most interesting story that occurred in this affair was of Giles Cory, and Martha, his wife. The woman was tried on the ninth of September, and hanged on the twenty-second. In the interval, on the sixteenth, the husband was brought up for trial. He said, he was not guilty; but, being asked how he would be tried? he refused to go through the customary form, and say, “By God and my country.” He observed that, of all that had been tried, not one had as yet been pronounced not guilty; and he resolutely refused in that mode to undergo a trial. The judge directed therefore that, according to the barbarous mode prescribed in the mother-country, he should be laid on his back, and pressed to death with weights gradually accumulated on the upper surface of his body, a proceeding which had never yet been resorted to by the English in North America. The man persisted in his resolution, and remained mute till he expired.
The whole of this dreadful tragedy was kept together by a thread. The spectre-seers for a considerable time prudently restricted their accusations to persons of ill repute, or otherwise of no consequence in the community. By and by however they lost sight of this caution, and pretended they saw the figures of some persons well connected, and of unquestioned honour and reputation, engaged in acts of witchcraft. Immediately the whole fell through in a moment. The leading inhabitants presently saw how unsafe it would be to trust their reputations and their lives to the mercy of these profligate accusers. Of fifty-six bills of indictment that were offered to the grand-jury on the third of January, 1693, twenty-six only were found true bills, and thirty thrown out. On the twenty-six bills that were found, three persons only were pronounced guilty by the petty jury, and these three received their pardon from the government. The prisons were thrown open; fifty confessed witches, together with two hundred persons imprisoned on suspicion, were set at liberty, and no more accusations were heard of. The “afflicted,” as they were technically termed, recovered their health; the “spectral sight” was universally scouted; and men began to wonder how they could ever have been the victims of so horrible a delusion. 227
190. Hutchinson on Witchcraft.
191. I Samuel, xv, 23.
192. Doctrine of Divorce, Preface.
193. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, p. 746.
194. Alciatus, Parergon Juris, L. VIII, cap. 22.
195. Danaeus, apud Delrio, Proloquium.
196. Bartholomaeus de Spina, De Strigibus, c. 13.
197. Biographie Universelle.
198. Biographie Universelle.
199. Hospinian, Historia Sacramentaria, Part II, fol. 131.
200. Bayle.
201. Paulus Jovius, Elogia Doctorum Virorum, c.101.
202. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, Lib. II, Quaestio xi, S. 18.
203. Delrio, Lib. II, Quaestio xxix. S. 7.
204. Wierus, Lib. II, c.v. S. 11, 12.
205. Cent. I, cap. 70.
206. De Praestigiis Demonum, Lib. II, cap. iv, sect. 8.
207. Durrius, apud Schelhorn, Amoenitates Literariae, Tom. V, p.50, et seqq.
208. Memoirs, p. 14.
209. Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, Letter IV.
210. Appendix to Johannes Glastoniensis, edited by Hearne.
211. Camden, anno 1693, 1694.
212. Pitcairn, Trials in Scotland in Five Volumes, 4to.
213. King James’s Works, p. 135.
214. King James’s Works, p. 135, 136.
215. Truth brought to Light by Time. Wilson, History of James I.
216. Fuller, Church History of Britain, Book X, p. 74. See also Osborn’s Works, Essay I: where the author says, he “gave charge to his judges, to be circumspect in condemning those, committed by ignorant justices for diabolical compacts. Nor had he concluded his advice in a narrower circle, as I have heard, than the denial of any such operations, but out of reason of state, and to gratify the church, which hath in no age thought fit to explode out of the common people’s minds an apprehension of witchcraft.” The author adds, that he “must confess James to have been the promptest man living in his dexterity to discover an imposture,” and subjoins a remarkable story in confirmation of this assertion.
217. Discovery of the Witches, 1612, printed by order of the Court.
218. History of Whalley, by Thomas Dunham Whitaker, p. 215.
219. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, Vol. II, p. 507.
220. Heylyn, Life of Laud.
221. Hutchinson on Witchcraft.
222. Menagiana, Tom. II, p. 252, et seqq.
223. Judges, v, 20.
224. Certainty of the World of Spirits.
225. Trial of the Witches
