The Ruin of All Witches
Life and Death in the New World
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4.0 • 8 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology.
“The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall
In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary.
Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Gaskill (Between Two Worlds) combines first-rate historical research with a driving narrative in this captivating study of a married couple accused of witchcraft in 17th-century New England. Mary Lewis and Hugh Parsons arrived separately in Springfield, Mass., in 1645 and married later that year. According to Gaskill, the community's growth and prosperity also brought "competition and unrest," as well as fears about external enemies, political instabilities, and diversions from Puritan orthodoxy. Residents became convinced that a series of odd occurrences meant the devil was in Springfield, and suspicion soon fell on the Parsons. Mary, who had three children by 1650 and likely suffered from postpartum depression, didn't behave like a proper Puritan wife, while Hugh was beset by health problems and bad dreams, and exhibited a lack of emotion following his son's death. (He was also accused of causing a cow to act strangely and knives to disappear.) Though the General Court in Boston found the evidence of the Parsons' witchcraft insufficient, Mary died in prison awaiting execution for the self-confessed killing of one of her sons. Hugh, meanwhile, moved with their daughter to Rhode Island, where he prospered. Gaskill's vibrant portraits of Springfield community members, especially town founder and magistrate William Pynchon, an amateur theologian whose life "had been stalked by war, hunger and pestilence," and lucid explanations of Puritan theology and Massachusetts's intertwined laws of church and state make for dense yet riveting reading. This portrait of early America fascinates. Illus.
