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Updated: May 29, 2025
I knew my grandmother, and loved her. Her mother was daughter to the witch that Chief Justice Sewall hanged and Cotton Mather delivered over to the Devil. That was Salem, though, and not Boston. No, not Boston. Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, it was that blew them all to
Increase and Mr. Calef, a Merchant in that Plantation." About the same time, the Rev. Daniel Neal, the celebrated author of the History of the Puritans, wrote a History of New England, in which he gives place to a brief, impartial, and just account of the witchcraft proceedings, in 1692.
Ezek., xxxiii., 2 to 8." Calef, 92. Looking at this passage, in connection with that quoted just before from Hutchinson, we gather that something had occurred that "nonplust" the Court some serious embarrassment, that led to its sudden adjournment after the condemnation of Bridget Bishop, while many other cases had been fully prepared for trial by the then Attorney-general.
Boston Merchants glory in the names, on their proud roll of public benefactors, of men whose wisdom, patriotism, and munificence have upheld, adorned, and blessed society; but there is no one of their number who encountered more danger, showed more moral and intellectual prowess, or rendered more noble service to his fellow citizens and fellow men, every where, than ROBERT CALEF.
One might give examples, but to do so seems ill- natured and ungrateful. There are some very perishable puns. The learning is not so recherche as it appeared when we knew nothing of Cotton Mather and Robert Calef, the author of a book against the persecution of witches. Calef, of course, was in the right, but I cannot forgive him for refusing to see a lady, known to Mr.
Hale, already stated, that Cotton Mather's book, Memorable Providences, was used as an authority by the Judges at the Salem Trials, shows that the author of that work was regarded by Hale as, to that extent at least, responsibly connected with the prosecutions. I pass over, for the present, the proceedings and writings of Robert Calef.
We may laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule, their spell-bound generation, the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone, the English Scot, and the New England Calef, deserve high honors as the benefactors of their race.
On the other hand, the learned scholar, the late William Frederick Poole, first in the North American Review, in 1869, and again in his paper Witchcraft in Boston, in 1882, in the Memorial History of Boston, calls Calef an immature youth, and says that his obvious intent, and that of the several unknown contributors who aided him, was to malign the Boston ministers and to make a sensation.
This is precisely what Mather did, in the case of the Goodwin children, and what Calef put a stop to his doing in the case of Margaret Rule. In 1831, I published a volume entitled Lectures on Witchcraft, comprising a history of the Delusion, in Salem, in 1692.
It is safe to say that no higher authority can be cited than that of John Eliot: "CALEF, ROBERT, merchant, in the town of Boston, rendered himself famous by his book against Witchcraft, when the people of Massachusetts were under the most strange kind of delusion.
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