The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697)Taylor, John M. (John Metcalf)
History
The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697)
Taylor, John M. (John Metcalf)
Connecticut -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Witchcraft -- Connecticut -- History
THE ACCUSATION--_Nathaniel's plea--"Travaile and labour"--"A red
creature"--- Prenuptial doubts--The weighty logs--Wifely tenderness and
anxiety--Under the greenwood tree--A cat call--Terpsichore and Bacchus_
"Rebecca Greenswith testifieth in Court Janry 8. 62.
"1. That my husband on Friday night last when I came to prison told me
that now thou hast confest against thyself let me alone and say nothing
of me and I wilbe good unto thy children.
"I doe now testifie that formerly when my husband hathe told me of his
great travaile and labour I wondered at it how he did it this he did
before I was married and when I was married I asked him how he did it
and he answered me he had help yt I knew not of.
"3. About three years agoe as I think it; my husband and I were in ye
wood several miles from home and were looking for a sow yt we lost and I
saw a creature a red creature following my husband and when I came to
him I asked him what it was that was with him and he told me it was a
fox.
"4. Another time when he and I drove or hogs into ye woods beyond ye
pound yt was to keep yong cattle severall miles of I went before ye hogs
to call them and looking back I saw two creatures like dogs one a little
blacker then ye other, they came after my husband pretty close to him
and one did seem to me to touch him I asked him wt they were he told me
he thought foxes I was stil afraid when I saw anything because I heard
soe much of him before I married him.
"5. I have seen logs that my husband hath brought home in his cart that
I wondered at it that he could get them into ye cart being a man of
little body and weake to my apprhension and ye logs were such that I
thought two men such as he could not have done it.
"I speak all this out of love to my husbands soule and it is much
against my will that I am now necessitate to speake agaynst my husband,
I desire that ye Lord would open his heart to owne and speak ye trueth.
"I also testify that I being in ye wood at a meeting there was wth me
Goody Seager Goodwife Sanford & Goodwife Ayres; and at another time
there was a meeting under a tree in ye green by or house & there was
there James Walkely, Peter Grants wife Goodwife Aires & Henry Palmers
wife of Wethersfield, & Goody Seager, & there we danced, & had a bottle
of sack: it was in ye night & something like a catt cald me out to ye
meeting & I was in Mr. Varlets orcherd wth Mrs. Judeth Varlett & shee
tould me that shee was much troubled wth ye Marshall Jonath: Gilbert &
cried, & she sayd if it lay in her power she would doe him a mischief,
or what hurt shee could."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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