JULY 1692
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
DAY
No one is more powerful in New England than Reverend Increase Mather.
Except, perhaps, his son, Reverend Cotton Mather.
Together they are the voice of God. They are very clear about it: God approves of hanging witches.
It takes courageous men to lead the fight against demons. The most powerful weapons are the spoken and written word as well as meaningful prayer. Increase and Cotton Mather accept this challenge. Together, they use the strength of the pulpit to make New Englanders aware that witches have arrived—and they must be found and destroyed.
Salem was settled in 1626 in order to give glory to God. “It is the ‘city upon a hill, a shining light for all to see.’” Nothing has changed in sixty-six years. Among all the ministers in New England, it is the Mathers who are closest to the deity. It is his wishes they channel.
The Mather saga began in Boston in 1635. The family patriarch, Reverend Richard Mather, flees England to escape religious persecution. He immediately establishes himself as an expert on Puritan doctrine. In 1640, he collaborates on The Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English, commonly known as the Bay Pslam Book. It is the first book published in North America.
Richard’s son, Increase, enters Harvard College in 1651 as a twelve-year-old and thirty-four years later becomes the school’s first Massachusetts-born president. Increase Mather’s ability to understand and interpret the lessons of the Lord, as recorded in the Bible, make him one of the best-known men in the colonies.
When he becomes minister of the North Church in 1664, Boston is an increasingly important city of almost three thousand residents, with “streets many and large, paved with pebble stone” and houses of “brick, stone and lime, handsomely contrived.”
Increase Mather lives in a comfortable home on North Square with his wife, Maria, who is also his stepsister. Their house is conveniently only steps away from the church. Increase spends most of his time working in his den, saying, “I have loved no place on earth more.” He keeps a library of almost one thousand books. While preaching and leading Harvard, he becomes the most prolific author in New England, which brings him fame, prestige, and wealth.
Increase Mather is a lean and somber man. His face is oval, and his features are soft. He is almost handsome. His appearance serves to reinforce the belief that he is a common man with an uncommon intellect. People travel long distances to hear his sermons.
Increase is not a hellfire preacher. He does not threaten people who stray with eternal damnation. Instead, he instructs. “He spoke with a grave and wise deliberation,” wrote his son. “But on some subjects his voice would rise … that the Hearers would be struck with an Awe, like what would be produced on the Fall of Thunderbolts.” *
The elder Mather is a shrewd man who doesn’t want to push the Puritan faithful too far. So his sermons comfort but also warn what might happen if people sin. One widely circulated sermon proclaims “The Day of Trouble Is Near.” The tract laments rising materialism: “As we now begin to espouse a Worldly Interest, and so to chuse a new God, therefore no wonder that War [with the Indians] is like to be in the gates … if thou hast but one Tear in thy Eyes, if thou hast but one prayer in thy heart, spend it now.”
Reverend Mather is also a champion of strict rules. In his essay “An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing,” Mather denounces “mixt” dances, wondering, “Is this a time for Jigs and Galiards?” He rails against “Stage-Plays,” maypoles, drinking, gambling, and pagan Christmas celebrations.
People love him. He is their teacher and guide to heaven. Ministers tend to all aspects of life, and, unlike politicians, they are trusted. Citizens turn to Increase Mather for advice on both religious and secular matters.
The reverend is so greatly respected that when King Charles II revokes the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter in 1684, Mather travels to England to negotiate a new one. The results are better than anyone expected. The Crown grants increased self-governing powers and the right to elect a legislature, and unites Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth. This success makes Increase Mather even more powerful.
So when Mather tells people that witches are real and actually living among them—they know it is true.
Witches exist. They are here in New England. In Salem. Their specters are not bound by natural laws; they can fly, they can pass through walls, they can inflict pain—and they can commit murder.
The appearance of witches in New England, Increase Mather explains, is caused by a decline in religion. It is God’s way of expressing His unhappiness with the increased emphasis on commerce, possessions, and individual achievement.
The reverend approaches the subject of witchcraft as a warrior and scholar. While some people question the existence of supernatural beings, the majority of New Englanders believe witches are very dangerous. Mather’s 1684 essay “Illustrious Providences” relates several stories of witchcraft as well as his own practical knowledge. In it, he rejects many of the folk tests for finding witches as superstitious and unscientific. For example, he writes that some people believe “water refuseth to receive witches into its bosom,” so suspected witches can be tested by being cast into water. If they sink, they are innocent. As a man of science, Mather dismisses this as “having no foundation in nature, nor in Scripture … the Bodies of witches have not lost their natural properties.”
As the number of executed witches grows, it is obvious control has been lost. Now, there’s nothing Increase Mather can do to stop the hangings even if he wanted to—which he doesn’t. However, he finally delivers a sermon urging New Englanders to “attend to his or her own soul,” which is taken as a message to focus on personal issues rather than witches.
No one listens.*
The only witch trial Increase Mather actually attends is that of Reverend George Burroughs, who may have once substituted for him on the pulpit at North Church. When Burroughs is found guilty, Mather doesn’t say a word. His silence is interpreted as approval.
His son, Cotton, seconds the motion and attends Burroughs’s hanging—calming the large crowd when objections are raised.
Cotton Mather is far more outspoken in support of the witch hunt than his father. Cotton is twenty-nine years old when the trials begin, the eldest of Mather’s children. In 1674, at age eleven, he becomes the youngest entering student in Harvard’s history. He is following the path laid down by his father. He is a brilliant young boy and intends to go much further.
Religious fervor is the theme of Cotton’s life. As an eight-year-old, the child reads fifteen biblical chapters every day. He writes, “In my early youth, while others were playing in the streets, I was preaching to large assemblies, and I was Honored with great respect among the people of God.”
Unlike his father, who is known for his “silver tongue,” Cotton Mather stammers. That disability sets him apart and shapes his personality. For a time, it causes him to consider medicine as a career. But with discipline, he overcomes the impediment by teaching himself to speak slowly and deliberately. In 1685, he joins his father as co-preacher of the prestigious North Church.
Although he never equals his father’s accomplishments as a colony leader nor becomes president of Harvard, Cotton surpasses him in the campaign against witches. No one fights the Devil harder than Reverend Cotton Mather! In his book Memorable Providences, Cotton alerts New Englanders that witches have arrived. His story of the Goodwin children bewitched by Goody Ann Glover creates a great stir. He tells readers what to watch out for, warning that witches could appear as their specters. That they can fly. That they gather at night in meadows to meet with the Devil. And in their supernatural shape, they do the work of the Devil.
The book terrifies Salem—and makes Mather the leading expert on witches.
Cotton Mather fathers fifteen children by the first two of his three wives. Life expectancy in the colonies at that time is about sixty-five years—much higher than in England. However, Mather’s first two wives die young. His third spouse, Lydia Lee, whom he describes as “one that shines forever with a Thousand Lovelinesses,” slowly goes insane. The cause is not known, although he claims, “She has been attacked by an evil spirit.”
The tragedy of Cotton Mather’s life is that only six of his fifteen offspring live to maturity. The harsh New England climate too often causes disease and death. Three of his children die from measles. Another is accidently smothered by a nanny keeping her warm. Mather finds some solace, he says, in the fact that God had told him they would all go to heaven.
Cotton Mather also has money problems, supporting all the children and his three sisters on a minister’s salary. So he begins to write. And write. And write. All told, Mather publishes more books and essays than any other person in American history.
And it isn’t all theology. The reverend also writes about history, science, and even verse. His knowledge of science is so respected he is one of the first Americans invited to join London’s Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge—a prestigious organization chartered in 1660 to advance experimental science.
Incredibly, Cotton Mather could write in seven languages, and even learned the Iroquois dialect. In these areas he far outpaces his father. He is credited with some four hundred published works.
In his personal appearance, Cotton Mather is meticulous. His shoulder-length hair is well groomed, even after a horseback ride. He wears expensive clothing and the finest boots made in England. The austerity of his father is lost on Cotton.
He also indulges in fine food and drink and, as the years pass, becomes quite corpulent. That doesn’t seem to bother any of his three wives, two of whom turn out children at an astonishing rate.
But above all, Cotton Mather is obsessed with fighting the Devil.
Whenever the witch call comes, Mather responds.
In one case, a woman named Martha Carrier defends herself against accusations, calling her child accusers crazy. The powerful Mather responds by describing Goody Carrier as “a Rampant hag” and “the Queen of Hell.”
She is executed on August 19, 1692.
However, there is a problem developing. As more witches are hanged, the governor of Massachusetts Bay, William Phips, is becoming uneasy. He doubts that witnesses really see “supernatural” beings in their visions and dreams. Phips does not believe in “spectral evidence.” So he asks Cotton Mather and several other ministers for guidance. People will live or die depending on what they say. If the governor tells the courts to ignore spectral evidence, the witch trials will soon end.
That would be the worst thing that could happen to Cotton Mather.
The clerics confer and Mather writes the report. Among the dozen people who sign it is his father. The ministers now oppose relying solely on spectral evidence to condemn witches. But, at the same time, the clerics support the ongoing witch hunt, urging “the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the direction given in the laws of God.”
Governor Phips is satisfied. The trials continue.
Privately, there is growing tension between Increase and Cotton Mather. The father knows the son is ambitious and wants to become a co-minister of the North Church. Increase is against it but is forced to agree because the congregation strongly supports his son.
Another source of friction is that Increase Mather has finally come to the conclusion that spectral evidence is morally wrong. “It would be better for ten witches to go free,” he writes, “than for one innocent person to be condemned.” But he does not publicly criticize his son, who has now become the most feared witch hunter in North America.
However, that description has a downside. Respected English-born writer Robert Calef ridicules Mather’s participation in the witch trials. Calef’s attack on Cotton in his book More Wonders of the Invisible World is so harsh that no one in Boston will print it, so it is published in London in 1700. Long after the trials, Robert Calef directly blames Cotton Mather for the witch executions and general hysteria in Salem.
Rather than responding to the charges made in Calef’s book, Mather calls him a “follower of Satan,” citing a passage from Exodus: “Thou Shalt Not Speak Evil of the Ruler of Thy People.”
Among the readers of Cotton Mather is a teenager named Benjamin Franklin. Born in Boston in 1706, Franklin certainly is aware of the events in Salem. He is considered a young man of great promise and pseudonymously contributes articles to his brother’s newspaper. Among them are parodies of Cotton Mather’s writing. But the more Franklin learns about Mather, the more intrigued he becomes.
In 1722, sixteen-year-old Ben Franklin arranges a meeting with the reverend at Mather’s home. Years later Franklin remembers their conversation as enjoyable and productive. “He condescended to entertain me,” Franklin wrote, “with some pleasant and instructive conversation.”
As he is leaving Cotton Mather’s house, the minister suddenly issues a stark warning: “Stoop! Stoop! Stoop!” But Franklin does not pay attention—and bangs his head against a low beam.
“Let this be a caution to you,” Mather advises, “not always to hold your head so high. Stoop, young man, stoop, as you go through the world—and you’ll miss many hard thumps.”
Young Benjamin Franklin gets the message: remain humble. But he does not realize at the time how much Reverend Cotton Mather will influence him and his country in the years to come.
Back in Salem, the evil continues. There is no end to the pattern of accusation and execution.
And, incredibly, things are about to get even worse.