Witchcraft accusations in the 17th century were often
motivated by economics than religious beliefs or superstition. When a woman was
left with a desirable farm or business after the passing of her husband,
witchcraft charges from envious neighbors or business competitors sometimes
followed. The punitive fines and room and board prison costs were a real
moneymaker for the colonial governments, and other costs could be satisfied by
selling off farm animals, household goods, or the property, or partially
relieved by the accused prisoners working at forced labor.
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| 1647 book by Matthew Hopkins, the self-titled Witchfinder General. |
Today, you’ll meet two women who
were caught in the witchcraft hysteria that was never far from the thoughts of
English subjects, from the publication of King James’s book Daemonologie in 1597, through the
300 or more women who were tried, tortured, and executed by the Witchfinder General of eastern England
in the 1640s, to the Salem,
Massachusetts witch trials of the
1690s.
Mary Lee
The superstition of witchcraft
manifested itself in both England
and America
in the 1640s and 1650s.
In 1654, the ship Charity left England
for Virginia.
The First Anglo-Dutch War had concluded with a treaty early in the year, but
piracy and privateering (piracy licensed by government) continued on the
American coasts and the Caribbean. Part of the
cargo on that voyage was a shipment of carbines (short-barrel muskets that
didn’t shoot much further than 100 yards), according to the state papers of
John Thurloe, the English secretary of state and the spymaster.
The Charity’s voyage that should have taken eight to ten weeks was
stormy, and the ship was forced to fight high seas and adverse winds for longer
than expected. Two or three weeks before the vessel entered Chesapeake
Bay, the sailors whispered that a witch was on board, and it was
she who was attracting the wrath of God. Their gaze rested upon a passenger,
Mrs. Mary Lee, a petite, aged widow traveling without escort. (“Aged” could
mean anyone older than 40.)
England,
after civil wars, political upheaval, the Anglo-Dutch conflict, and the
resulting economic depressions, was now in Mary Lee’s rear-view mirror, and she
planned to start a new life in Virginia.
If she had children, they may have died of epidemic disease or war. But in
1654, she was alone in the world.
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| Searching a woman for witch's marks. |
On this late winter or spring
voyage, the sailors demanded that John Bosworth, the Charity’s master, should test Mrs. Lee for witchcraft. The captain
at first refused to consent to an interrogation, saying he would put her off
the ship at Bermuda, but crosswinds prevented
that detour, the ship grew more leaky by the day, and the sailors continued to
clamor.
After consulting with passengers Henry Corbin,
a 25-year-old emigrant, and Robert Chipson, a merchant, Bosworth yielded to
the crew’s demand. (Why did the master of the ship consult with passengers?) The sailors affirmed that Mrs. Lee’s deportment suggested
she was a witch. Two seamen, without permission, stripped the elderly woman’s
body of all the layers of clothing and modesty that the 17th century
afforded, and searched for moles, skin tags—anything that might be a nipple for
nursing an imp—and declared they had found witch marks.
During the cold, stormy night, she
was left fastened to the capstan, probably naked, and in the morning light it
was reported that the marks "for the most part were shrunk into the
body." Henry Corbin, a young man from Warwickshire who was not a minister
or magistrate, was pressed to interrogate her, and at last, the terrified woman
confessed she was a witch.
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| 17th-century merchantman cross section. The capstan is the post between the first and second masts. |
The crew begged the captain to
execute Mrs. Lee, but he retreated to his cabin in the roundhouse. They pressed
him again, and he said to do what they would, and went back to his cabin. The crew
then hanged her, and “when life was extinct,” said the record, they tossed her
body in the sea. Was Mrs. Lee’s death from strangling? She was petite, and
probably not heavy enough to fall in the noose and break her neck. She had no
friends to pull on her feet to hasten her end.
One might wonder what became of
Mary Lee’s possessions, building supplies, furniture, and a year’s worth of
foodstuffs to get started in her Virginia
plantation life. John Bosworth obviously had no control over his seamen, and
feared mutiny. The Charity’s crew may
have divided Mrs. Lee’s goods amongst themselves and sold them at the port, or
pitched them overboard with her body.
Ann Hibbins
In 1656, Richard Bellingham, an MP
in Lincolnshire before he emigrated to New
England, a magistrate in Boston,
as well as Massachusetts Bay Colony’s former governor and now deputy governor, was
strangely silent regarding the witch trial of his sister, Mrs. Ann Hibbins.
Ann’s husband, William Hibbins, was a
merchant and magistrate, and the Bay Colony’s agent in England for two years. Boston’s First Church of
Christ censured Ann in 1641 after a dispute with church members, but it seems
that William Hibbins’ position and money were enough to protect her from other
charges or punishment. He lost £500
(about £35,000-40,000 in today’s
value) in a bad investment in 1654, and died thereafter. Apparently, Mrs.
Hibbins, after losing her lifestyle of financial ease and social status, became
sarcastic and bitter in her relationships.
But now, aged about 51, because of
her “censorious, bitter spirit, always quarreling with her neighbors,” she was
brought to the Court of Assistants on a charge of witchcraft. As it was done in
England,
Mrs. Hibbins’ body was searched for witches’ teats, but none were found. Nor
were there any puppets or images in her belongings which might have served as
“familiars” for evil spirits. The jury condemned her, but the magistrates set
the conviction aside.
But the Bostonians wanted her
death, and the General Court tried her for witchcraft. Even the Boston First Church
ministers, John Wilson and John Norton, supported Mrs. Hibbins. Rev. Norton was
heard to say that she “unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she
saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which cost her her life.” Vocalizing
her hunch, which turned out to be true, seemed like paranormal knowledge she’d
gained from an evil spirit.
After her conviction, Mrs. Hibbins
wrote a will for her three adult sons by her first marriage, who were living in
England.
The appraisal of her estate was about £320
(£25,000+ in today’s value), so
she was not destitute.
Edward Hutchinson, one of her
will’s executors, wrote that her will and her speech were quite reasonable and
there was no evidence against her. There were several other influential members
of the Boston
church and courts who supported Hibbins. It seemed that the ministers, the
magistrates, and leading men of Boston
society were on her side.
Nevertheless.
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| Ann Hibbins was hanged not on a tree, but on a gallows outside the fortified gate to Boston. |
The General Court records for May
14, 1656 show that:
“The magistrates not
receiving the verdict of the jury in Mrs. Hibbins her case, having been on
trial for witchcraft, it fell… to the General Court [a superior court, in
today’s terms]. Mrs. Ann Hibbins was called forth, appeared at the bar; the
indictment against her was read, to which she answered not guilty, and was
willing to be tried by God and this Court. The evidences against her were read,
the parties witnessing being present, her answers considered on; and the whole
Court being met together, by their vote determined that Mrs. Ann Hibbins is
guilty of witchcraft, according to the bill of indictment found against her by
the jury of life and death.”
Governor John Endecott delivered
her sentence, that Ann Hibbins be hanged. She was executed on June 17. There
aren’t any records of Deputy Governor Bellingham’s participation or whereabouts
in the prosecution and execution of his sister. But he was certainly available
to brutally accost the first Quaker missionaries who came to New
England a year later.
What did Mary Lee and Ann Hibbins
have in common?
For a case of an innocent witch executed for "surfing" on an English river, click HERE.1. They were both widows without the protection of a husband, though Hibbins should have had the assistance of her powerful brother.2. They were accused of being witches by superstitious people. They were both interrogated, and strip-searched for witch marks. Mrs. Lee was subjected to physical agony and sleep deprivation to make her confess. Mrs. Hibbins may have escaped the worst of the physical ordeals—but we don’t know for sure.3. The leaders of their time (Captain Bosworth of the Charity; ministers and magistrates of Boston) seemed more worried about what people thought of them, than their own integrity and stance for justice, against the false accusations and executions of innocent women.4. They were both caught up in a culture of Puritan zeal. Mrs. Lee was leaving the wreckage of an England nearly destroyed by civil war and its aftermath. Mrs. Hibbins lived in a fanatical theocracy that was financially and politically unstable. The General Court under Governor Endecott’s rule had a regular habit of accusing and brutally punishing before they invented and passed a law for the “crime.”
Sources: Virginia Carolorum: the Colony Under the Rule of Charles the First,
by Edward Duffield Neill (pub 1886, out of copyright), Massachusetts Archives; History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
by Thomas Hutchinson
Christy K Robinson is the author of two (five-star-reviewed)
historical novels and one nonfiction book centered on the mid-17th-century
Great Migration from England
to New England, the books spotlighting the
Quaker martyr Mary Barrett Dyer. Christy’s books may be found at her Dyer blog,
http://marybarrettdyer.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html