In the long roster of early New Englanders accused of witchcraft, John Godfrey invites attention for one special reason: he was male. To be sure, other men were accused at various times (and four or five were executed), but most of them were husbands of female “witches.”1 Thus—given the overall prominence of women in witchcraft cases—it seems probable that the charges against these men arose as a secondary or derivative matter.
But John Godfrey cannot be fitted to this pattern, for he had no witch-wife; in fact, he had no wife at all. What was it that made him suspect anyway? Why should this particular man have been singled out for such special disfavor from virtually all of his masculine peers? Does his career perhaps reflect an intensification of certain themes which, in the lives of women, created a strong presumption of guilt? Is this, in short, an instance of witch-behavior in “pure culture”—or as pure as we are likely to find?
[William Osgood, of Salisbury, deposed that:] in the year ’40, in the month of August, he being then building a barn for Mr. Spencer [and] John Godfrey being then Mr. Spencer’s herdsman, he on an evening came to the frame where diverse men were at work and said that he had gotten a new master against the time he had done keeping cows. The said William Osgood asked him who it was. He answered [that] he knew not. He again asked him where he dwelt. He answered [that] he knew not. He asked him what his name was. He answered [that] he knew not. He then said to him, “How then wilt thou go to him when thy time is out?” He said, “The man will come and fetch me.” … I asked him, “Hast thou made an absolute bargain?” He answered that a covenant was made [and] he had set his hand to it. He then asked of him whether he had not a counter covenant. Godfrey answered, “No.” William Osgood said, “What a mad fellow are thou to make a covenant in this manner.” He said, “He’s an honest man.” “How knowest thou?” said William Osgood. John Godfrey answered, “He looks like one.” William Osgood then answered, “I am persuaded thou hast made a covenant with the devil.” He then skipped about and said, “I protest, I protest.”2
This episode, recounted nearly twenty years after the fact, marks the first certain appearance of John Godfrey in New England. The place was Newbury, Massachusetts, then a community barely five years old. The deponent, William Osgood, was a young carpenter and millwright who would later become a founder of the town of Salisbury. “Mr. Spencer” (another John) was a local gentleman and heir to a large estate in Newbury; both Godfrey and Osgood were temporarily in his employ.
Of Godfrey’s background and origins nothing definite can be learned. Even the time of his birth is in question. Twice later on, in the course of legal proceedings, he made reference to his age: in 1660 he deposed “aged about 40 years,” and in 1661 “aged about 30 years.”3 Imprecision (or ignorance) as to chronology was not unusual among the early New Englanders, but this discrepancy seems particularly large.4 As such, it accords nicely with other will-of-the-wisp elements in Godfrey’s personal history. Upon reflection, the first estimate seems far more plausible, since by 1640 Godfrey was established as a “herdsman” and this was normally a job for a young man, not for a boy. Thus 1620 will serve as a best possible approximation of the year of Godfrey’s birth.
Actually, there is one very early notation of the name John Godfrey—on a passenger list for the ship Mary and John, which left London for New England in March 1634.5 We cannot be sure that this emigrant and the later “witch” were one and the same, but the probability seems strong; for John Spencer, and others prominent in the founding of Newbury, were also among the passengers for this sailing. Most of the group had come from a tier of counties on or near the south coast of England (Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, and Surrey),6 and it is tempting to think that John Godfrey’s roots were likewise in that part of the country. Perhaps, then, his beginning in New England was as a boy in his mid-teens, fresh from a springtime voyage, unaccompanied by family, and “bound” in service to a gentleman from the region of his birth. If so, it was a beginning that held no forecast of the unusual career that lay ahead.7
If the Osgood deposition is creditable, then John Godfrey was suspected of conniving with the Devil at least as early as 1640. There is no other, comparable information from this period, but it is worth noticing the first court cases in which Godfrey joined as a principal. In the summer of 1642 he sued Richard Kent of Newbury for slander, and Kent was found “greatly criminal.” In 1649 he won a similar complaint against Richard Jones of Salisbury.8 Depositions from these cases do not survive, hence the substance of the slander remains unknown. But allegations of witchcraft seem an obvious possibility. At a minimum, such events reveal Godfrey as someone about whom others were tempted to speak in strong and sharply hostile terms.
There were additional cases during the 1640s in which Godfrey appeared as defendant: in 1648, for “subborning a witness”; in 1649, for “lying”; again in 1649, for some unspecified charge.9 Gradually, it appears, his position outside the normative bounds of his community was solidified. Yet for most of the next decade (1650–58) he did not come to court at all. Scattered references in land deeds (and in later legal proceedings) show him moving out of Newbury, and appearing briefly in Rowley, Haverhill, and Andover, but otherwise he left no tracks.10
The absence of Godfrey’s name from court dockets during this long interval is all the more striking in light of the pattern that developed immediately thereafter. From 1658 until his death in 1675 Godfrey was in court at least once each year, and, in some years, many times. As suit and counter-suit piled one on top of the other, his record of legal actions became extraordinary even by the standards of a highly litigious society. Most of these actions dealt with property—land, money, bonds, wheat, corn, rye, oxen, sheep, cloth—and most involved relatively small values. Nearly all of Godfrey’s opponents at court were other Essex County residents, of modest wealth and status. Taken as a whole, the records depict a man continually at odds with his peers, over a host of quite specific, personal, and mundane affairs.
In the spring of 1658 Godfrey lodged a suit for debt—his first of this type—against one Abraham Whitaker of Haverhill, and within months he had begun additional actions against other persons from Haverhill.11 It appears that these cases were in some way interrelated—and that Godfrey’s position was fully supported by the verdicts. Almost immediately, however, the issue of witchcraft was raised—and formally presented to the court. The exact sequence is unclear, but evidently there were two actions pressed more or less simultaneously. A petition, signed by eleven persons and submitted at Ipswich in March 1659, alleged that “diverse [persons] of esteem with us, and, as we hear, in other places also, have for some time suffered losses in their estates and some afflictions on their bodies also.”12 Moreover, these events, which defied explanation by reference to “any natural cause,” had usually followed “upon differences had betwixt themselves and one John Godfrey, resident at Andover or elsewhere at his pleasure.” Under the circumstances an official inquiry seemed necessary. Unfortunately, there is no record of the court’s further proceedings in this matter, but almost certainly Godfrey was indicted, tried in Boston, and acquitted.13 Meanwhile the accused was mounting a counter-suit, on grounds of slander, “for charging him to be a witch.” A local jury sustained this complaint, “notwithstanding [we] do conceive that by the testimonies he is rendered suspicious.”14 Thus was Godfrey vindicated in the short run—but clearly put on notice for the future.
A variety of depositions, from either or both of these actions, survive in the files of the county courts.15 Twenty-four different witnesses are included here, and probably there were others whose testimony has disappeared. Careful tracing of these people shows a considerable geographic spread—no less than six different towns were represented16—but clearly the most detailed, and most telling, evidence came from residents of Haverhill. The four men with whom Godfrey was concurrently involved in property suits all participated in the witchcraft inquiry—one as a signer of the original petition, the other three as deponents. And yet there was more to this than the simple extension of a personal quarrel. If Godfrey’s debtors played a significant role, so, too, did others who had no such immediate interest in the outcome. If some witnesses were people of small means and humble status, at least a few held leading positions in their community. William Osgood, who recalled for the court that curious episode on “Mr. Spencer’s” farm long before, was among the wealthiest inhabitants (and most frequent office-holders) in the town of Salisbury. And Henry Palmer, a comparably important figure at Haverhill, also entered the lists against Godfrey.
The full corpus of testimony supplied many particulars on the difficulties that Godfrey experienced (or caused?) in his personal relations. Henry Palmer, for instance, recounted an episode “3 or 4 years since” when he had been serving as a selectmen at Haverhill. Godfrey “did often speak to me to join with the rest of the selectmen to hire the said Godfrey to keep the cows at Haverhill.” When refused, Godfrey “showed himself much displeased,” and soon thereafter cattle from the herds of both Palmer and his son-in-law vanished “quite away.”17 A similar sequence, described in a deposition from Elizabeth Whitaker, throws more light on Godfrey’s personal style—or at least the style attributed to him by his adversaries. Since the details are presented with special vividness, this document is worth quoting at length:
I being at my father’s house, one day [there] came in John Godfrey, and my father entertained him and gave him victuals and [bedding?]. And the next morning after, as the said Godfrey was [illeg.] a pair of shoes, he fell out very bitterly with me, and told me that my husband owed him more than he was worth and also that all the cloth I had was his. Then said my father to him, “That is not true, Godfrey, for she had them clothes of me when she was married.” Then Godfrey rose up in a great rage and knocked his head against the manteltree and threatened my father and I that we should neither of us get nothing by it before that summer passed. Then presently upon it I went and gave my father’s three swine some meat, and the swine was taken with foaming and reeling and turned around and did die. Then, after this, when I came home, the said Godfrey came [on] a Sabbath day in the morning next after Salisbury court, and demanded charges for witnessing that week before at Salisbury court. And my husband told him [to] come another time and he would pay him. Then, as Godfrey stood at the door of the house, my husband and my brother was driving our oxen out at the barn. Said, Godfrey, “Where are you going with them oxen?” Then said my husband, “I have hired my brother to keep them in the woods today.” Said Godfrey, “I will keep them for you, if you will.” Then said my husband, “No, my brother shall keep them.” Then said Godfrey, “One of them oxen should never come home alive anymore.” And that day they were lost, and one of them did never come home alive anymore. And the next day, when my husband was gone to look [for] the oxen, the said Godfrey came to our house and asked for my husband, and I told him he was gone to look [for] his oxen. Said Godfrey, “If Abraham had hired me, I would have looked [for] them and brought them home. For,” said Godfrey, “he may seek them, but he will not find them.” And when my husband came home, I told him what Godfrey had said, and my husband went that night to seek Godfrey to hire him. But Godfrey went away, and I saw him no more till after the one of the oxen was found dead. And after this, upon Godfrey falling out and threatening, we had many strange losses in our swine and cows and calves, and sore weakness of my body [such] that I could not go up and down all summer.18
The abrasive, grasping qualities so prominent in this account of Godfrey appear throughout the testimony presented against him. Indebtedness, threats, angry accusations, and “losses” of property or health: such were the central ingredients of an oft-repeated sequence.
And yet this sequence deserves a second look. Consider Godfrey’s response—“one of them oxen should never come home alive anymore”—when his services as cowherd had been refused in favor of Whitaker’s brother. Were those his exact words? Or had they been slightly altered, in the process of recollection, so as to exaggerate the element of danger? Even if correctly quoted, they leave room for varying interpretations. Perhaps this was simply a petulant reflection on the brother’s competence, with the implied meaning: “your brother is such a poor herdsman that probably he will lose one of your oxen.” If so, there was a vital difference between what Godfrey meant and what Whitaker heard—and it was precisely the difference between a casual (and defensive) slur and a bona fide threat. There is no way now to recover the intent behind such a remark, and Whitaker’s interpretation of it was, in any case, what counted most at Court. But it is important to recognize the possibilities for misunderstanding and subtle distortion that must have attended any dealings with a reputed witch.
Two other aspects of the evidence seem worthy of comment, for what they suggest about Godfrey’s character and social circumstances. First, there was something odd, and disturbingly suspect, about his conversation. It was not merely his frequent resort to “threatening” statements (though this was an obvious, and important, count against him). There was also his tendency to say things that would startle, or confuse, or annoy his listeners. His comments to Osgood about his “new master” have the look of deliberate provocation.19 The same could be said of another episode reported at court, involving a visit by Godfrey to the house of an Andover resident named Job Tyler.20 According to the Tylers, an odd-looking bird came in their door together with Godfrey. Efforts to catch it proving unsuccessful, the bird then “vanished” quite suddenly. And Godfrey “being asked by the man of the house wherefore it came … answered ‘it came to suck your wife.’” There were, moreover, times when Godfrey was given to “speaking about the power of witches.” For example:
The said Godfrey spoke that if witches were not kindly entertained, the Devil will appear unto them and ask them if they were grieved or vexed with anybody, and ask them what he should do for them. And if they would not give them beer or victuals, they might let all the beer run out of the cellar. And if they looked steadfastly upon any creature, it would die. And it were hard to some witches to take away life, either of man or beast; yet when they once begin it, then it is easy to them.21
Repeatedly, then—and in all sorts of ways—John Godfrey flouted his community’s standards of discreet conversation.
Another recurrent theme in the testimony on Godfrey is his special association with cattle. He was, of course, an experienced “herdsman”: he had worked in this capacity during his servant-years, and later he was hired for a time to “keep the cows” at Haverhill.22 Yet all did not go smoothly here. As noted above, Godfrey was forever putting himself forward as a herdsman, and was often rebuffed. His interest in cattle seemed beyond doubt, but there was something strange about it. Perhaps, indeed, he was too interested. One witness reported a curious incident when Godfrey,
hearing her call [her] calf, … [asked] what it was she called. She told him, this calf. He asked if she gave it milk still. And, as the calf was drinking the milk, the said Godfrey stroked the calf on the back, calling it “poor rogue” and “poor rascal,” and said it was very fat. And that night it died, and we could none of us find anything it ailed.23
Another witness described rumors that Godfrey had “come to places where some cattle were bewitched … and said, ‘I will unwitch them,’ and presently they were well.”24 Here, then, was a truly remarkable, even supernatural, talent, and yet it could not be trusted. Unwitching and bewitching were too closely related—in cow-keeping, as in any other activity. When joined in a man of bad temperament, such powers assumed a highly menacing aspect. It was no coincidence that most of the damage attributed to Godfrey’s witchcraft involved domestic animals.
What seems most striking about John Godfrey’s life following the witchcraft litigation of 1659 is his immediate return to the same community, to a familiar network of personal relationships, and to a highly similar pattern of activities. It was almost as if nothing had happened. A court case in September brought judgment against him “for not performing a summer’s work.” Witnesses testified that Godfrey had engaged to work for Francis Urselton of Topsfield “when he came out of Ipswich jail,” had taken money, and had then reneged on his own part of the arrangement.25 But never mind this outcome; the important thing is that someone had wished to hire Godfrey in the first place. An accused witch—formally acquitted of the charges against him, but “rendered suspicious” by much testimony—was considered employable!
With the Urselton case Godfrey began a new and intense round of legal involvements.26 The matters at issue were largely as before: land, cows, crops, and debt. Most of his opponents were drawn from the circle of his neighbors and associates (if not exactly his friends) in Haverhill, Andover, and the immediate surround. In 1661, for example, he initiated a complicated suit for debt against his old adversary Job Tyler. His own claims included payment for twenty-seven days of labor on Tyler’s farm, for many additional errands, for back loans, and much more. Meanwhile a counter-suit by Tyler alleged debts on Godfrey’s side as well, mainly for “washing, dress, and diet [during] a summer.” Witnesses spelled out the particulars, viz.: “Moses Tyler deposed that his mother dressed John Godfrey and washed his clothes above twenty weeks in one year, and that his father found Godfrey’s diet for eleven weeks, which was never satisfied.”27 The Tylers, be it recalled, had supplied damaging evidence against Godfrey in the witchcraft inquiry. Yet here are all parties, just a short while later, with their lives densely intertwined. The evidence makes clear that for a period in 1661 Godfrey had been working as Job Tyler’s hired man, and, most probably, staying in Tyler’s house. For whatever reasons, the Tylers had taken into their home a man whom they themselves regarded as a witch.
The following year Godfrey became involved in new litigation, with still another Haverhill family. His chief antagonist this time was one Jonathan Singletary, age twenty-two, son of a modest “planter,” recently married, and father of an infant daughter who had died soon after birth. The records depict Singletary (the name looks French in derivation, and was occasionally written “Singleterre”) as a young man overwhelmed by sudden adversities. Repeatedly in debt and in trouble during these years, he would subsequently leave the area altogether for a new start in the colony of East [New] Jersey.
The earliest Godfrey-Singletary litigation involved the latter’s use of a certain bond, but this was soon followed by various claims for debt (“50 shillings in silver” and “£8 in wheat and corn”). The depositional evidence revealed a tangled skein of interaction between the two men, in which Singletary was consistently at a disadvantage. (The same evidence offers some pithy examples of Godfrey’s speech style—for instance, this comment on a debt of corn allegedly withheld from him by a friend of Singletary’s: “I had rather it were in a heap in the street and all the town hogs should eat it, than [that] he should keep it in his hands.”)28
As a result of all this, Singletary was temporarily jailed; his father made a further (unsuccessful) attempt to settle with Godfrey; and, finally, accusations of witchcraft were made.29 As before (in 1659), there is no certain record that Godfrey was formally tried on this charge, but the probability seems strong.30 We do know, in any event, that Godfrey once again sued for slander, “for calling him a witch, and saying ‘is this witch on this side of Boston gallows yet?’”31 There is only one substantial deposition that survives from the case, a statement by Singletary, recounting a bizarre experience during his stay in Ipswich prison.32 Sitting alone, late one evening, he heard loud noises, “as if many cats had been climbing up the prison walls … and … boards or stools had been thrown about, and men [were] walking in the chambers, and a crackling and shaking as if the house would have fallen upon me.” Almost immediately his thoughts ran to witchery, and, more especially, to an acquaintance who “upon some difference with John Godfrey … [had been] several nights in a strange manner troubled.” Whereupon Godfrey himself appeared in the doorway (having magically unbolted the lock), and said:
“Jonathan, Jonathan.” So I looked on him [and] said “What have you to do with me?” He said, “I come to see you; are you weary of your place yet?” I answered, “I take no delight in being here, but I will be out as soon as I can.” He said, “If you will pay me in corn, you shall come out.” I answered, “No, if that had been my intent, I would have paid the marshal and never have come hither.” He, knocking of his fist at me in a kind of a threatening way, said he would make me weary of my part and so went away.
Soon he was back, and the discussion continued in a similar vein. At last, Singletary took a rock and lunged at his tormentor, “but there was nothing to strike, and how he went away I know not, for I could … not see which way he went.” There was only one means of explaining such an episode—at least from the standpoint of the “victim.”
There is no doubt about Godfrey’s next trial for witchcraft. Prosecuted during the winter of 1665–66, this case is duly noted in records still on file from the Court of Assistants in Boston.33 The initial complaint was lodged by Job Tyler and John Remington. Eighteen witnesses were summoned (from whose testimony seven depositions survive). The indictment charged that Godfrey had “consulted with a familiar spirit” and had “done much hurt and mischief by several acts of witchcraft to the bodies and goods of several persons.” The jury’s verdict was an obviously reluctant acquittal: “We find him not to have the fear of God in his heart. He has made himself suspiciously guilty of witchcraft, but not legally guilty according to law and evidence we have received.” The magistrates “accepted” this decision, but aimed a back-handed swipe of their own at Godfrey, in obliging him to pay all the costs of the trial. (There were substantial expenses for those who had come to Boston to give evidence.)34
The depositions were a mixture of old and new material. The Whitakers and Tylers recounted their various misadventures with Godfrey, going back a full ten years, and presumably other witnesses did likewise. But John Remington had a fresh contribution—and a telling one, as the proceedings unfolded. A carpenter who had moved to Haverhill from Andover some five years before, Remington testified concerning an injury recently sustained by his fifteen-year-old son. Unsurprisingly, the point of departure here was a quarrel with Godfrey over the care of the family cows. Remington had decided to “winter” his herd on land some miles distant from his home, and apparently this had provoked John Godfrey to “great rage and passion.” Indeed, Godfrey had sworn that “he should have cause to repent it before the winter was out.” The actual tending of the animals was “for the most part” left to John Remington, Jr., and it was he (allegedly) who suffered the consequences of Godfrey’s anger.35
Riding home alone through the woods one day; the boy noticed sudden signs of apprehension in both his horse and his dog. Soon there appeared, in the middle of the path, a crow, “with a very great and quick eye, and … a very great bill.” Young Remington “began to mistrust and think it was no crow,” and “as I was a-thinking this to myself,” the horse fell heavily “on one side” with the boy’s leg underneath. Eventually he reached home—though not without further harassment from the pseudo-crow—and recounted the experience to his parents. Two days later Godfrey visited the house and began the following conversation (as recalled by John, Jr.):36
He asked me how I did, and I told him, pretty well, only I was lame with the horse falling on me. Then said Godfrey: “Every cock-eating boy must ride. I unhorsed one boy the other day, and I will unhorse thee, too, if thee rides.” … Then said I: “I am not able to carry victuals on my back.” Then said Godfrey: “tis a sorry horse that cannot carry his own provender.” Then said Godfrey to me: “John, if thee had been a man, thee had died on the spot where thee got the fall.” Then said my mother: “How can thee tell that? There is none but God can tell that, and except thee be more than an ordinary man, thee cannot tell that.” Then Godfrey bade my mother hold her tongue; he knew what he said better than she. And [he] said: “I say again, had he been a man, … he had died on the spot where he fell.”
John Remington, Jr. had witnessed the original quarrel between Godfrey and his father, and the power of his own fear, while he carried out his duties with the herd, can easily be imagined. Weeks later his father testified that “the boy is very ill … and swells in the body every night [so] that I fear he will die of it.”37 As to Godfrey’s motives in all this, there is much less clarity; but the bitter comment—“every cock-eating boy must ride”—suggests his long-standing concern to protect his particular vocation. (If boys did not ride, perhaps there would be more work for a herdsman?) Godfrey’s reference to “unhorsing” seemed, of course, directly incriminating, and most suspicious of all was the statement that but for his age young Remington would have died on the spot. This was knowledge not vouchsafed to “ordinary” men. No suspected witch could afford to make comments that even hinted at such knowledge.
Acquitted in such a narrow and grudging way, Godfrey had little to look forward to in the spring of 1666. At least twice (probably three times) he had faced the possibility of conviction and death on the gallows; few, if any, of his peers believed in his innocence; and his notoriety extended throughout Essex County—perhaps beyond.38 Indeed, his name had become something of a byword, mentioned in situations where Godfrey himself played no direct part whatsoever. A lawsuit from Newbury in 1668 produced the following bit of testimony: “He [the defendant] further said that he could have as good dealing from a Turk or pagan or Indian as from Mr. Newman [the plaintiff]—yea, saith he, from Godfrey himself—with many such like words.”39 In a separate case, several months later, a defendant was alleged to have slandered a county magistrate, by asserting (among other things) that “he was as bad as Godfrey in usury.” (When the deponents had asked “what that Godfrey was,” they were told that “he was an evil-looked fellow, and that he was a great usurer; and if he came before a judge, his looks would hang him.”)40
It is striking, too, that some men not particularly involved in Godfrey’s legal and business affairs could feel, and express, a bitter rage when confronting him in person. One particularly violent episode was described in court by a local constable:
I, going to Job Tyler’s house to serve an attachment, did take John Godfrey with me. And when I came to the said Tyler’s house, John Carr being there said, “What come you hither for, Godfrey, you witching rogue? I will,” said John Carr, “set you out of doors.” This deponent said to the said John Carr, “Let John Godfrey alone.” The said Carr said he would not, but said, “What had you to do, to bring such a rogue with you?” And the said Carr immediately ran his fist in the said Godfrey’s breast, and drove the said Godfrey up against the chimney-stock which was very rugged. Then I charged the said Carr to be quiet and let the said Godfrey alone. But the said Carr said he would turn the said Godfrey out of doors and kick him down the hill. And again this deponent charged the said Carr to let the said Godfrey alone, and so Carr did forbear, and called the said Godfrey many bad names.41
Much of this had been true long before, yet now one senses a cumulative effect that was new and compelling. The records of the late 1660s suggest a changing set of relationships—a different balance of forces—as between Godfrey and the people among whom he lived. Whatever his difficulties in the earlier phase, there had been no mistaking the force of his aggressive energy, his determination to fight on, his ability to outmaneuver opponents, and the apprehension he aroused on all sides. But after 1666 he seemed an altogether less menacing, and more vulnerable, figure.
There was, for example, a marked tilt in the record of Godfrey’s court appearances. The vigorous and frequently successful plaintiff of former years was cast more and more in the role of defendant. (In the period 1660–64 he had appeared 13 times as defendant and 34 as plaintiff; for 1665–69 the comparable figures were 19 and 23.) Moreover, Godfrey could no longer be sure of obtaining fair treatment from the legal process itself. The court docket from the late 1660s contains several notations like the following: “John Godfrey vs. Henry Salter. For refusing to give him an acquittance as promised for a deed of sale of land at Haverhill. Verdict for the defendant, but the Court did not accept the verdict.”42 (What this meant, more precisely, was that the magistrates in charge detected prejudice in the decision of the jury.) Similarly, court and community officers sometimes balked at executing judgments in Godfrey’s favor. His only recourse in such cases was a further appeal to the magistrates: for example, “John Godfrey vs. Abraham Whitaker. For refusing, though the marshal’s deputy, to levy executions against John Remington and Edward Yeomans.”43 Thus the same court which had once served Godfrey as a forum for the exercise of his peculiar talents now became the protector of his weakness.
But protection from this source was incomplete and inconsistent, and Godfrey’s troubles continued to mount. In 1669 he was accused of “firing” the house of a Haverhill neighbor, and causing the death (by burning) of the neighbor’s wife.44 Convicted on all counts by the county court, he eventually won a reversal through an appeal to the Court of Assistants in Boston. Also, during these years, he was twice convicted of theft,45 and once for “subborning witnesses … by hindering persons from giving evidence and sometimes instigating some to give false evidence.”46 (The penalties in the latter instance included a fine of a full £100.) Still other cases traced a line of personal deterioration. There were repeated fines for drunkenness,47 for “taking tobacco in the streets,”48 for “cursing speeches,”49 and for “prophaning the sabbath.”50 Godfrey had never cared much for the social and moral conventions of his community; now, one feels, he no longer cared for himself.
There was one final court case of special interest here. In 1669 Godfrey filed suit against Daniel Ela (still another resident of Haverhill), charging defamation “for reporting that he, the said Godfrey, was seen at Ipswich and at Salisbury at the same time.”51 On this occasion, in contrast to the earlier ones, there is no hint of a criminal charge against Godfrey; the comments attributed to Ela were a matter of personal conversation. Indeed, the word witchcraft is not mentioned in any of the documents from Godfrey’s own suit, though the implication was very clear.52
Some of the testimony simply confirmed that Ela had spoken as alleged, but a far larger portion aimed to show the grounds for such a statement. Ela called as defense witnesses several persons who had seen Godfrey in Ipswich, and others who had seen him in Salisbury, on the particular day in question. Moreover, there were reports of similar occurrences in the past. A deposition from one John Griffin may stand for the rest:
About seven years ago the last winter John Godfrey and this deponent went over Merrimac River on the ice … to Andover—Godfrey on foot, and this deponent on horseback, and the horse was as good a one as ever I rode on. And when I was at Goodman Gage’s field, I saw John Godfrey in the same field a little before me. … But when I had ridden a little further—not seeing Godfrey or any tracks at all (and it was at a time when there had fallen a middling snow overnight)—I ran my horse all the way to Andover. And the first house I came into at Andover was Goodman Rust’s house, and when I came in I saw John Godfrey sitting in the corner, and Goody Rust told me that he had been there so long that a maid that was in the house had made clean a kettle and hung on peas and pork to boil for Godfrey. And the peas and pork were ready to boil, and the maid was skimming the kettle.53
This picture of wintertime life in early New England conveys a homely charm that is strengthened by the passage of three hundred years. The fresh snow, the river crossing, the fast ride on horseback, the snug house, the peas and pork warming in the fireplace: here are all the ingredients of a vintage Norman Rockwell painting. But, more important, there is a calmness, a “factual” tone, an absence of dread and loathing, in the participants themselves. In fact, the same quality characterizes most of the other evidence presented in Godfrey vs. Ela, and sets this case apart from all of the earlier ones. That a man should be capable of appearing in two places simultaneously, or of outracing a fast horse, seemed literally incredible, but it was not equivalent to magical acts of destruction against life or property. And it is most significant that none of the witnesses in 1669 imputed such acts, or threats to perform such acts, to John Godfrey. There was, in this final public consideration of his alleged witchcraft, much less at stake; as a result the proceedings were both less intense and less involved.
Following the conclusion of this case—a conclusion, incidentally, which favored the defendant—six years of life remained to John Godfrey. There was no significant change in his experience during these years, at least nothing that the extant records can be made to reveal. Suits and counter-suits over questions of property, minor criminal offenses, a restless moving about: so his life wound down. The end came in the summer of 1675, apparently at Boston. There is no certain record of Godfrey’s death,54 but legal documents from the settlement of his estate are pertinent. In September 1675 the court appointed a school-teacher named Benjamin Thompson, of Charlestown, Massachusetts, as his administrator; it appeared, too, that Thompson would be his chief beneficiary.55 But this arrangement was soon challenged by others with a claim on Godfrey’s property. Though there was no will, a statement signed with the dead man’s mark appeared to undermine Thompson’s position. It affords as well a last look at Godfrey’s personal style:
That whereas there was formerly a deed of gift of my estate, drawn from me John Godfrey unto Benjamin Thompson of Charles-town. … [I declare that this was] done by fraudulent means, myself and most of the company being drunk at the same time. He engaging to pay unto me for my yearly maintenance the full and just sum of ten pounds in silver, the which was never paid to me to the value of one farthing, though the said ten pounds was yearly engaged to be paid during my life. … All that he ever did for me [was], once when I was in Boston prison, he was an occasion of my being let out. The truth of which, I being in perfect sense and memory, I do protest upon my soul before God as I am a dying man. …56
The estate was not large, but included personal effects, several oxen, and a hundred acres of land in Haverhill. Additional papers showed death-bed bequests to two men (not including Thompson) who had assisted Godfrey during his terminal illness. The issue dragged on in the local courts for at least two years, and its final resolution went unrecorded. Probate litigation was not uncommon in colonial New England; but it seems particularly fitting, given all we know about the life of John Godfrey, that his death should have occasioned one more quarrel.
We have managed to follow John Godfrey through some thirty years of his personal history. The picture is necessarily incomplete—less a filled canvas than a collection of fragments—but certain thematic continuities do come clear. The following summary is an effort to stress these continuities more forcefully than has been possible heretofore. They are presented as six distinct, although obviously overlapping, attributes of Godfrey’s life and career. Taken altogether they go far toward explaining Godfrey’s singular position (given the sociocultural context), and the logic of his “selection” as a potential (or actual) witch.
1. It is striking, first of all, that John Godfrey was without family, and virtually without relatives of any kind, during all his years in New England. The only person who may have been his kin was one Peter Godfrey of Newbury; but even here the evidence is limited to a shared surname and a modest amount of personal contact.57 Was Peter a younger brother? a cousin? a nephew? Perhaps, but the records do not say. Apart from this single possibility, there was no one at all: no parents, no spouse, no children. Life-long bachelors were an extreme rarity in colonial New England; in this respect alone John Godfrey must have seemed conspicuous.
The singular fact of Godfrey’s bachelorhood suggests a further hypothesis which, while highly speculative, forges links with other bits and pieces of his life. Was he homosexual—perhaps not actively, but “latently,” so? Consider the following: Godfrey’s pursuit of work as a herdsman meant that he was continually presenting himself to men, and displaying his talent for their “approval.” And there was a “passive” side to this; he was, in effect, saying “choose me.” Often these approaches involved him in “triangular” situations, in which the “object” of his attentions was a mature man. (His “rival” in such instances was usually an adolescent boy. The bitter reference to “cock-eating boys,” quoted in the deposition by John Remington, also comes to mind here.) Moreover, the pattern of multiple litigation with a variety of men in his community—a pattern which seems to have a compulsive aspect—may reflect a defense against homosexuality. The strategy would be the one known to psychoanalysis as “reaction formation”: i.e. in order to suppress a culturally forbidden wish to love other men, ego attacks them continually. Finally, the bitter, tenacious style in which he waged his personal battles has a distinctly “paranoid” cast—and homosexuality has long been associated with paranoia, in psychiatric theory and practice.58
2. Lacking family, he also lacked a home. Many plots of land passed through his hands, either from regular sales or in payment of debts; but he did not maintain any settled habitation. His domestic arrangements were quite haphazard, and in part he depended on others. Thus one glimpses him staying overnight at the Whitakers in 1656; spending the summer of 1661 at Job Tyler’s; eating a meal, in 1668, at the home of Matthias Button (“he said to Goody Button … ‘woman, weigh me out some meat,’ and she arose and gave him meat and brought in water”); declaring in court, in 1669, that “his usual abode was at Francis Skerry’s in Salem”; and spending his last days, in 1675, under the care of a certain “Dr.” Daniel Weed and Richard Croade.59
3. By the standards of his time and culture John Godfrey was extremely mobile. His life seemed to violate the usual gravitational forces—social ones for certain, perhaps physical ones as well. The following is a list of his places of residence arranged in chronological sequence (though probably not a complete list, since some of his movements went unrecorded):
Many of the early New Englanders changed residence during the course of a lifetime, and in some instances there were several such changes. But few people felt comfortable with this pattern, for their own values consistently affirmed stability. And virtually no one amassed a record of movement to approach John Godfrey’s.
There is little doubt that this record was consciously recognized, and condemned, by Godfrey’s peers. The petition which opened the witchcraft inquiry of 1659 referred to “John Godfrey, resident of Andover or elsewhere at his pleasure”60—a quite unique notation. In later years his liability for Sabbath-breaking was described in terms of “travelling from town to town.”61 But most striking of all in this connection was the evidence presented in Godfrey vs. Ela, the defamation case of 1669. The defendant’s statement that Godfrey had been seen in two places at the same time found credence with many witnesses; such a feat seemed quite plausible from a man whose reputation for moving about was already beyond question. The testimony of John Griffin (quoted above) shows that this reputation had long encompassed some “supernatural” elements.
The three aspects of Godfrey’s life considered so far have an important underlying affinity. The dearth of kin, the casual dependency on others for bed and board, the frequent changes of residence: these are all manifestations of an extreme rootlessness. Perhaps it seemed, to those who knew him, that John Godfrey was scarcely touched by the elemental ties which controlled the lives of “ordinary men.” And being thus unbound, what might he not think, and feel, and do? The answer was manifest in three additional elements of his character: his abrasive interpersonal style; his grasping, importunate spirit; and his extraordinary contentiousness. These things, too, formed an overlapping triad of signal consequence.
4. Of Godfrey’s manner in dealing with others, the surviving evidence yields an entirely consistent picture. He was rough, provocative, and unpredictable. He paid little heed to accepted conventions; he would try, for instance, to collect debts on the Sabbath when “good” men were otherwise preoccupied.62 He cursed; he threatened; he was given to sudden “rages.” He never once admitted fault—never, so far as one can tell, allowed himself those moments of ritual self-abasement so familiar to the Puritans.
5. The spirit behind the style was equally plain. Time and again, the records show Godfrey grasping for something—whether for work as a herdsman, or for property, or for revenge. Many of his demands seemed excessive in amount and inappropriate in character, but he never stopped pressing. Jonathan Singletary, petitioning the court for relief from Godfrey’s incessant claims, expressed a widely held view: “still he goes on with me, as with many other poor men, and saith he is resolved utterly to undo me, although he undo himself also.”63 There is a quality of relentless pursuit here, no matter what the cost or consequences. With Godfrey, so it seemed, a wish became a need and finally an imperative demand.
6. Conflict was the normal condition of John Godfrey’s life. His instincts were deeply combative, and he made little effort to curb their expression. Once again Jonathan Singletary can serve as spokesman for views that were widely held in the community. “Why do you come dissembling and playing the Devil’s part?” said Singletary, midway through his quarrel with Godfrey at Ipswich prison. “Your nature is nothing but envy and malice, which you will vent though to your own loss, and you seek peace with no man.”64
It was, of course, in court that Godfrey’s “nature” found its appropriate outlet. Beginning in 1658 his involvement in litigation of one sort of another was virtually continuous. This pattern has been sampled rather extensively in the preceding pages; what remains now is an overall summary, a score-sheet of court cases in which Godfrey participated as one of the principals. The total of such cases is simply staggering—132 by a conservative count. (This figure is the sum of actions explicitly noted on a court docket. Almost certainly there were additional cases for which records have since been lost.) In 89 of these cases (some 67 percent of the total) Godfrey appeared as plaintiff; in 30 he was the defendant in a civil suit (23 percent); and in a further 13 instances he was indicted on criminal charges (10 percent).65
The matter of outcomes also deserves notice. When Godfrey brought suit against others, a verdict for the plaintiff was returned in 55 percent of all cases. (The other 45 percent included verdicts for the defendant, non-suits, and cases reported without reference to result.) When others brought suit against Godfrey, plaintiff was victorious only 30 percent of the time. He was, then, not only an aggressive litigant (far more appearances as plaintiff than as defendant), but also a notably successful one (a high rate of “favorable” verdicts, relative to that of opponents).
Godfrey’s combative instincts remained active to the end of his life, but they became in a sense less consequential. He continued the vigorous pursuit of his interests in the courts—but more and more often he was himself a defendant. His rate of successful prosecutions did not fall significantly—but only because the magistrates reversed several decisions by juries which seemed prejudiced against him. His involvement in petty misdemeanors increased—but he was less subject to charges of witchcraft. And, to the extent that his reputation as witch hung on, his accusers showed less fear, less anger, less deep-down dread. There developed around him a new balance of forces, which perceptibly reduced his social influence. From malevolent foe to clever trickster, from witch to eccentric: such was the direction of the change.
The foregoing list of significant themes in the life and career of John Godfrey yields a final opportunity to assess his position in the larger history of New England witchcraft. He was in some ways distinctive even among accused witches—for example, in his gender, and in his detachment from family and kin.66 (The hints of latent homosexuality suggest a further area of possible singularity.) But at least as striking overall are the various traits and experiences which Godfrey shared with others accused of “familiarity with the Devil.” The blunt, assertive style; the appearance of envious and vengeful motive; indeed, the unrestrained expression of a whole aggressive side: in all this Godfrey epitomized the character which New Englanders expected in their “witches.”67 Of course, this character was manifest in a social context; always and everywhere, witchcraft charges reflected chronic disturbance in human relationships. And this part of Godfrey’s experience is documented for us with truly remarkable clarity.
In another sense, however, “witches” and their accusers interacted on a deeply reciprocal basis; disturbances and disharmony were themselves an epiphenomenon, the paradoxical sign of an inner bond. Here, too, Godfrey’s case is instructive. Even in moments of bitter antagonism he and his peers were inextricably joined. Theirs was a relationship of functional dependence, with implicit gains for each side.
For average folk in Essex County Godfrey’s presence was frequently adaptive, helping them to relieve and resolve significant elements of inner tension. He offered, most conspicuously, a ready target for anger, a focus of indignation. An attack on Godfrey was understandable, even commendable, if not quite legitimate in the formal sense. Moreover, his special malign agency served to explain and excuse a variety of misadventures which must otherwise have been attributed to personal incompetence. When cows were lost or food was spoiled, when a boy was injured in a fall from a horse, the people involved could fix the blame on witchcraft. There was a kind of comfort here. Finally, and most broadly, John Godfrey defined for his community a spectrum of unacceptable behaviors. Like deviant figures everywhere, he served to sharpen the boundaries between “good” and “bad,” “moral” and “immoral,” “legitimate” and “illegitimate.”68
Meanwhile Godfrey himself seems to have derived covert gratification from the special notoriety he gained as a “witch.” His response to accusation, and even to formal indictment, was to continue the very pattern of activity which had brought him into difficulty in the first place. He became in this way a man of consequence, someone known (and feared) through the length and breadth of Essex County. His compulsive involvement in conflict implies as well a psychological need on Godfrey’s part. Something deep inside urged him insistently to challenge, to provoke, to contend.
Even as he tested the normative frontiers of his community, Godfrey was never far from its organizing center. Thus to describe him as an “outsider”—a common sociological view of accused witches—would be substantially misleading. He was, after all, a familiar participant in a variety of everyday situations. At one time or another he had his bed and board from many of his neighbors, he worked alongside (and for) other men, he accompanied the constable in serving attachments, and so on. Indeed it might well be argued that he was a special sort of insider, so deeply did he penetrate the thoughts and feelings of his peers.
And did they, for their part, have a sense of this underlying affinity? Godfrey was not an “ordinary” man by the standards they customarily applied, but could they feel confident that his life and behavior were totally at variance with their own? Did his rootlessness, for example, serve in the end to separate him from the mass of his fellow-New Englanders, or did it merely exaggerate a central tendency in their lives as well? Had not many of these men and women undergone, quite willingly, a process of uprooting beyond anything experienced by most of their English contemporaries? And did they not feel repeated temptations to move about in the American “wilderness,” as new towns were established and new lands opened to settlement?69 There was, too, the matter of John Godfrey’s conduct toward others. Aggressive, angry, grasping he certainly seemed; but were the others entirely free of such traits themselves? Their sermons, their charters, and their private devotions affirmed harmony and “peaceableness” as pre-eminent values; but the records of their courts and governments told a different story. Petty disputes among neighbors, and “heart-burning contentions” within whole towns or religious congregations, were endemic to the history of early New England.70
These pathways of identification suggest how fully John Godfrey and his neighbors served and used—one might even say, needed—each other. They afford, moreover, a new point of approach to questions which otherwise seem particularly baffling. Recall that John Godfrey was suspected of practicing witchcraft during a span of at least fifteen years. Two or three times he was prosecuted on charges that might have brought the death penalty. After each trial, no matter how narrow his escape, he returned to the same locale and was re-incorporated into the same network of ongoing relationships. The problem of John Godfrey simply would not go away. Perhaps now we can begin to understand why. For this was a problem deeply rooted in the collective life of the community, and in the individual lives of its various members. It is not too much to say, in conclusion, that there was a little of Godfrey in many of the Essex County settlers; so his fate and theirs remained deeply intertwined.