BURROUGHS, bur'r6z, GEORGE (e.1650-921. A Colonial clergyman in America, the most prominent victim of the Salem witchcraft de lusion of 1692. He graduated at Harvard in 1670, subsequently preached for several years at Falmouth (now Portland, Maine). and from 1680 to 1683 was pastor of the church at Salem Village (now Danvers). Mass. In 1685 he returned to Falmouth, but afterwards removed to Wells, where he was living at the time of the witchcraft delusion of 1692. Owing prob ably to the personal hostility of some of his former parishioners at Danvers, he was arrested early in 1692 on a charge of witchcraft, his in dictment asserting that he, on May 9 "as well before, as after, Certaine Detestable Arts called Witcherafts and Soreeries, Wickedly and ffel loniously hath Vsed, Practised. & Exercised . . . in. Vpon, & agt one Walcott of Salem village by which said wicked Arts the said Mary . . . was andisTortured,aftlicted, Pined, Consumed, Wasted, and Tormented against the Peace of our Sovereigne Lord & Lady, the King and Queen." Burroughs was also charged with having likewise bewitched three otber girls, and at the trial "was accused by five or six of the Bewitched as the Author of their Miseries: . . . by eight of the Confessing
Witches as being an head Actor at some of Their Rendezvouses, and one who had the promise of being a King in Satan's Kingdom, now going to be Erected: by Nine Persons for extraordinary Lifting and such feats of strength, as could not be done without Diabolieall Assistance." He was finally convicted on each indictment, in spite of the report of a jury, ordered to search his body for witch marks, that "Wee find nothing upon ye body of ye Sayd hurroughs but wt is naturall;" and on August 19 he was executed on Gallows Hill, Salem. making a speech on the scaffold which moved the spectators to tears and called from Cotton Mather, alarmed lest the proceedings be discontinued. the assurance that "the Devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light." Burroughs was the only minister who lost his life during the witchcraft delusion. Consult Sprague. Annals of the Ameri can Pulpit, Vol. I. (New York, 1857-69) ; Graduates of Harrard Unirersity, Vol. 11. ( Cambridge. 1873-85), and 'phalll, Lectures on Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1867).