The wrongs committed were so remediless, the outrages upon right, character, and life, had been so shocking, that it was expecting too much from the ordinary standard of humanity to demand a general oblivion.  On the other hand, so many had been responsible for them, and their promoters embraced such a great majority of all the leading classes of society, that it was impossible to call them to account.  Dr. Bentley describes the condition of the community, in some brief and pregnant sentences, characteristic of his peculiar style:  “As soon as the judges ceased to condemn, the people ceased to accuse....  Terror at the violence and guilt of the proceedings succeeded instantly to the conviction of blind zeal; and what every man had encouraged all professed to abhor.  Few dared to blame other men, because few were innocent.  The guilt and the shame became the portion of the country, while Salem had the infamy of being the place of the transactions....  After the public mind became quiet, few things were done to disturb it.  But a diminished population, the injury done to religion, and the distress of the aggrieved, were seen and felt with the greatest sorrow....  Every place was the subject of some direful tale.  Fear haunted every street.  Melancholy dwelt in silence in every place, after the sun retired.  Business could not, for some time, recover its former channels; and the innocent suffered with the guilty.”

While the subject was felt to be too dark and awful to be spoken of, and most men desired to bury it in silence, occasionally the slumbering fires would rekindle, and the flames of animosity burst forth.  The recollection of the part he had acted, and the feelings of many towards him in consequence, rendered the situation of the sheriff often quite unpleasant; and the resentment of some broke out in a shameful demonstration at his death, which occurred early in 1697.  Mr. English, representing that class who had suffered under his official hands in 1692, having a business demand upon him, in the shape of a suit for debt, stood ready to seize his body after it was prepared for interment, and prevented the funeral at the time.  The body was temporarily deposited on the sheriff’s own premises.  There were, it is probable, from time to time, other less noticeable occurrences manifesting the long continued existence of the unhappy state of feeling engendered in 1692.  There were really two parties in the community, generally both quiescent, but sometimes coming into open collision; the one exasperated by the wrongs they and their friends had suffered, the other determined not to allow those who had acted in conducting the prosecutions to be called to account for what they had done.  After the lapse of thirty years, and long subsequent to the death of Mr. Noyes, Mr. English was prosecuted for having said that Mr. Noyes had murdered Rebecca Nurse and John Procter.