1692.] CASE OF STEPHEN BURROUGHS. 469 prosecution toms of the delusion appeared, and who eventually availed himself of it to destroy his rivals, or enemies, hated the Rev. Stephen Burroughs and drove him away from Salem. He retired to Wells, in Maine, and settled there with his family. Parris had influence enough, Arrest and in the height of the witch trials, to have Burroughs ar- of Stephen rested for witchcraft and brought to Salem. It seems in- Burroughs. credible that it could have been done; but he had left many enemies. behind when he went to Wells. The accusation was based upon some commanding personal qualities which Burroughs possessed. He was a man of great stature and uncommon strength. His personal presence carried control and infected people with the magnetism of a superior nature. His look was very daunting. His knowledge of the mysteries of wood-craft, and forest life seemed to many people an uncanny endowment. When at his trial he happened to look backward, all the persons fell down whom he was supposed to be afflicting. He was charged with lifting a barrel of cider, with holding out a heavy musket at arms' length. No man, it was thought, without preternatural aid could perform such feats. He explained that he grasped the musket just behind the lock. It was said that he lifted a barrel of molasses by just putting his fingers into the bung-hole. This he denied. He was asked if his house. in Wells was not haunted; he denied this, but was willing to own, he said, that there were toads. Alas, the house in Wells was haunted by wife and children filled with agony and dread, as they His execuwaited so long for him; but he did not return. Parris tion. managed to have him hanged. He was a spotless man, and possessed a ruling intelligence. It was supposed that the enterprise to arrest him would be a difficult one, so an elder and two constables were sent to bring him to Salem. When they arrived and stated their errand, he promptly replied, "Oh, yes," and left his family, who were cheered, no doubt, with the reflection that a charge so preposterous could not for a moment be sustained. As the party started about nightfall, it was the more desirable to take the shortest route. Burroughs conducted them along a stretch of country leading through Berwick to the upper waters of the Piscataqua. There was no direct road; the track lay through an unbroken forest. The constables demurred at the prospect; Burroughs said that he knew the way; they dreaded him, but had to follow, as they afterwards declared, because they were under a spell. He knew the desolate forest as well as his own acres, for it was favorite ground of his. In the depth of it they were surprised by a storm which began with a pitchy darkness and a great hush. The men trembled with the suspicion that Burroughs was evoking supernatural aid They watched and shuddered with fear. Then came the powerful wind, bending and breaking trees, the rush of rain and the crashing thunders. The horses were mad with terror, and started at a furious pace over the ground that is now called Witch Trot. The party came out at length upon the river safely, and Burroughs with them, who had no desire to escape; but the constables on the day of his trial added their testimony to his familiarity with the powers of air and darkness, and always believed that he raised the storm. In 1720, an attempt was Later attemp's to revive the witchcraft excitement. Burroughs and the Sheriffs. made in Littleton, Massachusetts, to revive the witchcraft delusion, but it proved abortive. But the old Scotch.ordeal for discovering witches by throwing the accused into the water, when the innocent one would sink, not much to her personal advantage, was tried in the eighteenth century at an inlet of Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia, called "Witch-Duck." When the curtain had fallen upon the Salem tragedy, Cotton Mather undertook to sum up the matter and vindicate his share in it. This superficial and ambitious divine wrote thus: "It may be 1692.] COTTON MATHER'S VINDICATION. 471 that errors on both sides have attended them [the troubles] which will never be understood until the day when Satan shall Mather's be bound after another manner than he is at this day; but vindication. for my own part, I know not that ever I have advanced any opinion in the matter of witchcraft, but what all the ministers of the Lord that I know of in the world, whether English or Scotch, or French or Dutch, are of the same opinion with me. CHAPTER XX. COLONIZATION BY FRIENDS. PROGRESS OF NEW JERSEY. · INSURRECTION UNDER JAMES CARTERET.- CHANGES IN THE NEW JERSEY TITLES. - THE "QUINTIPARTITE DEED."— DIVISION INTO EAST AND WEST JERSEY. - PROSPERITY OF WEST JERSEY UNDER QUAKER RULE. CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION. -THE QUAKERS BUY EAST JERSEY. EARLIEST CONNECTION OF WILLIAM PENN WITH AMERICAN COLONIZATION. - LIFE AND CHARACTER OF PENN. THE GRANT OF PENNSYLVANIA. - EARLY SETTLERS. PENN IN AMERICA. -PHILADELPHIA FOUNDED. -THE TREATY AT SHACKAMAXON. -PENN'S RETURN TO ENGLAND. PROGRESS OF THE COLONY. PENN AGAIN AT PHILADELPHIA. Progress of THE new Proprietors of New Jersey had no reason to complain of any want of progress and prosperity in their colony for the New Jersey. first few years after it came into their possession. The constitution of government which they had established was acceptable to the people; the climate and the soil were attractive; the vicinity to older colonies made it easy to supply the wants of those who should settle in it, — exempt from the privations and hardships which necessarily attend a settlement in an isolated wilderness. Such representations brought emigrants from England; the enterprising and discontented in New England, whether desirous of more room, or restless for political or religious reasons, saw, or thought they saw, that they could better their condition by a removal to the new province. The first towns grew rapidly; others were begun. The axe and the plough, in the hands of sturdy farmers, everywhere encroached upon the primeval forests and the virgin soil. Trouble over rents and titles. But when, in 1670, the first quit-rents were demanded by the Proprietors, there came a check to all this prosperity. Titles to lands led to inevitable and bitter disputes. Some had purchased from the Indians; some claimed under the original Dutch owners; others had received grants from Nicolls; fewer still held deeds from the Proprietors at that time, Berkeley and Carteret. Bergen and Woodbridge were among the latter, and acknowledged their liability to the payment of these rents; but Elizabeth, Newark, and isolated farmers here and there, who had settled upon 1673.] CHANGES OF GOVERNORS AND TITLES. 473 their lands before the country had come under the jurisdiction of the English, united in resisting the demands of the proprietary govern ment. Resistance, at length, came to be absolute insurrection. A leader only was wanted, and it was not long before one was provided. About a year after the demand for the quit-rents was made, James Carteret, the second son of Sir George, arrived in the colony on his way to Carolina, of which he was one of the landgraves. A dissolute, unscrupulous, and ambitious man, he was ready to take advantage of any fortune that chance threw in his way. He put himself at the head of the movement against his cousin, Philip Carteret, who held his commission from James's father, Sir head of the George. In the spring of 1672 the insurrectionary party called an assembly at Elizabethtown, formally deposed Philip Carteret, and elected James to be Governor in his stead. Captain teret at the insurrec tion. Philip made little further attempt to contest the matter on the spot, but, appointing a deputy to represent him, took ship in the early summer and sailed for England, to lay the whole matter before his superiors. It was his wisest course. Unaided, he could do nothing against an unwilling people; and possibly he believed that his cousin's government would be to the malcontents a most salutary lesson. Such, at least, was the result. James showed himself to be utterly incompetent. By the time orders were received from the Duke of York, the insurgents were ready to submit. Captain Berry, Philip Carteret's deputy, was acknowledged without further trouble The Propriein May, 1673;1 and James Carteret sailed for Virginia ten tary Governdays afterward. There was no further interruption of the stored. proprietary government until the Dutch reconquest of New Netherland in the autumn of that year; and even then, though New Jersey received the new name of Achter Col, and ostensibly passed once more under the Netherland rule, the real change was but slight, and internal tranquillity was almost undisturbed. ment re Title to New Jersey after the Treaty of New Jersey was placed in a new position when by the treaty of Westminster New Netherland was restored to England. The Duke of York's title to New York had been entirely extinguished by the conquest of the territory by a foreign Westminpower, and its subsequent passage to the crown by treaty; and he required a new grant from the King, in order to be again the rightful proprietor of the province. How much more, then, it 1 Whitehead, pp. 58, 59. ster. 2 He came back to New York afterward, where he was seen in 1679, "running about among the farmers, and staying where he can get most to drink, and sleeping in barns on the straw." Journal of the Labadists. |