Smoke and Mirrors: The Politics of Witchcraft in Colonial Maryland
This essay appeared as an article in the October 2019 issue of CoffeeTable Coven.
On October 9, 1685 Rebecca Fowler was led to the gallows in St. Mary’s City, Maryland and hanged for the crime of witchcraft. She remains the only person legally executed as a witch in the history of Maryland. Just seven months after her death, however, another woman from the same part of the colony as Rebecca was also accused of being a witch. Hannah Edwards would make the same trip to St. Mary’s City, occupy the same cell that Rebecca had occupied not even a year prior, but ultimately be found not guilty. What was so different about the accusations in Hannah’s case?
Or were the differences in the politics of when the cases took place? Hannah, like Rebecca Fowler, was living in an area known as Mount Calvert Hundred when she was accused of witchcraft in February 1686. Her first husband was a man named John Pott, and they lived together with his children from a previous marriage on his plantation on the Patuxent river. John died in April 1675 and left Hannah as executor of his 400-acre estate. A year or two later Hannah married a man named Richard Edwards and lived with him on land subdivided from John Pott’s larger holdings. Her stepdaughter, Bridget, married a man named Daniel Cunningham and they lived on the northern half of the remaining estate. Her stepson, John Jr., likely lived with Bridget and Daniel. In August of 1678 Bridget, her husband Daniel, and John Jr. were killed in an apparent attack by local Native Americans.
After the deaths of her step-children and investigation into the massacre, Hannah and Richard relocated to another parcel of land on the estate she inherited, looking to start over. Over time they began to make a new life for themselves through farming and investing in cattle. Then, in early 1686, Hannah was accused of witchcraft by a woman named Ruth Hutchinson. The surviving records state Hannah was accused of witchcraft “whereupon their bodyes were very much the worse consumed, pined and wasted”. She would have been taken to the Calvert County Court where her case was then referred to the Provincial Court in St. Mary’s City. She was transported downriver with two other women where she occupied the same cell that housed Rebecca Fowler only seven months earlier. On April 29, 1686 an indictment was returned by a grand jury of sixteen men, and her trial took place the following day. The record shows Hannah asserted her right to a jury trial, where she was eventually found to be not guilty.
Following so closely on the heels of the execution of one witch, why was another accused witch found not guilty? There were a number of similarities in the cases. Both women were from the same relative area, and if history has shown anything it’s that “witch panic” can run rampant within a small, geographically concentrated community. Also of note, two men that served on Hannah’s jury, Andrew Abington and James Neale, had also served on the jury which found Rebecca guilty.
For all of these similarities there are some notable differences. Rebecca Fowler began her life in the Maryland colony as an indentured servant, while Hannah had found herself married into the more elite circles of the area. The two juror’s who served on both trials also likely knew Hannah’s first husband, John Pott, through both business and local legal connections which may have made them more sympathetic to Hannah. It’s also likely that Hannah’s accuser, Ruth, may have been seen as a disreputable figure in the colony. Records show in 1699 she was sentenced to twenty lashes for having a child outside of marriage, and in 1704 she indentured herself to pay off a debt for which she’d been imprisoned. The differences in social standing and reputation between Hannah and Ruth may have made the accusations carry less weight.
The accusation itself may have been less convincing, too. Rebecca had been accused of leaving her victim “lamed”, which implies a more permanent form of bodily injury. Hannah had been accused of leaving her victim “wasted” which could be construed much more generally, and the accusation itself makes no mention of how exactly Hannah bewitched her victim - cursing, sending her familiar to attack Ruth, casting a spell, etc. The lack of specificity may have worked to Hannah’s advantage.
The most important difference, however, may have been the political climate in the colony during both trials. Eleven months before Rebecca was accused the head of the council, George Talbot, had killed the royal tax collector aboard a ship belonging to a man named Thomas Allen. Allen despised the colonial government and refused to turn Talbot over to the authorities, taking him to Virginia instead. The Provincial Court had been accused by the colonists of assisting in Talbot’s escape from justice.
Talbot was eventually remanded to the Maryland Provincial Court and they hoped to try him. His indictment was on the same slate reviewed by the jury that reviewed the charges against Rebecca, but was one of the two indictments that were dismissed. This is likely due to the fact the governor of Virginia, who also had a low opinion of the Maryland colonial government, had withheld evidence concerning the murder of the tax collector and refused to assist in providing witnesses. It’s very likely the court saw Rebecca’s trial as an opportunity to act decisively and distract from the issue with Talbot, and also to demonstrate their own power within the colony in the face of opposition and mockery from those opposed to the government they represented.
It’s also worth readdressing the difference in social standing of both women. Witchcraft trials in Europe were mostly directed at peasant women or those perceived as outsiders, and the targeting of vulnerable and marginalized individuals came across the Atlantic with the colonists. Additionally, the belief in witches and witch accusations primarily served a social function of discharging tension within certain social structures, or between parties in which no other physical or legal recourse was available. Both Rebecca and Hannah may have been accused by someone who felt wronged by them, but felt they had no support or standing to seek justice in the established social arrangement or legal system. This may be especially true of Hannah, who was accused of someone from what appears to be a lower social standing and who was apparently considered a disreputable figure in the colony. It also can’t be denied that Hannah had a distinct advantage over Rebecca by having a direct relationship to two members of her jury through the business and legal dealings of her first husband, a man well-respected in the colony.
We will never know why these women were accused, and we will never know why their trials turned out so differently. The Maryland colony was already distinct from its northern neighbors in that access to resources was the driving force behind colonial occupation, and not escaping religious persecution. It may be the lack of religious fervor explains both the lack of recorded witch accusations and a seeming reticence on the part of the Provincial Court to bring guilty verdicts against those accused. In that case, the evidence against Rebecca must have been overwhelming. A more likely reason for the difference in these cases, however, is the core social function of the witch trial. These trials served no other purpose than being a public drama designed to intimidate individuals in local communities, and to confirm their subservience and obedience to established authority.
At a time when the power of the colonial government, and the loyalty of the Provincial Court, were being questioned the accusation and execution of a witch would serve to reinforce the power structures that served the elite in control of the Maryland colony. Whether anyone believed Rebecca was truly a witch the message being sent was clear: the Provincial Court, and by extension the colonial government, were in the business of enforcing the laws of the colony and would see justice served. Given the number of similarities between Rebecca and Hannah we’re left to wonder, however, if the same outcome would have occurred if Hannah had been accused first. Would the Provincial Court have seen fit to find someone so close to their own social circles guilty of witchcraft on the word of someone from a lower status? Would they have been able to bring themselves to execute Hannah?
Or was Rebecca the victim of not only someone with a grudge to bear, but also of a system that saw a former indentured servant as a convenient tool for reinforcing its own grip on power?
