Mrs. Glover was hanged on the following day. “There was a great concourse of people to see if the Papist would relent.... Her one cat was there, fearsome to see. They would to destroy the cat, but Mr. Calef would not [permit the cat to be killed]. Before her execution she was bold and impudent [!] making to forgive her accusers and those who put her off.... She predicted that her death would not relieve the children, saying it was not she afflicted them.” This was construed into a threat; and the children continued their sport, till, “a very strict fast being held, they were completely restored.” After recounting the details of this “joyful restoration,” Cotton Mather becomes more than usually prolix in a relation of the _piety_ of his protegés. It is not denied that before and after the execution of Ann Glover there was a vast number of arrests and executions of reputed witches and wizards in New England, beginning in 1647, under John Winthrop, and culminating in the Salem massacre of 1692. It is not denied that neither age, sex, nor condition was spared. Some were children—one but four years old,—others of eighty and beyond; one was a minister; many were the most reputable people in the Massachusetts Colony. What is asserted is that Ann Glover was put to death not so much because she was reputed a witch, as for the certainty that she was a Catholic. All we know of her is in the words of her enemies and executioners, except what is found in the scant record of Robert Calef, who exposed himself to utter ruin by his defence of her. The little we know, however, confirms the truth of my assertion. It was only when all attempts to move Mrs. Glover’s “obstinate Papacy” had failed, that she was first accused of witchcraft in 1682. That the Goodwins were in the league “to bring her out of the burning”—that is, to induce her to forswear the Faith—may be inferred with safety from what took place in 1687. When her daughter was accused of theft by Martha Goodwin, she does not say, “You may have us whipped, but we are innocent of stealing”: this she had asserted before. She cries out: “You may have us whipped, but we won’t go to the sermons.” Does not this outburst unfold a tale of antecedent persecution suffered for religion’s sake? A fast “had greatly relieved the Goodwin children”; the tempest they had aroused was lulled, and what happened? “The magistrates, long annoyed by the presence of an obstinate Papist in Boston, ordered Goody Glover to be taken into custody,” says Drake. At her trial there was not even such evidence to prove her a witch as would satisfy the gullible magistrates. It was only when Goody Glover made the declaration that she would die a Catholic that “the jury brought her guilty.”