ung white woman of many aliases but
most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable
house and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress
that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the
negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already
effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the
supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in
bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48]
Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and
likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a
conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to
the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the
slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives;
and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of
detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received.
Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them.
Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat
stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the
execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of
tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of
sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself
by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn
out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of
impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several
persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious
principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable
practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This
farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop
the tragic proceedings.

[Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in these
trials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection
of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and
other slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murdering
the Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the title, _The New York
Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chief
sourc