ied for warrants,
refused to grant any more. Hereupon they cried out upon Bradstreet, and
declared that he had killed nine persons by means of witchcraft; and he
was so much alarmed that he fled from the place. The accusers aimed at
people in higher positions in society, until at last they had the
audacity to cry out upon the lady of governor Phipps himself, and thus
lost whatever countenance he had given to their proceedings out of
respect to the two Mathers. Other people of character, when they were
attacked by the accusers, took energetic measures in self-defence. A
gentleman of Boston, when "cried out upon," obtained a writ of arrest
against his accusers on a charge of defamation, and laid the damages at
a thousand pounds. The accusers themselves now took fright, and many who
had made confessions retracted them, while the accusations themselves
fell into discredit. When governor Phipps was recalled in April, 1693,
and left for England, the witchcraft agitation had nearly subsided, and
people in general had become convinced of their error and lamented it.

But Cotton Mather and his father persisted obstinately in the opinions
they had published, and looked upon the reactionary feeling as a triumph
of Satan and his kingdom. In the course of the year they had an
opportunity of reasserting their belief in the doings of the witches of
Salem. A girl of Boston, named Margaret Rule, was seized with
convulsions, in the course of which she pretended to see the "shapes" or
spectres of people exactly as they were alleged to have been seen by the
witch-accusers at Salem and Andover. This occurred on the 10th of
September, 1693; and she was immediately visited by Cotton Mather, who
examined her, and declared his conviction of the truth of her
statements. Had it depended only upon him, a new and no doubt equally
bitter persecution of witches would have been raised in Boston; but an
influential merchant of that town, named Robert Calef, took the matter
up in a different spirit, and also examined Margaret Rule, and satisfied
himself that the whole was a delusion or imposture. Calef wrote a
rational account of the events of these two years, 1692 and 1693,
exposing the delusion, and controverting the opinions of the two Mathers
on the subject of witchcraft, which was published under the title of
"More Wonders of the Invisible World; or the Wonders of the Invisible
world displayed in five parts. An Account of the Sufferings of Margaret