Bridget Bishop was the only person tried at the first session of the Court.  She was brought through Prison Lane, up Essex Street, by the First Church, into Town-house Lane, to the Court-house.  Cotton Mather says,—­

“There was one strange thing with which the court was newly entertained.  As this woman was under a guard, passing by the great and spacious meeting-house, she gave a look towards the house; and immediately a demon, invisibly entering the meeting-house, tore down a part of it:  so that, though there was no person to be seen there, yet the people, at the noise, running in, found a board, which was strongly fastened with several nails, transported into another quarter of the house.”

It is probable that the streets were thronged by crowds eager to get a sight of the prisoner; and that the doors, fences, and house-tops were occupied.  Some, perhaps, got into the meeting-house; and, in clambering up to the windows, a board may have been put in requisition, and left misplaced.  Incredible almost as it is, this circumstance seems, from Mather’s language,—­“the court was entertained,”—­to have been brought in evidence at the trial, and regarded as weighty and conclusive proof of Bridget’s guilt.

One or two points in the evidence adduced against her, in addition to those mentioned heretofore, deserve consideration.  The position taken, at her trial, by the Rev. John Hale of Beverly demands criticism.  The charge of witchcraft had been made against her on more than one occasion before; particularly about the year 1687, when she resided near the bounds of Beverly, at Royal Side.  A woman in the neighborhood, subject to fits of insanity, had, while passing into one of them, brought the accusation against her; but, on the return of her reason, solemnly recanted, and deeply lamented the aspersion.  In a violent recurrence of her malady, this woman committed suicide.  Mr. Hale had examined the case at the time, and exonerated Bridget Bishop, who was a communicant in his church, from the charge made against her by the unhappy lunatic.  He was satisfied, as he states, that “Sister Bishop” was innocent, and in no way deserved to be ill thought of.  He hoped “better of said Goody Bishop at that time.”  Without any pretence of new evidence touching the facts of the case, he came into court in 1692, and related them, to the effect and with the intent to make them bear against her.  He described the appearance of the throat of the woman, after death, as follows:—­

“As to the wounds she died of, I observed three deadly ones; a piece of her windpipe cut out, and another wound above that through the windpipe and gullet, and the vein they call jugular.  So that I then judged and still do apprehend it impossible for her, with so short a pair of scissors, to mangle herself so without some extraordinary work of the Devil or witchcraft.”

If this was his impression at the time, it is strange