November 7, 2018 • 38 mins
Until now, the daily flood of examinations had been a temporary fix while everyone waited for the new government to set up an official trial. For many, that trial would represent hope and conclusion. For some, however, it would extract a heavy, deadly price.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
John Richards was an inspiration. He started out life as
a servant, but as the years would show, he was
born to climb the social ladder. He had a knack
for relationships. It seems, over the course of his life
he made powerful friends. Maybe in his time as a
servant he overheard enough conversations about the inner workings of
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power that he got a feel for the ebb and
flow of it. All. He gained the approval of his
superiors and the respect of his peers. Whatever the case,
John was making a move that few men dared he
was climbing. It didn't hurt that he married into the
Winthrop clan, whose estimable name carried the legacy of a
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Puritan leader who had founded it all. But John was
no slouch. He swiftly picked up the skills of favorite
game of the Boston elite, land speculation. He saved up
his money and then began to purchase property, the first
being Aerosick Island off the southern coast of Maine. By
the age of forty eight, he had one of the
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largest property holdings of anyone in Massachusetts. After all of that,
it's safe to say that few individuals in the Boston
establishment were as inspiring as John Richards, but it went
beyond wealth, or maybe that hard earned fortune unlocked new opportunities. Money,
after all, pairs very nicely with power. Richards served on
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the General Court of Massachusetts, that ruling body that guided
the colony. He had served as a judge in a
number of important cases that spanned the church and the state.
In six e and Samuel Sewell had ruled to suspend
a local minister due to foul language and unseemly behavior
in a tavern that wasn't hypocritical of him either. Richards
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was a well respected puritan in his own church, a
church that was led by none other than Cotton Mother,
son of the powerful Increase Mather. He was so respected
that Cotton Mother leaned on Richards for him to help
sway the congregation on important matters. John Richards, you see,
had it all money, power and respect. But this self
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made man was about to face the biggest challenges of
his life. The situation in s looked quite dire to
men like John Richards, and like a lot of things
in his life, that all came down to money. Like
so many of his peers, Richards had made his fortune
buying and selling land, frontier land, land on the edge
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of the colonies far to the north and Maine, and
that land was being taken away from him. Well, that's
a bit misleading. The land wasn't really his to begin with. Yes,
he had purchased stit from the local Native American tribe
known as the Wabanakis, but never at a fair price,
and the Wabanakis didn't care to have their homeland stripped
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of timber and mind for copper just to build someone
a grand house hundreds of miles away, so they took
it back. Losing that land to the enemy, literally, allies
of the Devil in the minds of the Puritans, was
a blow against his lifetime of achievement. And now Satan's
power was bleeding southward, inching ever closer to the safety
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of the Boston area. You have to imagine John Richards
and his wealthy, powerful friends were more than a little nervous,
which is why when word began to spread about an
outbreak of witchcraft in the town of Salem, all of
them drew a line in the sand. Satan would have
no more ground. They would stop him to save the
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Puritan mission, yes, but also to save their fortunes, but
with dozens of people already in jail and more being
added to their number each day, the clock was ticking. Thankfully,
Governor Phipps had ordered an official trial the Oyer and Terminer,
and that meant judges were needed. What better place for
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Boston's most powerful to take control than the front of
the courtroom. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mankey. When I'm
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trying to explain what the power structure of the colony
was like at the time of the witchcraft crisis, I
am fond of saying the following analogy in the US today,
If the joint chiefs of Staff were also the President's
cabinet and also the judges of the Supreme Court, that's
the power structure of Massachusetts at the time. The same
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men were the judges in the trials, and the chief
advisers of the governor, and the men who led the
local militia in the Indian War. So you talk about
consolidation of power there it is. That's Mary Beth Norton,
Professor of American History at Cornell University, and it's a
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powerful picture she paints. The only thing I would add
to her overlapping circles on the ven diagram would be
that not only were these men advisors and military leaders
and judges, but they were also the wealthiest in the land.
In a day and age when the wealth gap between
the one percent and the rest feels like a canyon,
these men from teen two sound awfully familiar. Each of
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them had built a fortune through a combination of land
speculation and the exploitation of that land. Some of them
own mills in the frontier country to the north, which
provided some of the prime exports of the colonies. Others
parceled out their massive tracks of land, earning a fortune
off the smaller sales. But while they all seem to
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be cut from the same cloth and most of them
held a lot of the same positions of power, it's
important to note that the events of six two would
test them to the limit. Some of these men would
seize the reins of the crisis and drive it towards
its bloody conclusion. Others would take a more passive role,
their names barely mentioned in the court documents, preferring instead
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to watch from the passenger seat while the victims get
trampled by injustice. So who were the nine judges of
the Oyer and Terminer trial. Some of them you've already met,
such as John Richards, John Hawthorne, and Jonathan Corwin. The
others were Peter Sargent, Samuel Sewell Wait Still Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney,
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and Nathaniel Saltonstall. Which is eight not nine, and that's
on purpose because I want to share their leader with
you in more detail. The man who would lead the
Court of Oyer and Terminer as chief magistrate, presiding over
the other eight judges was none other than the Massachusetts
Lieutenant Governor himself, William Stoughton. WILLIAMS. Stonton is a ghost character,
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one of my least favorite people. That's Emerson Baker, professor
of history at Salem State University. William Stoughton might have
put on a humble front, but he was just like
the rest of the judges, filthy, rich, and deeply embedded
in powerful circles. Stoughton had managed to trick the Native
Americans of western Massachusetts into selling him over a million
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acres of their land, which he then proceeded to cut
up and sell in pieces for massive profit. It was
so successful that he repeat of the process in Connecticut
a short while later, and he was using his political
positions to make it all happen, enriching himself through his
public office. Taking it all into account, William Stoughton seems
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to have been a man focused purely on his own
advancement of power and wealth, and he was willing to
be ruthless to get it done. The coup that had
ended the rule of Governor Andrews had set him back
a bit, but thanks to his connections, he landed on
his feet and managed to secure a place alongside Governor Phipps,
a position he was now about to use to deliver
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hard justice to the people of Salem. If it's not
already clear, this group of wealthy and interconnected power players
were accustomed to the comfort and stability of their high positions,
but in six they were shaking in their boots. The
New Charter had only just arrived and their future was
still uncertain, and all the while, Wabanaki forces were advancing
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as Maine and western Massachusetts, wiping out their personal fortunes.
The witches of Salem were the closest thing these men
could find to its target upon which they might vent
their frustration. The Catholic French and their heathen Native American
allies were all agents of the devil, sure, but so
were the witches of Salem. While the battles to the
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west and north were less within their control, nothing was
standing in their way to strike a decisive blow to
these new enemies that threatened the Puritan mission. The first
step was to assemble the jurors, which was done on
more importantly, though, they needed a prosecutor to bring those
minions of Satan to trial, and for that job they
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turned to a man named Thomas Newton. He was a
lawyer trained in English law who was currently practicing in Boston,
and he had a track record for ruthlessly pursuing the
very thing that the judges needed, convictions. He would bring
the cases before or the group of judges in the
presence of the jury, and then a decision would be
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made for each. But rather than beginning with those who
had been waiting the longest, or even those who were
the most prominent in the community, Newton chose instead to
start with his best chance of landing in early victory.
Salem's new oyer and terminal trial would begin with the
charges brought against just one person, bridget Bishop. If bridget
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Bishop's name sounds familiar, that's because we briefly discussed her
examination in episode four that said she has a powerful
story that requires a bit more exploration. Then honestly, if
we can't slow down and unveil the humanity behind a
list of names, we're missing the point. Bridget story is
her own, but at the same time it's everyone's. Bridget's
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journey to the New World had begun painfully. She had
married a man named Samuel in England, and the couple
swiftly became parents. But sometimes joy is as fleeting as
the morning fog, and that newborn infant and died before
it could thrive. A short time later, Samuel passed away
as well, leaving Bridget alone, well, not exactly. She was
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pregnant with their second child, which was at once both
hopeful and sad. This child would never know its father
or older sibling. It was a lot of darkness for
one person to deal with, which might explain why Bridget
boarded a ship bound for the New World. Maybe she
just wanted to escape it all. She arrived in Boston
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in sixteen sixty four, and a short while later she
gave birth for the second time in her life. This child,
just like her first, failed to thrive, and when it
was over, Bridget had no one, no one to care for,
no one to care for her alone in a strange
new land. She was lost two years later, though she
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married again. Her new husband, Thomas Oliver, seemed like a
good man. He, like her, had lost a spouse, although
the details were far different from her own. Thomas had
three grown children, and his wife had been known to
be a troublemaker, always insulting him and the people around them.
Perhaps a fresh start was what both of them needed.
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It wasn't idyllic, though. Thomas turned out to be an
abusive husband, perhaps shedding a bit of light on why
he and his first wife quarreled so often. Soon Bridget
and Thomas had their own version of that reputation, although
most of the rumors and reports had to do with
the physical abuse that he heaped upon her. One neighbor,
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Mary Ropes, later testified that she often saw Bridget with
a bloody face or covered in black and blue marks.
When the authorities got involved in sixteen seventy, they ordered
both of them to be whipped publicly, ten stripes a piece,
they said, and then find for their behavior. They took
their beating and They paid their fine, but the trouble continued.
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Seven years later, they were in court again. Bridget was
an abused woman fighting for her dignity and safety. Thomas
was a smooth, talking wife beater in a society that
elevated men high above the station of women, so naturally
his deeds never went on record, while Bridget's behavior was
seeing as stubborn, disobedient, and offensive. Despite that, both of
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them were punished again, and in the most public and
humiliating way possible. They were forced to stand in the
public market place with their backs to each other. Both
of them were gagged to keep them silent, and each
had a note tied to their forehead describing their crimes.
Thomas's adult daughter paid the fine to have her father released,
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but Bridget was left to suffer the humiliation alone. She
suffered more than that, though, in the eyes of the
people around her, any woman with the tenacity to call
her husband an old devil most certainly had a bit
of familiarity with the devil himself. As a result, people
began to whisper that Bridget was a witch. Years before
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the afflicted girls would claim to see spectral images of
their attackers. People in Salem were claiming to see Bridget
in their own homes, and these visions were linked to
unfortunate events. One man claimed to see Bridget spirit in
his home right before his infant daughter passed away. Another
man claimed Bridget had paid him for some labor, but
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the money later vanished from his pocket. Yet another person
claimed to see her perched high up on a beam
in his barn, holding a stolen egg. These rumors in
our own society today would never mature beyond that point,
but in the world of the Puritans, they were dark
and ominous seeds that grew over time. In the winter
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of sixteen seventy nine, Bridget was charged with witchcraft and
ordered to appear before the Court of Assistants in Boston.
She paid her bond and waited for a trial date,
but for whatever reason, the date never arrived. Thomas, the wife,
beat her, died in sixteen seventy nine, leaving Bridget alone again,
Although that might have been the first time in her life,
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she was glad to see a husband die, but as
death left her responsible for his outstanding debts, and she
spent the next six years in legal battles trying to
take care of everyone demanding repayments. Then in sight, she
met Edward Bishop. Edward had worked most of his life
at one of the sawmills in Salem, but he also
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owned a bit of land in Salem Village, out on
the north side of the territory. After their marriage, the
couple tore down the house Thomas had left Bridget in
Salem Town and constructed a tavern in its place, which
was managed and operated by Edward's son, Edward Jr. Life
was supposed to get better for Bridget. She had found
a new husband and they had a promising future in
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front of them. No, it wasn't a path to immense riches,
but it was better than a life of abuse and debt.
Bridget just wanted to move on from the failings of
her past and try to make a new start. Sadly,
the community around her wasn't going to play along. Edward
Junior and his wife Sarah brought some of that trouble
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back into her life. At one point, a neighbor woman
got fed up with the loud and disorderly behavior taking
place at the new Bishop tavern, and she confronted Edward Junr.
About it. Immediately after that, this neighbor woman fell ill,
She had seizures and spoke of wanting to die, all
while her family watched helplessly. A month later, this woman
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was dead by her own hand. She had managed to
obtain a pair of sharp scissors, which she used to
stab herself in the side of the throat. Sarah Bishop,
Bridget's daughter in law, didn't get charged with witchcraft, as
we might expect from the stories like this, but people
certainly did take notice. Sometime after her marriage to Edward,
Bridget was arrested for theft and served three months in
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jail before being charged with the crime and forced to
pay a large fine. It had only been a small
piece of brass hardware, but it was enough to ruin
her reputation for good. Bridget had lost two children and
a husband, only to find herself in an abuse of marriage.
She had fought back for her safety and her dignity,
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only to be branded as a disobedient and outspoken woman.
Now this, whether it was true or not, this theft
and conviction was the final straw in everyone's mind. If
any woman in Salem Village was a witch, it was Bridget.
To a career prosecutor like Thomas Newton, Bridget offered a
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chance to begin the court of oyer and terminer on
a strong note. Yes, she was one of dozens who
had been dragged before the magistrates for months, and each
of them possessed their own dark past and social baggage.
But Bridget Bishop was the key that Newton would use
to unlock the floodgates justice. If we can fool ourselves
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into calling it that was about to flow like a river.
Newton began by requesting just eight of the prisoners be
transferred up from the Boston jail to Salem Town. He
explained that while yes, there were a lot more people
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awaiting trial, it was going to be a slow, tedious
process working through all of them. The afflicted were sometimes
disruptive and the cases were complex, so eight would be
all he needed for in the first week. Bridget would
be his first. Of course, his case didn't rest entirely
on old events and accusations. There were fresh stories about
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Bridget that helped move her to the front of the line.
Mercy Lewis and Annie Putnam both had claimed to see
Bridget spirit in their home. They stated, as if it
were indisputable fact, that she had bewitched her second husband,
Thomas to death. It was damning evidence given the circumstances,
but Bridget had also lied to the magistrates, and that
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didn't help her case. When they asked her if she
was a witch, she denied it and claimed that she
didn't even know what a witch was. She also claimed
she hadn't known anyone else confessed to being agents of
the devil, but that wasn't exactly true. On the morning
of her examination back in April, she had been told
that Abigail Hobbs and Mary Warren had confessed, and if
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Bridget was willing to lie about that, what else was
she lying about. It was all word games. It was
all a classic example of Bridget being considered guilty even
before she was examined on April nineteenth, six two. Nothing
she could say would change the public perception of her.
All she could do was deny it as each question
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was fired at her one by one. I am innocent.
I am innocent. I am innocent. It didn't help her.
She had been carted off to jail on April nineteenth
and remained there for a month and a half. Every
day new accused arrived to join her. In the small,
filthy room, she watched the constables drop off Sarah Wilds,
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a woman from Topsfield with a very similar story to Bridgets.
She was even there long enough to see her stepson,
Edward Jr. And his wife Sarah, added to the already
overflowing jail. On June one, Thomas Newton's request for the
transfer of eight prisoners was put into action. Bridget Bishop,
along with John and Elizabeth Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, John Willard,
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Sarah Good, and two others were all placed in a
wagon and carted north to Salem Town. While they rode north,
another group of freshly accused were being sent south to
Boston to take their place in the jail. It must
have been maddening to everyone involved. Rather than making headway,
they were just treading water and barely staying afloat. Well
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maddening to most. Some of the people making decisions seemed
to lack any sense of compassion or common decency at all.
Remember Sarah Good, one of the first women to be
accused and carted off to jail. Her four year old
daughter Dorothy was eventually accused as well, and together they
had been waiting for their trial in the Boston jail.
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But when the constables transported Sarah Good and the others
to sail in town on June one. They left Dorothy behind,
a four year old girl, alone and afraid in a
crowded room full of equally frightened strangers. It was abhorrent,
but it didn't even cross their mind as the wrong
thing to do. There were bigger wrongs that needed writing.
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As far as they were concerned, what difference did it
make if the authorities had separated a mother and her child,
so long as they were wrapped securely in the blankets
of moral superiority and justification. So as you might imagine,
those eight prisoners rode north with a lot of emotional baggage.
They were afraid for sure. This was the first official trial,
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not some simple examination. The court could make a decision
that would impact their very lives, and that was more
than enough reason to feel fear and stress. But there
was more. They were all frustrated as well. You see.
Back in April, Hawthorn and Corwin had visited the Salem
jail to question Mary Warren, one of the accusers, who
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had confessed her guilt. As the others in the jail
listened from a distance, Mary recanted her confession, denying that
she was ever a witch, and she went further. She
claimed that the visions she had described had been nothing
more than stories she made up to distract the authorities.
It was a bombshell if it was true. Some of
the people awaiting trial and jail were doing so purely
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on the testimony of Mary Warren, and she had been
overheard telling Hawthorne and Corwin that her testimony was all alive.
So the prisoners mobilized. One of the wealthiest among them,
a woman named Mary English, organized these prisoners a group
that included Edward Bishop Junior and his wife Sarah, and
helped them write a joint statement. If Mary Warren's testimony
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was false, then they should all be released and sent home.
Then Yet here they were writing in a wagon toward
the court of Oyer and Terminer and their final judgment.
We know the magistrates received the statement. It's one of
the few documents that survived to this day. But whether
or not they even read it, let alone consider the request,
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is up for debate. The trials, even those for the
people accused by Mary Warren, continued to march forward unchanged. Now,
if we're looking for a reason why we don't have
to go far beyond their Puritan mission. They had settled
there decades earlier to build a city on a hill,
a shining example of God's kingdom on earth. But the
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devil wanted to tear all of that to the ground.
Things like false test ctimonies and lying prisoners were small
matters when held up to the larger safety of the
Puritan utopia they dreamt of. The day before the trials
were to begin, that mission was driven home for a
few of the presiding judges. Peter, Sergeant Samuel Sewell, and
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still Wait Winthrop all sat in their seats at Boston's
Third Church that morning and listen to the minister. Samuel
Willard preached from the Book of First Peter, chapter five.
Be sober, be vigilant, It says, because your adversary, the Devil,
as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Then,
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wanting to drive the point home, Willard issued his own
personal warnings. He told the congregation that because God had
banished the fallen angels from heaven, our world was full
of invisible forces bent on our destruction. These invisible powers
can assume any shape they desire, and they have enlisted
evil people among us to do the work of the devil. Translation,
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prepare yourselves, we're about to go to war. M Sergeant
Sewell and Winthrop weren't the only judges to receive messages
from the church that weekend. John Richards, that self made
man who started out life as a servant only to
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become one of the most powerful men in the colony,
received a letter from his own minister Cotton Mother. Neither
offered a laundry list of advice for Richards to follow
in the weeks to come. He told him not to
lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear.
Noticed that he didn't tell Richard's that stories about the
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specters of which is were invalid as we might expect,
just that he shouldn't rely too much on them. It
was advice that seemed to legitimize something no sane person
should accept as fact. Neither went on which is He
told him shouldn't be able to recite the Lord's prayer correctly.
They should be on the lookout for poppets, a sort
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of doll used by witches to focus spells on another person.
He also told Richards that another great source of physical
evidence was witches marks witches marks were also known as
witches teats and were supposed to be physical marks that
showed exactly where the witch would suckle. They're familiar, even
though men could also have them. It was a concept
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that played into the female centric hatred that consumed witchcraft panics.
These marks could be anything though dark spots on the skin,
large freckles, skin tags, even moles. As you can imagine,
most people had something on their body to worry about
when viewed through such a lens. Neither closed out his
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letter to Richards by suggesting that the best evidence of
all that they could find would be physical manifestations of
spectral origins, which seemed to contradict his earlier warning not
to lean too much on the spectral evidence. If Richard's
and the other judges noticed the contradiction, we don't see
evidence of that. In fact, they clearly adopted Mather's list
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of proof in the weeks and months to come. On
June two, William Stoughton, in his role as chief judge
for the trial, called the Court of Oyer and Terminer
into session. Thomas Newton was sworn in as Attorney General,
and Stephen Sewell as the Clerk of the Court. The
grand jury met and discussed their task. While witnesses for
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later cases were called to testify, They were laying out
the good silver, so to speak, setting the table for
the feast that was about to be served. While all
of this was going on, the suspects were split up
to be examined by smaller juries. John Proctor and John Willard,
that former constable who had tried to escape, both had
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their bodies search for which is marks by a group
of men, but they were unsuccessful. The ladies were examined
by group of women for the same reason, and the
results were much more fruitful. Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, and
Elizabeth Proctor all showed signs of witches marks. Maybe because
the other women didn't, Their examiners went back for a
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second look a couple of hours later. This time they
found nothing, though, and while you and I might chalk
that up to human error or a trick of the light,
these women assumed it was because diabolical marks have the
power to disappear and reappear at will, because of course
they do. Finally, Bridget Bishop was brought forward to meet
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Thomas Newton and the team of judges. She stood before
them in silence as witness after witness was brought in
to speak to her character. Each person brought a mixture
of old stories of her rough and disobedient ways and
new stories of seeing her with devilish little creatures or
spectral attacks. The most unusual witness that day had to
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have been the builders who had helped tear down bridgets
old Salem town home. According to them, poppets were found
in holes in the walls of the building. They were
crafted of rags and hog bristles and needles had been
shoved through their bodies. It was proof, they said, that
something unnatural had gone on inside that house. After all
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of the witnesses and evidence were presented, the judges charged
Bridget with her crimes. She had an I quote tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted,
and tormented five individuals Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard,
Annie Putnam, and Mary Walcott. To make it official, the
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judges wrote up five separate indictments. This wasn't the end
for her, not yet. At least an indictment was a
charge an accusation. Essentially, the judges were declaring that, yes,
a crime had been committed. Now, all that was left
was for the jury to decide whether Bridget Bishop was
guilty or not. Much later, Cotton Mather would write that
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the jury had no trouble determining her guilt. He wrote
that her crimes had been evident and notorious to all beholders,
and then went on to discuss the spectral evidence that
had been key in the decision. Her conviction was a
house of cards built out of invisible attackers, which is
marks that weren't there, a turbulent past, and the hearsay
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of a handful of teenage girls. Yet somehow it stood.
Of course, Thomas Newton was in charge of presenting all
of those pieces to the grand jury. He would have
picked the most convincing bits and left out the parts
that were more difficult to believe. He knew what he
was doing, of course, and that's why it worked. He
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had set out to begin the Oyer and Terminer with
a victory, and that seemed to be headed his way.
After this symphony of accusations artfully constructed by one of
the fine mis legal minds and the colonies, the last
step was to give Bridget a chance to speak for herself.
We don't know what she said in her own defense. Honestly,
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what could she have said beyond the words she had
muttered at her examination back in April? I am innocent.
I am innocent. And we don't know what the court's
response was that day. All we know is that she
was moved to the Salem jail to await the final verdict.
But weight must have felt like an eternity to considering
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what the stakes were. Would she die or would she
be allowed to go free. Of all the documents that
still survive from the Salem witch trials, the official oyer
and termin or records are not among them. Most historians
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don't consider them lost either. They were most likely destroyed
in the aftermath, like a criminal might burn down a
house to hide the murder scene inside it. Because of that,
we don't know how Thomas Newton built his case, and
we don't know how Bridget responded. What we do know, though,
is that it took the jury six days to issue
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their verdict. On June eighth, while he was in Boston
for a meeting of the Governor's General Court, William Stoughton
announced the court's decision. Bridget Bishop had been found guilty
of all charges and was to be sentenced to death.
The warrants also named the date of her execution. It
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would take place just two days later, on June tenth.
Her executioner would be George Corwin, the sheriff of Essex
County and the nephew of both Jonathan Corwin and wait
Still Winthrop. But there was more news that day. Nathaniel Saltonstall,
one of the nine judges on the oyer and terminer
and the man respected throughout Massachusetts for his strong convictions
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and sense of right and wrong, announced his displeasure at
the way the case had gone. We don't have a
record of his exact words, but we know what he did.
He walked away one case into the process. Saltonstall recognized
it for the circus it was, and he quit. Sadly,
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that didn't stop the march of time, and on June tenth,
bridget Bishop was escorted out of the Salem jail to
a makeshift execution site on the edge of town. Her
card was followed by a number of the afflicted girls
who were about to see the dark consequences of their
accusations and tales. The people that you would have expected
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to see, though the judges were nowhere to be found
that was bad enough for people like William Stowton or
Samuel Sewell, who were key figures in the trial. But Hawthorne,
Corwin and Gedney actually lived in Salem Town. They had
zero excuses for not being there to see the consequences
of their judicial fervor. Beverly Minister John Hale was present
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that morning to say a final prayer with Bridget and
to utter a benediction over the gathered crowd. Some of
the people gathered there were in shock. Others wore sneers
on their faces, as if they reveled in the tension
that hummed around them. Even in the darkest of times,
it seems there's always one person in the crowd who approves. Finally,
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George Corwyn led Bridget up to the hastily built platform
and tied her hands behind her back. Then he carefully
slipped the noose over her head and stooped down to
tie her petticoats to her legs. It would stop her
from kicking and keep her decent at the same time.
When he was ready, George Corwyn most likely took a long,
(34:49):
deep breath and then muttered a prayer of his own,
extending his arm toward her. He placed his hand on
her back, and then he pushed bridget Fell and the
world went dark. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.
(35:11):
Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview
of what's in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured,
Stoton believed that if someone witnessed the spectral image of
a witch, then the person they saw was the person
to blame. The ministers, though disagreed. They believed that the
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devil could impersonate innocent people, literally putting on their appearance
as a disguise, just to get those people in trouble,
So obviously, the next question was even trickier. How can
you tell? It was bad enough that no one except
a handful of the accused could actually see the specters
of their attackers, but now they had to play detective
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and figure out which ones were the devil in disguise
and which ones were real witches. And the solution, according
to the ministers, was to avoid prosecuting virtuous people, people
with blameless reputations and no history of any wrongdoing. It
was a cop out answer, though, because Stoton believed that
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very few people were actually of unblemished reputation. He and
his fellow judges were part of that select few, naturally,
but outside of that, it was difficult to imagine anyone
without a sordid past, even Rebecca Nurse, who was a
full member of the Salem Village Church and well respected,
(36:36):
and as she was about to find out, when your
fate rested on invisible evidence, it was hard to see
anything other than darkness. Unobscured was created and written by
(37:42):
me Aaron Mankey and produced by Matt Frederick and Alex
Williams in partnership with How Stuff Works, with research by
Carl Nellis and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more
about our contributing historians further reading material, resource archive and
links to our other thos at History unobscured dot com.
(38:03):
Until next time, thanks for listening, m HM.
John Richards was an inspiration. He started out life as
a servant, but as the years would show, he was
born to climb the social ladder. He had a knack
for relationships. It seems, over the course of his life
he made powerful friends. Maybe in his time as a
servant he overheard enough conversations about the inner workings of
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power that he got a feel for the ebb and
flow of it. All. He gained the approval of his
superiors and the respect of his peers. Whatever the case,
John was making a move that few men dared he
was climbing. It didn't hurt that he married into the
Winthrop clan, whose estimable name carried the legacy of a
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Puritan leader who had founded it all. But John was
no slouch. He swiftly picked up the skills of favorite
game of the Boston elite, land speculation. He saved up
his money and then began to purchase property, the first
being Aerosick Island off the southern coast of Maine. By
the age of forty eight, he had one of the
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largest property holdings of anyone in Massachusetts. After all of that,
it's safe to say that few individuals in the Boston
establishment were as inspiring as John Richards, but it went
beyond wealth, or maybe that hard earned fortune unlocked new opportunities. Money,
after all, pairs very nicely with power. Richards served on
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the General Court of Massachusetts, that ruling body that guided
the colony. He had served as a judge in a
number of important cases that spanned the church and the state.
In six e and Samuel Sewell had ruled to suspend
a local minister due to foul language and unseemly behavior
in a tavern that wasn't hypocritical of him either. Richards
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was a well respected puritan in his own church, a
church that was led by none other than Cotton Mother,
son of the powerful Increase Mather. He was so respected
that Cotton Mother leaned on Richards for him to help
sway the congregation on important matters. John Richards, you see,
had it all money, power and respect. But this self
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made man was about to face the biggest challenges of
his life. The situation in s looked quite dire to
men like John Richards, and like a lot of things
in his life, that all came down to money. Like
so many of his peers, Richards had made his fortune
buying and selling land, frontier land, land on the edge
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of the colonies far to the north and Maine, and
that land was being taken away from him. Well, that's
a bit misleading. The land wasn't really his to begin with. Yes,
he had purchased stit from the local Native American tribe
known as the Wabanakis, but never at a fair price,
and the Wabanakis didn't care to have their homeland stripped
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of timber and mind for copper just to build someone
a grand house hundreds of miles away, so they took
it back. Losing that land to the enemy, literally, allies
of the Devil in the minds of the Puritans, was
a blow against his lifetime of achievement. And now Satan's
power was bleeding southward, inching ever closer to the safety
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of the Boston area. You have to imagine John Richards
and his wealthy, powerful friends were more than a little nervous,
which is why when word began to spread about an
outbreak of witchcraft in the town of Salem, all of
them drew a line in the sand. Satan would have
no more ground. They would stop him to save the
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Puritan mission, yes, but also to save their fortunes, but
with dozens of people already in jail and more being
added to their number each day, the clock was ticking. Thankfully,
Governor Phipps had ordered an official trial the Oyer and Terminer,
and that meant judges were needed. What better place for
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Boston's most powerful to take control than the front of
the courtroom. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mankey. When I'm
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trying to explain what the power structure of the colony
was like at the time of the witchcraft crisis, I
am fond of saying the following analogy in the US today,
If the joint chiefs of Staff were also the President's
cabinet and also the judges of the Supreme Court, that's
the power structure of Massachusetts at the time. The same
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men were the judges in the trials, and the chief
advisers of the governor, and the men who led the
local militia in the Indian War. So you talk about
consolidation of power there it is. That's Mary Beth Norton,
Professor of American History at Cornell University, and it's a
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powerful picture she paints. The only thing I would add
to her overlapping circles on the ven diagram would be
that not only were these men advisors and military leaders
and judges, but they were also the wealthiest in the land.
In a day and age when the wealth gap between
the one percent and the rest feels like a canyon,
these men from teen two sound awfully familiar. Each of
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them had built a fortune through a combination of land
speculation and the exploitation of that land. Some of them
own mills in the frontier country to the north, which
provided some of the prime exports of the colonies. Others
parceled out their massive tracks of land, earning a fortune
off the smaller sales. But while they all seem to
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be cut from the same cloth and most of them
held a lot of the same positions of power, it's
important to note that the events of six two would
test them to the limit. Some of these men would
seize the reins of the crisis and drive it towards
its bloody conclusion. Others would take a more passive role,
their names barely mentioned in the court documents, preferring instead
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to watch from the passenger seat while the victims get
trampled by injustice. So who were the nine judges of
the Oyer and Terminer trial. Some of them you've already met,
such as John Richards, John Hawthorne, and Jonathan Corwin. The
others were Peter Sargent, Samuel Sewell Wait Still Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney,
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and Nathaniel Saltonstall. Which is eight not nine, and that's
on purpose because I want to share their leader with
you in more detail. The man who would lead the
Court of Oyer and Terminer as chief magistrate, presiding over
the other eight judges was none other than the Massachusetts
Lieutenant Governor himself, William Stoughton. WILLIAMS. Stonton is a ghost character,
(07:30):
one of my least favorite people. That's Emerson Baker, professor
of history at Salem State University. William Stoughton might have
put on a humble front, but he was just like
the rest of the judges, filthy, rich, and deeply embedded
in powerful circles. Stoughton had managed to trick the Native
Americans of western Massachusetts into selling him over a million
(07:52):
acres of their land, which he then proceeded to cut
up and sell in pieces for massive profit. It was
so successful that he repeat of the process in Connecticut
a short while later, and he was using his political
positions to make it all happen, enriching himself through his
public office. Taking it all into account, William Stoughton seems
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to have been a man focused purely on his own
advancement of power and wealth, and he was willing to
be ruthless to get it done. The coup that had
ended the rule of Governor Andrews had set him back
a bit, but thanks to his connections, he landed on
his feet and managed to secure a place alongside Governor Phipps,
a position he was now about to use to deliver
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hard justice to the people of Salem. If it's not
already clear, this group of wealthy and interconnected power players
were accustomed to the comfort and stability of their high positions,
but in six they were shaking in their boots. The
New Charter had only just arrived and their future was
still uncertain, and all the while, Wabanaki forces were advancing
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as Maine and western Massachusetts, wiping out their personal fortunes.
The witches of Salem were the closest thing these men
could find to its target upon which they might vent
their frustration. The Catholic French and their heathen Native American
allies were all agents of the devil, sure, but so
were the witches of Salem. While the battles to the
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west and north were less within their control, nothing was
standing in their way to strike a decisive blow to
these new enemies that threatened the Puritan mission. The first
step was to assemble the jurors, which was done on
more importantly, though, they needed a prosecutor to bring those
minions of Satan to trial, and for that job they
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turned to a man named Thomas Newton. He was a
lawyer trained in English law who was currently practicing in Boston,
and he had a track record for ruthlessly pursuing the
very thing that the judges needed, convictions. He would bring
the cases before or the group of judges in the
presence of the jury, and then a decision would be
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made for each. But rather than beginning with those who
had been waiting the longest, or even those who were
the most prominent in the community, Newton chose instead to
start with his best chance of landing in early victory.
Salem's new oyer and terminal trial would begin with the
charges brought against just one person, bridget Bishop. If bridget
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Bishop's name sounds familiar, that's because we briefly discussed her
examination in episode four that said she has a powerful
story that requires a bit more exploration. Then honestly, if
we can't slow down and unveil the humanity behind a
list of names, we're missing the point. Bridget story is
her own, but at the same time it's everyone's. Bridget's
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journey to the New World had begun painfully. She had
married a man named Samuel in England, and the couple
swiftly became parents. But sometimes joy is as fleeting as
the morning fog, and that newborn infant and died before
it could thrive. A short time later, Samuel passed away
as well, leaving Bridget alone, well, not exactly. She was
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pregnant with their second child, which was at once both
hopeful and sad. This child would never know its father
or older sibling. It was a lot of darkness for
one person to deal with, which might explain why Bridget
boarded a ship bound for the New World. Maybe she
just wanted to escape it all. She arrived in Boston
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in sixteen sixty four, and a short while later she
gave birth for the second time in her life. This child,
just like her first, failed to thrive, and when it
was over, Bridget had no one, no one to care for,
no one to care for her alone in a strange
new land. She was lost two years later, though she
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married again. Her new husband, Thomas Oliver, seemed like a
good man. He, like her, had lost a spouse, although
the details were far different from her own. Thomas had
three grown children, and his wife had been known to
be a troublemaker, always insulting him and the people around them.
Perhaps a fresh start was what both of them needed.
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It wasn't idyllic, though. Thomas turned out to be an
abusive husband, perhaps shedding a bit of light on why
he and his first wife quarreled so often. Soon Bridget
and Thomas had their own version of that reputation, although
most of the rumors and reports had to do with
the physical abuse that he heaped upon her. One neighbor,
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Mary Ropes, later testified that she often saw Bridget with
a bloody face or covered in black and blue marks.
When the authorities got involved in sixteen seventy, they ordered
both of them to be whipped publicly, ten stripes a piece,
they said, and then find for their behavior. They took
their beating and They paid their fine, but the trouble continued.
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Seven years later, they were in court again. Bridget was
an abused woman fighting for her dignity and safety. Thomas
was a smooth, talking wife beater in a society that
elevated men high above the station of women, so naturally
his deeds never went on record, while Bridget's behavior was
seeing as stubborn, disobedient, and offensive. Despite that, both of
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them were punished again, and in the most public and
humiliating way possible. They were forced to stand in the
public market place with their backs to each other. Both
of them were gagged to keep them silent, and each
had a note tied to their forehead describing their crimes.
Thomas's adult daughter paid the fine to have her father released,
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but Bridget was left to suffer the humiliation alone. She
suffered more than that, though, in the eyes of the
people around her, any woman with the tenacity to call
her husband an old devil most certainly had a bit
of familiarity with the devil himself. As a result, people
began to whisper that Bridget was a witch. Years before
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the afflicted girls would claim to see spectral images of
their attackers. People in Salem were claiming to see Bridget
in their own homes, and these visions were linked to
unfortunate events. One man claimed to see Bridget spirit in
his home right before his infant daughter passed away. Another
man claimed Bridget had paid him for some labor, but
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the money later vanished from his pocket. Yet another person
claimed to see her perched high up on a beam
in his barn, holding a stolen egg. These rumors in
our own society today would never mature beyond that point,
but in the world of the Puritans, they were dark
and ominous seeds that grew over time. In the winter
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of sixteen seventy nine, Bridget was charged with witchcraft and
ordered to appear before the Court of Assistants in Boston.
She paid her bond and waited for a trial date,
but for whatever reason, the date never arrived. Thomas, the wife,
beat her, died in sixteen seventy nine, leaving Bridget alone again,
Although that might have been the first time in her life,
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she was glad to see a husband die, but as
death left her responsible for his outstanding debts, and she
spent the next six years in legal battles trying to
take care of everyone demanding repayments. Then in sight, she
met Edward Bishop. Edward had worked most of his life
at one of the sawmills in Salem, but he also
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owned a bit of land in Salem Village, out on
the north side of the territory. After their marriage, the
couple tore down the house Thomas had left Bridget in
Salem Town and constructed a tavern in its place, which
was managed and operated by Edward's son, Edward Jr. Life
was supposed to get better for Bridget. She had found
a new husband and they had a promising future in
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front of them. No, it wasn't a path to immense riches,
but it was better than a life of abuse and debt.
Bridget just wanted to move on from the failings of
her past and try to make a new start. Sadly,
the community around her wasn't going to play along. Edward
Junior and his wife Sarah brought some of that trouble
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back into her life. At one point, a neighbor woman
got fed up with the loud and disorderly behavior taking
place at the new Bishop tavern, and she confronted Edward Junr.
About it. Immediately after that, this neighbor woman fell ill,
She had seizures and spoke of wanting to die, all
while her family watched helplessly. A month later, this woman
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was dead by her own hand. She had managed to
obtain a pair of sharp scissors, which she used to
stab herself in the side of the throat. Sarah Bishop,
Bridget's daughter in law, didn't get charged with witchcraft, as
we might expect from the stories like this, but people
certainly did take notice. Sometime after her marriage to Edward,
Bridget was arrested for theft and served three months in
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jail before being charged with the crime and forced to
pay a large fine. It had only been a small
piece of brass hardware, but it was enough to ruin
her reputation for good. Bridget had lost two children and
a husband, only to find herself in an abuse of marriage.
She had fought back for her safety and her dignity,
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only to be branded as a disobedient and outspoken woman.
Now this, whether it was true or not, this theft
and conviction was the final straw in everyone's mind. If
any woman in Salem Village was a witch, it was Bridget.
To a career prosecutor like Thomas Newton, Bridget offered a
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chance to begin the court of oyer and terminer on
a strong note. Yes, she was one of dozens who
had been dragged before the magistrates for months, and each
of them possessed their own dark past and social baggage.
But Bridget Bishop was the key that Newton would use
to unlock the floodgates justice. If we can fool ourselves
(18:13):
into calling it that was about to flow like a river.
Newton began by requesting just eight of the prisoners be
transferred up from the Boston jail to Salem Town. He
explained that while yes, there were a lot more people
(18:33):
awaiting trial, it was going to be a slow, tedious
process working through all of them. The afflicted were sometimes
disruptive and the cases were complex, so eight would be
all he needed for in the first week. Bridget would
be his first. Of course, his case didn't rest entirely
on old events and accusations. There were fresh stories about
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Bridget that helped move her to the front of the line.
Mercy Lewis and Annie Putnam both had claimed to see
Bridget spirit in their home. They stated, as if it
were indisputable fact, that she had bewitched her second husband,
Thomas to death. It was damning evidence given the circumstances,
but Bridget had also lied to the magistrates, and that
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didn't help her case. When they asked her if she
was a witch, she denied it and claimed that she
didn't even know what a witch was. She also claimed
she hadn't known anyone else confessed to being agents of
the devil, but that wasn't exactly true. On the morning
of her examination back in April, she had been told
that Abigail Hobbs and Mary Warren had confessed, and if
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Bridget was willing to lie about that, what else was
she lying about. It was all word games. It was
all a classic example of Bridget being considered guilty even
before she was examined on April nineteenth, six two. Nothing
she could say would change the public perception of her.
All she could do was deny it as each question
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was fired at her one by one. I am innocent.
I am innocent. I am innocent. It didn't help her.
She had been carted off to jail on April nineteenth
and remained there for a month and a half. Every
day new accused arrived to join her. In the small,
filthy room, she watched the constables drop off Sarah Wilds,
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a woman from Topsfield with a very similar story to Bridgets.
She was even there long enough to see her stepson,
Edward Jr. And his wife Sarah, added to the already
overflowing jail. On June one, Thomas Newton's request for the
transfer of eight prisoners was put into action. Bridget Bishop,
along with John and Elizabeth Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, John Willard,
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Sarah Good, and two others were all placed in a
wagon and carted north to Salem Town. While they rode north,
another group of freshly accused were being sent south to
Boston to take their place in the jail. It must
have been maddening to everyone involved. Rather than making headway,
they were just treading water and barely staying afloat. Well
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maddening to most. Some of the people making decisions seemed
to lack any sense of compassion or common decency at all.
Remember Sarah Good, one of the first women to be
accused and carted off to jail. Her four year old
daughter Dorothy was eventually accused as well, and together they
had been waiting for their trial in the Boston jail.
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But when the constables transported Sarah Good and the others
to sail in town on June one. They left Dorothy behind,
a four year old girl, alone and afraid in a
crowded room full of equally frightened strangers. It was abhorrent,
but it didn't even cross their mind as the wrong
thing to do. There were bigger wrongs that needed writing.
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As far as they were concerned, what difference did it
make if the authorities had separated a mother and her child,
so long as they were wrapped securely in the blankets
of moral superiority and justification. So as you might imagine,
those eight prisoners rode north with a lot of emotional baggage.
They were afraid for sure. This was the first official trial,
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not some simple examination. The court could make a decision
that would impact their very lives, and that was more
than enough reason to feel fear and stress. But there
was more. They were all frustrated as well. You see.
Back in April, Hawthorn and Corwin had visited the Salem
jail to question Mary Warren, one of the accusers, who
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had confessed her guilt. As the others in the jail
listened from a distance, Mary recanted her confession, denying that
she was ever a witch, and she went further. She
claimed that the visions she had described had been nothing
more than stories she made up to distract the authorities.
It was a bombshell if it was true. Some of
the people awaiting trial and jail were doing so purely
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on the testimony of Mary Warren, and she had been
overheard telling Hawthorne and Corwin that her testimony was all alive.
So the prisoners mobilized. One of the wealthiest among them,
a woman named Mary English, organized these prisoners a group
that included Edward Bishop Junior and his wife Sarah, and
helped them write a joint statement. If Mary Warren's testimony
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was false, then they should all be released and sent home.
Then Yet here they were writing in a wagon toward
the court of Oyer and Terminer and their final judgment.
We know the magistrates received the statement. It's one of
the few documents that survived to this day. But whether
or not they even read it, let alone consider the request,
(23:35):
is up for debate. The trials, even those for the
people accused by Mary Warren, continued to march forward unchanged. Now,
if we're looking for a reason why we don't have
to go far beyond their Puritan mission. They had settled
there decades earlier to build a city on a hill,
a shining example of God's kingdom on earth. But the
(23:56):
devil wanted to tear all of that to the ground.
Things like false test ctimonies and lying prisoners were small
matters when held up to the larger safety of the
Puritan utopia they dreamt of. The day before the trials
were to begin, that mission was driven home for a
few of the presiding judges. Peter, Sergeant Samuel Sewell, and
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still Wait Winthrop all sat in their seats at Boston's
Third Church that morning and listen to the minister. Samuel
Willard preached from the Book of First Peter, chapter five.
Be sober, be vigilant, It says, because your adversary, the Devil,
as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Then,
(24:39):
wanting to drive the point home, Willard issued his own
personal warnings. He told the congregation that because God had
banished the fallen angels from heaven, our world was full
of invisible forces bent on our destruction. These invisible powers
can assume any shape they desire, and they have enlisted
evil people among us to do the work of the devil. Translation,
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prepare yourselves, we're about to go to war. M Sergeant
Sewell and Winthrop weren't the only judges to receive messages
from the church that weekend. John Richards, that self made
man who started out life as a servant only to
(25:24):
become one of the most powerful men in the colony,
received a letter from his own minister Cotton Mother. Neither
offered a laundry list of advice for Richards to follow
in the weeks to come. He told him not to
lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear.
Noticed that he didn't tell Richard's that stories about the
(25:45):
specters of which is were invalid as we might expect,
just that he shouldn't rely too much on them. It
was advice that seemed to legitimize something no sane person
should accept as fact. Neither went on which is He
told him shouldn't be able to recite the Lord's prayer correctly.
They should be on the lookout for poppets, a sort
(26:06):
of doll used by witches to focus spells on another person.
He also told Richards that another great source of physical
evidence was witches marks witches marks were also known as
witches teats and were supposed to be physical marks that
showed exactly where the witch would suckle. They're familiar, even
though men could also have them. It was a concept
(26:28):
that played into the female centric hatred that consumed witchcraft panics.
These marks could be anything though dark spots on the skin,
large freckles, skin tags, even moles. As you can imagine,
most people had something on their body to worry about
when viewed through such a lens. Neither closed out his
(26:49):
letter to Richards by suggesting that the best evidence of
all that they could find would be physical manifestations of
spectral origins, which seemed to contradict his earlier warning not
to lean too much on the spectral evidence. If Richard's
and the other judges noticed the contradiction, we don't see
evidence of that. In fact, they clearly adopted Mather's list
(27:10):
of proof in the weeks and months to come. On
June two, William Stoughton, in his role as chief judge
for the trial, called the Court of Oyer and Terminer
into session. Thomas Newton was sworn in as Attorney General,
and Stephen Sewell as the Clerk of the Court. The
grand jury met and discussed their task. While witnesses for
(27:33):
later cases were called to testify, They were laying out
the good silver, so to speak, setting the table for
the feast that was about to be served. While all
of this was going on, the suspects were split up
to be examined by smaller juries. John Proctor and John Willard,
that former constable who had tried to escape, both had
(27:53):
their bodies search for which is marks by a group
of men, but they were unsuccessful. The ladies were examined
by group of women for the same reason, and the
results were much more fruitful. Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, and
Elizabeth Proctor all showed signs of witches marks. Maybe because
the other women didn't, Their examiners went back for a
(28:15):
second look a couple of hours later. This time they
found nothing, though, and while you and I might chalk
that up to human error or a trick of the light,
these women assumed it was because diabolical marks have the
power to disappear and reappear at will, because of course
they do. Finally, Bridget Bishop was brought forward to meet
(28:36):
Thomas Newton and the team of judges. She stood before
them in silence as witness after witness was brought in
to speak to her character. Each person brought a mixture
of old stories of her rough and disobedient ways and
new stories of seeing her with devilish little creatures or
spectral attacks. The most unusual witness that day had to
(28:58):
have been the builders who had helped tear down bridgets
old Salem town home. According to them, poppets were found
in holes in the walls of the building. They were
crafted of rags and hog bristles and needles had been
shoved through their bodies. It was proof, they said, that
something unnatural had gone on inside that house. After all
(29:19):
of the witnesses and evidence were presented, the judges charged
Bridget with her crimes. She had an I quote tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted,
and tormented five individuals Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard,
Annie Putnam, and Mary Walcott. To make it official, the
(29:41):
judges wrote up five separate indictments. This wasn't the end
for her, not yet. At least an indictment was a
charge an accusation. Essentially, the judges were declaring that, yes,
a crime had been committed. Now, all that was left
was for the jury to decide whether Bridget Bishop was
guilty or not. Much later, Cotton Mather would write that
(30:05):
the jury had no trouble determining her guilt. He wrote
that her crimes had been evident and notorious to all beholders,
and then went on to discuss the spectral evidence that
had been key in the decision. Her conviction was a
house of cards built out of invisible attackers, which is
marks that weren't there, a turbulent past, and the hearsay
(30:27):
of a handful of teenage girls. Yet somehow it stood.
Of course, Thomas Newton was in charge of presenting all
of those pieces to the grand jury. He would have
picked the most convincing bits and left out the parts
that were more difficult to believe. He knew what he
was doing, of course, and that's why it worked. He
(30:47):
had set out to begin the Oyer and Terminer with
a victory, and that seemed to be headed his way.
After this symphony of accusations artfully constructed by one of
the fine mis legal minds and the colonies, the last
step was to give Bridget a chance to speak for herself.
We don't know what she said in her own defense. Honestly,
(31:10):
what could she have said beyond the words she had
muttered at her examination back in April? I am innocent.
I am innocent. And we don't know what the court's
response was that day. All we know is that she
was moved to the Salem jail to await the final verdict.
But weight must have felt like an eternity to considering
(31:31):
what the stakes were. Would she die or would she
be allowed to go free. Of all the documents that
still survive from the Salem witch trials, the official oyer
and termin or records are not among them. Most historians
(31:52):
don't consider them lost either. They were most likely destroyed
in the aftermath, like a criminal might burn down a
house to hide the murder scene inside it. Because of that,
we don't know how Thomas Newton built his case, and
we don't know how Bridget responded. What we do know, though,
is that it took the jury six days to issue
(32:13):
their verdict. On June eighth, while he was in Boston
for a meeting of the Governor's General Court, William Stoughton
announced the court's decision. Bridget Bishop had been found guilty
of all charges and was to be sentenced to death.
The warrants also named the date of her execution. It
(32:34):
would take place just two days later, on June tenth.
Her executioner would be George Corwin, the sheriff of Essex
County and the nephew of both Jonathan Corwin and wait
Still Winthrop. But there was more news that day. Nathaniel Saltonstall,
one of the nine judges on the oyer and terminer
and the man respected throughout Massachusetts for his strong convictions
(32:58):
and sense of right and wrong, announced his displeasure at
the way the case had gone. We don't have a
record of his exact words, but we know what he did.
He walked away one case into the process. Saltonstall recognized
it for the circus it was, and he quit. Sadly,
(33:18):
that didn't stop the march of time, and on June tenth,
bridget Bishop was escorted out of the Salem jail to
a makeshift execution site on the edge of town. Her
card was followed by a number of the afflicted girls
who were about to see the dark consequences of their
accusations and tales. The people that you would have expected
(33:39):
to see, though the judges were nowhere to be found
that was bad enough for people like William Stowton or
Samuel Sewell, who were key figures in the trial. But Hawthorne,
Corwin and Gedney actually lived in Salem Town. They had
zero excuses for not being there to see the consequences
of their judicial fervor. Beverly Minister John Hale was present
(34:03):
that morning to say a final prayer with Bridget and
to utter a benediction over the gathered crowd. Some of
the people gathered there were in shock. Others wore sneers
on their faces, as if they reveled in the tension
that hummed around them. Even in the darkest of times,
it seems there's always one person in the crowd who approves. Finally,
(34:27):
George Corwyn led Bridget up to the hastily built platform
and tied her hands behind her back. Then he carefully
slipped the noose over her head and stooped down to
tie her petticoats to her legs. It would stop her
from kicking and keep her decent at the same time.
When he was ready, George Corwyn most likely took a long,
(34:49):
deep breath and then muttered a prayer of his own,
extending his arm toward her. He placed his hand on
her back, and then he pushed bridget Fell and the
world went dark. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.
(35:11):
Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview
of what's in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured,
Stoton believed that if someone witnessed the spectral image of
a witch, then the person they saw was the person
to blame. The ministers, though disagreed. They believed that the
(35:32):
devil could impersonate innocent people, literally putting on their appearance
as a disguise, just to get those people in trouble,
So obviously, the next question was even trickier. How can
you tell? It was bad enough that no one except
a handful of the accused could actually see the specters
of their attackers, but now they had to play detective
(35:54):
and figure out which ones were the devil in disguise
and which ones were real witches. And the solution, according
to the ministers, was to avoid prosecuting virtuous people, people
with blameless reputations and no history of any wrongdoing. It
was a cop out answer, though, because Stoton believed that
(36:15):
very few people were actually of unblemished reputation. He and
his fellow judges were part of that select few, naturally,
but outside of that, it was difficult to imagine anyone
without a sordid past, even Rebecca Nurse, who was a
full member of the Salem Village Church and well respected,
(36:36):
and as she was about to find out, when your
fate rested on invisible evidence, it was hard to see
anything other than darkness. Unobscured was created and written by
(37:42):
me Aaron Mankey and produced by Matt Frederick and Alex
Williams in partnership with How Stuff Works, with research by
Carl Nellis and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more
about our contributing historians further reading material, resource archive and
links to our other thos at History unobscured dot com.
(38:03):
Until next time, thanks for listening, m HM.
Unobscured News
Hosts And Creators
Aaron Mahnke
Matt Frederick
Alex Williams
Carl Nellis
Chad Lawson
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