878 A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands. 



Perjury, which is seldom mentioned in the records, was sometimes 

 punished : 



"Assizes at St. Georges, ending 1 March, 1618." 



"Kobert Hall was indicted of insolent perjurye 'for that thou has taken thie 

 corporal othe falsely econtrarye to the lawes of Almightye God ' of which he was 

 found gniltie. Soe sentance passed upon him to have both his eares cutt of 

 close by his head, but the Governor in hope of his amendment of life, did miti- 

 gate his punishment, soe the ftiird of March, 1618, his lefte eare was cutt of." 



Witchcraft Trials. 



In 1623, the church wardens and sidesmen were directed to pre- 

 sent offenders for various crimes, such as heresy, going to irregular 

 churches, absence from church, joining the Brownists, swearing, 

 Sabbath-breaking, quarrelling, drunkenness, wife-beating, cruelty to 

 servants, usury, etc., and against "all Sorcerers, Inchanters, Char- 

 mers, Witches, Figure-casters, or Fortune-tellers, Conjurers, or 

 whosoever hath or seemeth to have any familiar consultation with 

 the Devill." 



However, there are no trials for witchcraft recorded until after the 

 appointment of Governor Forster, in 1652. Most of the trials of 

 this kind, and all the recorded executions for witchcraft, took place 

 during his term of <J years. He seems to have been personally zeal- 

 ous in this matter, but he was aided and abetted by the Puritan party, 

 which had much increased about that time.* The names of promi- 

 nent leaders of that party appear in the records of the trials, as in 

 the witchcraft craze at Salem, Mass., about forty years later. But 

 the clergymen of Bermuda took no active or conspicuous part in the 

 persecutions there, nor do their names appear in any of the trials. 

 It seems to have been regarded here as a strictly criminal matter, to 

 be dealt with by the courts, like ordinary crimes.f 



The prevailing ideas and superstitions relating to witchcraft are 



* It will be remembered that at and before that time a vastly extended epi- 

 demic of witchcraft persecution had spread over England and Scotland, Ger- 

 many, and other parts of Europe. It is said that over 3,000 executions for 

 witchcraft took place in England during the Long Parliament, besides many 

 thousands before and subsequent to that event. Thousands were also executed, 

 at about the same time, in Europe. It is not to be wondered at that a shght 

 ramification of this, craze reached Bermuda. No doubt the witchcraft doctrines 

 and the modes of detecting witches, then current in England, had often been 

 expounded in Bermuda pulpits, which would account for the marked similarity 

 in the trials and testimony. 



f Many of the minor details of these trials are here omitted, only the more 

 essential parts being given, or else those details that best illustrate the supersti- 

 tious beliefs of the time. For fuller details and additional trials see Lefroy, 

 Archeolog. Jour., xxiii, pp. 89, 239, 1875 ; and Memorials, vol. ii, pp. 601-33. 



