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Updated: May 29, 2025
Great as may be the power of critical journals, they cannot strike into non-existence, the recorded and printed sentiments of Brattle, the Hutchinsons, Neal, Watts, Bentley, Eliot, Quincy, and Calef.
As it would have been perfectly easy, by certificates without number, to have exposed any error, touching that matter, and as no attempt of the kind was made, on this or any other occasion, the only alternative left is to accept Hutchinson's conviction, that "Calef was a fair relator" of that passage in our history.
Increase and Cotton Mather came in, shortly afterwards, with others. Altogether, there were between thirty and forty persons in the room. Calef drew up Minutes of what was said and done. He repeated his visit, on the evening of the nineteenth. Cotton Mather had been with Margaret half an hour; and had gone before his arrival.
Under his own, and other names, the descendants of the family of Calef are probably as numerous and respectable as those of the Mathers; and on that, as all other higher accounts, there is an equal demand for justice to their respective ancestors.
This letter concludes in terms which show that, in that stage of the affair, Calef was disposed to treat Mather with great respect; and that he sincerely and earnestly desired and trusted that satisfaction might be given and taken, in the interview he so persistently sought not merely in reference to the case of Margaret Rule, but to the general subject of witchcraft, on which they had different apprehensions: "I have reason to hope for a satisfactory answer to him, who is one that reverences your person and office."
Though it was impossible that retribution should be meted out to him for his crimes, at least he did not escape unscathed, for Calef and the Brattles, who had long been on his father's track and his, now seized him by the throat.
The problem of educating his children could appear to him in no light except a sober one. "Bear Creek," he said, "don't want the experience they had over at Calef. We must not hire an ignoramus." "Sure!" assented the Virginian again. "Nor we don't want no gad-a-way flirt," said Mr. Taylor. "She must keep her eyes on the blackboa'd," said the Virginian, gently.
Peabody refers to Calef throughout, and draws upon him freely and with confidence, as every one else, who has written about the transaction, has probably done. It may safely be said, that no historical fact has ever been more steadily recognized, than the action and, to a great degree, controlling agency, of Cotton Mather, in supporting and promoting the witchcraft proceedings of 1692.
"Unkindness, abuse, and reproach" find an explanation in the fact, that Willard was "cried out upon" and brought into peril of reputation and life, by the creatures of the prosecution. The monstrousness of the supposition that Mather was referred to, would hardly be heightened if it should appear that Brattle supplied Calef with materials in his controversy with Mather.
My other occasions will not admit any further scrutiny therein." A Postscript contains some strictures on the Life of Sir Wm. Phips, then recently printed, "which book," Calef says, "though it bear not the author's name, yet the style, manner, and matter are such, that, were there no other demonstration or token to know him by, it were no witchcraft to determine that Mr.
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