Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

[357] from which it may be inferred that the evidence submitted to the grand jury was not sufficient to justify an indictment. Nine months afterwards the Holmans sought legal redress for the wrongs they had suffered. This warrant was issued: ‘To the Constable of Cambridge, or his Deputy. You are hereby required to attach the goods or in want thereof the person of John Gibson Junr. of Cambridge, and take bond of him to the value of twenty pounds, with sufficient surety or suretyes for his appearance at the next County Court holden at Cambridge upon the 3 day of April next, then and there to answer the complaint of Mary Holman of Cambridge, in an action of defamation and slaunder; and so make a true return hereof under your hand. Dated this 26 of March, 16 59/60. By the court, Samuel Green.’¹ Similar warrants were issued March 28, 1660, requiring John Gibson, Sen., his wife, and his daughter Rebecca, wife of Charles Stearns, to make answer to the widow Winifred Holman. Both cases seem to have been tried together. A mass of testimony is still preserved in the files of the County Court, apparently prepared by John Gibson, Sen., to be used in this trial, as a justification of the charge formerly made against Mrs. Holman and her daughter. A recital of this testimony is tedious, but it may be excused inasmuch as it shows on what frivolous grounds the charge of witchcraft was made two hundred years ago:—

A relation of the passages between Mrs. Holman and her daughter Mary, and the wife of Charles Stearns,² now living in Cambridge. The first thing that makes us suspect them is that after she had two extraordinary strange fits, which she never had the like before, Mary Holman asked her why she did not get some help for them, and she answered she could not tell what to do; she had used means by physicians, and could have no help. And the said Mary said that her mother said, if she would put herself into her hands, that she would undertake to cure her with the blessing of God. Our daughter telling us of it, and we not suspecting them, we wished her to go and to see what she would say to her. And she said her daughter was a prating wench and loved to prate; but yet she did prescribe some herbs to her that she should use in the spring. After this my daughter's child grew ill, and Mary Holman coming in often asked her what the child ailed; and she said moreover that her mother and she took