John Davenport, one of the founders of New Haven, and Roger Ludlow,
Deputy Governor of Massachusetts and Connecticut.[I] Goodwife Knapp of
Fairfield was "suspicioned." That was enough to set the villagers agog
with talk and gossip and scandal about the unfortunate woman, which
poisoned the wells of sober thought and charitable purpose, and swiftly
ripened into a formal accusation and indictment.
[Footnote I: Connecticut, through its Commission of Sculpture, in
recognition of his services to the Colony, is to erect a memorial statue
to Ludlow to occupy the western niche on the northern facade of the
Capitol building at Hartford.]
Pending her trial the prisoner was committed to the house of correction
or common jail for the safe keeping of "refractory persons" and
criminals.
What terrors of mind and spirit must have waited on this "simple minded"
woman, in the cold, gloomy, and comfortless prison, probably built of
rough logs, with a single barred window and massive iron studded door, a
ghost haunted torture chamber, in charge of some harsh wardsmen.
Knapp was duly and truly tried, and sentenced to death by hanging, the
usual mode of execution. _No witch was ever burned in New England._
From the day sentence was pronounced until the hanging took place, out
in Try's field beyond the Indian field, in view of the villagers, whose
curiosity or thirst for horrors or whose duty led them there, this
prisoner of delusion was made the object of rudest treatment, espionage,
and of inhuman attempts to wring from her lips a confession of her own
guilt or an accusation against some other person as a witch.
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