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it appears that Alice Young, Mary Johnson, Margaret Jones, Joan Carrington, and Mary Parsons, all of whom were exe- cuted in the late 1640s and early 165,08, were women without sons when the accusations were lodged. Elizabeth Godman, brought into court at least twice on witchcraft charges in the 1650s, had neither brothers nor sons.’®° Decade by decade, the pattern continued. Only Antinomian and Quaker women, against whom accusations never generated much support, were, as a group, exempt from it.
The Salem outbreak created only a slight wrinkle in this established fabric of suspicion. If daughters, husbands, and sons of witches were more vulnerable to danger in 1692 than they had been previously, they were mostly the daughters, husbands, and sons of inheriting or potentially inheriting women. As the outbreak spread, it drew into its orbit increas- ing numbers of women, “unlikely” witches in that they were married to well-off and influential men, but familiar figures to some of their neighbors nonetheless. What the impover- ished Sarah Good had in common with Mary Phips, wife of Massachusetts’s governor, was what Eunice Cole had in com- mon with Katherine Harrison, and what Mehitabel Downing had in common with Ann Hibbens. However varied their
orderly transmission of property from one generation of males to another,
: ~ ;
FOUR
Handmaidens of the Devil
M OST WITCHES IN New England were middle-aged or old women. eligible for-inheritances because they had no
brothers-or-sons. But not al women who shared these demo- graphic and economic characteristics were accused of witch- craft. It was Rachel Clinton rather than her mother or her sisters whom neighbors saw as casting spells on themselves and their children. It was Susanna Martin rather than her sis- ter or stepmother whom neighbors said appeared to them in animal shapes, bewitched their cattle, and prevented them from prospering. Many female relatives of reputed witches were eventually found among the accused, especially during the Salem outbreak, but many others seem to have escaped the stigma of suspicion. So too, apparently, did other inheriting or potentially inheriting women in New England who had
passed their childbearing years. What was itabout the accused that set them apart even from other women in similar posi- tions?
The answer most likely to emerge from recent historical accounts of New England witchcraft is that the character or personalities of New England’s witches made them suspect in
117
118 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN Handmaidens of the Devil 119 ~ their neighbor’s eyes. Although some scholars are more sym- pathetic than others to the plight of their subjects, witches are behavior was understood in New England’s hierarchical soci- { generally portrayed in the literature as disagreeable women, ety. As older women, in most cases as poor, middling, or at best aggressive and abrasive, at worst ill-tempered, quarrel- unexpectedly well-off women, some of their attitudes and some, and spiteful. They are almost always described as actions were construed not simply as unneighborly or sinful— -deviants—disorderly. wome
nw
i »
ho.faile
d té, or-refused to, abide as were similar att itudes and actions in other people—b ut as~ by the behavioral. norms_of their-society,In two accounts, at evidence of witchcraft, as signsof women’s refusal to accept. en rnmrniainsbein least some of the accused were witches: that is to say, they are their “place” in New England’s social order. described as actually practicing the black arts in order to harm Thesocialprothcatetrasnsfsormedwomenintowitches or kil their adversaries.!
in New England required a convergence of belief on the part Drawn primarily from descriptions left to us by witches’ of both the townspeople and the religious and secular author- accusers, this portrait conforms to the popular stereotype of ities that these women posed serious threatsto society. For the witch.” Like other stereotypes, itcontains enough truth to most people that threat lay in the subversion ofstehexual mask the interests itserves. By suggesting that their disagree- order, but the clergy articulated the threat of witchcraft as the able personalities separated the accused from “ordinary” col- subversion of the order of Creation. Notsurprisingly, then, onists, even the most sympathetic accounts encourage us to thebehaviorsthatbrought,witches‘totheattentofiothneir conclude that New England witches, to a greater or lesser community were not simp random Japses from social norms. extent, brought, the accusations upon themselves.? In accept- They wéfe two types of:Nangerous trespass challenges to the ing their adversaries’ views Of iow these women ought to have supremacofy God and challenges to prescribed” gender} behaved, these descriptions overlook the variety of norms that arrangements, rr guided behavior in early New England. These norms varied Distinguishing between the two in colonial New England withprevailingclass,gendsws er, and
racial ass
umption
s, which is not always ea sy. Puritan belief ere the mo t powerful construedbehaviorappropd-ei riate
for s
ome
social
groups as determinants of acc eptabl female behav ior, wh ile religious inappropriate for others. An
the social assumptions that pre ritual and symbolism continually re nforced behavioral dis- vailed in early New England accurately measure the distribu- tinctions between the sexes. Gender issues were religious issues, ; tion of power at the time.
and perhaps nowhere is that more vivid than inthe case a In_their behavior or character, New-England-witches were witchcraft. In Puritan thought, the witch-figure was a symbo I iy of the struggle between God and Satan for human souls. In \ disagreeabieandquarrelsomeweee , others
re not. All
may have Puritan societ y, witches (who a swehavesnwere usually Ay female) were known by behavior closely or exclusively associ- ated with the female sex. Often implicit and seldom measur-
Englanderswereosryiwe an aggres
sive, c
ntentious, di
ordel lot,
no
able, official religious belefs re nonethel es s central in morewillingorablethanot people in
other
imes
and |places t determining who wi ches were and wha t witches did–—— liveuptotheifownidealsofy.to familial.or ne
ighborly harm
on
Bearing these con sideraions in mind, we Tow turn t the YetWotallcolonists—notevenallill-tempandercoe En ntden-
specific sins of New gland witches: discontent, anger, envy, tious colonists—were vulnerable to w
” malice, seduction, lying, and pride. Recognizing that al actions
120
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil
123
associated with witches were ultimately offenses against God and the order of Creation, and that all had repercussions for community social and economic relations, we can for conve- nience’ sake divide the range of sins into roughly three groups of transgressions, running along a continuum, differentiated according to the primary object of the activity: (1) explicitl religious sins directed against God or his emissaries on watth , the church and its ministers, (2) sins of amixed religious and sexual nature committed against other members of ihe com ‘munity, and (3) predominantly sexual sins against the order and processes of nature. Lying and pride will be discussed last because they are of such a general character as to permeate and inform the full range.
Witchcraft was rebellion against God, and among the
grounds for examining a witch were signs that she had trans-
erred her allegiance from God to Satan. Neighbors testifyin
against the accused often cited hostility to the Puritan Cod.
church, or clergy as evidence of witchcraft. Anythin: from sabbath-breaking to overt repudiation of ministerial authorit
to blasphemy could be interpreted as signifying a covenant
with the Devil. When, for instance, John Brown presented hi
testimony against Sarah Cole of Lynn in 1692, he charged her
with once having said that “all Church members were Devills v4
James Kettle came into the Salem court to accuse Elizabeth
Hubbard of speaking “severall untruthes in denying the sabath
day and saying she had not ben to meting that day.”> And
Andrew Elliott thought the court might want to know that a
man who had once lived with Susannah Roots of Beverly had
said that “she was a bad woman …” who “would witha
and absent herselfe” from family prayer.® TM
Confessing witches and defenders of the accused also acknowledged a connection between a woman’s attitude toward
the church and her witchcraft. After detailing her man
witchcraft practices in Andover, Ann Foster said in 1692 that
“she formerly frequented the publique metting to worship god, but the divill had such power over her that she could not profit there and that was her undoeing.”” As evidence of Winifred Holman’s innocence, several of her Cambridge neighbors averred in 1660 that they never had “any grounds or reasons to suspect her for witchery,” adding that “she is diligent in her calling and frequents public preaching, and gives diligent attention there unto.”® Mockery of established religion, either by word or deed, does not seem to have constituted sufficient proof of witch- craft, however. Stronger evidence of a deliberate pact with Satan was normally required for conviction. Even in those cases where indications of religious recalcitrance were submitted as evidence and where a verdict of guilty was found, the magis- trates’ decisions appear to have been based primarily on tes- timony concerning supernatural harm done or intended to individuals or their property.” Still, the association of women, religious dissent, and witchcraft aided the process of witch identification, Witches were thought to be clever and power- ful hags whose supernatural practices were hard to prove. A woman’s opposition to the church, on the other hand, was “knowable.” Like her other sins against God, itindicated that there was at least reason to suspect that she was in league with the Devil. The significance of witches’ real or perceived enmity to the church is best seen in the experiences of women for whom religious crimes were clearly major causes for suspicion. Unlike Sarah Cole and the other women mentioned above, most of these latter witches were tried for heresy, not maleficium. ‘As we have seen, witchcraft-as-heresy was a belief held by a few influential men but not shared by most colonists. During the Antinomian crisis in the late 1630s, witchcraft fear sur- faced among some of Massachusetts’ leaders, but their accu- sations never reached the level of formal complaints. Besides indicating that popular as well as elite support was necessary for trials to take place, accusations brought against women for
122
a is THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF AWOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil
123
religious crimes highlight the underiying gender issues in most other witchcraft cases,
witches before they even reached shore.’* Acting Governor Richard Bellingham ordered both Aus-
tin and Fisher stripped naked on board ship and their bodies Smmunities continued to play prominent roles as religious
examined for signs of Devil worship. Their possessions were dissenters for several years after the Antinduiian crisis, Once”
searched for books containmg “corrupt, heretical, and blas- See
ft’tr ial environ-
phemous Doctrines.”15 Apparently the incriminating evi- the late 164
dence was found, for the literature they brought with them was burned and the women incarcerated in the Boston jail. So dangerous were these two women to Puritan society that the windows of their cells were boarded up and a fine of £5 was levied on anyone who tried to speak with them. After five weeks From almost the beginning of their movement in the 1640s
of confinement, they were thrown out of the colony without a English Quaker women openiy assumed what New England’s
trial, . Antinomian women had claimed only indirectly—the right to
Not al were convinced by the allegations that Quaker. female spiritual leadership. Female preachers and “publishers
practiced witchcraft. Austin and Fisher had immediately found of truth” were numerous among the Quakers in the years fol-
supporters among local residents, and the next group of lowing England’s civil war. Once the sect was organized in New
Quakers, who arrived in Boston just two days after Austin and England, iis female adherents there became immediately vis-
Fisher left, were not treated as witches. These eight men and ible as active proselytizers of the faith, Rejecting Pauline pros-
women were simply detained in prison for eleven weeks as criptions against women speaking in church, Quakers, with
members of that “cursed sect of hereticks” and then shipped their msistence on a lay ministry and their emphasis on the
back to England.’® By the time they were gone, Massachusetts inner light,” took the Protestant principle of the “priesthood
magistrates had passed legislation that allowed them to pun- of al believers” to its logical conclusion. Because God revealed
ish Quakers as Quakers, for ‘tak[ing] uppon them to be tme- hiswordtoal,nmni: there
was
no
eed
for
an
or
dai
nedinistry
diately se t of Go d, and in fallibly as sted by t he spirit” for couldknow—anducatedwiththeeducated, Womenaswellatesi sm
en,
the
uned
holding “bla ph emouth op nions, despising govern ment and each—divin truth,!2
the order of God in church and comonwealth, speaking evil ToPuritanobhdNlofri ppon
ents
in
ot
old an
ew Engand dignities,eproach ing an d revlin g magist rates and minis– Quakerdoctrinesmackedmriea sinowr of
bl
asp
hey.
Its pr
ct
ice
evoked
ters,eekin g to tur e pe ple f om th e faith, and gaine prose- images of chaos in the social order. Ag
Putan
cl
rgyman Hugh
lytes to theire pern ciousayes.”!” Peter had made clear to Anne Hutchinson during her church
With this and subsequent laws providing legal grounds for trial,womenw’er ho as
su
me
d to pre
ach
Gods wo
rd c
alld _into
conf onting the fast-gr owing pop ulation of Qu akers and Quaker sympathizers, witchcraft allegations may have become and hearer but the
unnecessary. For almost the next four years (the period in wife,-and_magiss Si Bid_subject,Quakerot whichtheocietyofFrendsgrewmostquicklyinNew preachers ar rived
in
Boston
harbor
in
1656 the authorities
Eng land), n such charge s seem to have been lodged agains werepreparAuMed ed.
nn A
stin
and
ary
Fisher
were arr
ested as
them. Eve n Mary Dyer, who ha d return to M assachusetts
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
in 1657 and three years later was hanged as a Quaker, escaped public accusation as a witch.
With the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in England, witchcraft themes reappeared in public attacks on Quakers. Charles was known to disapprove of the persecution of Quak- ers in Massachusetts, and this may have affected their treat- ment there. When Long Island’s Mary Wright came before the Massachusetts General Court in 1660, she came as a sus- pected witch, and as a witch she may even have been tried. Yet the only surviving evidence speaks to the matter of her having entered Massachusetts to protest the execution of Quakers, for which she was subsequently banished from the colony.!8
No other Quaker was tried as a witch, yet the informal connection between witchcraft and Quaker belief persisted. Mary Tilton was exiled in 1662 for “having like a sorceress gone from door to door to lure and seduce people, yea even young girls, to join the Quakers,” but in this as in other cases, witchcraft was merely implied and the accusation was never formalized.” When a Boston constable could not identify Margaret Brewster among several Friends who disturbed a Puritan congregation in 1677, he blamed her for his confu- sion, explaining that during her crime Brewster had been dis- guised “in the shape of a Devil.”*° According to Cotton Mather, when Mary Ross fell into the hands of Quakers in the early 1680s, she became possessed with demons. Mather did not accuse the man who converted her of being a witch, but he did suggest that Satan had had a hand in the business. “The
stories Recorded by my Father,” he said, “(plamly enough) demonstrate, That Diabolical Possession was the Thing which
did dispose and encline Men unto Quakerism.” Claiming that
their “quaking” was a symptom of possession, he suggested
that the first Quaker was a female oracle of Delphi who, when
possessed by a demon, “was immediately taken with an extraordinary trembling of her whole body.” Her “prophesies,”
Mather added, “… enchanted all the world into a veneration
Handmaidens of the Devil
125
of them.”?! A similar connection among Quakers, “diabolical practices,” and possession had been drawn by minister John Norton in 1659 in The Heart of New England Rent, the sole full- length orthodox Puritan response to the Quaker threat.” Mather’s and Norton’s writings reveal that the idea of. witchcraft-as-heresy remained an element in Puritan belief for most of the century. However limited, it evidently had some impact on popular belief, since opposition to the established church was mentioned in witchcraft testimony against twenty- eight women. Only ten of these seem to have been accused primarily because of their religious dissent: their witchcraft is best understood in terms of the centuries-long tendency of Christian authorities to see their adversaries—especially their female adversaries—as witches.”* The significance of accusa- tions against the other eighteen women lies less in their here- sies, blasphemies, or other church-related crimes than in the sin of discontent. It was their perceived dissatisfaction with the religious system—and by extension with the religiously defined social system—that linked them to their sister witches.74
In the early 1650s, when New Haven minister John Dav- enport preached in a sermon on witchcraft that “a forward discontented frame of spirit was a subject fit for the Devill to work upon,” he was both expressing and reinforcing one of the most common assumptions about witches in New England.” When members of his congregation went into court in 1653 to explain why they considered Elizabeth Godman a witch, only one woman alluded directly to Davenport’s words, but it was on Godman’s many discontents that the rest of them focused. New Haven’s deputy governor, Stephen Goodyear, in whose household Godman resided, talked of her flinging herself out of a room after his “exposition of a chapter” of the Bible because “she liked [it] not but said it was against her.” According to William Hooke, Godman was also annoyed that “witches” were not allowed to “come into the church.” Kept
126 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil
1297
out of the church herself, Godman was particularly sensitive
monly described as the result of some real or imagined per- on this issue.26
sonal slight, as when Henry Herrick told the Salem court that But there were other manifestations of her discontent
Sarah Good was annoyed with him when he reftised her lodg- besides those directly connected with the church and its doc-
ing in his father’s house.?! : trines. Hooke said she was bitter because a man for whom she
Confessing witches often confirmed the belief shared by had “some affection” married another woman. Another wit-
ministers, magistrates, and witnesses that dissatisfaction led ness, Goodwife Thorpe, testified to Godman’s irritation when
women to join Satan’s forces. According to Hartford minister Thorpe was unable to sell her the chickens she sought. By the
Samuel Stone, Mary Johnson admitted that itwas because of subsequent hearing of the case in 1655, both Hooke and
her discontent with her work as a servant that she became a Goodyear had more to say. Hooke described how, after beg-
witch in 1648; yearning to escape from her many chores, she ging beer from him, Godman had gone away “in a muttering
resorted to calling on Satan to perform them for her.?? Nine- discontented manner” when she could not have it “newly
teen-year-old Mercy Wardwell of Andover confessed during drawne,” and Goodyear added a tale of Godman’s displeasure
the Salem outbreak that she became dissatisfied after people when he “warned her to provide her[self] another place to
told her that “she should Never hath such a Young Man who live in.””” To be sure, Godman may have expressed consider-
loved her”; it was for this reason, she said, that she decided to able discontent. A woman from a family with no male heirs,
take Satan as a lover.?> Implicit in these and other statements she had seen her estate turned over to Goodyear. Hardly a
of guilt was the women’s unhappiness with the material con- poor woman, and clearly not young, she was compelled to ask,
ditions of their lives. They were drawn to Satan, they said, by even beg, for her needs.?8 a
promises_of, prasperity,fineclothes,—future_hushands,.and.. D.s 7 Godman was not the only witch whose discontent was traced,
security.24 in the testimony, to her perception that her neighbors were
Puritans, efined discontent asthinking oneself above one’s *“ against her. Like Godman, man
wome_wn
ere accusedof plaicen.the.socialorder, as “better then some w hom Gad_hath witchcraftafterrelativesorneighe Go ‘ %% TNeretieamentieri—stheese np
bors gained possession of al preferred to_us, either in bonour..esteem, preferment, or, orpartoftheirestoartothe
er
swis intervened in their affairs
wealth,.25 When Elizabeth dman disagreed with decisions in ways they interpreted as hostile. According to two accusers,
of New Haven church members as to who could or could not neeretei
“HewlywidowDorceasdHoarofBeverlyexpresseddissatisfac-
j a ointhechurch,shewasssertingtherightofindividuals(as tion with them when they came to her house in 1691 to exam-
opposed to the congregation of God’s elect) to pass on their ine her husband’s body because she knew they suspected her
of killing him.?9
of course, claimed-for-themselves the clergy’s privilege both a fan + -ssdeahahalahatalneateieenaeariaena osneeauena=eamiietl The irritants were sometimes less explicitly threatening to
the long-term well-being of the witch herself. In 1654, Roger
Ludlow accused Mary Staplies of witchcraft, citing as evidence
ingness to subordinate her will to that of a master. By chal- that she was unwilling to accept the opinion of the New Haven
lenging the right of the New Haven court to determine a witch’s court that her Fairfield neighbor Goody Knapp was a witch;
innocence or guilt—or even to try women as witches—Mary another colonist added that Staplies was not satisfied that “their
Staplies usurped the role of magistrate. Sarah Good, by her were any witches” at all.3° But witches’ discontent was com-
disgruntled response to Herrick’s refusal of aid, revealed that
128
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handinaidens oftheDevil
A 129
ication,assJohnDare implied,‘was
she accepted neither her poverty nor his prosperity with the pleased with having to take out the ashes and chase hogs from proper spirit of humility. To her accusers, Dorcas Hoar was the fields, Samuel Stone said, she wished the Devil would do guilty of killing her husband, the ultimate expression of insu- it for her.2? Dorcas Hoar was more than just unhappy about bordination in a wife.
the investigation into her husband’s death, she was incensed: Dissatisfaction with one’s lot was one of the most pervasive according to the two men appointed by local authorities to themes of witches’ lives. We find that women accused of witch- look into the “untimely death,” Hoar broke out “in a very greate craft were involved in petitions and court suits involving prop- pashtion,” wringing her hands, stamping her feet, and calling erty, mistreatment, even divorce. A few women, Katherine them “wiked wretches” for assuming her guilty of murder.*° Harrison and Rachel Clinton being the most obvious examples, Submissiveness, a quality expected of women in Puritan soci- repeatedly took their grievances to court for redress—although ety, appears to have been characteristic of none of these three legal channels seem to have provided little satisfaction. Of women. Nor was it common among other witches, most of course, the witches themselves did not always initiate the offi- whom were decidedly assertive. cial process that expressed their dissatisfaction. Dorcas Hoar Self-assertion could take a variety of forms, but most often find
Mary Johnson, to name only two of at least fourteen witches were said to have expressed their dissatisfaction in the women, had been charged with stealing prior to being accused manner of Dorcas Hoar—with anger. When Sarah Good was of demonic activities.°5 Hoar was later acc refus ed aid, several of her neighbors attested, she went “mut- vuOusedofbewitchingteringaway,..andscoldingextreamly.”*!Similarly,Sarah a child who threatened to reveal the theft, while another witch, Margaret Jones, was asked whether she did not think the Holton deposed that witch Rébecca Nurse “ “continewed Rail- witchcraft accusation God’s way of punishing her for taking ing and scolding agrat while” after the Holtons’ pigs got into what was not hers.°” The connections between the two crimes— the Nurses’ field.” John Winthrop claimed that Margaret Jones or between the witch’s earlier appearance in court and her persisted in her “railing upon the jury and witnesses” until the later identification as a witch—were rarely so clearly drawn. moment her life was taken away.*? Almost as recurrent an image in the witchcraft documents as the discontented woman is the
furious hag. So fused was this figure with that of the witch that neighbors sometimes felt it unnecessary to cite specific instances of a witch’s rage. It was evidence enough to testify that a given woman was often angry.”
The anger did not have to be intense. According to Cotton Mather, the complaint against the aged Lydia Dustin of Read- ing was that she had merely uttered a “Christian admonition”: “God would not prosper them,” she told some of her neigh- bors, “if they wronged the Widow.’*® Ann Pudeator’s crime was scolding. John Best, speaking about how he had several times found Pudeator’s cow among his father’s when he rounded up the herd, explained that the reason he “did ConClude said pudeater was a wich” was that she “would Chide
complaints. Mary Staplies not only refused to accept the mag-
istrates’ decision that her neighbor was a witch, a decision based
“in par
_t on the discovery of a “witch’s teat” on the woman’s
but according to witnesses Staplies insisted upon exam-
ining the body herself after the execution and publicly
announced that these teats were “no more teates then ]myselfe
have, or any other women.”8 Mary Johnson was not just dis-
130
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil 131
fidhevricowndrgivenoff,orthatDorcasHoarwasfuriousat the insinuation that she had done away with her husband; but these reactions are plausible. Nor is it hard to believe that Sarah Good or Rachel Clinton, both deprived of their inheritances and reduced to the most demeaning poverty, were the embit- tered and resentful women their neighbors said they were: / the conditions of their lives, like those of so many other witches, were hardly more conducive to cheerfulness than they were tosubmissiveness.1iY. WecrLimé WUCNEA tron(Hyg :
What we know about witches comes largely from accusers’ positions concerning their quarrels with the accused, but ‘i e impression accusers intended to create—one of responsi- ble and righteous persons in conflict with discontented, angry, and contentious women—is in fact not supported by the evi-
dence. At the very least, the testimony reveals mutual displea– sure, hostility, and resentment between the disagreeing parties, and many times prior animosity on the part of accuser. It was in some cases not the witch’s ire that generated the accusation, but the accusation that generated her ire. When Elizabeth How was tried in 1692, witnesses indicated that for more than.a decade she had been kept from joining the Ipswich church and had repeatedly been subjected to harassment because her neighbors thought her a witch. Yet as support for his belief that she was in league with the Devil, one witness specifically cited anger that was clearly a response to his suspicion.‘ Without discounting the emotions women like How must have expressed, we cannot uncritically accept their adversaries’ view
ae eerie on that “score ‘alonéné sshe could have been ‘the “object, of her’:
“neighbors” deep-seated resentment. The dynamics of accusations become even more compli-
cated when we try to sort out whether the accused were guilty of the sin of malice. If we accept their detractors’ statements, witches’ malice was expressed in maleficium, the supernatural harm they inflicted on others. In light of the prevalent belief
me when I Came houm for turning the Cow bak.”4 Anger, no matter how mild, was viewed with deep suspicion when the person expressing it was a woman. Even the word “scold,” racuically a synonym for “witch” in the European witchcraft tradition, was defined as an angry woman. No comparable word for an angry man existed in the languagé*7 OSS In Puritan thought, anger, like discontent, was evil in and of itself. If not “speedily repressed,” it also soon spawned two additional sins, envy and malice.*® No creatures were so fully inclined to these offenses as witches, who were said to have so
implicit in accusers’ descriptions of witches’ discontent and anger, especially when, like Sarah Good or Mary Johnson, the accused women were poor. Malice, on the other hand, was openly and repeatedly talked about—every time an accuser said that a witch-threatened, cursed, or cast spells upon some- one. In each case, witnesses made clear, the witch intended to cause her neighbors harm.
It has so far been possible to discuss the sins attributed to
witches without questioning their plausibility. Other sources
support the testimony of accusers that witches were fre-
quently unhappy about the treatment they received from family
members, neighbors, or the authorities, and often discon-
tented with the overall conditions of their lives, We cannot be
sure that Rebecca Nurse was angry when the Holtons’ pigs
damaged her crops, or that Ann Pudeator was annoyed at
132 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF AWOMAN
that such practices worked, some women may have responded to their enemies in this manner, especially when there were few other avenues of redress for their grievances\{ But the evi- dence that some New England witches resorted to black magic is inconclusive. Did Elizabeth Godman “cast a fierce looke upon” Stephen Goodyear with the intention of causing him to fall into a “swonding fitt”—or did: she merely look at him fiercely?>! Did Rebecca Nurse call upon the Devil to kill Ben- jamin Holton—or did the Holtons simply believe that she did? Godman and Nurse, like most other witches, said they were innocent of the sin of galefictum, and we have only their accus- ers’ word that they were not. Short of accepting their enemies’ versions of their actions, we can only acknowledge the possi- bility of witches’ guilt.
Taam n mst
For the witch herself, the malevolence lay with her accus-
_ers, who knew the effect of an accusation Gf a woman’s life.
Perhaps, as some writers have intimated, she was right.° It is
difficult to read about Roger Ludlow’s intense battles with
Fairfield’s Mary Staplies, or George Walton’s long-standing
property dispute with Hannah Jones in Portsmouth, without
recognizing the deep animosity these men felt toward their
respective neighbors. But the evidence writers have cited against
accusers is no more compelling than that presented against
the accused. Witches’ adversaries may have been guilty of
malice, but their testimony indicates that they lodged their
complaints out of a firm conviction that their neighbors were
practicing maleficium and were therefore a serious menace to
them, their families, and their society.
This is not to say that people were not injured. Clearly, the
accused suffered. Most convicted witches lost their lives, and
many of them their property; others lost their freedom of
movement within the community or were forced to leave fam-
ilies and friends to find homes in other colonies, Their fami-
lies also endured the consequences of conviction, both’
emotional and financial. Even those women were were acquit-
ted (if they escaped Eunice Cole’s experience of being pun-
Handmaidens of the Devil. “ eS ;TMay
ished anyway) lived in the $hado .jodl shunned by some of their neighbors and provoked by others. Q C ft So too did many women who were never tried, YYW er. PM Accusers were harmed as well. Whether or not the accused§ }#’ ae? believed that they could inflict supernatural damage, or acted upon that assumption, other people were convinced that
witches could and did affect their health and prosperity. To presume that in lodging their complaints accusers exploited the witchcraft belief system for sinister ends overlooks the enormous power of religious conviction and cultural ideology to shape social behavior. The harm attributed to witches appears to have been real—in the sense that people who believe in the
witch’s malice can suffer and even die as a result of their fears. “Anthropologists studying witchcraft in other societies have many times noted that in this particular sense, witchcraft exists.5* There seems little reason to doubt that in colonial
New England, where witchcraft beliefs constituted one of sev- eral explanatory systems for natural and social misfortunes, people could be genuinely afflicted.
The experience of Elizabeth How and Hannah Perley. illustrates well both the power of belief and the harm inflicted
“a faling out” with their Topsfield neighbor, Samuel Perley.
Soon after, Perley’s ten-year-old daughter Hannah fell into a / ener “sorrowful condition.” / suggestion of other family mem- bers, “apparently made out of genuine conviction, Hannah began to see herself as a victim of Elizabeth How’s anger and
malice. Her afflictiofttnay have been a natural illness for which possession. was the explanation, or it may have been brought on by the belief that she was possessed. In either case, she alternated between affirming and denying that How was responsible. So too did her parents. For two or three years she suffered “dredful fits,” and eventually “so Pined awai to skin and bone” that she died.
Elizabeth How’s fate was similarly tragic. Guilty probably
134 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
of little more than discontent and anger, she was suspected of malefic witchcraft. None of the Perley family or any of the other neighbors who came to see themselves as How’s victims brought their accusations to the magistrates over the next few years, but they made their feelings known. How was not allowed to become a church member and was subjected to numerous smaller indignities because of her reputation. Stories of her deeds surfaced in Salem in 162, just as witchcraft accusations spread out from the village to nearby communities. At least nine Salem people came to believe themselves under her spell and “cried out” on her. Topsfield and Ipswich residents, con- firmed in their long-held suspicions, came forward to testify about Hannah Perley’s death and How’s other malicious activ- ities. Despite the testimony of several witnesses for the defense, and despite How’s unwavering protestations of innocence, she
_was convictedand executed. Like Hannah Perley, her life came to a premature end not because of calculated attempts to harm Kerbutbecauseofaprofoundfearofwitchcraft.Stilltobe
“explained iis why the fear was there in the first place, and why it was so intense. That explanation, as we will see, ultimately requires an understanding of the relationship between witch- craft_beli d_accusations.and .the-social. structure.of.early . colonial New England.
‘The witch’s power to avenge her discontent by inflicting harm ‘upon her neighbors “was inti ately «connected, in the perception of New Englanders, to her more general powers
‘to distiptr the-social-and 1 order” These niore general ~ pdwers carried an ‘implicit sexual content, often made explicit in the specific behaviors attributed to witches and the lan-
guage of these allegations.
ofseduction.ForPuritans,seductionwas“improvingoflone’s]
wit to draw others into sin, to study devices, and lay snares to
’ entrap their souls withal.”®4 As this-definition_suggests,-witches
Handmeaidens oftheDevil 135,
com ofthe Devil.I. Indeed, the destruction of their neighbors’ souls was yet another form of witches’ malice.
In descriptions of witches’ attempts to lead others into sin, Puritan ministers focused most frequently on cases of posses- sion—the most visible sign that witches were working to increase their numbers, During the initial stages of possession, the clergy argued, witches enticed their victims with material rewards, spouses, relief from labor, and so forth. (Only after seductive methods failed did they begin to employ their powers of tor- ture.) For reasons never explained, witches who supposedly recruited others into the Devil’s service focused their attention on other women. Eighty-six percent of possession cases on record in colonial New England are female.5® When Massa- chusetts magistrates banished Mary Tilton “for having like a sorceress gone from door to door to lure and seduce people, yeaevenyounggirls,tojointheQuakers,”orwhentheytried Eunice Cole for “enticing Ann Smith to come to live with her,” they were only expressing less obliquely what ministers implied in their sermons and published works: witches were most dan- gerous as seducers of other females, and they were especially given to working on the young. More than half of the New England possessed were under twenty.
Possession behavior, as scholars have noted, contains ele- ments that suggest repressed erotic impulses.*” But the erotic power witches were thought to wield over possessed females was only rarely explicit during possession; when openly men- tioned, it was not the witch but the Devil himself who seduced female bodies and promised to satisfy women’s carnal desires.
Witches’ attempts to seduce women_and girls tended to be ent et ee Ben ec ronet Pettis desacs.thresieducbtioneofdsouls. An erotic dimension, however, was often implicit in witches’
seduction of other females. Descriptions of witches successful in luring women into their ranks sometimes implied that they accomplished this end by appealing to other women’s licen-
136
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil : 137
being in bed on a lords day night he heard a [scratching] at the window. He this deponent saw susana martin … com in at the window and jumpt downe upon the flower. Shee was in her hood and scarf and the same dress that shee was in before at metting the same day. Being com in, shee was coming up toward this deponents face but turned back to his feet and took hold of them and drew up his body into a heape and Lay upon him about an hour and | half or 2 hours, in al which taim this deponent coold not \stirnorspeake,«oene-enemmnmenersSece .nang nannymeeepence nr
Peach did not interpret Martin’s supernatural appearance as an inducement to sign a covenant with the Devil or even as a torment inflicted for that purpose. Rather he offered it merely as additional evidence of Martin’s malice. Yet for Peach as for some other New England men, witches seem to have been particularly seductive figures.
_implicit, in these tales of witches’ night wandering_is not just that they forced themselves sexually on unwilling men but that_witches’ carnal appetites ‘were both internally uncon> trolled and externally uncontrollable: The testimony implied that these women were dissatistied with—indeed had no respect for—their society’s rules governing sexual behavior, Like the animals with which they were associated, and in whose shape they more often than not seduced their unsuspecting prey, witches made no attempt to restrain their sexual impulses. Since most of the accused were beyond their childbearing years, they lacked the “natural” control pregnancy provided; those who
were single or widowed, moreover, lacked even the restraint of a husband’s presence. Nowhere are their excesses more apparent than in accounts of witches’ intimate contact with their animal familiars. The teats upon which these demon-animals sucked were invariably searched for (and found) on parts of the body where women experience the greatest erotic pleasure, suggesting that the witch may have symbolized forbidden impulses for women as well as men. For while women were only rarely disturbed in
tiousness. In trying to account for Anne Hutchinson’s appeal to the “Femall Sex,” one Puritan writer described her follow- ers as “silly Women laden with diverse lusts.”5* Referring to Hutchinson as an “American Jesabel” and associating her with “Harlots” and religious groups rumored to be unchaste, John Winthrop and Thomas Weld also insinuated that she was seducing more than souls.°* Clergyman John Cotton was more direct about the implications of Hutchinson’s seductive pow- ers. “That filthie sinne of the Comunitie of Woemen,” he told her publicly, “and al promiscuus and filthie cominge togeather of men and Woemen without Distinction or Relation of Mar- riage, will necessarily follow.”®? Hutchinson’s enemies were evidently convinced that women led astray by her would even- tually be adulterous.
Witches were also described as seducers of men, but this sin took a very different form from witches’ seduction of other women. Witches Jured women through the process of posses- sion, but New England males were seldom described as pos- sessed, The few cases of male possession—almost al of which occurred during the Salem outbreak—were largely ignored.
Whenmenconfessedtobecomingwittcheyhalemossta,lways tere an rhryt th
ee en eee implthatiteheydhadbypased woiticnintheproces,claim- ing that the Devil himself was responsible for their entice-
_ment.®! Thus we find little direct evidence for men ofthe kind
witches—that of leading others into deliberate alliances with Satan.
For men, the closest parallel to being possessed was being bewitched in the night. Coming into their bedrooms unin
vited, witches were said to attack men while they slept. Although . men rarely referred to these nocturnal visits as sexual aggres-
sion on the part of witches, those who left detailed descrip-
tions of these attacks suggested precisely that. Bernard Peach,
for instance, claimed as evidence of Susanna Martin’s witch-
craft that
138 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF AWOMAN
their sleep by witches, female accusers frequently testified about witches’ contact with familiars, and women were the ones who conducted most of the searches for evidence of it.
Most witches were guilty of seduction only in the minds of their accusers, but the erotic content of witchcraft is also indi- cated by the presence among the accused of twenty-three women who were explicitly charged with sexual excesses, either during their witchcraft trials or during the years preceding the accusation. When Elizabeth Seager was tried as a witch in Hartford in 1662, she was simultaneously charged with adul- tery (and blasphemy as well).°> Her situation paralleled that of Susanna Martin, who in 1669 was also accused of witchcraft and sexual crimes with men. In both cases the magistrates insisted on separating the two issues.°* More commonly, when direct charges of sexual misbehavior were lodged against an accused witch, it was the Devil who was the alleged partner and the two crimes were treated as one. Sometimes witnesses simply referred vaguely to the Devil’s coming “bodyly unto” the woman at night;® sometimes they submitted more explicit testimony that the Devil had had carnal knowledge of her. In New Haven in 1653, Elizabeth Godman complained that some neighbors had said that she “had laine with” the Devil and that “Hobbamocke [supposedly an Indian ‘devil god’] was her husband.”°6
Testimony presented against Seager, Martin, and God-
man was unusual in that during actual witchcraft trials accus-
ers seldom linked licentious acts and witchcraft so blatantly. Witches were sometimes denounced as bawds or lewd women
in the course of their trials, but rarely were the sexual charges specified. Yet when we look at the lives of the accused prior to
the accusation, we sometimes find evidence of real or alleged
sexual offenses. Like women’s crimes against the church, these
sins seem to have played a role in generating the accusation
in the first place. Citing English opinion, Cotton Mather noted
that a “lewd and naughty kind of Life” was a sign of “proba-
ble” witchcraft.”
Handmaidens of the Devil 139
Margaret Jennings’s situation is instructive. Jennings had been tried and convicted of fornication in 1643, when she was “Margerett Poore, alias Bedforde” of New Haven, an inden- tured servant to Captain Nathaniel Turner, She had run away with Nicholas Jennings, evidently taking some of her master’s possessions with her. She must have been pregnant when the authorities apprehended her, since among their other actions they ordered the couple to marry and Nicholas to give satis- faction to Turner for the service Margaret owed him.®? The record is silent until eighteen years later when Margaret (now living in Saybrook, Connecticut) came before the magistrates a second time: she had been ordered to appear with her daughter Martha, both of them to answer a neighbor’s com- plaint. The exact charge was not recorded, but the court ordered young Martha to submit to a physical examination. Finding her not to be “with child but rather the contrary,” the magistrates released both her and her mother.® Soon after, Margaret and her husband Nicholas were on trial for their lives, accused of murdering several persons, including a young child, by witchcraft. Many of the jurymen believed them both guilty but hesitated to convict them. The only apparent action taken against them was the removal of their two youngest chil- dren from their care.”
Mercy Desborough’s experience suggests another varia- tion on the way sexual themes appear in the life histories of the accused. Desborough was conyicted of witchcraft during the Fairfield outbreak in 1692-99, but like Jennings she was not explicitly accused of any licentious behavior.”! Connecti- cut legal records reveal, however, that she had been punished in 1661, along with Joseph James, for an unspecified offense.72 At that time she was Mercy Holbridge, servant to the promi- nent Gershom Bulkeley of New London. Bulkeley played a central role in getting Desborough reprieved in 1693,”° and with the court granting her a full pardon it appeared that she was safe from further prosecution. But in 1696, Desborough was brought before the magistrates a third time, not for witch-
oe
craft but for fornication and infanticide. James Redfin of Fair-
latter part of the century did accused women offer specific field (formerly of New London) accused her of having done
sexual information. When fifty-three-year-old Rebecca Eames away with an illegitimate child when she worked for Bulkeley
of Andover admitted in 1692 that she had given herself soul nearly thirty-five years before. He implied that Bulkeley (not
and body to the Devil, she made it clear that she considered Joseph James) had fathered the child.74
herself an adulterer—but she was a rare exception.”” H, as in the cases of Desborough, Jennings, and Susanna Accusations of Devil worship were sometimes viewed as Martin, witchcraft suspicion was aroused at the time the sex-
God’s way of punishing women for illicit sexual behavior, as ual misconduct allegedly took place—when these women were
is evident in the response of Margaret Lakes of Dorchester to al young—there is no sign of it. They were al considerably
her witchcraft conviction, When, just before she was hanged, older when accused of demonic practices, Twenty-one in 1661,
both a minister and her former master tried to convince her Desborough was fifty-two when specifically charged with for-
to confess, she refused, saying that she “owned nothing of the nication and infanticide. Many times the sexual sin itself was
crime laid to her charge.” At the same time, according to.John said to have been committed when the woman was of mature
Hale, she fully justified God for bringing her out as a witch, years, Seager’s and Godman’s exact ages are unknown, but
saying that “she had when a single woman played the harlot, both seem to have been in their late thirties at least, and pos-
and being with Child used means to destroy the fruit of her sibly much older, when their sexual behavior was publicly called
body to conceal her sin and shame.””® ee alll into question. Rachel Clinton was thirty-eight when first
As the words of Margaret Lakes might suggest, New Eng- charged with adultery; when first accused of witchcraft she landers associated witchcraft not just with sexual fantasy, for- was fifty-eight. Neighbors sometimes informed a young woman nication, and adultery, but also with bearing illegitimate that her “nightwalking” or “wicked carriages” would lead peo- children, with abortion, and with infanticide—sins attributed ple to think “the devil was in her,””® but usually a woman had
to women almost exclusively. At least fourteen women were to pass her childbearing years before suspicions of licentious- suspected of one of these three sins prior to their witchcraft ness took the form of suspicions of witchcraft. The men said accusations. Such crimes (whether committed by these women to have been involved with these women, it is worth noting,
or not) might have been understood as evidence of dissatisfac- were often considerably younger.
tion with the social rules governing female sexuality and Women who confessed to witchcraft during the early years reproduction, but for many New Englanders these sins car- of witchcraft prosecutions tended to make the erotic content
ried greater import. They stamped the witch as guilty of inter- of witches’ seduction more obvious than their accusers did.
fering with the natural processes of life and death. Awoman Admitting carnal knowledge of both men and devils, these
guilty of these crimes took it upon herself to decide who should women seldom cloaked their descriptions in vague language, °
live and who should die, the prerogative of God alone. Even Mary Johnson and Rebecca Greensmith provided detailed
if, like Boston’s Jane Hawkins, she was thought to have helped accounts of their relationships with devils, and Johnson fur- generate life, or like Rachel Fuller had cast spells to prolong ther confessed to more earthly sexual encounters,”° After the
life, her transgression was just as heinous.”® For women even 1660s, the sexual content of confessions became more muted,
to possess knowledge so critical to the existence of their fami- iy
During the Salem outbreak, many women confessed that
Satan
lies and neighbors seems to have been at the heart of many \tcftaccusations. hadhem“soulandbody,”butonlyoccasionallyduringthe witchra
140 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil 141
142
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmandens of the Devil
143
Some witches were midwives and healers, women whose
ers “doctors,” by barring women from “professional” training, work involved them daily in matters of life and death. We
and, it seems, by accusing female practitioners of witchcraft.8* cannot determine precise numbers—or how explicit a wom-
In early New England, however, doctors were stil scarce and an’s identification as healer had to be to render her vulnerable
male control over medical services was not established. Most to suspicion—because al colonial women were responsible for
towns relied on women’s medical skills throughout the cen- the health of their families, Attendance at childbirth and pro-
tury. The frequency with which doctors were involved in vision of medical care were two of the many services colonial witchcraft cases suggests that one of the unspoken (and prob- women provided for their neighbors as well. Medical knowl-
ably unacknowledged) functions of New England witchcraft edge and skills were handed down from mother to daughter,
was to discredit women’s medical knowledge in favor of their in much the same way colonists thought witchcraft arts were
male competitors. passed on. The few published housewifery manuals of the day Physician Phillip Read of Lynn was connected with at least included not only cooking recipes but “Receipts of Medicines”
two separate episodes, testifying in 1669 that Ann Burt caused for “Distempers, Pains, Aches, Wounds, Sores, etc,”®°
an illness for which there was “noe Natural caus,” and filing Witches such as Ann Burt of Lynn, Elizabeth Morse of
an unspecified complaint against Margaret Gifford in 1680.3° Newbury, and Wethersfield’s Katherine Harrison all seem to Ministers and magistrates wanting confirmation that individ- have been paid for their medical services.*! But the profes-
uals were either bewitched or possessed did not rely on the sional status of most of the twenty-two midwife /healers who medical knowledge of women, but sought instead the medical were a a ccused of witchcraft is more ambiguous. Ann Burt’s
dvice of men. Hartford magistrates were so reluctant to trust granddaughter, Elizabeth Proctor of Salem, was accused of
local women on these issues that, lacking doctors in the vicin- killingherneighb2 ors in 1692
because they would not take her
ity , in 166 they sent for Bray Rossiter of Guilford to corrob- medicalacla dvice, but
it i
sunearwhethershewasaself-iden-
or te to wnspeop les’ suspicions concerning the death of young tified healer or simply one of thousands of New England Elizabeth Kelly.6° Midwives were called upon as “juries” to womenwhonursedothersthroughchildbirthandillnesses.82e examin the bodies of the accused for signs of devil worship, The problem is further complicated by the presence among
but this very intimate procedure was as far as the authorities witches of women like Ann Pudeator, who turned these house- trusted women’s medical judgments in witchcraft cases, even wifery skills to profit when widowed or at other times of though many of the same men relied on women for their own economic need.®* If, as is likely, midwives and healers were
and their families’ medical needs. Not surprisingly, only one particularly susceptible to witchcraft suspicion, we must also “doctor” seems to have been accused of witchcraft in New recognit ze that t
he skilis that made them suspect were pos- England. No only was he the husband of one witch and the sessed by most women, if not to the same extent.
brother-in-law of another, but he seems to have taken on the Whether paid for their services or not, midwives and heal-
title of doctor simply by virtue of his sex.*” , ers were in direct competition with the few male medical prac-
Just as the witch was a symbol of unrestrained lust to her titioners, in much the same way that Antinomian and Quaker neighbors, she also symbolized women’s control over the’health women vied with ministers for spiritual leadership. Men had
and well-being of others. Most witches, as we have seen, were already succeeded in denigrating women’s medical learning in accused of causing illnesses, accidents, or deaths among fam- early seventeenth-century England by designating male heal-
ily members or neighbors. Infants and young children—those
144 THE DEVIL IN FHE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
physically most dependent upon women-—were known to be the most vulnerable to attack. Midwives and healers, like women accused of abortion and infanticide, could have been likely suspects simply because they were ever-present reminders of the power that resided in women’s life-giving and life-main- taining roles.
When ministers and magistrates discussed the seductive power of witches they often linked it—albeit covertly—to women’s functions not only as midwives and healers but also as childbearers and childrearers. The procreative, nurturing, and nursing roles of women were perverted by witches, who gave birth to and suckled demons instead of children and who dispensed poisons instead of cures. The “Poisonous Insinua- tions” of witches, Cotton Mather wrote, spread like a “terrible Plague” through communities, causing them to become “Infected and Infested” with evil.28 John Winthrop told his readers that Anne Hutchinson “easily insinuated her selfe into the affections of many” because she was “a woman very help-
full in the times of child-birth, and other occasions of bodily infirmities.” Those who “tasted of [the Antinomians’] Com- modities. .,” Thomas Weld added, “were streight infected before they were aware, and some being tainted conveyed the infection to others: and thus that Plague first began amongst us.” Winthrop and others referred to Hutchinson’s seduction of other women in terms of her power to “hatch,” “breed,” and “nourish” heretical opinions much as she (and other witches) hatched, bred, and nourished monsters.*? Similar metaphors were employed in discussions of the Quaker men- ace. Minister John Norton described the influence of the Quakers as a “contagion,” arguing that the Puritans must save their “nurse-lings from the poyson of the destroyer.”%
Besides affecting conception, childbirth, and people’s
emotional and physical well-being, witches were regularly
accused of interfering with domestic processes and harming
Handmaidens of the Devil 145
domestic animals—accusations that reflected prevailing gen- der assumptions. Witches were said to have thwarted the mak- ing of butter, cheese, beer, and clothing, prevented livestock and poultry from functioning normally, if at all, and even.to have destroyed their neighbors’ crops. Occasionally, they were charged with phenomenal success in their own domestic work, but usually they were accused of keeping others from their productive activities, often making it impossible for their neighbors to prosper. Here too witches’ activities were a per- version of women’s traditional roles. Dairying, brewing, cloth- ing production, and the tending of farm animals and gardens al comprised women’s daily work. Witches were accused_of hampering-men’s productive activities aswell,-but they spe- cialized. in damage-to-those-domestic-pursuits-in-which they as / women. had.the most-training,-skill_and control. The domestic tasks in which women were traditionally granted expertise soon began to shrink, however; as in medi- cine, men would eventually take over many of these areas of expertise, either by pushing women out altogether or by rel- egating them to the lowest paid and least important positions in the occupational structure. In England, this process was algeady well underway in the seventeenth century, especially in textiles and brewing. It was also underway in New England, but the primitive conditions of early settlement retarded the change. The shift in occupational spheres went furthest in coastal and river towns like Boston, Salem, Springfield, Hart- ford, and New Haven—towns where commercial agriculture, manufacturing, and trade were more developed, and where witchcraft accusations were most common.” To flesh out the connection between women’s work in a . ncn developing economy and the propensit f witches to thwart domestic. processes, consider the witches (at | ast ninetéen) who were castigatefdor their unusual success in “domestic” pur- suits, These were women who tufted their food and textile production,”brewing and other doniestic work into:profitable business enterprises, the “works 6f Mei” tn-colonial-New
146
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil
147
England.°° Elinor Hollingworth ran a tavern in Salem.°* Widow
was as good to Hang her at first as Last.”** Though less Mary Hale, tried as a witch in 1680, kept a boardinghouse in
obviously vindictive, Elizabeth How’s Topsfield and Ipswich Boston. Mary Bradbury’s butter business in Salisbury was so
neighbors harbored a similar resentment of her economic successful that she was able to supply outgoing ships; she was
activities, Testimony presented against her in 1692 reveals that accused of witchcraft after two firkins of butter went bad on a
she had become involved in disputes that arose because she ship several days out to sea, confirming rumors the crew had
had been acting for many years in her blind husband’s stead.*? heard that she was a witch,.%®
At least a dozen other witches were in positions similar to that Katherine Harrison, who along with her husband had prof-
of Crawford and How. ited greatly from the Connecticut River trade in the 1650s and
1660s, put her energies into diverse ventures. Figuring prom-
inently in testimony against her after her husband’s death were
Two sins of a general character permeate the entire con- (besides her medical practice) her many acres on the river, her
tinuum of witches’ behavior: the sin of lying and the sin of numerous cattle, her extraordinary spinning skills, and her
pride, Both weretransgreswitshi proofnousnd implications beekeeping. The thirty “poles” of hops she said her neighbors
within. the. Puritan world view, for pride was Satan’s most destroyed suggests that she was also a brewer. Charged with
grievous sin, and deception was the means by which he first calling on the Devil to aid her in these pursuits, she was also
inflicted his foulness upon Paradise. suspected of hindering the work of others. Thomas Bracy
All witches were presumed to lie, their alliance with the ~ accused her of bewitching him to impede his own trade as a
“Prince of Liars” providing sufficient evidence of the fact. When weaver.” Like midwives, healers, and female religious lead-
Anne Hutchinson claimed knowledge of God’s word, she was ers, women who turned their traditional skills to profit placed
charged with deception by opponents who declared them- themselves in competition with men—and in positions of vul-
gtsselves “fully persuaded that [she was] deluded by the devil, nerability to witchcraft accusations.
because the spirit of God speaks truth in al his servants.” Women whose husbands were disabled or temporarily
Roger Ludlow may also have found witchcraft a plausible absent
from home
wer
e also sus
pect figures. Like widows, these
exp lanation fo r his d ifferences w ith Mary Staplies: his charge womenwerecp fo om
elled
to act on their own or on their fami-
of witchcr aft llow ed closely upon his debate with her in the lies’ behalf—running farms and business enterprises, hiring
Fairfield church, where he apparently charged her publicly people to perform specific tasks, dealing with legal matters,
with going on “in a tract of lying.”!°! Accusations of this sin anedwfs d in g
eneral
engaging their
neighbors as household heads.
preced itchcra t char ge in other cases as well. Most fre- EdithCrawfo, rd of Salem
was ac
cused of witchcraft after act-
quently however, witches were called liars simply for denying . ing as her husband’s attorney in a protracted court case that
their worship of the Devil or for disclaiming malice, theft, or lost the family their house and land in 1667. When the house
other sins associated with witchcraft. Confessions of witchcraft burned shortly after the property had been seized, the new
mad e by women_after-initial denials-were-ci ted~as-proaf that occupantaccusedCrawfordofcausingOn the fire, allegedly say-
witches never told the-truth-( the other hand, men who ing“thatheewouldhaveHet r Hanged If ther were no more
confessed to demonic ac ivities, as we have seen, were usually wimen In the world, for shee was A witch and If shee were
dismissed as liars for claiming witches’ powers.) nott A witch allreddy shee would bee won, and therefore It
While some witchcraft charges were the result of princi- .
148 THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
pled disagreements between accusers and women whom they
considered liars and thus allied with Satan, some witches actually
may have been guilty of lying prior to their accusation. Like
heresy or theft or adultery, this sin may have aroused suspi-
cion in the first place. Other women may have lied during the proceedings, fearful that the truth—even assertions of inno- cence—would cost them their lives. Gonfessions, however, seem
generally to have emerged from a real, if momentary, belief
on the part of the accused that they were, or probably were,
witches. During the Salem outbreak, this belief was no doubt encouraged by knowledge of the outcome if they maintained
their innocence, and by the responses of family members and
neighbors to the accusation.! In a culture where female dis- satisfaction and anger were linked with witchcraft, and where
women were pressured to search their consciences for evi-
dence of their own evil, not surprisingly some women were persuaded—albeit temporarily—that the Devil was in them.
Some accusers also admitted to lying. During the Salem
outbreak Mary Warren informed the court that she and oth-
ers of the possessed “did but dissemble,” and Sarah Churchill
pointed out how very hard it was to tell the community what
it did not want to hear.’ But these stories only demonstrate
more clearly the very real power of witchcraft belief and the
difficulty of separating false accusations from actual lying. When
put under pressure to maintain the community’s truth, both
women. fell back into possessed states or confessed themselves
witches.
Even during periods when only one or two witches were
accused and the appearance of personal motive for the accu-
sations is strongest, it seems a mistake to consider the accusa-
tions mere lies. When.George Walton said that “he believed
in his heart and conscience that Grandma Jones was a witch,”
he may have been self-serving, but as likely as not he was tell-
ing the truth. For Hannah Jones—an aging widow, a daugh-
ter in a family without surviving sons, the female progeny of
a mother who had three times faced witchcraft charges, and a
Handmaidens oftheDevil
149
woman clearly angry that her land had been “unjustly taken” by Walton—was as likely a New England witch as we will find.
The one remaining sin attributed to witches was perhaps the most evil of al. This was pride, defined by minister’Sam- uel Willard as “an overweening opinion of ones self, which makes [a person] think himself too good for his duty, and sO, puts him upon scornfully neglecting i710 Rarely was pride mentioned directly in a witchcraft accusation, but ministers assured their congregations that this sin was what made witches alliances with Satan so obvious. More than just a single sin, it was both the source and embodiment of al sins identified with witchcraft. Pride was inextricably linked in Puritan thought to insubordination—indeed, to outright rebellion. Knowing their duty to live according to God’s rules, Cotton Mather said, but
discontented with those rules, witches refused to obey them, and in the process they rose up against God. “Rebellion is, Mather insisted, “as the sin of witchcraft.”!% In its most obvious form, pride became manifest through witches’ challenges to the authority of ministers, magistrates, and masters. Yet some women who questioned the authority of their husbands were also considered witches. What made William Good afraidin 1692 that his wife witch or would be one very. quickly” w: him,”!97 Daniel Ela had similar thoughts about his own wife Elizabeth ten years earlier because she refused to humble her- self before him and acknowledge that “shee was but his ser- vantt. ..,” he being a “gentellman borne …” and she “butt a poore widdow” when he married her.’°* Evidence of this kind of pride is easily overlooked because husbands who suspected that their wives were witches were seldom taken seriously by the courts. Colonial culture strongly discouraged the use of witchcraft accusations as a way of severing marital bonds. Nevertheless, a wife’s insubordination to her husband is implicit in many of the sins that New Englanders saw as witchcraft,
150
THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN
Handmaidens of the Devil
ipl
from adultery to the murder of one’s own spouse and children
their judgment, rather than her grievance, became the issue.’!! to the pursuit of independent economic activities. Even when
When brought before the ministers and deacons of the a husband allowed or encouraged his wife’s evil, other people
church for trial, Hibbens was first cited for discontent and viewed these women’s actions as evidence of witchcraft. contentiousness, then for other sins. Governor Winthrop inti- Witchcraft in colonial New England meant more than
mated that she was guilty of seduction, arguing that she car- women’s refusal to subordinate themselves to men with insti-
ried on the dispute with “skill and patience, laboring te draw tutional authority over them: it suggested their refusal to sub- sometimes one and sometimes another to her own judgment.” ordinate themselves to al persons whom God had placed above
Minister John Wilson and several other men charged her with them in the social hierarchy. In some cases, women came under
making a “wisp” and a “cipher of her husband .., usurping suspicion for acting as ifthey were above other women whom
authority over him whom God hath made her head” as well society had defined as their betters. Most often, though, sus-
as over God himself. John Cotton said her charges against the picion originated in women’s interactions with men, whom
joiners were lies and accused her both of envy and of “thrust[ing society implicitly held to be superior to al women. While Puri-
herself] into God’s throne and seat, to know the hearts of men.” tans surely would have denied the principle that a// women
Blasphemy was implied by Cotton and several others. “Indeed,” were subject to adi men, the record shows thé lack of deference
claimed one of her adversaries near the end of her trial, “I do for male neighbors to be a common thread running through
not know of what sin she is not guilty of.” But the sin that led the many sins of witches. It was not just pride that most fun-
to and embodied all the others, in her opponents’ view, was damentally distinguished witches from other people; it was
her “great pride of spirit.” She not only refused to acknowl- female pride in particular.
edge her duty to obey God and man, but she persisted in seeing the “sin in this business” as the actions of the joiners. Com- paring her to the biblical Miriam, who “rose up against Moses The records do not allow us fully to see awoman becom-
and Aaron,” Deacon Thomas Oliver found her “leprous”; “she ing a witch. We have enough detail on the life of Ann Hib-
ought to be pronounced unclean,” he said, and “cast out of bens, however, to see the outlines of the process. None of the
the church” before her disease spread to others, adding that evidenceHiaty pre
sented ag
ain
stbbensinher1656witchcrafttrial
“l ready … here isd anger that man hath been infected by hassach urvived,
!°? but
sixteen ye
rs earlier other charges had
the urch’s delay.” No t long after, she was excommun i- been brought against her . —accusations not at the time desig-
cated!” nated as witchcraft.
No one mentioned witchcraft directly in Hibbens’s 1640 Dissatisfied with the quality of work done for her by Bos-
trial, but there was more than enough in her words and actions ton joiners (carpenters) in 1640—and with what she con-
to suggest to her adversaries that she was an instrument of sidered their excessive rates—Hibbens took her grievances to
Satan. All that was needed was the crucial ingredient: evi- her minister, the governor, and several other men, some of
dence of supernatural activities. Someone may have provided whom were joiners themselves. Initially, Hibbens found sup-
it at the time, but if so it was ignored. She was, after all, the port for her complaint because some of these men shared her
wife of a magistrate and highly respected by many. people in dissatisfaction,’!°Butitwaseweu not
lo
ng before her superiors unit
ed
the community. Sh as said to have be n “co nted a saint” in opposition against her. Her refusal to “rest satisfied” with
by some.!!° In 1656, two years after her husband’s death, the