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Weyer argued, these confused and addled women, with their weak minds penetrated by Satan, ended up confessing to things that they could not possibly have done. Weyer condemned those Christians who subjected such troubled women, solely on the basis of their confessions, to terrible imprisonment and tortures.225 If misogyny encouraged most of Weyer’s contemporaries to follow the lead of the Malleus Maleficarum and to associate women with witchcraft, Weyer’s misogyny persuaded him to exonerate women of these same charges. Old women, he believed, were frail, unstable, and mentally deficient, and thus easily duped. Indeed, he wondered whether women were people of reason or mere animals.226 Thomas Brattle’s skepticism likewise encompassed disbelief in women’s confessions at Salem in 1692 (document 25). He believed that those who confessed were “deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evill spirit; and therefore unfitt to be evidences either against themselves, or any one else.”227

Brattle’s critique of Salem was not the first skeptical voice raised in British North America. The absence of trials in many jurisdictions might be evidence of skepticism. Take, for example, the action of the Lower Norfolk (Virginia) County Court in May 1655. The justices declared that there had been many accusations of witchcraft lodged against women and damaging their reputations. Those who made accusations in the future and could not prove them would face substantial fines from the court.228 Thus we see both the persistence of belief—as the reference to numerous accusations suggests—and the justices’ expression of skepticism, putting the burden of proof on accusers.

John Winthrop, Jr. (1606–1676), the governor of the English colony of Connecticut, was one such North American skeptic, and unlike the Virginia justices, he lived in a region replete with witchcraft beliefs and accusations. Winthrop first became involved in witchcraft cases in Connecticut as a medical examiner and later as the colony’s governor, and in every instance, he sought to prevent the execution of the accused. He was a trained physician as well as an alchemist. Both skills proved relevant in his skepticism about witchcraft; physicians were often consulted about the illnesses that could be diagnosed as the result of witchcraft, and alchemists were men who specialized in transforming substances through chemical processes. Although most famously associated with transforming dross into gold, alchemists engaged in a wide range of scientific endeavors and counted among their ranks some of the most distinguished scientists of the day, including Isaac Newton (see figure 12). In an era when all forms of magic (whatever the intent of the practitioner) were considered diabolical, it is no surprise that alchemists also sometimes faced accusations of witchcraft. As an alchemist, Winthrop knew full well the difficulties of achieving success in scientific experiments, and he doubted that witches could obtain such consistent results with their own concoctions. He thought that his peers were far too likely to explain natural occurrences as witchcraft. As the colony’s governor, Winthrop functioned as the chief magistrate in all capital cases. His intervention was especially noteworthy during a major outbreak in Hartford in the 1660s. Although Winthrop was out of the colony in England for the first phase of the outbreak, on his return, he refused to enforce the court’s guilty verdict of one accused woman, Elizabeth Seager, and his posture of skepticism spread to other judges.229

Because so many people believed in witchcraft, skeptics tended to focus on the legal process. Their concerns about the use of evidence displayed an alliance of the acute concern for legal process and fair judgment that permeated the best judicial practice and an intellectual worldview that contained complex systems of religious belief. In their analysis of the case of Katherine Harrison of Wethersfield in 1669–1670, Connecticut’s judges paused to assess a number of sticky legal issues and sought help from