Edward Bishop had resided, for some seven years previous to the witchcraft delusion, within the limits of Salem, near the Beverly line.  His wife Bridget was a singular character, not easily described.  She kept a house of refreshment for travellers, and a shovel-board for the entertainment of her guests, and generally seems to have countenanced amusements and gayeties to an extent that exposed her to some scandal.  She is described as wearing “a black cap and a black hat, and a red paragon bodice,” bordered and looped with different colors.  This would appear to have been rather a showy costume for the times.  Her freedom from the austerity of Puritan manners, and disregard of conventional decorum in her conversation and conduct, brought her into disrepute; and the tongue of gossip was generally loosened against her.  She was charged with witchcraft, and actually brought to trial on the charge, in 1680, but was acquitted; the popular mind not being quite ripe for such proceedings as took place twelve years afterwards.  She still continued to brave public sentiment, lived on in the same free and easy style, paying no regard to the scowls of the sanctimonious or the foolish tittle-tattle of the superstitious.  She kept her house of entertainment, shovel-board, and other appurtenances.  Sometimes, however, she resented the calumnies circulated about her being a witch, in a manner that made it to be felt that it was best to let her alone.  A man called one day at the house of Samuel Shattuck, where there was a sick child.  He was a stranger to the inmates of the family, and evidently had come to the place to make trouble for Bridget Bishop.  He pretended great pity for the child, and said, among other things, in an oracular way, “We are all born, some to one thing, and some to another.”  The mother asked him what he thought her poor, suffering child was born to.  He replied, “He is born to be bewitched, and is bewitched:  you have a neighbor, that lives not far off, who is a witch.”  The good woman does not appear to have entertained any suspicion of the kind; but the man insisted on the truth of what he had affirmed.  He succeeded in exciting her feelings on the subject, and, by vague insinuations and general descriptions of the witch, led her mind to fix upon Bridget Bishop.  He said he should go and see her, and that he could bring her out as the afflicter of her child.  She consented to let another of her boys go with him, and show the way.  They proceeded to the house, and knocked at the door.  Bridget opened it, and asked what he would have:  he said a pot of cider.  There was something in the manner of the man which satisfied her that he had come with mischievous intent.  She ordered him off, seized a spade that happened to be near, drove him out of her porch, and chased him from her premises.  When he and the boy got back, they bore marks of the bad luck of the adventure.  Such things had perhaps happened before, and it was found that whoever provoked her resentment was very likely to come off second best from the encounter; yet Bridget was a member of Mr. Hale’s Church in Beverly, and retained her standing in full fellowship there.  It must have been thought, by the pastor and members of that church, that no charge seriously affecting her moral or Christian character was justly imputable to her.