church, that our Sister Nurse should be excommunicated, she being convicted of witchcraft by the Court, and she was accordingly excommunicated, since which the General Court having taken off the attainder, and the testimony on which she was convicted being not now so satisfactory to ourselves and others as it was generally in that hour of darkness and temptation; and we being solicited by her son, Mr. Samuel Nurse, to erase and blot out of the church records the sentence of her excommunication,—­this church, having the matter proposed to them by the teacher, and having seriously considered it, doth consent that the record of our Sister Nurse’s excommunication be accordingly erased and blotted out, that it may no longer be a reproach to her memory, and an occasion of grief to her children.  Humbly requesting that the merciful God would pardon whatsoever sin, error, or mistake was in the application of that censure and of that whole affair, through our merciful High-priest, who knoweth how to have compassion on the ignorant, and those that are out of the way.

“2.  It was proposed whether the sentence of excommunication against our Brother Giles Corey (all things considered) may not be erased and blotted out.  The result was, That whereas, on Sept. 18, 1692, it was considered by the church, that our Brother Giles Corey stood accused of and indicted for the sin of witchcraft, and that he had obstinately refused to plead, and so threw himself on certain death.  It was agreed by the vote of the church, that he should be excommunicated for it; and accordingly he was excommunicated.  Yet the church, having now testimony in his behalf, that, before his death, he did bitterly repent of his obstinate refusal to plead in defence of his life, do consent that the sentence of his excommunication be erased and blotted out.”

It will be noticed that these proceedings were not had at a regular public meeting, but at a private meeting of the church, on a week-day afternoon, at the teacher’s house.  The motives that led to them were a disposition to comply with the act of the General Court, and the solicitations of Mr. Samuel Nurse, rather than a profound sense of wrong done to a venerable member of their own body, who had claims upon their protection as such.  The language of the record does not frankly admit absolutely that there was sin, error, or mistake, but requests forgiveness for whatsoever there may have been.  The character of Rebecca Nurse, and the outrageous treatment she had received from that church, in the method arranged for her excommunication, demanded something more than these hypothetical expressions, with such a preamble.

The statement made in the vote about Corey is, on its face, a misrepresentation.  From the nature of the proceeding by which he was destroyed, it was in his power, at any moment, if he “repented of his obstinate refusal to plead,” by saying so, to be instantly released from the pressure that was crushing him.  The only design of the torture was to make him bring it to an end by “answering” guilty, or not guilty.  Somebody fabricated the slander that Corey’s resolution broke down under his agonies, and that he bitterly repented; and Mr. Noyes put the foolish scandal upon the records of the church.