[82] This was the commonly received opinion, and though opposed by Increase Mather, was much insisted on by Stoughton, the lieutenant-governor, and proved the destruction of many; as, if an innocent person could not be personated, it followed that those who were accused by the possessed were certainly guilty. _Cf._ Brattle, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_, vol. v. 61 ff., on spectral evidence, and the bigotry and unfairness of Stoughton. Increase Mather, _Some Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits_. [83] Hutchinson, ii. 49. Mather, Cotton, _Wonders of the Invisible World_, 65–70. [84] It is interesting, though painful, to find as a prominent witness against Bishop, one Samuel Shattuck, the son of the Quaker who, thirty years before, had delivered to Endicott the order from Charles II. which had freed himself and his friends from the extremes of Puritan cruelty. [85] Mather, Increase, D. D., _Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits_, Postscript. [86] Calef, _More Wonders of the Invisible World_. [87] Brattle, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_, v. 66, 67. The case of Elizabeth How, mentioned above, is a good example of the way in which neighborhood quarrels and church quarrels were dragged in. She had had a falling out with a family by the name of Perley some two years before, and they now came forward with depositions that she had bewitched their cows so that they gave no milk, and one of their children so that it pined away. “After this,” swears Samuel Perley, “the abovesaid goode how had a mind to ioyn to ipswich church thai being unsatisfied sent to us to bring in what we had against her and when we had declared to them what we knew thai see cause to Put a stop to her coming into the church. Within a few dais after I had a cow wel in the morning as far as we knew this cow was taken strangli runing about like a mad thing a litle while and then run into a great Pon and drowned herself and as sone as she was dead mi sons and miself towed her to the shore, and she stunk so that we had much a doe to flea her.”