[59] Perhaps by coincidence, Governor Phips' own wife, Lady Mary Phips, was among those who had been "called out upon" around this time. Their earliest impactful use as the basis for an item of popular fiction is the 1828 novel Rachel Dyer by John Neal. After the event, four out of six Goodwin children began to have strange fits, or what some people referred to as "the disease of astonishment." [115] Finally, on March 6, 1712, Rev. Hale did not mention Tituba as having any part of it, nor did he identify when the incident took place. Speakers at the ceremony in August included playwright Arthur Miller and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. The judges applied an archaic form of punishment called peine forte et dure, in which stones were piled on his chest until he could no longer breathe. A new charter for the enlarged Province of Massachusetts Bay was given final approval in England on October 16, 1691. A copy of this letter was printed in Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience, published in 1693. [33] Throughout their daily lives, Puritans, especially Puritan women, actively attempted to thwart attempts by the Devil to overtake them and their souls. Salem witch trials (1692–93), a series of investigations and persecutions that caused 19 convicted ‘witches’ to be hanged and many other suspects to be imprisoned in Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and at least five people died in jail. John Alden (son of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins), William Proctor (son of John and Elizabeth Proctor), John Flood, Mary Toothaker (wife of Roger Toothaker and sister of Martha Carrier) and her daughter Margaret Toothaker, and Arthur Abbott. [119] Danvers erected its own new memorial,[120] and reinterred bones unearthed in the 1950s, assumed to be those of George Jacobs, Sr., in a new resting place at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. Many historians consider the lasting effects of the trials to have been highly influential in subsequent United States history. After the Court of Oyer and Terminer was dissolved, the Superior Court of Judicature took over the witchcraft cases. The city of Danvers in Massachusetts is the original site of Salem Village, where the witch accusations first began. 2 years ago | 26.8K views. Fourteen of the victims were women and five men, but an unknown number of innocents were injured as well. Exodus states: “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.” Leviticus prescribes the punishment. ", For more information about family relationships, see. Courts relied on three kinds of evidence: 1) confession, 2) testimony of two eyewitnesses to acts of witchcraft, or 3) spectral evidence (when the afflicted girls were having their fits, they would interact with an unseen assailant – the apparition of the witch tormenting them). [101][121], In January 2016, the University of Virginia announced its project team had determined the execution site on Gallows Hill in Salem, where nineteen "witches" had been hanged in public. The Salem Witch Trials divided the community. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a dark time in American history. The charges against her and Rebecca Nurse deeply troubled the community because Martha Corey was a full covenanted member of the Church in Salem Village, as was Rebecca Nurse in the Church in Salem Town. Hoffer, Peter Charles. Faulkner admitted she was "angry at what folk said," and the Devil may have temporarily overtaken her, causing harm to her neighbors. It also resulted in the imprisonment of many more. [87] Other slightly later descriptions of her, by Gov. [123], Most recently, the events of the Salem witch trials were interpreted in the 2018 exploitation-teen comedy film Assassination Nation, which changed the setting to the present United States and added thick social commentary in order to underline the absurdity of the actual events.