hysteria broke out, the Putnams alleged that Burroughs had treated his wife cruelly.
Burroughs’ wife died in September 1681. By then, Bur- roughs had not been paid his salary for some time, a ca- sualty of the local infighting. He went into debt to pay for his wife’s funeral. Perhaps it was the combination of grief over his loss and frustration at the sentiments raging in the village, but Burroughs decided not to pursue the monies owed him and quit his job. He returned to maine, where he became a pastor in Wells.
In 1683, a suit was brought against Burroughs for the unpaid debt for funeral expenses. The suit was dropped when Burroughs demonstrated that the village owed him back salary, which could be applied to the debt. The situ- ation fomented ill will against the minister.
Burroughs was long gone from Salem Village when the witchcraft hysteria erupted in 1692. Burroughs was decried as a witch. Twelve-year-old Ann Putnam said that on April 20 the specter of a minister appeared and tortured and choked her, urging her to write in his dev- il’s book. She identified the specter as Burroughs. She said he told her he had three wives and that he had be- witched the first two to death. He also said he had killed mrs. Lawson and her daughter Ann; he had bewitched many soldiers to death; and he had turned Abigail Hobbs into a witch. He claimed to be a conjurer, which was above a witch.
On may 4, Burroughs was arrested at his home in Wells, maine—while he sat at his dinner table with his family, according to lore—and brought immediately to Salem. In his examination on may 9, he was accused of witchcraft, of not attending communion on some occa- sions and of not baptizing all but his eldest child. These were grave sins for a minister. Like others who had been cried out against, Burroughs was simply astounded both at the accusations and the girls falling into fits claiming that he was tormenting and biting them.
Putnam said that on may 8, the apparition of Bur- roughs appeared to her again and told her that she would soon see his dead two wives, who would tell her lies. She saw two ghosts of women in burial shrouds. They said that Burroughs had been cruel to them and had killed them. The first wife said she had been stabbed beneath the armpit and the wound covered with sealing wax. She pulled aside her burial shroud to show Putnam the wound. Putnam also said that the ghosts of Lawson and her child appeared and said they, too, had been murdered by Burroughs. Later, Putnam saw the ghost of Goody Fuller, who said Burroughs had killed her over a dispute with her husband.
Others, including eight confessed witches, came for- ward against him. Burroughs was a man of small stature but had exceptional strength for his size. It was alleged that his unusual strength came from the Devil, and that he reveled in letting others know of his occult powers, also granted by the Devil. By the time the testimonies
were done, Burroughs was the ringleader of all the witch- es, tempting and seducing them, giving them poppets for
evil spells.
Burroughs was tried on August 5. Found guilty, he was condemned to death by hanging. On August 19, he and four others were driven to GAllows HIll in an open cart. He mounted the gallows and then preached a ser- mon, ending with the Lord’s PrAyer. His flawless recita-
tion of the prayer upset the onlookers, for it was strongly believed that a witch could not say the prayer without stumbling. Cotton mAther, watching astride his white horse, kept the execution on track by telling the crowd that Burroughs was not an ordained minister and, thus, the Devil could help him recite the prayer. The execu- tions proceeded.
Burroughs and the others were cut down and dragged by halters to a shallow hole about two feet deep. Bur- roughs’ shirt and pants were pulled off, and an old pair of pants belonging to one of the executed were put on him. The bodies were barely covered with dirt. Burroughs’ chin and one hand stuck out from the ground, along with a foot of one of the others.
After his execution, more stories of his dealings with the Devil circulated through Salem. The citizens seemed to need a sense of justification at having killed the man who once led their church. mather made special effort to spread disparaging stories. Filled with loathing of Bur- roughs, mathers said he could hardly speak his name and would not have done so except that the state of massachu- setts asked for accounts of the Salem trials to be included in mather’s book, On Witchcraft: Being the Wonders of the Invisible World.
FurtherreAdIng:
Demos, John Putnam. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2004.
Hansen, Chadwick. Witchcraft at Salem. New York: New
American Library, 1969.
mather, Cotton. On Witchcraft: Being the Wonders of the Invis- ible World. mt. Vernon, N.Y.: The Peter Pauper Press,
1950. First published 1693.
Upham, Charles. History of Witchcraft and Salem Village. Bos-
ton: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867.
Bury St. Edmonds Witches Of the various witch trials
of Suffolk, England, conducted in Bury St. Edmonds dur- ing the 17th century, two episodes stand out. In 1645, 68
wItChes went to their deaths on the gallows, victims of
the witch-hunting zeal of mAtthew hopkIns and John Stearne. Seventeen years later, in 1662, Sir matthew Hale presided over trials that led to the condemnation and execution of two witches based on the flimsy spectral evidence of hysterical, “possessed” children. The 1662 trials heavily influenced officials of the Salem witch tri- als in 1692–93, the worst witch incident in the history of America (see SAlem WItChes).
The Hopkins trials. In 1645 matthew Hopkins, England’s
most notorious wItCh-hunter, and his associate, John Stearne, a rigid Puritan, were storming about the country- side routing out “witches” in exchange for exorbitant fees. Using unscrupulous methods to extract confessions, the witch-hunters, according to surviving records, charged at least 124 Suffolk men and women with witchcraft, who were tried at Bury St. Edmonds in August. (There prob- ably were more persons charged than surviving records indicate.) most of the “confessions” concerned the pos- session by evil imps (see Imp), the making of compacts
with the Devil (see DeVIl’spACt) and having carnal rela- tions with the Devil, the latter of which was guaranteed to inflame Puritan outrage. Some of the witches also were charged with the murder of livestock and people.
Victims were thoroughly searched for witch’s marks (see wItCh’smArk), a most humiliating ordeal for women, since the “marks” usually were found in or on the genitals. These marks, which were said to be supernumerary teats from which imps sucked, were discovered in the folds of the labia or were sometimes the clitoris itself. Stearne had a particular fondness for searching for witch’s marks and boasted that 18 of the Bury St. Edmonds witches “all were found by the searchers to have teats or dugs which their imps used to suck. . . . And of these witches some confessed that they have had carnal copulation with the Devil, one of which said that she had conceived twice by him, but as soon as she was delivered of them, they ran away in most horrid, long and ugly shapes.”
men also were said to have these teats. John Bysack confessed that he had been compromised 20 years ear- lier by the Devil who came in through his window in the shape of a sandy-colored, rugged dog and demanded that Bysack renounce God, Christ and his baptism. Bysack agreed, and the Devil used his claw to draw blood from Bysack’s heart. The Devil gave him six imps in the forms of snails, who sustained themselves by sucking Bysack’s blood. Each snail was an assassin with a particular as- signment: Atleward killed cows, Jeffry pigs, Peter sheep, Pyman fowls, Sacar horses and Sydrake Christians. Stea- rne claimed he found snail marks on Bysack’s body.
margaret Wyard confessed to having seven imps, in- cluding flies, dogs, mice and a spider. She had only five teats, however, which forced her imps to fight “like pigs with a sow.” Wyard said the Devil had come to her seven years earlier in the likeness of a calf, saying he was her husband. She would not submit sexually to him (a com- ment, perhaps, on the state of her marriage) until the Devil returned as “a handsome young gentleman.” Imps of other accused witches included a chicken named Nan; two “heavy and hairy” mice; and three imps “like chickens.”
Stearne recorded that 68 witches were executed; one who was tried at Ipswich instead of Bury St. Edmunds reportedly was burned to death. Dozens more may have been hanged—records are uncertain—and still others died in prison.
Ironically, Parliament had established a special com- mission to oversee witch-hunting activities, in response to reports of excesses. The commission, however, benign- ly accepted the “evidence” for Devil’s pacts and the exis- tence of imps, leaving Hopkins and Stearne free to wreak their havoc for another two years.
The hysterical children of 1662. rose Cullender and Amy
Duny of Lowestoft, Suffolk, were two old widows who were accused of bewitching seven children, one of them to death, and performing various other malicious acts upon their neighbors over a period of years. Sir matthew Hale (later Chief Justice), who heard the trials, was a believer in witchcraft and did nothing to discourage the most out- rageous accusations. The trials of the two unfortunates were recorded by Cotton mAther in On Witchcraft: Being the Wonders of the Invisible World (1692).
Duny’s fate as a witch was sealed when she was hired as a baby-sitter by Dorothy Durent for her infant. Duny tried to nurse the baby, William, contrary to Durent’s instruc- tions, and was reprimanded, much to her (obvious) displea- sure. Not long after, the baby began having fits that went on for weeks. Durent took it to a “white witch” doctor (a man), who told her to hang the child’s blanket in a corner of the chimney for a day and a night, then wrap the infant in it and burn anything that fell out. According to mather:
. . . at Night, there fell a great Toad out of the Blanket, which ran up and down the Hearth. A Boy catch’t it, and held it in the Fire with the Tongs: where it made a horrible Noise, and Flash’d like to Gun-Powder, with a report like that of a Pistol: Whereupon the Toad was no more to be seen.
The child recovered. The next day, Duny reportedly was seen with burn marks. Now labeled a witch, Duny was accused of causing fits in other children who had had contact with her. The Durents’s 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, fell into fits, complaining that the specter of Duny plagued her. The girl became lame in both legs and died within three days. mrs. Durent herself went lame and had to walk about with crutches. Another Durent child, Ann, suffered fits and swooning spells and vomited pins (see AllotrIophAgy), blaming her maladies on the specter of rose Cullender.
The nine- and 11-year-old daughters of Samuel Pacy, Deborah and Elizabeth, suffered fits that included lame- ness, extreme stomach pain as though being stabbed with pins and “shrieking at a dreadful manner, like a Whelp, rather than a rational creature.” They also vomited crooked pins and a two-penny nail. These girls cried out against Duny and Cullender, claiming to see them as specters, and saying that the witches threatened them not to talk, lest they be tormented 10 times greater than before. The Pacy girls could not pronounce the names of Lord, Jesus or Christ without falling into fits. But the names of Satan or the Devil made them say, “This bites, but it makes me speak right well!”