wall's Diary: "OCT. 7^th,
1692. Mr. Torrey seems to be of opinion, that the Court of Oyer and
Terminer should go on, regulating any thing that may have been amiss,
when certainly found to be so."

Sewall and Stoughton were among the principal friends of Torrey; and he,
probably, had learned from them, Phips's avowed purpose to stop the
proceedings of the Court, in the witchcraft matter. The Court, however,
was allowed to sit, in other cases, as it held a trial in Boston, on the
tenth, in a capital case of the ordinary kind. The purpose of the
Governor gradually became known. Danforth, in a conversation with
Sewall, at Cambridge, on the fifteenth, expressed the opinion that the
witchcraft trials ought not to proceed any further.

It is not unlikely that Phips, while at the eastward, had received some
communication that hastened his return. He describes the condition of
things, as he found it. We know that the lives of twenty people had been
taken away, one of them a Minister of the Gospel. Two Ministers had been
accused, one of them the Pastor of the Old South Church; the name of the
other is not known. A hundred were in prison; about two hundred more
were under accusation, including some men of great estates in Boston,
the mother-in-law of one of the Judges, Corwin, and a member of the
family of Increase Mather, although, as he says, in no way related to
him. A Magistrate, who was a member of the House of Assembly, had fled
for his life; and Phips's trusted naval commander, a man of high
standing in the Church and in society, as well as in the service, after
having been committed to Jail, had escaped to parts unknown. More than
all, the Governor's wife had been cried out upon. We can easily imagine
his state of mind. Sir William Phips was noted for the sudden violence
of his temper. Mather says that he sometimes "showed choler enough."
Hutchinson says that "he was of a benevolent, friendly disposition; at
the same time quick and passionate;" and, in illustration of the latter
qualities, he relates that he got into a fisticuff fight with the
Collector of the Port, on the wharf, handling him severely; and that,
having high words, in the street, with a Captain of the Royal Navy, "the
Governor made use of his cane and broke Short's head." When his Lady
told her story to him, and pictured the whole scene of the "strange
ferment" in the domestic and social circles of Boston and throughout the
country, it was well for the Chi