Free Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer

girls? Had a group of them joined in a secret conspiracy to fake their fits and tortures? Did they purposely stick pins into their own skin during the trials or secretly bite themselves before accusing the witches of harming them? If so, why? Were some of them simply helping their parents by making their enemies look bad in court? Were they bored thrill seekers trying to get attention? Was it all a big game to pull the wool over the eyes of the adults? After all, John Proctor’s servant Mary Warren, who had once accused the accusers of lying, reported that one girl said they went after the innocent suspects “for sport…we must have some sport.”
    WERE THE JUDGES CROOKED OR HONEST?
    Were the judges, consciously or unconsciously, eager to put blame for their blunders during the Indian Wars at the feet of witches and devils to avoid responsibility themselves? Did they use the minister George Burroughs as their scapegoat because they disapproved of his unusual religious views? Or did the judges conspire to make off with a share of the arrested citizens’ money and property. Three of the judges were related to George Corwin, the 25-year-old high sheriff of Essex County. They included the sheriff’s uncles, Jonathan Corwin and Wait-Still Winthrop, and his father-in-law, Bartholomew Gedney. Sheriff Corwin was in charge of arrests and property seizures among other duties.
    In those days, a witch’s property was supposed to be turned over to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the King of England after she or he was hanged. What’s more, large fees could be collected from the accused witches and their families. But Sheriff Corwin ignored the King and the Colony and kept all that booty, even before anyone was hanged.
    If certain judges connived with Corwin to convict wealthy people, maybe they got a cut of the action. Chief Justice Stoughton wrote out a warrant that allowed the estates and property of people who were executed to be seized and disposed of without ever telling Governor Phips or asking for his consent. This was illegal, too. And one time, when a Quaker woman asked why the court had seized her oxen, a judge replied, “Would you have us starve while we sit about your business?”
     
    I t seems likely that several of these theories are correct: Perhaps all of the disease, superstition, paranoia, hysteria, past resentments, cowardice, religious fervor, greed—and even boredom—boiled and bubbled together to foment a perfect storm in 1692 that finally exploded in the little town of Salem Village, to horrendous and tragic effect.



CHAPTER 10
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
    E ven though the almanacs continued to predict rain and snow and phases of the moon, and even though Salem’s town clerks still registered new births and collected taxes as usual, not all of the troubles came to an end once the witchcraft hysteria began to die down. Some people still thought the trials should continue. Others who had been afraid to speak up were mortified by the hangings. Newly freed “witches” and their families were embittered and impoverished. The church fell into disrepair due to lack of funds, and divisions among its members continued to fester. And despite Governor Phips’s attempts to achieve a much wider peace with the French and Indians, the Second Indian War would grind on and on until 1699.
    But when a 22-year-old Harvard graduate named Joseph Green was ordained as the minister of the Salem Village Church in 1698, things began to look up. A natural negotiator, Green initiated a “Meeting of Peace” so that families who had left the church could reconcile with those who had stayed, and a sense of normality finally began to return.
    Eighteen long years later, on October 17, 1711, the Province of the Massachusetts Bay signed a Reversal of Attainder, an act that declared a general amnesty and removed the witchcraft charges against George Burroughs and certain others. This was both good and bad. The good part was that it restored