Free The Penguin Book of Witches by Katherine Howe Page B

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    [A]: No, never in my life.
    [Q]: What ails this people?
    [A]: I do not know.
    [Q]: But what do you think?
    [A]: I do not desire to spend my judgment upon it.
    [Q]: Do not you think they are bewitched?
    [A]: No, I do not think they are.
    [Q]: Tell me your thoughts about them.
    [A]: Why, my thoughts are my own, when they are in, but when they are out they are another’s.
    [Q]: You said their master. Who do you think is their master?
    [A]: If they be dealing the black art, you may know as well as I. 5
    [Q]: Well, what have you done toward this?
    [A]: Nothing.
    [Q]: Why it is you, or your appearance.
    [A]: I cannot help it.
    [Q]: That may be your master.
    [A]: I desire to lead myself according to the will of God [scored from “will”] word of God.
    [Q]: Is this according to God’s word?
    [A]: If I were such a person I would tell you the truth.
    [Q]: How comes your appearance just now to hurt these.
    [A]: How do I know?
    [Q]: Are not you willing to tell the truth?
    [A]: I cannot tell. He that appeared in same shape as glorified saint can appear in anyone’s shape. 6
    [Q]: Do you believe these do not say true?
    [A]: They may lie for aught I know.
    [Q]: May not you lie?
    [A]: I dare not tell a lie if it would save my life. 7
    [Q]: Then you will speak the truth.
    [A]: I have spoke nothing else. I would do them any good.
    [Q] : I do not think you have such affections for them, whom just now you insinuated had the Devil for their master.
    Elizabeth Hubbard was afflicted and then the marshal who was by her said she pinched her hand.
    Several of the afflicted cried out they [torn] her upon the beam.
    [Q]: Pray God discover you, if you be guilty.
    [A]: Amen. Amen. A false tongue will never make a guilty person. 8
    You have been a long time coming to the court today. You can come fast enough in the night,
said Mercy Lewis.
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    No, sweetheart,
said the examinant.
    And then Mercy Lewis and all, or many of the rest, were afflicted.
    John Indian fell into a violent fit and said,
It was that woman, she bites, she bites
[and illegible] then she was biting her lips.
    [Q]: Have you not compassion for these afflicted?
    [A]: No, I have none.
    Some cried out there was the black man with her, and Goody Bibber, who had not accused her before, confirmed it.
    Abigail William upon trial could not come near her. Nor Goody Bibber. Nor Mary Walcott.
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    John Indian cried he would kill her if he came near her, but he [was?] flung down in his approach to her.
    [Q]: What is the reason these cannot come near you?
    [A]: I cannot tell. It may be the Devil bears me more malice than another.
    [Q]: Do not you see h[illegible] God evidently [torn] you?
    [A]: No, not a bit for that.
    [Q]: All the congregation think so.
    [A]: Let them think what they will.
    [Q]: What is the reason these cannot come near you?
    [A]: I do not know but they can if they will [illegible] else if you please, I will come to them.
    [Q]: What is the black man whispering to you?
    [A]: There was none whispered to me.

STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH HUBBARD VERSUS GEORGE BURROUGHS, MONDAY, MAY 9, 1692
    The shift in accusation from the local women of Salem Village to deposed minister George Burroughs marked a dramatic change in both tenor and scope for the Salem episode. This expansive transformation is one reason that Salem would be better understood as a regional panic rather than one tied to a specific community. Hubbard’s testimony claimed that Burroughs had told her he was “above a wizard, for he was a conjurer.”
    In the historiographic tendency to interpret witch trials as proxies for other, real conflicts, the fact that witchcraft itself was a category of reality for early modern Christians gets lost. The villagers of Salem were undoubtedly responding to a series of circumstances that intersected in the crucible (to borrow a turn of phrase) of a witch trial. But for them the threat of witchcraft was not a substitute for, or an overlaid scrim atop, their frontier anxieties and destructive