Deodat Lawson
[10] On July 19, 1688, Lawson preached a proclamation day sermon for the Dominion of New England governor Andros, as was reported in a letter to Increase Mather by Samuel Sewall.
[14] There seems to be no surviving record of anything untoward in Lawson's behavior while at Salem Village, but in a sermon ("Satan's Malignities") attributed to him, and printed under his name in 1693, he begins a dedication to the inhabitants of the Village by acknowledging that his previous ministry "attended with manifold sinful failings and infirmities, for which I do implore, the pardoning mercy of God in Jesus Christ, and entreat from you the covering of love.
Samuel Parris was tasked by the court with recording by hand the examination of Rebecca Nurse on March 24 and he omitted any testimony from those speaking in her defense.
Thus Lawson's account withholds information that suggests the sheriff had searched her home for physical evidence relative to the practice of witchcraft and found nothing.
[19] Deodat Lawson's "Brief Narrative" matches the official court records in a variety of ways while also containing curious differences and mistakes such as the incorrect listing of "Sacrament Day" on April 3 (it was March 27).
[20] This may have been a simple error but "Sacrament Day"—when the Lord's Supper was administered—was highly significant to Puritans, and never more so than during this time period with certain accusations regarding the capital crime of witchcraft tied directly to it.
What makes this surprising is that the sermon said to have been delivered on that day, and published within a year under Lawson's name, was a persuasive, lengthy, and elaborate tour de force.
GL Burr describes the sermon as "no extempore production, but a studied disquisition on the power and malice of the Devil, who 'Contracts and Indents with Witches and Wizzards, that they shall be the Instruments by whom he may more secretly Affect and Afflict the Bodies and Minds of others.'"
CW Upham calls it "a thoroughly elaborated and carefully constructed performance, requiring long and patient application to compose it, and exhausting all the resources of theological research and reference, and of artistic skill and finish."
Cotton Mather records that he took multiple "journeys" to Salem in his memoirs, and in a September 2, 1692 letter to Chief Justice Stoughton he writes that "one half of my endeavors to serve you have not been told or seen."
A handful of years later, Mather attempted to remain anonymous by printing in London a posthumous biography of William Phips (see photo) until he was identified as the author by Robert Calef.
[27] Samuel Sewall's diary mentions Lawson in the Boston area for the last time on December 27, 1692, in Watertown, alongside William Stoughton and others.
This lack of record-keeping was unusual for a pastor and according to the doctrine expressed in the March 24, 1692 sermon, Lawson thereby left these church members vulnerable to "satan's malignity.
"[31] Back in England in 1696, Lawson seems to have been known for his contemporaneous account of Salem perhaps because the "Brief Narrative" been included in London editions of Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World (WIW) in 1693.
He begged help from New England merchants to front money to print another sermon, one that he'd recently delivered on the occasion of the Royal Coronation of King George.
[36] Around the time of Lawson's increasing unhappiness, Francis Hutchinson published a broad attack on witch-phobia that included a lengthy treatment of Salem.
[37] Hutchinson cites the work of Robert Calef and blames the influence of the Mathers in the decade leading up to events at Salem, as well as the English clergyman Richard Baxter.
