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Text Box: Other Important People Involved in the Witch Trials               Thomas Brattle Thomas Brattle was a well-to-do Boston merchant who at one time served as treasurer of Harvard College. Brattle was well respected in the Boston community. In October 1692 he wrote a letter to an English clergyman critical of the Salem Witch Trials. Soon the letter was being circulated in Boston. Brattle argued brilliantly against the questionable legality and procedures of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. He ends his letter by saying, "I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our land."                 Cotton Mather Cotton Mather, the minister of Boston’s Old North Church, believed in witchcraft. In 1688 he had investigated the suspicious behavior of several children in Boston. He concluded that witchcraft was responsible for the strange behavior of these children. Mather was a friend of three of the Salem Witchcraft judges. He used his influence to persuade these judges to consider spectral evidence and to accept the confessions of witches as good evidence when examining someone accused of being a witch.                 Governor William Phips William Phips was born in Kennebec, Maine, the youngest of 26 children. He received virtually no formal education. In 1687 Phips led an expedition that recovered treasure from 16 Spanish ships. He kept a portion of that treasure, shared some with his investors and gave 10 percent to the king. Because of this the king knighted Phips and made him Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. When Phips assumed command he concluded that a terrible outbreak of witchcraft had taken hold in the colony. The following excerpt from one of his letters expresses how he felt and what he did: When I first arrived I found this province miserably harrassed with a most Horrible witchcraft or Possession of Devills which had broke in upon severall Townes, some score of poor people were taken with preternaturall torments some scalded with brimstone some had pins stuck in their flesh others hurried into the fire and water and some dragged out of their houses and carried over the tops of trees and hills for many Miles together; it hath been represented to mee much like that of Sweden about thirty years agoe, and there were many committed to prision upon suspicion of Whichcraft before my arrivall. The loud cried and clamours of the friends of the afflicted people with the advice of the Deputy Governor and many others prevailed with mee to give a Commission of Oyer and Terminer for discovering what whichcraft might be at the bottome or whether it were not a possession. The chief Justice in the Commission was the Deputy Governour and the rest were persons of the best prudence and figure that could then be pitched upon. Phips was not fit for the job of governor. After appointing the Court of Oyer and Terminer, he left for England and basically ignored the matter until upon his return he discovered that a great many injustices had been done. When the governor’s own wife was accused of witchcraft, Phips ordered that spectral evidence could no longer be used as testimony. Shortly after that he called a halt to the arrest of any more so-called witches.  See Spectral Evidence