![[PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS-BAY] PHIPS, WILLIAM, (Sir). Signed appointment of Jonas Prescot[t] as a Lieutenant of a Foot Company of Militia in the town of Groton, 13th June, 1692.](/sites/default/files/styles/auction_slider/public/images/lots/2022-03-22/1538880.jpg?itok=AP07JmPi)
Lot Details
Lot 39
[PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS-BAY] PHIPS, WILLIAM, (Sir). Signed appointment of Jonas Prescot[t] as a Lieutenant of a Foot Company of Militia in the town of Groton, 13th June, 1692.
7 7/8 x 12 inches (19.5 x 31 cm); single-page secretarially accomplished document written on a folded sheet of paper (conjugate blank except as noted), wafer seal of the Province of Massachusetts Bay affixed at upper left, the appointment written in black ink in a legible late English secretary hand by J.S. Addington (the Governor's secretary); signed by Phips as Governor and Addington as secretary. Usual folds, some toning, separation to the fold of the blank leaf, with a later note on the verso of this..
William Phips was born in 1651, near Kennebec, Maine; as a consequence of his successful recovery of the Hispaniola treasure, the cargo of sixteen sunken Spanish treasure ships off the Bahamas, he was knighted, the first native-born American to be so honored. Additionally, he was appointed by the king as the first Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, following the 1691 issuance of the Second Charter. The present document was drawn up during his first month in that post (he took up the office in mid-May, 1692).
One of his earliest acts was to establish a court to hear evidence of witchcraft, the beginning of the notorious Salem witchcraft trials. After accusations of witchcraft became widespread (including one against his own wife, Mary Phips), he ordered that so-called "spectral evidence" could no longer be used as a basis for a witchcraft convictions; shortly thereafter, he prohibited all arrests for witchcraft, and ordered the release of 49 of the 52 accused witches, later pardoning the three remaining; still, 19 had been hanged, five others had died in custody, and one man had died under the torture of peine forte et dure.
C
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