Witchcraft at Salem (Chapter 5 – pp.63-70)

It is plain that Mary Warren was literally driven insane by the refusal of the magistrates, the ministers, and the afflicted girls to accept her sanity. If her case had been an isolated one the community's treatment of her would be very nearly incredible. But just as the community's attitudes toward Rebecca Nurse had probably been influenced by her being examined on the same day as the second confessor, Dorcas Good, their attitudes toward Mary Warren were probably influenced by the fact that three other persons were examined on April 19: Giles Corey, Abigail Hobbes, and Bridget Bishop. Giles Corey had been very ready to testify against his wife, Martha, and to speak against her out of court as well as in: he had told several people that he knew things that would "do his wife's business."1 Now he was admirably, if belatedly, protesting her innocence as well as his own. But he did it stupidly; he denied having said things which witnesses had heard him say, and thus was several times caught lying. Since lying was a serious matter in Puritan Massachusetts and perjury is a serious matter in any age, Giles Corey must have made a very bad impression.

Abigail Hobbes was a wild and irreverent young girl who on one occasion had parodied the sacrament of baptism by sprinkling water on her mother and pronouncing the words of baptism over her.2 And she had cultivated the reputation of a witch. When Lydia Nichols had asked her “how she durst lie out of nights in the woods alone," she replied that “she was not afraid of anything, for…she had sold herself body and soul to the Old Boy." On another occasion she had told Lydia to hold her tongue or she would “raise all the folks thereabouts" [i.e., summon all the spirits thereabouts], and told her to

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look - "there was old Nick3 ...over the bedstead." Her mother was present and said to Abigail that "she little thought to have been mother to such a daughter." On another occasion a woman named Priscilla Chubb was scolding her "about her wicked carriage and disobedience to her father and mother," and Abigail replied that "she did not care what anybody said to her, for she had seen the Devil and had made a covenant or bargain with him." She confessed immediately, at her first examination, but it is most unlikely that she was actually a witch. Far too often she did not know what to answer to her examiners' questions, and they had to supply her the details of her supposed craft with their leading questions.

But there was more than Giles Corey's dogged lying and Abigail Hobbes' willingness to acquire a wicked reputation on display in Salem Village on April 19. There was Bridget Bishop. And Bridget Bishop was in all probability a practicing witch. She had a long-standing reputation for witchcraft; it was rumored that she had bewitched her first husband (a Goodman Wasslebee) to death.4 In 1679/80, during her second marriage (to Thomas Oliver), she had been brought before the Court of Assistants for witchcraft. The records of that trial do not survive, but it is probable that a major factor in her release at the time was the good opinion of her clergyman, John Hale of Beverly, who was then "hoping better of Goody Bishop" than others in the community. But Hale had changed his mind by 1692. Her present husband, Edward Bishop, had accused her of witchcraft; two women testified that he had said "the Devil did come bodily unto her, and that she was familiar with the Devil, and that she sat up all the night long with the Devil." She was well aware of her reputation. Once she had asked William Stacey "whether his father would grind her grist. He put it to her why she asked. She answered, because folks counted her a witch." She also had the malice requisite to the craft. During her examination, when Hathorne used the bullying techniques he had used on others, she startled him with an open threat. "If I were any such person [a witch]," she told him, “you should know it." [I.e., she would make him know it.]

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But there was much more against Bridget Bishop than her reputation and her malice. Two men testified that

being employed by Bridget Bishop, alias Oliver, of Salem to help take down the cellar wall of the old house she formerly lived in, we the said deponents, in holes in the old wall belonging to the said cellar, found several puppets made up of rags and hogs' bristles with headless pins in them with the points outward….

The doll with pins in it is the classic charm of black magic, and burying it in a wall is still a technique of witches; such charms have been found in the walls of rural English cottages in the twentieth century. To be sure, the evidence was circumstantial - nobody had seen Bridget Bishop stick the pins in the dolls or bury them in the walls. But she could, according to Cotton Mather, give no account of them to the court "that was reasonable or tolerable."5 Coupled with the other testimony against her, that concerning the dolls was extremely incriminating. It would have been quite enough to get her hanged in seventeenth-century England or burned in Scotland or on the Continent. It is probable that Bridget Bishop was indeed a practicing witch.

There is one more piece of evidence which probably applies to her use of image magic. Samuel Shattuck, a Quaker who was the local dyer, testified that she had brought him for dyeing "sundry pieces of lace, some of which were so short that I could not judge them fit for any use." Upham, in the nineteenth century, interpreted this to mean that Bridget Bishop was wearing clothing of a style incomprehensible to a simple Quaker6 and later writers have followed him in this interpretation, coupling with it the fact that Bridget Bishop often wore a "red paragon bodice" and leaving the impression that she dressed in a higher or more flashy fashion than the community thought proper. But red was not an unusual color for clothing in seventeenth-century New England, and Shattuck said nothing about the cut of the laces she brought him for dyeing. He said the pieces were too small to be of any use. If Bridget Bishop had been dressing extravagantly wouldn't her laces have been larger

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than usual? It would seem that what Shattuck meant was that the pieces of lace were too small to be worn by a human being. But they would not have been too small for dressing a witch's doll, which is often clothed in the same materials and colors as the clothing worn by the victim.

Shattuck, like other seventeenth-century common folk, had quite a smattering of occult information, which he was not above putting to use. One of his children had, years ago, been unaccountably ill of fits; "his mouth and eyes drawn aside…in such a manner as if he was upon the point of death." A passing stranger suggested the child was bewitched and offered to take the boy to Goodwife Bishop's and scratch her face (drawing blood from a witch's face was a common means of breaking her spells). Shattuck agreed, and added some white magic of his own: "I gave him money and bid him ask her for a pot of cider." (Obtaining property and subjecting it to occult abuse was a common technique of both white and black magic.) But Goodwife Bishop was not to be taken in. She refused to sell the cider and chased the stranger off with a spade. Not only did she avoid having her face scratched; she scratched the face of Shattuck's son. "And ever since," said Shattuck,

this child hath been followed with grievous fits as if he would never recover more, his head and eyes drawn aside so as if they would never come to rights more; lying as if he were in a manner dead; falling anywhere, either into fire or water if he be not constantly looked to; and generally in such an uneasy and restless frame, almost always running to and fro, acting so strange that I cannot judge otherwise but that he is bewitched, and by these circumstances do believe that the aforesaid Bridget Oliver, now called Bishop, is the cause of it. And it has been the judgment of doctors…that he is under an evil hand of witchcraft.

Notice again how willing the medical profession was to diagnose witchcraft. In fact, the seventeenth-century physician was apt to attribute everything he could not explain organically to witchcraft, just as the twentieth-century physician is apt to call whatever he cannot understand psychosomatic. But notice

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also that the child's symptoms are identifiably hysterical, and therefore may well have been due to his frightening experience with Bridget Bishop.

Certainly other persons were terrified of her and had hysterical hallucinations as a result of their terror. Richard Coman testified that about eight years before he had been in bed with his wife, with a light burning in the room.

I being awake did then see Bridget Bishop of Salem, alias Oliver, come into the room we lay in and two women more with her, which two women were strangers to me. I knew them not, but said Bishop came in her red paragon bodice and the rest of her clothing which she then usually did wear. ...And quickly after they appeared the light was out, and the curtains at the foot of the bed opened, where I did see her. And presently [she] came and lay upon my breast or body and so oppressed me that I could not speak nor stir, no not so much as to awake my wife, although I endeavored much so to do it. The next night they all appeared again in like manner and the said Bishop, alias Oliver, took hold of me by the throat and almost hauled me out of the bed. The Saturday night following, I having been that day telling of what I had seen and how I suffered the two nights before, my kinsman William Coman told me he would stay with me and lodge with me and see if they would come again, and advised me to lay my sword athwart my body. [The hilt of a sword, being shaped like a cross, was thought to be a protection against witches and evil spirits.] Quickly after we went to bed that said night, and both well awake and discoursing together, in came all the three women again, and said Bishop was the first as she had been the other two nights. So I told him, 'William, here they be all come again." And he was immediately struck speechless and could not move hand or foot. And immediately they got hold of my sword and strived to take it from me, but I held so fast as they did not get it away. And I then had liberty of speech [having been able to hold on to the sign of the cross; notice again how magic works in a society which believes in it] and called William, also my wife, and Sarah Phillips that lay with my wife, who all told me afterwards they heard me but had not power to speak or stir. ...And the first that spake was Sarah Phillips, and said, "In the name of God, Goodman Coman, what is the matter with you?" So they all vanished away.7

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Presumably the hallucination ended because the name of God 'had been invoked, just as Coman had regained his speech by holding to the symbol of the cross.

Samuel Gray had a similar experience fourteen years before, when he woke to

see a woman standing between the cradle in the room and the bedside and [she] seemed to look upon him. So he did rise up in his bed and it vanished. ...Then he went to the door and found it locked. And unlocking and opening the door he went to the entry door and looked out, and then again did see the same woman he had a little before seen in the room, and in the same garb she was in before. Then he said to her, "In the name of God, what do you come for?" Then she vanished away. So he locked the door again and went to bed. And between sleeping and waking he felt something come to his mouth or lips, cold, and thereupon started and looked up, and again did see the same woman with something between both her hands, holding [it] before his mouth. Upon which she moved, and the child in the cradle gave a great screech out, as if it was greatly hurt, and she disappeared. And taking the child up [he] could not quiet it in some hours. From which time the child, that before was a very likely thriving child, did pine away and was never well (although it lived some months after, yet in a sad condition) and so died. Some time after, within a week or less, he did see the same woman in the same garb or clothes that appeared to him as aforesaid, ...although he knew not her nor her name before. Yet both by her garb and countenance doth testify that it was the same woman that they now call Bridget Bishop, alias Oliver, of Salem.

The death of the child cannot be explained on natural grounds except by suggesting that there was something wrong with it quite unrelated to its father's experience. Nor can one account for Gray's having hallucinations of Bridget Bishop before he knew her or knew her name except by suggesting that he was mistaken. But the next experiences - those of John Louder - need no explanation. They fit the pattern of hysterical hallucinations we have seen before.

About seven or eight years since, I then living with Mr. John Gedney in Salem. ..had some controversy with Bridget Bishop,

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the wife of Edward Bishop of Salem, sawyer, about her fowls that used to come into our orchard or garden. Some little time after which, I going well to bed, about the dead of the night felt a great weight upon my breast, and awakening looked and, it being bright moonlight, did clearly see said Bridget Bishop or her likeness sitting upon my stomach. And putting my arms off of the bed to free myself from that great oppression, she presently laid hold of my throat and almost choked me, and I had no strength or power in my hands to resist or help myself. And in this condition she held me to almost day. Some time after this my mistress, Susannah Gedney, was in our orchard and I was then with her, and said Bridget Bishop being then in her orchard which was next adjoining to ours, my mistress told said Bridget that I said or affirmed that she came one night and sat upon my breast as aforesaid, which she denied and I affirmed to her face to be true, and that I did plainly see her, upon which discourse with her she threatened me. And some time after that I, not being very well, stayed at home on a Lord's Day. And on the afternoon of said day, the doors being shut, I did see a black pig in the room coming towards me. So I went towards it to kick it and it vanished away. [Notice again that hallucinations vanish if the subject is able to speak or move.] Immediately after I sat down…and did see a black thing jump into the window. And [it] came and stood just before my face…The body of it looked like a monkey, only the feet were like a cock's feet with claws, and the face somewhat more like a man's than a monkey's. And I being greatly affrighted, not being able to speak or help myself by reason of fear, I suppose, so the thing spoke to me and said, "I am a messenger sent to you. For I understand you are troubled in mind, and if you will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this world." Upon which I endeavored to clap my hands upon it, and said, "You Devil, I will kill you," but could feel no substance. And it jumped out of the window again and immediately came in by the porch, although the doors were shut, and said, "You had better take my counsel." Whereupon I struck at it with a stick but struck the groundsill and broke the stick, but felt no substance, and that arm with which I struck was presently disenabled. Then it vanished away and I opened the back door and went out, and going towards the house-end I espied said Bridget Bishop in her orchard going towards her house, and seeing her had no power to set one foot forward but returned in again. And going to shut the door I again

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did see that or the like creature that I before did see within doors, in such a posture as it seemed to be going to fly at me. Upon which I cried out, "The whole armor of God…be between me and you!" So it sprang back and flew over the appletree, flinging the dust with its feet against my stomach, upon which I was struck dumb and so continued for about three days time. And also [it] shook many of the apples off from the tree which it flew over.

At her trial Bridget Bishop denied knowing John Louder, although it was common knowledge that they had been next-door neighbors and had frequently quarreled. The gratuitous lie must have hurt her, but not nearly so much as the other evidence against her.

There is, unfortunately, no way of knowing whether Bridget Bishop was actually using charms or spells against Richard Coman, or Samuel Gray, or John Louder. But their testimony is eloquent evidence of the power which accompanied a reputation for witchcraft. And the dolls, the pieces of lace too short for use, and the scratching of the Shattuck child's face all suggest that Bridget Bishop had consciously sought such power, that she was in fact a witch, as the community believed her to be.

NOTES

1. Giles Corey's examination is printed in the 1823 edition of Calef's More Wonders and reprinted as an appendix to Drake's Witchcraft Delusion.

2. Abigail Hobbes' records are in RSW, I, pp. 172-80, excepting her examination of April 19. I wish to thank the Massachusetts Historical Society, and particularly Malcolm Freiberg, Editor of Publications, for providing me a Xerox copy of the latter.

3. RSW has a ditto mark for Nick, but the word is clear in the original document, in the Essex County Court House.

4. The documents relating to Bridget Bishop are in RSW, I, pp. 13S-72.

5. Cotton Mather, Wonders, Burr, p. 228.

6. Upham, II, pp. 126, 261.

7. Marion Starkey in "Village Circe," chapter XII of The Devil in Massachusetts (New York: 1950), sees this experience and those which follow as sexual in content, and remarks that Coman and the others "virtuously repelled [Bridget Bishop's] advances" (p. 152). I think, to put it mildly, that Starkey's interpretations of the documents are frequently mistaken.