Crane Pond by Richard Francis

Author:Richard Francis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2016-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

The document is titled The Return of Several Ministers, though Cotton Mather has written it singlehandedly for the sake of speed, and simply intends to get the approval of other ministers before submitting it to the governor. Mr. Phips has commissioned it because of his concern at Bridget Bishop’s execution and the sheer scale of the developing witchcraft, with several hundred people now accused and nearly a hundred in prison awaiting trial (John Alden among them).

They sit in the study, Sewall reading at his desk and Cotton Mather opposite, cracking walnuts with surprising loudness. It’s odd how harmless words can seem when they first strike the eye. You perform the mechanical task of determining the sense of what is on the page, and only when you have done that does the meaning sink in. Cotton Mather has attacked the procedure at the preliminary examinations and at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the noise and chaos that erupts, the tests for possession, above all the phenomenon of spectral evidence because (claims Mather) the Devil can take the form of an innocent person and thereby give the afflicted the delusion they are being haunted and tormented by witches.

Sewall sits where he is, taking deep breaths, trying to organise his thoughts. The detonations from Mr. Mather’s walnuts continue unabashed. There is noise and chaos in court, thinks Sewall, because crimes are being committed there and then, before the very eyes of jury and justices, and crimes bring suffering, and suffering makes people cry out and fall over, especially when the victims are children. Mr. Mather is a loving father himself; how can he be immune to those cries of pain? And the tests for possession, such as the one where the afflicted touch their tormentors to see if that will return the spectres to their original bodies: how can proof be proved without a test?

And lastly, if the Devil can take the form of innocent people when committing his own crimes, then all crimes whatsoever might as well be assigned to him and him alone, and every court, prison and gallows in the whole world can be closed down for lack of custom. In any case, Sewall has previously checked the doctrine that Satan cannot take the shape of innocent persons in his law books. It has been the primum mobile of witchcraft cases in England, as asserted by both Glanvil and Baxter.

Aware that Sewall has finished reading, Mather looks hopefully across at him. Within the tendrils of that fulsome wig he looks like the schoolboy he must once have been, awaiting praise for his homework. How can he not understand what he has done? ‘You have poured scorn upon the court,’ Sewall tells him. He feels suddenly weepy as he says this. ‘You have attacked the good faith of the judges.’

Mather blinks in astonishment. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he replies. ‘I was simply suggesting good practice.’

‘The moral to be drawn from your Return is that the judges have made a terrible mistake in allowing the execution of Bridget Bishop.

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