WEBVTT - S1 – 5: A Higher Power 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:14.000 John Willard was making a name for himself. Unlike most 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.880 of the people in Salem Village, he hadn't been born there. 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:19.400 It was marriage that had brought him to the close 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.720 knit community there west of Salem Town, and that was 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:27.280 his first smart decision. He married into the Wilkins family, 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.280 one of the prominent families in the area. By no 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:32.879 means were the Wilkins on par with the Putnam's, but 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.960 just like them, they chose to live far from Salem 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.720 Town in the western bread basket of the community. Over 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.479 the years, the Wilkins had built a micro village on 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.919 a rise of land everyone called Will's Hill, and they 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:50.600 started to shrug off outsiders. But not John Willard. The 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.200 leader of the clan was an old man named Bray Wilkins. 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.680 Maybe it was the loss of his timber business or 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.040 the government seizure of all his company assets. Whatever the 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.480 nudge was, Bray had become closed off to the outside 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:07.319 world over time. When young Margaret Wilkins married someone from 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.039 outside their community, she was the first to do so. 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.200 But John Willard wasn't going to let that be a hindrance. 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:17.399 He had plans to win them over. He bought property 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.320 near the Wilkins Clan and started into a career in 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.319 land speculation by dividing it into smaller lots and selling 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:26.760 those off. He was trying to do right for his 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.800 wife and new family, to make them proud and keep 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:34.080 up with their ambitions. But not everything was storybook perfect. 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.680 In fact, it seems that John had developed a bit 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:41.120 of a reputation and it was catching up with him. 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.560 Looking back, I wonder if he regretted coming to Salem Village. 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:47.280 There were a lot of reasons why his marriage to 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.320 Margaret was a good thing, but it toppled the first 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.600 domino that set a whole series of events in motion. 0:01:54.280 --> 0:02:00.240 And now on May ten, Willard found himself trying to 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:05.720 escape at all. John Willard, Deputy Constable to Salem Village, 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:40.960 was on the run. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Minky, 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.959 Like I said, John Willard had a bit of baggage. First, 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:52.079 one of John's relatives had been tried for witchcraft back 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.720 in his hometown of Lancaster in western Massachusetts, and that 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.120 sort of thing had a way of following people around. 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.560 As I've said before, the people of Puritan New England 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.040 believe that a person could inherit the spiritual disposition of 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.000 their direct ancestors in the same way that people inherit 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.880 hair color or facial features. This wasn't a good thing 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:16.440 for John at home, though. There was more trouble. John 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.080 was known to beat his wife with a stick whenever 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.119 she crossed him, and during his time in the Wilkins community, 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.560 he had shown that same propensity toward abuse while watching 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.640 over some of the Putnam children. All of those details 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.320 make up a really good list of reasons why John's 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.280 future might not be as bright as he hoped. But 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.000 the real turning point arrived on March eight. That was 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:41.800 the day he was selected to be a deputy constable 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.600 for Salem Village. The rumors of witchcraft had started just 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.240 a month before, so perhaps he was part of an 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.400 effort to bolster the ranks of the village officials. We 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.160 know that John Putnam Jr. Was also sworn in that 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.680 same day, so that's probably the case. They knew they 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.680 were about to become very, very busy. John Willard's role 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:05.000 gave him a front row seat to the mess that 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.320 was unfolding in the village. His name isn't on any 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.280 of the legal documents, but As a deputy constable, he 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.680 would have been responsible for helping Constables Herrick and Locker 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.839 arrest and transport the accused witches, dragging them from their 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.279 homes to the meeting house, and then from jail to 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.000 jail when they were removed from Salem to Boston and 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:28.040 back again. Maybe he was one of the men responsible 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.000 for hauling the six Sarah Osburne from place to place, 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.480 or the elderly Rebecca Nurse. Maybe he was one of 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.800 the men who transported little Dorothy Good, imprisoned as a 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.520 witch at just four years old. No record remains of 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.320 exactly what touched John's heart, but something about it got 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:51.200 to him. There was something about jailing so many vulnerable women, children, elders, 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.680 and respected churchgoers that finally broke through his conscience. What 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.880 he was doing was wrong, and everything about his position 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:01.760 was suddenly filling him with doubt. And one of the 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.719 things he felt the most doubt about was the truth 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.239 of the accusations Annie Putnam and her friends were making. 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.359 On April, he visited Putnam to confront her about the 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.960 accusation she was making. Maybe he thought he could talk 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:20.400 some sense into her, or at least figure out what 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.359 the truth was in the middle of the chaos. Maybe 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.040 he knew something about the girls that the others didn't. 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.440 After all, he'd been a caretaker for the family, he 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:34.760 knew the girl well. His visit backfired, though. The next day, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.279 Annie began to claim that she'd been attacked by his 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.280 spectral shape for days and days, but that she had 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.120 stayed silent about it, hoping that he would stop. When 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.400 she begged him to leave her alone. Everyone seemed to 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.359 take notice of this and began to look into John's 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:53.799 behavior for proof of the accusations. It turns out John 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:58.120 had already stopped serving warrants against accused witches. After his 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:02.119 visit to Annie Putnam, those spurs of suspicion bloomed into 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:06.239 full accusations. In the first week of May, girls all 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:11.160 over Sale and village were attacked by his spirit. When 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.039 he found out about the claims against him, John sped 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.840 to Bray Wilkins house. He was positive the family patriarch, 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:22.080 his wife's own grandfather, would know what to do. Bray 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.040 later recalled that John came to my house greatly troubled, 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.839 desiring me with some other neighbors to pray for him. 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.000 But John caught Bray in the middle of trying to 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.880 leave for a trip, and the older man brushed him off. 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:37.920 A few days later, when the family was having dinner 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.760 together in Boston, John glared at Bray across the table, 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.280 perhaps fueled by what he perceived to be as betrayal, 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.159 but Bray didn't notice. All he remembered from that night 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:53.520 was the pain that suddenly bloomed in his bladder. Later, 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.640 a doctor who examined him said that his affliction was preternatural, 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.640 reminding him of the newest rumors of John Willard. When 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.480 Bray had recovered enough to make the journey home to Salem, 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.680 he arrived to find one of his grandchildren, seventeen year 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.480 old Daniel, laid low by a mysterious illness of his own. 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.640 That was enough evidence for the village. Hawthorne and Corwin 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.280 scribbled out another of their warrants, this time for John Willard. 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.520 No one had formally approached them to request it, but 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.480 the rumors were just too enticing, so they handed the 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.280 slip of paper to John Putnam Jr. Who had been 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:34.200 selected alongside John Willard on March eight. When Putnam arrived 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:37.200 at John Willard's home the next day he found it empty. 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.120 He searched all over Will's Hill, asking from house to 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.800 house for anyone who might know where John had gone, 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:46.720 but no one had a clue. At the end of 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.400 his visit, Putnam left with a clear message from the 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:59.480 Wilkins family, John Willard had fled Salem. I want to 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:01.920 switch is for a bit and talk about a place 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:06.400 that isn't Salem. We've covered the differences between Massachusetts and 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.840 Maine in the previous episode, but there's another colony that's 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:12.280 going to come into play over the course of the trials, 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.920 New York. Today. We picture New York City as a 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:21.400 metropolis unlike any other. It's diverse and textured and full 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:25.640 of countless languages, cultures, and attitudes. It has a powerful 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:28.640 relationship with the waters that surround it, and the people 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.319 who live there have a more international mindset than most 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:36.720 of their fellow Americans. In the late seventeenth century, though, 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.360 it was pretty similar to all of that, and all 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.160 of it seems to be the fault of the Dutch. 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.920 In the early sixteen hundreds, a lot of European powers 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.320 were trying to colonize the New World. Most European countries 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:54.559 tended toward authoritarian monarchies that persecuted religious outliers and expelled 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.480 minority people groups, not the Dutch, though they were a 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.600 different sort of country. The Dutch had discovered that a 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.600 liberal government built around intellectual freedom and tolerance was much 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:10.160 more powerful. They prioritized commerce over religion and welcomed all 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:14.040 of those displaced minority groups into their own population, allowing 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.960 them to reap the benefit of their talents and resources. 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:20.120 It was that sort of attitude that was woven into 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.800 the foundational elements of the New York Colony. Back then, 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:26.800 of course, it was known as New Amsterdam, but things 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:30.280 would begin to change in sixteen sixty seven. That was 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.200 the year the Dutch handed control of the colony over 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.360 to the English and renamed the territory in port after 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.520 the brother of the King, the Duke of York. Goodbye 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:44.360 New Amsterdam, Hello New York. But the English ran things 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.480 very differently. Thanks to the English Civil War in the 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.480 sixteen forties, the Crown lacked the funds to embark on 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:55.040 proper royal colonies. Instead intended to give those opportunities to 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:59.800 private companies founded by merchants and wealthy aristocrats with royal 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.960 over site. Of course, that's why the Puritans of Massachusetts 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:06.600 were able to do what they did. They received a 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.080 commercial charter from the English government prior to the Civil War, 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.400 and then all of the leaders of that company transplanted 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.560 themselves overseas to live right in the middle of their investment. 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:21.040 It was economic cover for a deeply religious experiment to 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.920 live an unobstructed Puritan life far from the watchful eye 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:29.840 of the King. New York didn't have that purposeful beginning. 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.319 When the English took control in sixteen sixty seven, they 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:35.320 had to send troops into the city to help it 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.720 go smoothly. The Dutch had attracted a very diverse and 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.400 liberal community there, and they chafed under the English yoke. 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:46.120 The early governors of the colony even refused English shipping 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.439 companies in favor of their old Dutch partners. It was 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.440 a mess, and England felt like it was losing control. 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.800 Massachusetts sent troops and supplies to help out in an 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.240 effort to seem like a team player, but their time 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.720 was running out. After the devastation of King Philip's War 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.480 and the related conflict up and down the main coast, 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:09.560 England decided enough was enough. The old way of running 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:14.160 things was no longer working. In sixteen seventy nine, the 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.680 Crown took New Hampshire away from the Massachusetts colony and 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:21.440 issued them a new royal charter. Five years later, in 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.839 sixteen eighty four, Massachusetts saw their own charter revoked, leaving 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.640 them in a lawless chaos. Less than a year after that, 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:32.920 King Charles the Second died before law and order could 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.640 be restored. To help calm the colonies, Edmund Andros was 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:41.520 sent to set up English military rule. Here's historian Emerson Baker. 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:44.760 He was an Anglican with a Church of England, and 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:48.440 Puritanism no longer was special. Massachusetts was no longer special. 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:50.600 It was part of a super colony for stretch from 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:54.559 New Jersey to Maine. Andros wasn't a well loved governor. 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.600 He had previously been governor of New York and was 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:03.320 very outspoken against Puritans. He raised taxes, revoked Puritan laws, 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.800 and appointed his own judges and sheriffs. The worst blow, however, 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.800 came when Andros forced landowners to essentially re buy their 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.920 land from the Crown. The result was deep organized resistance. 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:21.480 On April eighteenth of sixteen eighty nine, hundreds of armed 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:25.640 Puritans flooded into Boston and captured Andros and his cadre 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.080 of loyal officers. All of them were thrown into prison, 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.640 and a new provisional government was set up on the 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.839 foundation of the old Charter and Puritan law. It left 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.360 Massachusetts defend for itself once again, and with the threat 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.160 of the Native American attacks on the northern border, it 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.400 wouldn't be an easy task. But there was a new 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:48.760 star rising in the Puritan sky. He was a son 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.600 of Maine, a Puritan sympathizer, and a man willing to 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:57.040 fight for a good cause. Folks, I'd like to introduce 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:06.360 you to Sir William Phipps. William Phipps had the sort 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:10.040 of upbringing that any hard working American today might connect with. 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.840 We don't like the silver spoon elitists who don't have 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.040 to work hard for their rewards. We want the scrapper, 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.840 the fighter, the one who was going to scramble to 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.160 the top of the pile. And William Phipps seems to 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:27.800 fit that bill, at least at first Blush He was 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:30.800 born on the coast of northern Maine around sixteen fifty 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:34.679 two frontier parents. His father used the family home as 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.640 a sort of hub for trading goods with the Native Americans, 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:41.000 but passed away when William was just four. When his 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.480 mother remarried, it was to his father's business partner, which 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.200 consolidated what little wealth they had, and then life carried on. 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:51.960 There were a lot of factors that might have helped 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.120 Phipps become the man history knows him as being when 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.080 of fourteen children taught him to fight for himself, and 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.800 working hard on the edge of the frontier taught him 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.600 that survival was much more important than social politeness. But 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.720 every character trait can become a flaw if you twist 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:10.920 it hard enough. At the age of eighteen, he quit 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.920 his job as a shepherd and became an apprentice to 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.840 a group of local shipbuilders. Shipbuilders who made frequent trips 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.640 to Boston, which allowed him to rub shoulders with the 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:24.320 sort of wealthy people who ran merchant companies. It's also 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.760 how he met a Puritan minister named Increase Mather, a 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:32.720 man roughly a decade his senior. William married into a 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:36.120 successful merchant family and then proceeded to try his hand 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.600 running his own business as a shipbuilder. It turns out 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.280 he wasn't the best business man out there, and he 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.840 never really achieved the level of success he aspired to. 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.600 In fact, he was better at achieving debts and failures, 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:50.880 much to the frustration of the people he dealt with. 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:55.080 It's important to stop for a moment and call attention 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.160 to one of his flaws. Phipps, it turns out, was 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:00.440 much more of a man of passion and a man 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.320 of learning. He wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination, 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.880 but he also wasn't educated and that sort of rubbed 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.720 off in his business dealings. He was known as a 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:14.280 rough talker who used abusive language like a weapon to 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:18.880 demean and intimidate others, and he was a fortune seeker 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.400 in fact. In Sight three, he managed to raise enough 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:25.040 money in England to go on a literal treasure hunt 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.480 in the Caribbean, which failed, but somehow the fact that 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.200 he survived the trip earned him enough attention to get 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.040 a second round of funding. That new, better equipped expedition 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.160 paid off, and he returned home with thirty tons of silver. 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.440 In return, he was given the honor of knighthood. When 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.360 he was ready to head back to Massachusetts, he expected 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.320 that Governor Andros would welcome him with open arms as 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:50.920 some sort of hero and give him a lofty position 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:55.600 in the government, but instead Androws turned him away. Months later, though, 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.440 Andros was in a prison cell and the Puritans had 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.880 retaken control of the colony, so Phipps offered his help 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.440 in their efforts against the Native Americans to the north. 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:07.920 The next two years were a bit of a blur. 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.520 Phipps led a small attack against French troops at Port 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:15.000 Royal Way up in modern day Nova Scotia. They found 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.880 the fourth there mostly unmanned and under extensive repairs, so 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.760 their victory was incredibly easy. Phipps returned to Boston as 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:25.760 a hero, and they rewarded him by sending him out 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.400 to do it again. There was a major attack going 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.000 on at the English settlement of Falmouth up in Maine. 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.520 Everyone gathered in New York for a large multi colony 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.280 gathering and insisted that they pushed back and end the 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.440 struggle with New France for good, and they put Phips 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:45.800 in charge. It looked impressive. Phipps had gathered over thirty 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.800 ships and more than two thousand fighting men, but he 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.880 also took his time doing so, wasting the better part 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:54.640 of two months. At one point he sent one of 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:58.320 his officers, Captain John Alden, over to marble Head, just 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.640 up the coast from Salem Town, to take their cannons 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.919 for use in the battle. But marble Head refused. Here's 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:09.440 Emerson Baker once again. This takes place, and they lead 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:12.840 in the fall of but for numerous reasons, a bad weather, 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:17.120 poor planning, frankly the fortifications of Quebec. It fails disastrously. 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:20.280 They lose hundreds of men. They bring back smallpox with 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.680 him into the harbor. When they arrived, they talk about 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.600 frozen dead being stacked on the ships like cordwood, and 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:29.200 they lose hundreds of people. And of course, since Phipps 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.000 was the man in charge of the entire operation, he 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.120 was looked on as a failure to deal with it. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.720 He's skipped down. In fact, he was so embarrassed that 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.639 he sailed back across the Atlantic to London, where his 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.919 good friend Increase Mather was currently working to get the 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:49.640 old Massachusetts charter restored by the King. Phipps arrival, whether 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:51.680 or not it was born on the wings of failure, 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:55.639 gave Mather an idea. What if Phipps a man he 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.800 considered to be a friend could be appointed governor by 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:03.000 the King. An ally he would be, so that's what 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.600 they pushed for. Mather ditched over two years of diplomatic 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.359 efforts to restore the old Puritan charter and instead seemed 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.199 to have made a new deal, a new charter that 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.480 was favorable to royal control, in exchange for Phipps in 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:20.960 the governor's house. But of course that meant returning to Boston. 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.760 Bipps loved the idea of being governor, but hated the 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:27.960 thought of facing all of those angry colonists. He had 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.440 already disappointed them once before with the failed Quebec incidents. 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:34.040 Now he was bringing them a charter that was the 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.400 opposite of what they wanted. That's probably all he thought 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:41.680 about on that long journey back. By the time his 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:44.480 ship was pulling into Boston Harbor on May fourteenth of 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:49.240 six he had a plan. It wasn't honest, and it 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:52.680 certainly wasn't legal, but he knew how he was going 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.119 to prevent the crowds from showing him the same hospitality 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:00.280 they extended to Edmund andros. He was going to lie 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:11.200 to them. The arrival of increase Mather with a new 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:14.439 charter was seen as good news in Boston, but of 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.639 course they didn't know what that charter said yet. That 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:20.240 was a bitter pill that needed a lot of sugarcoating 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.840 and lies to go down smoothly. So Phipps stood before 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:27.080 a massive crowd the night he returned and did just that. 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.880 This new charter, he told them, would restore the old 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:35.160 laws and freedoms that they had enjoyed under the first Charter. 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.000 It was what the crowd wanted to hear, and it 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.960 made him a hero for bringing that news to them. 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.159 But I can't help but wonder if Phipps cast a 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.120 knowing glance at Mather, because both of them knew how 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:50.639 patently false that promise was. In fact, the new Charter 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:53.960 required new laws to be established that matched English laws 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.240 back home. It would take them a while to get 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.000 things set up, sure, but when he was done, the 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:03.800 Puritan experiment in New England would essentially be over. Massachusetts 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:08.639 would become just one more royal colony. And Phipps needed 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:11.760 this to work. He had his own plans and goals 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.520 for his time in office, but that meant staying in 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.399 office to see them through. Here's Emerson Baker once again, 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:21.760 this is a guy that has no political experience whatsoever. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:24.439 He's pretty good at commanding a ship, but he's one 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.320 of these fortune seekers, and frankly, one off one of 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:28.959 his big personal goals would have been to make as 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.639 much money off the office as possible. He's all about 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:35.000 personal profit and advancement, and if you can cut a 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:37.000 side deal, he can. When he goes to make a 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:39.600 treaty with the Native Americans up at Pemaquid the end 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.320 of the war, he also manages to get the leading 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.800 stage him of Maine, Madakawando, to deed him several thousand 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.119 acres of mainland as a part of the treaty. The 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:52.600 same evening that Phipps arrived in Boston, Mercy Lewis and 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.480 a companion visited Will's Hill, where Bray Wilkins still suffered 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.880 enormous pain in his bladder and where young Daniel had 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:05.280 fallen into paralysis without hesitation. Mercy identified the specter of 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:10.680 John Willard afflicting them both. Two days later, Daniel would 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.040 suffocate to death in his own bed. Mercy Lewis and 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.159 Mary Walcott would report that they'd both seen John Willard 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.000 choke him, though of course no one else could see 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:23.320 anything but the dying boy, grasping for air until he 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:27.320 was finally still. Samuel Paris would record the boy's cause 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:30.680 of death in his church records as bewitched to death. 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:34.880 The man hunt for Willard picked up steam after that. 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:37.720 Now he was a murderer as well as a witch. 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.439 A new warrant was issued that authorized anyone in or 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:44.760 out of Salem to bring the former constable into custody, 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.280 and with it word of his evil deeds spread far 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:52.280 and wide. John Willard's goal had been to escape to 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.840 the more liberal and irreligious New York, but he apparently 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.240 took a detour along the way before heading south. He 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:02.280 headed west, making his way out to his family land 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.439 in Lancaster along the Nashua River. He apparently had the 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.200 bright idea to till the family land there and plant 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:10.840 the crops so that he could return when everything had 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:14.040 blown over and have a harvest waiting for him. So 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.640 the records about his capture have this head scratching detail 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:22.000 written in Willard They say was captured while howeing his 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:26.679 field that was May sixt The constables who found him 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:28.639 put him on a horse and guided him back to 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.240 Salem that very night in anticipation of his examination the 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:35.400 following day, But when they arrived there were already too 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:39.760 many people listed for examinations on so Willard would have 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:44.280 to wait in jail for another day. As part of 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.800 Willard's examination, a coroner's jury looked over the body of 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:52.680 Daniel Wilkins, including Nathaniel Ingersoll, Joseph Herrick, and a handful 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:56.119 of the Putnam clan. They reported finding a collection of 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:59.520 bruises on the boy's back, along with cuts and puncture 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:02.919 marks all over his body. In fact, it almost seemed 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:06.040 as if someone had pierced Daniel with an all and 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.600 when they rolled the body onto its front, they noted 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:13.399 that blood flowed freely from the boy's mouth. This horrifying 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:16.240 condition compelled these men to declare that he'd been the 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:20.480 victim of violent and malicious witchcraft. Given what the Wilkins 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:23.919 family knew about John's violent tendencies against his own wife, 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:27.399 it seemed all too clear that this could be his handiwork. 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.359 As a result, John was restrained with shackles to stop 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:34.200 him from attacking the afflicted girls in the room, who 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:38.600 screamed that his specter was torturing them. Oh, and when 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:42.240 the chains clanked onto John's legs, they say old Bray 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:45.840 Wilkins was suddenly relieved of the piercing pain in his abdomen. 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:51.280 That you were fled from authority is an acknowledgement of guilt, 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:55.600 Hawthorne declared. In other words, John Willard had made his 0:23:55.640 --> 0:24:01.919 confession through his actions. The previous afternoon in Boston was 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.440 devoted to other matters, though, Phipps and the Council devoted 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:08.359 their time to the ordering of the Massachusetts Militia and 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:11.720 the naval fleet. They also ordered a public fast for 0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:14.760 May twenty six so that everyone in the colony could 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:17.960 devote time to prayer for the new government. The next 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:20.480 few days after that were taken up with an emergency 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:23.800 as three French privateers rated up and down the coast. 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:27.399 Time was slipping away from Phipps and it was starting 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:30.040