Court the year before.  No man in this part of the country was more noted for strong good sense than Captain John Putnam.  This deposition is honorable to their memory, and clears them from all responsibility for the extent to which the afflicted persons were allowed to sway the judgment of the Court.  Taken in connection with the paper signed by so large a portion of the best people of the village, in behalf of Rebecca Nurse, it proves that the blame for the shocking proceedings in the witchcraft prosecutions cannot be laid upon the local population, but rests wholly upon the Court and the public authorities.

The Special Court that condemned the persons charged with witchcraft in 1692 is justly open to censure for the absence of all discrimination of evidence, and for a prejudgment of the cases submitted to them.  In view of the then existing law and the practice in the mother-country under it, they ought to have the benefit of the admission that they did, in other respects than those mentioned, no more and no worse than was to be expected.  And Cotton Mather, in the “Magnalia,” vindicates them on this ground:—­

“They consulted the precedents of former times, and precepts laid down by learned writers about witchcraft; as, Keeble on the Common Law, chap.  ‘Conjuration’ (an author approved by the twelve judges of our nation):  also, Sir Matthew Hale’s Trials of Witches, printed anno 1682; Glanvill’s Collection of Sundry Trials in England and Ireland in the years 1658, ’61, ’63, ’64, and ’81; Bernard’s Guide to Jury-men; Baxter’s and R.B., their histories about Witches, and their Discoveries; Cotton Mather’s Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft, printed 1685.”

So far as the medical profession at the time is concerned, it must be admitted that they bear a full share of responsibility for the proceedings.  They gave countenance and currency to the idea of witchcraft in the public mind, and were very generally in the habit, when a patient did not do well under their prescriptions, of getting rid of all difficulty by saying that “an evil hand” was upon him.  Their opinion to this effect is cited throughout, and appears in a large number of the documents.  There were coroners’ juries in cases where it was suspected that a person died of witchcraft.  It is much to be regretted that none of their verdicts have been preserved.  Drawn up by an attending “chirurgeon,” they would illustrate the state of professional science at that day, by informing us of the marks, indications, and conditions of the bodily organization by which the traces of the Devil’s hand were believed to be discoverable.  All we know is that, in particular cases, as that of Bray Wilkins’s grandson Daniel, the jury found decisive proof that he had died by “an evil hand.”