by some peculiar medicinal agent, often a spiritual one, or one medicated by spirits, which ordinary physicians are ignorant of, will not prescribe, and cannot obtain. The evidence which Judge Winthrop reports, shows that “the diseases and hurts” of recusants to take her prescriptions, not only continued to remain unhealed, but underwent such changes and relapses as physicians and surgeons could not understand. Since such things occurred in accordance with her predictions, we here perceive strong evidence that the woman possessed uncommon susceptibilities forsensingcoming results.It is just as clearly provedthat she foretold specific events, as it is that her touch was malignant, and her practice successful. Her marvelous prescience, which was one of her conspicuous powers, the historians failed to set forth. Their philosophy, founded only on such materials as are recognized in man’s physical sciences, was too narrow to embrace occult natural agents and forces by which such prescient powers could be drawn or put forth through some human organisms and produce marvelous results. Therefore those expounders let such facts remain undisturbed in the rarely visited closets where they have long reposed.
4.Things which she foretold came to pass accordingly.That is, events verified her predictions, and thusproved her exercise of marvelously prophetic powers. Should one assume that her verified predictions were only skillful or lucky guesses, would such assumption be fair and just toward the people who, as living witnesses on the spot, could know what the things were which she foretold, and know also with what accuracy they were fulfilled, and yet deemed them genuine prophecies? Her accusers could know the facts, while we, in the main, must be ignorant of them. We cannot reasonably deny that the direct observers actually discerned the exercise of genuinely prophetic powers by her. Some mortals at times can prophesy; for both in ancient prophetic and apostolic times, and in our own age, many people have been and are known to do it. Eternal laws or forces lead some mortals to sure knowledge of coming events. History and returning spirits both so teach.
“The spirit of prophecy has its source in infinite truth, and is as much a part of infinite law as any other manifestation of life; therefore it has a wise and powerful protection; and they who avail themselves of this spirit of prophecy,by virtue of the way and manner in which they are physically and spiritually compounded, if they are fortunate enough to place themselves in harmonious relations to the law, fail not in prophesying. But if, as is often the case, they unfortunately place themselves in inharmonious relations to the law, they must, of necessity, fail in part, if not entirely. It is a truthful saying, that ‘coming events cast their shadows before.’These shadows(?)are, in reality, portions of the events; these shadows take precedence of the material birth of all events as they are understood by mortals; they are the basis ofthat which you receive, and outlast that which you receive; they are the infinite part. Now, then, there are some personsso constitutedthat they perceive these shadows (?) and can judge as accurately concerning what they predict, as the learned astronomer can concerning an eclipse.”—Spirit,Prof. Alexander M. Fisher, of Yale.Banner of Light, Jan. 30, 1875.
5. “She could tell of secret speeches which she had no ordinary means to come to knowledge of.” At times, then, she was clairaudient, or was one of those sensitives whose spiritual organs of sensation are at times so disentangled from their material ones, that she experienced a practical annihilation of space and gross matter, which let her, as all unclogged spirits may, be practically present with and listeners to any person anywhere, to whom she was for any reason attracted, and with whom she came into rapport. Conditions admitting cognizance of the thoughts and words of the absent in body are now of daily occurrence with men, women, and children not a few, and therefore were possible with Margaret Jones in 1648 and years preceding. A letter from Captain Densmore, on a future page of this work, will show recent possession of power to bear the voices of living persons whose bodies were very far distant from the hearer.
6. “While in the prison in the clear daylight there was seen in her arms ... a little child ... which, at the officer’s approach, ran and vanished.”Vanished; that word intimates that it was a spectral or spirit child—perhaps her own departed one. By whom was it seen? By an officer of the prison, and therefore by one not likely to be her confederate in attempt at imposture. Not by him only; for a chambermaidalso saw the little one, and was made sick by the sight; which effect argues against her having had any complicity in a trick. That testimony to such occurrences was given in court, is vouched for by Winthrop, and must have been, or surely should have been, read by subsequent historians. Their adroitness at leaving certain classes of facts in undisturbed obscurity, nearly rivals the cunning of agents to whom they impute the origin and production of witchcraft manifestations.
The visible presence of that evanescent child shows very clearly that Mrs. Jones was endowed with some of the rarer and exceptional properties of mediumship—that she possessed those special elements in the midst of which spirits could be robed in such materialized encasements, that material eyes could discern them. Angels looking and acting like men (Gen. xviii.) were seen by Abraham and Lot. One was seen (Judg. xiii.) by Manoah and his wife. Another by Tobias, son of Tobit (Apoc.); another by disciples who were walking toward Emmaus (John xx.); others also by thousands of individuals in various ages and nations, sporadically. To-day, distinct perception of materialized spirits in the presence of Mrs. Andrews at Moravia, N. Y., around Dr. Slade of New York city, and many others are reported almost weekly, and are well attested. In these modern instances, generally, some special, though simple, pre-arrangements are made to facilitate such manifestations; but we may very reasonably doubt whether anything of the kind was resorted to by Mrs. Jones, because, being in prison charged with the awful crime of witchcraft, the presumption is imperative that shemust have lacked both means and opportunity to command tangible apparatus either for helping on a genuine spirit manifestation, or producing an optical illusion upon her keepers.
Mortal.“How do spirits materialize?”
Spirit.“You must know the atmosphere is full of particles of matter. Everything that is in the human body is also in the atmosphere in fine particles. Darkness renders these particles more quiescent, and hence more easily managed by spirits. The spirit has a will point or center which is a spark of the Divine Nature. When the condition of the atmosphere, of the medium, and of the circle is proper, the spirit exerts that will power, and, in accordance with natural law,attracts to its spirit formthe floating particles in the air, and they condense upon and interpenetrate the spirit form or body so as to materialize it, making bone, muscle, skin, hair—every part, and making the spirit body, for the time being, a solid, palpable one. The air contains an immense amount of matter which can be used by spirits for materializing. We do not, however, usually materialize the blood.... We have to draw a portion of the substance for materialization from the medium, he being a kind of reservoir where we concentrate our supplies, and it is much more difficult to draw from him when at a distance, therefore we keep near him.”—Spirit. Disc., as reported by H A. Buddington.Banner of Light, Feb. 6, 1875.
A case of much interest and significance was reported to the Boston Post, a daily newspaper, by a correspondent under date of Newburyport, Jan. 13, 1873. Therein is furnished an account of a spirit boyshowing himself in broad daylight, several times, on different occasions, at a window between an entry and a school-room, to a band of children and their teacher; also of his making a disturbing racket in an unfinished attic over them occasionally for many successive months. Miss Perkins, the teacher, says, “He is a little fellow, about eleven years old, with a pale face, and the saddest, sweetest mouth that she ever saw in her life, looking fearlessly up into her face out of a pair of blue eyes. He retreated into a corner. She followed him, and just as she was about to lay her hand upon him he vanished. No door had been opened, and yet he was gone.” The account states that Miss Perkins, “though no spiritualist, is convinced that it” (the racket) “is all produced by supernatural agency, and believes that the apparition she saw was a veritable ghost.”
The editor of the Springfield Republican probably consulted the teacher of that school, Miss Lucy A. Perkins, as to the correctness of the foregoing, and perhaps other accounts, which had become public, for she wrote to him, and he published as follows:—
“The account you sent me is true, with a few exceptions. When I first saw the boy, he was neatly attired in abrownsuit of clothes, trimmed with braid and buttons of the same color. When I reached forward to grasp him, he seemed not like the boy, but vapory, or, as I can only describe it, like a thin cloud scudding across the room; still he seemed to have the boy form. Reports from some of the Boston papers say I fainted; such is not the case. I knew where I was and what I was about just as well as I know I am writing.
“One day I sent a boy out to hang up the brushes, &c.... He was out about five minutes. After he had taken his seat, three raps came on the door of the room where the brushes were hung. He said, ‘Miss Perkins, can I go out and see who’s there?’ I told him, ‘Yes, and leave the school-room door open.’ He did so, and when he opened the brush-room door (I sat where I could see all) every one of the brushes, both long and short handled, came falling off the nails where they were hung; some struck him on the shoulders, and the broom directly on the top of his head. The dust-pan, hanging on a nail at some distance above the brushes, came tumbling to the floor with a vengeance. It then stood on its handle, then on the bottom edge, and continued on so till it entered the school-room, and then it was placed as nicely against the partition as if I had done it myself. Just as soon as I’d raise the ventilator, a black ball, like a cannon ball, would begin to roll around the attic, and make such a noise I would be obliged to lower the ventilator. One day the room was quiet as it possibly could be, and all at once some one in the attic called out, ‘Dadie Pike!’ Dadie thought I spoke, and said, ‘What’m?’ I said to him, ‘Can you say your lesson?’
“Since the boy affair took place, the attic has been fastened up; locks and keys are of no use, however, for there is as much walking up stairs, and sometimes the hammering and nailing. Once in a while, sounds as of some one walking will come down the attic way, go across the entry, and open the outside door, and be gone perhaps ten minutes; after it is quiet again, the door will open, and he,she, or it will go up stairs.... I am not a spiritualist; never attended a sitting, in fact, never had anything to do with a person of that belief, and never saw any manifestations. Why anything of the sort should take place where I am, is more than I can account for.”
This case, wherein a teacher and her two score pupils simultaneously saw a spirit in broad daylight, day after day and week after week, argues very forcibly that “the nature of things” permits admission that the testimony relating to the spirit child in the jail may be literally true. Laws and forces are now frequently indicating their existence, which permit the observable presence of spirits.
Intense yearnings for comfortings, sympathy, and support in her dark and trying hour, as well as other causes, may have drawn an angel child—her own or some other—to the arms of Margaret Jones, whose history reveals her possession of peculiar susceptibilities and mediumistic properties; and with her as a reservoir, materialization of the spirit may have been accomplished.
7. The sickened maid “was cured by the said Margaret, who used means to be employed to that end.” Kindness and skill successfully put forth to heal the sick, even while the public was keeping her in a felon’s cell, hang as a luminous cloud over her head, and betoken something good in her—betoken the possible source of something different from a malignant touch—yes, of “genuinely successful medical practice.”
We know little of her character; there is no impeachment of it in the recorded testimony. Herpeculiar powers resulted, no doubt, from peculiar innate formations of and connections between her outer and inner organisms, and had little dependence upon intellectual or moral qualities. Not her own holiness, nor any other common power of hers, enabled her to either intensify or abate painful sensations. Whether sinner or saint was the more prominent in her character, our course and views have no occasion to inquire.
Winthrop’s comments say that “her behavior at her trial was very intemperate; lying notoriously and railing upon the jury and witnesses;... in the like distemper she died.” He gives no particulars, and therefore furnishes no grounds on which we may judge whether any of her statements which seemed to him false, might not seem to us, at our different stand-point of observation, to have been true. Very many perfectly true utterances made by mediums to-day relative to their involuntary and even unconscious putting forth of acts and words imputed to them, would be deemed lies by all common interpreters who are ignorant of the part often performed by or through that higher set of mental powers which our leading scientists have lately discovered are at the service of intellect not our own. Perhaps she lied; perhaps, too, she was truthful, but misunderstood. Intemperance in her behavior, no doubt, was manifest. But that might spring from various motives. Any spirited person, consciously innocent of a charged offense, and possessing only moderate power of self-control and moderate intellectual stamina, would be very likely to pour forth warm language, and flat and forceful denials of allegations of wrong-doing.Persecuted innocence was only a very little less likely—if at all less—than ill temper or “distemper,” to call forth what might seem to be “railing upon the jury and witnesses.” Neither severe language nor “intemperate behavior” is necessarily derogatory to any one’s prevailing temper or character, when rushing forth from the lips and limbs of one whose deeds are being so misinterpreted that beneficence is looked upon as diabolism, and whose beneficent works are being made to draw down upon their author an ignominious death.
Possibly words from her lips, and behavior seemingly prompted by her emotions, were manifestations of the thoughts and impulses of some other intelligence than herself. If so, most scathing rebukes for her persecution, and for thirstings for her blood, might fall thick and heavy upon the ears of benighted jurors and blinded witnesses. Observation has often noticed most terrific outflowings of denunciations upon blind guides, through organs of speech not controlled by their reputed owner. Felix is not the last person who has trembled under the lashings of inspiration. An acting out through her form, by another intelligence, a deep sense of wrong she had received, may have made her seem as mad in the eyes of Winthrop, as the learning and forceful utterances of Paul did him in those of Festus.
Evidence produced at her trial shows that Margaret Jones correctly foretold the course of diseases in the systems of those who declined her prescriptions—that she foretold other “things which came to pass accordingly”—that she learned the purport of conversations by the absent or secluded—that a spiritchild became visible in her auras—and that the sickened maid was cured by her appliances. Each and all of these very marvelous manifestations were just as distinctly and authentically recorded on paper still extant, as were those less rare ones which have been put forth as fair indices of the case. Such blinking out of sight the most important things pertaining to the person who, as far as is now known, was first on this side the Atlantic to be executed for witchcraft, is unjust to culture and philosophy, which should be furnished with all known facts; is unjust to the fathers, whose full basis for her prosecution and execution should be set forth ere just judgment of their doings can be formed; and is unjust to her whose transcendent powers and effective labors for healing the sick may have been the main cause why minds deluded by a false and frenzying creed devil-ward, were impelled on to barbarously destroy one who had been and might have continued to be their benefactress.
She was a natural conduit from the inner to the outer world, through which perhaps impersonal force at times might cause supernal knowledge and power to come into her outer being; through which again, her own will might suction such, while at other times unseen persons might inject them through from their abodes, and even come themselves to aid her in their application. Nothing harmful was charged against her, excepting what seemed to be, and were believed to be, superhuman abilities.
The power that formed her originally, implanted and developed within her organism unusual capabilities for curing physical disease, for reading thefuture, and hearing the distant. There is neither evidence nor foundation for a conjecture that she was ever pupil of teachers of medical science, or of jugglery, nor that she belonged to any mesmerically developing circle. Her acts cannot well have been mere imitations of what she had seen others do, or had read or heard of having been done. She had no teachers, no confederates that were visible and tangible. Indeed, who among men could possibly have taught or helped her to prophesy correctly, to hear the far distant, or to embody a spirit child? Not one—not one. Such performances were only natural evolutions from her inborn faculties, when acted upon by spirit forces or agents, or both. The reader is asked how these manifestations, through our first martyr to it, canpossiblybe explained on the hypothesis that witchcraft was nothing else than the histrionic tricks of sprightly and cunning children, either singly or in combination with the ingenuities and malignities of old women. Such agents, unaided from out the unseen, were most clearly incompetent to project into human view some phenomena which attended upon this consternating seer, hearer, healer, and holder of properties for materializing a spirit form so as to render it visible.
What possible facts or considerations could have induced the humane, intelligent, virtuous, and religious community in which she lived, to seek the life of such a woman, moving, probably, in humble sphere, but, in the main, a doer of good works? The question brings up a complex and difficult problem, viz., How can the seeming stupidity and inhumanity of our fathers be reconciled with their obvious intelligence and humaneness?
Assuming the record of testimony given in court to be correct—and why should we not?—the manifestations through and around Margaret Jones clearly indicated the outworking there of some abilities which the bodies and ordinary mental powers of embodied human beings do not possess. What then? Some unseen power must have helped her. What unseen power? Yes,whatunseen power? Experience as then interpreted—religious creeds as then understood—science and philosophy as they then existed—all conspired to give one and the same answer, viz.,The Devil. That conclusion from the witnessed facts was then inevitable. The devil helped her. What next? The devil could help no one who had not previously entered into a covenant with him, and he surely helped this woman. Therefore she had made a covenant with him, and in making that she became awitch. The law of God which binds Christians says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Thus our forefathers saw and reasoned. Steps from facts to the conclusion were few, short, and plain. Feeble intellectscouldtake them, and strong onesmustdo so, or reject their life-long creeds. Then a crucial hour was upon them. To distrust and disregard their credal faith or stifle their humanity, one or the other, was the hard alternative presented to strong, good men. Their cherished creed or Margaret Jones, one or the other, must be sacrificed. Which? Clear heads and life-long affections grasped the creed firmly, and resolved to save it. They let Logic draw her rigid conclusions, and put them forth as rules for individual and public action. Sympathy went down before dominant faith, and man stifled every rebelliousemotion. God’s call and law, Christian men then felt, were paramount to sympathy. In submission to what they deemed Heaven’s will and call they said, “Down, humaneness—down! Up, God-derived Faith—up, in your majesty and might! Heart must follow whither you lead.” Their awful and crampingCreed devil-wardwas the chief fountain of bewildering and brutalizing force that dragged intelligent and kind men on to redden our soil with innocent blood, and that too “in all good conscience.”
Look closely at their position. The faith of all ages and nations had held that occurrences which seemed to result from supermundane force were produced by disembodied intelligences. Protestant Christendom was extensively holding that no invisible beings, excepting their Great Monstrous Monk-made Devil (see Appendix) and his obedient servants, could by any possibility work upon the bodies and possessions of men. And none such could work upon the external world in any other way than through, or by the aid of, such mortals as had voluntarily made a covenant with him. Such covenant once formed, the person making it would be an open door through which his fearful Majesty, or any imp of his, could freely enter the outer world and vent his malignity upon all the region far and wide around his entrance-place. Her works proved to the intellect of that day that this Margaret had covenanted to let him enter and co-operate with her. What, therefore, must be done? It was manifest to the people of Charlestown that through her the great invisible cloven-foot had found entrance, and was prowling among them. What was their duty? They must bar his entrancepromptly. To do it, they arrested, tried, condemned, and executed the Christian traitor who had furnished their great enemy entrance to the Christian fortress. Could firm, true men, holding then prevalent beliefs, have done less?
That prisoner was put to trial before judge, jury, and a public who each and all held the then common creed throughout all Protestant Christendom which is set forth in our Appendix. Witnesses swore that she accurately foretold the effects of medical treatment and other events; that she heard speeches by persons far remote from her; that a spectral child was seen in her presence; that her hands and simples wrought marvels,—therefore, how could jurors avoid conviction that the devil helped her? There was no spectral testimony in this case; outer senses of many persons had learned her supermundane powers. The nature of the testimony was unexceptionable, and its purport distinct and conclusive. The prevalent faith imperatively demanded that the verdict should be—guilty. The clear, strong faith of that day, in whomsoever it conjoined with good conscience and courage, put forth mighty power to persuade the good citizen and good man that high duty was calling upon him to gird on heavenly armor and fight for the destruction of this minion and colleague of the devil, even at the smothering of kindlier sentiments in his heart. She waswitch, and therefore must die. Was that adeludedcourt, representative of adeludedpeople, which condemned Margaret Jones to “hang high on the gallows-tree”? No doubt it was. Delusion led not only our fathers here, but all Christendom, on to deeds of shameful bloodshed. Witchcraft itself, as a whole, isnow by most people deemed a “dark delusion.” But which, among the human faculties, did that delusion spell-bind, stultify, and make sanguinary?
Were the external senses of a whole community so disordered that the character and dimensions of sensible acts were grossly misapprehended? No. The circumstances amid which the early colonists lived, were certainly as well fitted to sharpen, discipline, and give reliability to the external senses as those which wait upon their descendants in the present century. Whatever eyes saw, ears heard, or touch felt in 1648, was reported to the mind then as accurately as the same senses can report to-day. Witchcraft phenomena were not the fictions of deludedsenses.
Did that delusion dominate those mental faculties which clothe in words and report what the senses had learned, and derange them so effectually that they would put forth even under oath distorting and exaggerated accounts of facts which the senses had witnessed? We think not. Distrust of the truthfulness and discrimination of ancient unknown witnesses, founded mainly upon the marvelousness of facts they swore to knowledge of, is not a basis that either candor or justice can deem sufficient to sustain a charge that their testimony was misleading. Wherein lurks anything which indicates that the witnesses in this case stated anything that was not substantially true? If anywhere, it is probably in modern incredulity that spirits ever colabor with or act upon men. If the time shall come—and there now exist signs that it is near—when the cultured world shall learn thatsciencehas been unwittinglygenerating delusionby failing to detect and regard the existence of certain occult agents and forces which play important parts in scenes of nature and human society, then a greatly modified opinion concerning the truth of testimony evoked in witchcraft times may prevail throughout the enlightened world. The signs of to-day make it prudent, kind, and just to conceive that ancientwitnesseswere quite as truthful and discriminating as modern elucidators of remote transactions have generally been.
Were the faculties of jurors and judges for comprehending the accuracy, force, and tendency of testimony, and for logically deducing conclusions from proved facts, so deluded as that the whole court, without a misgiving, convicted either on false testimony or illogically? Candor must hesitate to say yes—especially in a case where such a man as Governor Winthrop sat upon the bench. He and his associates in the court may have been as free from any delusion that impaired or perverted their powers of discrimination, or for logical inferences from facts, as any court that has adjudicated since their day. The absolute cruelty and injustice of their verdict and sentence, however, do indicate delusion of some faculties; but not of the senses; not of the capacities to speak truth, and “nothing but the truth;” not of the capacities to sift evidence and to reason logically—not of these.
Their faculties for receiving, containing, holding on to, and obeying an inheritedFaithwere thedeludedones. In common with all Christendom the convictors of witches had been deluded into adoption, or at least retention, of a woful creed concerning the devil. At that time public sentiment in most countries on thecontinent of Europe, and also in both Old and New England, demanded rigid enforcement of all laws which that false, mischief-working creed had engendered and recorded in statute-books. Such laws were plain and imperative; both jurors and judges, suppressing sentiment, must yield to logic—must convict and sentence. By no other course could they be true to their convictions of duty toward society around them, or toward God on high. Yes; an imported monastic-bornFAITH, unnatural, erroneous, and more than barbarous, deluded kind and good men to feel that they must suppress sympathy, ignore their tender impulses, benumb their hearts, and, whither God’s voice was believed to call, go forward in stern, agonizing resolve to thrust a devil-helped worker, however good and estimable in outward seeming, to where the wicked one could do them and theirs no mischief through that mortal ally. Such was the logical and stern demand of the old deluding and heart-curbing creed.
Do we wonder in our day how such monstrous faith could ever have obtained and kept both an abiding hold and controlling authority in any clear head that was joined to a kindly heart? Seeds of faith get lodgment in the human brain while it is yet too young to understand or even try to test the nature and quality of what falls upon it. Whatever the church and public believe, and have believed through a long past, is ever dropping its own seed into opening minds, which forthwith germinates therein. This sends its roots deep into virgin soil, grows with vigor there, and becomes fruitful of the same old faith during that very early portion of life in which the infantilequestioning, analyzing, and reasoning faculties are scarce able to doubt the soundness or excellence of what thence has grown and matured in close alliance with themselves. Faith’s right and fitness to define duty, and the child’s obligation to execute its requirements, are usually conceded by all the other faculties. The truer and better the man, the more surely will he carry out his faith to its logical demands, even though, Abraham like, he have to lay his dearest on the altar of sacrifice, to lift the knife, and nerve himself to plunge it into his own child’s heart, unless some voice from on high, more potent than previous faith, shall bid him hold. Few other than strong men and true, conscious of being soldiers in heaven’s army, would march resolutely to the Devil’s living and shotted guns, purposing to destroy them; for their destruction was instinct with, and inseparable from, anguish to Christian neighbors and friends. Extremists alone would do that. None midway between vile demons and men of high faith in God would voluntarily meet that ordeal.
We do not regardallthe active prosecutors and convictors of witches as having been actuated by well-defined faiths and high principles. When popular furor sets strongly in any direction, the thoughtless, the unprincipled, the cruel, the malicious, join in the rush, and some such often become conspicuous and heartless agents in confounding confusion and in executing public decrees. Still, nearly all eminent men of both Europe and America—the leading divines, jurists, and civilians, the men of culture and of influence—believed that witchcraft and the witchcraft devil existed, and that witches should be detectedand punished by the processes and laws then deemed applicable in such cases. Therefore, the mass of the people, however ignorant, thoughtless, or rash, when detecting and punishing witches, were only hastening to effect by rough processes and expeditiously, no more than the learned, more orderly, and patient would have felt constrained to accomplish, in the end, from a firm conviction of duty. Good faith and conscientious regard for the public weal actuated and sustained all those “solid men of Boston” and its vicinity, who were the real bones, sinews, and muscles which brought the devil’s seeming helper to the gallows.
Whether this impressible and unfolded woman was literally aided in any of her marvelous operations by invisibleintelligencesmay be debatable. It is possible that forces subject to no will but her own, and not even to that at all times, may have passed from her into other persons, which relieved some and agonized others extensively. Medication of her simples may have been mainly their natural absorption of elements residing in her system, or which were naturally attracted into and through that peculiar system. Her correct perceptions of the future action of remedies prescribed by either herself or others, and of the future course and result of diseases, may have been obtained by her own inner faculties when partially and transiently disentangled from her outer ones, and sensing in knowledge from the hidden realm of causes. So too she may have been at times so nearly a freed spirit, that she could by her own perceptives accurately sense coming events, and hear the words of far distant speakers. We refrain from denying thepossibility that such auras resided in, emanated from, and surrounded her body, that a spirit child coming within them was by natural impersonal forces there rendered visible to external optics. It is possible there was no phenomenon in this case that must be calledspiritual, excepting the mereadventof the child—not its visibility, but itsadvent. If the child was there, then a spirit was there, and it was a case of Spiritualism. All this is possible; but we ask whether it is probable that all works seeming to be hers were produced by blind natural forces and her own will and powers solely? To this our own answer is an emphaticNO. The presence of the child gives force to that response. If one spirit came to her, others could have come.
The old records are nearly or quite devoid of information relating to the intelligence, character, and social position of Margaret Jones. She was wife of Thomas Jones, who, soon after her execution, took passage on board a vessel for Barbadoes. We have met with no indication that they had children—with nothing which alludes to his age, occupation, or standing in society. We find her a practicer of the healing art; but at what age, or amid what worldly circumstances, is all unknown.
Bunker Hill and its circumjacent slopes and lowlands have close connection with the earlier stages of two American conflicts for freedom. There lived, and from thence was taken to prison and the gallows, the first American martyr in a war whose end, obtained forty-four years later at Salem Village, was Christendom’s mental emancipation from deluding and dwarfing bondage to a more than savage creed. True, the aggressive hosts—the prosecutors for witchcraft—wereignorant and unsuspicious of the far-reaching purposes of the divinity that shaped their ends, that beheld and ruled over their blind violence, and made them, all unconsciously and undesignedly, mortally rend a monster-creed whose demands they were slavishly and blindly complying with, and thus, without knowledge of it on their part, procuring for themselves, their children, and all future Christians, new freedom and new incentives for independent speculations and conclusions regarding all matters both demonological and theological. A nightmare of centuries was thrown off from disturbed and horrified Christendom at Salem, and each cramped sufferer could thenceforth draw breath more freely, and commence processes of recuperation and expansion.
The case of Margaret Jones is isolated. It has no traceable connection with any kindred one which either preceded or followed it. Still its origin was in the abiding-place of forces and operators acting invisibly upon the external world, and amidst which all genuine witchcraft, miracle, and Spiritualism have been born.
Her case must be catalogued among the marvelous, though the proving of the nature and character of her offense, erroneously so called, was unattended by the absurdities and cruelties which attach to many cases where spectral evidence was admitted, and barbarous processes were resorted to for extorting a plea to an indictment. As a witchcraft trial, hers was exceptionally inoffensive to modern views of propriety. The testimony throughout was based on experiences and observations by external senses, and would be admissible in any court and any age. Theextra-common powers or susceptibilities of the accused were clearly proved. Therefore the monstrous creed which then blinded and tyrannized over all minds took her life legitimately. Good men, humane men, could do no less than pronounce her guilty before the law and before that creed which engendered the law. Before we denounce or even disparage those who condemned her, let us pause for reflection.
“A creed sometimes remains outside of the mind, incrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature, manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in.”—John Stuart Mill.
We requote as follows:—
“The nobler tendency of culture, and above all of scientific culture, is to honor the dead without groveling before them—to profit by the past without sacrificing it to the present.”
The early colonists of the old Bay State deserve to be held in high esteem and admiration; all noble sentiments conspire to honor them. Culture and enlightenment will be derelict to their high calling if they traduce that people before they turn thought backward through two centuries, scan the imported creeds then prevalent here, observe circumstances then existing, and enter into feelings and views then bearing resistless sway. Having done that, let them calmly determine whither duty led true-hearted, clear-headed, strong, courageous, and devout men in relation to witchcraft matters. Many old beliefs may be discarded; many mistakes and errors of the past be shunned. We are not called to grovel before our ancestors; but shame, shame be to us if we brand them withegregious “credulity and infatuation,” solely or mainly because their senses perceived and they described events which we cannot explain if we grant to them clear, sagacious, and well-balanced intellects for reporting facts which they observed. They were our peers in most good qualities and powers, and deserve our admiration.
Did we know the spot where the dust of Charlestown’s gifted physician reposes, we might desire to see a modest monument there bearing the following inscription:—
TO THE MEMORYOFMARGARET JONES,America’s first Martyr to Spiritualism:Who was hanged in Boston,June 15, 1648,Because God had given her such Organization and Receptivitiesthat beneficent occult Powers, using her successfullyas an Instrument in curingHuman Ills,So excited the Consternation of a Devil-fearing People,That, knowing not what they did,They cried,Crucify Her! Crucify Her!
We lead attention next to one who moved in the highest circle of Boston society—to an elderly lady of wit, culture, high connections socially, and of friendship with many of the most prominent and virtuous people of her day. So far as known, hers is meager as a case of witchcraft, attended by a less variety and extent of startling phenomena than most others; but it well reveals the force of the witchcraft creed, and the shifts of historians for explaining its only marvelous phenomenon which history hints at.
Hutchinson says, “The most remarkable occurrence in the colony in the year 1655 [1656 ?] was the trial and condemnation of Mrs. Ann Hibbins for witchcraft. Her husband, who died in the year 1654, was an agent for the colony in England, several years one of the assistants, and a merchant of note in the town of Boston; but losses in the latter part of his life had reduced his estate, and increased the natural crabbedness of his wife’s temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome, and brought her under church censures, and at length rendered her so odious to her neighbors as to cause some of them to accuse her of witchcraft. The jury brought her in guilty, but the magistrates refused to accept the verdict; so the cause came to the general court, where the popular clamor prevailed against her, and the miserable old woman was condemned and executed. Search was made upon her body for teats, and her chests and boxes for puppets, images, &c.; butthere is no record of anything of that sort being found. Mr. Beach, a minister in Jamaica, in a letter to Dr. Increase Mather in the year 1684, says, ‘You may remember what I have sometimes told; your famous Mr. Norton once said at his own table before Mr. Wilson the pastor, elder Penn, and myself and wife, &c., who had the honor to be his guests, that one of your magistrates’ wives, as I remember, was hanged for a witch only for having more wit than her neighbors. It was his very expression; she having, as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which, proving true, cost her her life, notwithstanding all he could do to the contrary, as he himself told us.’
“It fared with her as it did with Joan of Arc in France. Some counted her a saint and some a witch, and some observed solemn marks of Providence set upon those who were very forward to condemn her, and to brand others upon the like ground with the like reproach.”
The author of the above was born fifty-five years after the execution of Mrs. Hibbins, and his account of her was not published till 1764, that is, one hundred and eight years after her decease. In his youth he may have conversed with aged people who were living at the time of the trial and execution of this woman, and may have received from them their notions concerning her temper and character. But if he did, his informers, during more than half a century before he was old enough to be an intelligent listener, had been living in the midst of people who were ashamed of the treatment which they and theirfathers had bestowed upon reputed witches. Thus ashamed and yielding to an almost universal propensity in men to make their own imputed errors and crimes seem slight, trivial, and excusable as possible, nothing would be more natural than a general propensity to vilify the sufferers, under a mistaken, though common, notion that the vileness of the persecuted excuses the wrong of the persecutors.
Whether Hutchinson, in his youth, received from any source special mental biases which inclined him to regard all who suffered for witchcraft as quarrelsome and vicious, cannot now be ascertained; but it is obvious from his epithets that his disposition let him very readily apply to such persons terms of very decided disparagement. He spoke of one Mary Oliver as “a poor wretch;” also of Mrs. Hibbins as “the miserable old woman,” and specified the “natural crabbedness of her temper which made her turbulent and quarrelsome.” He implies that such traits were both the grounds and the sum of the charge and proofs of her witchcraft, and does all this without adducing a particle of evidence that she possessed such a temper, or was eitherturbulentorquarrelsome. His allegations seem like the offspring of either blinding contempt or of deluded fancy,—yes,deluded,—for surely clear-eyed fancy must have foreseen that after ages could never believe that the highest court in the colony found natural crabbedness of temper, and consequent turbulence, satisfactory proof of an explicit compact with the devil, and therefore punishable by death. The insufficiency and probable inaccuracy of his reasons for the arraignment and condemnation of this person, will be more clearly exhibited further on, and mainly in extracts from a later historian.
Mr. Beach’s letter, quoted by Hutchinson, gives distinct indication that Mrs. Hibbins was endowed with faculties which were vastly more likely to out-work what her age deemed witchcraft, than was any amount of bad temper and crabbedness. She had “more wit than her neighbors;” she “unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which, proving true, cost her her life.” Here is indication of probability that this lady, as did Margaret Jones, possessed ability to comprehend the conversation of far distant parties, or to sense in the thoughts of some absent people with whom she came in rapport. Similar abilities are possessed and exercised by many persons in these days, who have constitutional endowments of a kind which were formerly believed to be diabolical acquisitions, and were then deemed proofs of witchcraft—proofs of compact with Satan.
“It fared with her,” says Hutchinson, “as it did with Joan of Arc in France. Some counted her a saint and some a witch.” In these words the historian himself furnishes cause for distrusting the justice of ascribing to her a crabbed temper and habitual quarrelsomeness. For who, in any community, would ever count onea saintwho manifested such offensive qualities to any great extent as he ascribed to her? Surely no one would. And yet he states that very many persons did so count Mrs. Hibbins. Doubtless among her advocates was “your famous Mr. Norton,” a very eminent, sagacious, and able minister in Boston. There was enough about her to draw out from Hutchinson the concession that the public here was divided in judgment concerning her character, as it formerlywas in France concerning Joan of Arc, that Maid of Orleans, who heard and obeyed voices from out the unseen.
Crabbedness of temper and quarrelsomeness were not grounds on which any portion of the people would count her asaint. The historian refutes his own position. A more recent searcher for causes of her fate perceived, and very clearly pointed out, the inaccuracy and obvious insufficiency of Hutchinson’s grounds and reasons why Mrs. Hibbins was arraigned and convicted, but proceeded to assign others which are scarcely less inadequate and improbable. He writes as follows, vol. i. p. 422,Hist. of Witchcraft:—
“While it is hardly worthy of being considered a sufficient explanation of the matter,—it being beyond belief, that, even at that time, a person could be condemned and executed merely on account of a ‘crabbed temper,’—it is not consistent with the facts as made known to us from the record-offices. She could not have been so reduced in circumstances as to produce such extraordinary effects upon her character, for she left a good estate.... The only clew we have to the kind of evidence bearing upon the charge of witchcraft that brought this recently bereaved widow to so cruel and shameful a death, is in a letter written by a clergyman in Jamaica to Increase Mather” (as quoted above). “Nothing,” Upham adds, “was more natural than for her to suppose, knowing the parties, witnessing their manner, considering their active co-operation in getting up the excitement against her, which was then the all-engrossing topic, that they were talking about her. But, in the blind infatuation of the time, it wasconsidered proof positive of her being possessed,by the aid of the devil, of supernatural insight—precisely as, forty years afterward, such evidence was brought to bear with telling effect against George Burroughs.... The truth is, that the tongue of slander was let loose upon her, and the calumnies circulated by reckless gossip became so magnified and exaggerated, and assumed such proportions, as enabled her vilifiers to bring her under the censure of the church, and that emboldened them to cry out against her as a witch.”
Some of our quotations are introduced quite as much for the purpose of exhibiting the animus, short-comings, and over-doings of the historians themselves, as for elucidating the general subject of witchcraft. We learn from the pages of the work from which the above extract was taken, that Mrs. Hibbins was sister of Richard Bellingham, deputy-governor of the province at the very time of her trial, and that her highly-esteemed husband had left her an estate which placed her far above poverty. It may fairly be presumed that both her social and pecuniary conditions were very respectable. Upham perceives and forcibly comments upon the inadequacy of the grounds upon which Hutchinson attempted to account for her conviction and execution. That earlier historian evinced, on very many of his pages, his persuasion, or at least a purpose to persuade his readers, that all the peculiar and disturbing phenomena of witchcraft were of exclusively mundane origin, and that temper, trick, imposture, deception, and the like, produced them all. This persuasion made him somewhat impatient of the whole matter, uncareful to scan all the factsbefore him, or keep his inferences in fair and broad harmony with them. It made him rashly severe. Without indicating a shadow of reason why he does so, he calls this widow of one of Boston’s most esteemed merchants and public men—this sister of the deputy-governor of the province—this woman of more wit than her neighbors—this woman befriended by the eminent minister John Norton—this woman not in poverty—this woman whom he ought to have known, did, in her lowest condition, even when a convict in prison and doomed to the gallows—did, in this dire extremity, bespeak and obtain the friendly offices of six or eight of the leading men of the city, and therefore presumably had their respect—such a one, Hutchinson gratuitously calls a “miserable old woman;” and in doing it reveals the careless and heartless historian of those who had come under ban for witchcraft.
Upham, going to the probate records and finding the will of Mrs. Hibbins, which was made a few days after her sentence of death, is able to present her in a different aspect. His comments upon her, as she is revealed by the will and its codicils, are as follows, vol. i. p. 425:—
“The whole tone and manner of these instruments give evidence that she had a mind capable of rising above the power of wrong, suffering, and death itself. They show a spirit calm and serene. The disposition of her property indicates good sense, good feeling, and business faculties suitable to the occasion. In the body of the will, there is not a word, a syllable, or a turn of expression, that refers to or is in the slightest degree colored by her peculiar situation. In the codicilthere is this sentence: ‘My desire is that all my overseers would be pleased to show so much respect unto my dead corpse, as to cause it to be decently interred, and, if it may be, near my late husband.”
Perusal and study of her will and its appendages induced the later historian to speak of Ann Hibbins as “this recently bereaved widow”—a phrase much more agreeable, and seemingly vastly more just in application to her, than “miserable old woman.” In that will she names as overseers and administrators of her estate, Captain Thomas Clarke, Lieutenant Edward Hutchinson, Lieutenant William Hudson, Ensign Joshua Scottow, and Cornet Peter Oliver; also in a codicil, she says, “I do earnestly desire my loving friends, Captain Johnson and Edward Rawson, to be added to the rest of the gentlemen mentioned as overseers of my will.” Upham, having stated the above, says, “It can hardly be doubted that these persons—and they were all leading citizens—were known by her to be among her friends.” Yes, the presumption is very fair, amounting to almost positive proof, that many of the prominent and best people of the town were her friends. The appearance is, that her social walk was wide away from the purlieus of common mundane diabolism and billingsgate. The vulgar would see her standing off beyond their reach, and waste no breath upon her. Only the respectable and influential could touch her to her essential harm.
We commend and thank the later historian for bringing this persecuted woman out into such light as shows that she may have been equal in all good qualities to the best of her persecutors. But hisreasons for her persecution and condemnation are scarcely more adequate or credible than those of Hutchinson. We ascribed to him the faculties of a fictionist, and he used them when he said, “The truth is, that the tongue of slander was let loose upon her.” The former historian imputed certain offensive acts or traits to both Margaret Jones and Ann Hibbins severally, which he assumed to be the provoking causes of public vengeance. He deemed the sufferers themselves doers of the intolerable wrongs. But his successor makes her beneficence the crime for which Mrs. Jones suffered; and the origination and utterance of slanderby the public, the cause of death to Mrs. Hibbins. The earlier writer was lenient toward the public and severe upon the accused women. The later was kind toward the women, but, by necessary implication, intensely aspersory upon the great body of the people; for he makes the public hang one because of her successful medical practice by the use of only simple remedies, and another because of slanders which itself had poured out upon her.
His charge of slander is fictitious. He adduces no evidence that the lady was slandered, and we have met with none anywhere. And were it true, it is quite as much “beyond belief that even at that time a person could be condemned and executed merely on account of being”slandered, as it is that one could have then been thus treated on account of a “crabbed temper” solely.
A much more probable cause of the persecution of Mrs. Hibbins than either of the historians drew forth and rested upon, lurks in that language of “famous Mr. Norton,” which says that she “having more witthan her neighbors, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which proving true, cost her her life.” Upham, commenting upon that, says, “Nothing was more natural than for her to suppose, knowing the parties, witnessing their manner, considering their active co-operation in getting up the excitement against her, which was then the all-engrossing topic, that they were talking about her.” Whence and how did the accomplished rhetorician learn that those two persecutors were active co-operators, or that they were in any degree concerned “ingetting up” the excitement against her? Howknowthat their manner was expressive of any particular topic of conversation? Howknowthat she or her case was the then all-engrossing topic? He put forth assumptions as though they were historic facts. No ancient record is credited with them; none contains them that we have met with. He could not well know them to be true. They are fairly reasonable fictions; but we must doubt whether they are either known or knowable asfacts. They would be agreeable amplifications if they did not tend to mislead and blind; they would be beauties, and not blemishes, if the soundness and sufficiency of their underlying theory or assumption were conceded. But it is not. Common sense cannot concede it. Boston was neither doltish enough nor wicked enough to generate and sustainslanderof such quantity and quality as would force one of her ladies of wit and high connections to die ignominiously on the gallows—never, never. Neither the temper of the woman herself, nor any combined baseness and malice that ever existed in the orderly and religious townof Boston, is admissible as the chief cause of that woman’s execution. Her ownwitwas the historic, and, when defined and illustrated, may appear to be the real cause.
Whether Mrs. Hibbins received on that occasion, and might have been accustomed to get, knowledge by other than man’s ordinary processes, and to such extent and of such kind as implied her possession of some faculties above or distinct from great powers at guessing, can best be inferred by looking at the views of her utterances which were taken by those who heard them. Their persecution of her unto death tells what those views were. Have historians made fair and full use of the very small historic basis extant, for accounting for the state and nature of public feeling among the neighbors of this woman? We think not. Herwit, the true corner-stone, has not been their basis of explanation.
When she saw two known persecutors talking, the circumstances may or may not have been helpful to a correct guess at the topic of their conversationthen. But—but these men, Upham assumes, werealreadyknown to her as her persecutors. Therefore something must have occurred before that time which had aroused persecution of her. These men are called “two of her persecutors,” which intimates that she already may have had more than two, and admits the supposition that she may have had very many such, both prior to and at the very time when she made the particularguesswhose accuracy has been so plausibly commented upon. Something, antecedent to that guess, had set some minds against her. Yes, if we may trust the conjecture of Upham, something hadalready created an “excitement against her which was then the all-engrossing topic.” The cause of antecedent and existing excitement, at the time she madethatguess, was seemingly unsought for by either Hutchinson or Upham. Or, if they sought for this,the most important thing connected with the case, and essential to its satisfactory elucidation, they found nothing which they ventured to publish. Omission to bring out the cause of public excitement,prior to the guess, makes previous history very unsatisfactory. There is some light shining now which may enable the searcher in dark closets of the past to discover meanings there which former explorers failed to find. No new, positive, distinct historical statements explanatory of this case have been seen. We are confined to the same very narrow premises on which previous reasoners stood, but we find different import of the same facts from any which prior expounders disclosed.
We join with Upham in saying that “the only clewwe have to the kind of evidence bearing uponthe charge of witchcraftthat brought this recently bereaved widow to so cruel and shameful a death, is in a letter written by a clergyman in Jamaica to Increase Mather in 1684.” That letter, already quoted, imputes to her morewitthan others; wit, or penetration, by which she sensed correctly the conversation going on between two of her persecutors. That is the full sum of the direct historical evidence. And what is involved in that? Is crabbed temper there? No. Is slander there? No; butwitis. Standing alone and unexplained, this wit amounts, perhaps, to but little; and yet when interpreted by her sad fate it mayamount to very much. It suggests forcibly the probability, bordering close upon certainty, that she was endowed with some faculties which the sagacious Mr. Norton called “wit”—but yet were such as could obtain accurate knowledge so surprisingly as to suggest that it was obtained by process as occult as that by which Jesus perceived the private reasonings of scribes and pharisees—entrappers and persecutors of himself.
To-day,—when observation is almost daily meeting with operations of faculties, in limited classes of men and women, which enable them to read, at times, the secret thoughts and hear the secret and hushed utterances of some afar off,—that Jamaica letter intimates enough to generate presumption that Mrs. Hibbins might have possessed like faculties, and that her exercise of such startled, alarmed, and almost frenzied a community in which such powers were deemed proof positive that their possessor had made a covenant with the Evil One, and received her surprising knowledge from him. Amid a people holding such faith concerning the devil as the colonists here entertained in 1656, the exercise of such powers called upon all God-fearing and true men to rid the world of such a devil-minion as the knowledge possessed by Mrs. Hibbins proved her to be.
A sample of light which is now available shines forth from the following letter, and its rays are blended in those from the lamp that guides our feet while we move onward in tracing out the probable meaning reachable by following up the only historic clew to those powers of Mrs. Hibbins, her possession and exercise of which constituted a capital crime:—