Description:

Colonial Massachusetts - Appointment of seven Judges of the Salem Witch Trials, including Sewell and Saltonstall, and the Justice who saw to the arrests of 30 witches - signed by a member of the Grand Jury that indicted the witches

Manuscript Document Signed "Bellomont" as Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and "Is. Addington" as Secretary, 1 page, 18.5" x 11.75". Boston, June 12, 1700. On vellum. With paper seal affixed with red wax attaches with cloth at bottom. Folds. Fine condition.

In 1695, Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont,(1636-1701), was given commissions as Governor of the provinces of Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire, which he held until his death. Isaac Addington, Jr., had served on the Grand Jury that charged the defendants in the Salem Witch Trials.

Appointment of 35 Justices of the Peace in Essex County, Massachusetts Bay: "William Stoughton, John Pynchon, Wayt Winthrop, James Russell, Elisha Cooke, John Hathorne, Elisha Hutchinson, Samuel Sewall, William Browne, Isaac Addington, John Phillips, Jonathan Corwin, John Foster, Peter Sergeant, John Walley, Barnabas Lothrop, Joseph Lynde, Daniel Peirce, John Thacher, Nathaniel Thomas, Eliakim Hutchinson, Penn Townsend, John Appleton, Joseph Hammond, Nathaniel Byfield, Samuel Partrigg, Benjamin Browne, John Higginson, Nathaniel Saltonstal, Robert Pike, Dudley Bradstreet, John Wainwright, Thomas Noyse, John Legg, and Nathaniel Norden..."

Among those appointed by this document are Jonathan Corwin, John Hathorne, Peter Seargeant (Sargant), Samuel Sewell, Wayt Winthrop, and Nathaniel Saltonstall who were Judges in the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton who had been appointed Chief Justice of the court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 and ruled over the trials with the determination to eradicate all witches from Massachusetts Bay Colony, Dudley Bradstreet, who as Justice of the Peace in Andover granted arrest warrants against, and committed, 30 Andover persons to prisons for supposed witchcrafts, and James Russell,an Assistant to Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth who witnessed the statements of the witches' accusers.

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