The examinations were to be held in Ingersoll’s Tavern, but the crowd was so great on Ingersoll’s Common, that the court adjourned to the meeting house. The magistrates were John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, assistants. They went over from Salem, attended by the marshal, constables, and their aids, and all of them arrayed in the garb of court authority and the attractive insignia of official station. Their advent into the village was marked by an ostentation of whatever grandeur and splendor they had at command. To the gaping multitude it was “the greatest show on earth,” while the trials proved a “Wild West.” Sarah Good, a broken-down outcast, deserted by her husband, begging food from house to house, was first examined; the last examined was Tituba, the chief offender. [Illustration: GOV. SIMON BRADSTREET, 1603-1697] UNWARRANTABLE USURPATION NAMES OF THE COURT AND JURY The Province took formal charge _in re_ April 11, 1692. Simon Bradstreet was governor. He had been honored with thirteen annual elections by the people to that office. He was then eighty-six years of age, the “Grand Old Man” of his time. He struck the keynote at first in an opinion that the witch evidence was insufficient. With honor crowned he passed into history as “The Old Charter Governor.” The high action of Deputy-Governor Danforth and his Counsel, who were the court, gave éclat to the proceedings and consternation filled the county. In October, 1691, a new charter was signed, and Sir Wm. Phipps was appointed governor. He arrived in Boston with the new charter, Saturday, May 14, 1692. William Stoughton was made deputy-governor, in place of Thomas Danforth. In this change from popular government Increase Mather, an early president of Harvard College, was a “power behind the throne.” The new charter had his approval and Sir Wm. Phipps, its first governor, was his nominee. Phipps was “a well-meaning man, inclined to superstition,” and Mather admired his “incompetency.” Stoughton was a man “of cold affections, proud, self willed, and covetous of distinction, and universally hated by the people.” He was appointed deputy-governor to please Cotton Mather, son of Increase. Cotton in his race for glory ran amuck. He was a man of “overweening vanity,” panting for fame, and the strenuous mover in the trials. He harangued the populace and sermonized on witchcraft; he wrote a book: “The Trials of Witches,” and even on horseback, at the hanging of Rev. George Burroughs, he harangued the people gathered there, lest they interfere and rob the gallows. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: INCREASE MATHER COTTON MATHER FATHER SON ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------