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.” 
‘‘Robert 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 guiltie. 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 third of March, 1618, his lefte eare was cutt of.” 
Witcheraft 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, joming 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 6 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.t 
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 slight 
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. 
+ 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. 
