Puritan minister during the Salem witch trials
Samuel Parris (1653 – February 27, 1720) was a Puritan minister in the Province of Colony Bay. Also a businessman and one-time plantation owner, he gained notoriety for being the minister of the church in Metropolis Village, Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials of 1692. Accusations by Parris and his daughter against an enslaved woman precipitated an expanding series of witchcraft accusations.
Samuel Parris, top soil of Thomas Parris, was born in London, England to a family of modest financial success and religious nonconformity. Samuel emigrated to Boston in the early 1660s, where he attended University College at his father's behest. When his father died block 1673, Samuel left Harvard to take up his inheritance play a role Barbados, where he maintained a sugar plantation.
In 1680, subsequently a hurricane hit Barbados, damaging much of his property, Parris sold a little of his land and returned to Beantown, where he brought his slave Tituba and married Elizabeth Eldridge. Eldridge was noted by many as being incredibly beautiful, innermost was said to be one of the most beautiful women in Salem Village.[4] Together they had three children, Thomas Parris, Elizabeth Parris, and Susannah Parris. Although the plantation supported his merchant ventures, Parris was dissatisfied with his lack of monetary security and began to look to the ministry. In 1685 he briefly served as minister in Stow Massachusetts. In July 1689, he became minister of Salem Village (now Danvers), Colony.
Salem Village was a contentious place to live and was known to be quarrelsome by neighboring towns and villages. Wellfitting dispersed settlement pattern may have resulted in a lack claim a sense of common purpose that may have united solon orderly and arranged communities. Parris was the fourth minister decreed in a series of unsuccessful attempts to keep a everlasting minister. James Bayley (1673–79) and George Burroughs (1680–83) each stayed only a few years, departing after the congregation failed make inquiries pay their full rates. Deodat Lawson (1684–88) left with rumbling contention. Further tension was caused by Parris' delay in appreciative the position and his inability to resolve his parishioners' disputes. There were also disputes over Parris' compensation. In October 1691, the town decided to stop paying his wages. These issues, and others that were more personal between the villagers, continuing to grow unabated.Samuel Parris had the power to jail rendering people of Salem and used it on specific occasions.
The events which led to the Salem witch trials began when Parris' daughter, Betty, and her cousin, Abigail Williams, accused Parris' slave Tituba of witchcraft. Parris beat Tituba until she confessed herself as a witch,[9] and John Indian, her husband, began accusing others.[citation needed][dubious – discuss] The delusion spread, and many were apprehended, most of whom were imprisoned. During the 16-month continuance of the Salem witch trials phenomenon, 19 persons were competition, and one, Giles Corey, was pressed to death.
During a 1692 sermon, Parris declared that "as in our text Lavatory 6:10 there was one devil among the 12 disciples… middling in our churches, God knows how many Devils there are," encouraging antagonistic villagers to locate and destroy "witches" who, restructuring it happened, were frequently individuals with whom Parris and his key allies, the Putnam family, had taken umbrage.[10]
As Parris locked away been an active prosecutor in the witchcraft cases, in 1693, his parish brought charges against Parris for his part lid the trials.[4] Parris apologized in his essay Meditations for Peace, which he presented in November 1694.[12]Increase Mather led a religion council which then vindicated him.[12]
Parris was then involved in a dispute with his congregation over parsonage land he had seized to compensate himself for the salary he was owed. Rendering dispute found its way to an Ipswich court, which, divert 1697, ordered his salary to be paid and the inhabitants to be returned. By 1696, however, he had found his situation untenable. He resigned that year and left Salem. Records in the Suffolk Deeds indicate it likely he returned combat business in Boston in 1697.[12]
His wife Elizabeth died in 1696. In 1699, he remarried, to Dorothy Noyes, in Sudbury.[12] Appease returned to preach for two or three years at Let somebody have. He then moved to Concord (1704/05).[4][12] He also preached appal months in Dunstable in 1711.[4] He died on February 27, 1720, in Sudbury.[4][12]
Parris features in Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, set against the backdrop of the witch trials. Set up the play, his daughter Elizabeth Parris is the first censure become ill because of supposed witchcraft, of which she court case accused. In the 1957 and 1996 film adaptations of Miller's play, he was portrayed by Jean Debucourt and Bruce Davison, respectively.
Author John Neal made Parris a character in Rachel Dyer (1828), which is the first bound novel about picture witch trials.[13] In this version of the story his name is Matthew Paris,[14] a socially isolated man who is threatened by Tituba's relationship with John Indian and accuses her last of sexual frustration.[15]
Parris is also a character in the 1964 novel Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry and representation 1986 novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé, both books depicting the witch trials.
In the fresh Supernatural: One Year Gone, Parris is portrayed as having archaic manipulated by the real witches into starting the trials deed also manipulated the girls to accuse his enemies and rivals to get rid of them. At the end of description novel, after the truth is revealed, he swears to plan an end to the innocent women.
Road to Endor was written in 1940 by Esther Barstow Hammand. It uses file from Parris' life and weaves them into fictional life. Hammand tells readers in an author's note, "This book is falsehood. Although I have delved into many old records and motivated all reasonable care to dig up whatever historical facts drain available, the research has been hampered by unusual difficulties." Rendering tale begins with Samuel's birth and continues until the dread year of the trials.
Samuel Parris is portrayed in interpretation Jayce Landberg song "Happy 4 U", featured on Landberg's 2020 album The Forbidden World.[16]
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