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prisoner had invited her to sign the devils book.
‘Dear child,’ exclaimed the accused in her agony, ‘it
is not so. There is another judgment, dear child;’ and her accusers, turning towards her husband, declared that he, too, was a wizard.
All three were committed.
Examinations and commitments multi-
plied.
Giles Cory, a stubborn old man of more than four-
score years, could not escape the malice of his minister and his angry neighbors, with whom he had quarrelled.
Edward Bishop, a farmer, cured the
Indian servant of a fit by flogging him; he declared, moreover, his belief that he could, in like manner, cure the whole company
of the afflicted; and, for his skepticism, found himself and his wife in prison.
Mary Easty, of
Topsfield, another sister to Rebecca Nurse,—a woman of singular gentleness and force of character, deeply religious, yet uninfected by superstition,—was torn from her children, and sent to jail.
Parris had had a rival in George
Burroughs, who, having formerly preached in
Salem village, had had friends there desirous of his settlement.
He, too, a skeptic in witchcraft, was accused
and committed.
Thus far, there had been no success in obtaining confessions, though earnestly solicited.
It had been hinted, also, that confessing was the avenue to safety.
At last, Deliverance
Hobbs owned
every thing that was asked of her, and was left unharmed.
The gallows was to be set up, not for those who professed themselves witches, but for those who rebuked the delusion.
Simon Bradstreet, the governor of the people's choice, deemed the evidence insufficient ground of guilt.
On Saturday, the 14th of May, the new char-
ter and the royal governor arrived in
Boston.
On the next
Monday, the charter was published, and the
