It would have been one thing for the Puritans to view the contagion of both the mysterious illness spreading amongst the young women of Salem, and the subsequent accusations of witchcraft, as a sign that God is angry and the devil is at work. However, as Brown points out, in order for those accusations to gain the kind of traction they had in Salem—making it to trial, and, eventually, imprisoning and executing people—there had to be widespread buy-in from public officials.
“You need ministers saying, ‘Yes, these are signs of the devil in our midst,’” Brown explains. “You need magistrates doing interrogations and deciding to lock people up in jail and put them on trial. You need judges who are willing to believe the spectral evidence. You need all of the official apparatus of government and of justice to be on board with it to produce the kind of outcome you get at Salem.”
According to some scholars, most notably, historian Mary Beth Norton, local leaders in Salem were so receptive to the accusations of witchcraft, and on board with implementing draconian laws and policies in part because of the precariousness of the Massachusetts colonial settlement at that time.
High-ranking Puritans were concerned about their church’s dwindling numbers. “By the time [the Salem witch trials] take place, the Puritans are less dominant politically, religiously [and] culturally,” Brown explains.
The final decades of the 17th century were a time of political uncertainty in Salem as well. In 1684, King Charles II of England revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter. Seven years later, the new ruling monarchs, King William III and Queen Mary II, issued a new charter establishing the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and, at the urging of influential Puritan clergyman Increase Mather, appointed Maine-born William Phips governor of the colony.
By the time Mather and Phips returned to Massachusetts with the new charter in May 1692, Salem’s jails were already filled with people accused of practicing witchcraft.
“You can make the argument that the legal system [in place prior to May 1692] made it possible for the witch trials to happen,” says Christ-Doane. “They [didn’t] have a charter, and their courts were dysfunctional, and that allows them to make unusual procedural decisions that lead to so many people being convicted of witchcraft.”
This included relying heavily, and sometimes exclusively, on spectral evidence—or, testimony from witnesses claiming that the accused person appeared to them and caused them harm in a vision or dream—even though it was widely considered unacceptable in legal practice at the time.