Hugh & Mary Parsons & The Springfield Witch Trials

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2023

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

Forty years before the infamous witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, Hugh Parsons stepped out of his dirty, disease ridden prison cell in Boston and was carted off towards the courthouse in order to stand trial as a witch. He’d come from a small settlement named Springfield over a hundred miles away and spent the last year cooped up in a concrete prison with his life in the balance. The previous few years had seen the fear of witches spread like a disease throughout New England, with cases springing up like boils on a plague victim. Accused, tried and sent to prison to await a verdict, Parsons had survived the cold winter drinking filthy water and eating gruel in the overcrowded gaol and finally, he was to find out if he was to be lanced. SOURCES Pynchon, William (1651) Testimony Against Hugh Parsons Charged With Witchcraft. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1650 - 1651. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/3ca63410-c627-0139-9efd-0242ac110004 Gaskill, Malcolm (2021) The Ruin Of All Witches: Life And Death In The New World. Allen Lane, UK. Handlin, Lilian (1985) Dissent In A Small Community. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 193-220 (28 pages). New England, USA. Evans, Hillary & Bartholomew, Robert (2015) Outbreak: The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior. Anomalist Books, UK. ------- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/darkhistories and get on your way to being your best self. -------For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	40 years before the infamous witch trials in Salam, Massachusetts, Hugh Parsons stepped
0:07.0	out of his dirty, diseased, ridden prison cell in Boston and was cated off toward the
0:11.7	courthouse in order to stand trial as a witch. He'd come from a small settlement named Springfield
0:17.6	over a hundred miles away and spent the last year cooped up in a concrete prison with
0:22.4	his life in the balance. The previous few years had seen the fear of witches spread like
0:27.4	a disease throughout New England, with cases springing up like boils on a plague victim.
0:33.0	Accused, tried and sent to prison to await a verdict, Parsons had survived the cold winter
0:38.4	drinking filthy water and eating gruel in an overcrowded jail, and finally he was to find
0:44.7	out if he was to be lanced. This is Dark History's, where the facts are worse than fiction.
0:55.6	Hello and welcome to Dark History's Seed & Seed & Seed & Episode 5, I'm Ben, your host.
1:00.8	And this week, we have a call for an episode. Again, it's a one that's slightly longer,
1:05.6	so we're probably going to launch more or less straight into it. So yeah, let's get on
1:10.6	with it. This is Hugh and Mary Parsons and the Springfield Witch Trials.
1:19.0	The 1600s were a difficult time for many groups in England. Conflict was rife as the economy
1:24.2	struggled to get to grips with the population that had nearly doubled in less than a century.
1:29.0	Meanwhile, the religious gentry had seen the Protestant Reformation backslide into an
1:33.2	uncomfortable place, as King Charles I aligned the church in ways that began to reinstate
1:38.4	the modes and mediums of worship that the reformists had fought to eradicate.
1:43.5	The King was at odds with many of the political front too, culminating in the 1629 dissolution
1:48.9	of a parliament that fell in odds with many of his governing policies in order to enforce
1:53.0	his views that as the King he should reign over the country with the royal prerogative
1:57.9	that was preordained to him under a mandate from God. This enraged many who were politically
	...

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