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judges therefore went into the trials for witchcraft under the English 

 statute of James I. Giles Corey was not tried for witchcraft, but 

 he came to his horrid death under the provisions of another English 

 statute, for refusing to plead. It was English, and not New Eng- 

 land barbarity which inflicted this dread penalty. Those judges were 

 not inhuman men. The diary of Judge Sewall shows that they tried 

 to save him from this ordeal. We know the p&rsonal character of 

 these judges in other relations. They were under a delusion as to the 

 phenomena and theory of witchcraft ; but they were conscientious and 

 honest men, and represented the temper and spirit of their times. 

 Gov. Hutchinson, in an unpublished manuscript which I have recently 

 found, says he cannot understand why they did not burn their witches, 

 as was done in England, and as the statute, under which they acted, 

 required. The public sentiment of that period was not shocked, at 

 the time, by the penalties inflicted by the Court. Chief Justice 

 Stoughton, who was the controlling mind in these transaction^ re- 

 ceived every vote for the same position when the Superior Court was 

 regularly organized, on the 7th of December following. His associ- 

 ates, Richards, Winthrop, and Sewall, who also sat with him in the 

 witch trials, were also reflected, together with Danforth, but only by 

 a majority vote. Their contestants were Hathorne and Gedney, who 

 were as deeply implicated in the witch trials as they. 



But the special court itself, we are told, was an illegal body, a.nd 

 this is, technically speaking, a correct statement. The new charter 

 did not give the Governor and Council authority to appoint a special 

 court to try criminal cases. That power was vested in the General 

 Court which was to convene on the 8th of June. Why not postpone 

 the organization of the courts till after the General Court had met. 

 This would have been the regular, and hence the better proceeding. 

 The preamble of the judges commission gives reasons, and reads 

 thus : " Upon consideration that there are many criminal offenders 

 now in custody, some whereof have lain long, and many inconven- 

 iences attending the thronging of the jails at this hot season of the 

 year, there being no judicatories or courts yet established ; ordered," 

 &c. These reasons, though technically insufficient, may on the score 

 of humanity, have had more weight on the minds of the Governor and 

 Council, than they have on ours to-day. The 27th of May the hot sea- 

 son of the year! we must consider that the calendar has been 

 changed, and that the 27th of May, old style, is the same as the 6th of 

 June in our calendar. Shut up in close, inconvenient and crowded 

 prisons, and conscious of their own innocence, the wretched prison- 

 ers doubtless clamored for a speedy trial; and it was charity to grant 

 them this boon. The organization of the special court, and the ap- 

 pointees named in the commission, met with general approval. Not a 



