The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

Twenty innocent people lost their lives in the Salem witch hunts, but by the end of 1692 this short-lived spate of madness was almost at an end. Too many prominent citizens had been accused, and the cost of sustaining the fantasy for those in power became too great. Arguably, the process began when some of the girls accused the Reverend Samuel Willard, a highly respected minister of the Old South Church of Boston, possibly due to his known scepticism about the admissibility of ‘spectral evidence’. As one who had adjured caution against taking the word of the accusers as confirmation of another’s guilt, he represented a direct threat to the girls and their credibility. However, by ‘crying out’ on such an esteemed figure as Willard, the acting president of Harvard College, no less, the accusers had made a grave error. Faced with such audacity, the judges were surely jolted back into the real world, if only momentarily. They gently corrected the girls, assuring them that they must have made a mistake. Perhaps they had confused the Reverend Samuel Willard with Constable John Willard, who was already in prison awaiting execution for witchcraft? But if the girls were fallible, and if the identities of their tormentors could be so easily confused, what was the implication for those who had already been convicted? Nor was Willard the only example of this kind. When judge Jonathan Corwin’s mother-in-law was repeatedly implicated, no arrests were carried out. Nor was any action take...