address was probably not quite so militant as the witch hunters would have liked, for he rather oracularly concluded that "a froward discontented frame of spirit was a subject fitt for ye Devill to worke upon."

If the fire of petty spite and gossip gave signs of slackening, new winds of rumor blew it up again. In June, Goodwife Thorpe refused to sell Mrs. Godman some chickens, and then, looking doubtfully after the departing witch, she reflected: "If this woman is naught, as folks suspect, maybe she will smite my chickens." Sure enough, soon after a chicken died and was found to be " consumed in y gizzard to water and wormes, and divers others of them droped."

Mr. Goodyear, at family prayers, said something that Mrs. Godman resented. "As soone as Mr. Goodyear had done duties she flung out of the roome in a discontented way, and cast a fierce look upon Mr. Goodyear, as she went out. Immediately, Mr. Goodyear (tho' well before) fell into a swond."

The Court of Magistrates, August 4, 1653, reviewed the evidence and found the defendants not guilty. They declared Mrs. Godman to be a notorious liar, and "justly suspitious of witchcraft, which she herself in so many words confesseth." Therefore they sentenced her "not to goe in an offensive way to folkes houses in a rayling manner, as it seems she hath done, but (to looke to it) that she keepe her place and medle with her owne buis

ness.

After a whole summer full of stories of ague-stricken girls, bedeviled chickens, and swooning magistrates, this verdict was admirably sane. It shows that Governor Eaton was too judicious to play the part of a Sewall, and that he was too wise to mistake a cross-grained temper on the one side and a frenzy of gossip on the other for evidences of a literal compact with Satan. There was no trial by jury in the New Haven Colony. If there had been, Mrs. Godman would have run greater risk of a judicial murder.

While she moved under the surveillance of the Court and the burden of popular ostracism, a jury trial in the neighboring Connecticut town of Fair

field brought the sixth victim to the gallows. Roger Ludlow, a narrow-minded, ambitious, unscrupulous man, was as dominant in Fairfield as Eaton was in New Haven. Disappointed because Hopkins and Haynes in Hartford were preferred before him by the freemen, he was scheming to throw off the jurisdiction of Connecticut and to become the leader of a new commonwealth. This man interested himself in fastening the crime of witchcraft upon a poor townswoman of Fairfield, named Knapp. The first suspicions of Mrs. Knapp seem to have arisen from the desperate talk of Goody Bassett of Stratford. Goody Knapp was tried and convicted apparently upon the testimony of women who discovered the mysterious witch-teats upon her body. While she lay in prison, the female gossips of the town plied her with questions about her accomplices. They appeared to have made up their minds that a certain Mrs. Staples was also a witch, and with pleasant neighborly feeling they expected to stretch Goody Knapp's halter so as to reach Goody Staples. Madam Pell urged her "to lay open herself and make way for the minister to doe her good." Goody Knapp said that she would speak not to them, but only to Mr. Ludlow or the minister. "Elizabeth Bruster" sharply observed: "The Divill will have you quick if you reveale it not till then." Goody Knapp answered boldly:

"Take heed the devill have not you, for you know not how soone you may be my companions. The truth is you would have me say that Goodwife Staples is a witch, but I have sinns enough to answer for allready, and I hope I shall not add to my condemnation. I know nothing by Goodwife Staples, and I hope she is an honest woman." The attendant harpies and a bystander, Goodman Lyon, protested that they had accused no one. Goody Knapp retorted, "Goodman Lyon, hold your tongue! I have bine fished withal in private, more than you are aware of.”

After Goody Knapp was executed, the Fairfield women crowded around her body to look at the fatal witch-marks. Mrs. Staples was in the throng. "Taking ye Lords name in her mouth," she said to Mrs. Lockwood, "These are no witches teates. I have such myself, and so have have you, if you search yourself." Good

wife Lockwood replied: "If any finde any such Things aboute me, I deserve to be hanged as she was." Mrs. Staples's faith finally overcame her rebellious rea

son.

"As they were going to the grave, Goodwife Staples said that it was long before she could believe that this poor woman was a witch, or that there were any witches; till the word of God convinced her, which saith, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.""

For this hardness of heart, and probably also because Mr. and Mrs. Staples were not friendly to Ludlow's ambitions, Roger Ludlow tried to drive Goody Staples to the gallows. He asserted that Goody Knapp had revealed to him Mrs. Staples's intimacy with Satan, and he told Parson Davenport, of New Haven, that Goody Staples was both a witch and a liar. In the spring of 1654, Ludlow took refuge in New Haven to escape from the vengeance of Connecticut for his mutiny; and, in May, Thomas Staples sued him before the New Haven magistrates for defamation. Half Fairfield came up to testify, and it was plain that that town had been rent in twain by Ludlow's scheming. The New Haven Court decided adversely to him and fined him heavily. Soon after, he departed to Virginia in disgrace. This was the man whom our standard historian describes as "unsurpassed in the knowledge of the law and of the rights of mankind."

In the next year, 1655, the serpent was discovered in the New Haven Eden again. Nicholas Bayly and wife were judicially warned to remove from the colony, on account of the woman's "lying malice and filthy speeches"; although "both, and especially the woman, are very suspicious in point of witchcraft, but for matters of that nature, the Court intends not to proceed at this time."

This latitudinarian policy on the part of Governor Eaton must have vexed some of the faithful in Israel, for Mrs. Godman was again at her infernal tricks. The Goodyear household had been disturbed in the night, and Mrs. Godman told them that she saw lights and apparitions about her bed. Allen Ball's pigs died after his wife had refused Mrs. Godman some buttermilk. When Mrs. Godman turned her perilous glance on Allen Ball's

calf, that intelligent animal, though tied to a great post, rann away with the great post as if it had bine a feather, and rann among Indian corne and pulled up two hills." Goody Thorpe's cows were strangely disabled.

"Aboute a week after, she went by Mr. Goodyear's, and there was Elizabeth Godman pulling cherries in the streete. She said, 'How doth Goody Thorp? I am beholden to Goody Thorp; she would have had me to the gallows for a few chickens.' Also she gnashed and grinned with her teeth in a strang manner."

Mrs. Godman was warned not to visit the neighborhood prayer-meetings, and in August, the court committed her to prison for a month, perhaps with a view to her own safety. She was forbidden to give any money to the church as she had been wont to do, and was put under bonds of fifty pounds value to abstain from giving any more offence. The magistrates decided, in October, that the evidence against her was not sufficient to warrant her conviction for witchcraft, "though the suspitions be cleere and many, and she herself found to be full of lying." She lived quietly for five years more and died a natural death in 1660.

But one more accusation of witchcraft blots the New Haven records, and that one, in 1657, was so plainly dictated by personal spite that the magistrates would not pay any attention to it. The New Haven fathers, Davenport and Eaton, may have been excessively partial to theocracy, but in dealing with popular frenzies about witchcraft, the theocratic system of New Haven proved to be safer than the democracy of Connecticut or the aristocracy of Massachusetts.

During the winter of 1657-8, a quarrel between two women in the household of the famous Lion Gardiner resulted in hastening the entrance of the town of Easthampton, L. I., into the colony of Connecticut, so that some competent authority might try Goodwife Garlick for witchcraft. She was tried and acquitted at Hartford in May, 1658, but her husband was compelled to pay the expense of her "tranceportation both ways." Governor Winthrop sent by her a letter full of good advice to the authorities at Easthampton. "It is expected and desired by this Court that you should carry

neighborly and peaceably to Joseph Garlick and his wife, and that they should doe ye like to you." In 1659 and 1661, Capt. John Mason and Mr. Wyllys were busy with a "lewd" couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jennings of Saybrook, who were violently suspected of witchcraft, but a disagreement of the jury saved the pair. Goody Garlick and the Jenningses were the first to escape with their lives from such an indictment in a Connecticut court.

The next sufferers were not so fortunate. The year, 1662, witnessed at Hartford a reign of terror like that at Salem, thirty years later.

The excitement was closely connected in time with a quarrel which split the First Church at Hartford, and hystericky girl who wrought the worst mischief belonged to the partisans of Rev. John Whiting, the leader of the Ann Cole was the daughter of John, "a carpenter and a godly She was "taken with strange fitts, wherein she (or rather the Devill as 'tis judged) made use of her lips and held a discourse." In brief, the affrighted

seceders.

man."

Parson Stone wrote down from Ann

Cole's mouth what he sincerely believed

to be a conversation of devils from hell. They spoke in English, in Dutch, and in an unknown jargon. They conversed about Ann Cole herself, how they might "afflict her body, spoile her name, hinder her marriage, etc., wherein the gen

erall answer made among them was 'She runs to her Rock.'" They seemed to be on intimate terms with several persons in Hartford, among whom Mr. Stone detected the names of a Dutch woman named Varleth and of John Cole's nearest neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Greensmith. These persons were promptly arrested. Judith Varleth was a relative of the doughty Peter Stuyvesant, and his prompt intervention probably secured her escape. His letter is still extant which pleads for his "distressed sister-in-law, Judith Varleth, imprisoned, as we are informed, uppon pretend accusation of wicherye."

The Greensmiths were old and ignorant, and the wife confessed her unholy commerce with devils, who had come to her 1 Mr. Whiting told the story of Ann Cole to Rev. Increase Mather in a letter dated Dec. 4, 1682. It is published in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. Series 4, Vol. VIII.

quitted, but the latter was found guilty. The excited neighbors also laid hold of a husband and wife (probably Mr. and Mrs. William Ayres, who had been mentioned in Ann Cole's mutterings,) and ordeal. Shortly after, this couple fled illegally subjected them to the water from Hartford to parts unknown. The executed in the winter of 1663, after Greensmiths and Mary Barnes were duly which, as Mr. Whiting testified, “Ann

Cole had some abatement of her sorrows, joined the church, married a good man (Andrew Benton of Milford), bore chil

dren, and lived a godly life."

The regicide Goffe was at this time hiding in Milford, and diverting himself with a diary. In it he wrote:

"Jan. 20. Three witches were condemned at Hartford. Feb. 24. After one of the witches was hanged the maid got well."

This was probably the last execution of a witch within the jurisdiction of Connecticut. There was a rapid change in the sentiments of the magistrates, a change perhaps attributable to the return of Governor Winthrop from Europe. Goody Barnes had been in a dishonored grave for a month when the General Court of the colony peremptorily refused to pay the Saybrook constables for their trouble in the Jennings affair. "They do not see cause to allow pay to witnesses for time and trevaile, nor to any other upon such accounts for ye future." Mrs. Seager, who could not escape from the odium that the first trial had thrown upon

her, was brought before a jury twice more. At the last trial, in 1665, she was found guilty of witchcraft, but Governor Winthrop postponed her sentence, and discharged her from custody in the following year on the ground of incompatibility between the verdict and the indictment. A similar interference, in 1670, saved Katherine Harrison of Wethersfield from capital punishment. The jury returned a verdict of "guilty of witchcraft," but the court refused to impose the death penalty and discharged the unfortunate woman, with a recommendation that she remove from Wethersfield, "Which is that will tend most to her own safety, and the contentment of the people, who are her neighbors." She promptly took refuge in Westchester, N. Y., very much to the discomfiture of the superstitious people of that region. They made life as unpleasant for her as possible, and twice haled her before the courts on charges of witchcraft. The magistrates summarily dismissed the accusations.

The Great Enemy rested from his labors of witchcraft in Connecticut until that generation of Gallio-Winthrops had passed away. In 1692, when the Israel of the Bay was sorely troubled, the epidemic appeared again in Connecticut. Robert Treat, of Milford, sat in Winthrop's seat, and in the neighboring town of Fairfield the poisonous germs of malice and suspicion implanted in Ludlow's day showed unabated venom. Mrs. Staples, probably the same woman who, in her youth, had incurred Ludlow's enmity, was accused of "familiarity with Satan," and with her were indicted Mercy Disborough, Goody Miller, and Goody Clawson. The water ordeal was tried with damaging results for Mercy and for Goody Clawson. A jury of women examined the bodies of two of the accused, probably of these two whom the innocent water rejected. Seven magistrates and a jury listened to more than two hundred depositions. The jury at first disagreed, then found Clawson, Miller, and Staples to be innocent, but adjudged Mercy Disborough to be guilty. Being sent out to reconsider their verdict, they adhered thereto. Governor Treat pronounced sentence of death, but a memorial was

drawn up and presented to the general court praying for pardon. It was probably granted, unless indeed there were two Mercy Disboroughs in Fairfield, for Mercy Disborough was alive there in 1707, and was appointed with her son to administer upon the estate of her husband, Thomas.1

In 1697, the law of Connecticut against witchcraft was probably invoked for the last time. Again, as in Salem, children were prominent in accusation. Excited by their clamors, "Winnifrett Denham," or Benham, of Wallingford, and her little daughter were both accused of witchcraft. Mrs. Denham underwent the ordeal of water, her body was searched for the telltale marks, and the Wallingford minister pronounced her excommunicate. Nevertheless, the judicial proceedings against the mother and daughter collapsed altogether. It is probable, however, that they found it expedient to leave Wallingford and remove to New York.

Here ended the chapter of legal hazards and penalties. The belief in witchcraft yet lives, as many a friendless old woman, since 1697, has known too well. But the community of Connecticut may congratulate itself upon the possession of a governor and magistrates in the second half of the seventeenth century, who were remarkable for moderation, humanity, and good sense. It is not unlikely that, if Governor Winthrop had been at home in 1662, instead of in England winning a charter, the maunderings of Ann Cole would not have brought three human beings to the gallows.

The following schedule is a list of accusations and trials for witchcraft in the courts of Connecticut : 1647. Winthrop's "One of Wind

sor"

1648. Mary Johnson, of Hartford or Wethersfield

1651. Mr. and Mrs. Carrington, of Wethersfield

66

Executed.

66

66

66

1651. Goody Bassett of Stratford 1653. Knapp "Fairfield 1653-5. Mrs. Godman of New Haven. Imprisoned, and required to give bonds.

1 Some of the deposition at this trial may be found in the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser for July 14th and 15th, 1820. One is in the record-book of crimes and misdemeanors, Conn. Archives, Vol. I. doc. 187. The whole story of the proceedings of the special trial was discovered by Mr. Wm. L. Stone in a manuscript among the documents of the Wyllys family in Hartford.