Cotton Mather publishes "Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions",[1] which includes his account of the Goodwins and Glover.
January 20: Eleven-year-old Abigail Williams and nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris begin behaving much as the Goodwin children acted three years earlier.
Around February 25: Mary Sibly (or Sibley), a neighbor of the Parris family, instructs John Indian, the husband of Tituba, to make a "witch cake" of rye meal and the girls' urine to feed to a dog in order to discover who is bewitching the girls, according to English folk "white magic" practices.
[3] Pressured by ministers and townspeople to say who caused her odd behavior, Elizabeth Parris identifies Tituba.
March 1–March 7: Magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin interrogate Good, Osborne and Tituba over the course of several days.
[4] March 23: Salem Marshal Deputy Samuel Brabrook arrests four-year-old Dorothy Good.
April 3: Sarah Cloyce, after defending her sister, Rebecca Nurse, is accused of witchcraft.
April 19: Abigail Hobbs, Bridget Bishop, Giles Corey and Mary Warren are examined.
April 22: Mary Eastey, who defended her sister Rebecca Nurse, is examined by Hathorne and Corwin.
May 2: Hathorne and Corwin examine Sarah Morey, Lyndia Dustin, Susannah Martin and Dorcas Hoar.
Increase Mather and Sir William Phips, the newly appointed governor of the colony, arrive in Boston.
May 27: Governor William Phips issues a commission for a Court of Oyer and Terminer and appoints as judges John Hathorne, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Bartholomew Gedney, Peter Sergeant, Samuel Sewall, Wait Still Winthrop and Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton.
May 31: Hathorne, Corwin and Gedney examine Martha Carrier, John Alden, Wilmot Redd, Elizabeth Howe and Phillip English.
Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, and Abigail Faulkner are sentenced to hang.
Rebecca Earnes, Mary Lacy Sr., Ann Foster and Abigail Hobbs plead guilty to the charges and await sentencing.
September 19: Giles Corey is pressed to death for refusing to agree to be tried "before God and the Country" (i.e., a jury).
September 21: Several ministers successfully petition the Court to postpone Dorcas Hoar's execution to give her time to repent.
October 12: Governor Phips writes to the Privy Council of King William and Queen Mary saying that he has stopped the proceedings and referring to "what danger some of their innocent subjects might be exposed to, if the evidence of the afflicted persons only did prevail," i.e., "spectral evidence".
October 29: Phips prohibits further arrests, releases many of the accused from prison, and dissolves the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
December 16: An act is passed for the establishment of a Superior Court of Assizes and General Gaole Delivery, to convene in January and prosecute the remaining people in custody.
January 14: The General Court declared a Day of Contrition for the hysteria and false accusations, for which there was fasting and praying for forgiveness.
[11][12] Abigail Faulkner, Sr. requests that the Massachusetts General Court reverse the attainder on her name.