You're right, Joan -- witchcraft itself was illegal in New England. Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Hampshire defined a witch as a person who had a familiar spirit. And normally people were accused of witchcraft, not something else. But there could be circumstances when someone would be accused of another crime, if there was some advantage to it. (I don't know of any New England cases off-hand, so I can't give you an example.) With mischief, there are two possible advantages I can see. One, it was a comparatively minor charge, a trespass (under common law) versus a capital offense. Given the spirit of the time, however, I wouldn't expect people to be lenient to a suspected witch. Two, it might have been easier to prove. Theoretically it *shouldn't* have been. Mischief required you to prove that the accused damaged your goods. If you believed that your neighbor did this with magic, you had to prove that she was capable of using magic -- ie., that she was a witch. So in theory, magical mischief ought to be as hard to prove as witchcraft. But in reality the theory of magic wasn't well-thought-out. Religious leaders, like the Puritans divines, taught that witchcraft was essentially a form of heresy. You made a pact with the Devil and he gave you powers. To the divines and many intellectuals, what a witch did didn't matter -- it was making the pact with Satan, breaking faith with God, that was the crime. That's why the divines insisted that "white" witches (people who healed) were every bit as foul as "black" witches (people who harmed). Most people disagreed with the divines. English legal tradition treated witchcraft as a tort: witchcraft was doing harm by magic. Non-harmful magic, like healing or divination, was not treated as witchcraft. Colonial Americans inherited this legal tradition, which is why, as Francine pointed out, most trials involved charges of harm to people or property. The English and American laws changed in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it became possible to try people without evidence of harm. But most judges and most accusers continued to press for proof of "real" witchcraft -- dead cows, sick children, etc. Getting back to the mischief question, I can imagine a situation where someone might think, "I can't prove she has a familiar spirit, but I can prove that she killed my cows," even though the divines would insist this wasn't possible. The ProGenealogist list is very interesting, and suggests that this is worth investigating more. Somebody, at some time, clearly thought Rebecca Chamberlain was a witch. But she doesn't appear on Richard Godbeer's list of suspected witches. Godbeer's list includes people who had formal legal complaints lodged against them. Normally historians are sensitive to the fact that witchcraft could be called something else, and they include all accusations that involve magic. So since we know that Rebecca Chamberlain had formal charges lodged against her, I would expect her to appear on Godbeer's list if the mischief involved witchcraft. Sounds like the only way to resolve the question for sure is to find the original complaint. Good luck with your research, George! Jenny Gibbons