The New England cases
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The witchcraft cases of New England have been studied and written about more intensively than any others in the world, even though they were relatively few in number and extended only over some forty years. This is partly the result of fascination with the Salem trials, which have an iconic status in American self-understanding, even though some historians, such as Perry Miller, have minimized their importance as a pivotal moment in the defeat of theocratic tendencies in the early colonies. There is a vast literature on the Salem outbreak, much of it unscholarly and sensationalist in tone. Although many were accused, few were executed at the Salem trials, by comparison with European panics or the East Anglian panic of the late 1640s, which resembles the Salem outbreak in several respects.
Although the preceding Massachusetts and Connecticut cases, many of which resulted in acquittals, are an important background to what happened in 1692, in what follows I shall concentrate on the events at Salem Village and the surrounding towns.
The
beginning of the Salem events, as is well known, was in the household of
the Rev. Samuel Parris, recently hired as minister of the Salem Village
congregation. Since the village had been granted its own church in
1672, while remaining tied to Salem for all other purposes, three ministers
had come and gone: James Bayley, George Burroughs, and Deodat Lawson.
They had left after falling foul of village factionalism, and two of them
were to feature prominently in the events of 1692. Even after acquiring
a church, the village minister could not administer the sacraments or admit
members of the congregation, as this authority remained in Salem Town.
The Village Committee could be elected and meet, but it was a governing
body in name only, not able to act in its own self-interest and forced
to appeal to the town selectmen on any substantive issues. The village
was therefore divided between farmers and those inhabitants with mercantile
interests who continued to identify with the town.
In 1689, the villagers contrived to cooperate for long enough to succeed in pressing for an independent church and at the same time to appoint their new minister. On November 19, 1689, the Rev. Samuel Parris was ordained pastor of the newly created and independent Church of Christ at Salem Village, with twenty-seven adults joining together in full covenant. Unfortunately, other villagers regarded the terms of the contract, under which Parris was granted full ownership of the parsonage and a two-acre meadow, as illegitimately disposing of village property. As Robert Calef wrote after the collapse of the trials, "This occasioned great Divisions both between the Inhabitants themselves, and between a considerable part of them and their said Minister, which Divisions were but the beginning or Praeludium to what immediately followed." Parris was resisted by many villagers, who refused to give him either respect or material support. He responded by portraying his opponents as servants of the Devil. Parris's surviving sermon outlines, particularly those written during the last quarter of 1691, seem to include thinly veiled references to his dissatisfaction with his lot among them. He often preached on the theme of conflict between good and evil, Christ and Satan, and enemies who are both within and without the church.
Just when the strange afflictions first struck several children in the minister's house and those of his neighbours is unclear. By late January and early February 1692, a number of people knew that something was wrong. Two of the youngsters in the Parris household, his daughter Betty, aged 9, and niece Abigail Williams, aged 11, together with Ann Putnam, Jr., the daughter of the staunch Parris supporter, Thomas Putnam, who lived less than a mile from the parsonage, were all affected. Putnam's wife's niece, Mary Walcott, the 17-year-old daughter of Jonathan Walcott who lived within a stone's throw of the parsonage, was also "afflicted by they knew not what distempers." While it would later be speculated that these adolescent girls and perhaps others were dabbling in sinful games of divination, attempting to find out by means of white witchcraft their future fate, what caused their fits is not clearly known. Though presumed by later writers, it is unclear if Tituba, Parris's Indian slave whom he had brought with him from Barbados, had any hand in letting the girls have their forbidden sport and encouraged, or at least did not prevent, their irreligious games.
Their afflictions were comparable to those recently seen
among the Goodwin children, of whose case they doubtless knew. John
Hale later wrote, "These children were bitten and pinched by invisible
agents; their armes, necks, and backs turned this way and that way ....
Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths stopped, their throats choaked,
their limbs wracked and tormented so as might move an heart of stone, to
sympathize with them, with bowels of compassion for them." The children
became the focus of devout attention, with prayer meetings, private fasts,
and visits from neighbouring ministers. At this point, the diagnosis
remained unclear but a local physician, William Griggs, eventually declared
then to be suffering from no natural disease but "under an Evil Hand".
Clearly, some of the adults would prefer their children to be innocent
victims of witchcraft, rather than possessed by the Devil, and there was
pressure to name the witches. This mounted after Mary Sibley directed
Parris's slaves to concoct a witch cake using the children's urine, and
when the minister later learned of this
abomination occurring under his roof, he severely and
publicly chastised the woman, and identified this occurrence as what he
perceived to be allowing the Devil entry into the community.
Finally, the girls named three tormentors. The accused were fairly typical examples. One was the minister's slave, another a destitute woman of ill repute possessing a sharp tongue, and the third a sickly woman who had avoided church attendance for over a year and whose unsavory marital past had been the occasion for much gossip. With the swearing out of arrest warrants on February 29, 1692, Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn would become the first to be examined in relation to the girls' afflictions. In March, Parris wrote in his church book, "The Devil hath been raised amongst us, & his Rage is vehement & terrible, & when he shall be silenc'd the Lord only knows." Accusations were soon unleashed not only within Salem Village but throughout Massachusetts.
LOCAL DISPUTES AND SOME GENERAL FACTORS
An
influential way of studying the events has been to examine the village
community. The pioneers of this social historical method were Paul
Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, and they have been followed by Larry Gragg,
in his Quest for Security. Boyer and Nissenbaum published
the pre-trial depositions and also co-wrote a book which examined the conflicts
that were the setting for the outbreak of the accusations. Gragg
has focussed especially on Parris, but his contested position within the
village was clearly crucial, as was his impassioned preaching. The
problem with looking at Salem Village is that such an approach tends to
ignore the extent to which this was a crisis affecting the whole colony.
Other authors have extended this approach to the other affected communities
and considered gendered property conflicts (Carol Karlsen) and the provocative
presence of Quakers in the colony (Christine Heyrman).
Two more general factors that need to be considered are the military threat to the colony from Indian raids and the political threat from London. In these uncertain times, many clergy spoke of the backsliding, or "declension", of the current generation of New Englanders into a less God-fearing society, and suggested that in answer to these sins God might allow tribulation to befall them. Indians and the French to the north were a constant threat. In early 1692, Abenaki Indians had resumed bloody warfare by viciously attacking settlements in Maine, killing or carrying off inhabitants at York and Wells and burning many houses. These attacks led Essex County people to fear that this was the beginning of another war on the scale of the King Philip's War of the mid-1670s. Several of the young women involved at various stages in the accusation process had been orphaned in Indian raids. Many participants had been forced out of towns such as Groton by raids. Given the association of the native population with Devil-worship and witchcraft, it seems reasonable to see the fear of attack as an element of the trials and panic. One of the afflicted accusers cried out, "there stands Alden, a bold fellow, with his hat on before the judges, he sells powder and shot to the Indians and French and lies with the Indian squaws, and has Indian papooses."
There was also severe political uncertainty and the status of the colony's courts was uncertain. In 1684, under the reign of the Catholic monarch, James II, the colony had lost its self-governing charter and the Crown's newly appointed governor, Sir Edmund Andros, arrived in 1686. It was unclear during this period if the land granted under the old charter would be considered valid by the new power. With the excuse of the "Glorious Revolution" in England, Massachusetts in 1689 revolted against Andros and set up its own commonwealth based on the old charter. Rev. Increase Mather had been sent to England as advocate for Massachusetts concerning a new charter. The success or failure of his venture was unknown and the cause of much apprehension. This was the context for some of the legal irregularities of the trials and for the curiously powerful position of Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton.
THE CONDUCT OF THE CASES
In view of the liberal way in which many authors scatter remarks about the conduct of the trials, often stating which evidence was employed, what convinced the judges, and how the trials were conducted, it may come as something of a surprise to know that we have virtually no information about the trials. We do not know what happened during the trials or what evidence was presented. The only account we have of any of the trials was penned by Cotton Mather, in his Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, 1692). Mather was not present and he relied on notes taken by an unnamed informant, who supplied him with information on five of the trials, it would appear. These short narratives are certainly of interest, but it is difficult to know how reliable they are and what has been omitted.
What we do have, in vast quantities, is pre-trial depositions and associated documents, spread over several months. [These are available in print and online, and a new edition is being prepared at present. An example of a deposition, with transcript.] The relationship between what was said during the investigation and what was said in court is impossible to determine, except to a limited extent in the five cases described by Mather. To my knowledge, no one has attempted to do a detailed comparison of Mather's account with the depositions in the cases concerned. Moreover, most of the accused never came to trial.
It should also be noted that some of the most startling aspects of the Salem cases, which have drawn much condemnation, such as the use of spectral evidence and the role of girls as accusers, were far from being unknown in English cases of the later seventeenth century. Many of the comments of American historians about such features are based on an ignorance of the relevant comparative material.
A CASE HISTORY
Mary Easty was the daughter of William Towne, of Yarmouth, Norfolk County, New England, where she was baptized on August 24, 1634. Two of Easty's sisters, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Cloyse were also accused of witchcraft during the Salem outbreak. These were among the first "unlikely" accused. Rebecca Nurse was the wife of a prosperous Salem Village farmer (149 Pine Street, today).
Complaint of John Putnam, Jr. and Benjamin Hutchinson:
Salem May the 20th 1692
There being Complaint this day made before mee by
John putnam Jun'r. and Benjamin Hutcheson both of Salem Village, for themselfes
and also for theire Neighbours, in behalfe of theire Majesties against
Marah Easty the wife of Isaac Easty of Topsfield for sundry acts of witchcrafts
by her Committed yesterday and this present day of the date hereof upon
the bodys of Ann putnam Marcy Lewis Mary Walcot and Abigail Williams of
Salem village to the wrong and Injury of theire bodys therefore crave Justice.
At the time of her questioning, Easty was about 58 years old and was married to Isaac Easty, with whom she had had seven children. Isaac owned and lived upon a large valuable farm. Her examination followed the pattern of most in Salem: the afflicted had fits, and were speechless at times, and the magistrate expostulated with her for not confessing her guilt, which he deemed proven beyond doubt by the sufferings of the afflicted. At least, that is the way the story is usually told, because historians have concentrated on the testimony of the afflicted. However, the exact weight given to this feature of her examination might be doubted. There was a parade of witnesses from her home town, as well as people testifying to her demure conduct while in prison at Boston awaiting trial.
Transcripts of the depositions, and other documents
"How far have you complied with Satan?" "Sir, I never complied with him but pray against him all my days. What would you have Easty do?" "Confess if you be guilty" "I will say it, if it was my last time, I am clear of this sin." During the examination, when Easty clasped her hands together, the hands of Mary Lewis, one of the afflicted, were clenched and not released until Easty released her hands, and when she inclined her head, the afflicted girls cried out to have her straighten her neck, because as long as her head was inclined their necks were broken.
Mary Easty's examination, the original manuscript
Easty was committed to prison after her examination. For
a reason not disclosed in any of the remaining records, Easty, after spending
two months in prison, was discharged on the 18th of May. She and her family
believed she would now be safe from further accusations. They were wrong.
The release seems to have been very distasteful to the afflicted girls,
they became determined to not let the matter rest, and redoubled their
energies to get her back into prison. On the 20th, Mary Lewis spent the
entire day experiencing fits of unprecedented severity, during which time
she said she was being strangled, and claimed "they will kill Easty out
right." Several of the other afflicted girls claimed that they could see
the apparition of Easty afflicting her, and people came from all around
to see the fits. That evening a second warrant was issued for Easty's arrest.
At midnight, after experiencing two days of liberty and being reunited
with her family, Easty was rousted from her sleep by the marshall, torn
from her husband and children, and taken back to prison where she was loaded
with chains. Once Easty was back in prisons
with chains, Lewis's fits stopped. Easty was tried
and condemned to death on September 9th.
The humbl petition of Mary Eastick unto his Excellencyes
Sir Wm Phipps and to the honourd Judge and Bench now s[i]tting in Judiacature
in Salem and the Reverend ministers humbly sheweth.
That wheras your poor and humble Petition[er] being
condemned to die Doe humbly begg of you to take it into your Judicious
and pious considerations that your poor and humble petitioner knowing my
own Innocencye Blised be the Lord for it and seeing plainly the wiles and
subttlity of my accusers by my selfe can not but Judg charitably of Others
that are going the same way my selfe if the Lord stepps not mightily in
I was confined a whole month upon the same account that I am condemned
now for and then cleared by the afflicked persons as some of your honours
know and in two dayes times I was cryed out upon by them and have been
confined and now am condemend to die the Lord above knows my Innocencye
then and likewise does now as att the great day will be known to men and
Angells I petition your honours not for my own life for I know I must die
and my appointed time is sett but the Lord he knowes it is that if be possible
no more Innocent blood may be shed which undoubtidly cannot be Avoyd[e]d
In the way and course you goe in I Question not but your honours does to
the uttmost of your Powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft
and witches and would not be gulty of Innocent blood for the world but
by my own Innocencye I know you are in the wrong way the Lord in his infinite
mercye direct you in this great work if it be his blessed will that no
more innocent blood be shed. I would humbly begg of you that your honours
would be plesed to examine theis Aflicted persons strictly and keepe them
apart some time and likewise to try some of these confesing wichis I being
confident there is severall of them has belyed themselves and others as
will appeare if not in this world I am sure in the world to come whither
I am now agoing and I question not but youll see an alteration of thes
things they say my selfe and others having made a League with the Divel
we cannot confesse I know and the Lord knowes as wil thorlly appeare they
belye me and so I Question not but tey doe others the Lord above who is
the searcher of all hearts knowes that as I shall answer it att the Tribunall
Seat that I know not the least thinge of witchcraft therfore I cannot I
dare not belye my own soule I beg your honers not to deny this my humble
petition from a poor dying Innocent person and I Question not but the Lord
will give a blesing to yor endevers.
the original petition, in Mary Easty's hand
She was executed on September 22, despite her eloquent plea to the court to reconsider and not spill any more innocent blood. On the gallows she prayed for a end to the witch hunt. Easty's parting communications with her husband and children were said by those who were present to have been "as serious, religious, distinct, and affectionate as could be expressed, drawing tears from the eyes of almost all present." She was quite correct about the confessing witches. Only three of the fifty continued to admit any guilt after the dissolution of Stoughton's Court of Oyer and Terminer. Those accused who had no faith in the justice of the court or the protection of God's providence had taken the best step open to them. They had confessed and joined the accusers. Until quite late in the trials, this was a safe manoeuvre.
In November, after Easty had been put to death, Mary Herrick gave testimony about Easty. Herrick testified that she was visited by Easty who told her she had been put to death wrongfully and was innocent of witchcraft, and that she had come to vindicate her cause. Easty's family was compensated with £20 from the government in 1711 for her wrongful execution.
THE RISING TIDE OF CRITICISM
The New England ministers came under increasingly intense criticism, notably from the somewhat deviant Quaker merchant, Thomas Maule, in his Truth Held Forth and Maintained According to the Testimony of the holy Prophets, Christ and his Apostles recorded in the holy Scriptures (1695), who compared the suffering of the Quakers in Massachusetts to that of those accused of witchcraft.
The
colony held a day of fasting on January 14, 1697, and Samuel Sewall confessed
the fault of the judges: "We ourselves were not capable to understand,
nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness
and Prince of the Air; but were for want of Knowledge in our selves, and
better Information from others, prevailed with to take up with such Evidence
against the Accused, as on further consideration, and better Information,
we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the Lives of any..."
Shortly thereafter, Samuel Parris was ousted by his congregation, his opponents
having been strengthened in their opposition by his being discredited in
relation to the trials. Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, confident
of his own rectitude, never publicly repented his role in the trials and
Sir William Phips emerged with his reputation relatively unscathed, although
he was no longer able to rely on the Mathers, whose influence was destroyed
except among their own congregation. Willard's reputation grew, and
the Harvard liberals, led by Brattle, ousted Increase Mather and replaced
him with Willard.
As soon
as the trials were over, the process of interpretation began. One
of the most telling accounts was the scathing critique, on orthodox Calvinist
grounds, by John Hale, who had been one of the ministers involved, and
initially supported the prosecutions. Generation after generation
of New Englanders, and Americans generally, have re-examined and reinterpreted
the Salem events in the light of their current concerns. The panic
that surrounded the events of 1692 has had a lasting impact on the study
of witchcraft in America. Historians, novelists, playwrights, and even
Hollywood directors have been fascinated with the witch craze that erupted
in a fury that lasted for almost a full year and resulted in the deaths
of about two dozen individuals, directly or indirectly, and accusations
against a very large number of individuals. The Salem events have
a mythic status in American popular culture. Yet the number of deaths
were not great by comparison with, for example, the East Anglian panic
of the 1640s, let alone continental European outbreaks. Moreover, they
were untypical of New England witchcraft cases. Only four people
had previously been executed in Massachusetts for witchcraft, and there
had been no mass trials. The significance of the Salem panic is clearly
symbolic, as a site for the contestation of modern American identity.
It is the location for an origin myth that sets itself against the Mayflower
story, in which the heroic Pilgrim Fathers are shown fleeing the Old World
in search of religious freedom. In the Salem story, the Puritans
are shown as dangerous fanatics. Both narratives serve modern functions
more than they accurately portray early New England.
POSTSCRIPT
Colonial clerics, including John Hale and Cotton Mather, saw the Salem events as the direct intervention of the Devil attacking the Puritan Commonwealth and being partially successful as the result of a religious backsliding of New Englanders and the use by civil authorities of ill-conceived traditions and non-biblical principles to discover who was a witch. [Letter of Cotton Mather, in the aftermath of the Salem trials] Later authors have suggested a wide range of causes, including the pranks of bored adolescents, the influence of oligarchical and power-hungry clergy, local petty jealousies and land grabs, mental aberrations, spiritualist goings-on, political instability, a conspiratorial holding action against the disintegration of Puritanism, mass clinical hysteria, a clash between agrarian and emerging commercial interests, a continuation of the suppression of certain types of women, and even physical reactions to ingested ergot. Some of these explanations have more merit than others. Some ignore much of the evidence, others are too partial to act as explanations of more than a few aspects of the phenomenon. Much of the scholarship has been hampered by careless assumptions about what witchcraft prosecution was like in the Old World.
The case of Salem has been thoroughly explored by numerous historians to such an extent that one might now suspect that the only new light that could possibly be shed on the events would be mere nuances of previously explored descriptions and explanations. A handful of new documents has been found in recent years, but there have been no great revelations. Although some studies have extended the boundaries to include New England, there is scant recognition that there were any cases of witchcraft outside of Connecticut and Massachusetts. What little work has been done on witches elsewhere was done over forty years ago, long before historical scholarship was informed by such issues as race, class, and gender. Many cases that exist in isolation in places such as colonial Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or New Mexico have never been thoroughly examined. There is little reason to suppose that the Connecticut and Massachusetts witch trials could or indeed should serve as the model for witchcraft in colonial America any more than the model that is based on Essex should serve as the model for England. Puritanism permeates the witchcraft trials that occurred there, yet cannot be exported to explain the cases that occurred in non-Puritan locales. Virginia and Maryland appear to have had patterns of accusation that were quite different from the New England pattern.
A New Mexico case
Marc Simmons, Witchcraft in the Southwest (1980): In 1598, Juan de Oñate, scion of a wealthy north Mexican mining family, undertook the settlement and organization of the province of New Mexico in the heart of the Pueblo country, and twelve years later colonists established Santa Fe as their capital. From the beginning, Franciscan fathers fanned out through the several score Indian communities to build missions, create schools and workshops, and preach against native ways of religion. Fray Alonso de Benavides, author of a detailed report on the missionary effort in New Mexico, characterized the entire Pueblo male population as divided between warriors and sorcerers, the latter term referring to the large number of medicine men present in every village. These sorcerers, he explained, held their superstitious clansmen under their sway by arrogating to themselves the power to make the rain fall, the earth yield crops, and even to form the clouds and paint them with a sunset. Benavides, with smug satisfaction, recorded that "from the house of one old Indian sorcerer I once took out more than a thousand idols of wood, painted in the fashion of a game of nine pins, and I burned them in the public plaza."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Particularly
useful on some of the early cases is John Demos, who examines them with
care, albeit with a strongly psychoanalytic interpretation at times.
His knowledge of the social context is unparalleled. He is especially
interested in the cases involving afflicted accusers, prior to the Salem
trials, and discusses Elizabeth Knapp, dealt with by Willard, and the Goodwin
children, dealt with by Cotton Mather. Other authors, such as Richard
Weisman and Carol Karlsen, discuss Massachusetts or New England cases in
general, including Salem.
John Demos on the case of Goodwife Cole, of Hampton N.H.:
Chapter
10 of Entertaining Satan (1982)
Extract from Cotton Mather, Memorable
Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (Boston, 1689),
concerning the bewitchment/possession case of the Goodwin children.
From the introduction of Larry Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis (1992): "Three hundred years ago, the people in and around Salem, Massachusetts, engaged in the most massive witch hunt in American history. Authorities arrested over 150 suspects from more than two dozen towns, juries convicted twenty-eight, and nineteen were hanged. Recent scholarship on this topic has been substantial. In the past two decades, studies emphasizing economic conflict, sexual hostility, religious division, challenges to the legal system, and exaggerated fears of witch cults have modified long-held notions about early American witchcraft....As all specialists in this growing area of the colonial period of American history will quickly note, I am indebted to the work of a host of scholars, notably Paul Boyer, John Demos, Richard Gildrie, David Hall, Chadwick Hansen, Carol Karlsen, Lyle Koehler, David Thomas Konig, Stephen Nissenbaum, Richard Trask, and Richard Weisman."
I would concur with Gragg's remarks, because the various aspects of what happened have been variously explored. Many books on early New England religion are relevant, as are books on colonial law and the position of women in Massachusetts. Only by familiarizing oneself with a range of such works can one hope to come to a balanced position on this much discussed witchcraft panic. I would be happy to admit that even books with which I personally disagree on many points often have much to offer on others. I cannot hope to summarize all the scholarship here, so I have created a page of links to book reviews. I hope you will use these as a guide to relevant work that may address your interests. I have also provided some short extracts from relevant historical works.
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY, RESOURCES
A brief chronology of events at Salem and Salem Village, Massachusetts
Description of a course on Salem at the University of East Anglia, with a good bibliography
Description of a course on Salem at the University of Virginia, with good online resources
Primary sources, on microfilm at ND
Salem Witch Trials, online documentary archive
G.L.Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706, extracts from primary sources
The 1692 Salem Witch Trials: Documents and Participants, searchable transcribed records
Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits (1693)
[Samuel Willard], Some Miscellany Observations On Our Present Debates In a Dialogue Between S. & B. (Philadelphia, 1692)
John Hale, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702)
SECONDARY MATERIAL
Full bibliography, on this site
The principal journal dealing with the Salem events is
the Essex Institute Historical Collections,
F 72 .E78 E7 See the special issues,
volumes 128/4 (1992) and 129/1 (1993)
Timothy J. McMillan, "Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England", Journal of Black Studies 25 (1994) 99-117
David C. Brown, "The Forfeitures at Salem, 1692", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 50 (1993) 85-111
Norman Gevitz, " 'The devil hath laughed at the physicians': witchcraft and medical practice in seventeenth-century New England", Journal of the History of Medicine 55 (2000) 5-36 [PDF file]
Wendel D. Craker, "Spectral evidence, non-spectral acts of witchcraft, and confession at Salem in 1692", Historical Journal 40 (1997) 331-358 [PDF file]
John Demos, "John Godfrey and His Neighbors: Witchcraft and the Social Web in Colonial Massachusetts",William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 33 (1976) 242-265
Ann Kibbey, "Mutations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Remarkable Providences, and the Power of Puritan Men", American Quarterly 34 (1982) 125-148
Richard H. Werking, " 'Reformation Is Our Only Preservation': Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 29 (1972) 281-290
Elizabeth Reis, "The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England", The Journal of American History 82 (1995) 15-36
John Demos, "Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New England", The American Historical Review 75 (1970) 1311-1326
Frederick C. Drake, "Witchcraft in the American Colonies, 1647-62", American Quarterly 20 (1968) 694-725
Jon Butler, "Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600-1760", American Historical Review 84 (1979) 317-346
David Harley, 'Explaining Salem: Calvinist psychology and the diagnosis of possession', American Historical Review, 101 (1996)
William S. Simmons, "Cultural Bias in the New England Puritans' Perception of Indians", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 38 (1981) 56-72
Michael P. Winship, "Prodigies, Puritanism, and the Perils of Natural Philosophy: The Example of Cotton Mather", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 51 (1994) 92-105
Mary Beth Norton, "Gender and Defamation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 44 (1987) 3-39
David D. Hall, "Toward a History of Popular Religion in Early New England", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., 41 (1984) 49-55
REVIEWS of books on New England, relevant to witchcraft studies
