Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (11 page)

Courts charged with the handling of witchcraft cases had to deal not only with strict legal requirements but also with public opinion. Few ordinary folk appreciated the rigorous standards of proof that judges were bound to uphold: they often considered the evidence presented in court to be clearly damning and felt betrayed if the accused was acquitted. The most infamous clash between the legal system and public opinion in Connecticut had been some thirty years before, when Elizabeth Seager was tried for witchcraft on three separate occasions and each time went free: the first and second of these trials, both of which took place in 1663, resulted in acquittal; at the third trial in 1665 a jury did convict her, but the Court of Assistants overturned the verdict. Magistrates sometimes tried to contain public anger by recognizing quite openly in their formal judgments that legal innocence did not necessarily mean actual innocence. In one case they found the accused “suspiciously guilty of witchcraft, but not legally guilty according to law and evidence received.” In another they judged the defendant to be “not legally guilty according to indictment,” but acknowledged “just ground of vehement suspicion” against her.

Magistrates wanted New Englanders to believe that courts charged with witchcraft cases took seriously the testimony that accusers submitted, even though that testimony could not always support a conviction. At the close of yet another trial the judges advised the defendant “solemnly to reflect upon the case and grounds of suspicion given in and alleged against her,” and told her that “if further grounds of suspicion of witchcraft or fuller evidences should appear against her by reason of mischief done to the bodies or estate of any by any preternatural acts proved against her, she might justly fear and expect to be brought to her trial for it.” Elizabeth Seager’s experience suggested that the neighbors of suspect witches, if not the suspects themselves, took such advice to heart.

The cases of Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough would test the judicial and diplomatic skills of William Jones and his fellow magistrates to their utmost limits. Mister Jones came to Fairfield fully prepared, having read extensively on the vexed issue of how to conduct a witch trial. Most of the texts he examined had been published in England, including William Perkins’s famous
Discourse on the Damned Art of Witchcraft
and Richard Bernard’s no less respected
Guide to Grand-Jury Men
. Both authors wanted to establish a straightforward and reliable procedure for trying witches; he had found their careful discussion of the issues involved invaluable. Increase Mather, a learned pastor who lived in Boston, had penned his own contribution to the scholarship, an
Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences
. Published in 1684, this was a fount of wisdom on the subject of witchcraft as well as other supernatural phenomena. William Jones summarized the information that he gleaned from these various authorities in notes that would guide him as he assessed the evidence against Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough. Thus armed, he hoped to play a creditable role in the court’s proceedings as it sought to juggle its twin roles as an instrument of God against the forces of darkness and a rigorous agent of the law.

Mister Jones’s memorandum was divided into two parts. The first gave a list of legitimate grounds for holding a formal inquiry following an accusation of witchcraft. According to the authors he had read, officials should launch an investigation if any one of the following conditions was met:

Grounds for Examination of a Witch

1. Notorious defamation by the common report of the people a ground of suspicion.
   
2. A second ground for strict examination is if a fellow witch gives testimony on his examination or death that such a person is a witch. But this is not sufficient for conviction or condemnation.
   
3. If after cursing there follows death or at least mischief to the party.
   
4. If after quarreling or threatening a person mischief doth follow, for parties devilishly disposed after cursings do use threatenings and that also is a great presumption against them.
   
5. If the party suspected be the son or daughter, the servant or familiar friend, near neighbor or old companion of a known or convicted witch, this also a presumption, for witchcraft is an art that may be learned and conveyed from man to man and oft it falleth out that a witch dying leaveth some of the aforesaid heirs of her witchcraft.
   
6. If the party suspected have the Devil’s mark, for ’tis thought when the Devil maketh his covenant with them he always leaves his mark behind him to know them for his own, that is, if no evident reason in them can be given for such a mark.
   
7. Lastly, if the party examined be unconstant and contrary to himself in his answers.
   

It must have been clear to Mister Jones that the local magistrates had acted properly when, based on the information available to them, they held a preliminary hearing and then detained the suspects. This was true even of Mary Staples, Mary Harvey, and Hannah Harvey. Goodwife Staples had long been associated by “common report” with witchcraft and so satisfied the first of the “grounds” itemized in the memorandum. Mary Harvey and Hannah Harvey, daughter and grand-daughter of Goody Staples, fulfilled another, the fifth, by being closely related to Goody Staples.

The depositions against both Goody Clawson and Goody Disborough satisfied several of William Jones’s criteria, most obviously the first and fourth, “the common report of the people” and “mischief” following “quarreling or threatening.” Neighbors in Compo and Stamford had long suspected the two women of witchcraft; a significant number had, moreover, suffered death or misfortune within their households after quarreling with one of the accused.

Goody Disborough had also cursed at least two of her neighbors, which satisfied the third ground for examination. Following a disagreement with Elizabeth Benit, she informed the young woman rather cryptically “that it should be pressed, heaped, and running over to her.” When Elizabeth Benit reacted with outrage to this malediction, Mercy Disborough responded that the words she had spoken were taken from scripture. But she also told Elizabeth Benit’s father-in-law, Thomas Benit, that “she would make him as bare as a bird’s tail.” Soon after that his livestock began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In addition, both Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough satisfied the sixth of the possible grounds for an inquiry: both were rumored to have a “Devil’s mark” or “witch’s teat” on their bodies, an abnormal lump of flesh that looked like an extra nipple. Demonic imps were said to drink blood from these witch teats, usually assuming animal form to do so. Katherine Branch claimed to have seen Goody Miller, the suspect who escaped to New York, feeding a dog from a teat under her arm.

Several women in Stamford who had cared for Elizabeth Clawson during childbirth came forward in June 1692 to testify that she had a physical abnormality, perhaps a Devil’s mark. But not everyone agreed that Goody Clawson differed from other women “in the make of her body.” The court of inquiry had appointed a group of women, “faithfully sworn, narrowly and truly to inspect and search her body, to see whether any suspicious signs or marks did appear that were not common or that were preternatural.” These women reported “with one voice” that “they found nothing save a wart on one of her arms.” They also searched Mercy Disborough’s body that same day and did find “a teat or something like one in her privy parts, at least an inch long, which is not common in other women, and for which they could give no natural reason.”

Once Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough had been detained and removed to Fairfield, the group of women reconvened to carry out a second search of both women’s bodies. The local magistrates were clearly worried about the inconsistencies in what they had heard so far. The women confirmed that there was “nothing” on Goody Clawson’s body “that is not common to other women.” On Goody Disborough’s body they found “as before and nothing else.”

According to the guidelines on which William Jones was relying, the discovery of an unusual mark justified proceeding against a suspect “if no evident reason can be given for such a mark.” Yet it was easier said than done to establish whether a marking or growth was natural or supernatural. Mister Jones may well have seen the trial records for a case from several decades earlier in which residents of Fairfield disagreed over whether marks found on a woman named Goodwife Knapp, executed as a witch, were really witch teats. After Goody Knapp was cut down and brought to be buried, Mary Staples (the very same woman now accused by Katherine Branch) examined her body.

“Here are no more teats than I myself have, or any other women, or you either if you would search your body,” she told one of the other women present.

“I know not what you have,” the woman replied, “but for myself, if any find such things about me, I deserve to be hanged as she was.”

Several other women could not at first find any suspicious markings on Goody Knapp, but changed their minds under pressure from those who believed they had seen the Devil’s mark. Even Goody Staples ended up admitting that the marks might well be teats and that “no honest women had such.”

William Jones and his colleagues now arranged for a group of women, including some of those who had examined the accused before and others who had not yet seen their bodies, to carry out a third examination. Sarah Gold and Ann Wakeman, testifying on behalf of this group, gave a somewhat different report from those submitted earlier in the summer: “concerning Goody Clawson, we find in her private parts more than is common to women, we can’t say teats, but something extraordinary, and Goody Disborough’s is something like it, but a great deal smaller. Goody Clawson’s is a dark red and Disborough’s of a pale color.” Yet Goody Gold and Goody Wakeman did not speak for all of the women, as Ann Hardy and Martha Henry made clear in their separate deposition: “naught is seen by us on the body of Elizabeth Clawson which we could not find before at Stamford and on Mercy’s body we find that what we saw on her before is grown somewhat less, but there’s now another small one which we saw not before.”

Other women now came forward to clarify what they had seen at the original examination in Stamford: Sarah Finch, Mary Ambler, and Bethia Weld declared “that they found nothing upon the said Clawson but what they thought was natural, yet do further say that the said Clawson did differ in the make of her body from themselves.” Martha Homes confirmed “what return she made unto the court concerning the said search, that at Stamford they found nothing upon the said Clawson but what she thought was natural, yet also doth say that the said Clawson did differ from other women, and that at Fairfield there was then more to be seen upon her than she saw when she was searched at Stamford.”

There was clearly no consensus among the women who had examined the defendants’ bodies as to what they saw or what it meant. Regardless of whether the marks were natural or not, the magistrates already had ample grounds on which to proceed. But Mister Jones and his colleagues had good reason for their preoccupation with this particular kind of evidence: if truly diabolical, the markings constituted hard physical evidence, which was all too often elusive in a witchcraft trial. As the deputy-governor reviewed the second half of his memorandum, listing the legitimate grounds for conviction, he must have become increasingly concerned that, without proof of the Devil’s mark, convicting either woman seemed unlikely. They might well be guilty, but proving that in a court of law was not going to be easy.

The second part of the guide Mister Jones had compiled evaluated various kinds of evidence that might be presented once a witchcraft case came to trial. Legal experts and theologians had recently devoted much ink to distinguishing between “proofs” that they considered “sufficient” for conviction and those they dismissed as inadequate. Three main categories of evidence were judged to be “insufficient”:

1. Less sufficient are those used in former ages such as by red-hot iron and scalding water, the party to put his hand in one or take up the other. If not hurt the party cleared, if hurt convicted for a witch. But this way utterly condemned in some countries. Another proof justified by some of the learned is by casting the party bound into water. If she sinks counted innocent, if she sink not then guilty. 

No one involved in this investigation was suggesting that Elizabeth Clawson or Mercy Disborough put her hand in scalding water or pick up a red-hot iron. But the water test—or ducking, as some called it—was quite another matter. Ducking involved binding suspects and then throwing them into water to see if they sank or not. If they floated, the water had rejected their bodies as unholy and so they were guilty; if they sank, they were innocent.

Daniel Wescot told the court that when he confronted Goody Clawson that May about the afflictions in his household, he asked if she would be willing to be ducked. Elizabeth Clawson replied that she would if the minister and magistrates said it was reliable, but otherwise not. Immediately after Goody Disborough’s removal from the court of inquiry in Stamford to the county jail in Fairfield, she actually requested to be ducked and was evidently eager for this to be done. When the jailer asked why, she responded that “it was to vindicate her innocency.”