“The Deputies, on perusal of the Acts of the Honored Court of Assistants, relating to the woman condemned for witchcraft, do not understand the reason why the sentence, given against her by said Court, is not executed:  and the second reprieval seems to us beyond what the law will allow, and do therefore judge meet to declare ourselves against it, with reference to the concurrence of the honored magistrates hereto.

     WILLIAM TORREY, Clerk.”

The action of the magistrates, on this reference, is recorded as follows:—­

     “3d of November, 1680.—­Not consented to by magistrates.

     EDWARD RAWSON, Secretary.”

The evidence against Mrs. Morse was frivolous to the last degree, without any of the force and effect given to support the prosecutions in Salem, twelve years afterwards, by the astounding confessions of the accused, and the splendid acting of the “afflicted children;” yet she was tried and condemned in Boston, and sentenced there on “Lecture-day.”  The representatives of the people, in the House of Deputies, cried out against her reprieve.  She was saved by the courage and wisdom of Governor Bradstreet, subsequently a resident of Salem, where his ashes rest.  He was living here, at the age of ninety years, during the witchcraft prosecutions in 1692; but, old as he was, he made known his entire disapprobation of them.  It is safe to say, that, if he had not been superseded by the arrival of Sir William Phipps as governor under the new charter, they would never have taken place.  Notwithstanding all this,—­in spite of the remonstrances, at the time, of Brattle, and afterwards of Hutchinson,—­Boston and other towns (earlier, if not equally, committed to such proceedings) have, by a sort of general conspiracy, joined the rest of the world in trying to throw and fasten the whole responsibility and disgrace of witchcraft prosecutions upon Salem.

Things continued in the condition just described,—­Mrs. Morse in jail under sentence of death; that sentence suspended by reprieves from the Governor, from time to time, until the next year, when her husband, in her behalf and in her name, presented an earnest and touching petition “to the honored Governor, Deputy-governor, Magistrates, and Deputies now assembled in Court, May the 18th, 1681,” that her case might be concluded, one way or another.  After referring to her condemnation, and to her attestation of innocence, she says, “By the mercy of God, and the goodness of the honored Governor, I am reprieved.”  She begs the Court to “hearken to her cry, a poor prisoner.”  She places herself at the foot of the tribunal of the General Court:  “I now stand humbly praying your justice in hearing my case, and to determine therein as the Lord shall direct.  I do not understand law, nor do I know how to lay my case before you as I ought; for want of which I humbly beg of your honors that my request may not be rejected.”  The House of Deputies, on