ria, there were men fromMassachusetts that were in London trying to convince William to restore the old charteror to issue a new one so that Massachusetts could have all of the advantages that it oncehad. At these times it was understandable that the anxiety of the settlement was very high. In the settlement it was supposed to be a land of bliss and harmony, but this was not so. The courts were making their way through the settlement and were tearing apart the waysof the people. The courts were filled with land despots and personal feuds. The spirit ofbrotherhood which the original settlers had, had been diffused into commercialcompetition, political contention, and personal bad feelings. At the time of the SalemWitchcraft era, the way of New England had become a thing of the past by the people ofthe Bay not being able to learn from their past or to see what to look for in the future.Massachusetts had become, in Alan Hiemerts words, a society no longer able to judgeitself with any certainty.West 4Historically, as pointed out by George L. Kittrege, there is nothing unique in thefact that Massachusetts Bay should have put people on trial for witchcraft, the whole storyshould have been seen not as an abnormal outbreak of fanaticism, not as an isolatedtragedy, but as a mere incident, a brief and transitory episode in the biography of a terrible,but perfectly natural, superstition. During the Civil Wars in England was when thewitchcraft hysteria was the strongest. There may have been hundreds or even thousandsof witches burned at the stake during these times. It was seen that ever time somethingrash happened it began with the burning of witches.The witchcraft hysteria was seen only as a brief moment in time in MassachusettsBay by Erikson. She sees it as the first of the witch hysteria being born as a group ofexcited girls who drifted around the edges of the community. The people of these timestried to discover some place for them and i...
