"Dear child," she said, "it is not so;
there is another judgment, dear child:" and presently they de-
nounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side [April
18th].
there is another judgment, dear child:" and presently they de-
nounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side [April
18th].
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 to v20 - Phi to Qui
10985 (#197) ##########################################
THOMAS PAINE
10985
proud antiquity, like a skeleton in rags, parades the streets of
other nations, their genius, as if sickened and disgusted with the
phantom, comes hither for recovery.
The present enlarged and improved state of things gives every
encouragement which the editor of a new magazine can reason-
ably hope for. The failure of former ones cannot be drawn as
a parallel now. Change of times adds propriety to new meas-
ures. In the early days of colonization, when a whisper was
almost sufficient to have negotiated all our internal concerns, the
publishing even of a newspaper would have been premature.
Those times are past; and population has established both their
use and their credit. But their plan, being almost wholly de-
voted to news and commerce, affords but a scanty residence to
the Muses. Their path lies wide of the field of science, and has
left a rich and unexplored region for new adventures.
It has always been the opinion of the learned and curious,
that a magazine, when properly conducted, is the nursery of
genius; and by constantly accumulating new matter, becomes a
kind of market for wit and utility. The opportunities which it
affords to men of abilities to communicate their studies, kindle
up a spirit of invention and emulation. An unexercised genius
soon contracts a kind of mossiness, which not only checks its
growth, but abates its natural vigor. Like an untenanted house
it falls into decay, and frequently ruins the possessor.
There is nothing which obtains so general an influence over
the manners and morals of a people as the press; from that, as
from a fountain, the streams of vice or virtue are poured forth
over a country: and of all publications, none are more calculated
to improve or infect than a periodical one. All others have
their rise and their exit; but this renews the pursuit. If it has
an evil tendency, it debauches by the power of repetition; if
a good one, it obtains favor by the gracefulness of soliciting it.
Like a lover, it woos its mistress with unabated ardor, nor gives
up the pursuit without a conquest.
The two capital supports of a magazine are Utility and En-
tertainment: the first is a boundless path, the other an endless
spring. To suppose that arts and sciences are exhausted sub-
jects, is doing them a kind of dishonor. The divine mechanism
of creation reproves such folly, and shows us by comparison the
imperfection of our most refined inventions. I cannot believe
that this species of vanity is peculiar to the present age only. I
## p. 10986 (#198) ##########################################
10986
THOMAS PAINE
have no doubt but that it existed before the Flood, and even
in the wildest ages of antiquity. 'Tis folly we have inherited,
not created; and the discoveries which every day produces have
greatly contributed to dispossess us of it. Improvement and
the world will expire together; and till that period arrives, we
may plunder the mine, but can never exhaust it! That "We have
found out everything," has been the motto of every age. Let
our ideas travel a little into antiquity, and we shall find larger
portions of it than now; and so unwilling were our ancestors to
descend from this mountain of perfection, that when any new
discovery exceeded the common standard the discoverer was be-
lieved to be in alliance with the Devil. It was not the ignorance
of the age only, but the vanity of it, which rendered it dangerous
to be ingenious. The man who first planned and erected a ten-
able hut, with a hole for the smoke to pass and the light to
enter, was perhaps called an able architect; but he who first
improved it with a chimney could be no less than a prodigy: yet
had the same man been so unfortunate as to have embellished it
with glass windows, he might probably have been burnt for a
magician. Our fancies would be highly diverted could we look
back and behold a circle of original Indians haranguing on the
sublime perfection of the age; yet 'tis not impossible but future
times may exceed us almost as much as we have exceeded them.
I would wish to extirpate the least remains of this impolitic
vanity. It has a direct tendency to unbrace the nerves of inven-
tion, and is peculiarly hurtful to young colonies. A magazine
can never want matter in America, if the inhabitants will do
justice to their own abilities. Agriculture and manufactures owe
much of their improvement in England to hints first thrown out
in some of their magazines. Gentlemen whose abilities enabled
them to make experiments, frequently chose that method of com-
munication on account of its convenience. And why should not
the same spirit operate in America? I have no doubt of seeing,
in a little time, an American magazine full of more useful mat-
ter than I ever saw an English one: because we are not exceeded
in abilities, have a more extensive field for inquiry; and whatever
may be our political state, our happiness will always depend upon
ourselves.
Something useful will always arise from exercising the in-
vention, though perhaps, like the witch of Endor, we shall raise
up a being we did not expect. We owe many of our noblest
## p. 10987 (#199) ##########################################
THOMAS PAINE
10987
discoveries more to accident than wisdom. In quest of a pebble
we have found a diamond, and returned enriched with the treas-
ure.
Such happy accidents give additional encouragement to the
making experiments; and the convenience which a magazine
affords of collecting and conveying them to the public, enhances
their utility. Where this opportunity is wanting, many little in-
ventions, the forerunners of improvement, are suffered to expire
on the spot that produced them; and as an elegant writer beauti-
fully expresses on another occasion, they "waste their sweetness
on the desert air. "
In matters of humor and entertainment there can be no reason
to apprehend a deficiency. Wit is naturally a volunteer, delights
in action, and under proper discipline is capable of great exe-
cution. 'Tis a perfect master in the art of bush-fighting; and
though it attacks with more subtilty than science, has often
defeated a whole regiment of heavy artillery. Though I have
rather exceeded the line of gravity in this description of wit, I
am unwilling to dismiss it without being a little more serious.
'Tis a qualification which, like the passions, has a natural wild-
ness that requires governing. Left to itself, it soon overflows
its banks, mixes with common filth, and brings disrepute on the
fountain. We have many valuable springs of it in America,
which at present run purer streams than the generality of it in
other countries. In France and Italy, 'tis froth highly fomented.
In England it has much of the same spirit, but rather a browner
complexion. European wit is one of the worst articles we can
import. It has an intoxicating power with it, which debauches.
the very vitals of chastity, and gives a false coloring to every.
thing it censures or defends. We soon grow fatigued with the
excess, and withdraw like gluttons sickened with intemperance.
On the contrary, how happily are the sallies of innocent humor
calculated to amuse and sweeten the vacancy of business! We
enjoy the harmless luxury without surfeiting, and strengthen the
spirits by relaxing them.
I consider a magazine as a kind of beehive, which both
allures the swarm and provides room to store their sweets. Its
division into cells gives every bee a province of his own; and
though they all produce honey, yet perhaps they differ in their
taste for flowers, and extract with greater dexterity from one
than from another. Thus we are not all Philosophers, all Artists,
nor all Poets.
## p. 10988 (#200) ##########################################
10988
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
(1796-1881)
N THE preface to the fourth volume of his 'History of New
England,' John Gorham Palfrey sets forth his conception of
the significance of the work upon which he is engaged.
"The history of New England," he writes, "is considered to be dry and
unpicturesque. But by peculiar titles it deserves, beyond the record of dynas-
tic intrigues and wars, to be known to the philosophical student of man and
society, of Divine Providence, and of the progress of the race. In more stir-
ring narratives one may read of the conflicts of furious human passions, of
the baseness of men in high degree, of revo-
lutions due to thing worthy and issuing in
nothing profitable. In the colonial history of
New England, we follow the strenuous action
of intelligent and honest men in building up a
free, strong, enlightened, and happy State. With
sagacity, promptitude, patience, and constancy,
they hold their ground from age to age. Each
generation trains the next in the lessons of lib-
erty, and advances it to further attainments;
and when the time comes for the result of the
modest process to be disclosed, behold the estab-
lishment of the political independence of America,
and the boundless spread of principles which are
working for good in the politics of the world. »
JOHN G. PALFREY
Mr. Palfrey's New England ancestry must
have influenced him not a little in forming this estimate of the im-
portance of New England's development in the economy of interna-
tional affairs. He himself was of a prominent Massachusetts family;
his blood was rich in traditions of honor and godliness; he was an
outgrowth of the soil upon which many generations had fought for
the maintenance of high principles. His grandfather, Colonel William
Palfrey, had been a paymaster-general in the Revolutionary army.
Later he was appointed by the young Republic consul-general to
France, but the vessel on which he sailed was lost at sea. John
Gorham Palfrey was born at Boston in 1796. He graduated from
Harvard in 1815, and in 1818 he accepted the charge of the Brattle
Street Unitarian Church in his native city. The ministry was not
## p. 10989 (#201) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10989
altogether congenial to him, and he entered gradually into other
fields of activity. From 1831 to 1839 he held the Dexter professor-
ship of Sacred Literature at Harvard; and from 1836 to 1843 he
edited the North American Review. Towards the close of his editor-
ship he was drawn into politics, or rather into the dignified and
wholly worthy political life possible to a New England gentleman
fifty years ago. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature
in 1842; from 1844 to 1847 he was Secretary of State. The anti-
slavery movement was attaining strength in the East during these
years: Ir. Palfrey, who was a strong abolitionist, contributed a series
of articles to the Boston Whig on the 'Progress of the Slave Power. '
In 1847 he was sent to Congress as an anti-slavery Whig. Subse-
quently he was defeated in an election for the governorship of Mas-
sachusetts. After this defeat he devoted himself exclusively to his
literary labors, taking office only once again, when from 1861 to 1866
he held the postmastership of Boston. He died at Cambridge in
1881.
Among Mr. Palfrey's minor works are his biography of his grand-
father in Jared Sparks's 'Dictionary of American Biography'; his
lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, and his 'Evi-
dences of Christianity. ' His chief claim to distinction as a man of
letters is founded, however, upon his 'History of New England. '
The first three volumes of this important and significant work con-
tain the record of New England's development under the Stuart
dynasty. The fourth and fifth volumes bring the narrative to the
year 1765.
Mr. Palfrey's merits as a historian are chiefly those of scholar-
ship. He has drawn freely upon a large number of sources for the
material of his work, and he has made organic use of this material.
His historical record; while lacking in dramatic and humanistic ele-
ments, is remarkable for its clarity and dignity. It is written with
the candor and sympathy of one who has become the spiritual heir
to the fruits of the struggles which he describes. Through his schol-
arship, and through his catholic view of the significance of history,
he is entitled to high rank among American historians.
## p. 10990 (#202) ##########################################
10990
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
SALEM WITCHCRAFT
From A Compendious History of New England.
Gorham Palfrey; 1883, by John Carver Palfrey.
of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers.
Copyright 1873, by John
Reprinted by permission
He found
A
YET worse trouble confronted the new Governor.
a part of the people whom he was to rule in a state of
distress and consternation, by reason of certain terrible
manifestations during the last few weeks before his coming, at-
tributed by them to the agency of the Devil, and of wicked men,
women, and children, whom he had confederated with himself,
and was using as his instruments.
The people of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, like
all other Christian people at that time and later, at least,
with extremely rare individual exceptions,-believed in the real-
ity of a hideous crime called witchcraft. They thought they had
Scripture for that belief, and they knew they had law for it,
explicit and abundant; and with them law and Scripture were
absolute authorities for the regulation of opinion and of conduct.
In a few instances, witches were believed to have appeared
in the earlier years of New England. But the cases had been
sporadic. The first instance of an execution for witchcraft is said
to have occurred in Connecticut, soon after the settlement [1647,
May 30th]; but the circumstances are not known, and the fact
has been doubted. A year later, one Margaret Jones, of Charles-
town in Massachusetts, and it has been said, two other women
in Dorchester and Cambridge, were convicted and executed for
the goblin crime. These cases appear to have excited no more
attention than would have been given to the commission of any
other felony, and no judicial record of them survives. A case
much more observed was that of Mrs. Ann Hibbins, the widow
of an immigrant of special distinction. He had been agent for
the colony in England, and one of the Assistants. He had lost
his property, and the melancholy and ill-temper to which his dis-
appointed wife gave way appear to have exposed her to miscon-
structions and hatred; in the sequel of which she was convicted.
as a witch, and after some opposition on the part of the magis-
trates was hanged [1656, June].
With three or four exceptions,- for the evidence respecting
the asserted sufferers at Dorchester and Cambridge is imperfect,
no person appears to have been punished for witchcraft in
## p. 10991 (#203) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10991
Massachusetts, nor convicted of it, for more than sixty years.
after the settlement, though there had been three or four trials
of other persons suspected of the crime. At the time when the
question respecting the colonial charter was rapidly approaching
an issue, and the public mind was in feverish agitation, the min-
isters sent out a paper of proposals for collecting facts concern-
ing witchcraft [1681, May]. This brought out a work from
President Mather entitled 'Illustrious Providences,' in which that
influential person related numerous stories of the performances of
persons leagued with the Devil [1684, January 31st].
The imagination of his restless young son was stimulated, and
circumstances fed the flame. In the last year of the government
of Andros [1688], a daughter, thirteen years old, of John Good-
win,- a mason living at the South End of Boston,-had a quar-
rel with an Irish washerwoman about some missing clothes. The
woman's mother took it up, and scolded provokingly. Thereupon
the wicked child, profiting, as it seems, by what she had been
hearing and reading on the mysterious subject, "cried out upon
her," as the phrase was, as a witch, and proceeded to act the
part understood to be fit for a bewitched person; in which be-
havior she was presently joined by three others of the circle, one
of them only four or five years old. Now they would lose their
hearing, now their sight, now their speech; and sometimes all
three faculties at once. They mewed like kittens; they barked
like dogs. They could read fluently in Quaker books, in the
'Oxford Jests,' and in the Book of Common Prayer'; but not in
the 'Westminster Catechism,' nor in John Cotton's 'Milk for
Babes. ' Cotton Mather prayed with one of them; but she lost
her hearing, he says, when he began, and recovered it as soon
as he finished. Four Boston ministers and one of Charlestown
held a meeting, and passed a day in fasting and prayer, by which
exorcism the youngest imp was "delivered. " The poor woman,
crazed with all this pother, if in her right mind before, and
defending herself unskillfully in her foreign gibberish and with
the volubility of her race, was interpreted as making some con-
fession. A gossiping witness testified that six years before, she
had heard another woman say that she had seen the accused
come down a chimney. She was required to repeat the Lord's
Prayer in English,- an approved test; but being a Catholic, she
had never learned it in that language. She could recite it, after
a fashion, in Latin; but she was no scholar, and made some
---
## p. 10992 (#204) ##########################################
10992
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
mistakes. The helpless wretch was convicted and sent to the
gallows.
Cotton Mather took the oldest "afflicted" girl to his house,
where she dexterously played upon his self-conceit to stimulate
his credulity. She satisfied him that Satan regarded him as his
most terrible enemy, and avoided him with especial awe. When
he prayed or read in the Bible, she was seized with convulsion
fits. When he called to family devotion, she would whistle, and
sing, and scream, and pretend to try to strike and kick him; but
her blows would be stopped before reaching his body, indicating
that he was unassailable by the Evil One. Mather published an
account of these transactions, with a collection of other appro-
priate matter. The treatise circulated not only in Massachusetts,
but widely also in England, where it obtained the warm com-
mendation of Richard Baxter; and it may be supposed to have
had an important effect in producing the more disastrous delusion.
which followed three years after. The Goodwin children soon
got well in other words, they were tired of their atrocious fool-
ery; and the death of their victim gave them a pretense for a
return to decent behavior.
Mr. Samuel Parris was minister of a church in a part of
Salem which was then called Salem Village, and which now as
a separate town is known by the name of Danvers. He was a
man of talents, and of repute for professional endowments, but
avaricious and wrong-headed. Among his parishioners, at the
time of his settlement and afterwards, there had been angry dis-
putes about the election of a minister, which had never been
composed. Neighbors and relations were embittered against each
other. Elizabeth Parris, the minister's daughter, was now nine
years old. A niece of his, eleven years old, lived in his family.
His neighbor, Thomas Putnam, the parish clerk, had a daughter
named Ann, twelve years of age. These children, with a few
other young women, of whom two were as old as twenty years
or thereabouts, had become possessed with a wild curiosity about
the sorceries of which they had been hearing and reading, and
used to hold meetings for study, if it may be so called, and
practice. They learned to go through motions similar to those
which had lately made the Goodwin children so famous. They
forced their limbs into grotesque postures, uttered unnatural out-
cries, were seized with cramps and spasms, became incapable of
speech and of motion. By-and-by they interrupted public worship.
## p. 10993 (#205) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10993
Abigail Williams, Parris's niece, called aloud in church to the
minister to "stand up and name his text. " Ann Putnam cried
out, "There is a yellow bird sitting on the minister's hat, as it
hangs on the pin in the pulpit. " The families were distressed.
The neighbors were alarmed. The physicians were perplexed
and baffled, and at length declared that nothing short of witch-
craft was the trouble.
The families of the "afflicted children" assembled for fasting
and prayer. Then the neighboring ministers were sent for, and
held at Mr. Parris's house a prayer-meeting which lasted through
the day. The children performed in their presence, and the
result was a confirmation by the ministers of the opinion of the
doctors. Of course the next inquiry was by whom the manifest
witchcraft was exercised. It was presumed that the unhappy
girls could give the answer. For a time they refused to do so.
But at length, yielding to an importunity which it had become
difficult to escape unless by an avowal of their fraud, they pro-
nounced the names of Good, Osborn, and Tituba.
Tituba-half Indian, half negro-was a servant of Mr. Par-
ris, brought by him from the West India Islands or the Spanish
Main, where he had formerly been a merchant. Sarah Good was
an old woman, miserably poor. Sarah Osborn had been prosper-
ous in early life. She had been married twice, and her second
husband was still living, but separated from her. Her reputation
was not good, and for some time she had been bedridden, and
in a disturbed nervous state. In the meeting-house of Salem.
village [March 1st], with great solemnity, and in the presence of
a vast crowd, the three accused persons were arraigned before
John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, of Salem, members of the
Colonial Council. The "afflicted children" were confronted with
them; prayer was made; and the examination proceeded with a
questioning of Sarah Good, the other prisoners being for the
time withdrawn.
When Good declared that she was falsely accused, Hathorne
"desired the children all of them to look at her;
and so
they all did; . . . and presently they were all tormented. ”
The prisoner was made to touch them, and then their torment
ceased; the received doctrine being that by this contact the Sa-
tanic influence which had been emitted from the witch was drawn
back into her. Similar proceedings were had with the other two
prisoners. Tituba, whether in collusion with her young mistress,
XIX-688
## p. 10994 (#206) ##########################################
10994
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
or as was afterwards said, in consequence of having been scourged
by Mr. Parris, confessed herself to be a witch, and charged Good
and Osborn with being her accomplices. The evidence was then
thought unexceptionable, and the three were committed to jail
for trial.
Martha Corey and Rebecca Nourse were next cried out
against. Both were church-members of excellent character; the
latter seventy years of age. They were examined by the same
magistrates, and sent to prison [March 21st- March 24th], and
with them a child of Sarah Good, only four or five years old,
also charged with diabolical practices. Mr. Parris preached upon
the text,
"Hav not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a
devil? " Sarah Cloyse, understanding the allusion to be to Nourse,
who was her sister, went out of church, and was accordingly
cried out upon, examined, and committed. Elizabeth Procter was
another person charged. The Deputy-Governor and five magis-
trates came to Salem for the examination of the two prisoners
last named [April 11th]. Procter appealed to one of the children
who was accusing her.
"Dear child," she said, "it is not so;
there is another judgment, dear child:" and presently they de-
nounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side [April
18th]. A week afterwards, warrants were issued for the appre-
hension of four other suspected persons; and a few days later
[April 30th] for three others, one of whom, Philip English, was
the principal merchant of Salem. On the same day, on the in-
formation of one of the possessed girls, an order was sent to
Maine for the arrest of George Burroughs, formerly a candidate
for the ministry at Salem Village, and now minister of Wells.
The witness said that Burroughs, besides being a wizard, had
killed his first two wives, and other persons whose ghosts has
appeared to her and denounced him.
Charges now came in rapidly. George Jacobs, an old man,
and his granddaughter, were sent to prison [May 10th]. "You
tax me for a wizard," said he to the magistrates: "you may as
well tax me for a buzzard; I have done no harm. " They tried
him with repeating the Lord's Prayer, which it was thought
impossible for a witch to do. According to Parris's record, "he
missed in several parts of it. " His accusers persisted. "Well,
burn me or hang me," said he, "I will stand in the truth of
Christ; I know nothing of the matter, any more than the child
that was born to-night. " Among others, John Willard was now
## p. 10995 (#207) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10995
apprehended. As a constable he had served in the arrest and
custody of some of the reputed witches. But he came to see the
absurdity of the thing, and was said to have uttered something
to the effect that it was the magistrates that were bewitched,
and those who cheered them on. Willard was forthwith cried
out against as a wizard, and committed for trial [May 18th].
Affairs were in this condition when the King's Governor
arrived [May 14th]. About a hundred alleged witches were now
in jail, awaiting trial. Their case was one of the first matters
to which his attention was called. Without authority for so.
doing,- for by the charter which he represented, the establish-
ment of judicial courts was a function of the General Court,— he
proceeded to institute a special commission of Oyer and Ter-
miner, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was the
hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners
applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act
[June 2d] was to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation.
twenty years old, and retracted by its author on his death-bed,
had been revived. The court sentenced her to die by hanging,
and she was accordingly hanged at the end of eight days. Cot-
ton Mather, in his account of the proceedings, relates that as
she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had given a
look towards the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and
immediately a dæmon, invisibly entering the house, tore down
a part of it. " It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had
given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on col-
lected for so extraordinary a spectacle.
At the end of another four weeks the court sat again [June
30th], and sentenced five women, two of Salem, and one each of
Amesbury, Ipswich, and Topsfield, all of whom were executed,
protesting their innocence [July 19th]. In respect to one of them,
Rebecca Nourse, a matron eminent for piety and goodness, a ver-
dict of acquittal was first rendered. But Stoughton sent the jury
out again, reminding them that in her examination, in reference
to certain witnesses against her who had confessed their own guilt,
she had used the expression, "they came among us. " Nourse
was deaf, and did not catch what had been going on. When
it was afterwards repeated to her, she said that by the coming
among us she meant that they had been in prison together. But
the jury adopted the court's interpretation of the words as sig-
nifying an acknowledgment that they had met at a witch orgy.
## p. 10996 (#208) ##########################################
10996
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
The Governor was disposed to grant her a pardon. But Parris,
who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered and prevailed.
On the last communion day before her execution, she was taken
into church, and formally excommunicated by Noyes, her min-
ister.
Of six persons tried at the next session of the court [August
5th], the Reverend George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard
College, was one. At a certain point of the proceedings the
young people pretending to have suffered from him stood mute.
Stoughton asked who hindered them from telling their story.
"The Devil, I suppose," said Burroughs. "Why should the Devil
be so careful to suppress evidence against you? " retorted the
judge, and with the jury this encounter of wits told hardly
against the prisoner [August 19th]. His behavior at his execu-
tion strongly impressed the spectators in his favor. "When he
was upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his
innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to
the admiration of all present. His prayer (which he concluded
by repeating the Lord's Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered.
with such composedness, and such (at least, seeming) fervency of
spirit as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that
it seemed to many the spectators would hinder the execution.
Cotton Mather, who was present on horseback, made them a
quieting harangue. The accusers said the Black Man stood and
dictated to him. "
In the course of the next month, in which the Governor left
Boston for a short tour of inspection in the Eastern country,
fifteen persons-six women in one day, and on another eight
women and one man were tried, convicted, and sentenced.
Eight of them were hanged [September 9th, September 17th,
September 22d, September 19th]. The brave Giles Corey, eighty
years of age, being arraigned, refused to plead. He said that the
whole thing was an imposture, and that it was of no use to put
himself on his trial, for every trial had ended in a conviction,—
which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that, suffering the
penalty of the English common law for a contumacious refusal
to answer, the peine forte et dure,-he was pressed to death.
with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he in-
tended to protect the inheritance of his children, which, as he
had been informed, would by a conviction of felony have been
forfeit to the crown.
-
—
## p. 10997 (#209) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10997
In the following month [October] the malady broke out in
another neighborhood. One Ballard, of the town of Andover,
whose wife was ill in a way that perplexed their medical friend,
sent to Salem to see what light could be obtained from the witch-
detectors there. A party of them came to his help, and went
to work with vigor. More than fifty persons at Andover fell
under accusation, some of the weaker minded of whom were
brought to confess themselves guilty not only of afflicting their
neighbors, but of practicing such exercises as riding on animals
and on sticks through the air.
There were no executions, however, after those which have
been mentioned as occurring on one day of each of four suc
cessive months. There had been twenty human victims, Corey
included; besides two dogs, their accomplices in the mysterious
crime. Fifty persons had obtained a pardon by confessing; a
hundred and fifty were in prison awaiting trial; and charges had
been made against two hundred more. The accusers were now
flying at high quarries. Hezekiah Usher, known to the reader as
an ancient magistrate of fair consideration, was complained of;
and Mrs. Thacher, mother-in-law of Corwin, the justice who had
taken the earliest examinations. Zeal in pushing forward the
prosecutions began to seem dangerous; for what was to prevent
an accused person from securing himself by confession, and then
revenging himself on the accuser by arraigning him as a former
ally?
Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister of Beverly who had been
active in the prosecutions, and Dudley Bradstreet of Andover,
the old Governor's son, who had granted warrants for the com-
mitment of some thirty or forty alleged witches, were now
accused. The famous name of John Allyn, Secretary of Con-
necticut, was uttered in whispers. There had even begun to
be a muttering about Lady Phips, the Governor's wife; and Mr.
Willard, then minister of the Old South Church in Boston, and
afterwards head of the College, who, after yielding to the infat-
uation in its earliest stage, had made himself obnoxious and
suspected by partially retracing his steps. People began now to
be almost as wild with the fear of being charged with witchcraft,
or having the charge made against their friends, as they had
been with the fear of suffering from its spells. The visitation,
shocking as it had been, had been local. It had been almost
confined to some towns of Essex County. In other parts of the
## p. 10998 (#210) ##########################################
10998
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
province the public mind was calmer, or was turned in the dif-
ferent direction of disgust at the insane tragedies, and dread of
their repetition. A person in Boston, whose name had begun to
be used dangerously by the informers at Andover, instituted an
action for defamation, laying his damages at a thousand pounds;
a measure which, while it would probably have been ruinous to
him had he made a mistake in choosing his time, was now found,
at the turning of the tide, to have a wholesome effect.
After the convictions which were last mentioned, the Com-
mission Court which had conducted the trials adjourned for two
months. Thanks to the good sense of the people, it never met
again. Before the time designated for its next session, the Gen-
eral Court of the Province assembled, and the cry of the op-
pressed and miserable came to their ear. The General Court
superseded the Court of Special Commission, the agent of all the
cruelty, by constituting a regular tribunal of supreme jurisdiction
[November 25th]. When that court met at the appointed time,
reason had begun to resume her sway; and the grand jury at
once threw out more than half of the presentments [1693, Janu-
ary 3d]. They found true bills against twenty-six persons. The
evidence against these was as good as any that had proved fatal
in former trials; but only three of the arraigned were found
guilty, and all these were pardoned. One of them may have
owed her conviction to a sort of rude justice: she had before con-
fessed herself a witch, and charged her husband, who was hanged
on her information. Stoughton, who had been made Chief Just-
ice, showed his disapprobation of the pardons by withdrawing
from the bench with passionate anger [February 21st]. Phips
wrote to the Lords of Trade a disingenuous letter, in which he
attempted to divert from himself, chiefly at Stoughton's expense,
whatever blame might be attached to the recent transactions; it
even appeared to imply, what was contrary to the fact, that the
executions did not begin till after his departure from Boston to
the Eastern country.
The drunken fever-fit was now over, and with returning so-
briety came profound contrition and disgust. A few still held
out against the return of reason.
There are some men who
never own that they have been in the
who are forever incapable of seeing it.
dog stubbornness, that might in other times have made him a
St. Dominic, continued to insist that the business had been all
wrong, and a few men
Stoughton, with his bull-
## p. 10999 (#211) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10999
right, and that the only mistake was in putting a stop to it.
Cotton Mather was always infallible in his own eyes. In the
year after the executions he had the satisfaction of studying an-
other remarkable case of possession in Boston; but when it and
the treatise which he wrote upon it failed to excite much atten-
tion, and it was plain that the tide had set the other way, he
soon got his consent to let it run at its own pleasure, and turned
his excursive activity to other objects. Saltonstall, horrified by
the rigor of his colleagues, had resigned his place in the com-
mission at an early period of the operations. When reason re-
turned, Parris, the Salem minister, was driven from his place by
the calm and decent, but irreconcilable, indignation of his parish-
ioners. Noyes, his well-intentioned but infatuated neighbor in
the First Parish, devoting the remainder of his life to peaceful
and Christian service, caused his church to cancel by a formal
and public act [1712] their excommunication of the blameless
Mrs. Nourse, who had died his peculiar victim.
Members of some of the juries, in a written public declara-
tion, acknowledged the fault of their wrongful verdicts, entreated
forgiveness, and protested that, "according to their present minds,
they would none of them do such things again, on such grounds,
for the whole world; praying that this act of theirs might be
accepted in way of satisfaction for their offense. " A day of Gen-
eral Fasting was proclaimed by authority, to be observed through.
out the jurisdiction, in which the people were invited to pray
that "whatever mistakes on either hand had been fallen into,
either by the body of this people, or by any orders of men,
referring to the late tragedy raised among us by Satan and his
instruments, through the awful judgment of God, he would hum-
ble them therefor, and pardon all the errors of his servants and
people. " On that day [1696, January 14th] Judge Sewall rose in
his pew in the Old South Church in Boston, handed to the desk
a paper acknowledging and bewailing his great offense, and ask-
ing the prayers of the congregation "that the Divine displeasure
thereof might be stayed against the country, his family, and him-
self," and remained standing while it was read by the minister.
To the end of his long life, the penitent and much-respected
man kept every year a private day of humiliation and prayer
on the same account. Twenty-eight years after, he prays in
an entry in his diary in reference to the transaction, "The good
and gracious God be pleased to save New England, and me and
## p. 11000 (#212) ##########################################
1. 000
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
my family! " Ann Putnam, one of the three beginners of the mis-
chief, after thirteen years, came out of the long conflict between
her conscience and her shame, with a most affecting declaration
of her remorse and grief, now on record in the books of the
Danvers church. Twenty years after, the General Court made
grants to the heirs of the sufferers, in acknowledgment of their
pecuniary losses. "Some of them [the witch accusers] proved
profligate persons," says Governor Hutchinson, "abandoned to all
vice; others passed their days in obscurity and contempt. "
## p. 11001 (#213) ##########################################
I1001
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
(1826-1888)
STRANGE personality, inviting a strange life, a career of curi-
ous and indeed of highly romantic interest, yet of imperfect
fruitfulness. such is the summary of Palgrave's individu-
ality, and of his sixty-two busy years of work and wandering. An
assortment of mysteries, intangible and confused, hung about him
while he lived. His death did not answer many significant and open
personal questions. Scholar, poet, soldier, missionary-priest, traveler,
lecturer, learned Orientalist and linguist, Arabian explorer, doctor, spy,
secret agent, diplomatist,-Palgrave was all these; and in them all
the real Palgrave appeared, to friend or
to foe, chiefly in fragmentary and uncertain
aspects.
The second son of Sir Francis Palgrave,
the English historical writer and antiqua-
rian, William Gifford Palgrave was born in
Westminster, January 24th, 1826. He dis-
tinguished himself in belles-lettres as a
Charterhouse schoolboy, and graduated from
Trinity College, Oxford, when only twenty,
after an exceptionally short University resi-
dence. The East had already much at-
tracted him. Rejecting high opportunities WILLIAM G. PALGRAVE
of distinction opening to him in England
through his father's powerful influences, he entered the Indian serv-
ice as a lieutenant in the Eighth Bombay Regiment. His superior
education, his firmness of mind, and his temperamental adaptation
for Eastern military life, insured his advance in the service; but
here again Palgrave's tendency to turn from anything like commit-
ting himself in a given direction, and working out his material wel-
fare in commonplace method, seem to have affected his future. His
head was already full of Oriental literature; and it is said that not
a little merely through his study of such a work as 'Antar,' he felt
he must meet the less familiar life and less accessible peoples of the
East on another than military footing,- one far more intimate. He
had, too, at this time strong religious convictions and aspirations.
He entered the Roman Catholic Church, became a Jesuit in Madras,
and was ordained a priest.
## p. 11002 (#214) ##########################################
I 1002
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
For the next fifteen years Palgrave was an extremely hard-worked
Jesuit missioner in Southern India. In June 1853 he went to Rome.
There he met with distinguished attention, though in an unobtrusive
- in fact, almost a clandestine way. It may be said that he was
early a complete master of half a dozen European tongues, in addi-
tion to as many of the languages or dialects of the East. He learned
a language with something like preternatural quickness; though he
forgot one quite as suddenly, as soon as not needed in his affairs.
In the autumn of the year that had found him in Rome, he was sent
to Syria, and conducted most successfully some valuable missionary
undertakings at Zahleh. He was a born proselytist. Syria and the
Syrians, Arabia and the Arabians, became an open book to him.
With the persecution of the Maronite Christians from the Druses, the
Maronites were anxious that he should be their actual leader in the
war. This, however, he declined to do, although he bestirred him-
self actively, quite as far as any priest could becomingly go, in the
task of the practical military instruction of the dismayed Maronites.
The massacre of June 1861 nearly cost him his life; in fact, he just
escaped. His Syrian mission now interrupted, he became an Occi-
dental again. He revisited Europe; lectured in Great Britain on the
Syrian massacres, and was requested by Napoleon III. of France to
furnish authoritative data as to them. This he did with much suc-
cess, meeting with a most cordial personal interest on the Emperor's
part.
―
So perfectly could Palgrave assume the Oriental,—especially the
Arab, Syrian, or Levantine,—so complete had become his knowledge
of the races of the East and of shades of Eastern character and reli-
gion, that in 1862, after his return to Syria, he undertook one of the
most dangerous and adventurous tests of his genius for acting in
character. Mohammedanism he had by heart. He was able to be
a Mussulman among Mussulmans. He knew every shade of Islamic
orthodoxy and Islamic heterodoxy; and he could quote the higgling
commentators on the Koran as literally as he could cite the Most
Perspicuous Book itself. The French government felt special interest
at this time in learning definite particulars of the attitude toward
France of Central Arabia proper, with its group of little known cen-
tral tribes, and isolated towns and peoples; and France also wished
to ascertain how far the finer Arabian blood stock could be procured
for bettering the breed of French horses. At the same time Palgrave
himself was desirous of determining whether Central Arabia offered
a real and safe field for Catholic mission work. The district he was
asked to traverse and to study on these errands included that por-
tion of Arabia most out of touch with all European sounding; and
more of a difficulty than that, it was one savagely fanatical in its
## p. 11003 (#215) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11003
Mohammedan orthodoxy. It was a territory in which no European
traveler would be tolerated. To visit it invited death. Palgrave
accordingly began and completed his tour in disguise. He penetrated
to Hofhuf, Raïd, and to other centres of Mohammedan and Wahabee
religiosity, as a traveling Syrian physician. He nearly came to grief
two or three times; but by his assurance and his perfect familiarity
with his surroundings, he escaped more than some troublesome and
passing suspicions. He even gained the actual favor of the most
exclusive authorities of the Peninsula; and pursuing his explorations,
drew his various conclusions with complete success, and returned with
his head on his shoulders, to write one of the most fascinating rec-
ords of Arabian wanderings ever penned - his 'Narrative of a Year's
Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia' (1865).
No sooner was one task of travel ended than Palgrave was ready
for a new one. An Abyssinian journey occupied the summer of
1865, when he was commissioned to obtain the release of Mr. Cam-
eron, the consul, and of other English captives, from the clutches of
King Theodore. He remained in Egypt, under government instruc-
tions, till 1866; and then after a short visit to England he became
the British consular representative at Soukhoum Kalé. Many years
of government service, travel, and exploration followed, including
wanderings (frequently in disguise) through Asia Minor, the Euphrates
country, Anatolia, and Persia. He continued his consular duties by
accepting posts in Manila and Bangkok, and also studied Farther
India assiduously while residing in it. Finally the current of his
interests and official appointments set westerly; and after consular
services in the West Indies and Uruguay, he died at Montevideo in
September 1888. During the latter portion of his life he became
sufficiently interested in Shintoism to lapse from his Christian belief;
but before his death he repudiated what had been but an imperfect
apostasy, and received the last sacraments of the church of his
youth and middle age. His remains were brought with affectionate
care from the Uruguay city where he passed away. He is buried in
Fulham.
So far as Palgrave's mind and work, and especially his exquisite
knowledge of Eastern life and peoples, have a literary representation,
we find it in the 'Narrative' of his risky expedition through Central
Arabia; and not less clearly in one bit of fiction of astonishing brill-
iancy, sincerity, and vividness. This last is 'Hermann Agha. ' It is
to all intents a love story, withal a short and sad one. The material
in this tale, wholly Oriental, and modern-Oriental as well, is slight.
There is little between its covers, when we compare the slender
book with the elaborate romances of less authoritative but more pre-
tentious tale-tellers in Orientalism. But it is a transcript from the
## p. 11004 (#216) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11004
passionate heart and the fatalistic soul of the East. The directness
and emotional intensity of the story hold the reader under an irre-
sistible spell from beginning to end. It has been said, on one or
another authority, that in 'Hermann Agha' Palgrave ventured (dis-
guised to the last) to embody a considerable autobiographic element,
and reminiscences that were quite personal to himself. This can
scarcely be clear to the uninitiated reader of 'Hermann Agha'; but
hardly a character or passage in the tale reads like the creation of a
novelist's mere fancy, however sensitive or robust.
THE NIGHT RIDE IN THE DESERT
From Hermann Agha'
[Hermann Agha, the narrator and hero of Palgrave's dramatic love story of
Arabia, has learned that his affianced wife Zahra is being carried away into
a distant part of the desert country by the Emeer Daghfel, who has the con-
sent of Zahra's parents to a marriage with the young girl. Hermann, his
friends Moharib, Aman, and Modarrib, and others, make up a small troop
and hurry to overtake the bridal train. The following admirable descriptive
episode is part of the chapter setting forth their romantic pursuit. ]
WⓇ
E ALL left the garden together; there was plenty of occupa-
tion for every one in getting himself, his horse, his weap-
ons, and his traveling-gear, ready for the night and the
morrow. Our gathering-place was behind a dense palm grove
that cut us off from the view and observation of the village;
there our comrades arrived, one after another, all fully equipped,
till the whole band of twelve had reassembled. The cry of the
night prayers, proclaimed from the mosque roof, had long died
away into silence; the last doubtful streak of sunset faded from
the west, accompanied by the thin white crescent of the young
moon; night still cloudless, and studded with innumerable stars,
depth over depth, reigned alone. Without a word we set forth
into what seemed the trackless expanse of desert, our faces be-
tween west and south,-the direction across which the Emeer
Daghfel and his caravan were expected to pass.
More than ever did the caution now manifested by my com-
panions, who were better versed than myself in adventures of the
kind, impress me with a sense, not precisely of the danger, but
of the seriousness of the undertaking. Two of the Benoo-Riah,
Harith and Modarrib, — whom the tacit consent of the rest
designated for that duty, took the advance as scouts, riding far
-
## p. 11005 (#217) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11005
out ahead into the darkness, sometimes on the right, sometimes
on the left, in order that timely notice might be given to the
rest of us should any chance meeting or suspicious obstacle occur
on the way. A third, Ja'ad es-Sabāsib himself, acted, as beseemed.
his name, for guide; he rode immediately in front of our main
body. The rest of us held close together, at a brisk walking
pace, from which we seldom allowed our beasts to vary; indeed,
the horses themselves, trained to the work, seemed to comprehend
the necessity of cautiousness, and stepped on warily and noise-
lessly.
Every man in the band was dressed alike. Though I re-
tained, I had carefully concealed my pistols; the litham disguised
my foreign features, and to any superficial observer, especially
at night, I was merely a Bedouin of the tribe, with my sword at
my side, and my lance couched, Benoo-Riah fashion, alongside of
my horse's right ear. Not a single word was uttered by any one
of the band, as following Ja'ad's guidance—who knew every inch
of the ground, to my eyes utterly unmeaning and undistinguish-
able- we glided over the dry plain. At another time I might
perhaps have been inclined to ask questions; but now the near-
ness of expectation left no room for speech. Besides, I had been
long enough among the men of the desert to have learnt from
them their habit of invariable silence when journeying by night.
Talkative at other times, they then become absolutely mute. Nor
is this silence of theirs merely a precaution due to the insecur-
ity of the road, which renders it unadvisable for the wayfarer to
give any superfluous token of his presence: it is quite as much
the result of a powerful, though it may well be most often an
unconscious, sympathy with the silence of nature around.
Silent overhead, the bright stars, moving on, moving upwards
from the east, constellation after constellation, the Twins and the
Pleiads, Aldebaran and Orion, the Spread and the Perching Eagle,
the Balance, the once worshiped Dog Star, and beautiful Canopus.
I look at them till they waver before my fixed gaze; and look-
ing, calculate by their position how many hours of our long
night march have already gone by, and how many yet remain
before daybreak: till the spaces between them show preternatur-
ally dark; and on the horizon below, a false eye-begotten shim-
mer gives a delusive semblance of dawn, then vanishes.
Silent: not the silence of voices alone, but the silence of
meaning change, dead midnight. The Wolf's Tail has not yet.
THOMAS PAINE
10985
proud antiquity, like a skeleton in rags, parades the streets of
other nations, their genius, as if sickened and disgusted with the
phantom, comes hither for recovery.
The present enlarged and improved state of things gives every
encouragement which the editor of a new magazine can reason-
ably hope for. The failure of former ones cannot be drawn as
a parallel now. Change of times adds propriety to new meas-
ures. In the early days of colonization, when a whisper was
almost sufficient to have negotiated all our internal concerns, the
publishing even of a newspaper would have been premature.
Those times are past; and population has established both their
use and their credit. But their plan, being almost wholly de-
voted to news and commerce, affords but a scanty residence to
the Muses. Their path lies wide of the field of science, and has
left a rich and unexplored region for new adventures.
It has always been the opinion of the learned and curious,
that a magazine, when properly conducted, is the nursery of
genius; and by constantly accumulating new matter, becomes a
kind of market for wit and utility. The opportunities which it
affords to men of abilities to communicate their studies, kindle
up a spirit of invention and emulation. An unexercised genius
soon contracts a kind of mossiness, which not only checks its
growth, but abates its natural vigor. Like an untenanted house
it falls into decay, and frequently ruins the possessor.
There is nothing which obtains so general an influence over
the manners and morals of a people as the press; from that, as
from a fountain, the streams of vice or virtue are poured forth
over a country: and of all publications, none are more calculated
to improve or infect than a periodical one. All others have
their rise and their exit; but this renews the pursuit. If it has
an evil tendency, it debauches by the power of repetition; if
a good one, it obtains favor by the gracefulness of soliciting it.
Like a lover, it woos its mistress with unabated ardor, nor gives
up the pursuit without a conquest.
The two capital supports of a magazine are Utility and En-
tertainment: the first is a boundless path, the other an endless
spring. To suppose that arts and sciences are exhausted sub-
jects, is doing them a kind of dishonor. The divine mechanism
of creation reproves such folly, and shows us by comparison the
imperfection of our most refined inventions. I cannot believe
that this species of vanity is peculiar to the present age only. I
## p. 10986 (#198) ##########################################
10986
THOMAS PAINE
have no doubt but that it existed before the Flood, and even
in the wildest ages of antiquity. 'Tis folly we have inherited,
not created; and the discoveries which every day produces have
greatly contributed to dispossess us of it. Improvement and
the world will expire together; and till that period arrives, we
may plunder the mine, but can never exhaust it! That "We have
found out everything," has been the motto of every age. Let
our ideas travel a little into antiquity, and we shall find larger
portions of it than now; and so unwilling were our ancestors to
descend from this mountain of perfection, that when any new
discovery exceeded the common standard the discoverer was be-
lieved to be in alliance with the Devil. It was not the ignorance
of the age only, but the vanity of it, which rendered it dangerous
to be ingenious. The man who first planned and erected a ten-
able hut, with a hole for the smoke to pass and the light to
enter, was perhaps called an able architect; but he who first
improved it with a chimney could be no less than a prodigy: yet
had the same man been so unfortunate as to have embellished it
with glass windows, he might probably have been burnt for a
magician. Our fancies would be highly diverted could we look
back and behold a circle of original Indians haranguing on the
sublime perfection of the age; yet 'tis not impossible but future
times may exceed us almost as much as we have exceeded them.
I would wish to extirpate the least remains of this impolitic
vanity. It has a direct tendency to unbrace the nerves of inven-
tion, and is peculiarly hurtful to young colonies. A magazine
can never want matter in America, if the inhabitants will do
justice to their own abilities. Agriculture and manufactures owe
much of their improvement in England to hints first thrown out
in some of their magazines. Gentlemen whose abilities enabled
them to make experiments, frequently chose that method of com-
munication on account of its convenience. And why should not
the same spirit operate in America? I have no doubt of seeing,
in a little time, an American magazine full of more useful mat-
ter than I ever saw an English one: because we are not exceeded
in abilities, have a more extensive field for inquiry; and whatever
may be our political state, our happiness will always depend upon
ourselves.
Something useful will always arise from exercising the in-
vention, though perhaps, like the witch of Endor, we shall raise
up a being we did not expect. We owe many of our noblest
## p. 10987 (#199) ##########################################
THOMAS PAINE
10987
discoveries more to accident than wisdom. In quest of a pebble
we have found a diamond, and returned enriched with the treas-
ure.
Such happy accidents give additional encouragement to the
making experiments; and the convenience which a magazine
affords of collecting and conveying them to the public, enhances
their utility. Where this opportunity is wanting, many little in-
ventions, the forerunners of improvement, are suffered to expire
on the spot that produced them; and as an elegant writer beauti-
fully expresses on another occasion, they "waste their sweetness
on the desert air. "
In matters of humor and entertainment there can be no reason
to apprehend a deficiency. Wit is naturally a volunteer, delights
in action, and under proper discipline is capable of great exe-
cution. 'Tis a perfect master in the art of bush-fighting; and
though it attacks with more subtilty than science, has often
defeated a whole regiment of heavy artillery. Though I have
rather exceeded the line of gravity in this description of wit, I
am unwilling to dismiss it without being a little more serious.
'Tis a qualification which, like the passions, has a natural wild-
ness that requires governing. Left to itself, it soon overflows
its banks, mixes with common filth, and brings disrepute on the
fountain. We have many valuable springs of it in America,
which at present run purer streams than the generality of it in
other countries. In France and Italy, 'tis froth highly fomented.
In England it has much of the same spirit, but rather a browner
complexion. European wit is one of the worst articles we can
import. It has an intoxicating power with it, which debauches.
the very vitals of chastity, and gives a false coloring to every.
thing it censures or defends. We soon grow fatigued with the
excess, and withdraw like gluttons sickened with intemperance.
On the contrary, how happily are the sallies of innocent humor
calculated to amuse and sweeten the vacancy of business! We
enjoy the harmless luxury without surfeiting, and strengthen the
spirits by relaxing them.
I consider a magazine as a kind of beehive, which both
allures the swarm and provides room to store their sweets. Its
division into cells gives every bee a province of his own; and
though they all produce honey, yet perhaps they differ in their
taste for flowers, and extract with greater dexterity from one
than from another. Thus we are not all Philosophers, all Artists,
nor all Poets.
## p. 10988 (#200) ##########################################
10988
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
(1796-1881)
N THE preface to the fourth volume of his 'History of New
England,' John Gorham Palfrey sets forth his conception of
the significance of the work upon which he is engaged.
"The history of New England," he writes, "is considered to be dry and
unpicturesque. But by peculiar titles it deserves, beyond the record of dynas-
tic intrigues and wars, to be known to the philosophical student of man and
society, of Divine Providence, and of the progress of the race. In more stir-
ring narratives one may read of the conflicts of furious human passions, of
the baseness of men in high degree, of revo-
lutions due to thing worthy and issuing in
nothing profitable. In the colonial history of
New England, we follow the strenuous action
of intelligent and honest men in building up a
free, strong, enlightened, and happy State. With
sagacity, promptitude, patience, and constancy,
they hold their ground from age to age. Each
generation trains the next in the lessons of lib-
erty, and advances it to further attainments;
and when the time comes for the result of the
modest process to be disclosed, behold the estab-
lishment of the political independence of America,
and the boundless spread of principles which are
working for good in the politics of the world. »
JOHN G. PALFREY
Mr. Palfrey's New England ancestry must
have influenced him not a little in forming this estimate of the im-
portance of New England's development in the economy of interna-
tional affairs. He himself was of a prominent Massachusetts family;
his blood was rich in traditions of honor and godliness; he was an
outgrowth of the soil upon which many generations had fought for
the maintenance of high principles. His grandfather, Colonel William
Palfrey, had been a paymaster-general in the Revolutionary army.
Later he was appointed by the young Republic consul-general to
France, but the vessel on which he sailed was lost at sea. John
Gorham Palfrey was born at Boston in 1796. He graduated from
Harvard in 1815, and in 1818 he accepted the charge of the Brattle
Street Unitarian Church in his native city. The ministry was not
## p. 10989 (#201) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10989
altogether congenial to him, and he entered gradually into other
fields of activity. From 1831 to 1839 he held the Dexter professor-
ship of Sacred Literature at Harvard; and from 1836 to 1843 he
edited the North American Review. Towards the close of his editor-
ship he was drawn into politics, or rather into the dignified and
wholly worthy political life possible to a New England gentleman
fifty years ago. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature
in 1842; from 1844 to 1847 he was Secretary of State. The anti-
slavery movement was attaining strength in the East during these
years: Ir. Palfrey, who was a strong abolitionist, contributed a series
of articles to the Boston Whig on the 'Progress of the Slave Power. '
In 1847 he was sent to Congress as an anti-slavery Whig. Subse-
quently he was defeated in an election for the governorship of Mas-
sachusetts. After this defeat he devoted himself exclusively to his
literary labors, taking office only once again, when from 1861 to 1866
he held the postmastership of Boston. He died at Cambridge in
1881.
Among Mr. Palfrey's minor works are his biography of his grand-
father in Jared Sparks's 'Dictionary of American Biography'; his
lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, and his 'Evi-
dences of Christianity. ' His chief claim to distinction as a man of
letters is founded, however, upon his 'History of New England. '
The first three volumes of this important and significant work con-
tain the record of New England's development under the Stuart
dynasty. The fourth and fifth volumes bring the narrative to the
year 1765.
Mr. Palfrey's merits as a historian are chiefly those of scholar-
ship. He has drawn freely upon a large number of sources for the
material of his work, and he has made organic use of this material.
His historical record; while lacking in dramatic and humanistic ele-
ments, is remarkable for its clarity and dignity. It is written with
the candor and sympathy of one who has become the spiritual heir
to the fruits of the struggles which he describes. Through his schol-
arship, and through his catholic view of the significance of history,
he is entitled to high rank among American historians.
## p. 10990 (#202) ##########################################
10990
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
SALEM WITCHCRAFT
From A Compendious History of New England.
Gorham Palfrey; 1883, by John Carver Palfrey.
of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers.
Copyright 1873, by John
Reprinted by permission
He found
A
YET worse trouble confronted the new Governor.
a part of the people whom he was to rule in a state of
distress and consternation, by reason of certain terrible
manifestations during the last few weeks before his coming, at-
tributed by them to the agency of the Devil, and of wicked men,
women, and children, whom he had confederated with himself,
and was using as his instruments.
The people of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, like
all other Christian people at that time and later, at least,
with extremely rare individual exceptions,-believed in the real-
ity of a hideous crime called witchcraft. They thought they had
Scripture for that belief, and they knew they had law for it,
explicit and abundant; and with them law and Scripture were
absolute authorities for the regulation of opinion and of conduct.
In a few instances, witches were believed to have appeared
in the earlier years of New England. But the cases had been
sporadic. The first instance of an execution for witchcraft is said
to have occurred in Connecticut, soon after the settlement [1647,
May 30th]; but the circumstances are not known, and the fact
has been doubted. A year later, one Margaret Jones, of Charles-
town in Massachusetts, and it has been said, two other women
in Dorchester and Cambridge, were convicted and executed for
the goblin crime. These cases appear to have excited no more
attention than would have been given to the commission of any
other felony, and no judicial record of them survives. A case
much more observed was that of Mrs. Ann Hibbins, the widow
of an immigrant of special distinction. He had been agent for
the colony in England, and one of the Assistants. He had lost
his property, and the melancholy and ill-temper to which his dis-
appointed wife gave way appear to have exposed her to miscon-
structions and hatred; in the sequel of which she was convicted.
as a witch, and after some opposition on the part of the magis-
trates was hanged [1656, June].
With three or four exceptions,- for the evidence respecting
the asserted sufferers at Dorchester and Cambridge is imperfect,
no person appears to have been punished for witchcraft in
## p. 10991 (#203) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10991
Massachusetts, nor convicted of it, for more than sixty years.
after the settlement, though there had been three or four trials
of other persons suspected of the crime. At the time when the
question respecting the colonial charter was rapidly approaching
an issue, and the public mind was in feverish agitation, the min-
isters sent out a paper of proposals for collecting facts concern-
ing witchcraft [1681, May]. This brought out a work from
President Mather entitled 'Illustrious Providences,' in which that
influential person related numerous stories of the performances of
persons leagued with the Devil [1684, January 31st].
The imagination of his restless young son was stimulated, and
circumstances fed the flame. In the last year of the government
of Andros [1688], a daughter, thirteen years old, of John Good-
win,- a mason living at the South End of Boston,-had a quar-
rel with an Irish washerwoman about some missing clothes. The
woman's mother took it up, and scolded provokingly. Thereupon
the wicked child, profiting, as it seems, by what she had been
hearing and reading on the mysterious subject, "cried out upon
her," as the phrase was, as a witch, and proceeded to act the
part understood to be fit for a bewitched person; in which be-
havior she was presently joined by three others of the circle, one
of them only four or five years old. Now they would lose their
hearing, now their sight, now their speech; and sometimes all
three faculties at once. They mewed like kittens; they barked
like dogs. They could read fluently in Quaker books, in the
'Oxford Jests,' and in the Book of Common Prayer'; but not in
the 'Westminster Catechism,' nor in John Cotton's 'Milk for
Babes. ' Cotton Mather prayed with one of them; but she lost
her hearing, he says, when he began, and recovered it as soon
as he finished. Four Boston ministers and one of Charlestown
held a meeting, and passed a day in fasting and prayer, by which
exorcism the youngest imp was "delivered. " The poor woman,
crazed with all this pother, if in her right mind before, and
defending herself unskillfully in her foreign gibberish and with
the volubility of her race, was interpreted as making some con-
fession. A gossiping witness testified that six years before, she
had heard another woman say that she had seen the accused
come down a chimney. She was required to repeat the Lord's
Prayer in English,- an approved test; but being a Catholic, she
had never learned it in that language. She could recite it, after
a fashion, in Latin; but she was no scholar, and made some
---
## p. 10992 (#204) ##########################################
10992
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
mistakes. The helpless wretch was convicted and sent to the
gallows.
Cotton Mather took the oldest "afflicted" girl to his house,
where she dexterously played upon his self-conceit to stimulate
his credulity. She satisfied him that Satan regarded him as his
most terrible enemy, and avoided him with especial awe. When
he prayed or read in the Bible, she was seized with convulsion
fits. When he called to family devotion, she would whistle, and
sing, and scream, and pretend to try to strike and kick him; but
her blows would be stopped before reaching his body, indicating
that he was unassailable by the Evil One. Mather published an
account of these transactions, with a collection of other appro-
priate matter. The treatise circulated not only in Massachusetts,
but widely also in England, where it obtained the warm com-
mendation of Richard Baxter; and it may be supposed to have
had an important effect in producing the more disastrous delusion.
which followed three years after. The Goodwin children soon
got well in other words, they were tired of their atrocious fool-
ery; and the death of their victim gave them a pretense for a
return to decent behavior.
Mr. Samuel Parris was minister of a church in a part of
Salem which was then called Salem Village, and which now as
a separate town is known by the name of Danvers. He was a
man of talents, and of repute for professional endowments, but
avaricious and wrong-headed. Among his parishioners, at the
time of his settlement and afterwards, there had been angry dis-
putes about the election of a minister, which had never been
composed. Neighbors and relations were embittered against each
other. Elizabeth Parris, the minister's daughter, was now nine
years old. A niece of his, eleven years old, lived in his family.
His neighbor, Thomas Putnam, the parish clerk, had a daughter
named Ann, twelve years of age. These children, with a few
other young women, of whom two were as old as twenty years
or thereabouts, had become possessed with a wild curiosity about
the sorceries of which they had been hearing and reading, and
used to hold meetings for study, if it may be so called, and
practice. They learned to go through motions similar to those
which had lately made the Goodwin children so famous. They
forced their limbs into grotesque postures, uttered unnatural out-
cries, were seized with cramps and spasms, became incapable of
speech and of motion. By-and-by they interrupted public worship.
## p. 10993 (#205) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10993
Abigail Williams, Parris's niece, called aloud in church to the
minister to "stand up and name his text. " Ann Putnam cried
out, "There is a yellow bird sitting on the minister's hat, as it
hangs on the pin in the pulpit. " The families were distressed.
The neighbors were alarmed. The physicians were perplexed
and baffled, and at length declared that nothing short of witch-
craft was the trouble.
The families of the "afflicted children" assembled for fasting
and prayer. Then the neighboring ministers were sent for, and
held at Mr. Parris's house a prayer-meeting which lasted through
the day. The children performed in their presence, and the
result was a confirmation by the ministers of the opinion of the
doctors. Of course the next inquiry was by whom the manifest
witchcraft was exercised. It was presumed that the unhappy
girls could give the answer. For a time they refused to do so.
But at length, yielding to an importunity which it had become
difficult to escape unless by an avowal of their fraud, they pro-
nounced the names of Good, Osborn, and Tituba.
Tituba-half Indian, half negro-was a servant of Mr. Par-
ris, brought by him from the West India Islands or the Spanish
Main, where he had formerly been a merchant. Sarah Good was
an old woman, miserably poor. Sarah Osborn had been prosper-
ous in early life. She had been married twice, and her second
husband was still living, but separated from her. Her reputation
was not good, and for some time she had been bedridden, and
in a disturbed nervous state. In the meeting-house of Salem.
village [March 1st], with great solemnity, and in the presence of
a vast crowd, the three accused persons were arraigned before
John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, of Salem, members of the
Colonial Council. The "afflicted children" were confronted with
them; prayer was made; and the examination proceeded with a
questioning of Sarah Good, the other prisoners being for the
time withdrawn.
When Good declared that she was falsely accused, Hathorne
"desired the children all of them to look at her;
and so
they all did; . . . and presently they were all tormented. ”
The prisoner was made to touch them, and then their torment
ceased; the received doctrine being that by this contact the Sa-
tanic influence which had been emitted from the witch was drawn
back into her. Similar proceedings were had with the other two
prisoners. Tituba, whether in collusion with her young mistress,
XIX-688
## p. 10994 (#206) ##########################################
10994
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
or as was afterwards said, in consequence of having been scourged
by Mr. Parris, confessed herself to be a witch, and charged Good
and Osborn with being her accomplices. The evidence was then
thought unexceptionable, and the three were committed to jail
for trial.
Martha Corey and Rebecca Nourse were next cried out
against. Both were church-members of excellent character; the
latter seventy years of age. They were examined by the same
magistrates, and sent to prison [March 21st- March 24th], and
with them a child of Sarah Good, only four or five years old,
also charged with diabolical practices. Mr. Parris preached upon
the text,
"Hav not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a
devil? " Sarah Cloyse, understanding the allusion to be to Nourse,
who was her sister, went out of church, and was accordingly
cried out upon, examined, and committed. Elizabeth Procter was
another person charged. The Deputy-Governor and five magis-
trates came to Salem for the examination of the two prisoners
last named [April 11th]. Procter appealed to one of the children
who was accusing her.
"Dear child," she said, "it is not so;
there is another judgment, dear child:" and presently they de-
nounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side [April
18th]. A week afterwards, warrants were issued for the appre-
hension of four other suspected persons; and a few days later
[April 30th] for three others, one of whom, Philip English, was
the principal merchant of Salem. On the same day, on the in-
formation of one of the possessed girls, an order was sent to
Maine for the arrest of George Burroughs, formerly a candidate
for the ministry at Salem Village, and now minister of Wells.
The witness said that Burroughs, besides being a wizard, had
killed his first two wives, and other persons whose ghosts has
appeared to her and denounced him.
Charges now came in rapidly. George Jacobs, an old man,
and his granddaughter, were sent to prison [May 10th]. "You
tax me for a wizard," said he to the magistrates: "you may as
well tax me for a buzzard; I have done no harm. " They tried
him with repeating the Lord's Prayer, which it was thought
impossible for a witch to do. According to Parris's record, "he
missed in several parts of it. " His accusers persisted. "Well,
burn me or hang me," said he, "I will stand in the truth of
Christ; I know nothing of the matter, any more than the child
that was born to-night. " Among others, John Willard was now
## p. 10995 (#207) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10995
apprehended. As a constable he had served in the arrest and
custody of some of the reputed witches. But he came to see the
absurdity of the thing, and was said to have uttered something
to the effect that it was the magistrates that were bewitched,
and those who cheered them on. Willard was forthwith cried
out against as a wizard, and committed for trial [May 18th].
Affairs were in this condition when the King's Governor
arrived [May 14th]. About a hundred alleged witches were now
in jail, awaiting trial. Their case was one of the first matters
to which his attention was called. Without authority for so.
doing,- for by the charter which he represented, the establish-
ment of judicial courts was a function of the General Court,— he
proceeded to institute a special commission of Oyer and Ter-
miner, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was the
hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners
applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act
[June 2d] was to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation.
twenty years old, and retracted by its author on his death-bed,
had been revived. The court sentenced her to die by hanging,
and she was accordingly hanged at the end of eight days. Cot-
ton Mather, in his account of the proceedings, relates that as
she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had given a
look towards the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and
immediately a dæmon, invisibly entering the house, tore down
a part of it. " It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had
given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on col-
lected for so extraordinary a spectacle.
At the end of another four weeks the court sat again [June
30th], and sentenced five women, two of Salem, and one each of
Amesbury, Ipswich, and Topsfield, all of whom were executed,
protesting their innocence [July 19th]. In respect to one of them,
Rebecca Nourse, a matron eminent for piety and goodness, a ver-
dict of acquittal was first rendered. But Stoughton sent the jury
out again, reminding them that in her examination, in reference
to certain witnesses against her who had confessed their own guilt,
she had used the expression, "they came among us. " Nourse
was deaf, and did not catch what had been going on. When
it was afterwards repeated to her, she said that by the coming
among us she meant that they had been in prison together. But
the jury adopted the court's interpretation of the words as sig-
nifying an acknowledgment that they had met at a witch orgy.
## p. 10996 (#208) ##########################################
10996
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
The Governor was disposed to grant her a pardon. But Parris,
who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered and prevailed.
On the last communion day before her execution, she was taken
into church, and formally excommunicated by Noyes, her min-
ister.
Of six persons tried at the next session of the court [August
5th], the Reverend George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard
College, was one. At a certain point of the proceedings the
young people pretending to have suffered from him stood mute.
Stoughton asked who hindered them from telling their story.
"The Devil, I suppose," said Burroughs. "Why should the Devil
be so careful to suppress evidence against you? " retorted the
judge, and with the jury this encounter of wits told hardly
against the prisoner [August 19th]. His behavior at his execu-
tion strongly impressed the spectators in his favor. "When he
was upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his
innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to
the admiration of all present. His prayer (which he concluded
by repeating the Lord's Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered.
with such composedness, and such (at least, seeming) fervency of
spirit as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that
it seemed to many the spectators would hinder the execution.
Cotton Mather, who was present on horseback, made them a
quieting harangue. The accusers said the Black Man stood and
dictated to him. "
In the course of the next month, in which the Governor left
Boston for a short tour of inspection in the Eastern country,
fifteen persons-six women in one day, and on another eight
women and one man were tried, convicted, and sentenced.
Eight of them were hanged [September 9th, September 17th,
September 22d, September 19th]. The brave Giles Corey, eighty
years of age, being arraigned, refused to plead. He said that the
whole thing was an imposture, and that it was of no use to put
himself on his trial, for every trial had ended in a conviction,—
which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that, suffering the
penalty of the English common law for a contumacious refusal
to answer, the peine forte et dure,-he was pressed to death.
with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he in-
tended to protect the inheritance of his children, which, as he
had been informed, would by a conviction of felony have been
forfeit to the crown.
-
—
## p. 10997 (#209) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10997
In the following month [October] the malady broke out in
another neighborhood. One Ballard, of the town of Andover,
whose wife was ill in a way that perplexed their medical friend,
sent to Salem to see what light could be obtained from the witch-
detectors there. A party of them came to his help, and went
to work with vigor. More than fifty persons at Andover fell
under accusation, some of the weaker minded of whom were
brought to confess themselves guilty not only of afflicting their
neighbors, but of practicing such exercises as riding on animals
and on sticks through the air.
There were no executions, however, after those which have
been mentioned as occurring on one day of each of four suc
cessive months. There had been twenty human victims, Corey
included; besides two dogs, their accomplices in the mysterious
crime. Fifty persons had obtained a pardon by confessing; a
hundred and fifty were in prison awaiting trial; and charges had
been made against two hundred more. The accusers were now
flying at high quarries. Hezekiah Usher, known to the reader as
an ancient magistrate of fair consideration, was complained of;
and Mrs. Thacher, mother-in-law of Corwin, the justice who had
taken the earliest examinations. Zeal in pushing forward the
prosecutions began to seem dangerous; for what was to prevent
an accused person from securing himself by confession, and then
revenging himself on the accuser by arraigning him as a former
ally?
Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister of Beverly who had been
active in the prosecutions, and Dudley Bradstreet of Andover,
the old Governor's son, who had granted warrants for the com-
mitment of some thirty or forty alleged witches, were now
accused. The famous name of John Allyn, Secretary of Con-
necticut, was uttered in whispers. There had even begun to
be a muttering about Lady Phips, the Governor's wife; and Mr.
Willard, then minister of the Old South Church in Boston, and
afterwards head of the College, who, after yielding to the infat-
uation in its earliest stage, had made himself obnoxious and
suspected by partially retracing his steps. People began now to
be almost as wild with the fear of being charged with witchcraft,
or having the charge made against their friends, as they had
been with the fear of suffering from its spells. The visitation,
shocking as it had been, had been local. It had been almost
confined to some towns of Essex County. In other parts of the
## p. 10998 (#210) ##########################################
10998
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
province the public mind was calmer, or was turned in the dif-
ferent direction of disgust at the insane tragedies, and dread of
their repetition. A person in Boston, whose name had begun to
be used dangerously by the informers at Andover, instituted an
action for defamation, laying his damages at a thousand pounds;
a measure which, while it would probably have been ruinous to
him had he made a mistake in choosing his time, was now found,
at the turning of the tide, to have a wholesome effect.
After the convictions which were last mentioned, the Com-
mission Court which had conducted the trials adjourned for two
months. Thanks to the good sense of the people, it never met
again. Before the time designated for its next session, the Gen-
eral Court of the Province assembled, and the cry of the op-
pressed and miserable came to their ear. The General Court
superseded the Court of Special Commission, the agent of all the
cruelty, by constituting a regular tribunal of supreme jurisdiction
[November 25th]. When that court met at the appointed time,
reason had begun to resume her sway; and the grand jury at
once threw out more than half of the presentments [1693, Janu-
ary 3d]. They found true bills against twenty-six persons. The
evidence against these was as good as any that had proved fatal
in former trials; but only three of the arraigned were found
guilty, and all these were pardoned. One of them may have
owed her conviction to a sort of rude justice: she had before con-
fessed herself a witch, and charged her husband, who was hanged
on her information. Stoughton, who had been made Chief Just-
ice, showed his disapprobation of the pardons by withdrawing
from the bench with passionate anger [February 21st]. Phips
wrote to the Lords of Trade a disingenuous letter, in which he
attempted to divert from himself, chiefly at Stoughton's expense,
whatever blame might be attached to the recent transactions; it
even appeared to imply, what was contrary to the fact, that the
executions did not begin till after his departure from Boston to
the Eastern country.
The drunken fever-fit was now over, and with returning so-
briety came profound contrition and disgust. A few still held
out against the return of reason.
There are some men who
never own that they have been in the
who are forever incapable of seeing it.
dog stubbornness, that might in other times have made him a
St. Dominic, continued to insist that the business had been all
wrong, and a few men
Stoughton, with his bull-
## p. 10999 (#211) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10999
right, and that the only mistake was in putting a stop to it.
Cotton Mather was always infallible in his own eyes. In the
year after the executions he had the satisfaction of studying an-
other remarkable case of possession in Boston; but when it and
the treatise which he wrote upon it failed to excite much atten-
tion, and it was plain that the tide had set the other way, he
soon got his consent to let it run at its own pleasure, and turned
his excursive activity to other objects. Saltonstall, horrified by
the rigor of his colleagues, had resigned his place in the com-
mission at an early period of the operations. When reason re-
turned, Parris, the Salem minister, was driven from his place by
the calm and decent, but irreconcilable, indignation of his parish-
ioners. Noyes, his well-intentioned but infatuated neighbor in
the First Parish, devoting the remainder of his life to peaceful
and Christian service, caused his church to cancel by a formal
and public act [1712] their excommunication of the blameless
Mrs. Nourse, who had died his peculiar victim.
Members of some of the juries, in a written public declara-
tion, acknowledged the fault of their wrongful verdicts, entreated
forgiveness, and protested that, "according to their present minds,
they would none of them do such things again, on such grounds,
for the whole world; praying that this act of theirs might be
accepted in way of satisfaction for their offense. " A day of Gen-
eral Fasting was proclaimed by authority, to be observed through.
out the jurisdiction, in which the people were invited to pray
that "whatever mistakes on either hand had been fallen into,
either by the body of this people, or by any orders of men,
referring to the late tragedy raised among us by Satan and his
instruments, through the awful judgment of God, he would hum-
ble them therefor, and pardon all the errors of his servants and
people. " On that day [1696, January 14th] Judge Sewall rose in
his pew in the Old South Church in Boston, handed to the desk
a paper acknowledging and bewailing his great offense, and ask-
ing the prayers of the congregation "that the Divine displeasure
thereof might be stayed against the country, his family, and him-
self," and remained standing while it was read by the minister.
To the end of his long life, the penitent and much-respected
man kept every year a private day of humiliation and prayer
on the same account. Twenty-eight years after, he prays in
an entry in his diary in reference to the transaction, "The good
and gracious God be pleased to save New England, and me and
## p. 11000 (#212) ##########################################
1. 000
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
my family! " Ann Putnam, one of the three beginners of the mis-
chief, after thirteen years, came out of the long conflict between
her conscience and her shame, with a most affecting declaration
of her remorse and grief, now on record in the books of the
Danvers church. Twenty years after, the General Court made
grants to the heirs of the sufferers, in acknowledgment of their
pecuniary losses. "Some of them [the witch accusers] proved
profligate persons," says Governor Hutchinson, "abandoned to all
vice; others passed their days in obscurity and contempt. "
## p. 11001 (#213) ##########################################
I1001
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
(1826-1888)
STRANGE personality, inviting a strange life, a career of curi-
ous and indeed of highly romantic interest, yet of imperfect
fruitfulness. such is the summary of Palgrave's individu-
ality, and of his sixty-two busy years of work and wandering. An
assortment of mysteries, intangible and confused, hung about him
while he lived. His death did not answer many significant and open
personal questions. Scholar, poet, soldier, missionary-priest, traveler,
lecturer, learned Orientalist and linguist, Arabian explorer, doctor, spy,
secret agent, diplomatist,-Palgrave was all these; and in them all
the real Palgrave appeared, to friend or
to foe, chiefly in fragmentary and uncertain
aspects.
The second son of Sir Francis Palgrave,
the English historical writer and antiqua-
rian, William Gifford Palgrave was born in
Westminster, January 24th, 1826. He dis-
tinguished himself in belles-lettres as a
Charterhouse schoolboy, and graduated from
Trinity College, Oxford, when only twenty,
after an exceptionally short University resi-
dence. The East had already much at-
tracted him. Rejecting high opportunities WILLIAM G. PALGRAVE
of distinction opening to him in England
through his father's powerful influences, he entered the Indian serv-
ice as a lieutenant in the Eighth Bombay Regiment. His superior
education, his firmness of mind, and his temperamental adaptation
for Eastern military life, insured his advance in the service; but
here again Palgrave's tendency to turn from anything like commit-
ting himself in a given direction, and working out his material wel-
fare in commonplace method, seem to have affected his future. His
head was already full of Oriental literature; and it is said that not
a little merely through his study of such a work as 'Antar,' he felt
he must meet the less familiar life and less accessible peoples of the
East on another than military footing,- one far more intimate. He
had, too, at this time strong religious convictions and aspirations.
He entered the Roman Catholic Church, became a Jesuit in Madras,
and was ordained a priest.
## p. 11002 (#214) ##########################################
I 1002
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
For the next fifteen years Palgrave was an extremely hard-worked
Jesuit missioner in Southern India. In June 1853 he went to Rome.
There he met with distinguished attention, though in an unobtrusive
- in fact, almost a clandestine way. It may be said that he was
early a complete master of half a dozen European tongues, in addi-
tion to as many of the languages or dialects of the East. He learned
a language with something like preternatural quickness; though he
forgot one quite as suddenly, as soon as not needed in his affairs.
In the autumn of the year that had found him in Rome, he was sent
to Syria, and conducted most successfully some valuable missionary
undertakings at Zahleh. He was a born proselytist. Syria and the
Syrians, Arabia and the Arabians, became an open book to him.
With the persecution of the Maronite Christians from the Druses, the
Maronites were anxious that he should be their actual leader in the
war. This, however, he declined to do, although he bestirred him-
self actively, quite as far as any priest could becomingly go, in the
task of the practical military instruction of the dismayed Maronites.
The massacre of June 1861 nearly cost him his life; in fact, he just
escaped. His Syrian mission now interrupted, he became an Occi-
dental again. He revisited Europe; lectured in Great Britain on the
Syrian massacres, and was requested by Napoleon III. of France to
furnish authoritative data as to them. This he did with much suc-
cess, meeting with a most cordial personal interest on the Emperor's
part.
―
So perfectly could Palgrave assume the Oriental,—especially the
Arab, Syrian, or Levantine,—so complete had become his knowledge
of the races of the East and of shades of Eastern character and reli-
gion, that in 1862, after his return to Syria, he undertook one of the
most dangerous and adventurous tests of his genius for acting in
character. Mohammedanism he had by heart. He was able to be
a Mussulman among Mussulmans. He knew every shade of Islamic
orthodoxy and Islamic heterodoxy; and he could quote the higgling
commentators on the Koran as literally as he could cite the Most
Perspicuous Book itself. The French government felt special interest
at this time in learning definite particulars of the attitude toward
France of Central Arabia proper, with its group of little known cen-
tral tribes, and isolated towns and peoples; and France also wished
to ascertain how far the finer Arabian blood stock could be procured
for bettering the breed of French horses. At the same time Palgrave
himself was desirous of determining whether Central Arabia offered
a real and safe field for Catholic mission work. The district he was
asked to traverse and to study on these errands included that por-
tion of Arabia most out of touch with all European sounding; and
more of a difficulty than that, it was one savagely fanatical in its
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WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11003
Mohammedan orthodoxy. It was a territory in which no European
traveler would be tolerated. To visit it invited death. Palgrave
accordingly began and completed his tour in disguise. He penetrated
to Hofhuf, Raïd, and to other centres of Mohammedan and Wahabee
religiosity, as a traveling Syrian physician. He nearly came to grief
two or three times; but by his assurance and his perfect familiarity
with his surroundings, he escaped more than some troublesome and
passing suspicions. He even gained the actual favor of the most
exclusive authorities of the Peninsula; and pursuing his explorations,
drew his various conclusions with complete success, and returned with
his head on his shoulders, to write one of the most fascinating rec-
ords of Arabian wanderings ever penned - his 'Narrative of a Year's
Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia' (1865).
No sooner was one task of travel ended than Palgrave was ready
for a new one. An Abyssinian journey occupied the summer of
1865, when he was commissioned to obtain the release of Mr. Cam-
eron, the consul, and of other English captives, from the clutches of
King Theodore. He remained in Egypt, under government instruc-
tions, till 1866; and then after a short visit to England he became
the British consular representative at Soukhoum Kalé. Many years
of government service, travel, and exploration followed, including
wanderings (frequently in disguise) through Asia Minor, the Euphrates
country, Anatolia, and Persia. He continued his consular duties by
accepting posts in Manila and Bangkok, and also studied Farther
India assiduously while residing in it. Finally the current of his
interests and official appointments set westerly; and after consular
services in the West Indies and Uruguay, he died at Montevideo in
September 1888. During the latter portion of his life he became
sufficiently interested in Shintoism to lapse from his Christian belief;
but before his death he repudiated what had been but an imperfect
apostasy, and received the last sacraments of the church of his
youth and middle age. His remains were brought with affectionate
care from the Uruguay city where he passed away. He is buried in
Fulham.
So far as Palgrave's mind and work, and especially his exquisite
knowledge of Eastern life and peoples, have a literary representation,
we find it in the 'Narrative' of his risky expedition through Central
Arabia; and not less clearly in one bit of fiction of astonishing brill-
iancy, sincerity, and vividness. This last is 'Hermann Agha. ' It is
to all intents a love story, withal a short and sad one. The material
in this tale, wholly Oriental, and modern-Oriental as well, is slight.
There is little between its covers, when we compare the slender
book with the elaborate romances of less authoritative but more pre-
tentious tale-tellers in Orientalism. But it is a transcript from the
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WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11004
passionate heart and the fatalistic soul of the East. The directness
and emotional intensity of the story hold the reader under an irre-
sistible spell from beginning to end. It has been said, on one or
another authority, that in 'Hermann Agha' Palgrave ventured (dis-
guised to the last) to embody a considerable autobiographic element,
and reminiscences that were quite personal to himself. This can
scarcely be clear to the uninitiated reader of 'Hermann Agha'; but
hardly a character or passage in the tale reads like the creation of a
novelist's mere fancy, however sensitive or robust.
THE NIGHT RIDE IN THE DESERT
From Hermann Agha'
[Hermann Agha, the narrator and hero of Palgrave's dramatic love story of
Arabia, has learned that his affianced wife Zahra is being carried away into
a distant part of the desert country by the Emeer Daghfel, who has the con-
sent of Zahra's parents to a marriage with the young girl. Hermann, his
friends Moharib, Aman, and Modarrib, and others, make up a small troop
and hurry to overtake the bridal train. The following admirable descriptive
episode is part of the chapter setting forth their romantic pursuit. ]
WⓇ
E ALL left the garden together; there was plenty of occupa-
tion for every one in getting himself, his horse, his weap-
ons, and his traveling-gear, ready for the night and the
morrow. Our gathering-place was behind a dense palm grove
that cut us off from the view and observation of the village;
there our comrades arrived, one after another, all fully equipped,
till the whole band of twelve had reassembled. The cry of the
night prayers, proclaimed from the mosque roof, had long died
away into silence; the last doubtful streak of sunset faded from
the west, accompanied by the thin white crescent of the young
moon; night still cloudless, and studded with innumerable stars,
depth over depth, reigned alone. Without a word we set forth
into what seemed the trackless expanse of desert, our faces be-
tween west and south,-the direction across which the Emeer
Daghfel and his caravan were expected to pass.
More than ever did the caution now manifested by my com-
panions, who were better versed than myself in adventures of the
kind, impress me with a sense, not precisely of the danger, but
of the seriousness of the undertaking. Two of the Benoo-Riah,
Harith and Modarrib, — whom the tacit consent of the rest
designated for that duty, took the advance as scouts, riding far
-
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WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11005
out ahead into the darkness, sometimes on the right, sometimes
on the left, in order that timely notice might be given to the
rest of us should any chance meeting or suspicious obstacle occur
on the way. A third, Ja'ad es-Sabāsib himself, acted, as beseemed.
his name, for guide; he rode immediately in front of our main
body. The rest of us held close together, at a brisk walking
pace, from which we seldom allowed our beasts to vary; indeed,
the horses themselves, trained to the work, seemed to comprehend
the necessity of cautiousness, and stepped on warily and noise-
lessly.
Every man in the band was dressed alike. Though I re-
tained, I had carefully concealed my pistols; the litham disguised
my foreign features, and to any superficial observer, especially
at night, I was merely a Bedouin of the tribe, with my sword at
my side, and my lance couched, Benoo-Riah fashion, alongside of
my horse's right ear. Not a single word was uttered by any one
of the band, as following Ja'ad's guidance—who knew every inch
of the ground, to my eyes utterly unmeaning and undistinguish-
able- we glided over the dry plain. At another time I might
perhaps have been inclined to ask questions; but now the near-
ness of expectation left no room for speech. Besides, I had been
long enough among the men of the desert to have learnt from
them their habit of invariable silence when journeying by night.
Talkative at other times, they then become absolutely mute. Nor
is this silence of theirs merely a precaution due to the insecur-
ity of the road, which renders it unadvisable for the wayfarer to
give any superfluous token of his presence: it is quite as much
the result of a powerful, though it may well be most often an
unconscious, sympathy with the silence of nature around.
Silent overhead, the bright stars, moving on, moving upwards
from the east, constellation after constellation, the Twins and the
Pleiads, Aldebaran and Orion, the Spread and the Perching Eagle,
the Balance, the once worshiped Dog Star, and beautiful Canopus.
I look at them till they waver before my fixed gaze; and look-
ing, calculate by their position how many hours of our long
night march have already gone by, and how many yet remain
before daybreak: till the spaces between them show preternatur-
ally dark; and on the horizon below, a false eye-begotten shim-
mer gives a delusive semblance of dawn, then vanishes.
Silent: not the silence of voices alone, but the silence of
meaning change, dead midnight. The Wolf's Tail has not yet.
