Salem Witch Trials of 1692: The Role of Increase and Cotton Mather

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In 1692, a dark chapter of early American history began in New England. Residents of Salem Massachusetts and the surrounding communities were being accused and convicted of witchcraft based on the words of two girls of nine and eleven in the towns. On June 10, 1692, Bridget Bishop was the first of many to be hanged for practicing witchcraft. Over the following five months nineteen more would die by the rope of the gallows on evidence that was both intangible and spectral. Only two of the twenty confessed to witchcraft and that, believed by many, to delay their execution.
Historians and citizens of the United States have speculated on where the mantle of blame is to be laid for these injustices to humanity. Some have looked to the Puritan religion and its ties to the community and government, claiming that the influence of religion on the community government was to blame for the injustice done to these individuals. Others look to blame the system in which the colonials lived. Special magistrates and community courts allowed evidence based on intangibles and spectral resources that would never be allowed in courts today. Many have laid this incredible tragedy at the feet of two men, father and son, Increase and Cotton Mather. Both Increase and Cotton served in a religious capacity in the vicinity of Salem. Both were very much against witchcraft and for the punishment of practicing it, but did the preaching and writings of these men condemn, what is now believed, innocent men and women to an early grave? Many writings still remain from both father and son to piece together the answer to this question.
One cannot dispute that Increase Mather had some effect of the witch trials of New England, but the proper way to find to truth about Increase Mather’s involvement is to look to his own words, and look at the historical involvement of Increase Mather upon these proceedings.
Increase Mather was a prolific Puritan writer of his time. He was very involved in government and was very prominent in his community. In fact, May 14, 1692, the year of the trials, he accompanied the new governor from England to America along with a new charter. Increase was a man who was very involved in the community in which he lived. Increase Mather certainly had strong political connections. However he was also a deeply religious man and pursued religious aspirations as well. Politics and religion in 1692 Puritan New England were never too far apart. Increase wrote many works during his lifetime about supernatural and spectacular events. In 1681 and 1682, he wrote two works, Heavens Alarm to the World and The Voice of God in Signal Providences. These works reflected the sentiment of this time period: that the judgment of God was upon the Puritan New Englanders. Williams notes, “In Heavens alarm, Mather’s primary interpretive concern is to identify clearly the message he sees as inherent within the comet’ presence for the spiritual edification of the Boston Puritans. His rhetoric is highly emotive as he interprets the meaning of the heavenly sign [of the 1682 comet] as a precursor of impending doom.” Eight years prior to the witch trials Increase had already completed a work on the supernatural, specifically addressing witchcraft. This book entitled, An Essay for recording of Illustrious Providences would be blamed for much of the hype that surrounded the trials. Many accuse Increase Mather of predisposing the residents to fear about witchcraft in this work. In chapter five of the book, Increase documents a story of a “bewitched” boy that is bewitched and is remarkably close to the onset of the Salem trials. Mather writes, “The boy was violently thrown to and fro…All this while the Devil is not use to appear in any visible shape, only they would think they had hold of the hand that sometimes scratched them; but it would give them the slip…Neither were there many Words spoken by Satan all this time, only once having put out their light, they heard a scraping on the boards, and then a Piping and Drumming on them, which was followed with a voice, singing Revenge! Revenge! Sweet is Revenge!”
Based on these three writings alone, the evidence would seem to be mounting in favor of those who criticize Increase Mather in contributing to the guilty verdicts of the witch trials. However, Mather believed that supernatural happenings are just as much from God to show His glory and from Satan to show his earthly power. He concludes, “I shall not suspect all those as guilty of witchcraft, not yet of heresy, who call the received opinion about Witches into question. There are four or five English Writers and another anonymous Author; who do with great vehemence affirm that never any did maintain that familiarity with the evil Spirits, which is commonly believed. True it is, that many things have been looked upon as proceeding from witchcraft, when it has not been so” Clearly, Increase Mather warns against a rush to judgment concerning spiritual events and their classification as witchcraft. In this work, Increase also wrote against the common day practice of testing people to see if they were witches. The accusers would tie up the accused and cast them into a water hole, such as a river or a pond. If the accused floated, they were considered to be in collusion with Satan, on the other hand, if they sank, they were cleared of the charges of witchcraft. Increase responds, “This practice has no foundation in nature, nor in scripture, if the water will bear none but witches, this must need proceed either from some natural or some supernatural cause. No natural cause is or can be assigned why the bodies of such persons should swim rather than any other. The bodies of witches have not lost their natural properties, they have weight in them as well as others. Moral changes and viciousness of mind, make no alteration as to these natural properties which are inseparable from the body.” Clearly Increase Mather was against these superstitious practices and regarded such activity reckless. However such practices were regularly employed on suspected witches during 1692 in Salem.
Mather spoke out in opposition of improper practices against accused witches before the trials of 1692, and also during the trials. It was during the trials that he wrote a work titled Cases of Conscience. This work details the guidelines under which a person should be considered a “sick person” or a person of witchcraft. The preface of this book is signed by fourteen ministers which in part reads, “So Odious and Abominable is the name of a witch, to the civilized, much more the religious part of mankind, that it is apt to grow up into a scandal for any, so much as to enter son sober cautions against the over hasty suspecting, or too precipitant judging of persons on this account. But certainly, the more execrable the crime is, the more critical care is to be used in the exposing of names, liberties, and lives of men (especially of a Godly Conversation) to the imputation of it” Throughout the book, Increase makes a logical argument from scripture against the use of spectral evidence. He writes, “It is an awful thing which the Lord has done to convince some amongst us of their Error: This then I declare and testifies that to take away the life of any one, merely because a spectre or Devil, in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them, will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land, where such a thing shall be done: mercy forbid that it should, (and I trust that as it has not it never will be so) in New-England. What does such an evidence amount unto more than this: either such an one did afflict such an one, or the Devil in his likeness, or his eyes were bewitched.
It is clear that Increase Mather did not approve of the procedures being used to indict and ultimately prosecute the witch trial victims. What is his solution if not intangible and spectral evidence? He clearly asserts in Cases of Conscience, “What is sufficient Proof? … 1. That a free and voluntary Confession of the Crime made by the Person suspected and accused after Examination, is a sufficient Ground’ of Conviction. Indeed, if Persons are Distracted, or under the power of Phrenetick Melancholy that alters the Case; but the jurors that examine them, and their Neighbors that know them, may easily determine that case; or if confession be extorted, the evidence is not so clear and convective; but if any persons out of remorse of conscience, or from a touch of God on their spirits, confess and shew their Deeds, as the converted magicians in Ephesus did … nothing can be more clear.”
Mather cannot shoulder the blame for the witch trials in New England. Although he spoke out harshly against the practice of witchcraft as being evil and punishable, he also spoke out for fairness and the use of tangible evidence to convict those accused of witchcraft. If Increase Mather had nothing to do with perpetuating these injustices on the innocent, what role did his son, Cotton Mather, have in the Salem trials?
About the same time as his father published his book, Illustrious Providences, Cotton Mather published his own book on witchcraft, Memorable Providences. This book was devoted entirely to witchcraft and is claimed by many to have been a fuel source for the Witch trials. In his book, Cotton describes an incident in which he expels spirits from a young boy. However, he wrote many times against the use of spectral evidence and even when asked to report on the trials (Wonders of the Invisible World), he wrote with a prejudice against the trials. In a letter to John Richards, a member of the court overseeing the trials, Cotton wrote, “I must humbly beg you that in the management of the again in your most worthy hands, you do not lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear. When you are satisfied or have a good plain legal evidence that the demons which molest our poor neighbors do indeed represent such and such people to the sufferers, tho’ this be a presumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it a conviction that the people so represented are witches to be immediately exterminated.” Also in a letter dated August 17, 1692 to John Foster, Cotton writes, “I do still think that when there is no further evidence against a person but only this, that a specter in their shape does afflict a neighbor, that evidence is not enough to convict the [word missing] of witchcraft.” These two letters seem to exonerate Cotton of the accusations of involvement in the witch trials. Cotton Mather’s diary also reflects the thoughts of a man not comfortable with the proceedings at Salem. On May 14 Cotton writes, “For my own part, I way always afraid of proceeding to convict and condemn any person, as a confederate with afflicting demons, upon so feeble as Evidence, as a spectral Representation.”
The Mathers were not responsible for the tragic year of 1692 in Salem Massachusetts that claimed twenty lives. They were plainly and explicitly against the practice of witchcraft just as most all clergy were of their day. Being against the practice, they spoke out. They both preached against the evils, seen and unseen, as was their vocation by God. Those that accuse them of not exercising their duty in the community by speaking publicly in defense of the accused have chosen not to see the facts history presents them. The Mathers wrote publicly and privately against the manner in which the citizens of Salem were convicted. Both Mathers spoke to community leaders: Increase Mather to Governor Phipps, Cotton Mather to John Richards, regarding to the trials in the form of private letters and personal conversations. The Mathers filled no official capacity at the trials nor did they even attend the majority of the proceedings. They should carry no more blame than all the other citizens of New England for the continuance of the witch trials on dubious accusations. The Community of New England is responsible collectively for the atrocity of justice at Salem that dreadful year of 1692, not Increase Mather or his son Cotton Mather.
The lives of the Mathers can be an important reminder in our present culture that things are not always as they appear.

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