Religion, Politics, and Witchcraft in Bermuda, 1651-55

ON a February day in 1648/49, two Bermuda colonists, unaware that Charles I had been executed in London that January, met by chance and began to argue about politics. The political and religious turbulence across the Atlantic was making waves in this tiny island colony, where a group of Puritan “Independents” had formed a new church and challenged the colony’s government. For nearly a decade, Bermuda had been as bitterly divided as the mother country. Since 1640 there had been six governors (including a triumvirate for one year). The present governor had jailed some Independents and silenced others, and another governor was to take office in 1650. Meanwhile some Bermudans feared “the distraction of the country beinge ready to rise in armes.” The colony’s council had approved warrants to search for “Armes and Amunicon.” Lieutenant Michael Burrows, a militia officer, told colonist John Somersall that the next governor might be “kept out” when he arrived. Somersall, one of the Independents, replied that he would “venture his life to bring him in” and added, “we are not altogether fooles, for though wee are disarmed, yet there is other armes besides guns and Bullets.”1

Political science · Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law

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