Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 by Richard Godbeer Page B

or condemnation.
If after cursing there follows death or at least mischief to the party.
If after quarreling or threatening a person mischief doth follow, for parties devilishly disposed after cursings do use threatenings and that also is a great presumption against them.
If the party suspected be the son or daughter, the servant or familiar friend, near neighbor or old companion of a known or convicted witch, this also a presumption, for witchcraft is an art that may be learned and conveyed from man to man and oft it falleth out that a witch dying leaveth some of the aforesaid heirs of her witchcraft.
If the party suspected have the Devil’s mark, for ’tis thought when the Devil maketh his covenant with them he always leaves his mark behind him to know them for his own, that is, if no evident reason in them can be given for such a mark.
Lastly, if the party examined be unconstant and contrary to himself in his answers.
    It must have been clear to Mister Jones that the local magistrates had acted properly when, based on the information available to them, they held a preliminary hearing and then detained the suspects. This was true even of Mary Staples, Mary Harvey, and Hannah Harvey. Goodwife Staples had long been associated by “common report” with witchcraft and so satisfied the first of the “grounds” itemized in the memorandum. Mary Harvey and Hannah Harvey, daughter and grand-daughter of Goody Staples, fulfilled another, the fifth, by being closely related to Goody Staples.
    The depositions against both Goody Clawson and Goody Disborough satisfied several of William Jones’s criteria, most obviously the first and fourth, “the common report of the people” and “mischief” following “quarreling or threatening.” Neighbors in Compo and Stamford had long suspected the two women of witchcraft; a significant number had, moreover, suffered death or misfortune within their households after quarreling with one of the accused.
    Goody Disborough had also cursed at least two of her neighbors, which satisfied the third ground for examination. Following a disagreement with Elizabeth Benit, she informed the young woman rather cryptically “that it should be pressed, heaped, and running over to her.” When Elizabeth Benit reacted with outrage to this malediction, Mercy Disborough responded that the words she had spoken were taken from scripture. But she also told Elizabeth Benit’s father-in-law, Thomas Benit, that “she would make him as bare as a bird’s tail.” Soon after that his livestock began to die under mysterious circumstances.
    In addition, both Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough satisfied the sixth of the possible grounds for an inquiry: both were rumored to have a “Devil’s mark” or “witch’s teat” on their bodies, an abnormal lump of flesh that looked like an extra nipple. Demonic imps were said to drink blood from these witch teats, usually assuming animal form to do so. Katherine Branch claimed to have seen Goody Miller, the suspect who escaped to New York, feeding a dog from a teat under her arm.
    Several women in Stamford who had cared for Elizabeth Clawson during childbirth came forward in June 1692 to testify that she had a physical abnormality, perhaps a Devil’s mark. But not everyone agreed that Goody Clawson differed from other women “in the make of her body.” The court of inquiry had appointed a group of women, “faithfully sworn, narrowly and truly to inspect and search her body, to see whether any suspicious signs or marks did appear that were not common or that were preternatural.” These women reported “with one voice” that “they found nothing save a wart on one of her arms.” They also searched Mercy Disborough’s body that same day and did find “a teat or something like one in her privy parts, at least an inch long, which is not common in other women, and for which they could give no natural reason.”
    Once Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough had