WILLIAM STOUGHTON
Most people would assume that he was referring to the Native Americans but to many early Americans Catholics were more heathen than ignorant Indians.
Of course the Native Americans who had been born for hundreds of generations did not count as the Lord's.
William Stoughton was a colonial magistrate and administrator in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was in charge of what have come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, first as the Chief Justice of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692, and then as the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693. In these trials he controversially accepted spectral evidence (based on supposed demonic visions). Unlike some of the other magistrates, he never admitted to the possibility that his acceptance of such evidence was in error.
