GEORGE BURROUGHS, MARTYR
No.4 by Seabury Quinn
SERVANTS OF SATAN
Author of “The Phantom Farmhouse,” “Out of the Long Ago” etc.
In one of his terror tales, Poe tells how the inmates of a lunatic asylum overcame their keepers, locked them in the cells, and proceeded to administer the affairs of the institution according to the dictates of their own diseased minds. Something like this situation, magnified many times, prevailed in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, in the summer and autumn of 1692.
In the spring, a number of young women and girls, mostly members of respected and influential families, began acting in a way which, would have led to an inquiry concerning their sanity half a century later, but which induced the authorities of that day to declare them the victims of witchcraft.
Encouraged by the Reverend Samuel Parris, pastor of Salem Village Church, and by the magistrates of the district, these “afflicted children” accused two poor, friendless old women, then a prosperous farmer and his wife, next a universally respected and revered old lady, of the diabolical crime of witchcraft. And in every instance, the accused suffered death.
Absolute power was lodged in the hands of this group of hysterical girls by the credulous public officials. No juvenile despot of antiquity—not even the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, with her customary order, “Off with his head!”—ever exercised greater authority over the lives and liberties of a community than this company of young women, the oldest of whom was twenty years of age.
Those first accused were residents of Salem and its environs, people whom the “afflicted” saw daily. In March, 1692, however, came the first “long distance” accusations when the Reverend George Burroughs, residing in Wells, in the Province of Maine, was “cried out upon” by the afflicted children.
Mr. Burroughs was a man of more than ordinary physique and much more than ordinary character. Short of stature, he was abnormally strong, and combined with great physical strength a nature of unusual sweetness and charity. Prior to the Reverend Samuel Parris’ accession to
the Salem pastorate, Burroughs occupied the pulpit, but, unlike most
