The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World - Hardcover

Gaskill, Malcolm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593316576 ISBN 13: 9780593316573

Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MALCOLM GASKILL is emeritus professor of early modern history at the University of East Anglia. One of Britain's leading experts in the history of witchcraft, his works include the highly acclaimed Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans.

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1

A Voice That Said “Death”

Once, beside a great river at the edge of a forest, there stood a small town. Time has erased its every trace, but we can imagine it, quiet and still, settled under a pall of late winter darkness. A man is hurrying home along the main street, to his left a trickling brook and a fathomless bank of trees, to his right a curve of clapboard houses with steep roofs and leaded windows. Down the narrow lanes between homesteads he glimpses the moonlit river, in spate from the thaw. The air is ice-sharp, tinged with smoke and resin, the only sounds the rush of water, the muffled bellows of cattle and the distant cry of a wolf. It feels like the edge of the world, and to those who have settled here it is. Beyond the mountains to the west lie uncharted lands, as mysterious as the heavens, inhabited by people of an unknown, perhaps hostile, disposition.

It is February 1651. The man’s name is Jonathan Taylor, and he has had an unsettling day, which is not over yet. Arriving home, Taylor lifts the door latch, treading softly to avoid waking his wife, who is eight months pregnant, and their infant girl beside her. They have lived in the young plantation of Springfield for two years, laboring to make something of themselves in this new land. The family sleeps downstairs in one bed near the glowing hearth, which flickers shadows round the low-ceilinged room. Taylor undresses, slips between the coarse sheets. He closes his eyes. But then he’s awake, the room suffused with light. He sits up rigid with fear, sensing movement on the floor. He forces himself to look. Three snakes are slithering toward him. He glances at his wife but doesn’t rouse her, afraid the shock will hurt their unborn child. Nor does he want his daughter to see.

The smallest snake, black with yellow stripes, slides up the side of the bed. Taylor strikes it off, but it returns. Again he lashes out. Heart pounding, he shrinks back against the bolster. Daring to raise his head again, he meets the snake’s beady eye. With a flick of its jaws, the creature sinks its fangs into Taylor’s forehead. The pain is excruciating, but Taylor is too petrified to move. In the deep voice of a man—a voice he recognizes—the snake breathes the word “death.” Trembling, Taylor splutters that no man ever died from such a bite. Then, the room snaps back to darkness, and the snakes are gone. Taylor’s tremors wake his wife. Unable to calm him, she asks if he’s cold and whether she should warm his clothes. He replies that he’s hot and sick and falls back on the bed, shaking and sweating. All that Thursday night he writhes feverishly, his mind a confusion of images. But in the morning Taylor is clear about one thing. He knows who to blame for his torment: the brickmaker, Hugh Parsons.

Jonathan Taylor is not alone in suspecting Parsons. Two days ago, on Wednesday, the constable arrested Hugh’s wife Mary as a witch—the first that Springfield has known. Once, witches were unheard-of in New England, but recently a plague of accusations has infected the colony. Back across the Atlantic, Old England has also been scourged by witch panics, reports of which arrive by letter and word of mouth. Stories that by day are food for gossip, after dark fuel nightmares. Colonists fear God but also the devil and believe that witches can send beast-like demons to hurt them. Such thoughts were always present, but now witchcraft has become real among the settlements of the Connecticut valley, lonely outposts of piety and trade, of which Springfield is the most northerly. Meanwhile, rumors of heresy dog the town’s all-powerful governor, William Pynchon. These days, anything seems possible.

Hugh Parsons is a workingman in his thirties, who says little but radiates discontent. He left England several years ago, and has spent the last six in Springfield, at odds with the world. After Mary’s arrest, he tossed and turned through Wednesday night—worrying for her sake, perhaps, but also for himself. The following morning Hugh came looking for the constable, a Welshman named Thomas Merrick, eager to know what was happening. The constable wasn’t around; Jonathan Taylor, laboring in Merrick’s barn, was. Hugh asked Taylor if he knew who had pointed the finger at his wife. Taylor replied tersely that he—Hugh—would know soon enough. Just then Merrick appeared, marching Mary to the house of William Pynchon, who was also Springfield’s magistrate, for questioning. Hugh did nothing. Strangely calm, he sat in the barn until dusk, waiting until Taylor had finished, then, as Taylor went up to Merrick’s house, followed him. The constable was still not back, but his wife said the two men could help themselves to beer. Taylor went down to the cellar, but the barrel plug was so stiff it hurt to twist it. When Sarah Merrick tried, it came out easily. “What are you, a witch?” quipped Taylor: a risky joke. Back upstairs, Goody Merrick made light of it all and was sorry about Taylor’s sore hand, which she showed to Parsons. He said nothing, convinced that Taylor’s joke was on him. The two men then went to their homes, Taylor scarcely imagining what lay ahead that night.

The next day—Friday—Taylor complains of what he described as “fits” racing through his body. His panicked wife summons their neighbors. What if Jonathan were to die? She has a child of seventeen months and another in the womb. Angry and afraid, the townsfolk go to Pynchon and demand that Hugh Parsons be arrested. After all, others in the community have recently suffered at the hands of witches. Two years ago the town barber was traumatized in bed at night by a fiery apparition of a boy, for which he now blames Parsons. The saturnine brickmaker is seized and bound with chains. Pynchon investigates, determined to restore peace, yet aware that he, too, is a fountain of dissension. From every corner of the town come disturbing tales and outbursts of anger and anguish. Hugh and Mary Parsons can only wait, thinking about the calamitous last few years and wondering what will become of them.

William Pynchon, the figure who presided over Springfield, was sixty years old. He had traveled far, taken huge risks and weathered storms, metaphorical and real. New England had proved a grueling ordeal. His wife had died; his boat had been swept away; other townships had censured him. With courage girded by a strong faith, he had journeyed far into the wilderness to trade with the Indians, standing his ground in tense, halting exchanges. Life was unpredictable, and there were few people he could trust. Pynchon had been stalked by war, hunger and pestilence. But he had never experienced anything like the events of winter 1650–51: strange accidents blamed on the Parsons household, their neighbors swooning and convulsing, eerie sounds and apparitions, and throughout Springfield a pervasive mood of dread.

Pynchon was head to foot an English country gentleman: austere and determined with a godly passion for rectitude. He was a natural entrepreneur whose gaze took in the entire world, or as much of it as he might reach with a scheme. Calculating yet candid in negotiations, he spoke plainly and never flattered to deceive. He had no need to be loved; God’s love was sufficient. To him, as to all migrant Puritans, New England meant religious freedom and bringing the gospel to the natives, both of which would come from populating virgin land with hardworking Christians: prosperity and piety were companionable virtues. Pynchon was also a theologian, steeped in classical wisdom, including restraint of the tongue: he knew when to speak, and then with economy and precision. He lacked the rhetorical discipline of an Oxford or a Cambridge...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593316576
• ISBN 13: 9780593316573
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 305
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Knopf; https://knopfdoubleday.com; ; 3 Queen Caroline Street Hammersmith; London; W6 9PE; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar