The details of the case as related by Mr. Mather are quite unlike those
related by Mr. Hale. One or both of the statements must be incorrect.
The error I think must be in that of Mr. Hale. Mr. Mather was a
resident of Dorchester, and a graduate of the college in 1647. He gives
the name of the person accused, and was so situated as to be familiar
with all the incidents. Mr. Hale was a resident of Charlestown, and in
1650 was but fourteen years of age. He did not know the name of the
person, and gives the same incidents to a Springfield case. He says, p.
19: “There was another executed of Boston anno 1656 [Mrs. Hibbins] for
that crime; and two or three of Springfield, one of which confessed,
and said the occasion of her familiarity with Satan was this: She had
lost a child, and was exceedingly discontented at it, and longed _Oh
that she might see her child again!_ And at last the Devil in likeness
of her child came to her bed-side and talked with her, and asked to
come into the bed to her that night and several nights after, and so
entered into covenant with Satan and became a witch. This was the only
confessor in those times in this government.” If any person, other than
Mary Parsons, was executed at Springfield for witchcraft, no details
have come down to us. Increase Mather probably omitted to mention the
cases of Mrs. Hibbins and Mrs. Lake, with which he must have been
familiar, in deference to the feelings of their friends then living.
P.
[8] This was the case of Mrs. Kendal, of Cambridge, who was executed
for bewitching to death a child of Goodman Genings, of Watertown. The
principal evidence was that of a Watertown nurse, who testified that
the said Kendal did make much of the child, and then the child was
well, but quickly changed in color and died a few hours after. The
court took this evidence without calling the parents of the child.
After the execution the parents denied that their child was bewitched,
and stated that it died from imprudent exposure to cold by the nurse
the night before. The nurse soon after was put in prison for adultery,
and there died, and so the matter was not further inquired into. Hale’s
_Modest Inquiry_, p. 18.
Rev. Lucius R. Paige, of Cambridgeport, has recently found in the
Middlesex court records, 1660, another alleged case of witchcraft in
Cambridge, which was tried that year. Winifred Holman, an aged widow,
was accused by her neighbors, John Gibson and wife, their son John
Gibson, Jr., and their daughter Rebecca, wife of Charles Stearns.
Actions of defamation were commenced against these parties, and on the
trial, they, by way of justification, presented their supposed proofs
of witchcraft, some details of which may be seen in _Hist. and Geneal.
Register_, vol. xxiv. p. 59. Probably other cases were tried in the
courts of that period, of which nothing is now known. John Dunton, in
1683, said there had been twenty cases of witchcraft recently tried in
the colony. (_Letters_, p. 72.)
P.
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