Hi all! On 5/3/99, Abby <[email protected]> wrote: >The trial of Rebecca Nurse is particularly well documented. Actually, the whereabouts of the actual *trial* records from that infamous summer are unknown. The documents we do have are mostly pre-trial depositions, examinations, warrants, petitions, and the like, collected fairly far in advance of the trials. The Massachusetts charter had been revoked with the political turmoil in England, and therefore until the new charter arrived with the new governor, William Phips, in June, there could be no actual trials -- even though some of the acused had been jailed since March. When Phips arrived, the jails were overflowing, and he set up these courts of "Oyer and Examiner" to hear and decide the cases expeditiously -- then he left to fight Indians in Maine. Many of these cases were finished up on a single day and the guilty hanged together within a few more -- leaving time to excommunicate them if they were full members of the church, as Rebecca Nurse was. It wasn't until Phips returned in October and discovered what had transpired in his absence that these trials -- and the executions -- ended, and the remaining cases were heard under different criteria (no one could be convicted solely on the basis of spectral evidence). --Margo Margo Burns, Webweaver [email protected] http://www.ogram.org Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." -- Chomsky