The Ruin of All Witches

Starred review from August 1, 2022
Historian Gaskill (Between Two Worlds) combines first-rate historical research with a driving narrative in this captivating study of a married couple accused of witchcraft in 17th-century New England. Mary Lewis and Hugh Parsons arrived separately in Springfield, Mass., in 1645 and married later that year. According to Gaskill, the community’s growth and prosperity also brought “competition and unrest,” as well as fears about external enemies, political instabilities, and diversions from Puritan orthodoxy. Residents became convinced that a series of odd occurrences meant the devil was in Springfield, and suspicion soon fell on the Parsons. Mary, who had three children by 1650 and likely suffered from postpartum depression, didn’t behave like a proper Puritan wife, while Hugh was beset by health problems and bad dreams, and exhibited a lack of emotion following his son’s death. (He was also accused of causing a cow to act strangely and knives to disappear.) Though the General Court in Boston found the evidence of the Parsons’ witchcraft insufficient, Mary died in prison awaiting execution for the self-confessed killing of one of her sons. Hugh, meanwhile, moved with their daughter to Rhode Island, where he prospered. Gaskill’s vibrant portraits of Springfield community members, especially town founder and magistrate William Pynchon, an amateur theologian whose life “had been stalked by war, hunger and pestilence,” and lucid explanations of Puritan theology and Massachusetts’s intertwined laws of church and state make for dense yet riveting reading. This portrait of early America fascinates. Illus.

September 1, 2022

Known as one of Britain's leading experts in witchcraft history, Gaskill (emeritus, history, Univ. of East Anglia; Witchfinders) writes a new work about witch hunts and trials. He covers the 1651 case against married couple Hugh and Mary Parsons and their trial's outcome in great detail. The two lived in Springfield, MA. Hugh was described as moody, taciturn, and avaricious, whereas Mary was viewed as delusional, perhaps suffering from paranoid schizophrenia or postpartum psychosis. During that time, other community members started seeing visions, children passed away, food spoiled, and cows gave tainted milk. Some blamed these events on witchcraft and put people on trial for it. Mary was accused of being a witch; she accused Hugh; and they were both put on trial. The ethos and culture of the Springfield community is based on the author's extensive research. References are included for further reading. This is an intriguing, vivid, and often frightening study of witch hunts, consequent trials, and the community's psychological state and how their suspicions led to destructive consequences. VERDICT This should be of special interest to those fascinated by history and research.--Lucy Heckman

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2022
A contextually rich history of the first witch panic during a tumultuous time in Massachusetts in 1651. A leading British scholar of witchcraft, Gaskill delves into an Early American version at a fraught time of transition between the medieval and modern worlds. "Witchcraft was not some wild superstition," he writes, "but a serious expression of disorder embedded in politics, religion and law....Witches were tangible symbols of this chaos." Following in the wake of political, religious, and economic turmoil in Great Britain, which they were fleeing for land and economic opportunity, the Puritans and other dissenters faced enormous toil and hardship in the small, hard-bitten communities like Springfield, founded in the late 1630s by trader and entrepreneur William Pynchon as an industrious hub in the region. The settlers' lives were "dominated by piety and toil," and "beneath the surface of most settlements...coursed dark currents of wrath." Teeming with envy and contention between neighbors, Springfield, with its 50 households, erupted in discord in 1651. One of the causes was the faltering marriage between Hugh Parsons, a "turbulent English brickmaker and jack-of-all-trades," and his wife, Mary, likely caused by a combination of overwork, spite, and mental illness. Mary, "depressive and delusional," accused not only her neighbors of witchcraft, but also her husband. Within an atmosphere of heightened suspicion and bad omens and accusations among other citizens of the small town, Hugh and Mary were both arrested and tried in Boston for witchcraft. Gaskill presents a meticulous, multilayered snapshot of this smoldering society, combining history, theology, and psychological speculation. Around the same time, Pynchon wrote and published a controversial tract that questioned Calvinist orthodoxy, and he was charged with heresy by authorities and sent back to England. Both trials, held in the same week, "pricked a primal fear," an element that Gaskill investigates insightfully throughout the book. An elucidating study on the forces that fed witchcraft hysteria in early America.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2022
Professor of Early Modern History Gaskill (Between Two Worlds, 2014) paints an incredibly detailed picture of life in colonial New England--specifically Springfield, Massachusetts--and the spate of witchcraft accusations there starting in 1651. The lives of accused witches Mary and Hugh Parsons drive the narrative, often with such a convincing voice that the text bears a fictionlike quality. Odd happenings, a string of illnesses, and the sudden deaths of several children set the town on edge, with the melancholic Mary and the angry, vengeance-driven Hugh falling in the townsfolks' sights. Accusations of witchcraft are framed within the context of life in Massachusetts as well as the law, religion, and social constructs of the era, showing the ensuing witchcraft trials not as panicked fear of the occult but the ultimate culmination of time, place, personality, personal history, written law, and difficult times. The Ruin of All Witches is the perfect read for history enthusiasts, those interested in the history of witchcraft accusations, and readers of women's history.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.