Mary Easty: The Woman Who Begged For Common Sense
Wikimedia CommonsAccusers often had “fits” during the Salem witch trials, as depicted here.
After Mary Easty (sometimes spelled Eastey) was found guilty of being a witch, she wrote a petition to the court. But surprisingly, she did not ask for a stay of execution in the letter. Rather, she pleaded with Salem authorities to think about what they were doing to innocent people.
Easty wrote, “I petition to your honours not for my own life for I know I must die.” She pleaded that no more “innocent blood be shed.”
Indeed, Easty seemed to be guilty by association more than anything else. Her sisters were also accused of witchcraft — including Rebecca Nurse — and their mother had been accused of witchcraft back in 1670.
Like Nurse, Easty had a good standing in the Salem community. And like Nurse, she was accused of being a witch by afflicted girls in town.
“How far have you complied with Satan whereby he takes this advantage against you?” the Salem magistrate asked Easty during her trial.
“Sir, I never complied but prayed against him all my days,” Easty insisted. “I have no compliance with Satan, in this.”
At first, the court seemed swayed by Easty’s testimony — just like they had with Nurse’s. But although they briefly released Easty, the girls who had accused her started having violent fits again. And so, like her sister, Easty was thrown back in jail and threatened with punishment.
However, the girls weren’t the only ones to accuse Easty of witchcraft. A man in town also testified against her, claiming that after he got into an argument with Easty five years earlier, something invisible attacked him.
To the court, this seemed to be enough. On September 22, 1692, Easty was hanged alongside other victims of the Salem witch trials. But her death in particular moved many in the community.
Robert Calef, who wrote a contemporary account of the trials, noted:
“When she took her last farewell of her husband, children and friends, was, as is reported by them present, as serious, religious, distinct, and affectionate as could well be expressed, drawing tears from the eyes of almost all present.”
But not everyone shed tears after the execution. According to Calef, one minister squinted at the dead bodies and said, “What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there.”
Mary Easty’s legacy has endured long since her death. She’s mentioned as a relative of Bathsheba in the 2013 film The Conjuring.
