was found to be distracted.  “She continuing some time distracted, we sought the Lord by fasting and prayer.”  After a while, the woman recovered her senses, and, as Mr. Hale says he understood, expressed a suspicion “that she had been bewitched by Bishop’s wife.”  He declares that he did not, at the time, countenance the idea, “hoping better of Goody Bishop.”  He says further, that he “inquired of Margaret King, who kept at or near the house,” what she had observed concerning the woman who had been distracted.  “She told me that she was much given to reading and searching the prophecies of Scripture.”  At length the woman appeared to have entirely recovered, went to Goody Bishop, gave satisfaction for what she had said and done against her, and they became friends again.  Mr. Hale goes on to say, “I was oft praying with and counselling of her before her death.”  She earnestly desired that “Edward Bishop might be sent for, that she might make friends with him.  I asked her if she had wronged Edward Bishop.  She said, not that she knew of, unless it were in taking his shovel-board pieces, when people were at play with them, and throwing them into the fire; and, if she did evil in it, she was very sorry for it, and desired he would be friends with her, or forgive her.  This was the very day before she died.”  That night her distemper returned, and, in a paroxysm of insanity, she destroyed herself.

It is evident, from his own account, that Mr. Hale did not then fall in with, or countenance at all, any unfavorable impressions against Bridget Bishop; and that the poor diseased woman, when entirely free from her malady, repented bitterly of what she had done and said of Goodman Bishop and his wife, and heartily desired their forgiveness.  So far as the facts stated by Mr. Hale of his own knowledge go, they prove that Bridget Bishop was the victim of gross misrepresentation.  Five years afterwards, as we shall see, Mr. Hale gave a very different version of the affair, and one which it is extremely difficult to reconcile with his own former deliberate convictions at the time when the circumstances occurred.

As it is my object to bring before you every thing that may help to explain the particular occurrences embraced in the account I am to give of the witchcraft prosecutions, two other persons must be mentioned before concluding this branch of my subject,—­George Jacobs, Sr., and his son George Jacobs, Jr.  They each had given offence to some persons, and suffered that sort of notoriety which led to the selection of victims, although both were persons of respectability.  The father owned and had lived for about a half-century on a farm in North Fields, on the banks of Endicott River, a little to the eastward of the bridge at the iron-foundery.  He was a person of good estate and an estimable man; but it was his misfortune to have an impulsive nature and quick passions.  In June, 1677, he was prosecuted and fined for striking a man who had incensed him.  George Jacobs, Jr., his only son, at a court held Nov. 7, 1674, was prosecuted, “found blamable, and ordered to pay costs of court.”  His offence and defence are embraced in his deposition on the occasion.