[1] Maule's son Thomas was born in 1720 in Salem, apprenticed as a carpenter, and by 1744 relocated with his mother Sarah and her second husband Henry Clifton (m. 1733) to Philadelphia.
The restored Meeting House, reconstructed in 1865 with what is believed to be the building's original beams, is currently located at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.
In 1695, several years after the last of the accused were released from custody, Maule published a pamphlet titled Truth Held Forth and Maintained, in which he publicly criticized the Puritan leaders for their gross mismanagement of the Salem Witch Trials.
In response to this publication, on December 12, 1695, Maule was arrested on charges of slanderous publication about the manner of the untimely death of a prosecutor, Major General Humphrey Atherton, in the trial of Wenlock Christison, who was the last person to be sentenced to death in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for being a Quaker.
By granting Maule an acquittal, the jury showed it agreed with his principal argument: The court had no right to suppress his expression of religious belief.
The character Colonel Pyncheon, the family elder, is obsessed with purchasing Matthew's property, which has a sweet-water spring.
Determined to own his neighbor's property, Pyncheon accuses Matthew of witchcraft, for which he is ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.