unavoidable act of official duty, and prevented the execution of the sentence by the courageous use of his prerogative, in defiance of public clamor and the wrath of the representatives of the whole people of the colony.  These facts sufficiently show, that the proceedings afterwards had in Salem accorded with those in like cases, of that and preceding generations; and were sanctioned by the all but universal sentiments of mankind and a uniform chain of precedents.

The trial of Bridget Bishop, in 1680, before the County Court at Salem, for witchcraft, and her acquittal, have already been mentioned in the account of Salem Village, in the First Part.

In 1688, an Irish woman, named Glover, was executed in Boston for bewitching four children belonging to the family of a Mr. Goodwin.  She was a Roman Catholic, represented to have been quite an ignorant person, and seems, moreover, from the accounts given of her, to have been crazy.  The oldest of the children was only about thirteen years of age.  The most experienced physicians pronounced them bewitched.  Their conduct, as it is related by Cotton Mather, was indeed very extraordinary.  At one time they would bark like dogs, and then again they would purr like cats.  “Yea,” says he, “they would fly like geese, and be carried with an incredible swiftness, having but just their toes now and then upon the ground, sometimes not once in twenty feet, and their arms waved like the wings of a bird.”

One of the children seems to have had a genius scarcely inferior to that of Master Burke himself:  there was no part nor passion she could not enact.  She would complain that the old Irish woman had tied an invisible noose round her neck, and was choking her; and her complexion and features would instantly assume the various hues and violent distortions natural to a person in such a predicament.  She would declare that an invisible chain was fastened to one of her limbs, and would limp about precisely as though it were really the case.  She would say that she was in an oven; the perspiration would drop from her face, and she would exhibit every appearance of being roasted:  then she would cry out that cold water was thrown upon her, and her whole frame would shiver and shake.  She pretended that the evil spirit came to her in the shape of an invisible horse; and she would canter, gallop, trot, and amble round the rooms and entries in such admirable imitation, that an observer could hardly believe that a horse was not beneath her, and bearing her about.  She would go up stairs with exactly such a toss and bound as a person on horseback would exhibit.