a forced search,” the witchmarks, particularly “a teat, as fresh if it had been newly sucked.”  Other ridiculous allegations were made against her.  As for the effects of the touch, it is obvious that they could be easily simulated by evil-disposed persons.  The whole substance of her offence seems to have been, that she was very successful in the use of simple prescriptions for the cure of diseases.  Her practice was charged as “against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.”  A bitter animosity was, accordingly, raised against her.  She treated her accusers and defamers with indignant resentment.  “Her behavior at her trial,” says Winthrop, “was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, &c.; and, in the like distemper, she died.”  We shall find that the bold assertion of innocence, and indignant denunciations of the persecutors and defamers who had destroyed their reputations and pursued them to the death, by persons tried and executed for witchcraft, in 1692, were regarded by some, as they were by Winthrop, as proofs of ill-temper and falsehood.  The Governor closes his statement about Margaret Jones, by relating what he regarded as a demonstration of her guilt:  “The same day and hour she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, &c.”  The records of the General Court contain no express notice of this case.  Perhaps it is referred to in the following paragraph, under date of May 13, 1648:—­

“This Court, being desirous that the same course which hath been taken in England for the discovery of witches, by watching, may also be taken here, with the witch now in question, and therefore do order that a strict watch be set about her every night, and that her husband be confined to a private room, and watched also.”

Margaret Jones was executed in Boston on the 15th of June.  Hutchinson refers to the statement made by Johnson, in the “Wonder-working Providence,” that “more than one or two in Springfield, in 1645, were suspected of witchcraft; that much diligence was used, both for the finding them and for the Lord’s assisting them against their witchery; yet have they, as is supposed, bewitched not a few persons, among whom two of the reverend elder’s children.”  Johnson’s loose and immethodical narrative covers the period from 1645 till toward the end of 1651; and Hutchinson was probably misled in supposing that the Springfield cases occurred as early as 1645.  The Massachusetts colonial records, under the date of May 8, 1651, have this entry:—­

“The Court, understanding that Mary Parsons, now in prison, accused for a witch, is likely, through weakness, to die before trial, if it be deferred, do order, that, on the morrow, by eight o’clock in the morning, she be brought before and tried by the General Court, the rather that Mr. Pinchon may be present to give his testimony in the case.”

Mr. Pinchon was probably able to stay a few days longer.  She was not brought to trial before the Court until the 13th, under which date is the following:—­