text:
Anxiety produces specters; sensing ourselves lost, disenfranchised, dwarfed, we take reckless aim. "We have to be much smarter, or it's never, ever going to end," Donald J. Trump has warned of the war on terror. Amen. At least we can savor the irony that today's zealots share a playbook with the Puritans, a people who — finding the holiday too pagan — waged the original war on Christmas.
Stacy Schiff does not know anything about the Puritans
We've complained about this before, and we hate to start the New Year on a bashing note, but it's been forced upon us by Schiff's December 18 op-ed in the New York Times.
"Anger: An American History" is an attempt to contextualize the current anti-immigrant, "we are at war" environment Americans find themselves in now. This sort of contextualization is a good idea. But you can't make up a context, and that is what Schiff does, once again, by demonizing the Puritans.
Let's do a close-read:
From that earlier set of founding fathers — the men who settled 17th century Massachusetts — came the first dark words about dark powers. No matter that they sailed to these shores in search of religious freedom. Once established, they pulled up the gangplank behind them.
—The Puritans did not come to America "in search of religious freedom." As we have pointed out, in The Puritans and Freedom of Religion, they came here so they could practice their own religion freely. That is a very different thing than "religious freedom". They were persecuted in England for criticizing the Anglican church, so they came here specifically to create a new state where their own religion was the state religion. There was no "gangplank" to pull up behind them. No one in the western world that we know of was offering religious freedom at that time. To set the Puritans up as the only ones who didn't, and as terrible hypocrites who denied others the liberty they sought, is ridiculous.
The city on a hill was an exclusively Puritan sanctuary. The sense of exceptionalism — "we are surely the Lord's firstborn in this wilderness," the Massachusetts minister William Stoughton observed in an influential 1668 address — bound itself up from the start with prejudice. If you are the pure, someone else needs to be impure.
—Yes, we've established that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was created by Puritans for Puritans. Just like Virginia was created by Anglicans for Anglicans. Schiff's attempt to peg a start date for the concept of American Exceptionalism by tying it to the Puritans is again misguided. First, the Stoughton quote is (like almost all quotes from Puritan clergy) referring to religion and religion only: Stoughton is saying that because their parents came to America to set up a reformed Anglican state, the people listening to him are the first-born citizens of a state blessed by God with pure religion. This has nothing to do with American exceptionalism, which is a political theory that says America's political founding as the United States was a unique—and uniquely good—event in human history because it created representative democracy for the first time and led other nations to adopt it.
Schiff does not understand either Puritan theology or American exceptionalism, and so she conflates the two. Then she makes an awkward leap to her next topic, which is:
Quakers fared badly. In Boston, Cotton Mather compared them not only to dogs, but to serpents, dragons and vipers. The great young hope of the New England ministry, he sounds as if he would have started a Quaker database if he could have. Banned, exiled, imprisoned, whipped, Quakers were a "leprous" people, their teachings as wholesome as the "juice of toads."
Baptists and Anglicans fared little better. In 1689, Boston's Anglicans discovered the windows of their church smashed, "the doors and walls daubed and defiled with dung, and other filth, in the rudest and basest manner imaginable." The most moderate of Massachusetts men believed in Papist cabals; priests qualified as the radical Muslim clerics of the day. From the pulpit came regular warnings that boatloads of nefarious Irishmen were set to disembark in Boston harbor, to establish Roman Catholicism in New England.
—As so many people do, Schiff takes things that every other group in Europe did in the 17th century and pretends that only the Puritans did them. Only Puritans persecuted people who did not practice their version of Anglicanism (which evolved into Congregationalism in America). Only Puritans hated and feared Catholics. But anyone who casts even a passing glance over the history of the Reformation knows that hating anyone who did not practice your religion was the rule, not the exception. Catholics hated Protestants, Lutherans hated Calvinists, Calvinists hated Arminians, etc. etc. That's what religious wars do: they create impermeable boundaries between sects or faiths. The Quakers were no better: they came into Massachusetts hell-bent on stripping away the Puritans' religion and forcing their own onto the colony.
If she understood Congregational practice, Schiff would know just how much of a threat Baptists posed: they did not believe in infant baptism, which was key to the Puritans, who believed babies should be baptized as quickly as possible to bring them into the fold of believers, in case they died in infancy or childhood.
And if she read any history, Schiff would know that in 1689, the Dominion of New England was in place in all of today's New England and in New York and today's New Jersey. This was a government imposed by the new Catholic king of England, James II, and it stripped Massachusetts residents of their lands, their political representation, and their religious majority: everyone was forced to pay taxes to support the unreformed Anglican church at the expense of both Congregational and Baptist churches. The royally imposed governor forced Christmas and other religious celebrations that both Baptist and Congregational citizens rejected, and turned some churches into Anglican churches. This is the background to the desecration of the main Anglican church in Boston, which was part of a popular uprising against the governor that led to the overthrow of the Dominion.
The alerts naturally served an evangelical purpose. The common enemy encouraged cohesion, appealing to a tribal instinct. In the words of Owen Stanwood, a Boston College historian, the trumped-up fears neatly packaged the Massachusetts settlers' "desire for security, their Protestant heritage, and their nascent sense of racial privilege."
—Name the group in America at the time that did not seek to build cohesion by creating a common enemy. There isn't one. Whites organized an identity against blacks in slaveholding regions; whites and sometimes blacks identified against American Indians; English colonists identified against the Catholic French in Canada. The list goes on. Again, something everyone did is presented as something only the Puritans did.
The enemies did not need actually to be in New England's midst. As an Anglican official snorted from a Boston prison in 1689: "There were not two Roman Catholics betwixt this and New York." New England was nonetheless sacrificed over and over to its heathen adversaries, according to the ministry, that era's Department of Homeland Security.
—Schiff of course hates all Congregationalist ministers, and so connects them to the modern-day government organization she hates. In an NPR interview she did about this piece, she claimed that the ministers were the only source of information in Massachusetts because "there was no press."
The first printing press was up and running in Boston in 1639. Pamphlets and broadsides published in London were always made available in New England. What she means perhaps is that there were no newspapers, but Publick Occurrences hit the presses in 1690. She just doesn't know what she is talking about. People respected their ministers, but they got news from many sources.
Now Schiff moves to her favorite topic, the 1692 witch mania:
So great was the terror that year that grown men watched neighbors fly through the streets; they kicked at gleaming balls of fire in their beds. They saw hundreds celebrate a satanic Sabbath as clearly as some of us saw thousands of Muslims dancing in the Jersey City streets after 9/11. Stoughton would preside over the witchcraft trials, securing a 100 percent conviction rate. A Baptist minister who objected that the court risked executing innocents found himself charged with sedition. He was offered the choice between a jail sentence and a crushing fine. He was not heard from again. One problem with decency: It can be maddeningly quiet, at least until it explodes and asks if anyone has noticed it has been sitting, squirming, in the room all along.
—That second sentence should give everyone who reads it great pause. How many of "us" saw Muslims celebrate on September 11th? How "clear" was that for "us"? If you find yourself arguing back that very few Americans entertained such a bizarre conspiracy theory in 2001, you have an idea how most people in Massachusetts in 1692 would feel if they heard Schiff saying "they" saw people fly through the streets. Hey, they would respond; some people had witch-mania, but the vast majority of us did not, and did not support the trials, and were glad when they were over.
And it was Giles Corey, a farmer, who was killed by pressing (stones placed on his chest in an attempt to get him to confess). He was not a Baptist minister, and he had actually accused his wife Martha of witchcraft before he decided the trials were wrong, and he recanted his testimony.
The last sentence makes absolutely no sense in the context, but we are indeed squirming and squirming from reading this article.
Having firmly established that all bad things in America come from the Puritans and nowhere else, Schiff moves on to show how later generations used their inherited Puritan evil to create "toxic brush fires" of bigotry. But they only get one short paragraph, and the essay ends with the Puritans once again:
—Christmas was not mentioned anywhere in this, but she just can't resist adding it in. The Puritans did not think Christmas was "too pagan". They thought God made all days equally holy, and that humans shouldn't decide that certain days were better than others. Again, many other Protestant reformers in the 17th century joined them in this, including Baptists and Quakers.
Creating false history does not help Americans see their way more clearly in the present. Creating a bogeyman to blame all our bigotry on is ridiculous–as if a group of people who held sway for under 60 years in one part of the country in the earliest settlement period, who if not for the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving were about to fade permanently from the public mind in the early/ mid-1800s, created all bigotry and hatred in this country and maybe the world. What does this line of "reasoning" do for the people who pursue it? What does it satisfy in them? How does abhorring a group most Americans, especially Stacy Schiff, know nothing about make present-day America a better place? How does it end hatred?
It doesn't. Keep this in mind the next time you read about those hateful Puritans.
The Salem witch trials are not part of the history of witchcraft
We admit to a bit of hyperbole in that title, but we're just amplifying the message sent by Diane Purkiss in her August 2015 review of the new Penguin Book of Witches (edited by Katherine Howe).
Her review article is called "We need more types of witches", and in it Purkiss points out and criticizes the overwhelming fixation historians and average Americans alike have with the Salem witch trials in 1692 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony:
… The Penguin Book of Witches disappoints. A better title for this volume might be "The Penguin Book of Witches in the American Colonies", or even "The Penguin Book of Massachusetts Witches". As its editor Katherine Howe admits, the English materials she selects are chosen as "antecedent"–her word–to the Salem trials, which are the sole witchcraft trials covered in detail in this slender collection.
The effect is to reinforce the already disproportionate place of Salem in the popular imagination. The Salem trials were very late; they occurred in 1692, while the peak decade for executions in the Anglophone world was in the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth I. Historians estimate that 30,000 witches died in the witchcraft persecutions [in Europe], of whom just twenty died at Salem. …In truth, Salem was in many respects profoundly unusual.
So far so good. We do take issue with Purkiss' description of the causes of the witch trials:
The monocultural hardline Calvinism of the colonies, the lack of older and once powerful cultures as an anxiety-provoking substrate, the absence of the usual special interest groups, and the vicious hierarchy of the Calvinist churches all militate against using Salem as a representative case of witch-hunting. Yet that is how it is used, both here and elsewhere.
There was no "vicious hierarchy" in Massachusetts churches, which were not Calvinist in the first place (they were Congregational/Independent); Purkiss references the "extreme Calvinism that had led to the establishment of the colonies in the first place". We assume she means Massachusetts and the Connecticut colonies. But the English reformers who went to New England were not "extreme Calvinists"; they had already worked out unique compromises with Calvinism before they ever left England, during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and his son Charles I. That was in 1630—by 1692, even the original Congregationalist platform had been pretty thoroughly undermined and partially demolished by the loss of Massachusetts' political independence and the resulting influx of non-Congregational populations, as well as the growing Baptist movement in the 1670s, before the loss of the charter.
We go into this timeline in more depth in our article on Stacy Schiff's new and wildly inaccurate piece of historical fiction The Witches of Salem. It's a shame that even people making excellent points about the Salem trials don't know the history well, but we do want to focus here on the many things Purkiss gets right. She points out the ridiculous fantasy that is The Crucible, and laments its hold on both the popular and scholarly imagination. And Purkiss points out that Matthew Hopkins, who took advantage of social turmoil and fear during the English Civil War to execute 300-500 women as witches in just two years, is never mentioned in the current Penguin anthology, and seems to be completely lost to history, while the people involved in the deaths of just 20 men and women in Salem continue to live in infamy.
If you're interested in the history of human belief in witches, it's best to study that entire history, not just one incident that has likely become famous simply because it was the only incident of witch-mania in all American/U.S. history. The anomaly always fascinates, but we can't let it obscure the history.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Stacy Schiff and The Witches of Salem—skip it
As readers of the HP know, the 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, were an anomaly; as we put it in the first post of our series on the Salem witch trials,
…the Salem event is actually an anomaly in the history of their colony. Here are some points that are often overlooked:
–There was only ever one "witch scare" in the Puritan colonies. For the roughly 60 years that Puritan theology and law dominated New England, only one time were dozens of people persecuted and some executed as witches.
–The scare did not spread. It stayed local to the Salem area, and did not create a prairie fire of persecution across New England.
–It generated almost no positive reaction in New England at the time. It was generally not celebrated as a victory of God over Satan, despite the strenuous efforts of Cotton Mather. It almost seems as if all New England wanted to forget about it as soon as possible.
–The scare itself was set in the midst of violent political upheaval in New England and especially Massachusetts, and cannot be separated from it.
–There is no one single cause we can pinpoint for the scare; just as there is never just one cause for any major event, there were multiple factors leading to murder in Salem.
The research into what really happened in Salem in 1692 and why has been prolific for the past 10 years, as scholars recruit modern science to try to answer some questions.
If you go to that series, you'll see that we offer an interesting round-up of scholarly theories about why the outbreak of accusations happened and how/why they were allowed to get so out of hand.
Here, we address an article that appeared in the September 7, 2015 New Yorker magazine. We think it's an article; the author, Stacy Schiff, is a novelist whose novel on the Salem witch trials is due out in October, but the item in question does not seem to be an excerpt from a novel. Instead, it is a queasy mix of fact and fiction whose purpose is very hard to discern. We will give it a shot.
The piece begins with a series of stark fallacies: that in 1692, "the population of New England would fit into Yankee Stadium today. Nearly to a person, they were Puritans. Having suffered for their faith, they had sailed to North America to worship 'with more purity and less peril than they could do in the country where they were'… On a providential mission, they hoped to begin history anew; they had the advantage of building a civilization from scratch. Like any oppressed people, they defined themselves by what offended them, which would give New England its gritty flavor and, it has been argued, America its independence."
This is astounding; where to begin?
First, by 1692 the population of New England was not majority Puritan; by that time, Massachusetts was at the end of a long process of losing its independence. In 1684, its independent charter had been revoked by the Lords of Trade; the practical outcome of this was that Massachusetts would lose its popularly elected legislation and governor (they would be replaced by royal appointees answerable only to England). Before this could fully take place, James II created the Dominion of New England, which we describe in depth here; suffice it to say that this basically removed local government in each of the affected colonies, threw all land titles into question, and enforced religious toleration.
In 1689, this Dominion was overthrown by local American colonists once they heard that the Glorious Revolution had taken place and removed James II from the throne. Between 1689 and 1692 the colonists were caught in the middle of the new King William III's wars with France, as northern New England experienced attacks from French Canada that destroyed settlements and sent refugees fleeing south. In 1694, a new royal charter arrived at last in Boston, and the colony had a royally appointed governor and a popularly elected legislature.
That's a lot of change, and what it adds up to is that by 1692 when the witch trials happened, Massachusetts was light years from the days of its founding generation in the 1630s. Its religious hegemony had been broken, and even within the original Congregational church there were sharp theological debates and a general drift away from traditional Puritan religion. The bar for joining a Congregational church as a full member (taking common) was lowered substantially, and in some churches removed altogether. Non-traditional Congregationalists were a strong minority throughout the colony, and a majority in the capital of Boston. Aside from that, there were growing Baptist and unreformed Anglican populations. Old social rules against things like public drunkenness were abruptly discontinued under the rule of the royally appointed governor.
So by 1692, the old Puritan colony was long-gone. No one felt they were on a providential mission anymore, and people in Boston only became more and more connected with London, enjoying the commerce and fashions and relaxed, luxury-appreciative lifestyle brought over by army officers, rich merchants, and others.
Next, no Puritan even in the 1630s ever thought they were "building a civilization from scratch"; it was the exact opposite. They were building on continental reformed Protestant traditions from Geneva and Holland and elsewhere to bring the Reformation to its logical conclusion, to act it out in a way that was not possible in a non-homogenous population. The Puritan founders hewed to English law and custom—clung to it, really, as a lifeline to the old country in an alien world.
Next, the Puritan founders hardly "defined themselves by what offended them" in America. America was their golden, God-sent opportunity to create a religious and political settlement that was everything they ever wanted, the glorious culmination of continental Reformation. In America, Puritans defined themselves by what they wanted, and what they believed was completely, wonderfully achievable.
Finally, the old, corny stereotype of "gritty" Yankees is laughable, and the idea that there is a straight line from the Massachusetts Bay to American independence has long been thoroughly debunked.
If all these errors are in the second paragraph of a piece that goes on for nine pages, that doesn't bode well for the innocent reader. We tried to read it but gave up, as the piece veered between topics and people and times as if they were all one, and treated all with that condescending disgust that is so familiar to anyone who studies the Puritans. Clearly Schiff, like most people, sees the Salem massacre as typical of, rather than anomalous to, Puritans. She glides over topics to preserve that point of view: for instance, she goes on about how Puritans absolutely believed in witches (which they did) but elides (or does not know) that accusations of witch craft were a) relatively few, b) thoroughly investigated, c) usually thrown out of court, and d) when they weren't thrown out, sent back to towns for mediation rather than criminal sentencing. All the reader of Schiff gets is a picture of ignorant, awful people who had no compunction about killing people as witches, perhaps on a daily basis.
She completely misunderstands Increase Mather's warning to children that they would be horribly punished for disobedience to parents, takes on the putative "voice of the [ignorant] people" by saying things like "By the end of July, it was clear that …the Devil intended to topple the church and subvert the country", lingers over descriptions of deaths by hanging and one by pressing, and mentions Governor William Phips putting an end to the court without saying that the prod to this action was that his own wife, in Boston, was accused!
It all ends with a lyrical description of Cotton Mather having a home-made bomb thrown through his window… but without any explanation of how 98% of the public were against the trials, this is meaningless.
Rather than allow Schiff to get free advertising for her novel, the New Yorker should have made it clear that this is a hybrid fiction-article piece meant to generate readership before anyone seeking real information on the witch hysteria made the mistake of reading it.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Vanity Fair, John Winthrop and "a city upon a hill"
Aimlessly leafing through the August issue of Vanity Fair, not even we at the HP could have been expecting to see John Winthrop's name come up, but such is the power of myth.
In an article on the nature of the political debate over the middle class in America, the author (Michael Kinsley) referred to a speech the then-governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, gave in 1984 in which he lambasted then-President Reagan for ignoring the poor by talking about "two cities", one rich, one poor. The author said this:
Cuomo's 'two cities' imagery was a poke at Reagan, turning of of his favorite lines against him. In almost every speech he gave, it seemed, Reagan would refer to America as "a shining city upon a hill", meaning an example for the rest of the world. Reagan got that from the Puritan preacher John Winthrop (though probably not directly). What Winthrop had in mind was a moral example, the but metaphor works on many levels.
Kinsley clearly did not get his information about John Winthrop directly from any historical source, as Winthrop was not a "preacher" at all, but a political leader who was elected many times to be the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony between its founding in 1630 and his death in 1649. It's a little tricky, perhaps; the line "a city upon a hill" comes from a sermon Winthrop wrote while the Puritans were still on their sea voyage to the New World. The final section of that sermon is the section we set apart and study as the "City upon a Hill" speech.
Why would Winthrop write a sermon if he wasn't a minister? Because the Puritans held four things very dear: reading the Bible, attending sermons, engaging in conference, and lay prophesying.
Each of these, in that order, was key to opening up one's soul and consciousness enough to become aware of one's own salvation (if it existed—but that's another long story we cover here). The first two are clear; the third, conference, was just talking with other people who were seeking religious light about what you read in the Bible and what you heard in sermons. The Puritans were extremely social, and their religion was founded on the idea that you must put your heads together—no one person could ever get as far in understanding God's will as a group could. The Puritans needed and relied on each other for support during the difficult and, in England, the dangerous process of following their religion.
That's exactly what Winthrop is talking about in the City on a Hill section of his sermon. Go read it here. It is an exhortation to the people to support and love and help each other, to put others first and self last.
So that is what conference meant to the people Winthrop was leading to America, and he was giving a sermon to them as part of conference. One of the striking innovations of the Puritan reform of Anglicanism was that every church got to hire its own minister. In most churches, there is a governing body—bishops, archbishops, pope, whoever it may be—that assigns a minister or priest to a church. The people have no say. But the Puritans said each congregation was independent—no overall, hierarchical governing body could tell it what to do. (That's why in America they came to call themselves Congregationalists.) If a congregation could not agree on a minister, they went without one until they found one they could agree on. And if there was a shortage of good, reformed ministers, a congregation waited without one until one became available.
In the meantime, the deacons of the congregation preached and did everything the minister would except give communion. That was one of only two sacraments recognized by Puritans, and it had to be done by a minister. Having lay people lead the church was called lay prophesying. It could and did happen even after a minister was found, as members of the congregation were encouraged to share their light during and after church services.
The people crossing the Atlantic had not chosen a minister yet. So they asked their most important lay leader, John Winthrop, to preach them a sermon in the meantime. And he did such a masterful job that it has come down to us through the centuries. Once the people landed in Fall 1630, Winthrop and other lay leaders chose John Wilson to be the teacher of First Church in Boston. (Every Puritan church that could afford to pay them had both a teacher and a minister. Roughly, the minister was the administrative leader of the church who represented the church in meetings with other ministers and with the government; he also visited members of the congregation and gave them spiritual advice. The teacher was the scholar who wrote and preached sermons and published them, as well as other theological works.) Wilson served the church on his own until John Cotton was called as minister in 1632.
So that's why Winthrop preached a sermon even though he wasn't a minister. He was engaging in conference with other believers and lay prophesying. To go back to our Vanity Fair article, Winthrop was indeed talking about setting a good example in Massachusetts, but not in the pompous way implied in the article ("a moral example"). He wanted the people to treat each other well so that they would receive God's blessing, and once they had done this, others would see the blessings that God gave to those who serve him and do the same. But most of all, when Winthrop said "we will be as a city upon a hill" he meant that any failures would be painfully visible to all—he might as well have said "we shall be as a city within a fishbowl". All previous English colonies in North America had failed (Roanoke) or were failing (Plimoth [too small], Jamestown [small and wretched and chaotic]). The Massachusetts Bay Colony was being watched by all, particularly Spain and France, to see if it too would fail.
The stakes were high all around, then, when Winthrop gave his sermon; it became justly famous for urging people to find their best natures in a situation when people often did their worst. The least we can do is understand who Winthrop was and what he wanted for this new world.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )
Paul Revere's time capsule opened to reveal… a pine tree
The Old State House in Boston has been undergoing renovations, and two time capsules have been found in it. The first, laid away in 1901, was found inside the head of the gold-plated lion atop the building and was opened in October 2014 to reveal letters and business cards from Massachusetts politicians, and multiple newspapers from that great age of newsprint. The contents of the second capsule, which was found under a foundation stone, were just revealed to the public.
This second capsule is by far the more exciting. It was placed under the State House on July 4, 1795 by Governor Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, among others, to commemorate the impressive 20th anniversary of American independence. A rundown of the capsule and all of its contents is here, but we want to focus on one particular item in it: a "1652" pine tree shilling.
This humble coin was one of the first revolutionary acts to take place in English America, but merely one in a string of stands for independence made by the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In colonial America—from its beginnings in 1607 right up to independence—actual money was scarce. There were no mints in North America to mint coins. (Paper money as we know it did not exist.) In most colonies, there was either no metal to coin, or, as in Virginia, metal was available but the colonists did not have the wherewithal to mine it. Colonists had to rely on coins coming from England, usually via the Caribbean, where trade was strongest. Items called "Spanish dollars" were used most often as currency. These were not real coins produced in a mint. They were round slugs of silver with no markings that were quickly cut in New Spain so they could be sent to Spain and melted down for different purposes, from silverware to coins. But since these "cobs", as they were called, were made of silver, they were hijacked in the Americas to be used as currency. As with all coins through human history, they were clipped: someone would trim the edges of the coins to make them slightly smaller, save the trimmings, and melt them down to make more coins for themselves. This meant that the value of the Spanish dollar was unreliable—one might weigh 3 ounces while another weighed 5. On top of that, counterfeiters would reproduce Spanish dollars by mixing silver and alloy. No one could be sure if their Spanish dollars were really worth what they were supposed to be worth. In New England, it was far more reliable to use wampum, which American Indians manufactured to strict standards of quality. Wampum was the most valuable currency in colonial America for many decades in the 1600s.
But Europeans still valued silver, too, and all that suspect Spanish silver coming into North America was causing enormous economic problems, so the MBC came up with a solution. In 1652, the General Court (Massachusetts' elected legislature) ordered that the colony would begin producing its own silver coins. Here is part of that order:
…all persons what soever have liberty to bring in unto the mint house at Boston all bullion plate or Spanish Coin there to be melted & brought to the allay of sterling Silver by John Hull master of the said mint and his sworn officers, & by him to be Coined into 12d : 6d : & 3d pieces which shall be for form flat & square on the sides & stamped on the one side with N E & on the other side wth the figure XIId VId & IIId— according to the value of each piece, together with a privy mark—which shall be Appointed every three months by the Governor & known only to him & the sworn officers of the mint.
The denominations represented in Roman numerals in the order are threepeence, sixpence, and one shilling. The coins are known as "pine tree shillings" because they had an image of a pine tree on one side. Trees were a major export from the MBC, as the huge trees of North America made perfect masts for ships. All coins read 1652, to mark the year of the mint's founding, which is why they are referred to today as "1652" shillings even if they were minted in 1662, 1673, etc.
The people of Massachusetts were willing to bring in their shifty Spanish dollars and bullion that had no practical use value to be melted down into MBC coins at the new mint. Indeed, they brought in silver bars, candlesticks, jewelry, and other items that were of no use to them and had likely been brought over with the emigrants from England for fear they might be stolen or lost track of by their agents and/or relatives.
The Boston shilling, as the coins came to be known, was enormously and immediately popular, and began circulating throughout North America, much to the chagrin of the Massachusetts government. The whole point of minting its own coins had been to keep silver money in Massachusetts to steady the economy. But the coins were flowing out of the MBC to other colonies, which meant that Massachusetts wealth (its people's silver) was accruing in and enriching Virginia, New Amsterdam, and New France.
Its mint caused political problems for the MBC as well. Minting coins was something only a royal government had the authority to do. Colonists in America had absolutely no authority to mint coins—only the king of England could grant that. In 1652, of course, England had no king: Charles I had been executed in 1649 during the English Civil War, and the country was being governed by Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan Lord Protector. Remember how the pine tree shillings had an image of a pine tree on them? This was in place of an image of a king, which had always been on English coins. The establishment of a Puritan government in England led the Puritans in Massachusetts to believe that they had a good chance of getting away with establishing their own mint, and for eight years, they did. But when Charles II came to the throne in the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy (after Cromwell's death and his son's short stint in office) the renegade mint eventually came under attack from London. Charles II had no love for the Puritans who had executed his father, and he lent a friendly ear to those in his government who hated the Massachusetts Bay Colony in particular as a hotbed of treason and independence. These royal agents visited Boston in 1665 to "review" its laws and statutes, and demanded that the General Court of the colony change 26 of them to fall in line with British law. One of the demands was to immediately stop production at the mint.
The MBC resisted, sending two "very large masts" to the royal navy as a gift in 1666 and another shipload of masts two years later. (Charles II's government was of course very wrapped up in government at home after 11 years of the Protectorate and the religious upheaval the Restoration caused, so the efforts to bring Massachusetts to heel took a back seat to more pressing matters during this time.) More masts were delivered over the years and this sufficed to keep the mint running while colonial agents tried to win permanent and official royal approval, pleading the colony's loyalty to the king. They argued that the coins only grew the colonial economy, which could only mean more goods and profits flooding into England at a time when the country's finances were precarious. But that argument was used by the crown against the colonists: to recover from its depression, the English economy needed to control its coinage, and issue and enforce the use of one English currency throughout its dominions.
Boston kept its mint open despite the mounting problems it was facing. In 1675-6, the devastating civil war known as King Phillip's War weakened the economy and destroyed political unity in New England. Bickering between New England colonies after the war, which included appeals to London for mediation, contributed to the crown's decision to revoke Massachusetts' charter in 1684. The colony was no longer politically independent. It had to accept a governor appointed by the king rather than voted by representatives of the people. The mint was closed. Massachusetts would continue to struggle for independence, and one of the ways it did so was to begin printing paper money in 1690. It was the first government known to have established a paper currency in the history of western civilization.
But that's another story. We keep our eyes on the pine tree shilling. It's clear why one was saved, and placed with great pomp and ceremony into the time capsule in 1795. The pine tree shilling represented an early strike for American independence. It represented the Puritan commitment to independent government, and the role of Massachusetts in opposing royal political interference and control. Pine tree shillings were prized by Americans who knew them. With the pine tree shilling found in the time capsule now on temporary display, more Americans can learn about them.
The plan is to return the capsule to the State House foundation with its original contents, and items from 2015. The pine tree shilling that is now seeing the light of day for the first time in 220 years will return to the darkness of history. But one day it will be unearthed again, and it seems that nothing we could add to that time capsule today will outweigh the importance of that small coin, and when it is unearthed again it will steal the show once more.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Finding Your Roots—sort of
We watched the latest episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., last night, which featured Sting, Deepak Chopra, and Sally Field. It was going along dependably well when the awful specter of ignorance about the Puritans invaded the last segment on Sally Field's family tree.
Gates revealed that Field is directly descended from William Bradford, the governor of Plimoth Colony and the man who led the Separatists across the Atlantic to America on the Mayflower in 1620. The narration (done by Gates) described Bradford as a Puritan who was imprisoned in 1607 for non-conformity. We shifted a little uncomfortably, since the Pilgrims led by Bradford were not Puritans (who wanted to reform the Church of England) but Separatists (who abandoned the Church of England as a lost cause), and there was a great deal of tension between the two groups in England and outright hostility in New England once the Puritans arrived in 1630. But in 1607 Bradford had not yet separated, so we accepted it.
Field was told that Bradford sailed with other "Puritans" on the Mayflower and still did not recognize Bradford's name as that of the governor of the colony, the famous Pilgrim who wrote Of Plimoth Plantation, the history of the colony and a crucially important record of early settlement in New England. We held our breaths as Gates' narration described the voyage over, hoping against hope that he would not repeat the tired error that the Pilgrims intended to settle in Virginia but were blown off course by storms to Massachusetts, but that hope was lost. The myth was repeated (what really happened was that the ship almost capsized crossing a soon-to-be notoriously dangerous stretch of water south of Long Island and turned back, leaving the settlers on what is now Cape Cod).
Even after Gates told Field that her ancestor Bradford was elected governor, she did not make any connection. She had clearly never heard of him and had no idea that he is a famous figure. All of this was disappointing, but the worst finally came here:
FIELD: Many of the Indians coming amongst us whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us yet by the goodness of god we are so far from want.
GATES: And you know what they were describing?
FIELD: Thanksgiving.
GATES: The very first Thanksgiving.
FIELD: Well there you go. I've always loved Thanksgiving. It's always been a big deal.
GATES: Could you please turn the page? Look at that painting.
FIELD: Oh, yeah.
GATES: Now –
FIELD: Okay are you going to tell me one of those is…
GATES: Historians guess that is William Bradford sitting at the head of the table.
FIELD: He hasn't changed a bit. (Laughs) You're telling me he presided over the first Thanksgiving?
GATES: Right.
The errors in this exchange are glaring. First, the account of what we call the "first Thanksgiving" was not in a letter but in the journal of Edward Winslow, which he published in 1622 as Mourt's Relation. Winslow wrote what became known as Mourt's Relation (because it was published in London by a man named Mourt) with Bradford, who seems to have written many of the early entries. But the account of the thanksgiving is not in the first half of the book (it's about 3/4 of the way through), and seems to be Winslow's work. Second, it is hardly "incredible" that the researchers for the show "unearthed a copy of the letter" because Mourt's Relation has been in print for centuries—every New England scholar and every college library has a copy. What is incredible is that they pan over a photo of a contemporary edition of Mourt's Relation that has the chapter title "A letter sent from New England to a friend in these parts…", which was the literary device used to frame the stories from Winslow's journal. One expects a professional historian like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to know this—or at least have it fact-checked. Third, this was not the "first Thanksgiving" but the first thanksgiving the Pilgrims had in America. As we explain in our post Truth v. Myth: The First Thanksgiving,
People often wonder why there wasn't another thanksgiving the next year—we have seen that thanksgivings were not annual events, but came up often, and the idea of celebrating the harvest every year didn't make sense to the Pilgrims. They had only held a thanksgiving for the first good harvest because it was a life-saving change from the previous fall. Once they were on their feet, they expected good harvests, and didn't have to celebrate them. It was also against their Separatist beliefs to celebrate annual holidays—like the Puritans, they did not celebrate any holidays, not even Christmas. So to hold a regular, annual harvest thanksgiving was not their way.
Fourth, and most unbelievably, Gates shows Field a 19th-century painting of the First Thanksgiving and treats it like a historical artifact by saying "Historians guess that is William Bradford sitting at the head of the table." Of course it is, because it was painted by a 19th-century artist who put him there! As if the 90 Indians and roughly as many colonists all sat at one table "presided over" by Bradford. It is the well-known painting of one long table inexplicably placed in the middle of an empty field with 12-20 very white Pilgrims around it, bowing their heads as they hear grace, and a mother rocks an infant in a cradle (inexplicably brought out to the empty field) and holds her toddler by the hand. No Indians are present. This is the item presented by Gates as a historical artifact depicting the first day of thanksgiving celebrated by the Puritans in North America.
That's a lot to get wrong. Sadly, shows like this only misinform the American people, if the comments one viewer left on the PBS website for the episode are representative:
I had some uncomfortable feelings hearing the excerpt from a letter written by Sally Field's distant relative, William Bradford in 1621 describing the feast in such a feel-good manner. Yes, the Pilgrims were praising God because they were finally "so far from want," but in a 1623 sermon delivered by Mather the Elder, they were thanking God for the gift of smallpox that wiped out the majority of Wampanoag Indians, "chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth." I know the purpose of this episode wasn't to uncover the "truth" of Thanksgiving but I believe having this awareness will deepen our understanding of how much we of European descent have benefited at the expense of the indigenous New World inhabitants.
You can't blame the viewer for having these views when this is the quality of information at hand. First, as we said, the account was not in a letter and was not written by Bradford in 1621. Second, and much worse, is that the "Mather the elder sermon" is a complete hoax. Richard Mather (the "elder") was the patriarch of the family that gave us his son Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather. Richard Mather was a Puritan who came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, not Plimoth, in 1635. He was not there in 1623. No one named Mather was in Plimoth in 1623. An intrepid independent scholar has a long account of the scam here. Long story short, the quote about young men and children is borrowed from Puritan "historian" Edward Johnson's 1653 book The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England, a subjective and lionizing history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Here's the text from Johnson:
Their Disease being a sore Consumption sweeping away whole Families but chiefly yong Men and Children the very seeds of increase. …Howling and much lamentation was heard among the living who being possest with great fear oftimes left their dead unburied their manner being such that they remove their habitations at death of any. …by this means Christ whose great and glorious works the Earth throughout are altogether for the benefit of his Churches and chosen not only made room for his people to plant but also tamed the hard and cruel hearts of these barbarous Indians…
Interestingly, Johnson says he will not talk about the Pilgrims' relationship with the Wampanoags "particularly being prevented by the honoured Mr Winslow who was an eye witness of the work." Winslow did not want the unreliable Johnson describing Plimoth because he knew Johnson would depict the Pilgrims there as Indian-haters when they weren't.
The scam aside, yes the Pilgrims saw smallpox as God's work, but they didn't really celebrate it. God constantly struck people down—including Pilgrims. Pilgrims died of infectious diseases, their babies, children, and young men died from disease and accident, often in ways that severely tested their parents' faith in God. Why did God strike down the young? Why did God torment his most faithful followers by striking down their children? The answer was always that it was part of God's mysterious plan that no one could understand and everyone had to accept as eventually bringing about a greater good. They often used 17th-century English and called God's will "God's pleasure", but this does not mean that it made God happy to kill people, even Indians. It meant that God fulfilled his will (acted at his pleasure). Johnson says the Indians' deaths were caused by God (Christ) to make the land safe for pure churches. This had to be done, no matter how horrible it might be or how much howling and lamentation it caused. Unlike Johnson, when the Pilgrims or even other Puritans described Indian deaths from smallpox, they usually did not exult about savages dying; they saw God's mighty will revealed through the deaths and moved on, hoping their own deaths would not eventually be necessary to further God's plan.
It would have been nearly impossible for anyone in the 17th century—Wampanoag, Englishman, Egyptian, Japanese—to think outside the clannish box of us v. them and feel pity for people so obviously struck down by God. Humans, like all animals, are clannish; our first and strongest identity is being part of one group as opposed to other groups. It has taken centuries since the Enlightenment for humans to at least pay lip-service to the idea that all men are created equal and all are deserving of equal justice, that, as the bumper sticker says, "God bless the whole world—no exceptions". So if an English settler in 1623 saw God's providential hand in Indian deaths, that does not reveal and confirm the Pilgrims to be terrible racists. It confirms them as 17th-century human beings along the same lines as Indians, Asians, Africans, and everyone else who celebrated their enemies' deaths in battle, sacked cities killing women and children, enslaved rival groups, etc. It is taking us a long time to change our ways.
And so we leave Finding Your Roots with heavy hearts and grave concerns about Americans ever learning their real history. Who will kickstart-fund the HP's own TV series??Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 5 so far )
What kind of car would Thomas Cromwell drive?
We are big fans of Alan Partridge here at the HP, so when we found this clip of him asking callers to his radio show what kind of car Thomas Cromwell would have driven, we were knocked out.
At last someone who understands the Puritan mindset. And the wonderful reveal at the end that Alan thought they were talking about Oliver Cromwell the whole time… a common mistake. If only every historian had a Sidekick Simon to help us out with those details before we get up to the podium.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
The End of Witchcraft Trials in New England
Part the last of our short series on the practical whys and wherefores of witchcraft cases in Puritan New England ends with a look at reasons for the decline and disappearance of these cases. Again we are relying on John Demos' priceless book Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and and the Culture of Early New England for many of our specific examples.
As Demos points out, and as we noted in part 1 of this series, one of the exacerbating factors in witchcraft accusations was close proximity: in early New England towns, the entire population lived in small houses crowding the small square, saw each other daily in a variety of roles, socialized together, worshipped and worked together, and basically could not get out of each other's hair for one minute. If you disliked someone in town, you would not be able to avoid interacting with them every day, and, in their blunt Puritan way the person you disliked would likely barge into your yard and home whenever they wanted, sometimes just to bother you. We have seen that most people accused of witchcraft were difficult people who demanded favors, gifts, and intimacy from those around them, giving nothing back in return. If a neighbor refused a gift or favor, the difficult person might curse or threaten them. Then, if by coincidence some harm befell the neighbor, the difficult person would fall under suspicion of having used witchcraft to make good their threats.
So if witchcraft accusations were provoked in some part by too-close proximity, it makes sense that once New England had expanded enough to conquer its frontier, and it was safer and less laborious to start new towns, two things happened to slow witchcraft accusations: towns began to grow, and people began to move more often. As Demos puts it:
"Eventually witchcraft would disappear as a matter of formal proceedings. This last part of the sequence is extremely hard to analyze from a distance of three centuries; perhaps, however, one key factor was a certain loosening of the social tissues themselves. …The growth and dispersion of the local populace, a somewhat broadened range of economic activity, an increasingly firm system of social stratification: these interlocking trends seem gradually to have modified the tensions amid which witchcraft had flourished." (371)
If the average town goes from 150 people to 1,000, you are less likely to constantly deal with the same people each day, and your neighbor is less likely to focus his full attention on you 24 hours a day simply because there are more people to be interested in. Your neighbor is also less likely to also be your tax collector, fence inspector, pew-fellow, midwife, cattle-driver, etc. A small number of intensely intimate relationships are replaced by many more casual ones.
When Demos talks about loosening of the social tissues, remember that the Puritans were dedicated to the principle of mutual watch: the loving oversight of their community. This meant playing a role in the spiritual lives of your community, and welcoming your community's involvement in your own spiritual life. Puritans worshipped, prayed, and debated together on a regular, almost daily basis, and their ideal was to work out all conflicts through loving negotiation. Ideally, no matter would ever have to go to court. Many times, when a problem did go to court—including witchcraft cases—it was sent back to the town by the judge with a recommendation that the problem be solved privately, by the interested parties, through prayer, negotiation, and applied goodwill. Ministers, deacons, and especially godly church members were on constant call to mediate conflicts, and were successful far more often than might be expected.
As towns grew, and people knew each other less well, mutual watch became difficult and then impossible to carry out. Just as a growing population meant less intimate, less frequent contact between townspeople, so too it meant less conviction that the community was bound, or able, to mediate conflicts. And larger, more mobile populations meant fewer personal problems between individuals had the chance to fester and grow. Problems went directly to court and were settled there. This meant that the weeks, months, or even years of private tension over a suspected witch, and the weeks, months, or years of attempted mediation and accumulated anxiety and bad feeling were done away with. Without that long history of conflict, fewer accusations of witchcraft were made. Without that long history of conflict to produce dozens of witnesses for and against the accused, those witchcraft cases that did go to court were weaker and taken less seriously. It was easier to see the case as the result of a personal conflict. The wind was taken out of the sails of witchcraft.
So we see that by the end of the 17th century, a century of intense population growth in New England, witchcraft cases are dwindling to nothing. In fact, after the Salem witch trials in 1692, there were "no more executions, no convictions, indeed no actual indictments" related to witchcraft in any New England court. (Demos 387) We talked in part 2 about why Salem, the largest witch trials, happened as witchcraft trials themselves were dying away. Here we want to focus on its aftermath. The hysteria at Salem deeply shocked and shamed New Englanders, who saw government go off the rails, replaced by accusation and panic, and they were embarrassed to think of how they looked to the outside world. The Age of Reason was influencing how people thought about natural and unnatural phenomena, even New England Puritans.
Thomas Brattle is a good example of this. Brattle lived in the town of Cambridge and wrote a letter to a friend about the events in Salem just as they were ending, in October 1692. Brattle's account of the way the trials were conducted is a powerful example of a good Puritan completely rejecting the irrationality of the Salem trials:
"First, as to the method which the Salem Justices do take in their examinations, it is truly this: A warrant being issued out to apprehend the persons that are charged and complained of by the afflicted children, (as they are called); said persons are brought before the Justices, (the afflicted being present.) The Justices ask the apprehended why they afflict those poor children; to which the apprehended answer, they do not afflict them. The Justices order the apprehended to look upon the said children, which accordingly they do; and at the time of that look, (I dare not say by that look, as the Salem Gentlemen do) the afflicted are cast into a fit. The apprehended are then blinded, and ordered to touch the afflicted; and at that touch, though not by the touch, (as above) the afflicted ordinarily do come out of their fits. The afflicted persons then declare and affirm, that the apprehended have afflicted them; upon which the apprehended persons, though of never so good repute, are forthwith committed to prison, on suspicion for witchcraft.
…I cannot but condemn this method of the Justices, of making this touch of the hand a rule to discover witchcraft; because I am fully persuaded that it is sorcery, and a superstitious method, and that which we have no rule for, either from reason or religion. [This] Salem philosophy, some men may call the new philosophy; but I think it rather deserves the name of Salem superstition and sorcery, and it is not fit to be named in a land of such light as New-England is… In the mean time, I think we must [be] thankful to God for it, that all men are not thus bereft of their senses; but that we have here and there considerate and thinking men, who will not thus be imposed upon…
What will be the issue of these troubles, God only knows; I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our land. I pray God pity us, humble us, forgive us, and appear mercifully for us in this our mount of distress."
Puritans had always treasured reason. They believed it was God's greatest gift (after saving grace), given to humans to allow them to comprehend God's creation and to seek to understand God's will. Their legal code was a model of reason. As the 17th century drew to a close, Puritans began to doubt that their courts should be hearing witchcraft cases. Like Thomas Brattle, they felt there was no way for a judge to " discover witchcraft" because witchcraft was supernatural—it could not be addressed in a human court: witchcraft was "that which we have no rule for, either from reason or religion." Most Puritans felt the same, and witchcraft accusations were handled privately after Salem.
They were handled privately because witchcraft accusations didn't disappear after Salem; they dwindled, and they entered the realm of ambiguity. "Witchcraft was hard to square with 'enlightened' standards and values, yet it could not be dismissed entirely" [Demos 387], and in this state of limbo witchcraft accusations were reduced to the status of gossip and private fulminations and, eventually, legend. Ministers reported strange cases that alarmed them, but never led them to publicly reveal the suspected culprits. Almost every little town seemed to have a local witch who fueled gossip and folklore but was mostly left in peace. "The figure of the witch was effectively scaled down, so as to shrink the elements of death-dealing power, and to emphasize those of sheer eccentricity. …The harm attributed to witchcraft was confined more and more to routine domestic mishap, nightmares, and simple 'mischief'… such elements had always been part of the witch's maleficium, but now they were virtually the whole of it." [Demos 390]
Puritans had always been skeptical of claims that someone was truly a witch in league with and empowered by the devil, and required many witnesses and much evidence in trials, and even then dismissed most cases. By the 1700s, that skepticism was complete. 1630-1700 is a pretty brief window for witchcraft, and since we see that witchcraft cases really began in Puritan New England in the mid-1640s and ended after 1692, the window is even briefer. It is odd, therefore, that Puritan New England is so identified with witch trials and witch hunts. Poor Thomas Brattle was right, it seems, to fear that "ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our land." Americans love to reproach the Puritans with their "witch mania", unfair though that accusation may be, given that English colonists throughout North America believed just as firmly in witches. If only there had been a Salem in Virginia, another anomaly that drew attention away from its laser focus on Massachusetts, we might have a better general understanding of the role of witchcraft belief in the early modern western world.
As it is, we will leave off here feeling we've done our small part to set the record straight.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
The Chronology of Witchcraft in Puritan New England
Hello and welcome to part 2 of our short series on the Puritans and the factors behind the seeming madness of their accusations of witchcraft. Again we're referring to John Demos' book Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and and the Culture of Early New England for many keen observations on what caused the Puritans to make these accusations.
One of his most interesting conclusions is that witchcraft accusations came about during times of relative political and social peace. When communities were first founded, people's time was completely occupied with building homes, clearing fields, putting in crops, and other necessities of life. During the first few years of a new town's life, there were few or no witchcraft accusations. This was not only because people had little time to pursue such accusations, but because the populations were so new—people did not all know each other well. The core founders may have come over from England together, or a core group may have left one town to start another, but most of the rest were people who joined in from all over, and did not really know each other. We mentioned in part 1 that people lived in very close quarters and had a great deal of daily, often intimate (in the home) contact with each other over the course of years, and when people were difficult neighbors in these circumstances they more likely to be accused of witchcraft. As Demos says, the first tumultuous years of settlement, with high population turnover and few established relationships, "were not conducive to the development of full-blown witchcraft proceedings, which required time and a certain constancy of social relations." [371]
After the initial tumult of founding, however, people had time to get to know each other, sometimes all too well, and the accusations would begin—usually about a decade in to the life of the town. At that point, only one thing could disrupt the attention to witchery: outside conflict. War, threats to the town or the colony, dissension in the town's church; these were all events that devoured the attention of townspeople, putting them back into a life-or-death situation similar to the early founding years. The 1640s were a time of relative peace in New England, and during this decade the colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut experienced a high-water mark of witchcraft trials. But when the Hartford Controversy (a bitter conflict over church leadership) broke out in 1656, the number of witchcraft cases in that colony dropped sharply, and remained down until the controversy was ended.
After a conflict, there was a brief resting period, and then witchcraft accusations would resume, sometimes more vigorously than before, as excess energy and anger left over from the conflict found a vent.
There is an important difference here, as Demos notes, between conflict and "harms" or "signs". Epidemic disease, insect infestations, comets, hurricanes, and other such events were considered harms or signs from God, warning the people of the need to repent their sins. These harms and signs often triggered witchcraft accusations, as people attempted to harrow (as they would put it) and purify their communities in the face of God's demonstrated anger. Unusual or inexplicable events fueled fear of witches, but concrete, clearly human conflicts did not. Political fights, wars with or fear of Indians or the French in Canada and Maine, and church divisions were not sent from God but were the result of very human arguments, and these did not provoke quests to uncover witches.
The Puritans arrived in North America in numbers in 1630. For that first decade of settlement in the 1630s, witchcraft cases were few. It was in the 1640s that settled communities began prosecuting witches, and this persisted into the 1650s. By the 1660s, witchcraft cases in Massachusetts Bay Colony had dropped, while harms and signs (a smallpox epidemic and repeated crop failures) in Connecticut led to an increase of cases there. 1660 was a pivotal year: Charles II was restored to the English throne, and the Puritans in America justly feared for their safety and continued political independence with a Stuart back on the throne, since it had been Puritans who had executed his father. When the new king sent commissioners to inspect the colonies in 1664, fear of political takeover choked off witchcraft cases. In the late 1660s, a critical conflict in the mighty First Church Boston also preoccupied the colonists' attentions, and it was not until the early 1670s that witchcraft cases rose again in Massachusetts, which was suffering through a series of droughts and storms (harms and signs), while almost disappearing in Connecticut, which was still struggling with religious divisions (human conflict).
In the late 1670s, both Massachusetts and the Connecticut colonies experienced a very low number of witchcraft cases—almost none—thanks to the turmoil and fear of King Philip's War: as Demos puts it, "For the time being danger from the invisible world was superseded by combat with a host of quite present and visible Indian enemies."
After the war, the usual witchcraft cases driven by residual fear and anger cropped up, and a fire in Boston and other "harms and signs" exacerbated the tension. But in the 1680s and 90s cases dropped off again as fears of a royal political takeover grew—the Massachusetts Bay Colony was fighting for its independence as its charter was called into question in London. It was revoked finally in 1691, and the MBC became a royal colony with a royally appointed governor, a calamity that put almost all witchcraft accusations to rest.
But then came the one witchcraft episode that most Americans know about—Salem. Its date gives its motives away. The first accusations were in 1692, a year after the loss of the charter, and were clearly part of the usual post-traumatic stress of a big conflict. Other factors made Salem explode into a witch hunt such as had never been seen before (see our series on Salem here), but the unusually large trouble of losing political independence obviously contributed to an unusually large case of witchcraft accusations.
After Salem, the 1690s saw almost no witchcraft cases in Massachusetts or the Connecticut colonies, and this was likely, in part, a reaction against the Salem mania.
This chronological tour of rises and falls in witchcraft cases in New England shows us some interesting points:
—witchcraft was on people's minds mostly in the absence of human conflicts
—witchcraft accusations were not constant over time
—Puritans did not blame witchcraft for concrete crises and problems, but for more abstract, hard to explain events like storms, failed crops, and epidemics.
—Witchcraft accusations were often safety valves used to release accumulated tension and anger after a human conflict, and sometimes a way to strike at all-too human enemies who had emerged victorious from a conflict that should have destroyed them, according to the accuser.
Next time we'll see how demographic and geographic growth ended witchcraft cases altogether in Puritan New England by the early 1700s.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Puritans and Witchcraft: more method, less madness
John Demos' invaluable book Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and and the Culture of Early New England is a worthy read for anyone seeking scientific analysis of witchcraft amongst the Puritans—not just trials and executions, but the daily lived experience of witchcraft. It is a mark of the book's soundness, in some ways, that it does not discuss the Salem Witch Trials (they are mentioned in passing a few times). This confirms our opinion that the Salem trials were an anomaly in New England, and tell us about the Puritans' experience and understanding of witches only by spelling out what they were not.
It is clear from Demos' study that most 17th-century Puritans did believe that a few people around them practiced witchcraft, but the myth-busting corollary to this is that few people suspected of practicing witchcraft were actually tried, and fewer of those were convicted. It is amazing to read dozens of stories of people who were suspected of practicing witchcraft and repeatedly accused of it over many years—sometimes decades—who were never convicted in court, and who often had many public arguments over their suspected witchcraft before charges were even made against them.
The usual (though not universal) profile of a suspected witch was a middle-aged man or woman (more often a woman) with few or no children and an aggressive personality who made a habit of barging into people's homes uninvited, demanding jobs or favors from people, and meddling or attempting to meddle with the treatment of the ill. The usual victim was an infant or child, or a woman who had recently given birth. This, Demos argues, could illustrate the difficulties for childless women or women who lived past their childbearing years in early modern society: they had no children to do chores or bring in income for them, and therefore frequently asked for favors from others; and those in menopause had no hope of having (more) children and envied women who were younger and having children, which led them to insistently barge in on women in childbirth or to demand to touch and hold infants. In a society where the average family had 5 children, to be childless or to have only one child was to stand out, and once your only child grew up and perhaps moved away, you were alone, which was difficult in a frontier situation.
The almost universal aggressiveness of suspected witches is interesting. Today we tend to think of the accused as kind and helpless old women singled out for no good reason. But the men and women accused of witchcraft were always difficult people. They complained and took people to court even more frequently than the average litigious Puritan. They called people names and spread malicious gossip. They threatened people's livestock and livelihoods, predicting death or destruction. They made unreasonable demands on their neighbors for food, goods, and labor, and threatened illness, death, or worse when their demands were not met. Many of the couples accused of witchcraft had difficult marriages that sometimes resulted in physical abuse. A surprising number of accused witches actually boasted about their familiarity with the devil and sorcery, and while one can imagine the thrill of holding an audience spellbound with your stories about what you've heard the devil and his consorts do at night, one can't imagine that this display of intimate knowledge of satanism wouldn't come back to haunt the teller of the tales.
Demos' book concludes with some valuable generalizations about Puritans and witchcraft that we will spell out and amplify here and in the next post. But first, we want to make our own claims, which are these:
1. Too often the Puritans of New England are singled out for studies in witchcraft. One can be forgiven for thinking that the Puritans were the only group in North America who believed in or prosecuted witches. But witchcraft was an accepted reality throughout the early modern world, and the settlers in Virginia, Maryland, and New York were just as firm in their belief in witches as the settlers of Massachusetts and Connecticut. New Spain was constantly battling against native American witchcraft, and the meager Christian outposts of New France were happy to keep their distance from the witchery of the native Canadians.
Indeed, we posit that the only reason New England is the witchery upon a hill is the notoriety of Salem, and if that anomaly had not taken place the number of people interested in New England witchcraft would be equal to the minuscule number of people studying witchcraft in Jamestown.
2. We tend to cut the New England Puritans far too little slack for being a pioneer people. We somehow block out the fact that most Puritans in the mid-17th century, when witchcraft claims and trials were at their height, were living in mud huts in isolated villages of about 100-150 people, wary of Indian attacks, and suffering all the hunger, fatigue, and strain of founding a frontier settlement. The houses in a new settlement were literally all in one place, lining the road through the village, and everyone was almost astoundingly interconnected: your neighbors next door were also likely sitting next to you at church; serving in the militia with you; plowing the field next to yours; hosting your son or daughter as a live-in worker; performing some task, like weaving or cattle-driving, for you; deciding the borders of your land; having their baby delivered by your wife the midwife; serving on a committee with you; etc. The list goes on and on. Such frequent, intimate contact in an already stressful frontier situation was bound to create arguments, grudges, and other conflicts. If you disliked someone and then had to endure this kind of constant presence in your life, those arguments could grow, over months or years, into more serious accusations of witchcraft. If that hated neighbor was driving your cattle and one was lost, and he didn't apologize for it, longstanding tension could quickly escalate.
The point here is that most Puritans in the mid-1600s in New England lived in very stressful situations, and they lived in those stressful situations at a time when everyone in the western world believed in witchcraft. It is logical that they would blame witchcraft for the inevitable problems of losing livestock, suffering disease and death, failed crops, and, quite often, just a powerful sense of confusion and uncertainty.
The wonder is not that people were accused, but that so relatively few of the accused were convicted. That means that if you finally accused your neighbor of witchcraft, and testified against him in court, it was most likely that, after spending some weeks or months in prison awaiting trial, that neighbor was returned to your village, to resume life next door to you. Sometimes the neighbor would move away from an unendurable situation. But many other times, the two parties continued to live next to each other, and sometimes renewed accusations would break out.
That's because, amazingly, people once accused of witchcraft seemed to have no fear of provoking another accusation. Even people who were tried and acquitted, sometimes very narrowly, often returned home and picked up where they left off with their aggressive, argumentative behavior, and even their claims to know all about Satan and his minions.
Next time, we'll go further into the patterns and logic of witchcraft accusations outlined by Demos.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )
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What you need to know about San Bernardino, CA
San Bernardino is located in San Bernardino County, California. The population is 35% White, 9% Black, 3% Asian and 1% Native American or Native Hawaiian. 14% identify as another race or ethnicity, or two or more races. 39% of residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin. The median income is $38,774 and the median home value is $151,400. For more on schools, real estate, business and health care in San Bernardino, see each of the tabs above. Walkability can be a key driver of the overall livability of a community. San Bernardino has a Walk Score ® of 39.
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After taking an official visit Nebraska recently Murrieta (Calif.) Vista Murrieta High star Coltin Gerhart has decided to reaffirm his commitment to Arizona State.
Gerhart reaffirms ASU pledge as quarterback
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West Branch School to perform at Community Theatre League
West Branch School will perform the classic story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe March 8 through 10 at the Community Theatre League.
This year's performance is a departure from the traditional Shakespearean or Greek Mythological style plays for which the school has come to be known.
Students ages 3 to 6 will act alongside their teachers and alumni to entertain several local schools and the community.
Performances are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. March 8, 7:30 p.m. March 9 and 2 p.m. March 10.
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Tickets and reservations can be made by contacting West Branch School at 323-5498.


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In a timely discussion, Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole speaks with Stanley Nelson, director and producer of the acclaimed documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.
Tag Archives: Stanley Nelson
Stanley Nelson's Black Panther Doc Opens In Harlem (video)
Harlem's Stanley Nelson's Black Panther: Vanguard Of The Revolution, the first feature-length documentary to explore the history of the Black Panther Party opens in downtown at the film forum and in Harlem, NY. Continue Reading →


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Just bought this. Which connection is in and which one is out?
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The theory seems to be holding.
In 24 games since he eclipsed the 300-plate-appearance plateau on July 5, Gonzalez, 24, has hit .404 (40-for-99) with nine doubles, eight homers and 24 RBIs. He has hit safely in 22 of those games, including a 17-game hitting streak that was snapped July 28 at Colorado partially by a scorer's decision.
"Gonzalez is having quite a season," Padres manager Bruce Bochy said after his club snapped a three-game losing streak and won for only the second time in seven games. "He's smart and he works hard. You can see he's getting more and more comfortable at the plate."
Gonzalez said he was well aware of the Padres' offensive problems (two runs in their previous three games).
"Each time I stepped in there with someone on base, I told myself, 'Get it done,'" he said. "I was more worried about getting a pitch to handle and driving the ball than the runners on base. But I knew the situation."
REPLAY: As a youth in Pearland, Texas, Padres right-handed pitcher Clay Hensley was a fan of the Houston Astros.
"All my friends and family were also Astro fans," said Hensley, who Thursday afternoon made his first start against the Astros with many of his family and friends looking on. The game was in San Diego, but Hensley learned they had gathered at houses and sports bars between Houston and College Station to watch him face the Astros.
Hensley allowed one run on four hits over 5 2/3 innings and picked up the win. Even better, Hensley pitched against the Astros on a retro uniform day with both teams wearing circa-1976 colors.
"It was cool seeing those (rainbow) uniforms again," Hensley admitted. "In the first inning, I was a little amped up. I grew up watching Alan Ashby and Jose Cruz in those uniforms. It was fun to pitch against them. It was exciting. Pitching in Minute Maid Park, that would be the topper."


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It's a long time until mornin', but you have to like how new Oregon football head coach Mark Helfrich's first national signing day is going. It's early, but Helfrich is proving he can keep pace recruiting with the big boys.
Most Oregon fans were just hoping to get through today without losing any further commits. Dontre Wilson's flip to Ohio State was certainly painful-but-survivable, as long as 5-star running back Thomas Tyner does the expected later today and signs with the Ducks.
Now, it looks as if the Ducks had at least one very, very pleasant surprise up their sleeve—more on that in a slide coming your way soon.
It has to be said that even though it's only three hours into national signing day, Helfrich's day is already a huge success.
Let's look at the odds against the new head coach, and how Helfrich is bucking them.


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Hotel Rural El Jardín del Conde
This hotel is located in the centre of Ruta de la Plata along an old Roman road and in the leafy setting of a beautiful estate garden.
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Location: Hotel Rural El Jardín del Conde
The lodging is in "BEJAR", in the village of "Peñacaballera" (out of the inner city, 1,5 km from the town). It is a place between mountains. The ski slopes of "La Covatilla" are located 24 kilometers from the property. The golf course of "la cerrallana" is located at 15 km. From "Peñacaballera" you easily undertake day trips to Candelario (14 KM), Hervás (14 KM), Valle del Jerte (20 KM), Plasencia (49 KM). The accomodation offers: wifi, garden-terrace, coffee bar, restaurant, washing machine.


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When Ryan Green, a video game programmer, learns that his young son Joel has cancer, he and his wife document their emotional journey with a video game, "That Dragon, Cancer." It evolves from a cathartic exercise into an acclaimed work of art.
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The children are putting on a show at school today, each doing something that makes them special.
When they switch houses, a prince on the farm and a pauper in a castle soon leads to confusion.
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It's hot out! Sally and Nick visit friends in the Dizzle-dazzle Desert to learn how to keep cool.
He creates a tree on the balcony & gathers packages for a lady who turns out to be a mail carrier.
Hacker detains Inez and forces Jackie to teach him moves and partner with him in a dance contest.
WordGirl and Tobey get into a battle of words on the game show "Crash or Pie."
The size of this operation cannot be underestimated, particularly when your cargo is so precious. That's because these are no ordinary giraffes, they are in fact the world's rarest. Any mistake could be costly, not only for the giraffes being moved but also for an entire species.
While this process of erosion takes millions of years, the fragile roof of a cavern near the surface can collapse in an eye blink, with little or no advance warning. Sinkholes can range from a few meters across to one in Egypt that measures 50 x 75 miles, and a Chinese hole nearly half a mile deep.
The remains of a 3,000-year-old English settlement sheds light on the history of the western world.
Jean decides to join the technological age. Alistair tells Lionel that he's lost all his money.
Watch full episodes of Scott & Bailey, Death in Paradise, and Doctor Blake Mysteries online.