The Witchcraft Delusion: The Story of the Witchcraft Persecutions in Seventeenth-Century New England, Including Original Trial Transcripts

The Witchcraft Delusion: The Story of the Witchcraft Persecutions in Seventeenth-Century New England, Including Original Trial Transcripts by John M. Taylor. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780517124222.

Witchcraft is as old as human history, states John M. Taylor. "It has written its name in the oldest of human records. In all ages and among all peoples it has taken firm hold on the fears, convictions, and consciences of men." In colonial New England, laws against witchcraft were passed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven in the mid-seventeenth century. The most notorious episode of persecution occurred in 1692 in Salem, where 20 persons were executed as witches. From the 1660s to the 1690s, there were ongoing witch-hunts and trials in the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven. Several chapters of The Witchcraft Delusion are devoted exclusively to these accounts, most of which have been selected from colonial records and from original depositions. Each of the cases is presented using actual trial testimony. In addition to trial transcripts, there are such documents as the guide to discovering, accusing, and examining a witch prepared by William Jones, a deputy governor of C