Note 74 — Introduction.
Reading edition
October 17, 1711, the General Court passed an act reversing “the several convictions, judgments, and attainders against the” persons executed, and several who were condemned but not executed, and declaring that to be null and void. In December of the same year, £578. 12s. were appropriated to pay the damages sustained by persons prosecuted for witchcraft in 1692. The act reversing the attainder shows that the popular belief in the diabolical nature of the witchcraft troubles had not abated twenty years after those events transpired. The act is in Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. ii. pp. 216-218. It commences thus: “Forasmuch as in the year of our Lord 1692, two several towns within this Province were infested with a horrible witchcraft, or possession of devils,” &c. “The influence and energy of the evil spirits so great at that time acting in and upon those who were the principal accusers and witnesses;” and that “some of the principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious conversation”—were the reasons assigned for the reversal of the attainder.
As showing Gov. Hutchinson’s latest opinions on the question, whether the manifestations at Salem village were wholly the result of fraud and imposture, I append a supplementary paragraph with which he closes the narrative in his final draft.
“The opinion which prevailed in New-England for many years after this tragedy, that there was something preternatural in it, and that it was not all the effect of fraud and imposture, proceeded from the reluctance in human nature to reject errors once imbibed. As the principal actors went off the stage this opinion was gradually lessened; but perhaps it was owing to a respect to the memory of their immediate ancestor, that many do not seem to be fully convinced. There are a great number of persons who are willing to suppose the accusers to have been under bodily disorders which affected their imaginations. This is kind and charitable, but seems to be winking the truth out of sight. A little attention must force conviction that the whole was a scene of fraud and imposture begun by young girls, who at first, perhaps, thought of nothing more than being pitied and indulged, and continued by adult persons who were afraid of being accused themselves. The one and the other, rather than confess their fraud, suffered the lives of so many innocents to be taken away through the credulity of judges and juries.”
P.