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Show Notes
Discover the heartbreaking true story of Massachusetts Witch Trials victim Goody Glover, an Irish Catholic immigrant who became the last person executed for witchcraft in Boston in 1688. Occurring four years before the infamous Salem Witch Trials began, Glover’s case clearly illustrates the injustice of colonial New England’s witch hunting history. Standing alone between the 1656 execution of Ann Hibbins and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93, Goody Glover’s case provides crucial insights into colonial Boston’s religious tensions and social dynamics. While Salem would later become synonymous with witch trials, Boston’s last execution deserves recognition as a pivotal moment in American religious persecution. This episode is the fourth in Witch Hunt’s Massachusetts Witch Trials 101 series exploring the complex history of witch persecution in colonial New England.
Witch Hunt Podcast Episodes about Witch Trials in Massachusetts
Purchase Button: Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project
Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project
Live Event November 16 to Remember Goody Glover, Executed for Witchcraft Nov. 16, 1688
Cotton Mather’s Memorable Providences
Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana
Transcript
Sarah Jack: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast revealing the true stories of witch trials and their victims. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. Today, in the fourth episode of our Massachusetts Witch Trials 101 series, we're exploring the life and witch trial of Goody Glover of Boston, who was executed for witchcraft on November 16th, 1688.
Josh Hutchinson: For many years, Goody Glover has been a footnote in histories of the Salem witch trials, her own trial thought of as a preamble to the greater witch hunt to take place four years later.
Sarah Jack: However, in the late 19th century, antiquarians and others began to take some interest in Goody Glover's saga for its own sake.
Josh Hutchinson: And in the 20th and 21st centuries, Goody Glover has become important to many people, including members of the Irish American community and the Catholic Church.
Sarah Jack: She is now recognized as a martyr for dying without turning her back on her faith.
Josh Hutchinson: On the 300th anniversary of Glover's [00:01:00] death, she was honored in Boston when the City Council recognized November 16th, 1988 as Goody Glover Day.
Sarah Jack: Goody Glover Day continues to be recognized each year unofficially. However, no official functions take place.
Josh Hutchinson: We believe Goody Glover deserves greater recognition as the victim of the first fatal witch trial in Boston following the 1656 hanging of Ann Hibbens.
Sarah Jack: Thirty-two years had gone by without a supposed witch being executed in Massachusetts.
Josh Hutchinson: And nobody would ever be convicted of witchcraft or hanged for that crime in Boston again, as the 1692 and 1693 witchcraft convictions and hangings all occurred in Salem.
Sarah Jack: So, who was Goody Glover, the last person hanged for witchcraft in Boston, and what were the accusations against her?
Josh Hutchinson: The earliest source on the events is a letter from minister Joshua Moody to eminent Puritan divine Increase Mather. Dated October 4th, 1688, the letter was written to inform Mather, [00:02:00] who was then in England, of the astonishing events occurring in the household of John Goodwin of Boston.
Sarah Jack: The letter begins, quote, "We have a very strange thing among us, which we know not what to make of, except it be witchcraft, as we think it must needs be."
Josh Hutchinson: Moody explained that "three or four of children of one Goodwin, a Mason, that have been for some weeks grievously tormented, crying out of head, eyes, tongue, teeth, breaking their neck, back, thighs, knees, legs, feet, toes, etc. And then they roar out, 'oh my head, oh my neck.' And from one part to another, the pain runs almost as fast as I write it."
Sarah Jack: And yet, Moody reported that, quote, "when the pain is over, they eat, drink, walk, play, laugh, as at other times. They are generally well at night."
Josh Hutchinson: Moody said that many people observed a day of prayer at the Goodwin home,and he and Charles Morton, Charlestown's minister, each prayed for an hour.
Sarah Jack: Sometime after these [00:03:00] prayers, Goodwife and Goodman Goodwinexpressed that they suspected "an old woman and her daughter living hard by."
Josh Hutchinson: A complaint was filed with the authorities, and the two suspects were jailed.
Sarah Jack: After the women were arrested, the children were well, but only when they were away from home.
Josh Hutchinson: The four afflicted children were placed in neighbors' homes, as they had terrible fits whenever they entered their own house.
Sarah Jack: Moody wrote, "we cannot but think the devil has a hand in it by some instrument."
Josh Hutchinson: Following this letter, the next document referencing the case of Goody Glover is Samuel Sewell's diary entry for November 16, 1688, when he recorded, quote, "about eleven M, the widow Glover is drawn to be hanged. Mr. Larkin seems to be marshal, the constables attend, and Justice Bullivant is there."
Sarah Jack: This is our first indication that Goody Glover had been widowed, and in lieu of a trial record, this is the only known document from 1688 [00:04:00] to tell us the outcome of the case.
Josh Hutchinson: Goody Glover and the Goodwin family next turn up in Cotton Mather's book, Memorable Providences, which was published in 1689.
Sarah Jack: In this book, Mather gives a fairly detailed account of the events leading up to Goody Glover's execution.
Josh Hutchinson: Mather begins the book by extolling John Goodwin's virtues.
Sarah Jack: Quote, "There dwells at this time in the south part of Boston a sober and pious man, whose name is John Goodwin, whose trade is that of a mason, and whose wife, to which a good report gives a share with him in all the characters of virtue, has made him the father of six now living children. Of these children, all but the eldest, who works with his father at his calling, and the youngest, who lives yet upon the breast of its mother, have labored under the direful effects of no less palpable than stupendous witchcraft."
Josh Hutchinson: Mather explains that the oldest son also suffered from pains and continues, "but these [00:05:00] four children mentioned were handled in so sad and strange a manner as has given matter of discourse and wonder to all the country and of history not unworthy to be considered by more than all the serious or the curious readers in this new English world."
Sarah Jack: According to Mather, the oldest of the afflicted children was about 13 years old, and the youngest was about a third as old, so around four.
Josh Hutchinson: The children, quote, "had enjoyed a religious education and answered it with a very towardly ingenuity. They had an observable affection unto divine and sacred things, and those of them that were capable of it seemed to have such a resentment of their eternal concernments as is not altogether usual."
Sarah Jack: He continued, "their parents also kept them to a continual employment, which did more than deliver them from the temptations of idleness, and as young as they were, they took a delight in it. It may be as much as they should have done."
Josh Hutchinson: "In a word, [00:06:00] such was the whole temper and carriage of the children, that there cannot easily be anything more unreasonable than to imagine that a design to dissemble could cause them to fall into any of their odd fits, though there should not have happened, as there did, a thousand things, wherein it was perfectly impossible for any dissimulation of theirs to produce what scores of spectators were amazed at."
Sarah Jack: This belief in the piety of the children and parents perhaps goes some way to explain Mather's gullibility, which will be apparent time and time again throughout his book.
Josh Hutchinson: In Mather's account, the witchcraft scare began in the summer, shortly after some of the Goodwins' linen went missing. The oldest Goodwin daughter, age 13, confronted the unnamed laundress, who was the daughter of Goody Glover.
Sarah Jack: Goody Glover was incensedby the allegations of the theft against her daughter.
Josh Hutchinson: According to Mather, Goody Glover was, quote, "an ignorant and a [00:07:00] scandalous old woman in the neighborhood."
Sarah Jack: Her, quote, "miserable husband before he died had sometimes complained of her, that she was undoubtedly a witch, and that whenever his head was laid, she would quickly arrive onto the punishments due to such a one."
Josh Hutchinson: Unfortunately, Mather does not tell us the name of Goody Glover's husband or give us his occupation or any other identifying information.
Sarah Jack: Mather has a frustrating tendency to leave out such details.
Josh Hutchinson: Continuing Mather's account, quote, "this woman in her daughter's defense bestowed very bad language upon the girl that put her to the question, immediately upon which the poor child became variously indisposed in her health and visited with strange fits beyond those that attend an epilepsy or a catalepsy or those that they call the diseases of astonishment."
Sarah Jack: Soon afterward, the girls' siblings became ill with the same symptoms. Mather writes, "within a few weeks, they were all for [00:08:00] tortured everywhere in a manner so very grievous that it would have broke a heart of stone to have seen their agonies."
Josh Hutchinson: This is a pretty typical witchcraft accusation. Someone has an argument, harsh words are used, and a misfortune occurs.
Sarah Jack: That same recipe is repeated again and again through accounts of both the witch trials of the past and the witch trials of the present. Quarrels with neighbors can have severe consequences when witchcraft is then suspected for whatever misfortune next visits the aggrieved parties.
Josh Hutchinson: Like in Salem four years later, those concerned about the Goodwins' children's afflictions consulted medical authorities. As Mather writes, "skillful physicians were consulted for their help, and particularly our worthy and prudent friend, Dr. Thomas Oakes, who found himself so affronted by the distempers of the children that he concluded nothing but a hellish witchcraft could be the original of these maladies."
Josh Hutchinson: [00:09:00] Quote, "and that which yet more confirmed such apprehension was that for one good while the children were tormented just in the same part of their bodies, all at the same time together, and though they saw and heard not one another's complaints, though, likewise, their pains and sprains were swift like lightning, yet when suppose the neck or the hand or their back of one was racked, so it was at that instant with the other two."
Josh Hutchinson: Like with the story of Salem Village physician William Griggs telling Samuel Parris that his daughter, Betty, and his niece, Abigail Williams, were under an evil hand, we have a medical professional simply giving up and declaring that the problem was beyond his comprehension, so it must be witchcraft.
Sarah Jack: Mather continues, "the variety of their tortures increased continually, and though about nine or ten at night they always had a release from their miseries, and ate and slept all night for the most part indifferently well, yet in the daytime they were handled with so many sorts of ails that it would [00:10:00] require of us almost as much time to relate them all as it did of them to endure them."
Josh Hutchinson: Years later, Beverly minister John Hale wrote about the Salem Village afflicted persons. In A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, he writes, "I will not enlarge in the description of their cruel sufferings because they were in all things afflicted as bad as John Goodwin's children at Boston in the year 1689. He means 1688. So that he that will read Mr. Mather's Book of Memorable Providences, page 3, etc., may read part of what these children and afterwards sundry grown persons suffered by the hand of Satan at Salem Village and parts adjacent, Anno 1691 1692. Yet there was more in these sufferings than in those at Boston, by pins invisibly stuck into their flesh, pricking with irons, as in part published in a book printed 1693 viz. The Wonders of the Invisible World."
Sarah Jack: So we see [00:11:00] that even in the time of the Salem Witch Trials, the afflictions then were compared to those of the Goodwin children, which themselves can be compared to many earlier afflictions supposedly resulting from witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: Back to Memorable Providences,
Sarah Jack: Mather continues, "sometimes they would be deaf, sometimes dumb, and sometimes blind, and often all this at once."
Sarah Jack: As in Salem, these things could be faked and often occurred at convenient times.
Josh Hutchinson: Mather writes, "one while their tongues would be drawn down their throats, another while they would be pulled out upon their chins to a prodigious length."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "they would have their mouths opened unto such a wideness that their jaws went out of joint, and anon, they would clap together again with a force like that of a strong spring lock."
Josh Hutchinson: So were these just childish antics or did the children truly lack control over their bodies?
Sarah Jack: And there's [00:12:00] more. "The same would happen to their shoulder blades, and their elbows, and hand wrists, and several of their joints."
Josh Hutchinson: "They would, at times, lie in a benumbed condition, and be drawn together as those that are tied neck and heels, and presently be stretched out, yea, drawn backwards to such a degree that it was feared the very skin of their bellies would have cracked."
Sarah Jack: Children are more flexible than adults. Were they faking?
Josh Hutchinson: According to Mather, strange behavior was not all that afflicted the children. "They would make most piteous outcries, that they were cut with knives and struck with blows that they could not bear."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "their necks would be broken, so that their neck bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it, and yet, on the sudden, it would become again so stiff that there was no stirring of their heads. Yea, their heads would be twisted almost around, and if main force at any time obstructed a dangerous motion [00:13:00] which they seemed to be upon, they would roar exceedingly."
Josh Hutchinson: "Thus, they lay some weeks most pitiful spectacles, and this while as a further demonstration of witchcraft in these horrid effects, when I went to prayer by one of them that was very desirous to hear what I said, the child utterly lost her hearing till our prayer was over."
Sarah Jack: How convenient a time to lose her hearing.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. These kids were allergic to work and religious practice.
Sarah Jack: Mather writes, "it was a religious family that these afflictions happened unto, and none but a religious contrivance to obtain relief would have been welcome to them."
Josh Hutchinson: "Many superstitious proposals were made unto them by persons that were I know not who nor what, with arguments fetched from I know not how much necessity and experience, but the distressed parents rejected all such counsels with a gracious resolution to oppose devils with no other weapons but prayers and [00:14:00] tears unto him that was the chaining of them, and to try first whether graces were not the best things to encounter witchcrafts with."
Sarah Jack: As with the controversial witch cake baked in Salem, using the supernatural to explain the supernatural was frowned upon by religious authorities in Massachusetts. It was considered going to the devil for help against the devil.
Josh Hutchinson: Mather's account continues, "accordingly, they requested the four ministers of Boston, with the minister of Charlestown, to keep a day of prayer at their thus haunted house, which they did in the company of some devout people there. Immediately upon this day, the youngest of the four children was delivered and never felt any trouble as afore. But there was yet a greater effect of these applications unto our God."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "the report of the calamities of the family for which we were thus concerned arrived now unto the ears of the magistrates, who presently and prudently applied themselves with a just vigor to [00:15:00] inquire into the story."
Josh Hutchinson: "The father of the children complained of his neighbor, the suspected ill woman, whose name was Glover. And she, being sent for by the justices, gave such a wretched account of herself that they saw cause to commit her unto the jailer's custody."
Sarah Jack: Note that Mather does not give Goody Glover or her husband a first name.
Josh Hutchinson: According to Mather, Glover herself told the magistrates whatever they needed to hear to lock her up.
Sarah Jack: Mather writes, "Goodwin had no proof that could have done her any hurt, but the hag had not power to deny her interest in the enchantment of the children, and when she was asked whether she believed there was a god, her answer was too blasphemous and horrible for any pen of mine to mention."
Josh Hutchinson: Quote, "an experiment was made whether she could recite the Lord's Prayer, and it was found that though clause after clause was most carefully repeated unto her, yet when she said it after them that prompted her, she could not possibly avoid making nonsense [00:16:00] of it, with some ridiculous deprivations. This experience I had the curiosity since to see made upon two more, and it had the same event."
Sarah Jack: Here, we encounter the confusion over what was an acceptable experiment. Those proposed to the Goodwins earlier were not worthy. However, the Lord's Prayer Test was acceptable here and in the Salem Witch Trials.
Josh Hutchinson: According to Mather, "upon the commitment of this extraordinary woman, all the children had some present ease, until one, related unto her, accidentally meeting one or two of them, entertained them with her blessing, that is, railing, upon which three of them fell ill again, as they were before."
Sarah Jack: This is, again, similar to the Salem Witch Hunt, when the afflicted were momentarily freed from suffering whenever a suspect was jailed.
Josh Hutchinson: But would then relapse upon seeing the suspect in court.
Sarah Jack: Mather continues, "it was not long before the witch, thus in the trap, was brought upon her [00:17:00] trial, at which, through the efficacy of a charm, I suppose, used upon her by one or some of her crew, the court could receive answers from her in none but the Irish, which was her native language, although she understood the English very well and had accustomed her whole family to none but that language in her former conversation, and therefore the communication between the bench and the bar was now chiefly conveyed by two honest and faithful men that were interpreters."
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it's interesting that Mather believes witches charmed Goody Glover into only speaking Irish at trial. He may have actually exaggerated or misunderstood how well she understood English. Perhaps she couldn't actually follow what the officials were saying to her.
Sarah Jack: Unfortunately, the two "honest and faithful men" that were interpreters are never named.
Josh Hutchinson: Mather goes on, "it was long before she could, with any direct [00:18:00] answers, plead unto her indictment. And when she did plead, it was with confession rather than denial of her guilt."
Sarah Jack: " Order was given to search the old woman's house, from whence there was brought into the court several small images, or poppets or babies, made of rags and stuffed with goat's hair and other such ingredients. When these were produced, the vile woman acknowledged that her way to torment the objects of her malice was by wetting of her fingers with her spittle and stroking of those little images."
Josh Hutchinson: Poppets were commonly used in image magic. When used to represent a person, a poppet was believed to be a very effective way of manipulating a target's health.
Sarah Jack: A magic user could burn a poppet, prick it with pins, cut it, stroke it, or squeeze it,
Sarah Jack: and like effects would supposedly be produced in the personrepresented by the image.
Josh Hutchinson: Memorable Providences continues, "the abused children were then present, and the woman still kept stooping and shrinking as one that was almost [00:19:00] pressed to death with the mighty weight upon her.But one of the images being brought unto her, immediately she started up after an odd manner and took it into her hand, but she had no sooner taken it than one of the children fell into sad fits before the whole assembly."
Sarah Jack: Okay, so I'm thinking about this. These stories make it sound like she's the only woman in town that had a poppet.Especially if there is this language barrier and everybody else is poppeting each other when they're mad. And that's her poppet and they're handling her poppet. She's going to take it. She might wet it and smooth it down, if they were being rough with it. I'm just thinking about what was her experience. What was her perception of the poppet versus what Cotton is making it sound like?
Josh Hutchinson: And the poppet could even have symbolized something else for her, could have been represented one of [00:20:00] her saints, or maybe it represented a loved one and she wanted to be nice to it.It's really unclear, they don't describe the poppet, for us, and poppets were basically just dolls, so any kind of doll that you had in your house for your child, or whatever it was for, could be interpreted as being this magical tool.
Sarah Jack: Quote, " this the judges had their just apprehensions at, and carefully causing the repetition of the experiment found again the same event of it."
Josh Hutchinson: This is interesting because now it's the magistrates doing the experimentation.
Sarah Jack: We hear the word experiment a lot when we're looking at some of the Connecticut Witch Trials, too. Because they would do the experiments with Ann Cole? Oh, yeah.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. Not [00:21:00] just that, they're playing with proverbial fire. Who knows what a real witch could have done to the children with that poppet? If it truly were possible to use one as feared.
Josh Hutchinson: Continuing, quote, "they asked her whether she had any to stand by her. She replied she had, and looking very pertly in the air, she added, 'No, he's gone.'"
Sarah Jack: Quote, "and she then confessed that she had one who was her prince, with whom she maintained I know not what communion, for which cause, the night after, she was
Josh Hutchinson: heard expostulating with a devil, for his thus deserting her, telling him that because he had served her so basely and falsely, she had confessed all."
Josh Hutchinson: Here Mather bothers me because he assumes that she's speaking to a devil rather than God, a saint, or an angel, or any of these other entities she could have been addressing, which would have been a totally logical assumption.
Sarah Jack: He [00:22:00] proceeds, "however, to make all clear, the court appointed five or six physicians one evening to examine her very strictly whether she were not crazed in her intellectuals and had not procured to herself by folly and madness the reputation of the witch."
Josh Hutchinson: "Diverse hours did they spend with her, and in all that while, no discourse came from her but what was pertinent and agreeable, particularly when they asked her what she thought would become of her soul, she replied, 'You ask me a very solemn question, and I cannot well tell what to say to it.'"
Sarah Jack: What if she just said, what?
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, she might have just said that, and they said that she said what they said she said.
Sarah Jack: Quote, "she owned herself a Roman Catholic and could recite her Pater Noster in Latin very readily. But there was one clause or two always too hard for her, whereof she said she could not repeat it and if she [00:23:00] might have all the world. In the upshot, the doctors returned her Compos Mentis and sentence of death was passed upon her."
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, Mather doesn't tell us what language was used with Goody Glover in her mental examination.
Sarah Jack: Based upon a later comment on the rarity of her use of English, we can probably assume that the sanity evaluation was conducted in Gaelic through the interpreters Mather mentioned earlier.
Josh Hutchinson: The book continues, "diverse days were passed between her being arraigned and condemned. In this time, one of her neighbors had been giving in her testimony of what another of her neighbors had upon her death related concerning her."
Josh Hutchinson: Quote, "it seems one Howen, about six years before, had been cruelly bewitched to death. But before she died, she called one Hughes onto her, telling her that she laid her death to the charge of Glover,
Sarah Jack: that she had seen Glover sometimes come down her chimney, that she would remember this, [00:24:00] for within the six years, she might have occasion to declare it.
Josh Hutchinson: But it appears that Hughes never made any allegations against Glover prior to 1688, and she may have regretted coming forward then, as we'll see.
Sarah Jack: In Mather's account, quote, "this Hughes, now preparing her testimony, immediately one of her children, a fine boy, well grown towards youth, was taken ill, just in the same woeful and surprising manner that Goodwin's children were."
Josh Hutchinson: "One night particularly, the boy said he saw a black thing with a blue cap in the room, tormenting of him, and he complained most bitterly of a hand put into the bed to pull out his bowels."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "the next day, the mother of the boy went on to Glover in the prison and asked her why she tortured her poor lad at such a wicked rate."
Josh Hutchinson: Quote, "this witch replied that she did it because of wrong done to herself and her daughter. She denied, as well as she might, that she had done [00:25:00] her any wrong."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "well then, says Glover, let me see your child and he shall be well again."
Josh Hutchinson: Quote, "Glover went on and told her of her own accord, 'I was at your house last night.' Says Hughes, 'in what shape?' Says Glover, 'as a black thing with a blue cap.'"
Sarah Jack: " Says Hughes, 'what did you do there?' Says Glover, 'with my hand in the bed, I tried to pull out the boy's bowels, but I could not.'"
Josh Hutchinson: "They parted, but the next day Hughes, appearing at court, had her boy with her, and Glover passing by the boy expressed her good wishes for him, though I suppose his parent had no design of any mighty respect unto the hag by having him with her there. But the boy had no more indispositions after the condemnation of the woman."
Sarah Jack: Of course, it would have been Hughes, not Glover, who told the account of Glover saying that she was at Hughes' house that night, and it's unclear how Hughes would even have communicated with Glover if her jailhouse [00:26:00] visits really took place.
Josh Hutchinson: How is she speaking the Gaelic? Mather goes on to speak of his own visits to Glover. "While the miserable old woman was under condemnation, I did myself twice give a visit unto her. She never denied the guilt of the witchcraft charged upon her, but she confessed very little about the circumstances of her confederacies with the devils. Only she said that she used to be at meetings, which her prince and four more were present at."
Sarah Jack: Quote,
Sarah Jack: As for those four, she told who they were, and for her prince, her account plainly was that he was the devil."
Josh Hutchinson: For reasons known only to Mather, he never revealed the names of the four confederates of Goody Glover, so we do not know who else was named as a witch in Boston in 1688.
Sarah Jack: Mather continues, "she entertained me with nothing but Irish, which language I had not learning enough to understand without an interpreter." I'm so mad right now. She had to have [00:27:00] an interpreter, but I'm just saying an interpreter was fine enough for her, but not for him. I'm going to start over. "She entertained me with nothing but Irish, which language I had not learned enough to understand without an interpreter. Only one time, when I was representing unto her that, and how her prince had cheated her, as herself would quickly find, she replied, I think in English, and with passion, too, 'If it be so, I am sorry for that.'"
Josh Hutchinson: This is the only time Mather, or anyone else, quotes Glover directly.
Sarah Jack: And he thinks it was in English. And he's so certain, he's so certain of everything else. How often would he say, I'm not sure? So we do not have her side of the story at all.
Josh Hutchinson: We really don't. Mather continues, "I offered many questions unto her, unto which, after long silence, she told me she would fain give me a full answer, but they would not [00:28:00] give her leave. It was demanded, they, who is that they? And she returned that they were her spirits or her saints, for they say the same word in Irish signifies both. And at another time, she included her two mistresses, as she called them in that day. But when it was inquired who those two were, she fell into a rage and would be no more urged."
Sarah Jack: Like I can really see here how he was persecuting her religiously because he is saying, he is appropriating the devil and spirits ontowhat her faith is. He knowingly was doing this and portraying her as speaking with the devil, when he understood Catholicism.
Josh Hutchinson: He understood Catholicism a lot better than he's letting on. He was a Harvard trained religious scholar, so of course he knew. And to say that, [00:29:00] you know, saints and spirits, it's the same word. I don't know if that's even true, but, he obviously should know that when she's talking about saints, that's something different than devils.
Sarah Jack: He continues, "I set before her the necessity and the equity of her breaking her covenant with hell and giving herself to the Lord Jesus Christ by an everlasting covenant."
Sarah Jack: Oh, my word, every time I get into these quotes, I'm getting really mad because that isn't the covenant that her faith would have been directly based on. Her covenant isn't broken by hell, nor, that's just not Catholicism.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, he's saying that she has a covenant with hell, and she's saying that she has a covenant with God, but it's Roman Catholic God.
Sarah Jack: " And giving herself to the Lord Jesus Christ by an everlasting covenant, to which her answer was that I spoke a very reasonable thing, [00:30:00] but she could not do it, I asked her whether she would consent or desire to be prayed for. To that she said, if prayer would do her any good, she could pray for herself."
Josh Hutchinson: "And when it was again propounded, she said she could not unless her spirits, or angels, would give her leave. However, against her will I prayed with her, which if it were a fault, it was in excess of pity."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "when I had done, she thanked me with many good words, but I was no sooner out of her sight than she took a stone, a long and slender stone, and with her finger and spittle fell to tormenting it, though whom or what she meant, I had the mercy never to understand."
Josh Hutchinson: Mather doesn't say how he knew what she did after he was out of her sight, but presumably the jailer or somebody else present told him, but still, how is she tormenting this stone by rubbing it with her [00:31:00] finger?
Sarah Jack: It was a fidget.
Josh Hutchinson: It's her fidget, her fidget stone.
Sarah Jack: He forcibly prayed for her against her will.
Josh Hutchinson: And Mather continues, "when this witch was going to her execution, she said the children should not be relieved by her death, for others had a hand in it as well as she, and she named one among the rest, whom it might have been thought natural affection would have advised the concealing of."
Sarah Jack: This comment about natural affection has contributed to the belief that she may have been speaking of her daughter there.
Josh Hutchinson: She may not have even been trying to say that her daughter, or whoever it was that she actually named, was a witch. It might have just been a misunderstanding.
Sarah Jack: Mather goes on, quote, "it came to pass accordingly that the three children continued in their furnace as before, and it grew rather seven times hotter than it was."
Josh Hutchinson: " All their former ails pursued them [00:32:00] still, with an addition of, tis not easy to tell how many, more, but such as gave more sensible demonstrations of an enchantment growing very far towards a possession by evil spirits."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "the children in their fits would still cry out upon they and them as the authors of all their harm. But who that they and them were? They were not able to declare."
Josh Hutchinson: "At last, the boy obtained at some times a sight of some shapes in the room. There were three or four of them, the names of which the child would pretend at certain seasons to tell, only the name of one who was counted a sager hag than the rest, he still so stammered at that he was put upon some periphrasis in describing her."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "a blow at the place where the boy beheld the specter was always felt by the boy himself in the part of his body that answered what might be stricken at. And this, though his back was turned, which was once and again, so exactly [00:33:00] tried that there could be
Josh Hutchinson: no collusion in the business."
Josh Hutchinson: "But as a blow at the apparition always hurt him, so it always helped him too, for after the agonies, which a push or stab of that had put him to, were over, as in a minute or two the boy would have a respite from his fits a considerable while, and the hobgoblins disappear.
Sarah Jack: Quote, "It is very credibly reported that a wound was this way given to an obnoxious woman in the town, whose name I will not expose, for we should be tenderer in such relations, lest we wrong the reputation of the innocent, by stories not enough inquired into."
Josh Hutchinson: And here he's calling Goody Glover every name in the book, the 17th century, Puritan book. Except for, yeah, he doesn't tell us her real name and that he's telling us, 'Oh, we should be cautious and not spread stories about people without really knowing,' and I guess that's why he didn't [00:34:00] tell any of the four accomplices' names, but like, where's he drawing the line here? He's like, it's this obstinate, older Irish woman, who's got no husband alive to protect her, so I'll go after her. But like these other ones, he draws a line somehow.
Sarah Jack: And you know he, in his mind, he was going after the Catholic saints as well.
Josh Hutchinson: And, also once again, we see parallels with Salem with an afflicted person seeing the disembodied specters of witches and others striking at thin air in their attempts to remove these tormentors.
Sarah Jack: Of course, the boy was the only one who could see the specter, so he could easily have told them that they had hit the specter's arm or leg or head. They would have been none the wiser. It really didn't matter that his back was turned.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. All he really had to do was guess when they hit the witch by listening to what sounds they were making. [00:35:00] And then he'd say, 'Oh, you've got her again. That time you got her arm and, Oh, my arm hurts too.'
Josh Hutchinson: Mather continues, "the fits of the children yet more arrived unto such motions as were beyond the efficacy of any natural distemper in the world."
Sarah Jack: So those afflicted girls in Salem, they knew for sure expressing afflictions was not natural distemper, like that, it would be taken as witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: There was no doubt. They already knew. They had the playbook written by one Cotton Mather himself, but also writings of his father, Increase, before. This was the established playbook of how to behave when you were bewitched.
Sarah Jack: This is where it gets fun. Quote, "they would bark at one another like dogs. And again, purr like so many cats."
Josh Hutchinson: "They would sometimes complain that they were in a red hot oven, sweating and panting at the same [00:36:00] time unreasonably. Anon, they would say, cold water was thrown upon them, at which they would shiver very much."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "They would cry out of dismal blows, with great cudgels
Josh Hutchinson: laid upon them. And though we saw no cudgels nor blow, yet we could see the marks left by them in red streaks upon their bodies afterwards."
Josh Hutchinson: "And one of them would be roasted on an invisible spit, run into his mouth and out at his foot, he lying and rolling and groaning as if it had been so in the most sensible manner in the world. And then he would shriek that knives were cutting of him."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "sometimes also he would have his head so forcibly, though not visibly, nailed into the floor that it was as much as a strong man could do to pull it up."
Josh Hutchinson: "One while they would all be so limber that it was judged every bone of them could be bent. Another while they would be so stiff that not a joint of them could be stirred."
Sarah Jack: Much similar imagery was used during the Salem Witch Trial. [00:37:00] During the Salem Witch Hunt, afflicted Mercy Lewis even used the image of a person roasting on a spit in her testimony against Martha Cory.
Josh Hutchinson: And the story continues, "they would sometimes be as though they were mad, and then they would climb over high fences beyond the imagination of them that looked after them."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "yea, they would fly like geese, and be carried with an incredible swiftness through the air, having but just their toes now and then upon the ground, and their arms waved like the wings of a bird," whish, whish. "One of them in the house of a kind neighbor and gentleman, Mr. Willis, flew the length of the room, about twenty foot, and flew just into an infant's high armed chair, as 'tis affirmed, none seeing her feet all the way touch the floor."
Josh Hutchinson: She's just moving really fast. In his book, A True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages, Deodat Lawson wrote that Abigail [00:38:00] Williams, during the Salem Witch Hunt, " was at first hurried with violence to and fro in the room, though Mrs. Ingersoll endeavored to hold her, sometimes making as if she would fly, stretching up her arms as high as she could, and crying, 'whish, whish, whish,' several times."
Sarah Jack: The afflicted persons of Salem and surrounding communities had definitely imbibed the stories of the Goodwin children and other afflicted children.
Josh Hutchinson: Memorable Providences continues, "many ways did the devils take to make the children do mischief both to themselves and others, but through the singular providence of God, they always failed in their attempts."
Sarah Jack: "For they could never essay the doing of any harm, unless there were somebody at hand that might prevent it, and seldom without first shrieking out, 'they say, I must do such a thing.'"
Josh Hutchinson: How convenient.
Sarah Jack: Mather continues, "diverse times they went to strike furious blows at their tenderest and dearest friends, or to fling them downstairs [00:39:00] when they had them at the top. But the warning from the mouths of the children themselves would still anticipate what the devils did intend."
Josh Hutchinson: "They diverse times were very near burning or drowning of themselves, but the children themselves, by their own pitiful and seasonable cries for help, still procured their deliverance, which make me to consider whether the little ones had not their angels, in the plain sense of our savior's intimation."
Sarah Jack: So, their angels are okay?
Josh Hutchinson: Their angels are okay. Hers are not.
Sarah Jack: They either had angels, or they were stopping themselves just short of inflicting any real harm.
Josh Hutchinson: Mather adds, "sometimes when they were tying their own neck clothes, their compelled hands miserably strangled themselves, till perhaps the standers by gave some relief unto them."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "but if any small mischief happened to be done where they were,
Josh Hutchinson: as the tearing or dirtying of a garment, the falling of a cup, the breaking of a glass, or the like, they would rejoice [00:40:00] extremely and fall into a pleasure and laughter very extraordinary."
Josh Hutchinson: I mean, who doesn't?
Sarah Jack: Quote, "all which things compared with the temper of the children, when they are themselves, may suggest some very peculiar thoughts unto us."
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, one of the peculiar thoughts occurring to me is that the children were faking. Though it is possible they may have been going through some stress-induced psychogenic illness, which is a theory about the Salem Witch Trials as well, and this illness manifested in these strange behaviors because of this genuine fear of witchcraft.
Sarah Jack: And my laughter and making fun is of the adults, not that the children had no way to work through the stresses that they were feeling. I just want to be clear on that. This is about the narration of the adults about what was going on with the children whose lives were wonderful.
Sarah Jack: Cotton
Josh Hutchinson: [00:41:00] Mathers, gullibility, and, just believes anything.
Sarah Jack: We'll never really know why the children did these things. As far as we can tell, nobody did any where are they now type follow ups years later.
Josh Hutchinson: And none of the sources ever quotes the children themselves.
Sarah Jack: They're not named by the sources. They're named later.
Sarah Jack: Mather continues, "they were not in a constant torture for some weeks, but were a little quiet, unless upon some incidental
Josh Hutchinson: provocations, upon which the devils would handle them like tigers
Josh Hutchinson: and wound them in a manner very horrible."
Josh Hutchinson: "Particularly upon the last reproof of their parents for any unfit thing they said or did, most grievous, woeful, heartbreaking agonies would they fall into."
Sarah Jack: I can just see the eyes welling up with tears, just like that, Josh. Yes. Quote, "if any useful thing were to be done to them or by them, they would have [00:42:00] all sorts of troubles fall upon them."
Josh Hutchinson: Seriously, do these children just not want to work or to get in trouble with their parents?
Sarah Jack: Were they afraid of what punishment their parents would dole out? That's just a question, as we have no way of answering that.
Josh Hutchinson: And Mather writes, "it would sometimes cost one of them an hour or two to be undressed in the evening or dressed in the morning. For if anyone went to untie a string or undo a button about them, or the contrary, they would be twisted into such postures as made the thing impossible."
Sarah Jack: That sounds like toddler transition frustrations that we all see children do in 2024.
Sarah Jack: "And at whiles they would be so managed in their beds that no bedclothes could for an hour or two be laid upon them, or could they go to wash their hands without having them clasped so oddly together there was no doing of it."
Josh Hutchinson: It's just those troublesome kids at bedtime.
Sarah Jack: [00:43:00] Wash your hands! Wash your hands! Did you wash your hands? That's all that is.
Josh Hutchinson: No. Did you just run the water and not wash your hands? Yes, "but when their friends were near tired with waiting, anon, they might do what they would unto them."
Sarah Jack: There were limits.
Sarah Jack: "Whatever work they were bid to do, they would be so snapped in the member which was to do it, that they, with grief, still desisted from it."
Josh Hutchinson: " If one ordered them to rub a clean table, they were able to do it, without any disturbance. If to rub a dirty table, presently they would, with many torments, be made incapable."
Sarah Jack: I can't believe he wrote this down!
Josh Hutchinson: It's just troublesome. Did he never deal with his own children? He had plenty of them. He was 25 or 26 when he wrote this, but he already had several children.
Sarah Jack: Quote, "and sometimes, though but seldom, they were kept from eating their meals by having their [00:44:00] teeth set when they carried anything onto their mouths."
Josh Hutchinson: But even worse than work, another horror awaited the children.
Sarah Jack: Religion was even worse for them than chores.
Josh Hutchinson: As Mather writes, "nothing in the world would so discompose them as a religious exercise."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "if there were any discourse of God or Christ, or any of these things which are not seen, and are eternal, they would be cast into intolerable anguishes."
Josh Hutchinson: Once, those two worthy ministers, Mr. Fisk and Mr. Thatcher, bestowing some gracious counsels on the boy, whom they then found at a neighbor's house, he immediately lost his hearing, so that he heard not one word, but just the last word of all they said."
Josh Hutchinson: How does he hear only the last word? He's waiting for them to stop, obviously, and then he knows what last word they said because he was waiting for them to stop.
Sarah Jack: Was it Deodat's message where they were like, I [00:45:00] just missed that whole thing?
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah,Abigail Williams is saying, if you had a doctrine, I don't know what it was.
Sarah Jack: Quote, "much more, all praying to God and reading of his word would occasion a very terrible vexation to them. They would then stop their own ears with their own hands and roar and shriek and holler to drown the voice of the devotion."
Josh Hutchinson: "Yea, if anyone in the room took up a Bible to look into it, though the children could see nothing of it as being in a crowd of spectators or having their faces another way, yet would they be in wonderful miseries till the Bible were laid aside."
Sarah Jack: "In short, no good thing must be then endured near those children, which, while they are themselves, do love every good thing in a measure that proclaims in them the fear of God."
Josh Hutchinson: And this is how Mather ends his account.
Sarah Jack: But Mather does not conclude his section on Goody Glover here. Instead, he continues with another telling of the story.
Josh Hutchinson: He included a [00:46:00] section supposedly written by John Goodwin himself.
Sarah Jack: Mather labeled this section Mantissa, a term for a minor addition to a text, and it's basically a retelling of the story from Goodwin's perspective.
Josh Hutchinson: "In the year 1688, about midsummer, it pleased the Lord to visit one of my children with a sore visitation, and she was not only tormented in her body, but was in great distress of mind, crying out that she was in the dark concerning her soul's estate, and that she had misspent her precious time, she and we thinking her time was near at an end."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "hearing those shrieks and groans, which did not only pierce the ears but hearts of her poor parents, now was a time for me to consider with myself, and to look into my own heart and life, and see how matters did there stand between God and my soul, and see wherefore the Lord was thus contending with me. And upon inquiry, I found cause to judge myself and to justify the Lord."
Josh Hutchinson: " This affliction continuing some time, the Lord saw good [00:47:00] then to double the affliction in smiting down another child, and that which was most heartbreaking of all, and did double this double affliction, was that it was apparent and judged by all that saw them, that the devil and his instruments had a hand in it."
Josh Hutchinson: A
Sarah Jack: double double. A
Josh Hutchinson: double double.
Sarah Jack: And trouble.
Sarah Jack: "The consideration of this was most dreadful.I thought of what David saidin second Samuel 24:14. If he feared so to fall into the hands of men, oh, then to think of the horror of our condition to be in the hands of devils and witches."
Josh Hutchinson: "This our doleful condition moved us to call to our friend staff. Pity on us for God's hand had touched us."
Sarah Jack: "I was ready to say that no one's affliction was like mine, that my little house that should be a little Bethel for God to dwell in should be made a den for devils, and those little bodies that should be temples for the Holy Ghost to dwell in should be thus harassed and abused by the devil and his cursed
Josh Hutchinson: [00:48:00] brood."
Josh Hutchinson: " But now this twice-doubled affliction is doubled again. Two more of my children are smitten down. Oh, the cries, the shrieks, the tortures of these poor children. Doctors cannot help. Parents weep and lament over them but cannot ease them."
Sarah Jack: " Now, I considering my affliction to be more thanordinary, it did certainly call for more than ordinary prayer."
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, you might be wondering why he's talking about his affliction when the kids are the ones suffering. And, well, it wasn't uncommon for the men of the time as heads of the households to feel like any misfortune that befell their family was a judgment on them in particular. Cotton Mather behaved the same way, and so did Samuel Sewell, which was why Samuel Sewell did an apology for the Salem witch trials. um, sort of.
Sarah Jack: Thus the gall of John Goodwin to act like he was the one afflicted [00:49:00] when it was his own children who allegedly suffered pain.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. What gall? What nerve? His children are suffering. He's like, Oh, God has beef with me. What's this beef with me about?
Josh Hutchinson: And Goodwin continues, quote, "I acquainted Mr. Allen, Mr. Moody, Mr. Willard, and Mr. C. Mather, the four ministers of the town with it, and Mr. Morton of Charlestown, earnestly desiring them that they, with some other praying people of God, would meet at my house, and there be earnest with God on the behalf of us and our children, which they, I thank them for it, readily attended with great fervency of spirit, but as for my part, my heart was ready to sink to hear and see those doleful sights."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "now I thought that I had greatly neglected my duty to my children, and not admonishing and instructing of them, and that God was hereby calling my sins to mind, to slay my children." So which is it? Is it God or witches? [00:50:00]
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. he can't make up his mind. And, you have to wonder, were they thinking as Cotton Mather referenced earlier, their symptoms were approaching diabolical possession, so they could have been possessed or they could have been bewitched, or it could have been a judgment of God. Either way, ultimately in the Puritan belief of the time, it would have come back to Godjudging them in some way. Whether he used, let the devil and his witches have their way for a little while as a test or judgment, He's the one who ultimately has the power in the situation. Continuing," then I pondered of that place in Numbers 23:23. 'Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel.'"
Sarah Jack: Quote, "and [00:51:00] now I thought I had broke covenant with God, not only in one respect, but in many. But it pleased the Lord to bring that to mind in Hebrews 8:12, 'for I will be merciful, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.'"
Sarah Jack: So then why is Goody Glover getting the ultimate punishment? Yeah. This is all within the household in between God. In his broken covenant, Goodwin's broken covenant with him, what, why are they hanging Goody Glover?
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Yeah. Why? Fear. Just lack of understanding because the true will of God was unreadable.But you could go after the devil's instruments. couldn't really go, you couldn't take the devil to court. You couldn't take God to court and say, just to ask him, 'what did I do? I'm sorry, I want to reform.' [00:52:00] You couldn't even do that. Because his mind is unknowable. But you're afraid of the earthly, even as much as you believe in the heavenly, you're afraid of the earthly. And so you're afraid of the witch who you know more than the devil that you don't.
Sarah Jack: Continuing the account, quote, "the consideration how the Lord did deal with Job and his patience and the end the Lord made with him was some support to me."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "I thought also on what David said, that he had sinned, but what had these poor lambs done?"
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, this part here reminds me of your great grandmother, Rebecca Nurse in Salem, saying that she was unsure what sin God must have found in her, that he would allow her to be accused of witchcraft, where here it's like the flip side of that. John Goodwin is asking, what sins have I and my children not repented of that God would allow the children to be afflicted by a [00:53:00] witch?
Sarah Jack: Goodwin continues his account, quote, "but yet in the midst of my tumultuous thoughts within me, it was God's comforts that did delight my soul."
Josh Hutchinson: "That in the 18th of Luke and the beginning, verse 1, where Christ spake the parable for that end, that men ought always to pray and not faint. This, with many other places, bore my spirit."
Sarah Jack: And I want to point out that much of the same scripture possibly would have been known by Goody Glover, and she could too be asking questions of God and quoting scripture to try to flesh out what was happening to her spiritually.
Josh Hutchinson: The only difference is she's probably thinking of it in Irish, and he's thinking of it in English, but, she would have been just as versed, anybody at the time, drilled again and again, these things into your head.
Sarah Jack: And I'm thinking about when Cotton was speaking of her in the [00:54:00] jail, saying things and asking questions of the spirits. Could it, would it not be just like this account ofGoodman Goodwin questioning and quoting?
Josh Hutchinson: Very much.
Sarah Jack: "I thought with Jonah 2:4 that I would yet again look towards God's holy temple, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I did greatly desire to find the Son of God with me in this furnace of affliction, knowing hereby that no harm shall befall me."
Josh Hutchinson: But now this solemn day of prayer and fasting being at end, there was an imminent answer of it. For one of my children was delivered, and one of the wicked instruments of the devil discovered, and her own mouth condemned her, and so accordingly executed."
Sarah Jack: Goody Glover's death was the answer to John Goodwin's prayer.
Josh Hutchinson: He goes on to say, quote, "here was food for faith and great encouragement still to hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord, the minister still counseling and encouraging me to labor to be found in God's [00:55:00] way, committing my case to him, and not to use any way not allowed in God's word."
Sarah Jack: This really reminds me of
Josh Hutchinson:
Sarah Jack: when Paul Moyer discusses in his book, Wicked and Detestable Arts, how, in our conversation with him on that episode he made with us, how the scriptural family framework was holy and anything that fell outside of that would have not been valuable. And Goody Glover, everything about her life fell outside of that scriptural family, in their perception.
Josh Hutchinson: In the Puritan
Sarah Jack: perception.
Josh Hutchinson: And we never find out if she has any other children. They're never mentioned, only her one daughter. And we know from other cases, like Alice Young had just one daughter that we know of, and you look at the case of [00:56:00] Goody Eunice Cole, who had no children of her own, and was reported to be jealous of others who had children and wanted to take their children. But this like low fertility thing also was considered to be a judgment of God against you, that you had somehow done something wrong, or you weren't chosen by God to have children, so therefore you were valued less in society.
Sarah Jack: It was okay for the ministers and magistrates to try their experiments, but they did not want John Goodwin tempting the devil through folk magic or other means not specifically sanctioned by the Bible.
Josh Hutchinson: Goodwin continues, quote, "it was a thing not a little comfortable to us, to see that the people of God was so much concerned about our lamentable condition, remembering us at all times in their prayers, which I did look at as a token for good. But you must think it was a time of sore [00:57:00] temptation with us, for many did say, yea, and some good people, too, were it their case that they would try some tricks that they should give ease to their children."
Sarah Jack: Why was it so important for them to document that they weren't doing witch cakes and such?
Josh Hutchinson: I think in here part of the, if you look at this from like a propaganda perspective, basically the story that's being sold is that the Goodwin family is very pious and dedicated and devoted and did nothing to bring this on to themselves other than whatever sin Goodwin worries about there. They didn't do any witchcraft. They didn't do any magic. Only Goody Glover tried magic and her four accomplices that are unnamed. So it's like creating, it's like serving as, even though the trial had already happened and the execution had already happened, [00:58:00] it's like preserving for future generations, the high level of decency of the victimsand likewise showing just how detestable Goody Glover was.
Sarah Jack: And then I'm thinking about how important, at the beginning of the tale of the afflicted girls in Salem, the witch cake. That's kicks off the story, that Tituba allowed that to happen.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes, and Tituba gets blamed, even though Mary Sibley's the one who comes up with the idea for it, and she gets scolded in church, but then they vote, and they say, 'oh, we forgive you'.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, Reverend Parris would have been really familiar that Goodman Goodwin refused to use that folk magic, and it happened right in his house.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Reverend [00:59:00] Parris, before he went up to Salem, he was living in Boston in 1688. He moved to Salem Village in 1689. So he was still in Boston while this was going on, and he was a member of Mather's church.
Sarah Jack: And he possibly talked about this in his home.
Josh Hutchinson: Probably. And
Sarah Jack: when I say possibly, I'm being sarcastic.
Josh Hutchinson: He did. Yeah, he did. You know he did.
Sarah Jack: Yeah,
Josh Hutchinson: it's all there was to talk about, really.
Sarah Jack: Continuing, "but I thought for us to forsake the counsel of good old men, and to take the counsel of the young ones, it might ensnare our souls, though for the present it might offer some relief to our bodies, which was a thing I greatly feared, and my children were not at any time free for doing any such thing."
Josh Hutchinson: "It was a time of sore affliction, but it was mixed with abundance of mercy, for my heart was many a time made glad in the house of prayer."
Sarah Jack: And [01:00:00] Goodwin continues, "the neighborhood pitied us and were very helpful to us. Moreover, though my children were thus in every limb and joint tormented by those children of the devil, they also, using their tongues at their pleasure, sometimes one way, sometimes another, yet the Lord did hear and prevent them, that they could not make them speak wicked words, though they did many times hinder them from speaking good ones. Had they in these fits blaspheming the name of the holy God, this you may think would have been a heartbreaking thing to us the poor parents, but God in his mercy prevented them. A thing worth taking notice of."
Josh Hutchinson: "Likewise, they slept well at nights, and the ministers did often visit us and pray with us and for us. And their love and pity was so great, their prayers so earnest and constant, that I could not but admire at it."
Sarah Jack: If they admitted at this point that their fits included blasphemy, then it would totally discredit Cotton's analysis of their pious [01:01:00] family.
Josh Hutchinson: And they had to get out in front of any rumors of blasphemy that might have been spreading.
Sarah Jack: "Mr. Mather, particularly now, his bowels so yearn toward us in this sad condition that he not only prays with us, and for us, but he taketh one of my children home to his own house, which, indeed, was but a troublesome guest. For such a one that had so much work lying upon his hands and heart, he took much pains in this great service, to pull this child, and her brother and sister, out of the hand of the devil."
Josh Hutchinson: So Cotton Mather took one of the Goodwin children in,
Sarah Jack: David D. Hall refers to her as Martha in his book, Witch Hunting in 17th Century in New England.
Sarah Jack: John Goodwin's account continues, "let us now admire and adore that fountain, the Lord Jesus Christ, from once those streams come,
Sarah Jack: the Lord himself requite his labor of love."
Josh Hutchinson: "Our case is yet very sad, and doth call for more prayer. And the good ministers of this town and Charlestown readily came, with some [01:02:00] other good praying people to my house, to keep another day of solemn fasting and prayer, which our Lord saith this kind goeth out by."
Sarah Jack: "My children, being all at home, the two biggest lying on the bed, one of them would fain have kicked the good men, while they were wrestling with God for them, had not I held him with all my power and might, and sometimes he would stop his own ears."
Josh Hutchinson: "This, you must needs think, was a cutting thing to the poor parents. Now our hearts were ready to sink had not God put us under his everlasting arms of mercy, Deuteronomy 33:27, and helped us still to hope in his mercy, and to be quiet, knowing that he is God, and that it was not for the potsherds of the earth to strive with their maker."
Sarah Jack: One thing that I notice here is he says that they talked about keeping fasting and prayer, which our Lord saith, this kind goeth out by. Isn't the kind that goes out by fasting [01:03:00] and prayer having to do with possession and not witchcraft?
Sarah Jack:
Sarah Jack: John Goodwin was concerned for the well being of his children, but he often comes across as more concerned for his own needs, such as here when he talks about his and his wife's hearts being ready to sink because this was, quote, "a cutting thing to the poor parents."
Josh Hutchinson: But to be fair, he's also speaking to the parents in his audience about things they might experience in their own times of need.
Sarah Jack: And giving them advice on how to maintain their faith that God will deliver them from their troubles.
Josh Hutchinson: He continues, "well might David say, Psalms 1:2, that had not the law of his God been his delight, he had perished in his affliction."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "now the promises of God are sweet, God having promised to hear the prayer of the destitute and not to despise their prayer, and he will not fail the expectation of those that wait on him, but he heareth the cry of the poor and the needy."
Josh Hutchinson: "These Jacobs came and wrestled with God for a [01:04:00] blessing on this poor family, which indeed I hope they obtained, and may be now worthy of the name Israel, who prevailed with God and would not let him go till he had blessed us."
Sarah Jack: "For soon after this, there were two more of my children delivered out of this horrible pit. Here was now a double mercy, and how sweet it was, knowing it came in answer of prayer."
Josh Hutchinson: "Now we see and know it is not a vain thing to call on the name of the Lord, for he is a present help in the time of trouble, Psalms 46:1. And we may boldly say the Lord has been our helper. I had sunk, but Jesus put forth his hand and bore me up."
Sarah Jack: And I just keep thinking how Goody Glover would've been clinging to the same scripture, for her hope and rescue. "My faith was ready to fail, but this was the support to me that Christ said to Peter in Luke 22:32, I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail [01:05:00] not."
Josh Hutchinson: So Goodwin owns his crisis of faith and shares how he overcame it.
Sarah Jack: Quote, "and many other promises were as cordials to my drooping soul. In the consideration of all those that ever came to Christ Jesus for healing, that he healed their bodies, pardoned their sins, and healed their souls, too, which I hope in God may be the fruit of this present affliction."
Josh Hutchinson: "If God be pleased to make the fruit of this affliction to be to take away our sin and cleanse us from iniquity and to put us on with greater diligence to make our calling and election sure, then happy affliction!"
Sarah Jack: So mad right now.
Josh Hutchinson: Meanwhile, this woman died for, to make this guy happy.
Sarah Jack: It's so unhappy that they're willing to kill a woman. It's so unhappy that it was crushing the hearts of the parents, but now it's happy. The rescue.
Josh Hutchinson: Ding dong.
Sarah Jack: "The Lord said that I had need of this to awake [01:06:00] me. I have found a prosperous condition."
Josh Hutchinson: "I have taken notice and considered more of God's goodness in these few weeks of affliction than in many years of prosperity."
Sarah Jack: And this is really a point that we have even discussed with some of the European witch trials that we've discussed, that if witches were being found in your parish or church or community, that was a sign that you were having some spiritual prosperity. And so then you were a target by the devil, just as Goodman Goodwin here said that prosperous condition is a dangerous condition.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes.
Sarah Jack: "I may speak it with shame, so wicked and deceitful, and ungrateful is my heart, that the more God hath been doing for me, the less I have been doing for him. My returns have not been according to my receivings."
Josh Hutchinson: "The Lord help me now to praise him in heart, lip, and life. The Lord help us to see by this [01:07:00] visitation what need we have to get shelter under the wing of Christ, to haste to the rock where we may be safe."
Sarah Jack: I'm really impressed with this mason's writing skills.
Josh Hutchinson: He blows me away. He's better than cotton.
Sarah Jack: "We see how ready the devils are to catch us and torment our bodies, and he is as diligent to ensnare our souls in that many ways, but let us put on all of our spiritual armor and follow Christ, the captain of our salvation. And though we meet with the cross, let us bear it patiently and cheerfully, for if Jesus Christ be at the one end, we need not fear the heft of it. If we have Christ, we have enough. He can make his rod as well as his staff to be a comfort to us. And we shall not want if we be the sheep of Christ."
Josh Hutchinson: " If we want afflictions, we shall have them, and sanctified afflictions are choice mercies. Now I earnestly desire the prayer of all good people that the Lord would be pleased to perfect that work he hath begun, and make it to appear that [01:08:00] prayer is stronger than witchcraft. December 12th, 1688, John Goodwin."
Sarah Jack: John just shared a lot of scripture that is very familiar to many people. And it's just very insightful to see how it can be twisted to sanctify one person and discredit another person's humanity.
Josh Hutchinson: It's so easy to twist words.
Sarah Jack: And that ends the Goody Glover section of Memorable Providences.
Josh Hutchinson: Cotton Mather then goes on to detail other cases. One final source reflects another attitude about the Glover case, Robert Calef vocal critic of Cotton Mather and The Salem Witch-Hunt, wrote More Wonders of the Invisible World as a counterpoint to Mather's own Wonders of the Invisible World, a fawning work praising the actions of the Salem Witch Trial's judges.
Sarah Jack: In More Wonders of the Invisible World, Calef [01:09:00] included a couple paragraphs on the case of Goody Glover.
Josh Hutchinson: Calef wrote that he had perused the trial records of Goody Glover. Unfortunately, these records are not available today.
Sarah Jack: He wrote, "in the times of Sir Edmund Andros, his government, Goody Glover, a despised, crazy, ill-conditioned old woman, an Irish Roman Catholic, was tried for afflicting Goodwin's children, by the account of which trial, taken in shorthand for the use of the jury, it may appear that the generality of her answers were nonsense, and her behavior like that of one distracted."
Josh Hutchinson: "Yet the doctors, finding her as she had been for many years, brought her in compos mentis, and setting aside her crazy answers to some ensnaring questions, the proof against her was wholly deficient. The jury brought her guilty."
Sarah Jack: Quote, "Mr. Cotton Mather was the most active and forward of any minister in the country in those matters, in the country, taking [01:10:00] home one of the children and managing such intrigues with that child. And after printing such an account of the whole and his Memorable Providences as conduced much to the kindling those flames, that in Sir William's time, threatened devouring this country."
Josh Hutchinson: So now we've covered four contemporary sources of information on the Goody Glover case.
Sarah Jack: We talk about them losing hold of the country and here Calef uses the word devouring, that I just find that significant.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it's interesting because Cotton Mather, when he talks about Salem, he talks about the devil's dominion is, New England is the devil's dominion. And, the people of that dominion are all allied to take down the Massachusetts Bay Colony and it's thePuritanized Church. So it's interesting Cotton Mather's saying [01:11:00] that the devouring of the country is by Satan and his instruments, and Calef is saying, no, the devouring is you guys with your witch trial running rampant.
Sarah Jack: And witch hunting is still devouring.
Josh Hutchinson: What do you think caused the afflictions?
Josh Hutchinson: I believe the Goodwin children, like the girls in the Salem Village Parsonage in 1692, were under a great deal of stress. Cotton Mather told us that they were kept continuously employed in order that they could avoid temptation. That sort of strict management of their life could have driven them to extremes in an effort to avoid more work.
Sarah Jack: And Martha wouldn't have wanted to be blamed for the missing linen. So she confronted the laundress in an effort to get it back.
Josh Hutchinson: Or cynically, you might think she was just trying to cover herself by shifting the blame for whatever really happened to the linen to someone else.
Sarah Jack: Then when the [01:12:00] stressed-out Martha Goodwin was bawled out by Goody Glover, she feared the woman was a witch who had cursed her.
Josh Hutchinson: She then embodied the symptoms of bewitchment, which were known at the time.
Sarah Jack: And her younger siblings followed suit either out of their own bewitchment fear or simply to play the game.
Josh Hutchinson: Whatever caused the children's behaviors, we know one thing that didn't, real witchcraft.
Sarah Jack: That's right. We know for a fact that Goody Glover was not guilty of using witchcraft to harm the children.
Josh Hutchinson: With that much known, there's still much that we do not know about Goody Glover.
Sarah Jack: The men who wrote about her in the 17th century did not include details on her background.
Josh Hutchinson: You'll notice in these four sources that nobody ever gave Goody Glover a first name or a maiden name.
Sarah Jack: Or names her husband or daughter.
Josh Hutchinson: Unfortunately, some information that is commonly shared about Goody Glover today is not based on these sources or other true historical [01:13:00] record. Despite best guesses, Goody Glover's first name and maiden name are not known.
Sarah Jack: But part of popular lore.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes, part of popular lore.
Sarah Jack: We only know her by her husband's surname and the honorific Goody, which was short for Goodwife, a term applied to most married women in early Massachusetts. I know many people know her as Ann, but the contemporary sources we have do not include this information.
Josh Hutchinson: In fact, Goody Glover was first given the name Ann in 1905 by Harold Dijon in his article, "The Forgotten Heroine," which was published in the Ave Maria magazine's January 7th, 1905 issue and was later reproduced in the Journal of the American Irish Historical Society.
Sarah Jack: Sadly, Dijon fabricated historical details such as supposed quotes from Glover herself. Still, despite the glaring inconsistencies and inaccuracies, the story of heroic Ann Glover took hold in people's minds.
[01:14:00]
Josh Hutchinson: From this article and others like it, additional misinformation and speculation about Goody Glover has spread.
Sarah Jack: In 1872, Father James Fenton speculated that Goody Glover, quote, "was probably one of the unfortunate women whom English barbarity tore from their homes in Ireland to sell as slaves in America."
Josh Hutchinson: This was published in the book Sketches of the Establishment of the Church in New England.
Josh Hutchinson: Conjecture that Goody Glover was enslaved by OliverCromwell's regime and transported to Barbados made the rounds in the years following publication of this book. Then, in 1905, Harold Dijon removed the conjecture by claiming that Goody Glover, quote, "herself has stated that she and her husband were sold to the Barbados in the time of Cromwell."
Sarah Jack: No author ever cited this seemingly important quote by Goody Glover.
Josh Hutchinson: For his own part, Cotton Mather, writing soon after the execution of Glover, [01:15:00] only quoted the Irish woman briefly, saying, quote, "when I was representing unto her that and how her prince had cheated her, as herself would quickly find, she replied, I think in English, and with passion too, 'if it be so, I am sorry for that.'"
Sarah Jack: Quote, "if it be so, I am sorry for that." Is that really all he could be bothered with writing down out of everything she said?
Josh Hutchinson: Well, he was busy writing the 388 books and pamphlets he published.
Sarah Jack: But he had time to accuse Goody Glover of having familiarity with the devil and evil spirits.
Josh Hutchinson: So, how should this woman be remembered?
Josh Hutchinson: Over the years, various efforts have been made to resuscitate Glover's reputation. These have gone a long way to rehabilitate her image, but her story is still not widely known.
Sarah Jack: In 1987,a committee was formed to change that by erecting a statue in Goody Glover's honor.
Josh Hutchinson: The plan was [01:16:00] referenced in a Boston Globe article titled "In Honor of Goody," found on page 15 of the November 16, 1987 edition.
Sarah Jack: In this article, Patrick G. Russell, described as a local history buff from Stoneham,
Josh Hutchinson: wrote that Reverend Vincent A. Lapomarda of Holy Crossand Reverends Leonard P. Mahoney and Francis W. Sweeney of Boston College had formed a committee to push for the memorial, which has not been built.
Josh Hutchinson: Sadly, these three gentlemen have since passed. If anyone out there knows any more about this committee, we would love to hear what you have.
Sarah Jack: But there is a plaque on a church in Boston, and there is another way we can honor her very soon.
Josh Hutchinson: Goody Glover has never been exonerated of her supposed crime, though it is abundantly clear she was not guilty of being a witch, legally defined at the time as having or consulting with a familiar spirit.
Sarah Jack: As nobody has ever proven a connection with a familiar spirit, nobody [01:17:00] could have proven Glover a witch, as defined by Massachusetts law.
Josh Hutchinson: if you believe, like us, that Goody Glover deserves justice, we encourage you to sign our petition at change. org slash witchtrials.
Sarah Jack: And join us on Zoom this Saturday, November 16th, 2024 at 2 p. m. Eastern for a remembrance ceremony for Goody Glover.
Josh Hutchinson: Please check the show notes for details on that event. There's a Facebook
Sarah Jack: event, yeah,
Josh Hutchinson: There's a Facebook event, you can go to Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project Facebook and Witch Hunt Facebook and find it there, but we'll also have it in the show notes. And at this event, we'll have information on how you can help the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project clear the names of Goody Glover and seven other individuals who were convicted of witchcraft in Boston, and an apology for all witchcraft prosecutions in Massachusetts.
Sarah Jack: If you would like to get involved right now, and you are in Massachusetts, [01:18:00] please write your senator or representative to encourage them to support legislation to exonerate the eight people convicted of witchcraft in Boston. We're going to need people anywhere to write, but right now we really need people that are local in Massachusetts.
Josh Hutchinson: So please visit massachusettswitchtrials. org to learn more about the project and to complete our simple volunteer registration form.
Sarah Jack: And now Mary Bingham has a new minute with Mary.
Mary Bingham: Imagine a child grieving the loss of her mother as the woman she looked to for comfort and support all her life. Now imagine her mother died because she was hanged for a crime she did not commit. This was the case for Goody Glover's daughter, who was accused of stealing linen, which resulted in her mother's accusation of witchcraft. The younger Glover was orphaned at the moment of her mother's death in [01:19:00] 1688. Unfortunately, what happened to Goody's daughter is lost to history. What we do know is that she died without seeing justice for her mother or herself.
Mary Bingham: Boston did declare November 16th, 1988 as Goody Glover Day, but one day to honor her is not enough. The stain needs to be removed once and for all from Goody Glover. It's time the state of Massachusetts fully exonerate Goody Glover and offer an official state apology to all those who were accused for the capital crime of witchcraft.
Mary Bingham: Thank you.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: For my segment today,I'd like to read for you the proclamation, which set November 16th, 1988, as Goody Glover Day. You will notice the wording includes both [01:20:00] historical fact and some of the lore we have covered in this episode. And now, read for the first time since 1988, the proclamation. "City of Boston and City Council. Resolution of Counselor O'Neill designating November 16th as Goody Glover Day in Boston, commemorating the tricentennial of her religious martyrdom here." Whereas, 300 years ago this day in Boston, on November 16th, 1688, Goodwife Ann Glover, a penniless Irish laundress, was hanged, refusing to renounce her Catholic religion;
Sarah Jack: and "Goody" Glover thus became one of the early Puritan Colony martyrs to the witchcraft mania, which was to spread to Salem four years later; and
Sarah Jack: She was executed one day after her trial in Boston amidst an atmosphere unsympathetic to her Gaelic speech and disapproving of religious relicsfound in a search of meager living quarters the widow and her daughter had; [01:21:00] and
Sarah Jack: At her trial, without benefit of counsel, inarticulate in her defense, she was convicted of witchcraft based on charges stemming from the tantrums of a young girl;
Sarah Jack: The eve of her execution, she refused to save herself by recanting her faith,then failed to recite the Our Father in the version approved by the Reverend Cotton Matherwhen he visited her cell;
Sarah Jack: Goody Glover's martyrdom has been recognized by scholars, although her name has never been cleared on the records;
Sarah Jack: This past Sunday,a plaque to Goodwife Ann Glover was dedicated in Our Lady of Victory Shrine in Bostonas a donation by the order of Alhambra, therefore be it:
Josh Hutchinson: Resolved:The Boston City Council on this anniversary of Goodwife Ann Glover's death, and as a token of redemption of her name, declares November 16, 1988 as Goody Glover Day in Boston. Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for joining us for this episode of Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: We hope to see you [01:22:00] Saturday at our online event and back next week for another listen.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and remember Goody Glover.