arrested and thrown into prison by their influence and interference.  It is hardly to be doubted, that the persons who busied themselves to prevent the reprieve of Rebecca Nurse acted under the authority and by the direction of this self-constituted body of inquisitors.  The agency of such unauthorized and irresponsible combinations is always of questionable expediency.  When acting in the same line with an excited populace, they are extremely dangerous.

There is no more disgraceful record in the judicial annals of the country, than that which relates the trial of this excellent woman.  The wave of popular fury made a clear breach over the judgment-seat.  The loud and malignant outcry of an infatuated mob, inside and outside of the Court-house, instead of being yielded to, ought to have been, not only sternly rebuked, but visited with prompt and exemplary punishment.  The judges were not only overcome and intimidated from the faithful discharge of their sacred duty by a clamoring crowd, but they played into their hands.  Hutchinson justly remarks, that their conduct was in violation of that rule to execute “law and justice in mercy,” which ought always to be written on their hearts.  “In a capital case, the Court often refuses a verdict of ‘Guilty;’ but rarely, if ever, sends a jury out again upon one of ‘Not guilty.’” The statement made by the foreman of the jury, with the subsequent explanation of the prisoner, taken in connection with the ground on which the chief-justice sent the jury out again after rendering their verdict of “Not guilty,” made it the duty of the Court and the executive to give to her the benefit of that verdict.

At the trial of her mother, Sarah Nurse—­aged twenty-eight years or thereabouts—­offered this piece of testimony:  that, “being in the Court, this 29th of June, 1692, I saw Goodwife Bibber pull pins out of her clothes, and held them between her fingers, and clasped her hands round her knee; and then she cried out, and said, Goody Nurse pinched her.”  In all these trials, Mercy Lewis was a principal witness and actor; yet we find, among the papers, testimony from the most respectable and reliable persons, that she was not to be trusted.  There was also testimony which ought to have broken the force of the depositions of Ann Putnam and her mother.  Four days after the examination and commitment of Rebecca Nurse, John Tarbell and Samuel Nurse went to the house of Thomas Putnam to find out in what way their mother had been made the object of such shocking accusations.  They were men whose credibility was never brought in question.  Their declarations, on this occasion, were not disputed, and, if not true, might have been overthrown; for there were many witnesses of the facts they stated.  Tarbell swore as follows:  “Upon discourse of many things, I asked whether the girl that was afflicted did first speak of Goody Nurse, before others mentioned her to her.  They said she told them she saw the apparition of a pale-faced