On April 19’, 1692, when he was over four score years of age, poor old Giles Corey was arrested for witchcraft, at Salem, and his case furnishes the only instance in the United States, where to avoid the attainder of his blood and the forfeiture of his estate, a prisoner obstinately stood mute and was “pressed to death.” His unfriendly course toward his wife and the attitude of two of his four sons-in-law in testifying against his wife, no doubt so worked upon his mind as to cause him to make a terrible expiation. He deeded all his property to his two favorite sons-in-law, William Cleeves and John Moulton, and decided to then stand mute and refuse to plead and let the law take its course. Of course he knew that the gates of justice were closed to him and that he would be convicted, although he was innocent, but he determined to defy the multitude and to withhold his plea, in order to save his property for his sons-in-law and to show his courage, in the supreme test. Longfellow, in his “New England Tragedies,” has described this feeble old man, withstanding the exhortations of his friends, in his determination to die the death of a martyr in an unjust cause, and one cannot read the graphic and realistic account of this tragedy, without feelings of the greatest compassion and admiration for this grand old stoic, of our own soil, who bravely suffered his body to be pressed until all life was extinct and whose soul took its flight from the open field, near the Howard street burial ground, in the village of Salem, on September 19’, 1692.[44] In the case of the gentle Rebecca Nurse, even after her acquittal, by a jury, regularly empaneled and charged to try her for witchcraft, the frenzied populace “recalled the decision” and she was sentenced by the Court, to meet the demands of the mob; she was carted to the summit of Gallows hill, and hanged, on July 19’, and her case furnishes one of the most unjust instances of the “recall of a judicial decision” and one of the grossest travesties upon justice in the history of any country.[45] Because John and Elizabeth Proctor had absented themselves from the meetings, during the trials for witchcraft, they were finally accused and thrown in prison. He made a manly appeal for a trial at Boston, in a letter dated July 23’, 1692, addressed to Mr. Mather, Mr. Allen, Mr. Moody, Mr. Willard and Mr. Bailey, but all to no avail. His friends petitioned the Court; one of the girls who testified against them made a statement that she “must have been out of her head,” when she gave her evidence, as it was not true, but nothing could stem the tide of the current of rapidly rising prejudice and resentment prevailing, so after a farcical trial, he was convicted and executed on August 19’, 1692. His fearless defense of his good wife saved her life and two weeks after his death, she bore a baby in prison and it was no doubt due to her pregnant condition that she too, escaped the fury of the mob.[46]