Contests for what they deemed their rights with the old church and the border towns and their own town, as in the case just mentioned, undoubtedly produced a bad effect upon the temper of the people, by occasional expenses that consumed their substance, and incidents that sowed the seeds of personal animosities; preparing the way for that dreadful convulsion which was near at hand.  At the very time when the witchcraft frenzy broke out, they were in the crisis of an exasperating conflict with Topsfield, occasioned by a wrong done them by the General Court.  This requires to be explained, as it can be, by a collation of facts of record.

On the 3d of March, 1636, the General Court passed an order that the bounds of Salem, Ipswich, and Newbury, should extend six miles into the country.  It was afterwards defined to mean that “the six-mile extent,” as it was called, should be measured from the meeting-houses of the respective towns.  On the 5th of November, 1639, the General Court passed an order in these words:  “Whereas the inhabitants of Salem have agreed to plant a village near the river that runs to Ipswich, it is ordered that all the land near their bounds between Salem and the said river, not belonging to any other town or person by any former grant, shall belong to the said village.”  On the strength of this order, the farmers in that part of Salem pushed settlements out beyond the “six-mile extent,” over the ground thus pledged to them; cleared off the forests, built houses, brought the land under culture, erected bridges, made roads, and fulfilled their part of the contract by preparing to establish their village.  Four years after the General Court had thus pledged to “inhabitants of Salem” the privileges of a village organization on the lands between “Salem and the said river,” they authorized some inhabitants of Ipswich, who had gone there, to establish the village on the territory, independent of the Salem men.  This was an unjustifiable and flagrant violation of the stipulated agreement on the part of the General Court; because it appears by their own records, that Salem farmers had promptly fulfilled the condition on their part by going directly upon the ground, and getting farms under way there before 1643.  This careless and indefensible procedure by the General Court was the cause of interminable trouble and strife on the tract between Salem bounds and the river, introduced the elements of discord, and gave a color of legal justification to a conflict of authority between Salem and Ipswich men.  It sowed the seeds of animosities which aggravated the scenes that occurred in Salem Village in 1692.  In 1658, the General Court passed an order creating the town of Topsfield, including the larger part of these lands within its limits.  No heed was paid to the remonstrances, against these proceedings, of the Salem farmers, who found themselves, without their consent, permanently bereft of the benefit that had been promised them, cut off from all connection with