Part 8 (2/2)

But in the light of Michelet's theory,--that in the oppression and dearth of every kind of ideal interest in rural populations some safety-valve had to be found, and that there _were_ real organised secret meetings, witches' Sabbaths, to supply this need of sensation,--the thing is less difficult to comprehend. The religious hysteria that resulted in the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson was but another phase of the same thing. And the degeneration to be noted to-day in the remote hill-towns of New England is likewise attributable to Michelet's ”dearth of ideal interest.”

The thing once started, it grew, of course, by what it fed upon.

Professor William James, Harvard's distinguished psychologist, has traced to torture the so-called ”confessions” on which the evil princ.i.p.ally throve. A person, he says, was suddenly found to be suffering from what we to-day should call hysteria, perhaps, but what in those days was called a witch disease. A witch then had to be found to account for the disease; a scapegoat must of necessity be brought forward. Some poor old woman was thereupon picked out and subjected to atrocious torture. If she ”confessed,” the torture ceased. Naturally she very often ”confessed,” thus implicating others and d.a.m.ning herself.

Negative suggestion this modern psychologist likewise offers as light upon witchcraft. The witches seldom cried, no matter what their anguish of mind might be. The inquisitors used to say to them then, ”If you're not a witch, cry, let us see your tears. There, there! you can't cry!

That proves you're a witch!”

Moreover, that was an age when everybody read the Bible, and believed in its verbal inspiration. And there in Exodus (22:18), is the plain command, ”Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Cotton Mather, the distinguished young divine, had published a work affirming his belief in witchcraft, and detailing his study of some bewitched children in Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family, the better to observe the case. The king believed in it, and Queen Anne, to whose name we usually prefix the adjective ”good,” wrote to Governor Phips a letter which shows that she admitted witchcraft as a thing unquestioned.

It is in connection with the witchcraft delusion in Salem that we get the one instance in New England of the old English penalty for contumacy, that of a victim's being pressed to death. Giles Corey, who believed in witchcraft and was instrumental in the conviction of his wife, so suffered, partly to atone for his early cowardice and partly to save his property for his children. This latter thing he could not have done if he had been convicted of witchcraft, so after pleading ”not guilty,” he remained mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words that he would be tried ”by G.o.d and his country.”

The arrest of Mrs. Corey, we learn, followed closely on the heels of that of t.i.tuba and her companions. The accused was a woman of sixty, and the third wife of Corey. She seems to have been a person of unusual strength of character, and from the first denounced the witchcraft excitement, trying to persuade her husband, who believed all the monstrous stories then current, not to attend the hearings or in any way countenance the proceedings. Perhaps it was this well-known att.i.tude of hers that directed suspicion to her.

At her trial the usual performance was enacted. The ”afflicted girls”

fell on the floor, uttered piercing shrieks, and cried out upon their victim. ”There is a man whispering in her ear!” one of them suddenly exclaimed. ”What does he say to you?” the judge demanded of Martha Corey, accepting at once the ”spectral evidence”. ”We must not believe all these distracted children say,” was her sensible answer. But good sense was not much regarded at witch trials, and she was convicted and not long afterward executed. Her husband's evidence, which went strongly against her, is here given as a good example of much of the testimony by which the nineteen Salem victims of the delusion were sent to Gallows Hill.

”One evening I was sitting by the fire when my wife asked me to go to bed. I told her that I would go to prayer, and when I went to prayer I could not utter my desires with any sense, nor open my mouth to speak.

After a little s.p.a.ce I did according to my measure attend the duty. Some time last week I fetched an ox well out of the woods about noon, and he laying down in the yard, I went to raise him to yoke him, but he could not rise, but dragged his hinder parts as if he had been hip shot, but after did rise. I had a cat some time last week strongly taken on the sudden, and did make me think she would have died presently. My wife bid me knock her in the head, but I did not, and since she is well. My wife hath been wont to sit up after I went to bed, and I have perceived her to kneel down as if she were at prayer, but heard nothing.”

Incredible as it seems to-day, this was accepted as ”evidence” of Mrs.

Corey's bewitchment. Then, as so often happened, Giles Corey, the accuser, was soon himself accused. He was arrested, taken from his mill, and brought before the judges of the special court appointed by Governor Phips to hear the witch trials in Salem. Again the girls went through their performance, again there was an endeavour to extort a confession.

But this time Corey acted the part of a man. He had had leisure for reflection since he had testified against his wife, and he was now as sure that she was guiltless as that he himself was. Bitter, indeed, must have been the realisation that he had helped convict her. But he atoned, as has been said, to her and to his children by subjecting himself to veritable martyrdom. Though an old man whose hair was whitened with the snows of eighty winters, he ”was laid on his back, a board placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day, and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his sufferings.” Rightly must this mode of torture have been named _peine forte et dure_. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but _there is absolutely no foundation for the statement that some were burned_.

The revulsion that followed the cessation of the delusion was as marked as was the precipitation that characterised the proceedings. Many of the clergy concerned in the trials offered abject apologies, and Judge Sewall, n.o.blest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities implicated in the madness, stood up on Fast Day before a great congregation in the South Church, Boston, acknowledged his grievous error in accepting ”spectral evidence,” and to the end of his life did penance yearly in the same meeting-house for his part in the transactions.

Not inappropriately the gloomy old house in which the fanatical Corwin had his home is to-day given over to a dealer in antique furniture.

Visitors are freely admitted upon application, and very many in the course of the year go inside to feast their eyes on the ancient wainscoting and timbers. The front door and the overhanging roof are just as in the time of the witches, and from a recessed area at the back, narrow cas.e.m.e.nts and excrescent stairways are still to be seen.

The original house had, however, peaked gables, with pineapples carved in wood surmounting its latticed windows and colossal chimneys that placed it unmistakably in the age of ruffs, Spanish cloaks, and long rapiers.

LADY WENTWORTH OF THE HALL

On one of those pleasant long evenings, when the group of friends that Longfellow represents in his ”Tales of the Wayside Inn” had gathered in the twilight about the cheery open fire of the house at Sudbury to tell each other tales of long ago, we hear best the story of Martha Hilton.

We seem to catch the poet's voice as he says after the legend from the Baltic has been alluringly related by the Musician:

”These tales you tell are, one and all, Of the Old World, Flowers gathered from a crumbling wall, Dead leaves that rustle as they fall; Let me present you in their stead Something of our New England earth; A tale which, though of no great worth, Has still this merit, that it yields A certain freshness of the fields, A sweetness as of home-made bread.”

And then, as the others leaned back to listen, there followed the beautiful ballad which celebrates the fas.h.i.+on in which Martha Hilton, a kitchen maid, became ”Lady Wentworth of the Hall.”

The old Wentworth mansion, where, as a beautiful girl, Martha came, served, and conquered all who knew her, and even once received as her guest the Father of his Country, is still in an admirably preserved state, and the Wayside Inn, rechristened the Red Horse Tavern, still entertains glad guests.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RED HORSE TAVERN, SUDBURY, Ma.s.s.]

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