Danforth was a magistrate and leading figure in the colony at the time of the Salem witch trials, but did not sit on the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

[3] Danforth immigrated with his father, brothers Samuel and Jonathan, and sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and Lydia to New England in 1634, probably aboard the Griffin.

)[11] Two committee members, magistrate Simon Bradstreet and minister John Norton, were sent to England to argue the colony's case.

[13] In one notable instance Danforth was aboard a small boat with other colonial officials in Boston Harbor en route to Long Island to inspect facilities for Praying Indians who had been relocated there "for their own safety" when a nearby ship apparently intentionally rammed the smaller vessel.

The colony had previously governed this territory (roughly the land between the Piscataqua and Kennebec Rivers in what is now southwestern Maine), but its right to do so had been stripped by King Charles after protests by the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had long-standing claims to the area.

[15] The territory had been devastated and many properties abandoned during King Philip's War, and Danforth acted in effect as a Lord Proprietor, making land grants and reestablishing towns such as Falmouth and North Yarmouth.

When the Glorious Revolution deposed James, Massachusetts Puritan leaders orchestrated an uprising and arrested Andros, Dudley, and other dominion officials.

In the period between the dominion's collapse and the establishment of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1692, the old colonial government was temporarily reestablished, and Danforth resumed his offices.

[24][page needed] Danforth was not assigned to the special Court of Oyer and Terminer that Phips established shortly thereafter, and he was opposed to the manner in which magistrate William Stoughton conducted the witch trials, which unconditionally accepted spectral evidence in its proceedings and vigorously presumed the guilt of the accused.

When Stoughton temporarily removed himself to protest Governor Phips' ban on spectral evidence and other related reforms, Danforth sometimes presided over the court.

[27] In 1992, The Boston Globe published a historian's suggestion that Danforth might have facilitated Cloyce's escape from Ipswich jail and subsequently concealed her family on his property.

[3] Although Danforth continued to reside in Cambridge, he developed these lands, which came to number 15,000 acres (61 km2), by issuing 999 year leases rather than selling parcels.

[39] In Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, Thomas Danforth is depicted as the leading judicial figure overseeing the Salem trials.

William Stoughton is not a character in the play, and Miller portrays Danforth as an honest but domineering and selfish judge, under whose authority many are imprisoned and sentenced to hang.

[43] Miller also wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film version of the play, in which the name Danforth was retained (portrayed by actor Paul Scofield) as the principal judicial antagonist.