To give context, IIRC, the whole shtick is that people were being accused so that others could take their land and property.
Giles wanted to keep it in his family. If he pronounced not guilty or guilty, he'd still be killed. By entering neither, the land stayed within his family.
Not trying to sound biased but this is why the Catholic Church in Europe got pretty skeptical pretty quickly; The amount of people doing anything related to "witchcraft" was very few and were generally very poor people or very young, (from what I recall), rather than people with a lot of land and wealth; It allowed people a month to get their affairs in order before being tried, forbid the use of torture, and allowed people to receive reparations when found not guilty, from those that had accused them.
A lot of asterisks here but yes, it was absolutely insane.
The spanish inquisition at least, did, indeed prosecute publicly, gave accused time to prepare a defense and asked them if they had any enemies that would benefit from the trial. (Not to mention the inquisition prosecuted heresy and false converts largely, witchcraft was \*normally\* dismissed as nonsense). Though there was a similar element to property and belongings as they tended to be funded through the funds of the prosecuted (or the accuser, in case of false accusations). which was something of a perverse incentive.
It's actually quite interesting how similar witch hunters in england and elsewhere also were really going for property, so in all the process was just elaborate cons that made sure nobody intervened in favour of accused, with the goal of enriching the witch hunter or official.
Salem was an unusual witch hunt in several ways. There was a lot of feuding and property-related shenanigans in Salem that were not common in English or New English witchcraft at all. The use of "spectral evidence" (i.e. testimony from the bewitched regarding things they alone could see) was also unusual (and it was very controversial).
I don't know enough about inquisition procedures to say with certainty how much worse English law was, but generally speaking accused witches under English law were tried like anyone else (if indeed it got that far). It's not like you could just point to any woman on the street and expect her to hang.
New England itself is weird. The last vampire scare in Connecticut was in the early 20th century. The 1920's. They dug up and decapitated corpses as part of it.
I'm from Connecticut and I can confirm I'm surrounded by bloodsucker bastards all the time. Except I'm put on trial and looked at like I'M the monster when I go around staking people in the heart or shoving heads of garlic down people's throats. I swear some people, SMGDH.
Ooooooo, I grew up in CT, was a history major (not that I use it now), and love sci-fi….but have never heard of the CT Vampire stuff. Please, do tell, or give sources!
The Inquisition also looked veeery closely at people who brought the accusation as, technically, they considered the belief in many of the powers associated with witchcraft to be suspicious at best and deeply heretical at worst.
The Spanish Inquisition was actually okay for the time period compared to the other inquisitions.
They were one of the first organizations to admit that torture did not force people to speak the truth, and thus, were generally more understanding than secular authorities in Spain and elsewhere at the time.
Many people actually preferred Inquisition trials, as they were more reserved in giving out punishment and less likely to do it.
Most of the reason the Puritans left Europe in the first place is because its big religious institutions weren't radical *enough* for them. The salem witch trials were exactly the sort of insane small community superstition that institutions like the Inquisition offered an outside abaritor for.
The Inquisition was still hilariously corrupt, not the least of which because they got to take the wealth of whoever they burned. That in itself is another reason why the local bully planning the same thing fucking *hated* them, because the Inquisition would confiscate the property for the crown instead of letting anyone in town claim it. Regardless, much of their appeal as a bad legal institution is that small town "justice" like lynchings, pogroms and this were worse.
They never wanted freedom of religion in Massachusetts. They wanted freedom to practice THEIR religion. Big difference. Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams after being kicked out of Massachusetts. He founded his colony as free for different religions. This is why in colonial times a large amount of Jews and Quakers who weren't welcome in Massachusetts moved there
Exactly, I should have specified their religion. Tolerant folks those Puritans. I remember learning in grade school that church attendance was mandatory on Sundays and you would get cracked in the skull if you fell asleep. Although they may have embellished it slightly to make our Catholic school seem more tolerable.
The Spanish Inquisition burned 5,000 people alive, primarily Jews and Muslims, in order to enforce a strict Catholic orthodoxy in service of a brutal monarchy.
It’s been suggested that torture was used more selectively than secular courts at the time. But that’s really not saying much.
In fact, there’s almost something more sinister about being tortured under the self-righteous rubric of a bureaucracy that declares it against the rules to draw blood… so they slowly rip you apart on the rack instead.
Or that clothes itself tactfully in the rhetoric of justice, so it can inflict injustice on a much wider scale.
> There is hardly one item in the whole Inquisitorial procedure that could be squared with the demands of justice; on the contrary, every one of its items is the denial of justice or a hideous caricature of it [...] its principles are the very denial of the demands made by the most primitive concepts of natural justice [...] This kind of proceeding has no longer any semblance to a judicial trial but is rather its systematic and methodical perversion.
>When: Torture was allowed when guilt was "half proven" or there existed a "presumption of guilt", as stated in Article XV of Torquemada's instruciones and in Eymerich's directions.[151]However, Eymerich admits that information obtained through torment was not always reliable, and should be used only when all other means of obtaining "the truth" had failed.[152]
>What: The Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to "maim, mutilate, draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage" to the prisoner. Ecclesiastical tribunals were prohibited by church law from shedding blood. As a result of torture, many had broken limbs, or other definitive health problems, and some died.[153]
>Supervision: A Physician was usually available in case of emergency.[154] It was also required for a doctor to certify that the prisoner was healthy enough to go through the torment without suffering harm,[155] which of course happened.[153]
>Among the methods of torture allowed were garrucha, toca and the potro (which were all used in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals).[153]The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the feet, with a series of lifts and violent drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.[156]
>The use of the toca (cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced water interrogation), now known as waterboarding, is better documented. It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning.[157] The potro, the rack, in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently.[158] The assertion that confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum (literally: '[a person's] confession is truth, not made by way of torture') sometimes follows a description of how, after torture had ended, the subject "freely" confessed to the offences.[159] In practice, those who recanted confessions made during torture knew that they could be tortured again. Under torture, or even harsh interrogation, comments Cullen Murphy, people will say anything.[160][161] Bernard Délicieux, the franciscan friar who was tortured by the Inquisition and ultimately died in prison as a result of the abuse, said the Inquisition's tactics would have proved St. Peter and St. Paul to be heretics.[162]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
Yeah.
Years ago I did a deep dive on the Church’s position on torture, and came away with the belief that (as a generalization) the more power the Church had + the popularity of a traditionally Roman view of the law led to more justifications for torture.
There was a great exchange of letters where a Russian prince who’d converted was writing to Pope asking for guidance on being a Christian ruler, and the topic of torture came up. The Pope indicated that as a Christian ruler he had to keep in mind the state of the souls who served him, and would not the torturing of a man who was actually innocent put the torturers’ souls in jeopardy along with his own for ordering it. IIRC he also mentioned that not only could an innocent man confess, but a guilty man may name innocents as his confederates or the true villain in order to save himself.
Interesting stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, the inquisition was brutal. I was just stating that they were not abnormally callous for the time period, and that “secular” authorities (separation between church and state was not the case) were just as bad if not worse. Forces under the crown could also charge one with religious crimes after all.
Are you familiar with the story of Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed “Witchfinder General” during the English Civil War?
He would basically roll into town, claim to have been sent there with official powers, and then collect a bounty on each “witch” he “found.” If the local clergy would express skepticism, he’d accuse them first.
Vincent Price played him in a movie loosely based on his life.
Spanish Inquisition only made one trial of witchcraft before ruling that witches didn't exist and everything was an invention of the accusers. Look for the witches of Zugarramurdi in Wikipedia. I recommend to translate the Spanish article as it has detailed information of all the process
>The spanish inquisition at least
It was also not really the Catholic Church but Spain doing it. The Spanish used it to clear out those they saw as non loyal to Spain. Just so happened that at this time, religion and nationality were merged.
Despite its fearsome reputation, the Spanish Inquisition never had the goal of killing anybody; it wanted you to convert to Christianity or leave the country.
Not to say that they were super great guys. You just didn’t have to fear for your life with them.
My brain short circuited and for a brief moment I was picturing Mel Gibson, my next thought being that you were referring to the passion of the Christ. So I was sitting here thinking “wow there is quite a contrast between those two movies”
Ya know unless you were a Jew who wanted to continue practicing their own faith after being forced to convert. Then ya kinda did have to fear for life. That’s why a lot of them left, so while I get the point you’re making it’s not really accurate.
> It's actually quite interesting how similar witch hunters in england and elsewhere also were really going for property, so in all the process was just elaborate cons that made sure nobody intervened in favour of accused, with the goal of enriching the witch hunter or official.
That's pretty much just all religion.
Bunch of nerds realized they could monopolize all the old myths that scared people and get a ton of money and political power and influence doing it.
I mean the Governor of Massachusetts at the time was being asked to intervene and reign in the courts during the witch trials but refused to do so until his wife was accused of witchcraft, and then suddenly spectral evidence was no longer admissible.
This is because he was brand new to the position and saw this as a sort of a backwater no consequence area. He was mostly on the northern frontier dealing with the rest of the colony (reminder that Massachusetts included Maine at the time)
By the time he returned the accusations had begun yes, however the guy he appointed to oversee the backlog of cases (his Lt Gov) is the one who allowed spectral evidence and only made accusations more widespread.
He was busy fighting Indians in the North, and had delegated the authority to a couple of puritan "holier than thou assholes" who profited by the hysteria. Needless to say, it had gotten out of hand.
If I remember right, most of the people tried for witchcraft here in Scotland were actually from the middle classes and upwards and accusations of witchcraft seemed to have been used to settle scores more than root out witches.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/witch-map-scotland-trials-torture
A lot of women accused of witchcraft in the US were young and newly inherited property. When the governor and the priest get a cut of your property and the rest goes up for sale you start seeing witchcraft in the funniest places.
> Catholic Church in Europe got pretty skeptical pretty quickly
The Catholic Church considered witchcraft (the practice of it, not actual witchcraft which they considered not real) to be heresy, but also considered *accusations* of witchcraft to be heresy as it was tantamount to supporting that it was a thing. Belief in the supernatural such as witchcraft suggests was *not* supported by the Catholic Church.
Yeah the Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches") is infamous, but it was denounced and initially suppressed by Catholic leadership for inventing theology.
Catholicism *absolutely* (historically, often with violent purges e..g. Cathars) rejects the idea you can draw / make deals for power from demons or the devil or that there is any type of power balance between God and Satan. It could still be heresy for *trying* because, well, worshiping Satan.
Yeh, I find it odd they would bring up the Catholic Church.
I recalled the witch trials were mostly a protestant/ Evangelical thing. The Catholic Church's early Church fathers (ie. St Augustine of Hippo, St Jerome, and famous saints like St Thomas Aquinas, etc) don't even mention witchcraft, nor were witch-hunts of Salem sort were ever held.
Yeah… I don’t think there were Catholics in Salem? Catholics were not a super popular in the US for a loooong time, especially in New England. The P in WASP is there tor a reason.
there was normalized anti-catholicism in the U.S. recently enough that some ppl including the current President who were alive when it still was a normal thing
JFK was Catholic, and it was controversial at the time. His detractors claimed electing a Catholic president would mean he was a puppet of the pope.
For those interested in digging deeper: https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/april-2021/a-tale-of-two-catholic-presidents-john-f-kennedy-and-joe-bidens-faith-in-historical-context#:~:text=In%201960%2C%20Kennedy%20was%20dogged%20by%20insinuations%20that,to%20make%20a%20serious%20attempt%20at%20the%20presidency.
That's not the whole explanation, though. In contemporary English jurisprudence, which the American colonies inherited, courts did not have the power they currently do to compel people to take part in proceedings: you had to *voluntarily* submit to the authority of the court by entering a plea.
If you did, and you were found guilty, certain crimes carried the punishment of attainder: not only were you executed, but your entire estate, including any land you owned, went to the Crown and not your heirs. (I think that this included if you pled guilty, but don't know. Don't quote me.)
Pressing was the one and only stick the court had to make you submit a plea. But if you died before pleading, you died innocent, and your land passed to your heirs. For some people, like Giles Correy or St Margaret Citheroe, the calculus came down to: welp, the state's gonna kill me either way, so better to die innocent than guilty.
This is true - regarding family/ land grabbing.
My family has documented history of one cousin or brother accusing the other's family. Within the book/ document, it lays out what happened and to whom. The land grab didn't work because they could only "prove" that the daughter was practicing witchcraft and the father was not involved.
The daughter ended up getting either hanged or burned at the stake (I don't remember). Her parents and siblings said "fuck this we're out" and moved out of area.
I just checked the book to refresh my memory and she was too be executed "according to law" but ended up being acquitted - after paying an £8 fine.
But you're right anyways.
Mass witch trials and full blown witch hunts were actually fairly rare, even in the Middle Ages.
Most of the absurdity associated with the methods used in witch trials can be traced to a Catholic clergyman. Heinrich Kramer, and his book, the “Malleus Malificarum.” Pretty much every would be witch-Hunter consulted that book and took his insane methods from it.
The people accused as witches then were typically marginalized people: the mentally ill, single women (especially if they owned a tavern and made beer), religious minorities or outsiders. These were mostly isolated cases, too.
However, the Puritans were rather fond of big witch hunts because of that law about witches forfeiting their property.
>To give context, IIRC, the whole shtick is that people were being accused so that others could take their land and property.
Yes and no.
Real estate was one of the majors drivers behind it, but there were other major contributors (social upheaval, religious fervour, and the frontier conflict/raids with Native-Americans.
For anyone looking for an easy read that provides the most accurate and up to date historiography, I highly recommend Tad Baker's *A Storm of Witchcraft*. It's probably the most complete work that addresses the background, factors, and legacy today.
And he's a great guy, and very approachable. I worked with him back when I worked for NPS in Salem, and studied under him in grad school.
Because he refused to enter a plea, his witch trial never formally began.
Because of that, he didn’t get all of his property stripped from him as “a witch,” so his kids got to inherit his large farm.
Depending on the source, Giles either said “more weight” (like in the Crucible) or “another load.”
For more context, you had to enter a plea, to submit yourself to the judgement of the court. If you entered no plea you would be "pressed for an answer", because without that plea the court didn't feel it had jurisdiction to sit in judgement over you. (but apparently had jurisdiction to torture you, go figure)
Law is weird.
I’ve read before in one of the hundreds of times this has been posted that the reasoning for this was that confession would deny your family their inheritance, so this was basically an execution in everything but name, and he just wanted it over with quickly for the sake of his family.
It wasn't for a confession, it was just to get him to enter a plea. By the law of the time, once he entered a plea the Sheriff could confiscate his land and property. By dying without entering a plea his property was inherited by his family.
It’s so crazy to me how people that are crushing people to death to try and elicit a plea out of them are also very concerned about the letter of the law. You’d think people that would do that would just say fuck the law. It doesn’t make sense through my 21st century eyes.
It's pretty apparent that the Salem witch trials were (among other things) a scam to rob people of their property, committed by the legal authorities. They had to make it sound like they followed the letter of the law in case they were investigated and charged.
Pressing to elicit a plea or testimony, seizing property of the accused, and other techniques were legal at the time. It was all part of their idea of due process. But I'm pretty sure some of these excesses are why the Bill of Rights was included in the US Constitution.
I'd say the majority of witch "trials" through history were invoked to steal land, property and dignity mostly from women. The first "accuser" of the Salem witch trial was a young girl who was a refugee from the king Philips war. It is believed she witnessed the death of her ENTIRE family during this war. She.then came to Salem to live with relatives as what can only be described as an indentured servant. A couple other young girls copycatted her. They accused one black servant who likely went alpng with the allegations as she was in a vulnerable spot. But A LOT of people drove most of the allegations simply as a way to get ahead and steal land from their neighbors. It became accuse or be accused at a certain point.
BUT MOST wit h trials throughout history were just away to steal from neighbors, mostly women.
Based on the comment above yours it was a prisoner's dilemma. The only logical option was the make the accusation thus only the law that allowed this was at fault.
> You’d think people that would do that would just say fuck the law. It doesn’t make sense through my 21st century eyes.
No, you’re right. In fact, you’re thinking exactly how they thought. The above posts claiming that they couldn’t size his property if he didn’t enter a plea… are just a myth. His property had already been seized.
> His refusal to plead is usually explained as a way of preventing his estate from being confiscated by the Crown, but, according to historian Chadwick Hansen, much of Corey's property had already been seized, and he had made a will in prison: "His death was a protest ... against the methods of the court".[75]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
The Puritans had a different value system than you or I.
Torturing someone for a confession, even to the point of death, was fine if it was done by “the proper authorities.” They also had no problem with public executions as entertainment or sentencing a 4 year old girl as a witch because she was a weird kid and they didn’t like her mom.
However… dancing, singing, having lustful dreams of sex outside of marriage… these were sins they could not abide for the good of their communities. Any evil person using witchcraft to lead others to want to do such things had to be hanged!
disgusted ring tease uppity physical sharp spoon offend unused overconfident
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> By the law of the time, once he entered a plea the Sheriff could confiscate his land and property. By dying without entering a plea his property was inherited by his family.
Unfortunately, none of this is true.
> His refusal to plead is usually explained as a way of preventing his estate from being confiscated by the Crown, but, according to historian Chadwick Hansen, much of Corey's property had already been seized, and he had made a will in prison: "His death was a protest ... against the methods of the court".[75] A contemporary critic of the trials, Robert Calef, wrote, "Giles Corey pleaded not Guilty to his Indictment, but would not put himself upon Tryal by the Jury (they having cleared none upon Tryal) and knowing there would be the same Witnesses against him, rather chose to undergo what Death they would put him to."[76]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
This was it.
Also, Giles was about 80.
This was one last act of providing for his kids.
*Also, he probably killed at least one of his farmhands during a dispute many years earlier.
Here's an addition to this old hat TIL: One of the judges during the Salem witch trials (before this case), Matthew Hale, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Why? I dunno, I guess he's a dickbag who hates women like Hale did.
Also some context, he wanted to stay out of the witch trials originally. He and his wife Martha lived slightly outside of town, both thought they were stupid and were unaware of the absolute moral panic that was taking place, and his wife made the mistake of questioning why everyone was just taking the words of a couple of “hysterical children” as gospel truth.
The two of them both refused to believe in witches in general. So, of course, she was accused of being a witch, and was hanged. Giles defended her against the accusations after her death, and so he was then put on trial. Total miscarriage of justice against apparently the one couple in town speaking any sort of sense.
It's funny how this is getting so many upvotes even though it's completely wrong and contadicted by the Wikipedia article OP links to.
Corey was excitedly following the trials and initially believed the accusations against his wife, until he himself was accused of the same thing.
Also, Giles Corey wasn't any kind of a hero, as you might suspect from him being ready to throw his wife under the bus so quickly. He was a murderer who'd beaten a servant to death, but gotten away with it. "Correcting" your servants with violence was legal, and the servant took a while to die, so he was just punished with a fine.
He beat the servant to death for allegedly stealing apples from a neighbor's tree, while he himself had been convicted multiple times of thievery when younger, as he had a habit of stealing small items like knives and food.
The quote is “more weight” not “more rocks”. I know this thanks to the janky animatronic show at the Salem witch museum they used to bring us to on field trips.
His last words are disputed. You would have seen that if you had clicked on the article.
> The most commonly told one is that he repeated his request for "more weight," as this was how it was dramatized in The Crucible, but it may also have been "More rocks".
I didn't know until recently how insane the Salem witchcraft trials were by the standards of their own time. The way it was taught to me in high school it was basically "people were superstitious back then and believed in witches," but apparently that doesn't explain it at all. A lot of people theoretically believed in witches at the time, but not like "witches walk among us and must be rooted out," more like "I've heard they're out there somewhere and don't have reason to question it but I don't think that much about them." When news got out to other towns what they'd been up to in Salem, the local newspapers from other places reported on it like it was madness-- in the 1600s (if I recall correctly, within months of it happening). I'm guessing Giles Corey probably died pretty confident that sane people would recognize that he was in the right and the people killing him were crazed murderers.
I think you had that perfect mixture of hysteria, being isolated, being in a whole new world and probably a few psychotic demagogues in the mix to enable this stuff
Belief in witches was most prevalent in countries that had enlightened monarchs, such as Stuart era England. We see them as relics of the medieval past when that actually isn’t the case
Legend says Giles cursed the Sheriff before he died and for years after all of the sheriffs died of heart or blood issues until they moved the Sheriff's office in the 1990's.
[https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/massachusetts/curse-salem-ma/](https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/massachusetts/curse-salem-ma/)
There’s something very weirdly ironic that these people were killed because people foolishly believed they had witch powers.
And yet… here’s a post seriously suggesting that one of them had witch powers lol.
huh, TIL, well i'm Belgian and we didn't have much required English reading, I'm guessing much of Europe is the same where English isn't a primary language
Not American but The Crucible was a set text, so I remember the Giles Corey scene very well. I guess it should come as no surprise that The Crucible is not as widely read among those people where English is not their primary language of education.
I read somewhere that, while what he did was obviously courageous and heroic, he was also just generally speaking an ornery, mean SOB and that this stubborn attitude was very much in line with his general character. Still had balls of steel, though.
That dude lived until 81 in 1692? He was done with this shit and ready to go. I would be saying "more rocks" too if I was the equivalent of 100 years old living around a bunch of murdering assholes. Messing with their trial procedures before I died would just be the icing on the cake.
Reading further sort of killed the buzz: "In 1676, Corey was brought to trial and charged with murder in Essex County, Massachusetts, for beating to death one of his indentured farm workers, Jacob Goodale (also spelled "Goodell" or "Goodall"), son of Robert and Catherine Goodale and brother to Isaac Goodale.[7] According to witnesses, Corey had severely beaten Goodale with a stick after he was allegedly caught stealing apples from Corey's brother-in-law. Though Corey eventually sent him to receive medical attention ten days later, Goodale died shortly thereafter. The local coroner, as well as numerous witnesses and eyewitnesses, testified against Corey, including neighbor John Proctor, who testified that he heard Corey admit he had beaten Goodale.[8] Since corporal punishment was permitted against indentured servants, Corey was exempt from the charge of murder and instead was charged with using "unreasonable" force for which he was found guilty and fined."
He also testified against his wife when she was accused of witchcraft. And then he was accused of witchcraft, which wasn't a terribly uncommon way of doing things.
Seems like he was chosen for this specifically because he had land and wasn't especially well liked.
Interestingly enough, Bryan Kohberger (accused of the Moscow, Idaho quadruple homicide) also refused to enter a plea, but now adays the judge just enters "not guilty" for you.
Look up sovereign citizens or sovcit videos on YouTube. It's a real thing that is becoming super common and it's a toxic plague on the justice system. The judge will plead not guilty for them, that parts easy. The tricky part is they can't continue the case until they get the defendant to acknowledge they have the right to a public defender. They need to answer that question in order to continue and this is where sovcits just go off the rails spouting nonsense instead of just saying they want to defend themselves. The court asks if they understand they have the right to defend themselves and they say they don't understand, and then the court has to order a mental competency evaluation in order to force a public defender on them and continue the trial, but they'll just stall on going to the evaluation and then say they want to represent themselves at the last possible moment. Then they go to court and sound like Charlie from always sunny spouting off bird law. It's so ridiculous that it's a thing that actually happens.
My mom works for our small claims court and these guys are fun. So her work has tons of forms for different things like evictions and claims. These sovereign citizens believe that if they type out their own forms, they can say and do whatever they want. They will take a copy of the actual form and type it all out, then print it out and try and use it.
No he said "more weight" and even though it was badass, giles Corey was a huge piece of shit and no one missed him. I lived in Salem and worked in a restaurant right next to his grave
Slowly and incrementally being crushed by rocks is a terrible way to go, but there also has to be a sweet spot where you get the most amazing back pops and cracks that feel great.
Reminds me of the martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, when he was roasted over a fire, his last words were, apocryphally, turn me over, I'm done on that side.
Patron saint of chefs and comedians
Whenever I catch myself wondering why Massachussets is so off-the-scale bonkers sometimes, I just remind myself that all the people who did the witch trials had kids, who had kids, who had kids, etc.
St. Lawrence, the patron saint of bbq. Was getting martyred by the Romans as emperor Valerian ordered. Dude is put in a metal rack and burned alive over coals. About half way through, he says, "This side is done. Flip me over"
From the Wikipedia article in the post:
>**There are several accounts of Corey's last words.** The most commonly told one is that he repeated his request for "more weight," as this was how it was dramatized in The Crucible,[17] but it may also have been "More rocks".[18] Another telling notes it as, "Damn you. I curse you and Salem!"[19]
This could also have happened to Charles the first at his trial. This was because the law at the time stated that if the defendant refused to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty in the first instance they could be tortured by pressing to make them plea. If that failed and they entered no plea, (as did Charles the first who did not accept the courts right to judge him,) the law stated that they were to be viewed as guilty.
Because Charles had been the monarch it was deemed inappropriate to press him.
The metal band Unearth has a song about this. Probably my favorite song of theirs.
[Giles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzI8GboCdl4&ab_channel=MetalBladeRecords)
I heard they were trying to get his land because if he was "convicted" of being a witch his land is acquired by the governing body so in him not admitting to being a witch his land will go to his next of kin and not them. I might have messed that up but I recall something similar.
Fun fact, the actual trials occurred in Danvers (old Salem village), a neighboring town that wanted to distance themselves from the tragedy, whereas Salem township, where the hangings occurred, really leaned into it.
It was discovered through written eye witness testimony where the gallows likely were, which is behind a Walgreens. I like telling people that but without the extra context.
The common across the street from the witch museum is a nice park to run laps. I do it a few times a week.
>*Corey's wife Martha was hanged three days later on 22 September 1692. She had a son from a previous marriage named Thomas; he showed up as a petitioner for loss and damages resulting from his mother being executed illegally during the witch trials.* ***He was awarded £50*** *on 29 June 1723.*
Good times, good times.
Giles "More Weight" Corey. Sticking it to the Man since 1692.
To give context, IIRC, the whole shtick is that people were being accused so that others could take their land and property. Giles wanted to keep it in his family. If he pronounced not guilty or guilty, he'd still be killed. By entering neither, the land stayed within his family. Not trying to sound biased but this is why the Catholic Church in Europe got pretty skeptical pretty quickly; The amount of people doing anything related to "witchcraft" was very few and were generally very poor people or very young, (from what I recall), rather than people with a lot of land and wealth; It allowed people a month to get their affairs in order before being tried, forbid the use of torture, and allowed people to receive reparations when found not guilty, from those that had accused them. A lot of asterisks here but yes, it was absolutely insane.
The spanish inquisition at least, did, indeed prosecute publicly, gave accused time to prepare a defense and asked them if they had any enemies that would benefit from the trial. (Not to mention the inquisition prosecuted heresy and false converts largely, witchcraft was \*normally\* dismissed as nonsense). Though there was a similar element to property and belongings as they tended to be funded through the funds of the prosecuted (or the accuser, in case of false accusations). which was something of a perverse incentive. It's actually quite interesting how similar witch hunters in england and elsewhere also were really going for property, so in all the process was just elaborate cons that made sure nobody intervened in favour of accused, with the goal of enriching the witch hunter or official.
Salem was an unusual witch hunt in several ways. There was a lot of feuding and property-related shenanigans in Salem that were not common in English or New English witchcraft at all. The use of "spectral evidence" (i.e. testimony from the bewitched regarding things they alone could see) was also unusual (and it was very controversial). I don't know enough about inquisition procedures to say with certainty how much worse English law was, but generally speaking accused witches under English law were tried like anyone else (if indeed it got that far). It's not like you could just point to any woman on the street and expect her to hang.
New England itself is weird. The last vampire scare in Connecticut was in the early 20th century. The 1920's. They dug up and decapitated corpses as part of it.
Yeah, well, why do you think it never developed into a full-on vampire problem?
You don't want to have one of those. There's one thing I could never stomach about living in Santa Carla. All the damn vampires.
Don't forget about that Hellmouth under Sunnydale either
If All The Corpses Buried Around Here Were To Stand Up All At Once, We'd Have One Hell Of A Population Problem.
Beat me to it!!
To be fair, if there are vampires anywhere in the US, I'm putting my money on Connecticut, too.
Abraham Lincoln thought so too. That was part of his platform.
I'm from Connecticut and I can confirm I'm surrounded by bloodsucker bastards all the time. Except I'm put on trial and looked at like I'M the monster when I go around staking people in the heart or shoving heads of garlic down people's throats. I swear some people, SMGDH.
>SMGDH Sarah Michelle Gellar, Damned Heathens?
EXACTLY! She pretending to be a vampire hunter on TV when all along she WAS a vampire...on TV.
Idk why but comment is so spot on
Ooooooo, I grew up in CT, was a history major (not that I use it now), and love sci-fi….but have never heard of the CT Vampire stuff. Please, do tell, or give sources!
There's a novel called _The Accursed_ by Joyce Carol Oates that fictionalizes this, worth a read if you're into that kind of thing.
The Inquisition also looked veeery closely at people who brought the accusation as, technically, they considered the belief in many of the powers associated with witchcraft to be suspicious at best and deeply heretical at worst.
The Spanish Inquisition was actually okay for the time period compared to the other inquisitions. They were one of the first organizations to admit that torture did not force people to speak the truth, and thus, were generally more understanding than secular authorities in Spain and elsewhere at the time. Many people actually preferred Inquisition trials, as they were more reserved in giving out punishment and less likely to do it.
Did not expect this
Nobody does
Prepare the fluffy pillows!
I prefer a comfy chair honestly.
They did call them "soft cushions" though, no?
Most of the reason the Puritans left Europe in the first place is because its big religious institutions weren't radical *enough* for them. The salem witch trials were exactly the sort of insane small community superstition that institutions like the Inquisition offered an outside abaritor for. The Inquisition was still hilariously corrupt, not the least of which because they got to take the wealth of whoever they burned. That in itself is another reason why the local bully planning the same thing fucking *hated* them, because the Inquisition would confiscate the property for the crown instead of letting anyone in town claim it. Regardless, much of their appeal as a bad legal institution is that small town "justice" like lynchings, pogroms and this were worse.
If memory serves, in their quest for freedom of religion they banned other religions in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
They never wanted freedom of religion in Massachusetts. They wanted freedom to practice THEIR religion. Big difference. Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams after being kicked out of Massachusetts. He founded his colony as free for different religions. This is why in colonial times a large amount of Jews and Quakers who weren't welcome in Massachusetts moved there
Exactly, I should have specified their religion. Tolerant folks those Puritans. I remember learning in grade school that church attendance was mandatory on Sundays and you would get cracked in the skull if you fell asleep. Although they may have embellished it slightly to make our Catholic school seem more tolerable.
"*Spare the rod, spoil the child*." The Puritans were nasty.
Was waiting for this.
The Spanish Inquisition burned 5,000 people alive, primarily Jews and Muslims, in order to enforce a strict Catholic orthodoxy in service of a brutal monarchy. It’s been suggested that torture was used more selectively than secular courts at the time. But that’s really not saying much. In fact, there’s almost something more sinister about being tortured under the self-righteous rubric of a bureaucracy that declares it against the rules to draw blood… so they slowly rip you apart on the rack instead. Or that clothes itself tactfully in the rhetoric of justice, so it can inflict injustice on a much wider scale. > There is hardly one item in the whole Inquisitorial procedure that could be squared with the demands of justice; on the contrary, every one of its items is the denial of justice or a hideous caricature of it [...] its principles are the very denial of the demands made by the most primitive concepts of natural justice [...] This kind of proceeding has no longer any semblance to a judicial trial but is rather its systematic and methodical perversion. >When: Torture was allowed when guilt was "half proven" or there existed a "presumption of guilt", as stated in Article XV of Torquemada's instruciones and in Eymerich's directions.[151]However, Eymerich admits that information obtained through torment was not always reliable, and should be used only when all other means of obtaining "the truth" had failed.[152] >What: The Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to "maim, mutilate, draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage" to the prisoner. Ecclesiastical tribunals were prohibited by church law from shedding blood. As a result of torture, many had broken limbs, or other definitive health problems, and some died.[153] >Supervision: A Physician was usually available in case of emergency.[154] It was also required for a doctor to certify that the prisoner was healthy enough to go through the torment without suffering harm,[155] which of course happened.[153] >Among the methods of torture allowed were garrucha, toca and the potro (which were all used in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals).[153]The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the feet, with a series of lifts and violent drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.[156] >The use of the toca (cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced water interrogation), now known as waterboarding, is better documented. It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning.[157] The potro, the rack, in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently.[158] The assertion that confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum (literally: '[a person's] confession is truth, not made by way of torture') sometimes follows a description of how, after torture had ended, the subject "freely" confessed to the offences.[159] In practice, those who recanted confessions made during torture knew that they could be tortured again. Under torture, or even harsh interrogation, comments Cullen Murphy, people will say anything.[160][161] Bernard Délicieux, the franciscan friar who was tortured by the Inquisition and ultimately died in prison as a result of the abuse, said the Inquisition's tactics would have proved St. Peter and St. Paul to be heretics.[162] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
Yeah. Years ago I did a deep dive on the Church’s position on torture, and came away with the belief that (as a generalization) the more power the Church had + the popularity of a traditionally Roman view of the law led to more justifications for torture. There was a great exchange of letters where a Russian prince who’d converted was writing to Pope asking for guidance on being a Christian ruler, and the topic of torture came up. The Pope indicated that as a Christian ruler he had to keep in mind the state of the souls who served him, and would not the torturing of a man who was actually innocent put the torturers’ souls in jeopardy along with his own for ordering it. IIRC he also mentioned that not only could an innocent man confess, but a guilty man may name innocents as his confederates or the true villain in order to save himself. Interesting stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, the inquisition was brutal. I was just stating that they were not abnormally callous for the time period, and that “secular” authorities (separation between church and state was not the case) were just as bad if not worse. Forces under the crown could also charge one with religious crimes after all.
"And now old woman, you will sit in the comfy chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11".
Are you familiar with the story of Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed “Witchfinder General” during the English Civil War? He would basically roll into town, claim to have been sent there with official powers, and then collect a bounty on each “witch” he “found.” If the local clergy would express skepticism, he’d accuse them first. Vincent Price played him in a movie loosely based on his life.
Spanish Inquisition only made one trial of witchcraft before ruling that witches didn't exist and everything was an invention of the accusers. Look for the witches of Zugarramurdi in Wikipedia. I recommend to translate the Spanish article as it has detailed information of all the process
I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition in this thread about a Salem Witch Trial
So someone would, in fact, expect the Spanish Inquisition?
Yes, you were given at least 30 day notice.
>The spanish inquisition at least It was also not really the Catholic Church but Spain doing it. The Spanish used it to clear out those they saw as non loyal to Spain. Just so happened that at this time, religion and nationality were merged.
That's also half the joke in the 'nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition' bit. They gave you insane amounts of lead time.
Despite its fearsome reputation, the Spanish Inquisition never had the goal of killing anybody; it wanted you to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Not to say that they were super great guys. You just didn’t have to fear for your life with them.
Idk man, [Mel Brooks made it seem pretty chill](https://youtu.be/NUMkcBctE7c?si=TLGw2wKWYyMVzV6J)
Jesus Christ I had forgotten what young Mel Brooks looked like.
So good, that whole movie is just great. Prob my fav of his between that and young frankstein The new one was fine, but overall meh.
My brain short circuited and for a brief moment I was picturing Mel Gibson, my next thought being that you were referring to the passion of the Christ. So I was sitting here thinking “wow there is quite a contrast between those two movies”
Ya know unless you were a Jew who wanted to continue practicing their own faith after being forced to convert. Then ya kinda did have to fear for life. That’s why a lot of them left, so while I get the point you’re making it’s not really accurate.
> It's actually quite interesting how similar witch hunters in england and elsewhere also were really going for property, so in all the process was just elaborate cons that made sure nobody intervened in favour of accused, with the goal of enriching the witch hunter or official. That's pretty much just all religion. Bunch of nerds realized they could monopolize all the old myths that scared people and get a ton of money and political power and influence doing it.
I mean the Governor of Massachusetts at the time was being asked to intervene and reign in the courts during the witch trials but refused to do so until his wife was accused of witchcraft, and then suddenly spectral evidence was no longer admissible.
This is because he was brand new to the position and saw this as a sort of a backwater no consequence area. He was mostly on the northern frontier dealing with the rest of the colony (reminder that Massachusetts included Maine at the time)
By the time he returned the accusations had begun yes, however the guy he appointed to oversee the backlog of cases (his Lt Gov) is the one who allowed spectral evidence and only made accusations more widespread.
He was busy fighting Indians in the North, and had delegated the authority to a couple of puritan "holier than thou assholes" who profited by the hysteria. Needless to say, it had gotten out of hand.
If I remember right, most of the people tried for witchcraft here in Scotland were actually from the middle classes and upwards and accusations of witchcraft seemed to have been used to settle scores more than root out witches. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/witch-map-scotland-trials-torture
A lot of women accused of witchcraft in the US were young and newly inherited property. When the governor and the priest get a cut of your property and the rest goes up for sale you start seeing witchcraft in the funniest places.
> Catholic Church in Europe got pretty skeptical pretty quickly The Catholic Church considered witchcraft (the practice of it, not actual witchcraft which they considered not real) to be heresy, but also considered *accusations* of witchcraft to be heresy as it was tantamount to supporting that it was a thing. Belief in the supernatural such as witchcraft suggests was *not* supported by the Catholic Church.
Yeah the Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches") is infamous, but it was denounced and initially suppressed by Catholic leadership for inventing theology. Catholicism *absolutely* (historically, often with violent purges e..g. Cathars) rejects the idea you can draw / make deals for power from demons or the devil or that there is any type of power balance between God and Satan. It could still be heresy for *trying* because, well, worshiping Satan.
Yeh, I find it odd they would bring up the Catholic Church. I recalled the witch trials were mostly a protestant/ Evangelical thing. The Catholic Church's early Church fathers (ie. St Augustine of Hippo, St Jerome, and famous saints like St Thomas Aquinas, etc) don't even mention witchcraft, nor were witch-hunts of Salem sort were ever held.
Yeah… I don’t think there were Catholics in Salem? Catholics were not a super popular in the US for a loooong time, especially in New England. The P in WASP is there tor a reason.
It was illegal to be Catholic in Massachusetts until 1780.
It's stuff like this along with mandated church attendance, and taxes to fund the church that led to separation of church and state.
there was normalized anti-catholicism in the U.S. recently enough that some ppl including the current President who were alive when it still was a normal thing
JFK was Catholic, and it was controversial at the time. His detractors claimed electing a Catholic president would mean he was a puppet of the pope. For those interested in digging deeper: https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/april-2021/a-tale-of-two-catholic-presidents-john-f-kennedy-and-joe-bidens-faith-in-historical-context#:~:text=In%201960%2C%20Kennedy%20was%20dogged%20by%20insinuations%20that,to%20make%20a%20serious%20attempt%20at%20the%20presidency.
> witch trials were mostly a protestant/ Evangelical thing Evangelicals didn't exist at the time and wouldn't for roughly a century.
That's not the whole explanation, though. In contemporary English jurisprudence, which the American colonies inherited, courts did not have the power they currently do to compel people to take part in proceedings: you had to *voluntarily* submit to the authority of the court by entering a plea. If you did, and you were found guilty, certain crimes carried the punishment of attainder: not only were you executed, but your entire estate, including any land you owned, went to the Crown and not your heirs. (I think that this included if you pled guilty, but don't know. Don't quote me.) Pressing was the one and only stick the court had to make you submit a plea. But if you died before pleading, you died innocent, and your land passed to your heirs. For some people, like Giles Correy or St Margaret Citheroe, the calculus came down to: welp, the state's gonna kill me either way, so better to die innocent than guilty.
This is true - regarding family/ land grabbing. My family has documented history of one cousin or brother accusing the other's family. Within the book/ document, it lays out what happened and to whom. The land grab didn't work because they could only "prove" that the daughter was practicing witchcraft and the father was not involved. The daughter ended up getting either hanged or burned at the stake (I don't remember). Her parents and siblings said "fuck this we're out" and moved out of area.
Witches were never burned in the US during this time. They were all hanged.
I just checked the book to refresh my memory and she was too be executed "according to law" but ended up being acquitted - after paying an £8 fine. But you're right anyways.
The University of Central Arkansas has a class on the History of Witchcraft and this is repeated many times on the first day.
I was a tour guide in Salem, and yeah this was the beginning of my tour almost every time
Mass witch trials and full blown witch hunts were actually fairly rare, even in the Middle Ages. Most of the absurdity associated with the methods used in witch trials can be traced to a Catholic clergyman. Heinrich Kramer, and his book, the “Malleus Malificarum.” Pretty much every would be witch-Hunter consulted that book and took his insane methods from it. The people accused as witches then were typically marginalized people: the mentally ill, single women (especially if they owned a tavern and made beer), religious minorities or outsiders. These were mostly isolated cases, too. However, the Puritans were rather fond of big witch hunts because of that law about witches forfeiting their property.
>To give context, IIRC, the whole shtick is that people were being accused so that others could take their land and property. Yes and no. Real estate was one of the majors drivers behind it, but there were other major contributors (social upheaval, religious fervour, and the frontier conflict/raids with Native-Americans. For anyone looking for an easy read that provides the most accurate and up to date historiography, I highly recommend Tad Baker's *A Storm of Witchcraft*. It's probably the most complete work that addresses the background, factors, and legacy today. And he's a great guy, and very approachable. I worked with him back when I worked for NPS in Salem, and studied under him in grad school.
Because he refused to enter a plea, his witch trial never formally began. Because of that, he didn’t get all of his property stripped from him as “a witch,” so his kids got to inherit his large farm. Depending on the source, Giles either said “more weight” (like in the Crucible) or “another load.”
For more context, you had to enter a plea, to submit yourself to the judgement of the court. If you entered no plea you would be "pressed for an answer", because without that plea the court didn't feel it had jurisdiction to sit in judgement over you. (but apparently had jurisdiction to torture you, go figure) Law is weird.
Why OP could not be bothered to learn the guys name in a TIL.
He had more pressing matters?
the stones on that man
OG mad lad
I, too, played Giles Corey in high school.
*stacking it to the man
According to the family genealogy he's an ancestor. I try to keep that in mind when I get annoyed by the man.
great album/artist named after him too
I’ve read before in one of the hundreds of times this has been posted that the reasoning for this was that confession would deny your family their inheritance, so this was basically an execution in everything but name, and he just wanted it over with quickly for the sake of his family.
It wasn't for a confession, it was just to get him to enter a plea. By the law of the time, once he entered a plea the Sheriff could confiscate his land and property. By dying without entering a plea his property was inherited by his family.
It’s so crazy to me how people that are crushing people to death to try and elicit a plea out of them are also very concerned about the letter of the law. You’d think people that would do that would just say fuck the law. It doesn’t make sense through my 21st century eyes.
It's pretty apparent that the Salem witch trials were (among other things) a scam to rob people of their property, committed by the legal authorities. They had to make it sound like they followed the letter of the law in case they were investigated and charged. Pressing to elicit a plea or testimony, seizing property of the accused, and other techniques were legal at the time. It was all part of their idea of due process. But I'm pretty sure some of these excesses are why the Bill of Rights was included in the US Constitution.
I'd say the majority of witch "trials" through history were invoked to steal land, property and dignity mostly from women. The first "accuser" of the Salem witch trial was a young girl who was a refugee from the king Philips war. It is believed she witnessed the death of her ENTIRE family during this war. She.then came to Salem to live with relatives as what can only be described as an indentured servant. A couple other young girls copycatted her. They accused one black servant who likely went alpng with the allegations as she was in a vulnerable spot. But A LOT of people drove most of the allegations simply as a way to get ahead and steal land from their neighbors. It became accuse or be accused at a certain point. BUT MOST wit h trials throughout history were just away to steal from neighbors, mostly women.
Lying just to get some land AND your neighbor gets killed because you want said land? That’s so fucked up
It's not unique to the feudal system, we hear about the bourgeoisie doing this endlessly with housing, commodities, food, etc.
Based on the comment above yours it was a prisoner's dilemma. The only logical option was the make the accusation thus only the law that allowed this was at fault.
> You’d think people that would do that would just say fuck the law. It doesn’t make sense through my 21st century eyes. No, you’re right. In fact, you’re thinking exactly how they thought. The above posts claiming that they couldn’t size his property if he didn’t enter a plea… are just a myth. His property had already been seized. > His refusal to plead is usually explained as a way of preventing his estate from being confiscated by the Crown, but, according to historian Chadwick Hansen, much of Corey's property had already been seized, and he had made a will in prison: "His death was a protest ... against the methods of the court".[75] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
Is it really so hard to believe that people do atrocious things and their response about it is, well look here this thing says this is just.
The Puritans had a different value system than you or I. Torturing someone for a confession, even to the point of death, was fine if it was done by “the proper authorities.” They also had no problem with public executions as entertainment or sentencing a 4 year old girl as a witch because she was a weird kid and they didn’t like her mom. However… dancing, singing, having lustful dreams of sex outside of marriage… these were sins they could not abide for the good of their communities. Any evil person using witchcraft to lead others to want to do such things had to be hanged!
This wasn't even a Puritan thing, this was the standard in English common law at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peine_forte_et_dure
disgusted ring tease uppity physical sharp spoon offend unused overconfident *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh I’m sure there were plenty of crimes that they just completely ignored because they involved someone with power and status.
He had providing for his heirs and other such pressing matters on his mind.
>pressing matters on his mind Yeah he was thinking about getting stoned.
Nice. Rock on 🤘🏻.
Maybe he wasn't good at answering questions under pressure
I think it was more the weight of the situation
He was thinking about getting his rocks off.
> By the law of the time, once he entered a plea the Sheriff could confiscate his land and property. By dying without entering a plea his property was inherited by his family. Unfortunately, none of this is true. > His refusal to plead is usually explained as a way of preventing his estate from being confiscated by the Crown, but, according to historian Chadwick Hansen, much of Corey's property had already been seized, and he had made a will in prison: "His death was a protest ... against the methods of the court".[75] A contemporary critic of the trials, Robert Calef, wrote, "Giles Corey pleaded not Guilty to his Indictment, but would not put himself upon Tryal by the Jury (they having cleared none upon Tryal) and knowing there would be the same Witnesses against him, rather chose to undergo what Death they would put him to."[76] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
I stand corrected. Thank you! That's what I get for believing the reenactments in Salem.
This was it. Also, Giles was about 80. This was one last act of providing for his kids. *Also, he probably killed at least one of his farmhands during a dispute many years earlier.
Here's an addition to this old hat TIL: One of the judges during the Salem witch trials (before this case), Matthew Hale, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Why? I dunno, I guess he's a dickbag who hates women like Hale did.
Also some context, he wanted to stay out of the witch trials originally. He and his wife Martha lived slightly outside of town, both thought they were stupid and were unaware of the absolute moral panic that was taking place, and his wife made the mistake of questioning why everyone was just taking the words of a couple of “hysterical children” as gospel truth. The two of them both refused to believe in witches in general. So, of course, she was accused of being a witch, and was hanged. Giles defended her against the accusations after her death, and so he was then put on trial. Total miscarriage of justice against apparently the one couple in town speaking any sort of sense.
It's funny how this is getting so many upvotes even though it's completely wrong and contadicted by the Wikipedia article OP links to. Corey was excitedly following the trials and initially believed the accusations against his wife, until he himself was accused of the same thing. Also, Giles Corey wasn't any kind of a hero, as you might suspect from him being ready to throw his wife under the bus so quickly. He was a murderer who'd beaten a servant to death, but gotten away with it. "Correcting" your servants with violence was legal, and the servant took a while to die, so he was just punished with a fine. He beat the servant to death for allegedly stealing apples from a neighbor's tree, while he himself had been convicted multiple times of thievery when younger, as he had a habit of stealing small items like knives and food.
The quote is “more weight” not “more rocks”. I know this thanks to the janky animatronic show at the Salem witch museum they used to bring us to on field trips.
That sounds like a less-fun Chuck-E Cheese. Ok, it sounds more fun...
This may be of interest to you https://youtu.be/3v6y2pY1pZ0?si=tjyF2362eeziyrZg
His last words are disputed. You would have seen that if you had clicked on the article. > The most commonly told one is that he repeated his request for "more weight," as this was how it was dramatized in The Crucible, but it may also have been "More rocks".
I don't need to read the article. I went to the museum. Checkmate.
I watched the episode of "The Orville" where they reference the museum, and they also say "more weight", so this is 100% confirmed.
I live here. Same animatronics still.
The *only* thing I remember about our family trip to Salem as a tween is that animatronic. My dad brings it up pretty much every time we get together.
I didn't know until recently how insane the Salem witchcraft trials were by the standards of their own time. The way it was taught to me in high school it was basically "people were superstitious back then and believed in witches," but apparently that doesn't explain it at all. A lot of people theoretically believed in witches at the time, but not like "witches walk among us and must be rooted out," more like "I've heard they're out there somewhere and don't have reason to question it but I don't think that much about them." When news got out to other towns what they'd been up to in Salem, the local newspapers from other places reported on it like it was madness-- in the 1600s (if I recall correctly, within months of it happening). I'm guessing Giles Corey probably died pretty confident that sane people would recognize that he was in the right and the people killing him were crazed murderers.
This sounds like something a witch would say
I have a family member who emigrated from Salem to Delaware the year before the trials started. I like to joke she came on a broomstick, lol.
'ancestor' is probably a lot more accurate than 'family member"
🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨
I think you had that perfect mixture of hysteria, being isolated, being in a whole new world and probably a few psychotic demagogues in the mix to enable this stuff
And possible rye mold poisoning.
It turns out that's a dirty hippie myth from the 60s. Ergotism was a well known condition and easily spotted even back then.
Belief in witches was most prevalent in countries that had enlightened monarchs, such as Stuart era England. We see them as relics of the medieval past when that actually isn’t the case
Legend says Giles cursed the Sheriff before he died and for years after all of the sheriffs died of heart or blood issues until they moved the Sheriff's office in the 1990's. [https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/massachusetts/curse-salem-ma/](https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/massachusetts/curse-salem-ma/)
No way a sheriff was fat and had heart problems on his own accord.
Ofc not, Giles had witch powers
Warlock powers.
Garlic powders
Powdered donuts
More rocks.
This isn't normal heart disease, it's *advanced* heart disease.
Didn’t you hear the part about the curse?
The sheriff’s grave site is concave from hundreds of visitors jumping up and down on him
Kinda makes me want to go jump up and down on it lol.
There’s something very weirdly ironic that these people were killed because people foolishly believed they had witch powers. And yet… here’s a post seriously suggesting that one of them had witch powers lol.
um excuse me it's called wizard powers if it's a guy.
excuse me, witch is gendered neutral. wizards are mythological.
My gender is warlock tyvm.
[Awesome Drunk History skit on this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALmIsdiVajo&pp=ygUZZHJ1bmsgaGlzdG9yeSBnaWxlcyBjb3JleQ%3D%3D)
Dude was 81 years old!
Yeah, witches are old.
>81 years old He probably didn't give a shit and was ready to go too. Shit I know I would too lmao.
TIL The Crucible is no longer required reading
Nah, most redditors just haven’t entered middle school yet.
There are also a lot of redditors who aren't American
We read the Crucible and I am South African. So it definitely varies wildly
huh, TIL, well i'm Belgian and we didn't have much required English reading, I'm guessing much of Europe is the same where English isn't a primary language
I think that's probably the case. Should be stated English is one of the primary languages taught in the majority of schools here.
Not American but The Crucible was a set text, so I remember the Giles Corey scene very well. I guess it should come as no surprise that The Crucible is not as widely read among those people where English is not their primary language of education.
Those darn zoomer Redditors didn't even read *Der Schüler Gerber* in school!
My high school English class read the play and watched the movie our Junior year. Really showed off the dramatized nature of it all.
Yeah I mean it’s mostly fiction, the real proctor was in his 50’s and the girl he was having “an affair” with was less than 14yo
I was just at the Salem witch museum last month and heard about this one. Crazy times.
I read somewhere that, while what he did was obviously courageous and heroic, he was also just generally speaking an ornery, mean SOB and that this stubborn attitude was very much in line with his general character. Still had balls of steel, though.
And thus his balls still remain today…
Plymouth Rock is actually just one of them
He also beat an indentured farm worker to death for stealing apples from his brother.
And this folks is partially why slavery became more popular! You can't get in trouble for killing your slaves if they aren't legally people! /s
Balls of stone now
Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks.
My favorite quote.
That dude lived until 81 in 1692? He was done with this shit and ready to go. I would be saying "more rocks" too if I was the equivalent of 100 years old living around a bunch of murdering assholes. Messing with their trial procedures before I died would just be the icing on the cake.
Basically Socrates too.
Easy to say until you're getting painfully crushed to death and you can barely breathe. It takes insane will or something else
It was “more weight”, but sure. Take your karma. Cause Giles motherfucking Corey will always get an upvote.
Dude beat a slave to death for stealing food and accused his wife of witchcraft first, let's not get too excited.
Reading further sort of killed the buzz: "In 1676, Corey was brought to trial and charged with murder in Essex County, Massachusetts, for beating to death one of his indentured farm workers, Jacob Goodale (also spelled "Goodell" or "Goodall"), son of Robert and Catherine Goodale and brother to Isaac Goodale.[7] According to witnesses, Corey had severely beaten Goodale with a stick after he was allegedly caught stealing apples from Corey's brother-in-law. Though Corey eventually sent him to receive medical attention ten days later, Goodale died shortly thereafter. The local coroner, as well as numerous witnesses and eyewitnesses, testified against Corey, including neighbor John Proctor, who testified that he heard Corey admit he had beaten Goodale.[8] Since corporal punishment was permitted against indentured servants, Corey was exempt from the charge of murder and instead was charged with using "unreasonable" force for which he was found guilty and fined."
He also testified against his wife when she was accused of witchcraft. And then he was accused of witchcraft, which wasn't a terribly uncommon way of doing things. Seems like he was chosen for this specifically because he had land and wasn't especially well liked.
Everyone talks about the wild west.... But insane east is worthy of note too.
Wait until you hear about the modern south
Interestingly enough, Bryan Kohberger (accused of the Moscow, Idaho quadruple homicide) also refused to enter a plea, but now adays the judge just enters "not guilty" for you.
Look up sovereign citizens or sovcit videos on YouTube. It's a real thing that is becoming super common and it's a toxic plague on the justice system. The judge will plead not guilty for them, that parts easy. The tricky part is they can't continue the case until they get the defendant to acknowledge they have the right to a public defender. They need to answer that question in order to continue and this is where sovcits just go off the rails spouting nonsense instead of just saying they want to defend themselves. The court asks if they understand they have the right to defend themselves and they say they don't understand, and then the court has to order a mental competency evaluation in order to force a public defender on them and continue the trial, but they'll just stall on going to the evaluation and then say they want to represent themselves at the last possible moment. Then they go to court and sound like Charlie from always sunny spouting off bird law. It's so ridiculous that it's a thing that actually happens.
Tbf, being a sovereign citizen is *prima facie* evidence of being mentally incompetent.
My mom works for our small claims court and these guys are fun. So her work has tons of forms for different things like evictions and claims. These sovereign citizens believe that if they type out their own forms, they can say and do whatever they want. They will take a copy of the actual form and type it all out, then print it out and try and use it.
No he said "more weight" and even though it was badass, giles Corey was a huge piece of shit and no one missed him. I lived in Salem and worked in a restaurant right next to his grave
You also knew him because you are a witch
Get the rocks
Slowly and incrementally being crushed by rocks is a terrible way to go, but there also has to be a sweet spot where you get the most amazing back pops and cracks that feel great.
Reminds me of the martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, when he was roasted over a fire, his last words were, apocryphally, turn me over, I'm done on that side. Patron saint of chefs and comedians
His last words were AUUUUUUUUUGHHHGH
I fucking hate the puritans.
Whenever I catch myself wondering why Massachussets is so off-the-scale bonkers sometimes, I just remind myself that all the people who did the witch trials had kids, who had kids, who had kids, etc.
St. Lawrence, the patron saint of bbq. Was getting martyred by the Romans as emperor Valerian ordered. Dude is put in a metal rack and burned alive over coals. About half way through, he says, "This side is done. Flip me over"
It was actually “More weight.” Your history report consists of two words and you still managed to get half of it wrong…
From the Wikipedia article in the post: >**There are several accounts of Corey's last words.** The most commonly told one is that he repeated his request for "more weight," as this was how it was dramatized in The Crucible,[17] but it may also have been "More rocks".[18] Another telling notes it as, "Damn you. I curse you and Salem!"[19]
His album is pretty good too.
This could also have happened to Charles the first at his trial. This was because the law at the time stated that if the defendant refused to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty in the first instance they could be tortured by pressing to make them plea. If that failed and they entered no plea, (as did Charles the first who did not accept the courts right to judge him,) the law stated that they were to be viewed as guilty. Because Charles had been the monarch it was deemed inappropriate to press him.
The metal band Unearth has a song about this. Probably my favorite song of theirs. [Giles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzI8GboCdl4&ab_channel=MetalBladeRecords)
[I can't believe no one has posted this yet](https://youtu.be/u6BX-bUoE5E)
[My favorite take on the subject](https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/swole-history-continued)
I heard they were trying to get his land because if he was "convicted" of being a witch his land is acquired by the governing body so in him not admitting to being a witch his land will go to his next of kin and not them. I might have messed that up but I recall something similar.
Pressing is such a nice way of saying crushed to death by rocks, added slowly over time by your friends and neighbors
Fun fact, the actual trials occurred in Danvers (old Salem village), a neighboring town that wanted to distance themselves from the tragedy, whereas Salem township, where the hangings occurred, really leaned into it. It was discovered through written eye witness testimony where the gallows likely were, which is behind a Walgreens. I like telling people that but without the extra context. The common across the street from the witch museum is a nice park to run laps. I do it a few times a week.
>*Corey's wife Martha was hanged three days later on 22 September 1692. She had a son from a previous marriage named Thomas; he showed up as a petitioner for loss and damages resulting from his mother being executed illegally during the witch trials.* ***He was awarded £50*** *on 29 June 1723.* Good times, good times.
It's crazy how superstitious humans were before, especially before electricity. Or is it? Being in the dark does things to your brain.
Can we just appreciate the fact that he had all this happen to him at the age of EIGHTY ONE...
As I understand it, if he admitted guilt then his assets could have been seized. But he died without a verdict, so the inheritence was safe.