and Rebecca
Nurse, and Bridget Bishop, and so on; the charges being made now against
the members, often the heads, of the most reputable families in Salem
town and village and the surrounding neighborhoods. Before the coming of
the winter snows probably one hundred and fifty persons were in prison
at Salem and Ipswich and Boston and Cambridge. Two-thirds of these were
women; many of them were aged and venerable men and women of the highest
reputation for behavior and piety. Yet, they were bound with chains, and
exposed to all the hardships that attended incarceration in small and
badly constructed prisons.

A special court composed of the leading judges in the province being
appointed by the Governor for the trial of these accused persons, a mass
of what would be now styled "utter nonsense" was brought against them.
No wonder that the official record of this co-called court of justice is
now nowhere to be found. The partial accounts that have come down to us
are sufficient to brand its proceeding with everlasting infamy. Let us
recur to the charges against some of these persons:

The Rev. Cotton Mather, speaking of the trial of Bridget Bishop, says:
"There was one strange thing with which the Court was _newly
entertained_. As this woman was passing by the meeting-house, she gave a
look towards the house; and immediately a demon, invisibly entering the
house, tore down a part of it; so that, though there was no person to be
seen there, yet the people, at the noise, running in, found a board,
which was strongly fastened with several nails, transported into another
quarter of the house."

A court of very ignorant men would be "entertained" now with such a
story, in a very different sense from that in which the Rev. Cotton
Mather used the word. The Court of 1692, doubtless swallowed the story
whole, for it was no more absurd than the bulk of the evidence upon
which they condemned the reputed witches.

One of the charges against the Rev. Master Burroughs, who had himself
been a minister for a short time in the village, was, that though a
small, slender man, he was a giant in strength. Several persons
witnessed that "he had held out a gun of seven foot barrel with one
hand; and had carried a barrel full of cider from a canoe to the shore."
Burroughs said that an Indian present at the time did the same, but the
answer was ready. "That was the black man, or the Devil, who looks like
an Indian."

Another charge against Ma