The legal system in early New England changed dramatically as an affect of the witch trials. As their faith-based beliefs went at odds with a reason-dominated legal system, a conflict occurred which led to social shearing in a community believed to be plagued with suspected spiritual enemies. There are certain circumstances that sparked such disorder, such as their unrelenting faith and social misgivings that could now be vocalized. This vocal catalyst displaced the communal sanctity of social order. This is one reason other such instances failed from becoming widespread. Even when such instances occurred, a relatively reasonable system of deciding guilt or innocence was developed to determine the fate of the suspected witches’ lives.
Faith initially took precedence in response to their views surrounding the occurrence of disasters, which provided unverifiable grounds for suspecting a singular demonic entity behind common strife. Anything that could not be readily explained was instead left to supernatural explanations. “Such adversities were incomprehensible only until one looked beyond the natural realm. In common with other New England settlers, the people of Stamford believed that supernatural forces intruded constantly into their lives.” {p 73}” The accuser would bring forward testimony of a disaster which bore some relation to a recent incident with the accused, and would inextricably link the two incidents as one in the same. “To be sure, such incidents could sometimes be traced to natural causes. Yet Ebenezer (a normal Stamford resident) knew that supernatural forces were constantly at work in the world. {p 4}” Certain unexplainable acts were seen to have a supernatural cause and by putting fault with someone the accuser could put a known and despised face on an unseen problematic figure.
Belief in unseen forces to explanation troubles in people’s lives caused suspicion of supernatural alliances between the devil and neighbors in the small community. However, most people would not have risked upsetting the communal harmony that they had established. “People knew that conflict threatened to undermine the values on which their community was built: discord was, as the Reverend Bishop often reminded them, an opening to the Devil, who was always looking for ways to poison the well of God’s vineyard. No one wanted to be held responsible for that happening.” {p 75} Therefore, the actual vocalization of scorn by a member who is somehow set apart from society in a vocally acceptable manner was a very peculiar factor that could only arise through a person who would not be ostracized for their obscene statements. This led to the involvement of Katherine Branch who provided just such an opportunity.
Katherine’s disability kept her from being dismissed outright. She fell into fits and stupors, similar to the fits her ward’s daughter had suffered years earlier. While skepticism into the fits appeared, the repeated occurrence to the Wescot’s household became common knowledge. The relatively small size of the town let word of her affliction spread quickly and soon there was a definite increase in consistency and ‘supernatural’ influence. Daniel Wescot is implied as having influence in her accusations, which she uses to explain who may be inflicting her pains. She proceeds to name three people. These people were generally considered the black sheep of the surrounding area, or had some misgivings with the Wescot family with which Katherine Branch stayed. Once Katherine issued the names the townspeople, relieved of the censorship of social misgivings, began to vent their suspicions against the suspected witches.
After time, the testimony of Katherine Branch was refuted as false and not lent to the findings against the final two accused. “Perhaps, as the ministers suggested, her torments were a combination of involuntary fits and crafted performance. The deputy governor must have noted that the statement included an unequivocal rejection of spectral evidence as a reliable basis for conviction. Katherine Branch ‘s affliction was, they acknowledged, ‘something strange,’ but she was clearly not ‘a sufficient witness.’” {p 118} It is not strange that they would not admit the first testimony as reasonable evidence against the accused, but that the trial continues after this testimony is deemed false, even though this testimony is the only reason the accused names were initially issued is somewhat baffling. It seems as if the townspeople, and the first two ruling judicial bodies, are searching for the wolf in the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf after the hoax is already made evident. The initial accusation is something that must be taken on faith, and the faith in Katherine Branch was disputed and disproven.
This recurring theme of lack of credible sources is what keeps a social collapse from occurring over greater ranges of the English colonies. “Jonathon Silleck also knew that trying to prove an invisible crime in court was not easy and could lead to serious
problems, both inside and outside the courtroom. Religious doctrine and the legal code invited accusations of witchcraft, yet court officials were often much less impressed by
the evidence presented in such cases than were the accusers and their supporters. Ministers, magistrates, and ordinary townsfolk agreed that witches posed a real and serious threat, but agreeing on how to prove witchcraft in a court of law was another matter.” {p 53} Law and order searched for an objective explanation for unnatural occurrences and could not in good conscience allow these citizen’s of the crown to be condemned on unsubstantiated evidence, especially if the penalty of such crime was death. A penalty with such impact and permanence must present a reasonable amount of evidence and minimize the scope of doubt.
This uncertainty on how to proceed with prosecuting the unseen is the reason most trails brought against witches ended in acquittal due to lack of evidence. “After all, courts were often fickle in dealing with witchcraft cases: they would ask for information against an accused person and then, like as not, judge it inadequate, so that the witches went free.” {p 86} The strict rules placed by the special court to determine a legal distinction of guilt proved hard and required “The jury [to] be confident that the accused had forsaken allegiance to God and formed an alliance with Satan. There lay the problem.” {p 113} That some witches were sentenced to death is the real oddity. However, the public pressure the court faced to prosecute the supposed witches is a likely cause for the deaths that did occur. The townspeople were looking for a scapegoat and not justice.
The committee acknowledged this desire and its potential effects. “The committee also pointed to the grim lesson provided by recent events in Salem ‘the miserable toil’ in which the Massachusetts court found itself for convicting defendants on the basis of dubious evidence should be ‘warning enough’ to the magistrates in Connecticut dealing with Goody Disborough’s case.” {p 124-5} The fears that the quelling of the scapegoat would not solve the problems that afflicted the people led to caution on the side of the ruling body. Salem had portrayed a picture of what happens to communities when unreliable fact provides proper cause for death. With news of Salem fresh on local magistrate and court official’s minds, the fact that more such events did not take place is partly attributed to the common fear among the judiciary body. The main fear arose from the thought that an innocent might be forced to suffer an unjust death. This presents a move from faith-based reasoning to a justice-focused system; one that sought to protect the weak against the removal of evil despite all collateral damage.
Godbeer portrays a moral and political motive in contrast with the religious mindset that surrounded the greater population. This rationality is what kept such cases of social unrest as isolated incidents. Evidence was beginning to become necessary in proving matters of importance; in this case showing a transformation of legal definition, away from witness testimony as reliable reason to convict someone and onto fact. This legal restriction provides security from slander and demands verifiable information to prove guilt, which upholds communal sanctity. Communal prosperity begins when justice is the priority of the legal system, and the right discernment of that justice is kept in the foreground of judicial proceedings.
