The Enemy Within (21 page)

Parts of this extraordinary scene are witnessed by a visiting clergyman, Reverend Deodat Lawson, who would write about it in a book published shortly afterward: “She
[
Ann Sr.
]
desired me to pray with her . . . but after a little time was taken with a fit . . .
[
and
]
was so stiff she could not be bended . . . but began to strive violently with her arms and legs.” After some minutes, Ann Sr. gathers herself to fight back, and hurls a volley of scathing words at her spectral adversary: “Be gone! Be gone! Be gone! Are you not ashamed . . . to afflict a poor creature so? What hurt did I ever do to you in my life? You have but two years to live and then the Devil will torment your soul; for this your name is blotted out of God's book. . . . Be gone, for shame, are you not afraid of that which is coming upon you? I know, I know, what will make you afraid: the wrath of an angry God, I am sure that will make you afraid! Be gone, do not torment me. . . .” Soon Ann Sr. is again “sorely afflicted [with] her mouth drawn to one side and her body strained, for about a minute.” Finally, she asks Lawson to read from a certain scriptural passage—the Book of Revelations, chapter 3—because “I am sure you [i.e. Nurse's apparition] cannot stand before that text!” At this the minister does “something scruple,” since such practice seems uncomfortably close to traditional magic—in the parlance of the time, a charm—but decides to “do it . . . once for an experiment.” Almost immediately, Ann Sr. is freed from her suffering.

These events—the affliction by Rebecca Nurse's apparition of at least three different persons—quickly become the subject of much agitated discussion around the Village. The fits of the victim group, some of them dating back to the previous month, have built an atmosphere of intense public concern; Rebecca is the sixth person to fall under suspicion so far. But her case is unusual in one important respect: she has numerous local supporters, friends and relatives ready to come to her defense. In due course, four of these friends—Israel and Elizabeth Porter, Daniel Andrew, and Peter
Cloyce, upstanding citizens all—are “desired to go to . . . [her] house,” and speak with her personally, to break the news of the accusations made against her. The circumstances are poignant and difficult. Rebecca, age 71, has been bedridden for some time; her visitors find her “weak and low.” They ask her “how it [is] . . . otherwise with her” (referring to her spiritual condition). She gamely replies that she feels “more of God's presence in this sickness than [at] some [other] times, but not so much as she desired.” Indeed, her piety is fully manifest; she cites “many . . . places of scripture” that give her great comfort. Then, “of her own accord,” she raises the matter of “the affliction [i.e. the witchcraft] amongst them,” and expresses her sympathy for its several young victims. She regrets being too ill to visit them, for she has “pitied them with all her heart, and . . . [prayed] for them.” Eventually, and as gently as possible, Rebecca's friends come to the point and tell her “that she was spoken of also [as a witch].” She feels “as it were amazed,” and sits quietly trying to understand. Presently she says, “If it be so, the will of the Lord be done.” But then, a moment later: “As to this thing [the witchcraft accusation
],
I am [as] innocent as the child unborn.” She ends, in good Puritan fashion, by turning the matter back on herself and wondering aloud: “What sin hath God found out in me, unrepented of, that he should lay such an affliction on me in my old age
?
” An affliction it truly is—hardly less so than what the bewitched victims are concurrently suffering. And there is worse to come.

 
Rebecca Nurse was born in the English town of Great Yarmouth, in 1621, to a couple named William and Johannah Towne. The Townes emigrated to Massachusetts when Rebecca was still a girl, and established themselves on a small farm in Topsfield, just north of the Salem line. Across that line in years to come, William Towne would repeatedly find himself “in controversy” with various Salem Village residents, especially some from the large and locally influential Putnam clan; for the most part, the issue was poorly-drawn boundaries between one farm and another. Otherwise little is known of the family's situation in that period, except that Goodwife Towne was suspected by some of being a witch. Since witchcraft was believed to be a heritable condition, passed through families from one generation to the next, this would be a factor in her daughter Rebecca's own vulnerability to accusation later on.

Coming of age in the 1640s, Rebecca married a young artisan in Salem; his name was Francis Nurse. Together they would raise eight children. Local records afford passing glimpses of their doings: occasional lawsuits filed for and against them (debt, trespass, slander), the taking of a foster child into their household “in charity,” Francis's occasional service as a juryman and constable. Taken together, these bits suggest a gradual rise in status and property. Then, in 1678, came something more substantial: Francis Nurse emerged as the purchaser of a fine 300-acre “estate” from a Boston clergyman named James Allen. The terms were unusual: Nurse was given 21 years to discharge the principal (a hefty total of 400 pounds), while in the meantime paying a modest annual rent. The land was in Salem Village, to which the entire family then moved from its previous home in the Town center. In fact, this transaction would have a troubled history, including numerous legal challenges that played out in local courts over the next several years. Allen, who still held official title, bore the brunt here, but inevitably the Nurses were also drawn in. Thus, they became increasingly embroiled with various neighbors who would later step forward among Rebecca's accusers in the witch trials.

Still, from all signs the family prospered in its new venue. Francis became a vigorous participant in the local economy and his wealth as recorded on the tax rolls rose markedly. In time, he managed to settle most of his now-grown children within the ambit of his own property. Rebecca was a member in good standing of the church and a figure of deep respect within the wider Village community. A contemporary would subsequently note many “testimonials of her Christian behavior, both in the course of her life and at her death, and her extraordinary care in educating her children, and setting them good examples.” ◆◆◆

Back and forth it goes, with yet more of her accusers falling into fits. At one point Hathorne mentions “an odd discourse [gossip] in the mouths of many [Villagers],” to the effect that her recent “sickness” was actually the result of wounds received when the afflicted and others struck back at her apparition. As to “wounds,” she replies, “I have none but old age.” Meanwhile, the afflicted claim to see “a black man whispering in [Rebecca's] ear, and birds [her familiars]
”
fluttering around her.

 
It would be a mistake to make any one set of people entirely responsible for the persecution of Rebecca Nurse, but members of the Putnam clan do seem to have been disproportionately represented among her accusers. Of 18 surviving depositions given against her at her eventual trial, ten included one or more Putnams as signatories. Thus, their family's history deserves some particular attention.