A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill

Author:Frances Hill [Hill, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Tantor eBooks
Published: 2014-07-08T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A BLACK MAN WITH AN HAT

By the time Mary Warren poured out her accusations, in mid-May, thirty-six accused witches were in jail. After the examination of Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyce in Salem Town, the warrants began flying from the magistrates not one at a time but in clusters. Since the witch-hunt had been given the seal of approval by the highest authorities, the Putnams felt free to complain of almost whomever they pleased. The few exceptions were certain powerful enemies in Salem Village itself. The girls also grew bolder, calling the names of any who doubted or displeased them, with the same few exceptions. Men and girls worked together, though which were instigators, which followers, in any given instance, can only be guessed at. However, sometimes the guessing is not all that difficult.

One man and two women were examined with Mary Warren on April 19. The man was Giles Cory, who had helped send his wife to prison only one month before. He was eighty years old and well known in the village as a cantankerous, obstinate character. It may be that his testifying against his wife had backfired: Relatives of witches were automatically suspected of witchcraft. He had no specific quarrel with the Putnams. But, born in England, a fairly recent arrival in Salem Village, successful and prosperous, he was exactly the kind of outsider they loathed.

The two women examined with Warren were Abigail Hobbs and Bridget Bishop. Abigail, twenty-two, was a strange creature, a rebel of a kind perhaps Ann Putnam or Abigail Williams might have been had they come from homes of lower standing governed by less powerful fathers. Neither of Abigail Hobbs's parents were church members and her father had not even been to a service in the meetinghouse for a very long time. His occupation is not recorded, which suggests he was a laborer, finding work where he could. The family had lived a few years earlier at Casco, Maine, in the remote region to the northeast of Salem that was repeatedly devastated by Indian raids. The Hobbs family now resided on the edge of Salem Village in an area that was to become part of Topsfield.

Abigail was as wild as the forests she resided so close to. She roamed them at night, sleeping under the stars. Her parents had lost all control of her. When she visited a seventeen-year-old friend with her mother, she was so rude and unseemly that the friend gave her a lecture, saying she ought to be ashamed. In response Abigail told her to hold her tongue or she would make such a racket as would raise the whole neighborhood. Then she said that "Old Nick sat over the bedstead." All her helpless mother could do was sigh that she "little thought to be the mother of such a daughter." Eighteen months earlier the same friend, Lydia Nichols, had asked Abigail how she dared lie out at night in the woods all alone. "She told me," Lydia said, "she had sold herself body and soul to the old boy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.