Massachusetts repents
1697 · Event
The colony keeps an official day of fasting for the tragedy — and Judge Samuel Sewall stands in church while his confession of guilt is read aloud, the only trial judge ever to apologise; twelve jurors sign their own. Convictions are reversed and restitution paid by 1711. The trials become America's founding parable of due process — replayed by Arthur Miller whenever it is needed again.
On these timelines: The Salem Witch Trials, USA, Master, Christianity, Major Religions
More from The Salem Witch Trials
- Salem witch trials (1692)
- Giles Corey is pressed to death (1692)
- Tituba's confession lights the fire (1692)
- The afflictions begin in the parsonage (1692)
- The court is dissolved (1692)
- Bridget Bishop is hanged (1692)
- The court of Oyer and Terminer (1692)
Around 1697
- Reign of Peter the Great (1682)
- Siege of Vienna (1683) (1683)
- Great Plague of London (1665)
- Glorious Revolution (1688)
- Jacobite rising of 1745 (1745)
- Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687)
- Walpole's premiership (1721)
- Peace of Westphalia (1648)
- English Bill of Rights (1689)
- Peter the Great (1672)