Abigail Faulkner, the daughter of a minister and the wife of a large landowner, was among those accused of witchcraft during the frenzied hysteria that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Although she maintained her innocence, Faulkner was declared guilty, entirely on the basis of coerced confessions and spectral evidence. Because she was pregnant, however, her execution was postponed, and she petitioned Governor Phips to be released (Document 4.1). Faulkner was released, but only after Massachusetts officials stepped in and ended the trials. Still, the belief in witches persisted. Cotton Mather, a prominent Puritan minister, defended the trials and his role in them in Wonders of the Invisible World, published the following year (Document 4.2). His justifications for the trials and their outcome reveal some awareness of the problems associated with the evidence used against the accused. Nonetheless, his writings indicate his belief that Satan was actively working to undermine colonial communities and that godly Christians needed to take extreme measures to save their communities.
| 4.1 | Petition of Abigail Faulkner, 1692 |
The humblee Petition of Abigall: Falkner unto his Excellencye S’r W’m Phipps knight and Govern’r of their Ma-jestyes Dominions in America: humbly sheweth
That your poor and humble Petitioner having been this four monthes in Salem Prison and condemned to die having had no other evidences against me but the Spectre Evidences and the Confessors w’ch Confessors have lately since I was condemned owned to my selfe and others and doe still own that they wronged me and what they had said against me was false: and that they would not that I should have been put to death for a thousand worldes for they never should have enjoyed themselves againe in this world; w’ch undoubtedly I shouled have been put to death had it not pleased the Lord I had been with child. Thankes be to the Lord I know my selfe alto-gether Innocent & Ignorant of the crime of witchcraft w’ch is layd to my charge: as will appeare at the great day of Judgment (May it please yo’r Excellencye) my husband about five yeares a goe was taken w’th fitts w’ch did very much impaire his memory and understanding but w’th the blessing of the Lord upon my Endeavors did re-cover of them againe but now through greife and sorrow they are returned to him againe as bad as Ever they were: I having six children and having little or nothing to subsist on being in a manner without a head [husband] to doe any thinge for my selfe or them and being closely confined can see no otherwayes but we shall all perish Therfore may it please your Excellencye your poor and humble petition’r doe humbly begge and Implore of yo’r Excellencye to take it into yo’r pious and Judicious consideration that some speedy Course may be taken w’th me for my releasement that I and my children perish not through meanes of my close confinement here w’ch undoubtedly we shall if the Lord does not mightily prevent and yo’r poor petitioner shall for ever pray for your health and happinesse in this life and eternall felicity in the world to come.
Source: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977), 1:333–34.
| 4.2 | Cotton Mather | The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693 |
These our poor afflicted neighbours, quickly after they become infected and infested with these dæmons, arrive to a capacity of discerning those which they conceive the shapes of their troublers; and notwithstanding the great and just suspicion, that the dæmons might impose the shapes of innocent persons in their spectral exhibitions upon the sufferers (which may perhaps prove no small part of the witch-plot in the issue), yet many of the persons thus represented, being examined, several of them have been convicted of a very damnable witchcraft: yea, more than one twenty have confessed, that they have signed unto a book, which the devil show’d them, and engaged in his hellish design of bewitching, and ruining our land. We know not, at least I know not, how far the delusions of Satan may be interwoven into some circumstances of the confessions; but one would think, all the rules of understanding humane affairs are at an end, if after so many most voluntary harmonious confessions, made by intelligent persons of all ages, in sundry towns, at several times, we must not believe the main strokes wherein those confessions all agree: especially when we have a thousand preternatural things every day before our eyes, wherein the confessors do acknowledge their concernment, and give demonstration of their being so concerned. If the devils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so fine a composition and operation, that scores of innocent people shall unite, in confessions of a crime, which we see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the wonders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of a dissolution upon the world.
Source: Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New-England (London: John Russell Smith, 1862), 15–16.
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