erto, unable from partial deafness to understand, so as to explain, the allegations made against her, was convicted notwithstanding every proof in her favor.

Reaction now began. Public opinion commenced to waver. No one knew whose turn to be hanged would come next. Emboldened by their fatal success, accusers whispered of people in high places as leagued with the Evil One. An Andover minister narrowly escaped death. The Beverly minister, Hale, one of the most active in denouncing witches, was aghast when his own wife was accused. Two sons of Governor Bradstreet were obliged to flee for their lives, one for refusing, as a magistrate, to issue any more warrants, the other charged with bewitching a dog. Several hurried to New York to escape conviction. The property of such was seized by their towns. A reign of ter

ror prevailed.

The

People slowly awoke to the terrible travesty of justice which was going on. Magistrates were seen to have overlooked the most flagrant instances of falsehood and contradiction on the part of both accusers and accused, using the baseless hypothesis that the devil had warped their senses. disgusting partiality shown in the accusations was disrelished, as was the resort that had been had to torture. One One poor old man of eighty they crushed to death because he would plead guilty to nothing. The authorities quite disregarded the fact that everyone of the self-accusations had been made in order to escape punishment. These considerations effected a revolution in the minds of most peo

ple. Remonstrances were presented to the courts, securing reprieve for those under sentence of death at Salem. This so irritated the despicable Stoughton that he resigned.

The forwardness of the ministers therein turned many against the persecution. After the first victims had fallen at Salem, Governor Phips took their advice whether or not to proceed. Cotton Mather indited the reply. It thankfully acknowledges "the success which the merciful God has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavors of our honorable rulers to defeat the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected." It is pleasant to note, after all, the ministers' advice to the civil rulers not to rely too much on "the devil's authority"-on the evidence, that is, of those possessed. The court heeded this injunction all too little, but by and by it had weight with the public, who judged that, as the trials appeared to be proceeding on devil's evidence alone, the farce ought to cease. The Superior Court met in Boston, April 25, 1693, and the grand jury declined to find any more bills against persons accused of sorcery. King William vetoed the Witchcraft Act, and by the middle of 1693 all the prisoners were discharged.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES

THE English conquest of New Netherland from the Dutch speedily followed the Stuarts' return to the throne. Cromwell had mooted an attack on Dutch America, and, as noticed in Chapter I., Connecticut's charter of 1662 extended that colony to include the Dutch lands. England based her claim to the territory on alleged priority of discovery, but the real motives were the value of the Hudson as an avenue for trade, and the desire to range her colonies along the Atlantic coast in one unbroken line. The victory was not bloody, nor was it offensive to the Dutch themselves, who in the matter of liberties could not lose. King Charles had granted the conquered tract to his brother, the Duke of York, subsequently James II., and it was in his honor christened with its present name of New York.

The Duke's government was not popular, especially as it ordered the Dutch land-patents to be renewed-for money, of course; and in 1673, war again existing between England and Holland, the Dutch recovered their old possession. They held it however for only fifteen months, since at the Peace of 1674 the two belligerent nations mutually restored all the posts which they had won.

The reader already has some idea of Sir Edmond Andros's rule in America. New York was the first to feel this, coming under the gentleman's governorship immediately on being the second time surrendered to England. Such had been the political disorder in the province that Andros's headship, stern as it was, proved beneficial. He even, for a time, 1683-86, reluctantly permitted an elective legislature, though discontinuing it when the legislatures of New England were suppressed. taste of freedom had its effect afterward.

This

When news of the Revolution of 1688 in England reached New York, Andros was in Boston. Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor, being a Catholic and an absolutist, and the colony now in horror of all Catholics through fear of French invasion from Canada, Jacob Leisler, a German adventurer, partly anticipating, partly obeying the popular wish, assumed to function in Nicholson's stead. All the aristocracy, English or Dutch, and nearly all the English of the lower rank were against him. Leisler was passionate and needlessly bitter toward Catholics, yet he meant well. He viewed his office as only transitory, and stood ready to surrender it so soon as the new king's will could be learned; but when Sloughter arrived with commission as governor, Leisler's foes succeeded in compassing his execution for treason. This unjust and cruel deed began a long feud between the popular and the aristocratic party in the colony.

From this time till the American Revolution New York continued a province of the crown. Royal governor succeeded royal governor, some of

them better, some worse. Of the entire line Bellomont was the most worthy official, Cornbury the least so. One of the problems which chiefly worried all of them was how to execute the navigation acts, which, evaded everywhere, were here unscrupulously defied. Another care of the governors, in which they succeeded but very imperfectly, was to establish the English Church in the colony. A third was the disfranchisement of Catholics. This they accomplished, the legislature concurring, and the disability continued during the entire colonial period.

Hottest struggle of all occurred over the question of the colony's right of self-taxation. The democracy stood for this with the utmost firmness, and even the higher classes favored rather than opposed. The governors, Cornbury and Lovelace, most frantically, but in vain, expostulated, scolded, threatened, till at last it became admitted by law in the colony that no tax whatever could, on any pretext, be levied save by act of the people's repre

sentatives.

Dutch America, it will be remembered, had reached southward to the Delaware River, and this lower portion passed with the rest to the Duke of York in 1664. The territory between the Hudson and the Delaware, under the name of New Jersey, he made over to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, proprietaries, who favored the freest institutions, civil and religious. The population was for long very sparse and, as it grew, very miscellaneous. Dutch, Swedes, English, Quakers, and Puritans from New England were represented.