of the grand jury that brought in all the indictments in the witchcraft trials; and therefore could not, from the declarations in the letter itself, have been its author.  The only other person of that name at the time, of whom we have knowledge, was his father, who seems, by the evidence we have, to have died in 1693.  (That date is given in the Harvard Triennial for the death of Robert Paine, the graduate; but erroneously, I think, as signatures to documents, and conveyances of property subsequently, can hardly be ascribed to any other person.) Robert Paine, the father, from the earliest settlement of Ipswich, had been one of the leading men of the town, apparently of larger property than any other, often its deputy in the General Court, and, for a great length of time, ruling elder of the church.  “Elder Pain,” or Penn, as the name was often spelled, enjoyed the friendship of John Norton, and all the ministers far and near; and religious meetings were often held at his house.  We know nothing to justify us in saying that he could not have been the author of this paper; but we also know nothing, except the appearance of his name upon it, to impute it to him.

The document is dated from “Salisbury.”  So far as we know, Elder Paine always lived in Ipswich; although, having property in the upper county, he may have often been, and possibly in his last years resided, there.  It is, it is true, a strong circumstance, that his name is written, although by a late hand, under the initials.  It shows that the person who wrote it thought that “R.P.” meant Robert Paine; but any one conversant especially with the antiquities of Ipswich, or this part of the county, might naturally fall into such a mistake.  The authorship of documents was often erroneously ascribed.  The words “Robert Pain” were, probably, not on the paper when the indorsement was made, “A letter to my grandfather,” &c.  Elder Robert Paine, if living in 1692, was ninety-one years of age.  The document under consideration, if composed by him, is truly a marvellous production,—­an intellectual phenomenon not easily to be paralleled.

The facts in reference to Robert Pike, of Salisbury, as they bear upon the question of the authorship of the document, are these:  He was seventy-six years of age in 1692, and had always resided in “Salisbury.”  The letter and argument are both in the handwriting of Captain Thomas Bradbury, Recorder of old Norfolk County.  On this point, there can be no question.  Bradbury and Pike had been fellow-townsmen for more than half a century, connected by all the ties of neighborhood and family intermarriage, and jointly or alternately had borne all the civic and military honors the people could bestow.  The document was prepared and delivered to the judge while Mrs. Bradbury was in prison, and just one month before her trial.  Pike, as has been shown (p. 226), was deeply interested in her behalf.  The original signature ("R.P.”) has the marked characteristics of the same initial letters as found in innumerable autographs of his, on file or record.  There are interlineations, beyond question in Pike’s handwriting.  These facts demonstrate that both Pike and Bradbury were concerned in producing the document.