Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 by Richard Godbeer Read Free Book Online

time that Mercy had been suspected of witchcraft.
    Several days later when Daniel Wescot returned home from Hartford, he made Kate repeat her description of this third woman.
    “What does she look like?”
    “She’s of middle stature with thick lips.” Mistress Wescot may well have noted the discrepancy between this answer and Kate’s earlier description of the witch as a tall woman, though the thick lips did conform with what she had said before—and also with Abigail’s own suspicions. Mister Wescot meanwhile continued his interrogation.
    “How old is she?”
    “Neither old nor young. She has on a dirty shift and a dirty cap.”
    “And where does she live?”
    “Compo. I’ve been to Compo.” This last remark doubtless perplexed Mistress Wescot. When Kate first spoke to the specter, she had not known where Compo was. Yet now she claimed to have been there.
    Kate seemed to know that this third woman was no stranger to the Wescot household. “Mercy,” she cried out during one of her fits, “why do you meddle with me? I never did you any wrong. What’s it to me if my master did?” Once Kate emerged from the fit, Daniel Wescot asked her why she had spoken in that way.
    “The woman told me that you wronged her in giving evidence against her.” When she next went into a fit, Kate conversed again with the woman. “Why do you meddle with me? What’s it to me if my master did that? But I’ve told him of it and he said nothing. I believe you lie.”

    Kate had now named three women. It was almost five weeks since the onset of her fits and her master decided that the time had come to act. Daniel Wescot lodged a formal complaint on behalf of his servant and appeared with her before a preliminary court of inquiry on the twenty-seventh of May 1692. The court consisted of four local magistrates: Jonathan Bell and Jonathan Selleck, both of whom lived in Stamford, along with two men from nearby Fairfield, John Burr and Nathan Gold. Their task was to determine whether the evidence that Mister Wescot presented justified a formal prosecution. Trials were time consuming, costly, and not to be undertaken lightly. Preliminary courts of inquiry could identify accusations that were frivolous or for which there was little supporting evidence; they could dismiss cases there and then, or they could determine that a full-scale trial should go ahead.
    The magistrates met with Mister Wescot and his maidservant at the Stamford meetinghouse, the same building in which religious services and town meetings took place. The meetinghouse was a simple thirty-eight-foot-square timber building with a steep roof, built two decades ago to replace a smaller structure that the town had outgrown. Since then the population had continued to expand and the town had recently installed additional seating. The wooden benches were austerely functional and there was little decoration such as one would see in an English parish church or a Catholic chapel. The meetinghouse was a straightforward, multipurpose structure. Daniel Wescot would have been used to spending time in the building for town meetings as well as for church services, though never before had he come there for a purpose such as this.
    Mister Selleck and his fellow magistrates asked Kate if she knew who it was that afflicted her. She replied without hesitation that she did.
    “I’ve seen Goody Clawson sitting on a spinning wheel and on the back of a chair. This very day I’ve also seen Goody Hipshod.”
    “Who?”
    “That’s what I call her. I saw her sitting on the bedhead.”
    “Have you seen any other?”
    “Yes, a woman who used to be called Mercy Holbridge but is now Mercy Disborough.”
    “How do you know her name?”
    “She told me. She lives at Compo.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I’ve been there.”
    One of the magistrates asked her how she got there.
    “I went on foot,” Katherine explained, “and Mercy was my guide, there and back again.”
    Mister Wescot