Kate, as she was known, had been in that tormented state since the end of April. Without warning and for no apparent reason she would suddenly collapse into agonized convulsions, crying out that she was pinched and pricked by invisible creatures, weeping and moaning in helpless terror. At other times she would sink into a paralyzed trance, stiff as a board and completely senseless. She told her master and mistress that during these fits she saw cats that sometimes transformed into women before her eyes and then changed back into animal form. It was these creatures that attacked her, she said.
Supernatural forces were constantly at work in the world. Sudden losses or mishaps might well be judgments from God, sent to chastise sinners and encourage moral reformation. But sometimes these misfortunes turned out to be the handiwork of someone closer to hand with much less exalted intentions, a malign neighbor using dark cunning to torment and even destroy—witchcraft might be to blame.
[Daniel Wescot] wanted the witches responsible for his household's afflictions punished and he wanted to be rid of them. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” That was, after all, God's Word.
It was on the following day that Kate first named one of the women afflicting her: Goody Clawson. This revelation came as no surprise to the Wescots. Elizabeth Clawson, a woman in her early sixties, had lived in Stamford with her husband Stephen ever since their marriage in 1655. Goody Clawson was suspected by many of having occult powers and of using them against her enemies. She was no friend of the Wescots. The Wescots had quarreled with Goody Clawson almost a decade before over the weight of some flax that she had supplied to them.
"Goody Miller, hold up your arm higher that the black dog may suck you better. Now I'm sure you are a witch for you've got a long teat under your arm." Both David and Abraham had heard that witches fed demonic spirits in the form of animals—just as mothers fed their infant children, except that witches used a third nipple hidden somewhere on their bodies and nourished the familiars with blood, not milk.
Yet how best to protect the town? Mister Selleck was well aware that allegations of witchcraft could multiply rapidly and plunge entire communities into crisis. […] Selleck also knew that trying to prove an invisible crime in court was not easy. […] Religious doctrine and the legal code invited accusations of witchcraft, yet court officials were often much less impressed by the evidence presented in such cases than were the accusers and their supporters. Ministers, magistrates, and ordinary townsfolk agreed that witches posed a real and serious threat, but agreeing on how to prove witchcraft in a court of law was quite another matter.
According to the clergy, witches had no occult power of their own; demons acted on their behalf, taking on the appearance of the witches for whom they acted. Most people assumed that a specter's appearance matched the identity of the witch who wanted to harm the victim. But might specters appear as innocent people so as to incriminate harmless and virtuous individuals?
Other neighbors, however, portrayed Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough as argumentative and vindictive. Following the arrest of the two women, a wave of Stamford and Compo residents came forward to relate quarrels with one or the other which had been followed by mysterious illness or misfortune. […] Both women reacted to the allegations against them in ways that seemed to incriminate them further.
"About two years past," confided Goody Newman, "I also had a difference with Goody Clawson and angry words passed between us. The next day we had three sheep die suddenly. When we opened them up we couldn't find anything amiss to explain their deaths. Some of our neighbors told us then they thought the creatures were bewitched.”
That emphasis on community support created intense pressure. When requests for help were denied and when neighbors argued, resentments and recriminations often lingered. People knew that conflict threatened to undermine the values on which their community was built: discord was, as the Reverend Bishop often reminded them, an opening to the Devil, who was always looking for ways to poison the well of God's vineyard.
As officials gathered evidence, […] there emerged a long history of suspicion and resentment surrounding the two women. Katherine Branch's allegations against Mercy Disborough and Elizabeth Clawson were clearly part of a larger story. But how would the special court react to such testimony? Would these magistrates prove any more reliable than those who presided over witchcraft cases in the past? Surely the overwhelming volume of evidence against the two women would force the court to act decisively. […] Such, at least, were the hopes of those who believed the accused to be guilty as charged.
Several women […] who had cared for Elizabeth Clawson during childbirth came forward […] to testify that she had a physical abnormality, perhaps a Devil's mark. […] The court of inquiry had appointed a group of women, "faithfully sworn, narrowly and truly to inspect and search her body.” […] These women reported "with one voice" that "they found nothing save a wart on one of her arms." They also searched Mercy Disborough's body that same day and did find "a teat or something like one in her privy parts, at least an inch long, which is not common in other women, and for which they could give no natural reason."
On 2 June both women were bound hand and foot and then thrown into the water. According to those present, Elizabeth Clawson bobbed up and down like a cork and when they tried to push her down she immediately buoyed up again. Mercy Disborough also failed to sink. If the test was trustworthy, both women were guilty. But William Jones knew from his reading that this technique, though practiced for centuries, was now extremely controversial. […] Since the Bible made no mention of any such technique having been ordained by God, ducking must be an invention of the Devil.
Even as most trials ended in acquittal, ordinary folk continued to focus on witchcraft as a practical menace, not as a spiritual betrayal. They may have been motivated partly by stubborn resistance to pressure from the courts, or they may not have understood fully why so many trials were failing to result in conviction. But whatever the reasons, when New Englanders talked about witchcraft, most of them did so in terms of the practical threat that it posed: it seemed at such times that ordinary folk cared not a whit about the Devil, only about their dead sheep.
Katherine Branch claimed that the Devil had appeared to her "in the shape of three women, Goody Clawson, Goody Miller, and Goody Disborough." [….] Many people had heard Kate relate what she saw during her fits, yet she was the sole source for all that information and the law required that there be two independent witnesses for each incriminating incident. In any case, the information Kate gave was highly suspect: a significant number of Stamford residents doubted that the young woman's fits were genuine; and even if she was seeing specters, how could anyone be sure that the Devil was not misleading her?
The sticking point was the need for clear proof of the Devil's involvement since hardly any of the depositions mentioned dealings between Elizabeth Clawson or Mercy Disborough and "the grand enemy of God." The witnesses focused on who had a motive to inflict occult harm on the victims, not how the harm was inflicted or whether the Devil was involved. That made for a perplexing situation.
The ministers did not reject the possibility that Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough were witches, but they did repudiate the evidence before the court as a sound basis for conviction. Their advice would provide an important reinforcement as Mister Jones and his fellow magistrates urged caution upon the jury.
Mercy Disborough was alive and free, but were her troubles over? A decade earlier a woman in Massachusetts had been acquitted of witchcraft. But a year or so later neighbors suspected her of striking again when an elderly man in the town fell ill. One night a group of young men visited the woman: they dragged her outside, hanged her from a tree until she seemed to be gasping her last breath, then cut her down, rolled her in the snow, and buried her in it, leaving her for dead. Amazingly, she survived, though barely. The law was only one way of dealing with a witch...
To settle on a particular interpretation of Kate's behavior strikes me as problematic, not only because of the lack of evidence but also because people at the time were clearly uncertain and divided as to whether Kate was bewitched and if her allegations against specific women could be trusted. That uncertainty was a key component of the situation and has to be retained if we are going to understand just how perplexing Kate's ordeal was for those around her.
The supernatural realm, [The Puritans] believed, could intrude upon their lives at any time. Any extraordinary event that seemed to interrupt the natural order—comets and eclipses, dramatic fires and epidemics, deformed births and inexplicable crop failures, dreams and visions—carried supernatural significance. Some were sent by God, others by Satan. According to the world view embraced by most New Englanders, God and the Devil were constantly at work in their day-to-day lives, testing and tempting, rewarding and punishing as each son and daughter of Adam and Eve deserved.
Women known for their magical skills were much more likely than men to be accused of witchcraft. The power wielded by cunning folk was potentially dangerous whether in the hands of a man or a woman, but it seemed especially threatening if possessed by a woman because it contradicted gender norms that placed women in subordinate positions.
Women whose circumstances or behavior seemed to disrupt social norms and hierarchies could easily […] become branded as the Servants of Satan. […] Women who seemed unduly aggressive and contentious or who failed to display deference toward men in positions of authority—women, in other words, like Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough—were also more likely to be accused. Both Clawson and Disborough […] fit the age profile of most accused witches: Goody Clawson was sixty-one and Goody Disborough was fifty-two. Both were also confident and determined, ready to express their opinions and to stand their ground when crossed. Such conduct seemed to many New Englanders utterly inappropriate in women.
Personal interactions and influence were central to the experience of early New Englanders. It therefore made good sense to account for misfortune or suffering in personal terms (just as it should not surprise us that modern Americans inhabiting an often anonymous world, seemingly captive to faceless institutions, should sometimes blame impersonal forces like "the federal government" for their problems). Witchcraft explained personal problems in terms of personal interactions. A particular neighbor had quarreled with you and was now taking revenge for a perceived injury by bewitching you.
The impulse to find a scapegoat in times of trouble and to demonize those whom we dislike and fear remains very much alive. Jews and other ethnoreligious groups, communists and capitalists, feminists and homosexuals, liberals and conservatives, religious fundamentalists—each group has figured in the minds of its enemies as an evil and alien force that threatens to corrode and destroy. A periodic need for witch hunts would appear to be one of the more resilient as well as one of the least admirable human instincts.
