Analysis: The Salem Witch Trials: The Case against John and Elizabeth Proctor

Date: 1692; 1706

Author: various

Genre: law

Summary Overview

In 1692, the villages of Salem Village (present-day Salem, Massachusetts) and Salem Town (present-day Danvers) became embroiled in the pursuit of alleged witches or heretics among their residents. Nineteen people were executed for witchcraft, one died after being crushed to death during his questioning, and seven more died in prison awaiting trial after a special tribunal was created to address the accusations. Prominent farmer John Proctor was one of the few to oppose the trials and was summarily accused, along with his wife, Elizabeth, of witchcraft. Despite a petition to church leadership in Boston, he and his wife were both found guilty. John was later executed.

Document Analysis

The 1692 trial of John and Elizabeth Proctor, both accused of witchcraft, was significant for a number of reasons. It underscores the hysteria that was prevalent during the relatively short period in which the Salem witch trials took place. Four individuals claimed that the Proctors had somehow bewitched them. Additionally, the case provided multiple examples of “spectral evidence” that was at the core of most of the previous accusations. Furthermore, it highlighted many of the ulterior motives of the accusers.

In 1692, Betty, the daughter of Samuel Parris, started to exhibit strange symptoms that included hyperactive behavior, delusions, fever, and physical contortions. Some modern scientists have argued that her symptoms may have been real, brought about by ingestion of rye that was contaminated by the ergot fungus. Others have argued that her behavior was psychosomatic. A popular book by Boston minister Cotton Mather, published about the same time as the childrens’ symptoms began, described an Irish woman whose supposed witchcraft caused similar symptoms in her victims. It is thought that the girls either consciously or unconsciously mimicked the symptoms described in the book.

Not long after Betty fell ill, her cousin Abigail Williams, who was also living in the Parris household, developed similar symptoms. Shortly thereafter, two girls with whom Betty and Abigail often played, Mercy Lewis and Ann Putnam, started to display symptoms akin to those of their friends. The village doctor examining each of the girls could not determine the cause of their perceived ailment and, in the absence of a medical explanation, offered a supernatural one: The girls had been attacked by the devil.

Suspicion regarding the witch who had enabled the devil’s work in the Parris household focused on Tituba, the Parris family’s Caribbean slave and open practitioner of magic. However, as Tituba’s case was investigated, more of the Parris girls’ friends became afflicted, including Mary Warren. Meanwhile, Tituba and two other women confessed under duress to being witches and incriminated others in the village as well. The afflicted girls also began to accuse people in the village, including Elizabeth Proctor. The first accusation against Elizabeth was made by Mercy Lewis. Mercy Lewis’s personal history was marked by traumatic experiences and social maladjustment. She had witnessed her parents’ murder during the ongoing conflict with nearby American Indian tribes. After being orphaned, she first went to live with Reverend George Burroughs in Maine and then with Thomas Putnam in Salem. With the Putnams, Mercy struggled to find acceptance in the Salem community, as did her friends. Some historians believe that the girls, if they knowingly and falsely acted afflicted, were acting out of personal insecurity.

Mercy Lewis’s accusation against Elizabeth Proctor was typical of many of the charges against the Proctors and others. In her deposition, she claimed that the apparition of Elizabeth Proctor appeared before her, bit and pinched her, and attempted to force her to sign the devil’s book, a book in which the names of those who pledge to worship him was kept. A few weeks earlier, Ann Putnam made similar claims about Elizabeth Proctor, saying that Elizabeth’s spirit came before her and choked, pinched, and bit her to make her sign the book. Ann claimed she had no knowledge of who Proctor was until she saw Elizabeth in town after the incident.

When his wife was jailed, John Proctor came to her defense. During the trial, he derided the process, claiming the accusers’ affliction was nothing more than a sham. Of course, Proctor’s criticism of the young girls’ claims left him open to suspicions that he himself was a witch, and the girls wasted no time in doing so. Ann Putnam, in April 1692, testified that not only had John Proctor’s spirit tortured, pinched, and choked her, but that he had done the same to her friends Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, and others.

The girls who accused Elizabeth and John Proctor appeared to be both prolific in their accusations and consistent in each case. When accusing the Proctors, their claims were based on what is called spectral evidence—they never said that John and Elizabeth Proctor directly attacked or bewitched them but instead insisted that their apparitions were involved. The girls made similar claims when accusing others—Ann Putnam was one of the girls who made the most accusations, citing spectral evidence in the cases against Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, Tituba, and Martha Carrier. In fact, she actually stuck pins into her flesh on several occasions, later saying that the spirits of the accused caused the wounds.

Why the Hysteria Began

Historians offer a wide range of alternative explanations as to why these girls began to accuse so many individuals, including John and Elizabeth Proctor, of attacking them via apparitions. Some argue that the girls were simply playing a prank on an unsuspecting public. Others suggest that they may have been prodded by parents to accuse certain villagers based on interpersonal and/or political rivalries. Ann Putnam’s example provides clues about this latter theory.

As explained earlier, Ann Putnam resided in the household of the most influential religious leader in Salem, the Reverend Parris. A large number of those whom Ann accused, including John Proctor and his wife, were individuals with whom Reverend Parris had had disagreements. She also accused George Burroughs, in whose household her friend Mercy Lewis lived. In fact, Ann’s accusations were often added to bolster cases against suspected witches. It has been therefore argued that Ann Putnam and her friends were embroiled in a conspiracy against those who opposed Reverend Parris and others in his circle. In addition to the girls’ testimony, a local man, Joseph Bayley, also pointed the finger at John and Elizabeth Proctor collectively. He claimed that one day, as he and his wife rode past Proctor’s tavern, he was hit in the chest by an unseen but powerful force. When he turned around, he saw John and Elizabeth Proctor in their house, a great distance away, looking at them. He claimed to have been hit by a similar force in another incident, this time by an apparition of a woman he identified as Elizabeth Proctor. In both incidents, according to Bayley, his wife did not see the apparitions who attacked him, even when he could see them clearly. Of course, neither Proctor could be physically connected to the scene, as they were in jail after being arrested.

Linnda Caporael, who in the 1970s first introduced the theory that ergot fungus played a role in the girls’ affliction, suggested that Bayley might have been one of the victims of such contamination. Then again, Bayley was at the time traveling en route from his home in Newbury to Boston and prior to his perceived assault stayed at the home of Thomas Putnam, one of John Proctor’s biggest rivals in Salem.

The growing hysteria in Salem in 1692 led to the imprisonment of more than 150 Salem villagers. William Phips, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, was absent at the time, leaving management of the colony’s affairs in the hands of the church magistrates. When he returned, Phips found that the magistrates overseeing the witch cases in Salem were overwhelmed, having placed those accused in prison to await a trial. Phips authorized the creation of a Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) to review each case of suspected witchcraft. Based on the format used against accused witches in England many years prior, Phips’s court would act as a sort of grand jury, reviewing the evidence against each suspect. The evidence included the depositions shown above as well as any depositions and petitions supporting the defendant’s innocence. Phips placed the court in the hands of his lieutenant governor, William Stoughton. Stoughton was a known zealot on the issue of witchcraft and welcomed the use of spectral evidence to convict suspected witches.

Among the documents submitted to the court regarding the case of John and Elizabeth Proctor was a petition of individuals who defended the Proctors. Nathaniel Felton Sr., his wife Mary, and his son Nathaniel Felton Jr., who were neighbors of Proctor, signed a petition that stated simply that in the many years of living alongside the Proctors, they never encountered any illicit or un-Christian behavior. Sixteen others also signed, including John Endecott, a relative of the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, as was typical in the cases of the Salem witch trials, there was a considerably larger volume of evidence and testimony against the Proctors than in favor of them. Once the evidence was reviewed, the colonial leadership would defer to the local leaders to put the accused on trial.

Growing Church Unease and the End of the Trials

Although they did not directly intervene when the number of defendants entered the hundreds, the Puritan church did seem somewhat uneasy about the situation in Salem. John Proctor added to this discomfort by writing to the Boston clergy to protest his own jailing. On July 22, 1692, Proctor wrote to the council of ministers, including Increase Mather, Cotton Mather’s father. Cotton Mather was a firm believer in witchcraft and a close friend of and minister to three of the five judges on the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Increase Mather, however, was an intellectual; he was the president of Harvard College and a prominent liaison to the English government.

John Proctor’s plea cited a number of key issues regarding both his specific case and the trials themselves. First, Proctor referred to the accusers as individuals with “enmity” toward him. The judges involved with the trials, Proctor said, were quick to condemn the accused due both to their zeal to combat witchcraft and the fact that witchcraft was perceived to be running rampant in Salem. He then took issue with the girls themselves, whom he identified as people who “have lately confessed themselves to be Witches.”

Proctor’s next argument was a pivotal one for the Salem witch trials. As mentioned earlier, the accusations against John and Elizabeth Proctor were similar to others made by the girls. The stories told by the girls, as well as the testimony of those who supposedly witnessed the girls’ affliction, could not be corroborated by physical evidence. In each deposition, the girls claim that John and Elizabeth Proctor came to them as apparitions when the attacks occurred. Bayley’s testimony was also dubious, according to Proctor’s petition to the council: “We were committed into close Prison,” wrote Proctor, when the alleged attacks on Bayley took place.

Proctor continued his petition by saying that countless individuals, he and his wife included, were being tortured and murdered in light of nothing more than groundless accusations. He cited the case of his son, William, who was also accused and hung until “Blood gushed out of his Nose” when he did not confess. William was then unbound, Proctor observed, when his torturers showed rare mercy. The brutality demonstrated toward the accused, Proctor said, was akin to the horrific acts conducted by the Spanish Inquisition, which began two centuries prior but continued through the early nineteenth century.

John Proctor’s letter concluded by calling upon church magistrates to intervene on behalf of the accused who, in addition to enduring physical torture and false imprisonment, lost their standing and financial resources because of their alleged crimes. Proctor asked the magistrates to move the trials to Boston, where more level heads might prevail as the evidence was read. If they could not move the trials, Proctor suggested, the council might replace the magistrates who oversaw the trials in Salem. In either case, Proctor argued, the lives of innocent men and women were hanging in the balance, and without intervention, innocent blood would be shed.

Proctor’s letter was significant in that it prompted the church to examine the use of spectral evidence in the trials. Increase Mather and other members of the church leadership met after receiving the petition to discuss this issue. Shortly thereafter, Mather attended the trial of Reverend George Burroughs to witness firsthand the use of spectral evidence. Burroughs was the only Puritan minister to be charged and, according to his accusers, was a ringleader of the Salem witches. Over time, Mather began to believe in Burroughs’s innocence and to doubt the reliability of spectral evidence.

Thanks in large part to the petition of John Proctor, the church leadership in Boston developed an interest in the trials. Some members of the council even spoke out against them, but there was no intervention. Spectral evidence, used against the Proctors, was tolerated even though it was highly suspect. Even Mather, though critical of spectral evidence and likely beginning to doubt the trials themselves, never spoke out against the proceedings or the magistrates overseeing them.

Despite the council’s growing opposition to spectral evidence, Governor Phips held his ground, at least for a time. Proctor’s letter failed to gain him or his wife exoneration, and he was executed on August 19, 1692. Thereafter, Phips changed his mind on spectral evidence. However, his change of heart was not the result of the council’s actions or Proctor’s letter. Phips’s wife was accused of witchcraft, with townspeople offering spectral evidence. In October 1692, Governor Phips declared that spectral evidence was inadmissible in the trials. Without any additional evidence, those who were awaiting execution were summarily freed and the trials came to a close.

While he was awaiting his fate in jail, John Proctor crafted his last will and testament. Strangely, he did not name his wife as a beneficiary of his estate, which had been seized during the trials. Elizabeth was therefore left with very little when she was released. Four years after her husband’s execution and her release, she wrote to the Massachusetts General Court. In her petition, she reminded her leaders that she and her husband were wrongfully imprisoned during the Salem witch trials. She said that her husband was in fact delivered a will by another party, in which he signed away his estate without compensation to Elizabeth. She asked the General Court to assist her, and the General Court obliged. She and her family were given 150 pounds, a much larger sum than other accused witches received.

Fourteen years after the end of the trials, Ann Putnam stood before the congregation in Salem and made a formal statement of regret for the hysteria she helped create more than a decade earlier. She described how she knowingly caused the prosecution and deaths of many innocent people. In the document, read on her behalf by Parris’s successor, Reverend Joseph Green, Putnam claimed to be under the delusion of the devil at the time, saying that she had no motives to accuse those who were tried. Her confession is viewed by many historians as somewhat disingenuous, motivated not out of extreme guilt but by Green’s efforts to reestablish harmony in the congregation.

Still, Ann Putnam was the only member of the original afflicted girls who took such an action. Even though she retracted her accusations, she failed to provide any credible clues about her motives. Without a rational explanation for her actions or the actions of the other girls, the facts surrounding the underpinnings for the Salem witch trials remain a topic of much historical debate.

Bibliography

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Blackstone, Kenneth E. “The Salem Witch Trials: A Case Review.” Blackstone Polygraph. Blackstone Polygraph, 2009. PDF file.

Carroll, Meghan, and Jenny Stone. “Mercy Lewis.” Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. University of Virginia, 2002. Web. 1 Jan. 2012.

Dignan, Brendan. “Governor, Sir William Phips.” Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. University of Virginia, 2012. Web. 3 Jan. 2012.

“John Proctor.” Famous American Trials: Salem Witchcraft Trials, 1692. University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, n.d. Web. 1 Jan. 2012.

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