"Burroughs was apprehended in Wells, in Maine; so say his children. They also inform us that he was buried by his friends, after the inhuman treatment of his body from the hands of his executioners at Gallows Hill, in Salem.
"He is represented as being a small, black-haired dark-complexioned man, of quick passions and great strength. His power of muscle, which discovered itself early when Burroughs was a member of Cambridge College, and which we notice in the slight rebutting evidence offered by his friends at his trial, convinces us that he lifted the gun, and the barrel of molasses, by the power of his own well-strung muscles, and not by any help from the devil, as was supposed by the Mathers, both father and son. Alas, that a man's own strong arm should prove his ruin!"
We shall show shortly that this commentator here overlooked an important point. Burroughs himself made statement, in his own defense, that an Indian stood by and lifted the gun; therefore the chief question is not whether Burroughs was himself strong enough to lift it as alleged, but whether he told the truth when he said that he had help. The chief question bears upon his veracity, not upon his strength. The Mathers believed him on that point.
The allegations in the indictment were for witchcrafts invisibly practiced upon members of the famous CIRCLE, and not for visible feats of strength. All the girls testified to seeing and suffering from his apparition. Also some who confessed to having been _witches_ themselves (for some accused ones were over-persuaded to speak of their own clairvoyant observations and experiences as witchcrafts, and therefore of themselves as witches),--some such testified thus, as Mather says (p. 279, _Salem Witchcraft_). "He was accused by eight of the confessing witches as being head actor at some of their hellish rendezvous, and who had promise of being a king in Satan's kingdom now going to be erected; he was accused by nine persons for extraordinary liftings, ... and for other things, ... until about thirty testimonies were brought in against him."
Mather's account of the witchcraft at Salem was drawn up at the request of William Phips, then governor of the province; and two prominent judges at the trials indorsed it as follows:--