“Season of the Witch” – Song by Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan released in August 1966 on his third studio album, Sunshine Superman.
-From 1645 to 1663, about eighty people throughout England’s Massachusetts Bay Colony were accused of practicing witchcraft. Thirteen women and two men were executed in a witch-hunt that lasted throughout New England from 1645 to 1663. The Salem witch trials followed in 1692–93. These witch trials were the most famous in British North America and took place in the coastal settlements near Salem, Massachusetts. Prior to the witch trials, nearly 300 men and women had been suspected of partaking in witchcraft, and 19 of these people were hanged, and one was “pressed to death”.
Margaret Mattson and another woman were tried in 1683 on accusations of witchcraft in the Province of Pennsylvania. They were acquitted by William Penn after a trial in Philadelphia. A popular legend tells of William Penn dismissing the charges against Mattson by affirming her legal right to fly on a broomstick over Philadelphia, saying “Well, I know of no law against it. The record fails to show any such commentary, but the story probably reflects popular views of Penn’s socially progressive Quaker values.
