This petition availed nothing, except perhaps to delay the trial. The poor demented woman was kept in prison until the next January, when she was indicted, tried, and acquitted. Before this January Court, a great change had occurred in the public opinion. A principal reason for such a change is mentioned by Hutchinson: ‘Ordinarily, persons of the lowest rank in life have had the misfortune to be charged with witchcrafts; and although many such had suffered, yet there remained in prison a number of women, of as respectable families as any in the towns where they lived, and several persons, of still superior rank, were hinted at by the pretended bewitched, or by the confessing witches. Some had been publicly named. Dudley Bradstreet, a justice of the peace, who had been appointed one of President Dudley's Council, and who was son to the worthy old governor, then living, found it necessary to abscond. Having been remiss in prosecuting, he had been charged by some of the afflicted as a confederate. His brother, John Bradstreet, was forced to fly also. Calef says it was intimated that Sir William Phips's lady was among the accused. It is certain that one who pretended to be bewitched at Boston, where the infection was beginning to spread, charged the Secretary of the colony of Connecticut. Mrs. Hale, wife to the minister of Beverly, was accused also; which caused her husband to alter his judgment, and to be less active in prosecutions than he had been.’2
