Season 07 Episode 25: The City Upon a Hill (Pt.3 of 3)

Sarah like a bolt of lightning. She wants to vomit. That's it, says Rebecca, Nurse, stroking her back.

nor has there ever been. That's it, says Rebecca. It's coming. Push, push, It's too much for the jailer. A sign to keep watch on, Rebecca nurse, he turns to face the war. Sarah twists and pulls at her chains, anchoring herself as another wave of pain rises up from deep within. It's as though her inside are turning molten with heat. Mamma cries Dorothy in anguish. It's okay, says Sarah, between gasps

of breath and gritted teeth. Mamma's o k With one or mighty push, A bloody lump of flesh and bone bursts forth from between Sarah's legs, its dark wisps of hair slicked down with vernix cassiosa, and then from its tiny mouth, a piercing wail rings out. Had any one else been present that day, they would have seen it too real. Undeniable magic performed by the so called witches of Salem, life giving birth to life, new beautiful life, A miracle of God, says Rebecca as she helps it

wriggle free. Perhaps we are not forsaken after all, sarah SLINKs to the ground, exhausted as Rebecca swaddles the baby in the blanket. It's a girl, she says, handing her to Sarah. Sarah beams at the baby through tears as she holds it tight against her body. She pulls Dorothy closer to I'll call her Mercy, says Sarah through the sobs. Mercy Good. It seems as good a name as any.

Sarah Good was pregnant when she was arrested and imprisoned in March sixteen ninety two, alongside Titchebur and Sarah Osborne. It isn't known exactly when the baby was born, though some believe it may have been as early as April, suggesting either Good was heavily pregnant when she was sent

to jail or the baby was severely premature. Either way, if she or any of the other accused individuals languishing in jail alongside her, were hoping it would grant them some leniency in the eyes of their accusers, they would have been very much mistaken. In mid April, three more names are added to the list of accused, Abigail Hobbes, Brigid Bishop, and Mary Warren, the same Warren servant to John and Elizabeth Proctor, who had accused her employers of

witchcraft only a few weeks before. Like all except Titchuburb before them, Bishop and Warren plead innocent and a duly throne in Salem jail to await trial. Abigail Hobbes is the next to be examined. Hobbs is about fifteen at the time of her arrest. She and her family had moved to Salem, Massachusetts, from Falmouth in Maine a few years previously. Falmouth, about one hundred miles to the northeast of Salem, is effectively the frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Like many of their fellow Falmouth residents, Hobbs and her family were forced to move further south for their own safety due to the constant fighting between Native Americans and the various colonial powers that clashed at the outer regions of the English colonies, and so in search of serenity and security, with complete faith in their God, they came to Salem. Like most of her fellow prisoners, Abigail was accused by Anne Putnam Junior, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, and

Mary Walcott of psychically attacking them on April nineteenth. She's led into the Salem Village meeting house to face the regular case magistrates John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin. Though many in the congregation believe the accused to be guilty, few expect them to admit it. In fact, only Titchubur to date has actually confessed to the crime. The rest vehemently

protested their innocence, but not this time. Abigail Hobbs begins, Magistrate Hawthorne, you are brought here to answer for sundry acts of witchcraft committed by you.

her in the shape of a man. He offered her fine things she says, if she did what he asked, what would he have you do? Asks Hawthorne. Why be a witch? Of course, she replies. Hawthorne squirms uneasily in his chair, And did you make a contract with him?

be none other than former Salem minister George Burr's. Burroughs was Minister of Salem from sixteen.

once to have him arrested for it. For his part, when he was Minister of Salem, Burroughs believed he was being woefully underpaid by the village for his role on the orders of Thomas Putnam. Eventually he refused to preach until they agreed to pay him more. In the end,

he felt he had no choice but to leave. When Anne accused Burroughs of being a witch, she added two that he had also killed two of his wives, one of which had died while he was Minister of Sale, and that he used witchcraft to kill countless colonial soldiers. Minister Burrows was tracked down to a house in Wells in Maine, then arrested and dragged back to Salem to

face trial. It was a few days later, on May tenth, that a jailer making the rounds of Salem prison came to call on Sarah Osborne, one of the first three to be accused of witchcraft, and found her unresponsive. It isn't known exactly how Osborne died, though malnutrition or from an infection caught while in prison are the most likely culprits.

She is the first of the accused to die. Reverend George Burrows is examined on a thirtieth of April, and like all the others, he is found likely guilty of the crime and thrown in jail to await a formal trial. Though accusations have been steadily building ever since the first accusations, Minister Burrows's arrest opens the floodgates. If a man of the cloth can potentially be a witch, nobody is immune from both the power of the devil or from accusation.

Within a week of his arrest, fifteen more suspects are named, and within a month another forty are jailed. And now the accused are found not only in Salem, but all over the colonies, from northern Maine all the way down to Boston. Abigail Hobbes's parents Deliverance and William Hobbes, Mary Easty, Nehemiah Abbott Junior, Sarah Wild's Edward, Bishop, Mary Black, Mary English. The list goes on Deliverance Hobbes claims there is a congregation of witches in Salem Village, a demonic church that

holds meetings next to Minister Samuel Parris's house. She paints a terrifying picture of Satanic deacons who give out red bread and red wine, while a preacher who oversees it all administers some kind of black sacrament. The deacons, she says, are Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Wild's, another accused member of the Salem Village congregation. The satanic preacher, of course, is

none other than Minister George Burr's. All this time, the accused have been simply left to rot in jail, since the province of Massachusetts Bay, of which Salem is part of, had yet to establish a legal court to hear the trials. In late May, newly installed Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Sir William Phipps arives back from a trip to England to find Salem jail full to the brim with apparent which is alarmed at the scale of the sudden outbreak

of Satanic practice. He quickly signs an order to establish the court of oyer and terminay. It borrows from the French terms meaning to hear and to determine. The court is established in Salem Town, with seven judges appointed to manage the trial. The defendants are given no legal representation. A Reverend Nicholas Noise is employed to be the chief minister of the trial, while overseeing it all is Chief Justice William Stoughton. Also returning to Massachusetts with William Phipps

is Increase Mather. Both he and his son Cotton carry great influence in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As ministers themselves, they are fervently committed to the Puritan cause and to the divinely inspired success of the colony. Cotton in particular, sees himself as an expert on the subject of bewitchment.

In sixteen eighty nine he published Memorable Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, which gave an account of an earlier trial involving an indentured servant named Anne Glover, who was accused by her masters of witchcraft. In sixteen eighty eight, she was hanged for her apparent crime. In the book, Matha confidently affirms the indisputable existence of witches and devils and urges all Christians to weed them out at the

first opportune unity. He also highlights their preference for using spectral versions of themselves to commit their wicked acts. It could almost have been a blueprint for the events in Salem Village, which occurred only three years later. Cotton Matha also recommends that bodily searches be carried out on the accused to look for marks.

When Bridget is examined for marks, one durer shrieks out that they have uncovered an excrescence of flesh on her chest, a third nipple. It is a certain sign of devilry. When a subsequent investigation fails to find it, it is clear to all present that Bridget merely used her witchcraft to hide it. Throughout her eight day trial, Bridget Bishop begs and pleads with the jury to ignore the accusations

and see past the noise. She begs them to see that she is not a witch, but just an ordinary citizen of Salem, innocent just like them.

rope dangles from one of its lower branches. Bridget continues to protest her innocence as the noose is placed around her neck while her feet teeter on the.

On July nineteenth, a terrified and inconsolable four year old Dorothy Good is wrenched away from her mother and left alone in her cell as Sarah is taken away. Sarah, along with Rebecca Nurse from Salem, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wild from Ipswich, and Susannah Martin from the nearby town of Salisbury are all thrown into the back of a cart and taken up to the wooded rocky outcrop on the outskirts of town. As each woman awaits their fate, the Reverend Nicholas Noise is on hand to offer them

some redemption. He urges them to confess, telling them that a confession will grant them grace in the eyes of the Lord. None will have it, though, if they are to be executed for their apparent crimes, the least they can do is to ensure there is no public record of them admitting to the crimes, so that their names, as they echo through eternity, will do so untainted by the mark of the devil. But while Rebecca Nurse Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wiles, and Susannah Martin keep a quiet counsel, Sarah

Good refuses to go silently into the night. She rails and screams against the injustice of their convictions. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, she cries to the Reverend Noise. I am innocent, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink. Noise is unmoved, and minutes later Sarah Good and the others are dead. With the death sentences mounting

both Increase and Cotton. Mather, despite what Cotton has himself previously written, advised the jurors to look at more than just the spectral evidence, the anecdotal evidence of apparent attacks made by spectral forms before coming to their decisions. But that horse as well and truly bolted from the stable.

In August, Reverend George Burroughs is tried. At his trial, the court are treated to a dark and fantastical story in which one accuser, Eliza Keyser, recalls returning home after a spat with Burrows to find a dozen or so strange shapes appear in his fireplace, moving, he said, like jelly through water. Clearly they were agents of the devil, conjured thereby Burrows to intimidate him. Burrohs is duly convicted

of being a witch. On August nineteenth, With the noose around his neck, Minister Burrohs proudly recites the Lord's prayer. The baying crowd are initially stunned into silence. After all, it's common knowledge that no witch or agent of Satan can properly recite the Lord's prayer. Some in the crowd begin to cry, suddenly unsure of what they're doing. Others push forward and demand that the minister be freed from the noose, but the stool is kicked out from under

his feet before things get out of control. Cotton Mother urges the people of Salem not to let the devil for them, though it might seem like the Reverend Burrows was a pious and innocent man, that was just the kind of trick the devil would play on them. George Jacobs, Martha Carrier, John Willard, and John Proctor are also hanged alongside Reverend Burroughs. Proctor's wife, Elizabeth, is also convicted and sentenced to hang. However, she has granted a stay of

execution when she is found to be pregnant. With eleven people now execute it, the jail still full and the accusations and arrests showing no signs of stopping, the mood in Salem grows increasingly bleak. On September ninth, Martha the Cory, the upstanding and pious Martha Corey, is then sentenced to be executed for her husband Giles a very different fate awaits. When Martha was first accused of being a witch, Giles testified against her, only to then himself be accused of witchery.

A few weeks later. The eighty one year old Giles as watched as one by one is fellow accused of being dragged in front of the jury to answer for their crimes, and no matter what they say, the result is always the same. All are sentenced to death. He decides to say nothing. The act of refusing to plead, be it as not guilty or otherwise is known as

standing mute. Without a plea, you can't be tried. So to avoid people cheating justice, a legal remedy was devised, known as penn forte jeure, or hard and forceful punishment. Its aim to quite literally squeeze the truth out of you.

give in, but Corey steadfastly refuses. After three days of ever increasing weights of stone piled on top of him, his body is so crushed, his lungs and diaphragms so collapsed that his tongue lulls uncontrollably out of his mouth. Taking his cane, the Salem Sheriff George Corwyn pokes Corey's tongue back into his mouth and asks, for the unteenth time if he has anything to say. The faintest wisp of a sound comes from Corey's lips. Corwyn stoops lower

and puts his ear close to Corey's mouth. More wait, more, wait, he rasps. He dies soon after. Three days later, Giles Corey's wife Martha, along with Margaret Scott, Mary Eastye, sister of Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse, Alice Parker, and Pudiator Wilmot Read. Samuel Wardle and Mary Parker are all hanged, taking the total number of execute it to nineteen by December sixteen ninety two, With the death toll of the

Salem witch Trials at twenty two. There are many who have had enough enough of witches, enough of convulsing, screaming young girls, enough of the fear that they will be accused next, enough of trials and executions. Equally, there are those who, having gone so far down the path of purging New England of witchcraft, feel that to stop now would be weakness and failure. Or, as Shakespeare's Macbeth had it, I am in blood stepped in so far that should

I weigh no more more? Returning were as tedious as to go o'er then came one accusation in late October that truly sends a shockwave through Massachusetts. It is made against Governor William Phipps's own wife Mary. With it, Phipps brings the trials to a screeching halt. The Court of Oyer and Terminae is dissolved immediately and replaced by a superior Court of Judicature with instructions to ignore all spectral evidence.

Trials resume in January and February of sixteen ninety three, but only three out of fifty six individuals are convicted, And just like that, as swiftly as it had seemingly started, the salem which trials were over by May sixteen ninety three, although still languishing in jail. Over one hundred and fifty people are pardoned and released, including Elizabeth Proctor, who had

since given birth to her baby. The intense trauma, the loss of money, property, and life, and the almost total eradication of neighborly trust had a devastating impact on the Salem community for years to come. Many were debt ridden after their ordeal, owing to the perverse rule that defendants were charged rent for their time in jail, even if not eventually convicted. Many suffered extreme physical and mental health issues.

The four year old Dorothy Good, after nine months chained up in a jail cell, most of which were spent fending for herself after her mother was murdered, never recovered from the trauma. As for the apparently afflicted girls, Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis married and moved away. Young Betty Paris stayed in Salem, where she also married and raised

a family of her own. The whereabouts of others such as Elizabeth Hubbard and Abigail Williams has been lost a time, but there are some writings that account for a quote young girl afflicted who never quite recovered her sanity, which some believed to be a reference to Abigail. The enslaved Titchuba remained in the dire conditions of jail for thirteen months because the godly Minister Samuel Parris refused to pay

her fees. In April sixteen ninety three, she was sold to an unknown person for the price of her prison debt. She was later said to have alleged that Paris beat her original confession out of her and then instructed her on what to say and how to say it. When she was first questioned in seventeen oh six, a then twenty six year old and Putnam junior, unmarried and still in Salem, stirred in front of the local congregation and offered an apology for her part in the events of

sixteen ninety two. She believed she was in fact delusional at the time, and that even though those delusions were likely brought on by the devil, the people she named

were innocent. She was forgiven by their families. It is said that the Reverend Nicholas Noys, the official minister of the trials, who presided over the excommunication of some of the defeats and encouraged others to confess to their sins, later regretted his part in the trials, perhaps troubled by a supposed witch, Sarah Goods, threatened to him that if he were to let her die, God would give him blood to drink. He had a change of heart. Others

are not so sure. One seventeen o three petition to clear the names of all accused witches, signed by a number of ministers, did not include his name. It was fifteen years later at his home in Newbury when Noise, on the cusp of his eightieth birthday, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. Some say as the hemorrhage intensified, Noise was heard coughing and spluttering up blood until he eventually choked

on it. This episode was written by Richard McClain Smith and Ella McLoud Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain Smith Unexplained.

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