Dictionary of Literary Biography on William Stoughton
William Stoughton, minister, political leader, and author of an important jeremiad, is best known as the remorseless judge of the Salem witch trials. Born probably in England, the son of Israel Stoughton, a founder of Dorchester, Massachusetts, Stoughton graduated from Harvard College (1650), where he studied divinity. He then went to England, where he received his M.A. at New College, Oxford (1653), and preached in Sussex. At the Restoration he was one of hundreds who refused to conform to standards imposed on the clergy as a prerequisite for their being sanctioned by the Church of England. Ejected from his fellowship as a result, he returned to New England in 1662 and preached at Dorchester.
Invited to give the election sermon on 29 April 1668 (New-Englands True Interest; Not to Lie ..., 1670), Stoughton took the occasion to remind his audience of the "Foundation-work" needed to live up to God's "Expectations" for New England. Stressing God's "loving kindness and tender mercies" and "our Advantages and Priviledges in a Covenant-state," Stoughton chastised his contemporaries for falling short of the learning, virtue, and "Zeal" of the first generation. In one of the most famous sentences in any seventeenth-century jeremiad, he reminded New England that "God sifted a whole Nation that he might send choice Grain over into this Wilderness." Though the sermon has usually been cited for its gloomy depiction of the new generation's backsliding, scholars who have reassessed the nature of the "American jeremiad" now see in it an underlying optimism, a sense of the inevitable success of New England's "solemn divine Probation."
Stoughton declined offers to become permanent minister at Dorchester and Cambridge, turning his talents for the remainder of his life to politics. He served as selectman at Dorchester (1671-1674); as assistant or member of the upper house in the General Court, the chief governing, judicial, and legislative body of Massachusetts (1671-1677, 1680-1686); and as commissioner for the United Colonies of New England, a confederation of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven colonies formed for mutual cooperation and defense against the Indians and foreign threats (1674-1676, 1680-1686). He was sent to England in 1676 with Peter Bulkeley to defend the Bay Colony against charges that it had overstepped its charter. But when the agents returned in 1679, there was some sentiment that they had given up too much of the colony's autonomy, and Stoughton refused a subsequent appointment as agent to defend the charter before Charles II. The Massachusetts charter was voided by the Court of Chancery on 23 October 1684, and the General Court was dissolved. But Stoughton, who had carefully avoided offending the Crown during the charter crisis, was appointed deputy president of the new Council for New England under a commission received from King James II in May 1686; and on 26 July he was also named by Council President Joseph Dudley to head the courts. After Sir Edmund Andros arrived on 20 December with a royal commission as governor under yet another reorganization, Dudley was named chief justice, Stoughton judge assistant (3 March 1687). As a member of Andros's council until the hated governor was ousted in April 1689, Stoughton lost popularity. But he was an adaptable politician who quickly dissociated himself from the Andros regime; A Narrative of the Proceedings of Sir Edmond Androsse ... (1691), a pamphlet critical of Andros, has been attributed to Stoughton. And when the charter was restored under William and Mary, the resilient Stoughton, through Increase Mather's intervention, received a royal commission as lieutenant-governor (14 May 1692), a post he held until his death.
By the time he was named lieutenant-governor the witchcraft hysteria was erupting in Massachusetts, and in the spring of 1692 Stoughton was named chief justice of the tribunal convened to deal with the matter. More responsible than any man for the atrocities committed by the court, Stoughton dispensed justice with incredible sternness. Indeed, when Governor Phips, increasingly alarmed at Stoughton's excessive zeal, reprieved eight of the condemned in January 1693, Stoughton angrily left the court. Unlike Samuel Sewall, Stoughton never publicly repented for his role in the witch trials. Remarkably, his contemporary reputation suffered little. Though lieutenant-governor, he served also as chief justice of Massachusetts from 22 December 1692 until shortly before his death, and when Phips went to England in 1694, Stoughton became acting governor, serving in that capacity for all but a year's interval until his death nearly seven years later.
A bachelor, Stoughton left much of his estate to the church, the poor, and the Dorchester schools. He was the greatest benefactor of Harvard College in the seventeenth century, having built Stoughton College in 1698-1699; though the structure was torn down in 1781, Stoughton Hall was erected on a different spot in 1805. Remembered today as a hanging judge, Stoughton died a widely respected, if opportunistic, colonial leader.
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