|“||Once upon a time, the land was ruled by monsters. They wore fine black suits. They hid behind their fine black book with their fine black beards. And they lived in grand houses. And they ruled by fear. They made everyone fear the woods, trees, and the birds and the animals around them so that they would not dare to venture from their village. And if anyone said anything other than what the monsters wanted them to say, they stole their voices.||”|
The Puritans are a group of Protestant settlers who emigrated from the Old World to America following violent religious wars. In Salem they act as antagonists of the witches as they are represented as fervent religious, free-thinking oppressors.
Most of the citizens of Salem are Puritans, people who adhere to a particular moral code that affects their entire life, deeply attached to the Holy Scriptures. The entire structure of the colonies of Essex County is governed by a council of Puritans opposed to Native Americans, to the Anglo-French domain and, of course, to the enemies of Christ, who are allied with the demonic forces.
The Council of Selectmen is an assembly formed by prominent male citizens, whose task is to administer justice, quell disputes and intervene on urban issues. Given the close correlation between religious and temporal power in the puritanical society, the selectmen are - apparently - eminent Puritan who blindly follow the word of the Lord. There are fourteen members of the select board in 1692, after John Alden claims a seat on the board as his father's heir.
Salem Council of Selectmen
Boston assembly of Puritan elders
The Puritans were a group of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, including, but not limited to, English Calvinists. Puritanism in this sense was founded by John Calvin from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England. Particularly in the years after 1630, Puritans left for New England, supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements. This English-speaking population in America did not all consist of original colonists, since many returned to England shortly after arriving on the continent, but produced more than 16 million descendants. This so-called "Great Migration" is not so-named because of sheer numbers, which were much less than the number of English citizens who emigrated to Virginia and the Caribbean during this time. Puritan hegemony lasted for at least a century. That century can be broken down into three parts: the generation of John Cotton and Richard Mather, 1630–1661 from the founding to the Restoration, years of virtual independence and nearly autonomous development; the generation of Increase Mather, 1662–1689 from the Restoration and the Halfway Covenant to the Glorious Revolution: years of struggle with the British crown; and the generation of Cotton Mather, 1689–1728 from the overthrow of Edmund Andros (in which Cotton Mather played a part) and the new charter, mediated by Increase Mather, to the death of Cotton Mather.
Throughout the Salem serie
To Be Added
- John Alden (to Cotton Mather): Are you sure you want the truth? Are you really damn sure you know the difference between good and evil? Cause you puritans, you think the world is just black and white. What if the truth of the world is that it's nothing but gray?
- Tituba: My body was bought and sold many times, but never my soul, not until I came to Salem. I am a child in a cage, given less to eat than the animals on the ship. I fear I will never see the sun again. And then a man comes. It was he that brought me to Salem, only to be bought and sold again. I am sold from hand to hand, from man to man.
- -- in The House of Pain
- Tituba: Tell me, who started this war between witches and puritans, the scattered few of them or the mighty many of you?
- Increase Mather: By your own admission, these creatures have sold their very souls for vengeance to the Devil. Is this not so?
- Tituba: Were your people never slaves? Did they never cry out in the wilderness for justice? And did your God not hear their cries and answer with thunder?
- -- in The House of Pain
- Mary Sibley: There is no world new or old not founded on bones and blood.Imagine a world free of the violent hypocrisy and oppression of the puritans, a new world that celebrates the power of nature, freedom of thought, belief, and feeling. This is our chance.
- Anne Hale: But at what price? You, all of you, even my father, sold your souls to the devil himself.
- Mary Sibley: Neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil himself is like a puritan suit in only black and white. All is gray. And the devil they fear is not the devil I know.
- -- in Cry Havoc
- Mr. Hathorne: I am quite certain what God is most displeased with. But what is a surer sign of a world turned upside-down than a world with a woman on top? We have utterly upended the most fundamental principle of how things are to be, which is led by men. Men of property, men of substance, men of godly goodwill.
- -- in Cry Havoc
- Isaac Walton: Hypocrite! Hypocrite.You're all fornicators. Screwing each other every day of the week, including the Sabbath! I swear if Jesus Christ walked the streets of Salem, he wouldn't find a man worth saving.
- Mr.Hathorne: This is vile blasphemy, and you will hang for it.
- Isaac Walton: Go on, then! Hang me! Hang me! Done died on those stocks years ago. You all, so busy looking for where the evil came from. You brought it with you. Still, you look all'round for who could have done it. Must be the Indians, or the French or the witches or even my Dollie. Blame it on my Dollie. She had angel eyes. Couldn't see my scars just my soul and loved it. Angel eyes. Risked her life to save mine. And I'll remember them until my dying day. I promise you. But who will remember the lot of you when you're ashes? They say God sees every sparrow that falls. But he don't see you. Not no more! He forgot all about you. Salem is the dust he shook from his feet when he turned around and walked away, and he ain't never coming back!
- --in On Earth as in Hell
- Mary Sibley: No, I no longer have Faith in my magic. It has brought me and everyone around me nothing but misery and death.
- Anne Hale: Do not give in to despair. That is what you would tell me. We are not puritans Not anymore. We do not believe in this idiotic predestination. We make our own destiny.
- Mary Sibley: You're right. It's not over till we're dead and the birds are eating our eyes!
- --in On Earth as in Hell
- The seat of the Puritan Council of Elders is based in Boston.
- Mr. Elliot, subjugated by Countess Von Marburg, was one of the members together with rev. Increase Mather and rev. Cotton Mather.
- The hallmark of the Puritans is their inclination to dress entirely in black.
- George Sibley was the last of the founding fathers of Salem to be alive during the events narrated in the Second Season of Salem, before being killed.