ibe.

"Yours,
"KATHERINE HARRISON."

At a special court of assistants held May 20, 1670, to which the General
Assembly had referred the matter with power, the court having considered
the verdict of the jury could not concur with them so as to sentence her
to death, but dismissed her from her imprisonment, she paying her just
fees; willing her to mind the fulfilment of removing from Wethersfield,
"which is that will tend most to her own safety & the contentment of the
people who are her neighbors."

In the same year, having paid the expenses of her trials and
imprisonment, she removed to Westchester, New York. Being under
suspicion of witchcraft, her presence was unwelcome to the inhabitants
there and complaint was made to Governor Lovelace. She gave security for
her civil carriage and good behavior, and at the General Court of
Assizes held in New York in October, 1670, in the case of Katherine
Harrison, widow, who was bound to the good behavior upon complaint of
some of the inhabitants of Westchester, it was ordered, "that in regard
there is nothing appears against her deserving the continuance of that
obligation she is to be released from it, & hath liberty to remain in
the town of Westchester where she now resides, or anywhere else in the
government during her pleasure."

CHAPTER VII

"Although our fathers cannot be charged with having regarded the Devil
in his respectful and deferential light, it must be acknowledged, that
they gave him a conspicuous and distinguished--we might almost say a
dignified--agency in the affairs of life and the government of the
world: they were prone to confess, if not to revere, his presence, in
all scenes and at all times. He occupied a wide space, not merely in
their theology and philosophy, but in their daily and familiar
thoughts." UPHAM'S _Salem Witchcraft_.

"There are in every community those who for one cause or another
unfortunately incur the dislike and suspicion of the neighbors, and when
belief in witchcraft prevailed such persons were easily believed to have
familiarity with the evil one." _A Case of Witchcraft in Hartford_
(Connecticut Magazine, November, 1899), HOADLEY.

Witchcraft in the Connecticut towns reached its climax in 1692--the
fateful year at Salem, Massachusetts--and the chief center of its
activity was in the border settlements at Fairfield. There, several
women early in the year were accused of the crime, and among them Mercy
Disborough. The