to his ordination, and of the strong endorsement of him by the General Court; and the failure of either of those bodies to take the responsibility of proceeding to his ordination,—­made the dissatisfaction and disappointment of his friends intense.  His connection by marriage with such a wide-spread influence, and the harmony and happiness of social life, made his settlement so very desirable that his friends could not account for the resistance made to it.  His amiable character, which had been shown to be proof against slander; and his domestic bereavements in the loss of his wife and three children,—­made him dear to his friends.  More than three to one earnestly, persistently, from year to year, begged that he might be ordained; but what was regarded as an unworthy faction was permitted to succeed in preventing it.  All these things sunk deep into the heart of the wife of Sergeant Thomas Putnam.  She was a woman of an excitable temperament, and, by her talents, zeal, and personal qualities, wrought all within her influence into the highest state of exasperation.  This must be borne in mind when we reach the details of our story.  It is the key to all that followed.

The friends of Bayley, while they yielded to his determination to withdraw from his disagreeable position, never relinquished the hope to get him back, but renewed a struggle to that end, whenever a vacancy occurred in the village ministry.  With that object in view, they were unwise and unjust enough to cherish aversion to every one who succeeded him, and thus kept alive the fatal elements of division.  But it is due to him to say, that he does not appear to have been at all responsible for the course of his friends.  Although retaining his property in the village, and often residing there, there is no indication that he had a hand in subsequent proceedings, or was in the slightest degree connected with the troubles that afterwards arose.  Arts were used to inveigle him into the witchcraft prosecutions:  his resentments, if he had any, were invoked; but in vain.  He resisted attempts, which were made with more effect upon one of his successors, to rouse his passions against parties accused.  He kept himself free from the whole affair.  His name nowhere appears as complainant, witness, or actor in any shape.  He was, so far as the evidence goes, a peaceable, prudent, kind, and good man; and if the people of Salem Village had been wise enough, or been permitted, to settle him, the world might never have known that such a place existed.

George Burroughs, in November, 1680, was engaged to preach at Salem Village.  He is supposed to have been born in Scituate; but his origin is as uncertain as his history was sad, and his end tragical.  He was a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1670.  What little is known of him shows that he was a man of ability and integrity.  Papers on file in the State House prove, that, in the district of Maine, where he lived and preached before and after