the 24th of May, voted to give her a new trial.  But the magistrates refused to concur in the vote; and so the matter stood, for how long a time there are, I believe, no means of knowing.  Finally, however, she was released from prison, and allowed to return to her own house.  This we learn from a publication made by Mr. Hale, of Beverly, in 1697.  It seems, that, after getting her out of prison and restored to her home, to use Mr. Hale’s words, “her husband, who was esteemed a sincere and understanding Christian by those that knew him, desired some neighbor ministers, of whom I was one, to discourse his wife, which we did; and her discourse was very Christian, and still pleaded her innocence as to that which was laid to her charge.”  From Mr. Hale’s language, it may be inferred that she had not been pardoned or discharged, but still lay under sentence of death, after her removal to her own house:  for he and his brethren did not “esteem it prudence to pass any definite sentence upon one under her circumstances;” but they ventured to say that they were “inclined to the more charitable side.”  Mr. Hale states, that, “in her last sickness, she was in much trouble and darkness of spirit, which occasioned a judicious friend to examine her strictly, whether she had been guilty of witchcraft; but she said no, but the ground of her trouble was some impatient and passionate speeches and actions of hers while in prison, upon the account of her suffering wrongfully, whereby she had provoked the Lord by putting contempt upon his Word.  And, in fine, she sought her pardon and comfort from God in Christ; and died, so far as I understand, praying to and relying upon God in Christ for salvation.”

The cases of Margaret Jones, Ann Hibbins, and Elizabeth Morse illustrate strikingly and fully the history and condition of the public mind in New England, and the world over, in reference to witchcraft in the seventeenth century.  They show that there was nothing unprecedented, unusual, or eminently shocking, after all, in what I am about to relate as occurring in Salem, in 1692.  The only real offence proved upon Margaret Jones was that she was a successful practitioner of medicine, using only simple remedies.  Ann Hibbins was the victim of the slanderous gossip of a prejudiced neighborhood; all our actual knowledge of her being her Will, which proves that she was a person of much more than ordinary dignity of mind, which was kept unruffled and serene in the bitterest trials and most outrageous wrongs which it is possible for folly and “man’s inhumanity to man” to bring upon us in this life.  Elizabeth Morse appears to have been one of the best of Christian women.  The accusations against them, as a whole, cover nearly the whole ground upon which the subsequent prosecutions in Salem rested.  John Winthrop passed sentence upon Margaret Jones, John Endicott upon Ann Hibbins, and Simon Bradstreet upon Elizabeth Morse.  The last-named governor performed the office as an