But it was
natural that, believing the crime to exist, they should use the belief
to strike down offenders or annoyances out of reach of any other _legal_
means. They did not invent the crime for the purpose, nor did they
invent the death penalty for this crime." _Connecticut as a Colony_
(1: 206), MORGAN.
"As to what you mention, concerning that poor creature in your town that
is afflicted and mentioned my name to yourself and son, I return you
hearty thanks for your intimation about it, and for your charity therein
mentioned; and I have great cause to bless God, who, of his mercy
hitherto, hath not left me to fall into such an horrid evil." Extract of
a Letter from Sec. Allyn to Increase Mather, Hartford, Mar. 18, 1692-93.
An accusation of witchcraft was a serious matter, one of life or death,
and often it was safer to become an accuser than one of the accused.
Made in terror, malice, mischief, revenge, or religious dementia, or of
some other ingredients in the Devil's brew, it passed through the
stages of suspicion, espionage, watchings, and searchings, to the formal
complaints and indictments which followed the testimony of the
witnesses, in their madness and delusion hot-foot to tell the story of
their undoing, their grotesque imaginings, their spectral visions, their
sufferings at the hands of Satan and his tools, and all aimed at people,
their neighbors and acquaintances, often wholly innocent, but having
marked personal peculiarities, or of irregular lives by the Puritan
standard, or unpopular in their communities, who were made the victim of
one base passion or another and brought to trial for a capital offense
against person and property.
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