Prologue: Boston, 1688: The Possession of the Goodwin ChildrenMATHER VS GLOVER
The trouble began in the summer of 1688. Thirteen-year-old Martha Goodwin noticed that some of her family's linen was missing and sharply questioned their washerwoman, who she suspected had stolen it. The laundress's mother was furious and attacked Martha with terrible words. Goody Glover's "bad language" seemed to afflict Martha like a contagious disease. The girl, and soon her three younger siblings, fell into fits. These seemed so painful that the prominent minister who later wrote up the case reported that "it would have broke a heart of stone to have seen their agonies." When the respected physician Thomas Oakes was called in, the only possible explanation he could offer for the children's suffering was witchcraft.
Luckily, it was not hard to guess who was responsible for harming the Goodwin children. Glover -- her first name is not known for certain, though she is often mistakenly called "Mary" -- was made-to-order for the part. An angry older woman, she was just the sort of person whom people suspected of being a witch. In fact, not six years earlier, as a woman lay dying, she had revealed to another woman that Glover had bewitched her to death. And just as the woman who was carrying this secret was preparing to testify against the witch, her son was assaulted by a "black thing with a blue cap" that appeared in his room to torment him. Though Glover was just a poor woman, she seemed able to cause great harm by using the powers of evil. Her imprisonment immediately healed the youngest of the Goodwin children, but when she again railed at them, the other three relapsed.
To face off against Glover and the devil -- the evil one who surely was responsible for the anguish Glover was causing the Goodwin children -- a young but important minister arrived at the household. He was Cotton Mather -- son of Increase Mather, one of the leading ministers and theologians of his day, and grandson of John Cotton, one of the most important ministers and authors in the early history of New England. In his lineage, his already impressive learning, and his presence, Cotton Mather was the ideal person to aid the Goodwin children. If he could entrap Glover and get her to reveal her satanic bond, he could free the young people from her malign influence.
Mather, already in Boston, arrived at their home to try to help four children who lived near the church in which he preached. But he was also there to participate in what he knew was a far larger and more momentous cause. This case was both a test and a potential rallying point for all of New England Puritans.
Of MEETINGHOUSES and the blood of WOLVES: the PURITAN journey
The Puritans' mission in America was clearest in the early days of their New England settlements. The Puritans had arrived on ships. Built of long wooden planks, their churches were like simple wooden boats on land, safeguarding the believers inside. And, as one of their descendants, Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote, when one of them killed a wolf, he claimed his reward by nailing it "on the porch of the meetinghouse," where the blood would drip onto the doorstep. This balance of simple strength and fierce combat was the essence of Puritanism.
Puritans turned completely away from what they saw as the old props of religion. Rich cathedrals full of statues, stained-glass images, ceremonies where the scent of incense or the sound of ancient chants might set the mood, priests speaking in a foreign language -- all had no place in their religion. Instead, they built their faith on clean, simple planks, like the timber of their churches, on the Word of God as written in the Bible, translated into English, and shared by the congregation.
The Puritans, or "the Godly" as they were often called in England, were pleased with their spare, simple churches with their hard wooden benches. Religion for them was not a moment here or there -- a sermon on the Sabbath Day, a prayer at meals, pious phrases on holy days. Nor were they called "Puritans" because they wanted a pure, clear faith filling every part of life and every moment of every day. Each household was considered a little congregation, with the father as a kind of minister. He would lead the family in prayer and Bible reading, and he would discipline those who needed it. Children were viewed as prideful and stubborn. Their early education involved breaking them of that willfulness and making them more humble and obedient. While in some ways this was a very severe kind of family life, Puritans thought of it as based on love. They believed that husbands and wives should love each other, passionately and intimately. And the harsh treatment of young children only made sense since it gave them the best chance of discovering God's love, which was the greatest gift of all.
The Puritans believed that each person was on the most difficult, dangerous, and uncertain path: the journey toward God. In England they had to struggle against the government even to practice their faith. Their absolute devotion to religion as they understood it, their unwillingness to accept compromise, and their hatred of Catholics clashed with the policies of English kings content with an easier faith that asked less of people. Faced with this kind of opposition in 1603, King James I warned that he would chase them out of the country. But this persecution only strengthened their faith. Puritans who crossed the sea and arrived in New England felt they were participating in a new kind of pilgrimage, the physical epic of starting over in a new land. And the physical was linked to the spiritual growth. Every tree felled, field planted, simple meetinghouse built was a step in the creation of the kingdom of the Lord.
The Puritans were a minority among the English settlers in New England, and from the first, they had conflicts with others who came to North America only to make money or to live according to their own rules. But their sense of what crossing the ocean meant was very influential. Anyone today who feels that Americans have a special destiny as a force for religious faith or democracy or economic opportunity is sharing in and carrying on the Puritans' vision of this land.
Devout Puritans interpreted everything that happened to them on their pilgrimage in the new land -- epidemics of illness, wars with Indians, the sickness or health of their families, earthquakes, even the severity of New England winters -- as judgments of their behavior. They saw themselves as living out the story of the Jews, the chosen people in the Bible, who had to wander in the wilderness after they left Egypt. The stark meetinghouse colored with the blood of a wolf was the modern version of the tents of the Jews, carrying the Word of the Lord to the Promised Land.
Puritans drew great strength from seeing themselves in combat with the world around them. In their wars against the Indians, for example, they could be completely and coldly destructive. For a time they offered bounties for the scalps of murdered Indians. In this sense they were like those fundamentalists of all religions today who can justify extreme measures against others -- whether that be attacking U.S. cities, killing doctors who perform abortions, or settling in occupied territories -- on the grounds that they have a divine right to take them. They considered themselves an outpost of saints in a hostile wilderness. Any victory against their foes seemed to prove the rightness of their mission; any defeat was a sign of God's dissatisfaction.
Seeing themselves as a spiritual community, Puritans especially feared being attacked by the devil, the enemy of God. Those who rejected God entirely and made pacts with the devil were, in the eyes of Puritan believers, a combination of our worst fears of spies and terrorists. Since you could not immediately recognize these traitors, they could pass as the most pious of churchgoing neighbors -- which meant you constantly had to be on guard. Anyone who yearned for a simpler, easier way to happiness could be tempted. According to one woman who confessed to being a witch during the Salem trials, the devil promised her, "We should have happy days and then it would be better times for me." The devil felt equally present to people who thought they were failing God. Like Elizabeth Knapp, they feared they had lost their souls already.
Witchcraft and prayer actually had something very important in common. If the devil was lurking nearby, turning people into witches, then God was equally close at hand, saving souls. The threat of one proved the existence of the other. This equation was very important to Cotton Mather when he came to help the Goodwin children, for on every front the mission that had brought his family to New England was under assault.
Four years before, in 1684, the frighteningly pro-Catholic Charles II had dissolved the original charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had allowed the Puritan leaders to govern as they saw fit. New England was now being run by an arrogant Englishman named Sir Edmond Andros. Andros was questioning whether long-established farmers really owned their land. Worse, he was insisting that any Christian could come into the community. That meant that Quakers had to be tolerated. All good Puritans knew that Quakers trembled and shook in their meetings and claimed to be in touch with an inner light. To the Godly, this sounded suspiciously like possession. Puritans were being told to allow people who might be directly in touch with the devil into their towns and villages.
Outside New England's borders the news was equally frightening. King Philip's War, a ferocious conflict with the Indians a decade earlier, had led to extremes of death and suffering on both sides. Though unprecedented killing and cruelty allowed the New Englanders to win, the war left scars: disabled men, lost relatives, and the certainty that remaining Indians could see their neighbors only as mortal enemies. Farther north, the Catholic French and their Indian allies were a ...
