>From : "Jenny Gibbons" <jenny@panix.com> >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.) It might be difficult to find an example of, say, the charges being reduced. I only know of one of that sort. Caleb Powell was not convicted of witchcraft but the magistrates ruled that though the charges were not proven, they suspected that he really was a witch, and so the accusers were not obliged to pay liabilities for false accusation. Incidentally, the threat of being sued for false accusation might be a reason someone would make an accusation of mischief rather than witchcraft, especially if there had been earlier unproven accusations. This might be especially true if there were a husband and children around to threaten to sue, as the Chamberlains may have done. >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. Agreed. But if you had proof of ordinary damage, then you might opt to press that charge instead, if you were afraid of being sued for false accusation. I've had another thought. Jenny, what was the law concerning malicious gossip? Was that ever called "mischief"? >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. Just as Quakerism, Catholicism, and Indian religion were all consideed heresies and therefore liable to the same capital penalty. >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. I think we can see the conflicts among the differing traditions being worked out in the trials. In Elizabeth Morse's case, the accusers emphasized that she did them harm. But the testimony that ehr husband William Morse gave suggests that the magistrates were thinking all powers were inherently evil, because William went to great lengths to argue that there might be good powers that healed people and therefore ought to be permitted (Elizabeth was what today we might call a folk healer, and her methods included charms as well as herbal potions, etc.). The Wardwell fellow from Andover who was accused, convicted, and executed did the kinds of divination tricks that folklorists collect today, things that were accepted and even advertized in the eighteenth century. His testimony suggests that a lot of people asked him to do divination for them, and he complied. But when the hysteria struck, it was his undoing. >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. Or they might choose to go after a lesser charge they could prove. >Sounds like the only way to resolve the question for sure is to find the original complaint. That would be ideal. However, I can think of other possibly fruitful endeavors: - See whether "mischief" was ever used in Middlesex cases to describe witchcraft - See whether Rebecca Chamberlain or other members of her family were accused of other crimes earlier in their lives, who made the charges, and what the outcomes were - Check out the neighborhood dynamics. Who were their neighbors and enemies? Francine Nicholson _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus