Of the other persons hung on the 22d of September 1692, few particulars have come down to us, either in history or by tradition. It was the last execution and its atrocity manifestly weakened the authority of Phipps’ bloody witch court, and the credit of the Parris afflicted band. It swelled the number of victims to twenty, nineteen of whom had now been hung on that fatal gallows-tree, in after ages an object of peculiar superstitious dread; and their bodies, unhonored even by funeral decencies, though not unwept by private affection, were cast with public ignominy into untimely graves about its roots. But the tree withered, as was supposed, thunder-smitten, and stood for years with leafless, outstretched branches and shattered trunk, until burned to the ground by the descendants in the third and fourth generation of those who suffered on it. In superstitious minds tempests and torrents could not wash away the blood from the unhallowed hill whereon it grew, and the soil was cursed and barren of all wholesome vegetation. But all were not executed who were tried and sentenced. Besides Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Falkner of Andover was saved by her delicate family condition. At her trial the court took the confession of her little daughter, ten years old, against her. But Dorcas Hoar of Beverly, Rebecca Eams of Boxford, Abigail Hobbs of Topsfield, Mary Bradbury of Salisbury, and Ann Foster and Mary Lacy of Andover, all flattered their persecutors by a confession of the charges against them, and thus escaped death. This whole slaughter of the innocent under the similitude of legal forms, was the work of little more than three short months. A sudden bereavement, indeed, of near and loved friends. When, however, a lawful court was established, this sham tribunal, happily for the country, came to an end. And it is some consolation to know that it was entirely discontinued with the regular jurisprudence of the country. The last witch trials ever holden in Massachusetts were those five at Ipswich about the middle of May, 1693, and to which I have already referred. By this time the spectre evidence, or the devil’s testimony through the mouths of the afflicted, had become so unpopular that none of the judges dared to sustain it, and the juries also disregarded it; and from this time forth it was manifest that there could be no more convictions for alleged witchcrafts. And thus public opinion, operating through the jury and the only part of the government at that time through93 which it could operate, in effect annulled the bloody witch law, passed by false agents of the people, against common justice and in favor of the then ruling political interests and influences; or the old charter church and state aristocracy. And history rarely reveals to us a more bloody despotism. And shall it not stand forever as a warning against any interference by a people’s self-government with the religion or business of the community?