Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [86]
England to Maryland
Four ships sailed together from England, but were overtaken by a fearful storm as they were passing the Western Isles, and the ship which carried the Father was so shattered that, springing a leak in battling with the continued violence of the sea, the pump became almost useless. Four men at a time, taken not only from the ship’s crew but from among the passengers also, were kept constantly working at the great pump, each one in turn day and night.
Having changed their course their intention was to make sail towards Barbados; but no art or labour could accomplish this, and so they decided on abandoning the ship and commiting themselves with their wares to the long boat. As, however, the swelling sea and huge waves prevented this also, many a form of death presented itself to their minds, and the habit of terror, now grown a familiar thought, had almost excluded the particular fear of death. The tempest lasted in all two months, whence the opinion arose that it did not come from the storm of sea or sky, but was occasioned by the malevolence of demons. Forthwith they seized a little old woman suspected of sorcery, and after examining her with the strictest severity, they killed her, whether guilty or not guilty, as the suspected cause of all the evil. The corpse, and whatever belonged to her, they cast into the sea. However, the winds did not in consequence abate their violence, nor did the raging sea smooth its threatening billows. To the troubles of the storm sickness was added next, which attacked almost every person and carried off not a few. The Father himself escaped untouched by the disease, but in working at the pump somewhat too laboriously he contracted a slight fever of a few days’ continuance. Having passed through multiplied dangers, at length, by the favor of God, the ship reached the port of Maryland.
Source: Henry Foley, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London: Burns and Oates, 1878), vol. 3, 388–89.
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10. The Case of Grace Sherwood, Virginia, 1706
Grace Sherwood lived in Princess Anne (formerly Lower Norfolk) County, Virginia, in the area of what is now Virginia Beach. She first appeared in the county court records in 1698, when she and her husband James sued a variety of people for slander and defamation for calling her a witch. It was, apparently, a time of some witchcraft trouble in the county, for in that same year, another woman was accused of “riding” her neighbors, a customary act of a witch and just what Sherwood herself was accused of by her neighbors.1 In 1701, James Sherwood died, and in December 1705, Grace Sherwood was back in court, suing Luke Hill and his wife for assault. The Hills then brought a complaint to the county court in January 1706, that Sherwood was a witch, and for the next several months, the case continued in the court, culminating in the ducking trial in July of that year. Sherwood survived her ordeal and little is known of her subsequent life. Her will was proved in court in 1740, showing that she lived long after the trials she endured in 1706, and in it she left property to three sons. The legal records enable us to glimpse many points of view—Sherwood’s accusers, her neighbors, the local court officials, and the men of the colony’s council, who weighed in on the subject. At one point, the justices could not find a jury of women willing to participate in a search of Sherwood’s body for witches’ marks. Do you think that Sherwood’s neighbors agreed that she was a witch? What made her a witch?
At a Court held the 10th of Sept 1698
James Sherwood and Grace his wife sueing John Gisburne and Jane his wife in a action of Slander setting forth by his petition that the Defendents had wronged Defamed and abused the said Grace in her good name and reputation saying that she is a Witch and bewitched their piggs to Death and bewitched their Cotton & prays Judgment against the said Gisburne for £100 Sterling damage with Cost to which the Defendent pleadeth not guilty the whole matter being put to a Jury who bring in their