The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut: Historical Account of Witch Trials Early Modern Period: 1647 1697

The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut is a compact yet penetrating historical study of the colony's witchcraft prosecutions from the mid-seventeenth century, including cases that preceded the more famous Salem outbreak. Drawing on court records, depositions, and colonial statutes, Taylor reconstructs a culture in which theology, communal anxiety, illness, and legal procedure converged to turn suspicion into accusation. Its style is documentary and judicious, combining antiquarian exactness with a reformist skepticism toward inherited superstition, and it belongs to the early modernizing scholarship that sought to recover New England's darker legal and religious history. John M. Taylor wrote as a Connecticut historian deeply engaged with local archives and civic memory. His interest in witchcraft was not sensationalist but corrective: he aimed to show that Connecticut, often overshadowed by Massachusetts in accounts of witch persecution, had its own significant record of trials and executions. His careful use of names, dates, and legal contexts suggests an author intent on restoring historical proportion and moral seriousness. This book is recommended to readers of colonial American history, legal history, Puritan studies, and the history of belief. It offers a concise, sober, and valuable account of how fear can become institutionally sanctioned injustice.