Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England

In the first edition of the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England.
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Almost certainly, the membership of the Hampton church was divided over ecclesiastical issues, with Bachiller propounding one viewpoint, and his pastoral colleague -- the Rev. Timothy Dalton -- the other. It has been surmised that Bachiller was too "independent" by the standards of his community, even that the Massachusetts leadership connived at his ouster; but evidence on these points is lacking. Careful study of signatures on rival petitions, and of ancestral lines to England, shows that most of Bachiller's followers had come from the southern counties, while the Dalton faction was predominantly East Anglian.

Dalton, he charged, had "been the cause of all the dishonor that accrued. Strenuous efforts were made to heal this breach in the years and No doubt the decision of the Rev. Bachiller to "voluntarily remove [from Hampton] for peace sake" constitutes at least a part of the answer. With Bachiller gone, conflict swirled away from religion and morality, toward issues of property and politics. In the town held special meetings to decide the ownership of a vast tract of previously ungranted lands, known as the "cow commons. As before, the distribution was an unequal one, with individual householders receiving one, two, or three shares, depending on size of family -- and of tax-rate.

Objections were raised by some who felt short-changed in these assignments, and so Hampton was obliged once more to turn to outside arbitration.

The usual remonstrances to the General Court brought the usual response, the appointment of a select committee "to search and examine all differences at Hampton. It would be tedious, and unnecessary, to present further details of town conflict in these years, but two general conclusions are worth mentioning. First, substantive issues, as they arose, regularly threatened to immerse the town in new controversy -- so raw were sensitivities on all sides.

Indeed, after the early s Hampton seems to have achieved a modus vivendi , with which most, it not all, of her citizens were reasonably comfortable. When new troubles developed, they were effectively contained by procedures internal to the community. The formal history of witchcraft in Hampton begins with the year That there was an informal history, extending some time farther back, seems likely -- but not provable from extant materials.

An initial brace of depositions was taken by magistrates in Essex County that April, and was forwarded to Boston for use in a trial before the General Court the following September. The court solicited further testimony of its own, so that some two dozen witnesses eventually took part. Two of these imputed illness a grown man and death an infant girl to her maleficium ; three others alleged acts of destruction against domestic animals.

The same materials noted a variety of suspicious and seemingly occult phenomena: But who was Goody Cole? What can be learned of her character? And what was the pattern of her relations with others? The trial testimonies themselves yield some parts of the answer to such questions. She was, first of all, a woman given to threats and curses against those she perceived as antagonists. These scattered glimpses of Eunice Cole interacting with her accusers can be supplemented by evidence of other kinds.

She had arrived in New England some two decades before, together with her husband, a carpenter named William.

Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England

A bill from November noted the manner of their coming: It is evident, too, that the Coles were quite poor. Recently freed from service to an English merchant, they assumed a modest position in the little community of Mount Wollaston later Braintree just to the south of Boston. Because they moved beyond the reach of any provincial authority, the Exeter group drew up special articles of "combination" as a, basis for self-government, All of the first-comers set their hands to these articles, promising thereby to "submit ourselves The Coles spent five uneventful years in Exeter.

A land division among early householders, with the usual pattern of unequal shares, finds William near the middle of the list. It is not known why the Coles moved to Hampton in , but this change marked a sharp downward turn in their fortunes. In Eunice was charged at Salisbury Court with having made "slanderous speeches" against other Hampton women. The court decided against them, and when the constable went to execute the verdict, a violent ruckus ensued.

Witnesses reported that Eunice cried "murder, murder," while William ranted about "thieves in the town"; together they bit the constable's hands, knocked him down, and "pulled the swine from him. In Eunice was admonished at court for new "misdemeanors," and in she was "presented" to still another jury. If the Coles, and especially Eunice, were increasingly marked as deviant from a legal standpoint, they also gravitated quickly toward the bottom of the local status hierarchy. Hampton tax-lists from to show William Cole "rated" fifty-first among sixty householders in the former instance, and dead last out of seventy-two in the latter.

But what of the community in which the Coles found themselves so invidiously placed? Careful demographic reconstruction, focused on the year , has yielded a reasonably clear profile. The age-structure was heavily skewed toward youth 62 percent of the inhabitants were under twenty years old ; among people fully adult there were nearly equal numbers in brackets of thirty to thirty-nine, forty to forty-nine, and over fifty years.

Among heads of household and their wives, fully half had lived in Hampton since the time of its founding; two-thirds had been there for at least ten years, and all but a handful for at least five. Of those whose place of origin in England can be traced, some 70 percent came from the eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. It was to the influence of this majority that Stephen Bachiller ascribed his own downfall. Before settling in Hampton, nearly all had stopped at least briefly in some other New England community -- Watertown and Exeter, most especially; also Salem, Newbury, Ipswich, and Dedham.

The spatial arrangement of Hampton was relatively simple. Most of the population lived in a central, nucleated village, clustered on all sides of the "meeting-house green. Year after year a cadre of perhaps a dozen families filled most of the major town offices, paid the highest taxes because they controlled the most property , and occupied the coveted front-row seats in the meeting-house. Here, then, was Hampton on the eve of its first witchcraft trial; a community no longer new, increasingly stable, self-contained, and self-sufficient -- a fully-formed social organism, by the standards of its own time and culture.

The prosecution of Eunice Cole itself affirms this impression of integrated structure, for the people who testified against her represented a notably broad spectrum of local townsfolk; no single descriptive category will suffice to characterize them. For example, their spatial disposition within the town was almost random.

Three sides of the village green produced witnesses for the trial; so, too, did the settlements along the outlying roads. Only the categories of age and social position yield anything like an uneven distribution. The age-group thirty to thirty-nine was somewhat more heavily represented relative to its overall size than other ten-year brackets. The "low" group produced its fair share of witnesses, while the "middle" was somewhat underrepresented.

In sum, this analysis of the witnesses to Eunice Cole's "witchcraft" reveals a general movement against her, led by people of recognized standing in the community. Her prospects must, then, have seemed rather bleak, in the summer of , as her case headed for trial before the Court of Assistants.

Entertaining Satan by Demos, John Putnam

Unfortunately, the verdict in this case is nowhere recorded. All previous writers on Hampton have assumed a conviction -- and a punishment by whippings and long imprisonment. Witchcraft was a capital crime in Massachusetts Bay, and a judgment of guilt invariably brought the death sentence. Yet Goody Cole was certainly not executed. Indeed she was back in Hampton by at least , creating new difficulties for herself and her neighbors.

The sequence of her life in these, and succeeding, years is extremely difficult to follow, for only some parts are documented. In she was prosecuted for "unseemly speeches. She is abed with your father, that whore-master. Her husband, however, had died that summer, and local authorities were already in the process of settling his estate.

William Cole had written a will in May , leaving Eunice only her "clothes which she left with me," and giving the rest of his property to a neighbor named Thomas Webster "upon condition of his keeping of me comfortably during the term of my natural life. Subsequently, the court elected to modify William Cole's will, dividing the estate evenly between Webster and the unfortunate widow. Meanwhile Eunice Cole continued to bounce back and forth between Hampton and the Boston jail.

The spring of found her approaching the General Court with a new petition for release from imprisonment -- which was granted "upon her [giving] security to depart from, and abide out of, this jurisdiction. Perhaps, then, she remained a impoverished prisoner for some years longer; 57 there is no further trace of her at Hampton until about Whatever the legal troubles of Goody Cole in the decade of the s, witchcraft was not among them.

Other crimes such as "unseemly speeches" served to sustain her adversary relationship with the towns-people of Hampton. But there is no reason to think that her reputation for witchcraft had been dissipated; on the contrary, it flourished as vigorously as ever. One episode, recalled much later, will serve to illustrate. The setting was Hampton, on an evening near the end of the year ; a selectmen named Abraham Perkins was approaching her house on an errand, when:.

I heard a discoursing. And I being much amazed to hear that voice, I went and called Abraham Drake and Alexander Denham, and we three went to her house and harkened, and heard the said Eunice Cole speak and the said strange voice answer her diverse times, and the said Eunice Cole went up and down in the house and clattered the door to and again, and spake as she went, and the said voice made her answer in a strange manner. This exchange, so patently terrifying to the men who watched and listened, would eventually sustain a formal indictment, charging that "Eunice Cole of Hampton, widow,.

Doubtless, in the interim there was much local gossip about the "shimmering" presence which bad visited widow Cole on that fateful November evening; but for ten years it remained gossip -- and nothing more. This sequence raises obvious questions of timing , and invites further investigation of the history of Hampton during the intervening years. Why did the community wait so long before renewing its legal battle against witchcraft?

As mentioned previously, Eunice Cole may have spent much of this period in prison at Boston; if so, the incentive for a new prosecution would have been somewhat diminished. However, that is not the whole story. For during the decade of the s Hamptonites were increasingly preoccupied with external risks and dangers.

The problem which faced them was not new, but now -- as never before -- it threatened their property, their political rights, and the integrity of their community.

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In order to understand this situation, it is necessary to trace the history of the so-called "Mason patent" for northern New England. Meanwhile, settlers arrived in the designated region, establishing new towns including Hampton under the administrative oversight of Massachusetts Bay. In John Mason's grandson and principal heir obtained in England a judgment favorable to the family claim -- which, however, was immediately contested by the Bay Colony.

Out of favor with the Cromwell regime, the Masons had no quick opportunity to break this impasse. But their prospects brightened considerably following the restoration of the monarchy in The new king's attorney general reaffirmed that "Robert Mason. Among other things, the commissioners challenged the jurisdiction of Massachusetts over the New Hampshire towns; indeed, at Portsmouth they appointed new officials directly responsible to the king. The whole region experienced, as a result, an extreme public agitation.

As one of the communities directly involved, Hampton shared in the general excitement. During the summer of the town held special meetings to consider various avenues of response. Eventually a committee was appointed to "remonstrate" with the commissioners, and to "make answer to any claims or objections" that might be made against the rights of the local citizenry.

In all this they cooperated closely with their neighbors at Exeter, Portsmouth, and Dover. The people of New Hampshire obtained thereby a brief period of remission; but Mason continued to press his interests as best he could, and he would find new -- and better -- openings in the future. In the long-festering currents of fear and spite converged to produce the second major witchcraft prosecution at Hampton.

Two developments seem to have opened the way. First, the "crisis" of the previous decade had temporarily abated, permitting the reassertion of internal concerns. And, second, Eunice Cole had returned home, under circumstances that were bound to create difficulty. The record suggests that she was now wholly a public charge. Apparently she was living in a small hut erected by the town; meanwhile individual householders took turns in supplying her daily needs for food and fuel.

As in her previous trial for witchcraft, the prosecution mounted a large body of testimony against Eunice Cole. Fourteen depositions, taken between October and April , are still extant; 66 they record the impressions of sixteen different witnesses, about twelve distinct episodes.

Once again the range of the witness group seems notable -- whether measured in terms of age, sex, social position, or place of residence. But most striking of all, in this case, is the blending of old and new material. Several major depositions recall events from a much earlier period: Of course, there was much new evidence as well. The town constable, whose task it was to deliver to Eunice Cole the maintenance donated by the townspeople, recounted a series of recent misadventures.

Eunice, he noted, would be often finding fault with him about her provision, and complaining that it was not so good as was brought in to him" -- whereupon his own bread turned rotten, and for weeks together "we could never make any bread Four different witnesses gave evidence on this latter point: Ann Smith herself called "about the age of nine years" , Anna Huggins age fourteen , Sarah Clifford age thirty , and Bridget Clifford age fifty-six. And when she had laid her in the cradle, the child related to us two that when she was in the cabbage yard there came an old woman to her in a blue coat and a blue cap and a blue apron and a white neckcloth, and took her up and carried her under the persimmon tree, and told her that she would live with her.

Then, said she, "the old woman struck me on the head with a stone"; and then she turned into a little dog and ran up the tree, and flew away like an eagle. Among the many intriguing aspects of this testimony, the "enticement" theme commands special attention. Evidently this was not a new accusation against Goody Cole. The court noted that "it was her design formerly to insinuate herself into young ones," and recalled an earlier trial when another local girl had testified "how many ways, and in how any forms, she [Eunice] did appear to her.

Herself childless through many years of marriage, Eunice Cole may have sought in her widowhood to become a parent," after all. It would be easy enough to understand her yearnings in this direction, given a culture which consistently affirmed child-bearing as a central part of life. But there are further questions to raise here. Why, for example, was Ann Smith the particular object of the widow's interest? How did this one girl fall under the shadow of those dark fears and pressures which had attached to Goody Cole from a much earlier time?

To explore such issues is to commit oneself to some painfully complicated demographic reconstruction; but the outcome will be worth the effort. Ann Smith's personal history begins with her birth, at Exeter, in the year Their natural father remarried within a few years, but evidently made no effort to reclaim the children for his own household. William and Margery Godfrey, henceforth foster-parents for the two young Smiths, were already well along in life.

In addition, they bad raised a son and two daughters of their own, who ranged in age from about eighteen to twenty-four when the Smiths came into the household. William Godfrey died in , and soon thereafter his widow made her third marriage -- to a Hampton neighbor named John Marion.

Meanwhile, John Clifford, junior son of John and his first wife , was living in the next house, with his bride of two years, Sarah [Godfrey] Clifford. This situation requires summary, from the particular vantage point of Ann Smith. The Cliffords' was the third household in which she had lived. She had experienced the loss by death, first of her natural mother, and later of her adoptive father; and, in each case, the surviving parent natural father, adoptive mother had acceded in her transfer to a new setting.

Her current family was composed of thirteen persons, including eleven children with four different surnames. To be sure, fosterage was not uncommon in early New England; more than a few families were rearranged by the death of one spouse, and the remarriage of the other. But the complexity of the Clifford household was extreme, and the changes experienced by young Ann Smith were unusually frequent and jarring.

Under all these circumstances, Ann might well have felt her new position among the Cliffords to be somewhat uncomfortable, even precarious.


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Where was her real home? To whom did she finally belong? Was it fanciful to suppose, as life continued to move her about, that she might one day fall into the clutches of a witch-mother? These data help to explain why Eunice Cole, longing for a child "to live with her," might have fastened her interest on Ann Smith. They also suggest why Ann herself might have been made especially jittery by any overt approach. But there is still more to ask about the circumstances which brought these two together.

How had Ann come to learn of the widow's "witchcraft" in the course of her childhood years? To what extent was she prepared, by those around her, for what would happen in the summer of ? It is clear, in the first place, that the Clifford family supported her charges against Eunice Cole; three of them supplied personal testimony for the prosecution.

But these three -- Bridget Clifford, Sarah Clifford, and Anna Huggins -- were themselves recent arrivals in the household; and, in each case, it was prior experience that shaped their participation in the trial. Bridget had served as a witness in the first witchcraft prosecution, seventeen years before.

And Sarah Clifford was originally Sarah Godfrey, daughter of William; her brother, John, was another of the witnesses at the earlier trial. The Godfrey connection was important in one final way. William Godfrey's wife, Margery, was the mother by a previous marriage of Thomas Webster -- the same man whom William Cole bad designated as his principal legatee.

Widow Cole would likely have resented Thomas Webster's claim to property that she regarded as rightfully her own. And Webster, knowing her reputation as a grasping sort, surely expected such resentment; more, be anticipated some form of retaliation. Ships from and sold by Amazon. In the Devil's Snare: Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Witchcraft in Colonial New England. The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of A Documentary History , Second Edition. The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation.

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Moriah must find love to escape her fears and wants to repair her family's derelict lighthouse. Can Ben, a master stonemason, save her? Review "A book that will rank with the best, a book that shows how much we still may learn from these people. Vividly illustrates what made certain individuals vulnerable to charges of witchcraft. More than a history of witchcraft.

Entertaining Satan

It is placed within the wider social context and is thus a history of early New England culture Reviews of New Books "A work that sets the stage for the eruption in Salem and promises to transform the terms in which we understand that extravagant episode A rewarding and fascinating achievement well worth reading. Viser, Ouachita Baptist University "An ambitious, informative work.

Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video. Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention salem demos psychology century witch sociology colonial topic community trials evidence historical approach america accusations subject accused research clinton understanding. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I love the subject matter-- witchcraft in 17th century New England.

The really good feature of this book is that the author gives accounts of smaller, lesser-known cases of "witchcraft" and accusations of witchcraft and doesn't focus on the Salem Witch Trials. That said, the writing style is rather dry. The psychology of witchcraft is the strongest argument in the book. This was a new and thought-provoking analysis of the mass hysteria that flourished in New England over witches. A significant amount of research was done at the local level through archival documentation utilizing primary sources from court hearings and eyewitness accounts of those present during witchcraft accusations.

Demos states very clearly that this information may not be complete, but provides enough primary and secondary evidence to substantiate his conclusions. In part four, Demos traces witchcraft throughout history concluding that witchcraft was more prevalent than originally believed and not limited to just Salem, Massachusetts.

Providing a few examples of witchcraft outside of Salem, Demos strengthens his argument showing that witchcraft accusations were not specific to Salem, but occurred elsewhere. The last section tightly concludes the biographical sketches with the psychological and social influences witchcraft had on communities facing the phenomenon of witchcraft.

In Entertaining Satan, there is a substantial amount of psychological interpretation of what it was like living in colonial New England during the witchcraft hysteria. The objective of Entertaining Satan is to show that witchcraft was not as simple as accusing an individual of being a witch. The witchcraft phenomenon was a conglomeration of multiple issues converging together providing the perfect storm for mass hysteria. There are really no simple answers, yet Demos does a brilliant job of interconnecting each idea to achieve his thesis.

Mar 05, Mark Valentine rated it really liked it. Clearly the definitive study of witchcraft in colonial America, Demos provides layers of research to create a rational portrait of the terror, blight and scourge that scarred so many lives. I picked this up in order to learn more about the background of the Salem witch tirals and specifically, the background behind Miller's play, "the Crucible," and in that respect I was disappointed--Demos gives that event only glancing treatment.

But about all the other cases of witchcraft, it essentially work Clearly the definitive study of witchcraft in colonial America, Demos provides layers of research to create a rational portrait of the terror, blight and scourge that scarred so many lives. But about all the other cases of witchcraft, it essentially works as an encyclopedia, documenting the biographies, the psychology, the sociology and the history.

Most definitely recommended for study and for understanding a very complicated time, I gained from my reading; and what is more, I think the book serves as a model of what every historian should strive for in presenting the past.


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Dec 21, Tommy rated it really liked it. An in depth look at the witchcraft culture endemic in New England at its founding. I was struck by how exhaustive the court records were for several of the witchcraft trials considering the frontier nature of these settlements and the litigious nature of Puritans that I was not aware of. I really enjoyed seeing the trends and conclusions the author drew from his compiling of the surviving court papers and town histories and how these fit into the larger witch scare movement winding d I liked it.

I really enjoyed seeing the trends and conclusions the author drew from his compiling of the surviving court papers and town histories and how these fit into the larger witch scare movement winding down in Europe. I don't know if I agree with some of the Freudian psychoanalysis the author uses with a couple of the accused witches and their accusers as it seems to be a bit of a reach at some points.

Regardless, an excellent book that helps to understand why I had to read "The Crucible" sophomore year of high school. Jun 17, Lizzie rated it really liked it Shelves: A detailed analysis of various factors surrounding witchcraft in the Colonies. If you were an older, childless woman who was often in conflict with your neighbors, you were more likely to be accused of witchcraft than others. If you were a young woman, being bewitched by a neighbor and subject to fits and other signs of demonic possession would bring you fame and recognition otherwise denied to those of your age and sex.

If your town was involved in Indian wars and other strife, people were more A detailed analysis of various factors surrounding witchcraft in the Colonies. If your town was involved in Indian wars and other strife, people were more likely to be taken up by that and not have time to contemplate accusations of witchcraft against their neighbors.

Lots of accounts of trials and case histories; probably more about the subject than I really care about, but interesting. Feb 03, Josie rated it it was ok.


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    5. Although the history narrated in this book is quite fascinating, it was impossible to get past the constant psychoanalysis of the people. There are other forms and more accurate of psychology and the use of Freud's outdated methods to identify with these figures makes this book one very difficult to read. I found myself constantly skipping entire pages looking for the historical accounts through all of the muck.

    If I had not been forced to read this for a class I would have out it down immedia Although the history narrated in this book is quite fascinating, it was impossible to get past the constant psychoanalysis of the people. If I had not been forced to read this for a class I would have out it down immediately. Sep 15, Darcia Helle rated it it was amazing Shelves: Being a Massachusetts native, I have always been fascinated by the witch trials in Salem.

    This book covers the subject in amazing detail. The research is in-depth and the writing thoroughly entertaining. Apr 07, Jean Louise rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Demos left me with a new perspective on the witchcraft crisis. I'm not sure that his use of Freudian analysis is valid, however his exploration on the role of pyschology was very interesting.

    Excellent resource for those interested in the whys and hows of the witch trials in early New England.

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    Feb 02, Katie rated it liked it Shelves: Listen, there was altogether too much detail. Feb 24, Marie rated it it was ok Shelves: Too psyco-analytical for my taste, otherwise quite interesting. Nov 19, Rebecca Dunbar rated it really liked it. Jan 29, Becky rated it really liked it Shelves: This book contains a lot of information that is neatly organized and easy to follow.