There could be no clearer proof of
insanity, for it is admitted that in every other respect her conduct was
exemplary.
Her judges at Ipswich had her bound to a rough post of the tavern, in
which they sat, and then, while the splinters tore her bare breasts, they
had her flesh cut from her back with the lash. [Footnote: _New England
Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 377.]
"Thus they served the wife, and the husband escaped not free; ... he
taxing Simon Broadstreet, ... for upbraiding his wife ... and telling
Simon of his malitious reproaching of his wife who was an honest woman ...
and of that report that went abroad of the known dishonesty of Simon's
daughter, Seaborn Cotton's wife; Simon in a fierce rage, told the court,
'That if such fellows should be suffered to speak so in the court, he
would sit there no more:' So to please Simon, Eliakim was sentenc'd to be
stripp'd from his waste upward, and to be bound to an oak-tree that stood
by their worship-house, and to be whipped fifteen lashes; ... as they were
having him out ... he called to Seaborn Cotton ... to come and see the
work done (so far was he from being daunted by their cruelty), who hastned
out and followed him thither, and so did old Wiggins, one of the
magistrates, who when Eliakim was tyed to the tree and stripp'd, said ...
to the whipper... 'Whip him a good;' which the executioner cruelly
performed with cords near as big as a man's little finger;.
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