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

the rights and good names of some (but not all) of the living and dead “witches” and awarded some money to their heirs.
    There were two bad parts. One was that the legislature only gave money to people who asked for it or whose names were included on a list that left lots of people out. The other bad part was that not one single person would ever be prosecuted for any of the crimes they had committed during the witch trials, whether they had falsely accused their neighbors of being witches, hanged the innocent, ruined their reputations, or stolen all of their property.
    Meanwhile, here’s what happened to a few of the people who were tangled up in witchcraft’s wicked web.
    THE OFFICIALS
    Chief Justice William Stoughton

    Stoughton believed he had done a great job of ridding the land of witches and was furious that Governor Phips had set them free. On January 3, 1693, he ordered the hanging of everyone who had been exempted because they were pregnant. But Governor Phips—whose wife was among those accused of witchcraft—blamed Stoughton for the entire tragedy and wouldn’t allow him to hang the women. So Stoughton angrily quit his job as a judge.
    Phips’s slap in the face to the chief justice didn’t hurt Stoughton’s career one bit, though. When Phips was ordered to return to London later that year, Stoughton became the acting governor of Massachusetts, serving until his death in 1701 and even doing double duty as chief justice until 1699. He never once apologized for his role in the trials.
    The Other Judges
    On January 14, 1697, Judge Samuel Sewall took “the blame and shame” for his role in the witch trials and asked for the people’s pardon. The same day, 12 other jurors signed a document apologizing for unwittingly shedding innocent blood, and the Massachusetts legislature declared the first annual Fast Day as everyone’s penance for all the sins committed during the trials. Each year after that, Sewell made sure to observe a fast and to pray for forgiveness.
    High Sheriff George Corwin

    On May 15, 1694, Justice Stoughton’s court helped out Sheriff Corwin once again by exempting him and his heirs from any liability for his failure to return all the goods he had stolen. Sheriff Corwin died at home of a heart attack in 1696. He was only 31 years old. Not one cent he extorted or stole from his innocent victims was ever turned over to the Crown, or the Colony, or the victims themselves during his lifetime.
    THE ACCUSERS
    Reverend Samuel Parris
    Parris was the only person who offered any restitution to the accused witches and their families. In an attempt to keep his job by appeasing church members who had lost their loved ones because of the trials, he offered to subtract six pounds from his salary for 1692 and six pounds for 1693. The offer seems strange indeed: His total yearly salary was supposed to have been 66 pounds sterling (22 in money and the rest in provisions), but ever since 1691, the church committee had refused to pay him a cent. In 1694, he apologized for his mistakes and tried to make peace with the congregation. Placing the blame on his servants and “Satan the devil, the roaring lion, the old dragon, the enemy of all righteousness,” he said, “I do humbly own this day before the Lord and his people that God has been righteously spitting in my face.”
    But in the end, neither Parris’s offer of restitution nor his apologies comforted his opponents. In fact, after Rebecca Nurse’s son and son-in-law and Sarah Cloyse’s husband directly accused Parris of destroying the innocent people in their families, they withdrew from his church. On May 3, 1695, 16 young men, 52 householders, and 18 church members sent a petition to Reverend Increase Mather and eight other area ministers, requesting that they advise Parris to quit and find a job someplace else. Parris refused, even though the ministers offered him a good job elsewhere if he would leave gracefully.
    On July 14, 1696, Parris’s