John Higginson sums it up best:—­“They proceeded in their integrity with a zeal of God against sin, according to their best light and law and evidence.” “But there is a question,” he wisely adds, “whether some of the laws, customs, and privileges used by judges and juries in England, which were followed as patterns here, were not insufficient.”  Cotton Mather also declared that he observed in judges and juries a conscientious endeavor to do the thing which was right, and gives a long list of the legal authorities whom they consulted; observing, finally, that the fact of fifty confessions was, after all, the one irresistible vindication of their strong measures.

It must have been so.  Common sense and humanity might have refuted every other evidence than that of the victims themselves.  But what were the authorities to do, when, in addition to all legal and Scriptural precedents, the prisoners insisted on entering a plea of guilty?  When Goody E——­ testified that she and two others rode from Andover to a witch-meeting on a broomstick, and the stick broke and she fell and was still lame from it,—­when her daughter testified that she rode on the same stick, and confirmed all the details of the casualty,—­when the grand-daughter confirmed them also, and added, that she rode on another stick, and they all signed Satan’s book together,—­when W. B——­, aged forty, testified that Satan assembled a hundred fine blades near Salem Meeting-House, and the trumpet sounded, and bread and wine were carried round, and Satan was like a black sheep, and wished them to destroy the minister’s house, (by thunder probably,) and set up his kingdom, and “then all would be well,”—­when one woman summoned her three children and some neighbors and a sister and a domestic, who all testified that she was a witch and so were they all,—­what could be done for such prisoners by judge or jury, in an age which held witchcraft a certainty?  It was only the rapid rate of increase which finally stopped the convictions.

One thing is certain, that this strange delusion, a semi-comedy to us,—­though part of the phenomena may find their solution in laws not yet unfolded,—­was the sternest of tragedies to those who lived in it.  Conceive, for an instant, of believing in the visible presence and labors of the arch-fiend in a peaceful community.  Yet from the bottom of their souls these strong men held to it, and they waged a hand-to-hand fight with Satan all their days.  Very inconveniently the opponent sometimes dealt his blows, withal.  Surely it could not be a pleasant thing to a sound divine, just launched upon his seventeen-headed discourse, to have a girl with wild eyes and her hair about her ears start up and exclaim, “Parson, your text is too long,”—­or worse yet, “Parson, your sermon is too long,”—­or most embarrassing of all, “There’s a great yellow bird sitting on the parson’s hat in the pulpit.”  But these formidable interruptions veritably happened, and received the stern discipline in such cases made and provided.