laid upon the table. A debate ensued, and continued until evening. When it was about to be decided that the charter should be given up, the lamps were dashed out. Other lights were brought in; but the charter had disappeared. Joseph Wadsworth, snatching up the parchment, bore it off through the darkness and concealed it in a hollow tree, ever afterward remembered as THE CHARTER OAK. But the assembly was overawed and the authority of Andros established throughout the country.

20. But his dominion ended suddenly. The English Revolution of 1688 was at hand. James II. was driven from his throne; the system of arbitrary rule which he had established fell with a crash, and Andros with the rest. The news of the accession of William and Mary reached Boston on the 4th of April, 1689. On the 18th of the month, the citizens of Boston rose in rebellion. Andros was seized and marched to prison. The insurrection spread; and before the 10th of May New England had regained her liberties.

RECAPITULATION.

Philip king of the Wampanoags.-Causes of war.-Alexander's imprisonment.--Outrages are committed.-The war begins.-Philip is pursued to Mount Hope. Is driven from the country.-Goes to the Nipmucks.-A general war ensues.-The Narragansetts remain neutral.-English embassadors massacred at Brookfield.-The town is attacked.-And burned.-Deerfield destroyed.-Lathrop is ambushed at Bloody Brook.-Hadley is attacked.-Rescued by Goffe.Springfield is destroyed.-Hadley burned.- The savages are defeated at Hatfield. The English invade the country.-Philip and his forces take refuge in a swamp.-Are surrounded.-And utterly routed.-Ruin of the Narragansetts.-The war on the frontiers.-Towns and villages destroyed.-The savages grow feeble.-Canonchet is put to death.-Philip's family are captured. -And sold as slaves.-Himself hunted down.-And shot.-Submission of the tribes.-Losses of New England.-The English government refuses help.-Randolph comes to Massachusetts.-And is resisted.-Massachusetts purchases Maine.-Difficulties concerning New Hampshire.-Royal government is established.-Cranfield's administration.-The king's hostility.-His death.-The charter of Massachusetts is annulled.-James II. appoints Andros governor.The liberties of the people are destroyed.-The government of Andros is extended over New England.-The charter of Connecticut is saved.-The Revolution of 1688.-Andros is imprisoned.-And the colonies regain their liberties.

IN

CHAPTER XVI.

MASSACHUSETTS.—WAR AND WITCHCRAFT.

[N 1689 war was declared between France and England. This. conflict is known in American history as KING WILLIAM'S WAR. When James II. escaped from his kingdom, he took refuge at the court of Louis XIV. of France. The two monarchs were both Catholics, and on this account an alliance was made between them. Louis agreed to support James in his effort to recover the English throne. Parliament, meanwhile, had conferred the crown on King William. Thus the new sovereign was brought into conflict with the exiled James and his ally, the king of France. The war which thus originated in Europe soon extended to the French and English colonies in America.

2. The struggle began on the frontier of New Hampshire. On the 27th of June, a party of Indians in alliance with the French made an attack on Dover. The venerable magistrate of the town, Richard Waldron, now eighty years of age, was murdered. Twentythree others were killed, and twenty-nine dragged off captive into the wilderness.

3. In August a hundred Abenakis came down from the Penobscot, and attacked Pemaquid-now Bremen. A company of farmers were surrounded in the harvest-field and murdered. The fort was besieged and compelled to surrender. A few of the people escaped into the woods; the rest were killed or carried away captive. The English and the Mohawks entered into an alliance, but the latter refused to make war upon their countrymen of Maine. The Dutch settlements of New Netherland made common cause with the English against the French.

4. In January, 1690, a regiment of French and Indians left Montreal, crossed the Mohawk, and reached the village of Sche

nectady. At midnight they stole through the gates, raised the war-whoop, and began the work of death. The town was soon in flames. Sixty people were killed and scalped; the rest, escaping half-clad into the darkness, ran sixteen miles through the snow to Albany. The settlement of Salmon Falls, on the Piscataqua, was next attacked and destroyed. The English fort at Casco Bay was taken and the settlements broken up.

5. New England was thoroughly aroused. In order to provide the means of war, a congress was convened at New York. Here it was resolved to attempt the conquest of Canada. At the same time, Massachusetts was to coöperate by sending a fleet up the St. Lawrence against Quebec. Thirty-four vessels, carrying two thousand troops, were fitted out, and the command given to Sir William Phipps. Proceeding first against Port Royal, he compelled a surrender; the whole of Nova Scotia submitted without a struggle. The expedition was foolishly delayed until October; and an Indian carried the news to the governor of Canada. When the fleet came in sight of the town, the castle was so well garrisoned as to bid defiance to the English; and it only remained for Phipps to sail back to Boston. To meet the expenses of this expedition, Massachusetts issued bills of credit which were made a legal tender. Such was the origin of PAPER MONEY in America.

6. Meanwhile, the land forces had proceeded from Albany to Lake Champlain. Here dissensions arose among the commanders, and the expedition had to be abandoned. Sir William Phipps was now sent to England to procure aid from the government and to secure a reissue of the old colonial charter. But the ministers replied that the English armies could not be spared, and that the old patent would not be reïssued. In the spring of 1692, Sir William returned to Boston commissioned as royal governor of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia.

7. The war still continued. In 1694, the village of Oyster River was destroyed by the savages. The inhabitants were either killed or carried into captivity. Two years later, Pemaquid was a second time surrendered to the French and Indians. The captives were sent to Boston and exchanged for prisoners held by the English. In the following March, Haverhill was captured under circum

stances of great atrocity. Nearly forty persons were butchered in cold blood; only a few were spared for captivity. Among the latter was Mrs. Hannah Dustin. Her child, only a week old, was dashed against a tree. The heart-broken mother, with her nurse and a lad named Leonardson, was taken by the savages to an island in the Merrimac. Here, while their captors, twelve in number, were asleep at night, the three prisoners arose, armed themselves with tomahawks, and with one deadly blow after another crushed in the temples of the savages, until ten of them lay still in death. Then, embarking in a canoe, the captives dropped down the river and reached the English settlement in safety.

8. But the war was already at an end. Early in 1697, commissioners of France and England assembled at the town of Ryswick, in Holland; and on the 10th of the following September, a treaty of peace was concluded. King William was acknowledged as the rightful sovereign of England, and the colonial boundary-lines of the two nations in America were established as before.

9. The darkest page in the history of New England is that which records the SALEM WITCHCRAFT. In February of 1692, in that part of Salem afterward called Danvers, a daughter and a niece of Samuel Parris, the minister, were attacked with a nervous disorder which rendered them partially insane. Parris pretended to believe that the girls were bewitched, and that an Indian maidservant was the author of the affliction. He had seen her performing some of the rude ceremonies of her religion, and this gave color to his suspicions. He accordingly tied the ignorant creature and whipped her until she confessed herself a witch. Here, perhaps, the matter would have ended had not other causes existed for the spread of the delusion.

10. But Parris had had a quarrel in his church. A part of the congregation, led by George Burroughs, a former minister, disbelieved in witchcraft, while Parris and the rest thought such disbelief the height of wickedness. The celebrated Cotton Mather, minister of Boston, had recently preached much on the subject of witchcraft, teaching that witches were dangerous and ought to be put to death. Sir William Phipps, the royal governor, was a member of Mather's church. Stoughton, the deputy-governor, was

the tool of Parris and Mather. To these men must be charged the dreadful crimes that followed.

11. By the laws of England and of Massachusetts, witchcraft was punishable with death. In the early history of the colony, one person charged with being a wizard had been arrested at Charlestown, convicted and executed. But many people had now grown bold enough to denounce the baleful superstition; and something had to be done to save witchcraft from falling into contempt. A special court was accordingly appointed by Phipps to go to Salem and judge the persons accused by Parris. Stoughton was the presiding officer, Parris the prosecutor, and Mather a bishop to decide when the testimony was sufficient to condemn.

12. On the 21st of March, the proceedings began. Mary Cory was arrested, brought before the court, convicted, and hurried to prison. Sarah Cloyce and Rebecca Nurse, two innocent sisters, were next apprehended as witches. The only witnesses against them were the foolish Indian woman and the niece of Parris. The victims were sent to prison, protesting their innocence. Giles Cory, a patriarch of eighty years, and Edward Bishop, a sturdy farmer, and his wife were next arrested and condemned. George Burroughs was accused and imprisoned. And so the work went on, until seventy-five innocent people were locked up in dungeons.

13. In hope of saving their lives, some of the prisoners confessed themselves witches. It was soon found that those were to be put to death who denied the reality of witchcraft. Convictions followed fast; the gallows stood waiting for its victims. Burroughs was brought to the scaffold. Old Giles Cory refused to plead, and was pressed to death. Five women were hanged in one day.

14. Between June and September, twenty victims were hurried to their doom. Fifty-five others were tortured into the confession of falsehoods. A hundred and fifty lay in prison awaiting their fate. Two hundred were accused or suspected, and ruin seemed to impend over New England. But a reaction at last set in among the people. The court which Phipps had appointed to sit at Salem was dismissed. The spell was broken. The prisons were opened, and the victims of superstition went forth free. In the beginning of the next year a few persons were arrested and tried