ior....

Martha Corey and Rebecca Nourse were cried out against. Both were
church-members of excellent character; the latter seventy years of
age. They were examined by the same magistrates, and sent to prison,
and with them a child of Sarah Good, only four or five years old, also
charged with diabolical practises. Mr. Parris preached upon the text,
"Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Sarah
Cloyse, understanding the allusion to be to Nourse, who was her
sister, went out of church, and was accordingly cried out upon,
examined, and committed. Elizabeth Procter was another person charged.
The Deputy-Governor and five magistrates came to Salem for the
examination of the two prisoners last named. Procter appealed to one
of the children who was accusing her. "Dear child," she said, "it is
not so; there is another judgment, dear child:" and presently they
denounced as a witch her husband, who stood by her side. A week
afterward warrants were issued for the apprehension of four other
suspected persons; and a few days later for three others, one of whom,
Philip English, was the principal merchant of Salem. On the same day,
on the information of one of the possessed girls, an order was sent to
Maine for the arrest of George Burroughs, formerly a candidate for the
ministry at Salem Village, and now minister of Wells. The witness said
that Burroughs, besides being a wizard, had killed his first two
wives, and other persons whose ghosts had appeared to her and
denounced him....

Affairs were in this condition when the King's Governor arrived. About
a hundred alleged witches were now in jail, awaiting trial. Their case
was one of the first matters to which his attention was called.
Without authority for so doing,--for by the charter which he
represented, the establishment of judicial courts was a function of
the General Court,--he proceeded to institute a special commission of
Oyer and Terminer, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was
the hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners
applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act was
to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation twenty years old and
retracted by its author on his death-bed, had been revived. The court
sentenced her to die by hanging, and she was accordingly hanged at the
end of eight days. Cotton Mather, in his account of the proceedings,
relates that as she passed along the street under guard,