CHAP. VIII.

EXPEDITION AGAINST QUEBEC.

407

of the approach of the invaders. He called out his Indian allies. Taking a tomahawk in his hand, he danced the war-dance and chanted the war-song, in their presence, and then led them against the foe. Schuyler was repulsed, and the whole army returned to Albany. Leisler charged Winthrop with treachery, and Winthrop, in turn, charged the failure of the expedition to the inefficiency of Milborne in furnishing supplies.

Meanwhile Phipps, without charts or pilots, had crawled cautiously around Acadié and up the St. Lawrence for nine weeks, giving a swift Indian runner an opportunity to go from Pemaquid to Canada with the news of Phipps' departure, in time to allow Frontenac to reach Quebec before the arrival of the hostile fleet. The fortifications of the ancient town were strengthened; and when Phipps arrived before it, and sent a summons for its surrender, his message was treated with derision. It was then the middle of October. Hearing of the failure of the land expedition, Phipps weighed anchor and crawled cautiously back to New England before the winter storms set in. The French and Indians in Canada and Acadié were greatly elated, and the repulse was considered so important by Louis that he ordered a commemorative medal to be struck, with the legend: FRANCE VICTORIOUS IN THE NEW WORLD. These military operations exhausted the treasury of Massachusetts, and the government emitted bills of credit to the amount of about one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars. This was the first paper-money ever issued on the American continent.

Soon after his return from the St. Lawrence, Sir William Phipps went to England to solicit aid for the colonies in their further warfare with the French and Indians, and to assist in efforts there to procure a restoration of the charter of Massachusetts which King James had annulled. Aid was refused; and instead of restoring the old charter, William gave a new one, by which Massachusetts, Plymouth, Maine and Nova Scotia were united under the name of "Massachusetts Bay Colony," and was made a royal province, with Phipps as governor. The baronet was a man of dull intellect, rudely educated, utterly lacking in qualities of statesmanship, headstrong, egotistical, superstitious, patriotic, and every way unfitted as a leader in civil and military affairs. He had gained distinction in his native colony only by his wealth and title, both of which were acquired by his successful raising of treasure from a Spanish ship with a diving-bell. He returned to Massachusetts in 1692, bringing the new charter with him.

The people of Massachusetts were not only dissatisfied with the new charter, but offended by it, for it greatly abridged their liberties. Wise and enlightened statesmen and churchmen in England advised William and his

Parliament not to make the liberties of the colonists less. Tillotson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, charged the king "not to take away from the people of New England any of the privileges which Charles the First had granted them." Others did likewise; but the government refused to listen to wise advice. The king reserved the right, in the new charter, to appoint the governor, his deputy and the secretary of the colony, and of repealing all the laws within three years after their passage. This robbery of their liberties alienated the affections of the people from the mother country. It was one of the series of blunders made by the crown and ministers which fostered discontent in the colonies and tended to the final dismemberment of the empire in 1776.

Yet in some respects the new charter was an improvement upon the old. While the rights of citizens were abridged in some things, they were enlarged in others. Toleration was granted to every form of the Christian religion excepting, unfortunately, the Roman Catholic; and the right of suffrage-to vote was no longer restricted to members of Congregational churches, but was made almost universal. Bigotry and intolerance were, so far, disarmed; and they never afterward held controlling sway in the policy of the State.

Here let us pause a moment in our narrative of political transactions and of the horrid war then raging, to consider a strange social feature in the history of Massachusetts, known as SALEM WITCHCRAFT.

CHAPTER IX.

WITCHCRAFT-THE SAD STORY OF "SALEM WITCHCRAFT

SUPERSTITION AND WICKEDNESS HAND-IN-HAND-RESULT OF THE DELUSION-KING WILLIAM'S WAR-NEW ENGLAND'S SUFFERINGS-CAPTURE OF PEMAQUID-THE BARON DE CASTIN-FRENCH AND INDIANS MAKE WAR TOGETHER THE EXPLOIT OF HANNAH DUSTIN AND HER COMPANIONS-TREATY AT RYSWICK -THE PRETENDER-QUEEN ANNE-NEW ENGLAND MORE TOLERANT.

I

N the seventeenth century, a belief in witches and witchcraft was almost universal. The Church of Rome, more than three hundred years ago, sanctioned punishments for the exercise of witchcraft; and after that, thousands of suspected persons were burned alive, drowned or hanged. During the sixteenth century, more than one hundred thousand accused and convicted persons perished in the flames, in Germany alone. In England, enlightened men embraced the belief. The eminent Sir Matthew Hale, who flourished during the civil war, the commonwealth and the period of the restoration of monarchy, repeatedly sentenced persons to death accused of witchcraft. The Puritans brought the belief with them to America. They established laws for the punishment of witches; and before 1648, four persons had suffered death for the alleged offence, in the vicinity of Boston. The ministers of the gospel there were shadowed by the delusion; and, because of their powerful social influence, they did more to foster the wild excitement and produce the distressing results of what is known in history as "Salem witchcraft," than all others.

In 1688, a wayward daughter of John Goodwin, of Boston, about thirteen years of age, accused a servant girl of stealing some of the family linen. The servant's mother, a "wild Irish woman" and a Roman Catholic, vehemently rebuked the accuser as a false witness. The young girl, in revenge, pretended to be bewitched by the Irishwoman. Some others of her family followed her example. They would alternately become deaf, dumb and blind; bark like dogs and purr like cats, but none of them lost their appetites nor sleep. The Rev. Cotton Mather, a credulous and egotistical clergyman (who seems to have believed, with Hubbard, the Puritan historian, that "America was originally peopled with a crew of witches transported thither by the devil"), hastened to Goodwin's house to allay the witchery by

prayer. Wonderful were the alleged effects of his supplications. The devil was controlled by them for the time. Then four other ministers of Boston and one of Salem, as superstitious as himself, joined Mather, and they spent a whole day in the house of the "afflicted" in fasting and prayer, the result of which was the "delivery" of one of the family from

the power of the witch. This was sufficient proof for the minds of the ministers that there must be a witch in the case, and these deluded clergymen prosecuted the ignorant Irish woman as such. She was bewildered before the court, and spoke sometimes in her native Irish language, which nobody could understand, and which her accusers and judges construed into involuntary confession. Mather and his clerical associates had the satisfaction of seeing the poor old Irish woman hanged as a witch, "for the glory of God."

CHAP. IX.

CREDULITY RUN MAD.

411

Skeptics ridiculed Mather. He defended his cause by the assertion of alleged facts. He called the "afflicted" daughter of Goodwin to his study, when the artful girl thoroughly deceived him. The devil would allow her to read "Quaker books, the Common Prayer and Popish books," but a prayer from the lips of Mather, or the reading of a chapter of the Bible, threw her into convulsions. The credulous parson believed all he saw and heard, and cried from his pulpit, with outstretched arms and loud voice, "Witchcraft is the most nefarious high-treason against the Majesty on High. A witch is not to be endured in heaven or on earth." Mather's discourse on the subject was scattered broadcast among the people by means of the printingpress; and with it went out his narrative of the events in the Goodwin family, which led to greater tragedies in the spring and summer of 1692, when an epidemic disease resembling epilepsy broke out in Danvers (then a part of Salem), and spread rapidly. The physicians could neither control nor cure it; and with the sermon and statements of Mather before them, they readily ascribed the malady to the work of witches.

A niece and daughter of the parish minister at Danvers were first afflicted. Their strange and unaccountable actions frightened other young women, who soon exhibited the same symptoms, such as convulsions and spasmodic swellings in the throat, undoubtedly produced by hysterics. A belief quickly spread over Salem and throughout the province that evil spirits having ministering servants on earth had been permitted to overshadow the land with an awful visitation. Terror took possession of the minds of nearly all the people, and the dread made the malady spread widely. Other old and ill-favored women now shared with the Irish woman in the suspicion of being witches, and several of them were publicly accused and imprisoned. The "afflicted," under the influence of the witchery, professed to see the forms of their tormentors with their “inner vision," and would forthwith accuse some individual seen. At length the "afflicted" and the accused became so numerous that no person was safe from suspicion and its consequences. Even those who were active in the prosecutions became objects of suspicion. A magistrate who had presided at the condemnation of several persons, becoming convinced of the wrongfulness of the proceedings and protesting against it, was himself accused and suffered much. A constable, who had arrested many and refused to arrest any more, was accused, condemned and hanged. Neither age, sex nor condition were considered. Sir William Phipps, the governor of Massachusetts, his lieutenant-governor, the near relations of the Mathers, and learned and distinguished men who had promoted the dreadful delusion by acquiescing in the proceedings against accused persons, became objects of suspicion.