of indictment found against her by the jury of life and death.  The Governor, in open Court, pronounced sentence accordingly; declaring she was to go from the bar to the place from whence she came, and from thence to the place of execution, and there to hang till she was dead.

“It is ordered, that warrant shall issue out from the secretary to the marshal general, for the execution of Mrs. Hibbins, on the fifth day next come fortnight, presently after the lecture at Boston, being the 19th of June next; the marshal general taking with him a sufficient guard.”

Mrs. Hibbins is stated to have been a sister of Richard Bellingham, at that very time deputy-governor, and always regarded as one of the chief men in the country.  Strange to say, very little notice appears to have been taken of this event, beyond the immediate locality; but what little has come down to us indicates that it was a case of outrageous folly and barbarity, justly reflecting infamy upon the community at the time.  Hutchinson, who wrote a hundred years after the event, and evidently had no other foundation for his opinion than vague conjectural tradition, gives the following explanation of the proceedings against her:  “Losses, in the latter part of her husband’s life, had reduced his estate, and increased the natural crabbedness of his wife’s temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome, and brought her under church censures, and at length rendered her so odious to her neighbors as to cause some of them to accuse her of witchcraft.”

While this is hardly worthy of being considered a sufficient explanation of the matter,—­it being beyond belief, that, even at that time, a person could be condemned and executed merely on account of a “crabbed temper,”—­it is not consistent with the facts, as made known to us from the record-offices.  She could not have been so reduced in circumstances as to produce such extraordinary effects upon her character, for she left a good estate.  The truth is, that the tongue of slander was let loose upon her, and the calumnies circulated by reckless gossip became so magnified and exaggerated, and assumed such proportions, as enabled her vilifiers to bring her under the censure of the church, and that emboldened them to cry out against her as a witch.  Hutchinson expresses the opinion that she was the victim of popular clamor.  But that alone, without some pretence or show of evidence, could not have brought the General Court, in reversal of the judgment of the magistrates, to condemn to death a person of such a high social position.