Harrison Literary Paper 2

I believe this was my best paper, because Cotton Mather was such an interesting person. The time period, as well as the situation in which the people in Salem found themselves embroiled in was tragic, yet fascinating. I put a lot of time, and research into this paper, and enjoyed the subject immensely.



Alyssa D. Harrison
English 201
Evelyn Beck

October 28, 2006

The Role of Cotton Mather in the Salem Witch Trials.

To analyze the writings of Cotton Mather, we need to first understand the background he came from. Cotton Mather was born of two prestigious Puritan families in 1663. He was the grandson of John Cotton, whom he was named after, and Richard Mather. His father was Increase Mather, who served as the pastor of the Old North Church of Boston, and later as the president of Harvard. Cotton attended Harvard at the age of twelve, and had his M.A. by the age of eighteen. He felt he had a calling to become a minister but did not pursue this immediately because of a speech impediment that he later overcame. He instead turned to the study of medicine, an interest he kept until his death in 1728, and writing, for which he is best known. He finally became an ordained minister at the age of twenty-two. Which led to his life long work, of ministering to those in need of guidance.
Cotton Mather published his work “Memorable Providences” (1689) in which he detailed witchcraft and the symptoms of the afflicted based on the children of the Godwin Family. He said in his description ”Their Necks would be broken, so that their Neck-bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it; and yet on the sudden, it would become, again so stiff that there was no stirring of their Heads; yea, their Heads would be twisted almost round”. (Memorable Providences 1689) Historians later stated that the symptoms described by Mather were that of seizures, and possibly hysteria.

The girls then accused the Parris family slave Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbourne as the witches who had caused their affliction. The symptoms were so like Mather’s description of the affliction recorded of the Godwin family, that the people of Salem were very accepting of the doctor’s conclusion and the accusations against the women. Tituba confessed that she and the other two women had made a pact with the devil, and had even flown through the air on poles. Her confession showed the villagers of Salem that their fear and suspicions were valid. Fueled by their paranoia and hysteria, over one hundred people were arrested, and twenty people were hanged as accused witches that refused to confess. Two more people died in jail before their trials could begin.
Cotton Mather was not directly involved in the proceedings of the Salem witch trials although he wrote a letter to one of the magistrates, John Richards of Boston, urging caution of “spectral evidence." Mather also wrote, “Return of Several Ministers” a report which was sent to the Salem court judges. In this carefully worded document, he again cautioned against using “spectral evidence,” saying the devil can assume the shape of an innocent person: “'tis an undoubted and a notorious thing that a Demon may, by God’s permission, appear even to ill purposes in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man ”. (Return of Several Ministers 1692) Cotton then stated that they should use witch tests such as the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer to determine innocence. The last paragraph of this treaty[,] however, appears to undermine his cautionary statement: “Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the government the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the direction given in the Laws of God and the wholesome statutes of the English nation for the detection of witchcraft”. (Return of Several Ministers 1692) This statement in the opinion of the court was interpreted as Mather’s seal of approval for the continuation of the trials.
Historians and eyewitness accounts give a more contradictory portrait of Mather’s hand in the trials. While Mather writes of the Trials, “ For my own part, I was not present at any of them” (Wonders of the Invisible World 1692), others condemn him for his role in the trials. In Robert Calef’s book More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700), he reports Mather’s conduct at the hanging of former Salem minister, the Reverend George Burroughs, who while standing upon the gallows, recited a perfect rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, something that Mather said a guilty person could not do. The crowd was moved by his recitation, and wanted to prevent the execution, but Mather proclaimed that Burroughs was not an ordained minister, and that the “Devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light” (More Wonders of the Invisible World 1700). Mather’s words of condemnation caused the Reverend George Burroughs to be hanged on August 19, 1692.
It was Mather’s own words that condemned him more that anything in the eyes of history. He had published his book “Wonders of the Invisible World” in October of 1692, just after the last of the Salem witch executions. In it he tries to justify the trials, and the deaths in Salem. He states of Bridget Bishop, the first woman to be hanged on June 10, 1692, that there was “little occasion to prove witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders” (Wonders of the Invisible World 1700). He describes Susanna Martin, hanged July 19, 1692 as “one of the most impudent and scurrilous wicked creatures in the world” (Wonders of the Invisible World 1700). Cotton also condones the use of “spectral evidence” used to convict at least five accused witches in a letter to William Stoughton, which he wrote during the trial of George Burroughs, while asserting the guilt of the Reverend as the ringleader of at least ten witches from a confession he received by five accused Andover witches.
It was when Robert Calef, the author of “More Wonders of the Invisible World” (1700), published different accounts of the trials, that Cotton Mather was put on the defensive. Cotton Mathers remained on the defense of his role in the Salem witch trials for the remainder of his life. Cotton Mather died at the age of sixty-five on February 13, 1728.
Although Mather’s writings on witchcraft made up only sixteen of his almost four hundred plus works, it is these writings that have garnered the most scholarly attention. In conclusion, his interest in witchcraft, the trials, and his influence in the trials left him a scapegoat for the witch hunts. While he may have believed at the time that he was protecting the lives of the accused by saving their souls and the spirituality of the community, he in fact fueled a religious hysteria pitting families and neighbors against each other.







Works Cited
Calef, Robert. More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700.
Kallen, Stuart A. The Salem Witch Trials 1999.
Lauter Paul, eds The Heath Anthology of American Literature 2006.
Mather, Cotton The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1692.
---. Return of Several Ministers, 1692
---. Memorable Providences, 1689
Rosenthal, Bernard Salem Story: Reading the Witch trials of 1692. 1995