woman that sat in her grandmother’s seat, but did not know her name.  Then I replied and said, ’But who was it that told her that it was Goody Nurse?’ Mercy Lewis said it was Goody Putnam that said it was Goody Nurse.  Goody Putnam said that it was Mercy Lewis that told her.  Thus they turned it upon one another, saying, ‘It was you,’ and ‘It was you that told her.’” Samuel Nurse testified to the same.

There was another piece of evidence, which, though brought against Rebecca Nurse, bears harder, as we read it now, upon Ann Putnam than any one else, and makes it more difficult to palliate her conduct on the supposition of partial insanity.  It is, all along, one of the obscure problems of our subject to determine how far delusion may have been accompanied by fraud and imposture.  Edward Putnam testified, that “Ann Putnam, Jr., was bitten by Rebecca Nurse, as she said, about two of the clock of the day” after Rebecca Nurse had been committed to jail, and while she was several miles distant, in Salem; and the said Nurse also struck said Ann Putnam with her spectral chain, leaving a mark, “being in a kind of a round ring, and three streaks across the ring:  she had six blows with a chain in the space of half an hour; and she had one remarkable one, with six streaks across her arm.”  Edward Putnam swears, “I saw the mark, both of bite and chains.”  The Court, no doubt, were solemnly impressed by this amazing evidence; but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ann Putnam was guilty of elaborate falsehood and a studied trick.

In the trials at this session, one of the “afflicted children” cried out against the Rev. Samuel Willard, of the Old South Church, in Boston.  “She was sent out of Court, and it was told about that she was mistaken in the person.”  There was surely evidence enough against the honesty and credibility of the accusers to leave the judges without excuse, and justly meriting perpetual condemnation for not paying heed to it.

The case of Rebecca Nurse proves that a verdict could not have been obtained against a person of her character charged with witchcraft in this county, had not the most extraordinary efforts been made by the prosecuting officer, aided by the whole influence of the Court and provincial authorities.  The odium of the proceedings at the trials and at the executions cannot fairly be laid upon Salem, or the people of this vicinity.

But nothing can extenuate the infamy that must for ever rest upon the names of certain parties to the proceedings.  Not to attempt here to measure the guilt of the accusing witnesses, it may be mentioned that it was the deliberate conviction of the family of Rebecca Nurse, that Mr. Parris, more than all other persons, was responsible for her execution; whether by his officious activity in driving on the prosecution, or in preventing her reprieve, cannot be known.  Of the prominent part taken by Mr. Noyes in the cruel treatment of this woman, there is no room for doubt.  The records of the First Church in Salem are darkened by the following entry:—­