#mary bradbury

Mary Bradbury and Mary Esty (of the cursed Towne sisters) now stand on trial.

The afflicted girls offer up their testimonies as usual, describing the pinching, choking, and stabbing that they felt in the presence of the women’s specters. Bradbury’s outsider status gives the accusers more credibility: none of them have ever met her, being from Andover, but they all agree that upon seeing her enter the meeting house for the first time for her examination in July, they recognized her as the witch who had been torturing them all spring. She is also known to be rude to neighbors, cause butter to spoil, and demonic animals like black cats and blue boars seem to follow her.

Several witnesses describe the terrible sights saw that spring when Mercy Lewis, the Putnam family servant, nearly died from fits she claims were caused by Mary Esty. For several days she was in a “dreadful condition”, so choked that several times bystanders legitimately feared for her life. While Esty has no previous history of wrongdoing, her relationship with other accused and executed witches seals her fate. 

Bradbury writes her plea before speaking to the court: “I am wholly innocent of any such wickedness…I am the servant of Jesus Christ and have given myself up to him as my only Lord and Savior, and to the diligent attendance upon him in all his holy ordinances, in utter contempt and defiance of the Devil.”

Esty and her living sister, Sarah Cloyce, submit a petition to the court with three requests: that, as the defendants have no right to legal counsel and cannot plead their own cases effectively to a hung jury, that the judges would act as counselors, that witnesses of their choosing might be called forward to speak on their behalf, and that their cases not be tried solely based on the testimony of the bewitched and the accused witches, but that other legal evidence be required for a verdict. 

All petitions are denied; the jury pronounces both women guilty.