All Saint's Church • Sudbury

It’s 13^th January 1617 and a wedding is taking place at this church. Martha is marrying Richard Haffield, a carrier from the town.  Martha is 24 years old and her new husband is 36. They would be old parents by the standards of the day, eventually having five daughters. Martha was 25 when she became pregnant with her first daughter and 39 with her last. It is her middle daughter, Rachel whose story starts here and ends 65 years later as a destitute survivor of the Salem Witch Trials. On 13^th September 1629 Rachel Haffield was baptised at this church, where her parents had been married. As a six year old she would leave England with her family for America during the Great Migration.

Between 1620 and 1640 roughly 80,000 Puritans left England, with around a quarter of those heading for the New England colonies. Although there would be some families travelling from most of the English counties, almost half came from East Anglian settlements like Sudbury. They hoped to have more freedom to practice their beliefs. They were against the rituals within the Church of England that still resembled The Roman Catholic Church. Although the singing of Psalms was deemed appropriate, they believed choral music too closely associated with the Catholic church and did away with it. Musical instruments, such as the organ, were also not allowed.

In April 1635 we see Rachel on the passenger list of the ship Planter with her family. It set sail in the first or second week of April and arrived in Boston on the 7^th June the same year. They had been relatively affluent when they emigrated, but four years after their arrival in Ipswich, New England, Rachel’s father died and her mother was forced to rent out parts of their home to lodgers. Rachel’s mother has suffered with deteriorating mental health and by 1666 she was declared insane. Rachel was recently married at this time to a man named Lawrence Clinton. Their marriage was not happy and there was scandal on both parts due to extra-marital affairs. Lawrence treated Rachel very poorly and was largely responsible for the loss of her financial security. Rachel had petitioned for divorce, but her husband had not waited for this to go through before re-marrying someone else and starting a family. Rachel was forced to beg for money to support herself and it was around this time that the first accusations around witchcraft began to surface.

Between the Spring of 1692 and Summer of 1693 more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft in the Massachusetts colonies. Several residents of Ipswich were called to give depositions against Rachel in the April of ‘92. She was arrested in the May.The accusations against her ranged from murder by supernatural means to shape-shifting. Ultimately Rachel was released in the January of 1693, although 19 people would go on to be executed for witchcraft during the course of the trials. A handful would also die while awaiting trial in gaol. Rachel would only live another couple of years, dying destitute sometime around the turn of the year into 1695. One wonders what her life would have been like had her family stayed in Sudbury. Would she still have relatives visiting this church where we stand now?

///fuss.spoon.joints

GRID REF: TL 86892 40986