them, had they not
been true. He says that brutal violence was used upon his son to induce
him to confess. He also states that two of the children of Martha
Carrier were "tied neck and heels, till the blood was ready to come out
of their noses." The outrages, thus perpetrated, with all the
affrighting influences brought to bear, prevailed over Carrier's
children. Some of them were used as witnesses against her. A little
girl, not eight years old, was made to swear that she was a witch; that
her mother, when she was six years old, made her so, baptizing her, and
compelling her "to set her hand to a book," and carried her, "in her
spirit," to afflict people; that her mother, after she was in prison,
came to her in the shape of "a black cat;" and that the cat told her it
was her mother. Another of her children testified that he, and still
another, a brother, were witches, and had been present, in spectre, at
Witch-sacraments, telling who were there, and where they procured their
wine. All this the mother had to hear.

Thomas Carrier, her husband, had, a year or two before, been involved in
a controversy about the boundaries of his lands, in which hard words had
passed. The energy of character, so strikingly displayed by his wife, at
her Examination, rendered her liable to incur animosities, in the
course of a neighborhood feud. The whole force of angry superstition had
been arrayed against her; and she became the object of scandal, in the
form it then was made to assume, the imputation of being a witch. Her
Minister, Mr. Dane, in a strong and bold letter, in defence of his
parishioners, many of whom had been accused, says: "There was a
suspicion of Goodwife Carrier among some of us, before she was
apprehended, I know." He avers that he had lived above forty years in
Andover, and had been much conversant with the people, "at their
habitations;" that, hearing that some of his people were inclined to
indulge in superstitions stories, and give heed to tales of the kind, he
preached a Sermon against all such things; and that, since that time, he
knew of no person that countenanced practices of the kind; concluding
his statement in these words: "So far as I had the understanding of any
thing amongst us, do declare, that I believe the reports have been
scandalous and unjust, neither will bear the light."

Atrocious as were the outrages connected with the prosecutions, in 1692,
none, it appears to me, equalled those committed in