name appears once in the Salem court records as part of a council which observed the proceedings on April 11. but his involvement ended in May upon the arrival of Sir William Phips, the first royal governor under the new charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Danforth was not assigned to the special Court of Oyer and Terminer that Phips established shortly thereafter, and he was opposed to the manner in which magistrate William Stoughton conducted the witch trials, which unconditionally accepted spectral evidence in its proceedings and vigorously presumed the guilt of the accused. In a letter by Thomas Brattle on October 8, 1692, Danforth is described as among a select group of "several about the Bay, men for understanding, judgement and piety... that do utterly condemn the said proceedings, and do freely deliver their judgment..." After the Court of Oyer and Terminer stopped sitting, a new Superior Court was created, and, in December 1692, Stoughton was elected by the governor's council to head the court, defeating Danforth by three votes. In early 1693, Danforth sat on Superior Court sessions conducted by Stoughton that continued to hear witchcraft cases, but without accepting spectral evidence. By this time the hysteria was dying down, and the court (sometimes with Danforth leading after Stoughton temporarily removed himself in protest at the ban on spectral evidence and other reforms imposed by Governor Phips. Danforth was sympathetic to the plight of individuals accused, relocating some of them to his lands west of Boston; Salem End Road in Framingham is part of the area where they settled. Family and property Danforth married Mary Withington in 1644. The couple had 12 children, but half of these died before the age of three. Danforth was survived by only three of the others. Danforth died in Cambridge on November 5, 1699. During his lifetime, Danforth owned an enslaved man named Philip Ffeild. In 1662 Danforth began to acquire land to the west of Boston by way of land grants by the Great and General Court after general surveys conducted by Edmund Rice at the behest of the Court. Originally known as "Danforth's Farm", he began to refer to the estate as "Framingham" in the 1670s in honor of his birthplace. Although Danforth continued to reside in Cambridge, he developed these lands, which came to number , by issuing 999 year leases rather than selling parcels. By the