Speaker 1: When Governor William Phipps arrived in Boston Harbor on September,
Speaker 1: he discovered a fire. Not a real fire, mind you,
Speaker 1: but a metaphorical one that threatened to burn his colony
Speaker 1: to the ground. Nonetheless, yes he knew that there had
Speaker 1: been sparks, and yes he knew that there was plenty
Speaker 1: of kindling, but somehow I doubt he expected it to
Speaker 1: burn as hot and deadly as it had. He had
Speaker 1: left Massachusetts in early August for a trip up the
Speaker 1: coast to visit the main frontier. He was gone until
Speaker 1: September two, when he returned to take a few meetings
Speaker 1: in Boston before heading up again on September for another
Speaker 1: eleven days. Then, I know what you're thinking. With Salem
Speaker 1: and the surrounding area consumed with accusations of witchcraft, accusations
Speaker 1: that were maturing into convictions and executions, what in the
Speaker 1: world could have been more important land, specifically his land. Remember,
Speaker 1: before being knighted by the King of England for his
Speaker 1: treasure hunting expedition, and before moving to Boston to rub
Speaker 1: shoulders with the wealthy merchants, Phipps had been a shipbuilder
Speaker 1: from Maine. So while every single person in the colony
Speaker 1: had a bit of skin in the game when it
Speaker 1: came to the conflict with the Native Americans and their
Speaker 1: French allies to the north. All of those battles were
Speaker 1: personal for Phipps. During part of his trip, he was
Speaker 1: up in Pemmaquad, near modern day Bristol, Maine, to oversee
Speaker 1: a huge shipment of masts to be sent back to
Speaker 1: England for the Royal Navy's shipwrights, but he used his
Speaker 1: time there to set his militia forces loose on the
Speaker 1: local Native Americans in retaliation for their recent raids on
Speaker 1: colonial lands. He also oversaw the construction of Fort William Henry,
Speaker 1: a military base with stone walls measuring twenty nine feet
Speaker 1: high and six ft thick, with twenty eight gun ports
Speaker 1: facing the Atlantic Ocean. It was something that could have
Speaker 1: easily been built without his supervision, but it just happened
Speaker 1: to be located near his old home village, where friends
Speaker 1: and relatives still struggled to keep a foothold in hostile territory. Phipps,
Speaker 1: always one to chase after self interest, was using his
Speaker 1: position as leader of the colony to secure his own
Speaker 1: property and increase his own fortunes. Back in Boston, though,
Speaker 1: he discovered a world that had gotten out of hand,
Speaker 1: endless examinations, an ongoing Oyer and Terminer trial, and more
Speaker 1: than a dozen executions. And as that storm continued to
Speaker 1: swirl and captured debris, a pattern was forming. By connecting
Speaker 1: the dots, most people could predict who would be accused
Speaker 1: of witchcraft and who wouldn't. If you had a relative
Speaker 1: accused of being a witch, either a contemporary or in
Speaker 1: the past, you were a good candidate for accusations. If
Speaker 1: you had been in contact with the French and Native Americans,
Speaker 1: you were even more of a target. And if you
Speaker 1: defended someone who was already accused, you were likely to
Speaker 1: draw the spotlight on yourself. So when Phipps returned home,
Speaker 1: it was to a personal emergency. Word had begun to
Speaker 1: spread about a woman who had ties to a former accused,
Speaker 1: which who kept a Native American slave in her house,
Speaker 1: and who helped at least one already jailed, which escaped
Speaker 1: to freedom. Under most circumstances, that would have meant that
Speaker 1: a warrant would be quickly drawn up and the woman
Speaker 1: would be arrested. But that's where it got tricky, because
Speaker 1: this new suspect hit a bit too close to home,
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively for phipps own good. This suspect, you see,
Speaker 1: was his own wife. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky.
Speaker 1: Family troubles weren't the only challenges that Phipps was facing.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the main reasons he might have
Speaker 1: been spending so much time away from Boston in the
Speaker 1: early days of his governorship is because the work was
Speaker 1: just too difficult, and that wasn't entirely his fault. Remember,
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Bay Colony had their original charter taken away
Speaker 1: from them by the new English king. In the decades
Speaker 1: that they had relied on that charter, a whole catalog
Speaker 1: of home grown laws had sprung up around it that
Speaker 1: were mostly unique to the colony. But when the Crown
Speaker 1: issued a new charter, it came with specific instructions to
Speaker 1: set up a brand new framework that aligned with English law.
Speaker 1: I imagine that was fine for a lot of topics,
Speaker 1: but Phipps had a particular rock in his shoe from
Speaker 1: the start the witchcraft trials in Salem because they were
Speaker 1: touching on something very sensitive and at first blush incredibly boring.
Speaker 1: Forfeiture of property. So buckle up, We're about to get
Speaker 1: legal for a moment. Oh boy. Under English law, if
Speaker 1: you were convicted of a felony, say witchcraft, for example,
Speaker 1: the consequences had roots in the old feudal system of
Speaker 1: land ownership. Your land and other personal property would be
Speaker 1: taken away and given to the Crown, who could then
Speaker 1: keep it for themselves or redistribute it to others. In
Speaker 1: Massachusetts in the years leading up to the beginning of
Speaker 1: the witch Craft trials, though, that practice had gone away
Speaker 1: until the new Charter. That is because if Phipps was
Speaker 1: going to realign the colonies laws with the Crowns laws,
Speaker 1: that meant bringing back forfeiture. As you can imagine, some
Speaker 1: people were opposed to this, namely the people who stood
Speaker 1: to have their property taken away, and those who supported it, well,
Speaker 1: they were the ones who were about to benefit from it.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a couple of examples. Sheriff George
Speaker 1: Corwin was the man presiding over the executions, transporting the
Speaker 1: convicted witches to the gallows and carrying out their sentences.
Speaker 1: But he was more than a hangman. He was an
Speaker 1: officer of the crown with a full authority of the
Speaker 1: government behind him, and apparently he was a bit greedy.
Speaker 1: The day after Giles Corey was pressed to death, it
Speaker 1: was George Corwin who went to the Corey household and
Speaker 1: seized his property. Now, some people look at the seizure
Speaker 1: as a way to earn back the money it costs
Speaker 1: to house and feed Giles and Martha in jail for
Speaker 1: all those months. It certainly makes sense, but George Corwin
Speaker 1: did other things that cast doubt on that theory. For example,
Speaker 1: he and his deputies wrote out to the farms of
Speaker 1: John and Elizabeth Procter, the Wardwells, and the Jacob's family.
Speaker 1: At each stop he confiscated their goods and property and
Speaker 1: carted it off. He even did this to the sizeable
Speaker 1: estate of Mary and Philip English, one of the richest
Speaker 1: couples in the colony, at the Proctor's tavern. Corwin was ruthless.
Speaker 1: They hadn't even been connected yet before he arrived to
Speaker 1: take everything away. He took their cattle, selling some at
Speaker 1: a discount to make a quick sale while butchering the rest.
Speaker 1: He dumped out their beer and soup supplies and carted
Speaker 1: off with the pots and barrels. He took everything. It
Speaker 1: didn't matter that John and Elizabeth's young children still lived there.
Speaker 1: As Robert Caliph wrote, they were left to the mercy
Speaker 1: of the wilderness. There's also a vidence that Sheriff Corwin
Speaker 1: took money in exchange for leaving property alone. If you recall,
Speaker 1: Bridget Bishop was the first person to be formerly executed,
Speaker 1: and her stepson Edward, along with his wife Sarah, were
Speaker 1: also in jail. When Corwin wrote out to their tavern
Speaker 1: in Salem Town and began to load up his cart
Speaker 1: with everything he could find. Edward's son Samuel, showed up
Speaker 1: and offered to pay the sheriff ten pounds to leave
Speaker 1: it all behind. It was the equivalent of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars in modern American currency, and Sheriff Corwin should probably
Speaker 1: had handed it over to the crown and walked away. Instead,
Speaker 1: he wrote Samuel a receipt that simply read a valuable
Speaker 1: sum of money. If that wasn't the perfect set up
Speaker 1: for embezzlement, I'm not sure what is. The seizure of
Speaker 1: property didn't happen all the time, though, then that's because
Speaker 1: of how property laws worked In English law men could
Speaker 1: own property, as could single women. But once a woman
Speaker 1: married a man, all of her assets became his property,
Speaker 1: not hers. Many of the women who were accused and
Speaker 1: convicted never experienced the loss of their property because it
Speaker 1: didn't legally belong to them, but there were a number
Speaker 1: of them that did. Here's Jane Kaminsky, professor of history
Speaker 1: at Harvard University. Another scholar, Carol Carlson out of University
Speaker 1: of Michigan, found that a significant number of suspects in
Speaker 1: New England witchcraft cases were women who had unusually direct
Speaker 1: lines to property holding, either because they didn't have living husbands,
Speaker 1: or they didn't have sons, or they didn't have brothers.
Speaker 1: Some unusually direct relationship to property and land. When we
Speaker 1: do see it, it's because the husband was also convicted,
Speaker 1: or the woman was a widow who took possession of
Speaker 1: her husband's assets after he passed away. And Sheriff Corwin
Speaker 1: knew these rules all too well. In fact, after George
Speaker 1: Jacobs had been arrested, Corwin paid his wife a visit
Speaker 1: and took her wedding ring, which by English law belonged
Speaker 1: to George and not her. This is a lot of
Speaker 1: legal stuff, I know, but it was an attack on
Speaker 1: the foundation of society inside the colony. There these people
Speaker 1: were second or third generation settlers whose ancestors had brought
Speaker 1: everything with them and then handed it down to support
Speaker 1: the next generation in the new world. That's why the
Speaker 1: colony did away with the forfeiture laws in the first place. Now, though,
Speaker 1: that was all changing, and this was the mess that
Speaker 1: Phipps discovered when he returned from Maine. People were having
Speaker 1: their land and property ripped out of their hands seemingly
Speaker 1: left and right, and the community was beginning to rumble
Speaker 1: with discontent, and so word was spreading about it. So
Speaker 1: Phipps did something to stop it all. No, not the
Speaker 1: seizure of property, but the spreading of the news. He
Speaker 1: declared an embargo on the public writing about the trials
Speaker 1: in their entirety, for bidding anyone from publishing news or
Speaker 1: information about what was happening. Phipps, the rough spoken gold
Speaker 1: digger who preferred victory lapse to actually doing work, declared
Speaker 1: the press to be illegitimate and shut it down. But
Speaker 1: as everyone knows, you can't stop the signal. Local news
Speaker 1: is a lot like water. You can seal your house,
Speaker 1: but it's still going to find a way inside. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Phips might have placed a ban on writing about the
Speaker 1: events in Salem, but that didn't mean it was going
Speaker 1: to work. And ironically, one of the biggest works on
Speaker 1: the witchcraft trials was being written at that very moment
Speaker 1: by his good friend Cotton Mother. Months earlier, in June,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the local clergy had gathered together to
Speaker 1: write a document that was meant to urge Stowton, Hawthorne
Speaker 1: and the other magistrates to exercise caution in the coming trials.
Speaker 1: They used Christie in scripture to build their case and
Speaker 1: then gave the actual writing over to cotton Mother because
Speaker 1: he was the popular favorite. When it was completed, they
Speaker 1: titled the work The Return of Several Ministers. Stoughton misread it, though,
Speaker 1: Where the collection of ministers meant to offer the theology
Speaker 1: behind their warnings, Stoughton saw theology that backed up his
Speaker 1: own agenda, and of course it didn't help the Cotton
Speaker 1: Mather was a bit of a people pleaser, so it
Speaker 1: was easy to misinterpret his soft, flowery language. The end
Speaker 1: result was that rather than feel scolded by the ministers,
Speaker 1: the judges all felt as if Mather was on their side,
Speaker 1: so as the Oyer and termin or trial and all
Speaker 1: of the fallout around it began to turn into a
Speaker 1: sort of pr nightmare. The judges decided to work with
Speaker 1: Mather on writing a book in their defense. On September
Speaker 1: twenty two, just one day after the most recent group
Speaker 1: of executions, Cotton Mather was invited over to the home
Speaker 1: of Judge Samuel's Will to discuss the project. Also in
Speaker 1: attendance were Samuel's brother Stephen, who worked as the clerk
Speaker 1: of the court for the trial, as well as William Stowton,
Speaker 1: John Hawthorne, and senior Salem town minister John Higginson, whose
Speaker 1: son was now one of the judges. Their purpose to
Speaker 1: defend themselves from accusations of mishandling the trials. They would
Speaker 1: provide Mather with all the court documents he would need
Speaker 1: to mount their defense, covering the challenges faced by the court,
Speaker 1: as well as the multitude of suspects and descriptions of
Speaker 1: the supernatural evidence that they had to sift through. Here's
Speaker 1: historian Maryland k Roach. He at this point still assumes
Speaker 1: that they had been proceeding correctly, and maybe he thinks
Speaker 1: he needs to make more excuses for how things had gone.
Speaker 1: So it kind of supports the view that they had
Speaker 1: proceeded as best they could. It did nothing for his
Speaker 1: reputation thereafter, and it kind of ties him with that,
Speaker 1: even though he did say at the beginning, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: really use spectral evidence, and he had a lot of
Speaker 1: all the good things that he did, But that wasn't
Speaker 1: very unfortunate when all of the book is a good
Speaker 1: source of what people were saying in views of the trials,
Speaker 1: and there's some anecdotes and they aren't in the existing papers.
Speaker 1: By early October, Cotton Mather was working furiously on the book.
Speaker 1: He began by grabbing the text from a series of
Speaker 1: sermons he had given over the summer on the topic
Speaker 1: of supernatural and spiritual matters. The most popular of them
Speaker 1: had been a sermon he called a Discourse of the
Speaker 1: Wonders of the Invisible World, so popular that he pulled
Speaker 1: the new book's title right from it. As he finished
Speaker 1: each chapter, he would rush it off to the printer
Speaker 1: to be typeset, not wanting to waste any time. Interwoven
Speaker 1: within the republished sermons were arguments in support of the
Speaker 1: judges and their trial. He even used quotes from actual
Speaker 1: court records, words spoken by the judges and the accused
Speaker 1: is alike to support his arguments. Of course, he also
Speaker 1: skipped all the quotes that countered his points, but who
Speaker 1: among the common folk would know that right? It was
Speaker 1: looking back an unapologetic work of propaganda. His main argument
Speaker 1: was essentially this, there was a military government within the
Speaker 1: forces of the Devil. He even compared their ranks to
Speaker 1: the French cavalry, and these military like forces desired to
Speaker 1: overrun the colony and the Church. Not one to shy
Speaker 1: away from dramatic language, Mather declared that the Devil in
Speaker 1: Great Wrath has made a prodigious descent on our poor
Speaker 1: New England. His biggest piece of evidence that this conflict
Speaker 1: was taking place was the spectral evidence. You know, the
Speaker 1: stories of an accused which visiting one of the afflicted
Speaker 1: in their homes at night, hovering above their beds and
Speaker 1: tormenting them. Visions of Martha Corey demanding that someone signed
Speaker 1: the Devil's book, or tales of the spectral version of
Speaker 1: a witch physically attacking an innocent victim. Mather's argument was simple,
Speaker 1: how can we even note to go looking for other
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence if we dismissed the spectral tales. These
Speaker 1: supernatural stories, according to Mather, help them to notice the
Speaker 1: people who deserve more investigation. In other words, the ends
Speaker 1: entirely justified the means, so please, let's not attack the means,
Speaker 1: however unusual and unfair they might appear. What's interesting to note, though,
Speaker 1: is that for as much as Cotton Mather had essentially
Speaker 1: become the pr director for the witch trials in Salem,
Speaker 1: he was out of step with the majority of clergy
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. Sure, he was a well respected religious leader
Speaker 1: working hard to make sure the Puritan mission was represented
Speaker 1: in the new government, but on this matter he was
Speaker 1: in the minority. So it shouldn't come as a surprise
Speaker 1: that he was opposed by other vocal ministers. While Cotton
Speaker 1: Mather was discussing the correct way to navigate spectral evidence
Speaker 1: within the court, other religious leaders were building a case
Speaker 1: to oppose him, and they were led by someone that
Speaker 1: Cotton thought he could trust, his father, Increase Mather. We
Speaker 1: need to pause for a second and play catch up.
Speaker 1: Over the last ten episodes, I've told you about a
Speaker 1: lot of arrests and examinations, about the evidence presented and
Speaker 1: the trials that judged them. Each of them are slightly
Speaker 1: different from the last, and no two cases follow the
Speaker 1: same path. So I want to try and illustrate something
Speaker 1: for you. To convict a person on the charge of
Speaker 1: witchcraft in Salem, in just like our court system today,
Speaker 1: you had to prove that the person was guilty. Obviously,
Speaker 1: someone had to begin the process by accusing someone else
Speaker 1: and calling them a witch. If the accusation was serious enough,
Speaker 1: they would be arrested and brought in for examination. And
Speaker 1: that's where things got tricky. We can look back after
Speaker 1: three twenty six years and understand why the magistrates were
Speaker 1: being asked to believe supernatural stories and take them as proof.
Speaker 1: So they administered tests, some of which we've covered already.
Speaker 1: They might have the person's body searched for, which is
Speaker 1: marks those unnatural teats used to suckle the devil's minions.
Speaker 1: They might listen to the stories of the afflicted, who
Speaker 1: would describe being attacked by the person's spectral form. They
Speaker 1: would also rely on something called the touch test, where
Speaker 1: the accused, which would be brought into the same room
Speaker 1: as one of the afflicted girls during one of her
Speaker 1: fits and instructed to touch her. If the touch of
Speaker 1: the accused stopped the seizure, then they were truly a witch.
Speaker 1: But I think you can see the problem with something
Speaker 1: like that. If the afflicted person had simply made up
Speaker 1: the stories to hurt another person, they can just as
Speaker 1: easily fake the seizure and then stop when the accused
Speaker 1: person touches them, And since it's all happening in a courtroom,
Speaker 1: the judges would accept it as perfectly legitimate evidence. After that,
Speaker 1: the trial would go one of two ways. Either the
Speaker 1: accused which would deny all of the charges and put
Speaker 1: up a legal fight, or they would cave in, admit
Speaker 1: to being a witch and then name a bunch of
Speaker 1: other people in an effort to save themselves. Those new
Speaker 1: accused people would be arrested and the process would start
Speaker 1: all over again. So as Cotton Mather was publishing his
Speaker 1: book of justification for that broken system, his father was
Speaker 1: working on something of his own. Increase. Mather was the
Speaker 1: man who traveled to England with Sir William Phipps to
Speaker 1: bring back the new Charter. He had the ear of
Speaker 1: the governor, decades of experience, and a lot more wisdom
Speaker 1: and patience than his son Cotton, and he used all
Speaker 1: of that to craft his own book. It was called
Speaker 1: Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, personating men, witchcrafts, infallible
Speaker 1: proofs of guilt in such as are accused with that crime.
Speaker 1: That's a mouthful, I know, which is why most historians
Speaker 1: today just call it Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits.
Speaker 1: And the book directly attacked the Court's view of spectral
Speaker 1: evidence and therefore his son's support of it. Increase Mather
Speaker 1: wrote about how the touch test was flawed. The afflicted person,
Speaker 1: the one having the seizure or the fit, should be blindfolded,
Speaker 1: so that the anonymous touch alone would be the test.
Speaker 1: He cited an event in and Over on September seven
Speaker 1: where a group touched test was carried out, although in
Speaker 1: that one they blindfolded the accused, not the afflicted. It was,
Speaker 1: according to him, a flawed measure of guilt. Then there
Speaker 1: was the basic notion that the Court was literally accusing
Speaker 1: people of supernaw natural crimes by using supernatural tests to
Speaker 1: judge them. It was hypocritical and wrong and easily manipulated
Speaker 1: by those in power. According to Increase Mather, these tests
Speaker 1: were invented by the devil so that innocent persons might
Speaker 1: be condemned and some notorious witches escape. His last attack
Speaker 1: on the views of the court was regarding confession. If
Speaker 1: an accused witch nodded her head and declared, yes, I
Speaker 1: am in fact a witch, and then named a dozen
Speaker 1: others to make herself valuable and ward off her execution,
Speaker 1: the court would go and arrest all of those new people.
Speaker 1: Increase Mather, however, pointed out how ludicrous that notion was.
Speaker 1: If someone had given themselves up to the devil, the
Speaker 1: legendary father of lies, then how can we possibly trust
Speaker 1: a single word that came out of their mouth? If
Speaker 1: they identify a dozen other witches, why in the world
Speaker 1: should anyone believe them? It was, according to him, him insanity.
Speaker 1: On October three, a group of ministers gathered at Harvard
Speaker 1: to read Increase Mather's new book out loud. Increase wasn't there,
Speaker 1: but his son Cotton was, and I can't help but
Speaker 1: imagine that it was just a little bit awkward for him.
Speaker 1: Another of the ministers there was Samuel Willard, who we've
Speaker 1: heard a lot about so far. Not only was he
Speaker 1: the minister of the church where Captain John Alden and
Speaker 1: Mary and Philip English attended, he had also increasingly become
Speaker 1: more and more opposed to the direction and methods of
Speaker 1: the trial. As a sign of support, Willard wrote an
Speaker 1: introductory essay for increase Mather's book. All of the ministers
Speaker 1: there at Harvard that day signed their names to the
Speaker 1: essay to show their agreement. All of them, that is,
Speaker 1: except Cotton Mother. Increase Mather wasn't alone in his descent.
Speaker 1: Despite the muzzle that Governor Phipps tried to put on
Speaker 1: the press, more and more people began to speak out
Speaker 1: about the trials. Yes, some people still believe the witchcraft
Speaker 1: was a disease threatening to destroy the Puritan mission, but
Speaker 1: there was a growing majority who felt that the real
Speaker 1: disease was actually the trial. Some of the more outspoken
Speaker 1: voices came from wealthy Boston businessmen. They circulated statements and
Speaker 1: letters in an attempt to sway public opinion, and chief
Speaker 1: among them was a young man named Thomas Brattle, a
Speaker 1: member of Samuel Willard's Third Church of Boston and part
Speaker 1: of a well established Boston family. And this guy was smart.
Speaker 1: Four years prior to the Sale and witch trials, he
Speaker 1: and Judge Samuel Sewell had traveled together on a one
Speaker 1: year tour of England. They were marginal players in the
Speaker 1: process to restore the old Massachusetts Colony charter, but Brattle
Speaker 1: also had a deep interest in the scientific community that
Speaker 1: was growing back in London. Brattle had a passionate interest
Speaker 1: in a lot of areas of science, including mathematics, architecture,
Speaker 1: and astronomy. While he and Sewell were in London, he
Speaker 1: dragged his friend to all sorts of enlightening events and locations.
Speaker 1: They attended concerts together, visited the Royal Navy rope yards
Speaker 1: to see the trade in action, and even went swimming
Speaker 1: in the Thames. And from everything I've read, Brattle would
Speaker 1: have been an avid Instagram user today. He absolutely loved
Speaker 1: to make detailed architectural surveys of the buildings he visited,
Speaker 1: spending hours measuring them and recording accurate drawings to share
Speaker 1: with his friends back home. There's even a story of
Speaker 1: Brattle visiting Versailles in France on another trip and pouring
Speaker 1: over the palace there with such attention that one of
Speaker 1: the guards accused him of being a spy. Brattle and
Speaker 1: Sewell were in London in six eighty nine when King
Speaker 1: William's War was declared by the Crown. They were there
Speaker 1: when London received word of the coup that overthrew Massachusetts
Speaker 1: governor Androws. They were there as the efforts to restore
Speaker 1: their colony to its old Puritan charter were derailed. But
Speaker 1: it was also productive for Brattle. By the time they
Speaker 1: sailed home in September of sixty nine, he had been
Speaker 1: awarded entrance to the Royal Society, the most prestigious scientific
Speaker 1: community in England. Samuel Sewell wasn't just a quiet observer, though.
Speaker 1: He took things in and allowed it to change his mind.
Speaker 1: In the weeks leading up to their trip in sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, Sewell recorded in his journal that he watched
Speaker 1: an Irish washerwoman named Goody Glover be carded past him
Speaker 1: in Boston, followed by a crowd of marshals, constables, and
Speaker 1: even a judge. She was on her way to be
Speaker 1: executed for witchcraft, and he was intrigued by that. Brattle
Speaker 1: is important, though, because of what he represents. Remember we
Speaker 1: have this trial going on in sale and Town, and
Speaker 1: it's spreading like a plague to the surrounding community. Is
Speaker 1: it's a religious movement with a legal framework. It's the
Speaker 1: moment where the rubber meets the road for a community
Speaker 1: of people who believe in the spiritual world, and it
Speaker 1: seems to fly in the face of hard, evidence based science.
Speaker 1: So when Brattle writes his letter regarding the trials, that's
Speaker 1: the world view he brings to the table. He's a
Speaker 1: scientist and a passionate observer of verifiable evidence, so he
Speaker 1: can't view the trials in the same way as someone
Speaker 1: like Cotton Mather might. His letter was a plea for
Speaker 1: rationality over religion. He started it off by stating that
Speaker 1: he had no intent to cast dirt on authority, as
Speaker 1: he put it, but soon enough the text shifts into
Speaker 1: a bloodthirsty analysis of the trials. He touches on many
Speaker 1: of the same ideas that Samuel Willard and increased Mother had,
Speaker 1: but he does it with surgical precision and an undercurrent
Speaker 1: of science. Brattle didn't mince words. Instead, he went for
Speaker 1: the jugular. He blames Stoton for allowing justice to be
Speaker 1: perverted in the service of religion, and he named the
Speaker 1: prominent individuals who were staunchly opposed to the actions of
Speaker 1: the Court, including former Governor Simon Bradstreet, former Deputy Governor
Speaker 1: Thomas Danforth, and Nathaniel salt Install, the judge who had
Speaker 1: quit the Oyer and Terminer out of disgust with the proceedings,
Speaker 1: and he begged the court to use common sense. How
Speaker 1: could the afflicted see the specters of witches if their
Speaker 1: eyes were closed? How could they not see the difference
Speaker 1: between real, verifiable evidence and simple religious bias. When Sewell
Speaker 1: read his friend's letter, he paid Thomas Danforth a visit.
Speaker 1: Was it true, he asked him, and Danforth confirmed it yes.
Speaker 1: He told him I no longer support the court. Since
Speaker 1: his forced retirement in April, he had found himself with
Speaker 1: ample spare time to consider all of the strange events
Speaker 1: in Salem and felt that the process was broken. If
Speaker 1: the Court wanted to continue moving forward, he felt they
Speaker 1: needed to consult the ministers and the people first. Thomas Brattle, though,
Speaker 1: had a less polite, yet more powerful way of putting it.
Speaker 1: If our officers and courts have apprehended, imprisoned, condemned, and
Speaker 1: executed our guiltless neighbors, he wrote, certainly, our error is great,
Speaker 1: and we shall rue it in the conclusion. In other words,
Speaker 1: if it turns out that you were wrong, you'll have
Speaker 1: blood on your hands. If Thomas Brattle's mission to call
Speaker 1: the colony to common sense was a spark it quickly
Speaker 1: ignited the Boston area. In early October, two things happened
Speaker 1: that just one month prior would have seemed impossible. First,
Speaker 1: some of the afflicted girls in Andover pointed their fingers
Speaker 1: at a worthy gentleman of Boston as its it, and
Speaker 1: accused him of being a witch. Rather than allow himself
Speaker 1: to be arrested or even flee to New York or
Speaker 1: some other sanctuary location, this man simply acquired a warrant
Speaker 1: to have the girls arrested for defamation with the promise
Speaker 1: of a thousand pound fine roughly one million dollars today,
Speaker 1: they dropped their claims. That same week, a different Boston
Speaker 1: businessman found himself so desperate to find healing for his
Speaker 1: sick daughter that he traveled north with her to Salem.
Speaker 1: This particular man had either been ignoring Brattle's cry for
Speaker 1: logic and reason or had somehow missed the news, so
Speaker 1: he approached the afflicted girls of Salem and asked for
Speaker 1: help identifying the witch or witches that were tormenting his daughter.
Speaker 1: The girls identified two witches, but when he took their names,
Speaker 1: to the judges. They refused to give him a warrant
Speaker 1: for their arrest. The Boston man might have missed Brattle's message,
Speaker 1: but the authorities in Salem certainly at it. When Increase
Speaker 1: Mather heard what this man had tried to do, he
Speaker 1: berated him, asking him why he preferred the devil in
Speaker 1: Salem to God in Boston. The first two weeks of
Speaker 1: October also saw some changes in how prisoners were being held.
Speaker 1: Eight men from Andover requested that the court release all
Speaker 1: of the accused miners into the custody of their families
Speaker 1: while they await trial. It was getting colder and the
Speaker 1: jails were less and less safe to be inside. The
Speaker 1: court agreed, and a number of prisoners were released. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the children. Here's historian Stacy Schiff, most
Speaker 1: of the husbands will actually petition to get their wives back.
Speaker 1: Late in the fall, it's harvest season. It's really important
Speaker 1: that the wives be there to help, you know, can
Speaker 1: the preserves and and get the house in order. And
Speaker 1: I think most of most of those women are released.
Speaker 1: In October November, the tide was turning. Minds were changing
Speaker 1: the public perception of the Salem Trials was no longer
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly in favor of pushing for word. With blind passion
Speaker 1: banks to the mounting death toll and the epidemic of
Speaker 1: property seizures, the people of Salem and the surrounding area
Speaker 1: had started to doubt they were on the right path,
Speaker 1: and all of that doubt was washing up on the
Speaker 1: shore at the feet of Governor William Phipps on October twelfth.
Speaker 1: He found himself with some decisions to make, partly because
Speaker 1: of the rise and resistance to the trials, but also
Speaker 1: because the General Court sort of the state legislature for
Speaker 1: the colony had finally gathered together to put new laws
Speaker 1: on paper. The new Charter needed to be implemented, and
Speaker 1: that meant Phipps and the others had some work ahead
Speaker 1: of them. We know about what happened inside the government
Speaker 1: in October because Phipps wrote a series of four letters
Speaker 1: back to the Crown in England. Now keep in mind
Speaker 1: they were written by him to make himself look better,
Speaker 1: but it's possible to pick through them and find the
Speaker 1: truth of the events around him. Here is Professor of
Speaker 1: American history Mary Beth Norton. Phipps is really good at
Speaker 1: covering his butt. Phipps is a master at not letting
Speaker 1: on that he knew all along it was going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, Phipps rice this letter saying to the people
Speaker 1: in London, oh my god, I just got back. I
Speaker 1: went fighting Indians on the frontier all summer, and I
Speaker 1: came back and I found this horrible situation and I
Speaker 1: stopped it. That was so untrue. For example, he recorded
Speaker 1: that the property seizures had been an unauthorized decision by
Speaker 1: William Stowton, head of the Court of Oyer and Terminer,
Speaker 1: And maybe that's how he justified reinstating the old colony
Speaker 1: law that prevented forfeiture of property. But there was more.
Speaker 1: Phipps had a decision to make about the very foundation
Speaker 1: of the entire trial spectral evidence. He was the person
Speaker 1: who had to make the call. If he decided that
Speaker 1: spectral evidence was not valid and admissible, then there was
Speaker 1: a whole list of people who had been arrested, convicted,
Speaker 1: and executed specifically because of that mistake. If, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, he declared it all to be legitimate, then
Speaker 1: he would have to give a reason why, and a
Speaker 1: good enough reason, even in late October still eluded him.
Speaker 1: Phipps was that stereotypical cartoon character with a tiny angel
Speaker 1: on one shoulder and a tiny devil on the other.
Speaker 1: Except for him, it was men like Samuel Willard and
Speaker 1: Thomas Brattle whispering caution into one ear, while Cotton Mather
Speaker 1: and his few remaining supporters urged him to rush forward. Finally,
Speaker 1: he and the General Court proposed a temporary pause so
Speaker 1: they could institute a fast and call for an assembly
Speaker 1: of ministers to advise them. They wanted help seeking out
Speaker 1: God's preferred road out of their current mess. When it
Speaker 1: went to a vote, it barely passed, with thirty three
Speaker 1: in favor and twenty nine against. The colony might have
Speaker 1: been ready for a change, but the men in charge
Speaker 1: weren't so sure. Half of them were ready to continue
Speaker 1: as before, but the other half were still on the fence.
Speaker 1: All that was left now was to wait for a sign.
Speaker 1: Governor Phipps seemed to be doing everything possible to not
Speaker 1: make a decision. If he moved too quickly, he might
Speaker 1: be seen as meddling in the trial he had been
Speaker 1: largely absent from for months, never mind the fact that
Speaker 1: his own wife had been accused, which meant that rushing
Speaker 1: in to stop things now might appear like a personal
Speaker 1: mission to save his own skin and support a witch
Speaker 1: in the process. He and the General Court got a
Speaker 1: lot of work done, though they officially appointed Anthony Checkley
Speaker 1: as Attorney General. They set up new justice system and
Speaker 1: superior court for the colony. They even settled on what
Speaker 1: crimes constituted capital crimes, but the Salem trials were hovering
Speaker 1: over all of them. There were people in jail who
Speaker 1: were waiting for their moment before the Oyer and Termine
Speaker 1: or judges. Some had been in jail for months and
Speaker 1: they were looking for a resolution, be it freedom or death.
Speaker 1: There was a new session scheduled for early November, but
Speaker 1: everyone was waiting on Phips to decide if it was
Speaker 1: going to happen at all or not. While he was
Speaker 1: wavering back and forth, Thomas Brattle and a handful of
Speaker 1: ministers paid a visit to the Salem jail to talk
Speaker 1: with prisoners there. When they questioned some recently arrested women
Speaker 1: from and Over, many of them retracted their claims. They
Speaker 1: might have confessed to being witches and even named others
Speaker 1: in the process, but all of it had been a
Speaker 1: lie to save their own lives. Here's Mary Beth Norton
Speaker 1: once again. That was about three weeks after the last
Speaker 1: set of executions. They take it back and they talk
Speaker 1: about how they were basically convinced to confess by magistrates,
Speaker 1: sometimes by their own relatives, who said, well, you may
Speaker 1: not realize you were a witch, but you clearly were
Speaker 1: because of X, and then cited some evidence to them.
Speaker 1: I think that was also very meaningful in helping to
Speaker 1: convince Phips that he could not maintain the trials any longer,
Speaker 1: or at least the trials in the Court of or
Speaker 1: Iran terminal, and that the rules had to change and
Speaker 1: that spectral evidence could not be allowed when the trials
Speaker 1: continued in January under the regular courts. In other words,
Speaker 1: confession wasn't infallible. Here we have people who had gone
Speaker 1: along with the system confessing and pointing their fingers at
Speaker 1: others in an effort to stay alive, and they were
Speaker 1: fully admitting that it was all make believe. If there
Speaker 1: was one last legitimate pillar holding up the witch trials,
Speaker 1: confession was it, and now it too was crumbling. On October,
Speaker 1: Phips and his counselors gathered to discuss more business regarding
Speaker 1: the new charter and William Stoughton, eager to move forward
Speaker 1: with the trials and convict more witches, rode south to
Speaker 1: Boston to demand permission to do so. He rode through
Speaker 1: a torrential downpour that drove a high tide onto the
Speaker 1: road he was traveling. By the time he arrived in Boston,
Speaker 1: he was utterly soaked and needed a fresh change of clothes.
Speaker 1: After his servant returned to Salem to retrieve that change
Speaker 1: of clothes, he finally made his appearance before the Governor
Speaker 1: and his counsel. He stood defiantly before them and demanded
Speaker 1: a decision. Did he have permission to continue forward? This was,
Speaker 1: he informed them, the last time he would ask. In
Speaker 1: an eerie echo of Giles Corey standing mute before Stoughton
Speaker 1: just weeks before, Phipps stared back at the judge with
Speaker 1: a great silence. You can almost see the battle in
Speaker 1: their staring contest that ensued. Stoughton with his murderous zeal,
Speaker 1: Phipps with his crowd of differing voices screaming inside his head.
Speaker 1: I have to imagine that was the moment that it
Speaker 1: all clicked for Governor Phipps, looking into Stowton's face would
Speaker 1: have made it crystal clear that he was a man
Speaker 1: who would not let go. If he was allowed to
Speaker 1: continue his trials, the only thing that would come out
Speaker 1: of it would be more people in jail and more
Speaker 1: people at the end of the hangman's noose, and one
Speaker 1: of those people would most certainly be phipps Own wife.
Speaker 1: Stowton went home that day without an answer, so when
Speaker 1: the council gathered again the next day, it was another
Speaker 1: of the members who brought it back up. James Russell
Speaker 1: had seen firsthand what Stowton was capable of. He had
Speaker 1: been in Salem on April tenth, when Sarah Klois and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Proctor had been examined. He knew it wasn't pretty,
Speaker 1: so he asked the governor the same question everyone else
Speaker 1: had that month, with a court of oyer and termine
Speaker 1: or presiding over the witchcraft plague in Salem, stand or fall.
Speaker 1: Phipps looked back at him with an expression that must
Speaker 1: have contained the weights of a thousand stones, and then, finally,
Speaker 1: with a sigh, he replied, it must fall. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around. After this
Speaker 1: short sponsor break for a preview of what's in store
Speaker 1: for next week, next time on Unobscured. Finally word went
Speaker 1: out that the next trial would take place in January,
Speaker 1: not another Oyer and terminer like the past sessions, but
Speaker 1: a new trial by the Massachusetts Superior Court. It offered
Speaker 1: hope to those still waiting for a decision and praying
Speaker 1: for their release from captivity, perhaps even an occasion to
Speaker 1: celebrate before the trial date could arrive. Though the Governor
Speaker 1: declared December twenty to be a day of fasting and
Speaker 1: prayer across the colony. They were urged to consider the
Speaker 1: various and awful judgments of God continued upon the English
Speaker 1: nation and the dispersions thereof in their Majesty's several plantations,
Speaker 1: by permitting witchcrafts and evil ages to rage against His people.
Speaker 1: Translation judgments was coming, so Pray for mercy. Unobscured was
Speaker 1: created and written by me Aaron Mankey and produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams in partnership with How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: with research by Carl Nellis and original music by Chad Lawson.
Speaker 1: Learn more about our contributing historians further reading material, resource
Speaker 1: archive and links to our other shows at History Unobscured
Speaker 1: dot com Until next time, Thanks for listening.