Simon Bradstreet and Thomas Danforth, the colony's last leaders under the old charter, resumed their posts as governor and deputy governor, but lacked constitutional authority to rule because the old charter had been vacated. Andros was ousted in 1689 after the " Glorious Revolution" in England replaced the Catholic James II with the Protestant co-rulers William and Mary. The original 1629 Royal Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was vacated in 1684, after which King James II installed Sir Edmund Andros as the governor of the Dominion of New England. New England had been settled by religious dissenters seeking to build a Bible-based society according to their own chosen discipline. Jewett included a list of other people executed in New England in his 1881 book. The earliest recorded witchcraft execution was that of Alse Young in 1647 in Hartford, Connecticut, the start of the Connecticut Witch Trials which lasted until 1663. Recorded witchcraft executions in New England Dorothy Good was four or five years old when she was accused of witchcraft. The trials were started after people had been accused of witchcraft, primarily by teenage girls such as Elizabeth Hubbard, 17, as well as some who were younger. Works by men such as Glanvill and Cotton Mather tried to prove that "demons were alive." Accusations Glanvill wanted to prove that the supernatural could not be denied those who did deny apparitions were considered heretics, for it also disproved their beliefs in angels. In his treatise, Glanvill claimed that ingenious men should believe in witches and apparitions if they doubted the reality of spirits, they not only denied demons but also the almighty God. Glanvill wrote about the "denial of the bodily resurrection, and the spirits." In 1668, in Against Modern Sadducism, Joseph Glanvill claimed that he could prove the existence of witches and ghosts of the supernatural realm. The events in 1692–1693 in Salem became a brief outburst of a sort of hysteria in the New World, while the practice was already waning in most of Europe. While witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid-17th century, they continued on the fringes of Europe and in the American Colonies. Backgroundįurther information: Protests against early modern witch trials The city dedicated the Proctor's Ledge Memorial to the victims there in 2017. In January 2016, the University of Virginia announced its Gallows Hill Project team had determined the execution site in Salem, where the 19 "witches" had been hanged. As of 2004, there was still talk about exonerating all of the victims, though some think that happened in the 18th century as the Massachusetts colonial legislature was asked to reverse the attainders of "George Burroughs and others". In 1957, an act passed by the Massachusetts legislature absolved six people, while another one, passed in 2001, absolved five other victims. According to historian George Lincoln Burr, "the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered." Īt the 300th anniversary events in 1992 to commemorate the victims of the trials, a park was dedicated in Salem and a memorial in Danvers. Many historians consider the lasting effects of the trials to have been highly influential in the history of the United States. In America, Salem's events have been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process. It was not unique, but a colonial manifestation of the much broader phenomenon of witch trials in the early modern period, which took the lives of tens-of-thousands in Europe. The episode is one of Colonial America's most notorious cases of mass hysteria. ![]() Only fourteen other women and two men had been executed in Massachusetts and Connecticut during the 17th century. It was the deadliest witch hunt in the history of colonial North America. ![]() The grand juries and trials for this capital crime were conducted by a Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 and by a Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, both held in Salem Town, where the hangings also took place. Īrrests were made in numerous towns beyond Salem and Salem Village (known today as Danvers), notably Andover and Topsfield. ![]() One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in jail. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom were executed by hanging (14 women and five men). The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693.
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