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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
Our Good God is working of Miracles. Five Witches were Lately Executed, impudently demanding of God, a Miraculous Vindication of their Innocency. Immediately upon this, Our God Miraculously sent in Five Andover-Witches, who made a most ample, surprising, amazing Confession, of all their Villainies and declared the Five newly executed to have been of their Company; discovering many more; but all agreeing in Burroughs being their Ringleader, who, I suppose, this Day receives his Trial at Salem, whither a Vast Concourse of people is gone; My Father, this morning among the Rest.
–Cotton Mather, Boston, August 5, 1692However the Salem witch trials are remembered today, in 1692 the central episode centered on the Reverend George Burroughs. His case brought William Stoughton into the proceedings before the Court of Oyer and Terminer existed, and it enmeshed Increase and Cotton Mather into positions inconsistent with their stated views on uncovering witchcraft. The search for witches became entwined with otherwise unrelated theological issues.
At his examination on May 9, George Burroughs drew even more extraordinary attention than had John Proctor when the judiciary crossed the gender line. After Proctor's examination, the handling of cases had reverted to Hathorne, Corwin, and Gedney; but on May 9, Stoughton, accompanied by Samuel Sewall, who would serve with him on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, showed up to examine Burroughs, a minister exhibiting some objectionable theological conduct unrelated to witchcraft. Regardless of our cultural representations of people at Salem being persecuted for their beliefs, George Burroughs was probably the only person in the whole episode who fits this description.
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