E/MS Unit II

Activity 2: Threats to the Community

Have students read over the first page of the document listing Capital Laws in effect in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

What issues do the first three laws address?
What does it tell us when these three appear at the top of the list, ahead of murder?
Look at the second law, regarding “Witch-craft.” What does the wording in the law tell us about people’s belief in the presence of witches?

Define “defendant,” “plaintiff,” and “deposition.” Have half the class read John Winthrop’s journal entry that describes the evidence against a convicted witch, and the other half read the Mass Moment about Mary Parsons. Both groups should answer:

What evidence was presented in court as proof of witchcraft?
How did the case get resolved?
What factors may have helped or hurt the accused person?

Have the students exchange information about their reading. Then discuss:

What appears to have been a big part of these accusations?
The evidence of witchcraft seems ridiculous to us today. Why did people in the seventeenth century apparently take it so seriously?
The Puritans believed that everything good that happened was a result of God’s blessing. How did they explain unfortunate things such as storms, illness, death, and accidents?
What are alternative explanations for these events?
Do local histories mention any case(s) of suspected witchcraft in the students’ home town? If so, what can they find out about it?

Document E/MS II-10: Guilty of Witchcraft: Excerpt from John Winthrop’s Journal, May 1648

John Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. He kept a journal from 1630 until he died in 1649. It is among the best written records we have of the early years of the colony.

At this Court one Margaret Jones of Charlestown was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft and hanged for it. The evidence against her was 1. that she was found to have such a malignant touch as many persons (men, women, and children) whom she stroked or touched with any affection of displeasure or, etc., were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains, or sickness; 2. she practicing physic, and her medicines being such things as (by her own confession) were harmless, as aniseed, licorice, etc., yet had extraordinary violent effects; 3. she would use to tell such as would not make use of her physic that they would never be healed, and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued… 4. some things which she fortold came to pass accordingly; other things she could tell of (as secret speeches, etc.) which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of; 5. she had (upon search) an apparent teat in her secret parts as fresh as if it had been newly sucked… upon a second search [it was found] that [it] was withered, and another began on the opposite side; 6. in prison in the clear daylight there was seen in her arms…a little child which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it was vanished; the like child was seen in 2 other places… Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed there was a very great tempest in Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc…

Margaret Jones was hanged June 14, 1648, in Boston. She was one of four women executed for witchcraft in New England between 1647–1648.

Quoted in The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 (abridged), ed. by Richard S. Dunn and Laetitia Yeandle (The Belknap Press, 1996).