What Are The Causes Of The Salem Witch Trials Essay

Salem Witch Trials

The year is 1692 and everywhere you go, you hear rumors of people being witches and others being bewitched. News spreads around your small town of Salem, Massachusetts and sooner than you know your friends and family are being accused of witchcraft and being killed. How would you feel if this was happening to you? Would you think it's a good lawful execution , or a bad unlawful monstrosity? In a small period of time over 100 men and women were accused of witchcraft and out of the 100, 20 were executed by the Jury and countless others died in jail. This series of events will come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, but what were the causes of this? Well, there are multiple factors that contributed to the trials but, there are three main groups that caused these Trials. Theses three groups included the government, the church, and the “afflicted girls”/ accusers. These three small groups will be the cause of 20 deaths, 100 men and women being accused, and countless

Little by little, they had started to hint at apologies and in 1679 the jurors signed a petition “admitting that they had convicted and condemned people to death on the basis of insufficient evidence.” Another thing that happened after the trials, was the change in Salem’s governor. The governor was replaced with his lieutenant, William Stoughton. William Stoughton was a judge at the trials and served until the court was closed. Even though he made some questionable decisions at times he was a relatively fair judge. He stayed in the position of governor until his death in 1701. Although, before his death he issued a bill where the heir of the accused witch would be given a sum of 600 pound and also declared the trials unlawful. Finally in 1752 Salem Massachusetts was renamed to Danver Massachusetts in order to leave the Salem Witch Trials in the