g witches, "and several others,"
relating, as it did, to what was alleged to have happened "the night
before Mr. Burroughs was executed," could not have been given at his
trial, nor until after his death. Yet, as but three other confessing
witches are mentioned in the files of this case, Mather must have relied
upon this Memorandum to make up the "eight" said, by him, to have
testified, "in the prosecution of the charge" against Burroughs. Hale,
misled, perhaps, by the Memorandum, uses the indefinite expression
"seven or eight." We know that one of the confessing witches, who had
given evidence against Burroughs, retracted it before the Court,
previous to his execution; but Mather makes no mention of that fact.

To go back to the barrel Mr. Burroughs lifted. I have stated the
substance of the whole testimony relating to the point. Mather
characterizes it, thus, in his report of the trial: "There was evidence
likewise brought in, that he made nothing of taking up whole barrels,
filled with molasses or cider, in very disadvantageous positions, and
carrying them off, through the most difficult places, out of a canoe to
the shore."

He made up this statement, as its substance and phraseology show, from
Willard's deposition, then lying before him. In his use of that part of
the evidence, in particular, as of the whole evidence, generally, the
reader can judge whether he exhibited the spirit of an historian or of
an advocate; and whether there was any thing to justify his expression,
"made nothing of."

Any one scrutinizing the evidence, which, strange to say, was allowed to
come in on a trial for witchcraft, relating to alleged misunderstandings
between Burroughs and his two wives, involved in an alienation between
him and some of the relations of the last, will see that it amounts to
nothing more than the scandals incident to imbittered parish quarrels,
and inevitably engendered in such a state of credulity and malevolence,
as the witchcraft prosecutions produced. Yet our "historian," in his
report of the case, says: "Now G. B. had been infamous, for the
barbarous usage of his two successive wives, all the country over."

In my book, in connection with another piece of evidence in the papers,
given, like that of the confessing witches just referred to, long after
Burroughs's execution, I expressed surprise that the irregularity of
putting such testimony among the documents belonging to the trial,
escaped the notice of H