Robert Calef

Background

Robert Calef was born in 1648 probably in England.

Education

The Calef family of Stanstead was "one of substantial yeoman and clothiers. " The majority of what is known about the character of Robert Calef is what can be gleaned from his single book, and it contains almost no details about his own life. His writing displays broad education and it is possible that following grammar school he attended one of England's clandestine dissenting academies as evidenced by Cotton Mather's use of the title "Mr. " ("Mr. R. C") and Calef's pride in having no proficiency in Latin. (In contrast to Oxford and Cambridge, the English language was generally preferred for instruction in dissenting academies, as Latin was viewed as having ties to Rome. ) According to the tradition of Calef's descendants, he matriculated from "one of the English colleges" and showed sympathy for Quakers and sought asylum in New England.

Career

By 1688 he was settled as a cloth merchant in Boston where he came into prominence in 1693 by accusing Cotton Mather of attempting to stir up a Boston witchcraft delusion in the wake of the Salem tragedy.

Calef obtained a copy of "Another Brand Pluckt out of the Burning, " Cotton Mather's manuscript account of his efforts to exorcise Margaret Rule, and circulated his own observations concerning the seance, containing unsavory insinuations as to Mather's, and his father's, motives and methods. Cotton Mather caused Calef to be arrested for libel, but dropped the case after receiving a temperate but ambiguous explanation. Calef incorporated "Another Brand, " with the correspondence, in a book called More Wonders of the Invisible World, which he completed in 1697, but was unable to induce any Boston printer to publish. It was printed in London, in 1700, and caused a great sensation in Boston, for it not only attacked the Mathers, but included a well-documented and devastating account of the Salem trials of 1692. A committee of Cotton Mather's congregation replied in a pamphlet, Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book (1701). Increase Mather caused a copy of More Wonders to be burned in the Harvard yard. The controversy between the partisans of Calef and of the Mathers has never ceased. William F. Poole, for instance, declares that Calef was only stirring the ashes of a dead fire, with the purpose of maligning the Boston clergy (Memorial History of Boston, 1882, II, 165 ff. ) , whilst Charles W. Upham asserts, "Calef's book drove the Devil out of the preaching, the literature, and the popular sentiment of the world" (Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather, 1869, p. 83). The truth no doubt lies between these extremes. That More Wonders was a direct and powerful condemnation of the seventeenth century view of witchcraft, written in terms to arouse the most intellectually inert, there can be no doubt. That Cotton Mather failed to reply is significant. Calef was not a rationalist. He rested his arguments on the Bible, and admitted "That there are Witches but what this witchcraft is, or wherein it does consist, seems to be the whole difficulty. " Yet this common basis of thought with his contemporaries made his book the more powerful. One may, however, admit that More Wonders occupies an important place in the literature of witchcraft, without sharing Calef's opinion of his opponents. Their counter charges that his motives were political, and that he was assisted in writing the book, have never been substantiated. There is no reason to question his declared motive of discrediting the doctrines that produced the Salem tragedy; and he succeeded, completely. A persistent belief that More Wonders is the work of Robert Calef, Jr. (1676 - 1722) was effectually refuted by George Lincoln Burr. This younger Calef, who generally signed himself Calfe, was one of eight children. The father in later life held several town offices in Boston and Roxbury, where he died on April 13, 1719.

Achievements

• He was the author of More Wonders of the Invisible World, a book composed throughout the mid-1690s denouncing the recent Salem witch trials of 1692-3 and particularly examining the influential role played by Cotton Mather.

Works

More photos

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  • More Wonders of the Invisible World, or the Wonders of the Invisible World Displayed. In Five Parts

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • Wonders of the Invisible World

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • book