Powell was accordingly brought before the Court at Ipswich, March 30, 1680, under an indictment for witchcraft.  Before giving the substance of the evidence adduced on this occasion, it will be well to mention the manner in which he got into the case as a principal.  He was a mate of a vessel.  While at home, between voyages, he happened to hear of the wonderful occurrences at Mr. Morse’s house.  His curiosity was awakened, and he was also actuated by feelings of commiseration for the family under the torments and terrors with which they were said to be afflicted.  Determined to see what it all meant, and to put a stop to it if he could, he went to the house, and soon became satisfied that a roguish grandchild was the cause of all the trouble.  He prevailed upon the old grandparents to let him take off the boy.  Immediately upon his removal, the difficulty ceased.

New-England navigators, at that time and long afterwards, sailed almost wholly by the stars; and Powell probably had often related his own skill, which, as mate of a vessel, he would have been likely to acquire, in calculating his position, rate of sailing, and distances, on the boundless and trackless ocean, by his knowledge and observations of the heavenly bodies.  He had said, perhaps, that, by gazing among the stars, he could, at any hour of the night, however long or far he had been tossed and driven on the ocean, tell exactly where his vessel was.  Hence the charge of being an astrologist.  Probably, like other sailors, Powell may have indulged in “long yarns” to the country people, of the wonders he had seen, “some in one country, and some in another.”  It is not unlikely, that, in foreign ports, he had witnessed exhibitions of necromancy and mesmerism, which, in various forms and under different names, have always been practised.  Possibly he may have boasted to be a medium himself, a scholar and adept in the mystic art, able to read and divine “the workings of spirits.”  At any rate, when it became known, that, at a glance, he attributed to the boy the cause of the mischief, and that it ceased on his taking him away from the house, the opinion became settled that he was a wizard.  He was arrested forthwith, and brought to trial, as has been stated, for witchcraft.  His astronomy, astrology, and spiritualism brought him in peril of his life.

“THE TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM MORSE:  which saith, together with his wife, aged both about sixty-five years:  that, Thursday night, being the twenty-seventh day of November, we heard a great noise without, round the house, of knocking the boards of the house, and, as we conceived, throwing of stones against the house.  Whereupon myself and wife looked out and saw nobody, and the boy all this time with us; but we had stones and sticks thrown at us, that we were forced to retire into the house again.  Afterwards we went to bed, and the boy with us; and then the like noise was upon the roof of the house.