Abigail Faulkner - Aftermath and Exoneration

Aftermath and Exoneration

In December 1692, four months after her arrest, Faulkner petitioned Governor Phips pleading for clemency. She explained that her husband was an invalid, and though his condition had been stable, her arrest caused him to suffer a relapse, leaving her children with no caretaker and "little or nothing to subsist on." Governor Phips granted her request; she was pardoned and released from prison.

Though released, her name had not been cleared. In 1703, Faulkner petitioned the court asking that she be legally exonerated.

"The pardon so far had its effect that I am as yet suffered to live, but this only as a malefactor, convicted upon record of ye most heinous crimes, which besides its utter ruining and defacing my reputation will certainly expose myself to imminent danger of new accusations which will be ye more readily believed, and will remain a perpetual brand of infamy upon my family. I do humbly pray that this high and honorable court will plan to take my case into serious consideration, and order the defacing of ye record against me, so that I may be freed from the evil consequences thereof."

Faulkner petitioned the court for eleven years before they finally granted her request, reversing the bill of attainder in 1711.

Upon the humble Petition and suit of several of the said persons and of the children of others of them whose Parents were Executed. Be it Declared and Enacted by his Excellency the Governor Council and Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same That the several convictions Judgments and Attainders against the said George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willard, Giles Corey and Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, Mary Eastey, Sarah Wildes, Abigail Hobbs, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Martha Carrier, Abigail Faulkner, Anne Foster, Rebecca Eames, Mary Post, Mary Lacey, Mary Bradbury, and Dorcas Hoar, and every of them Be and hereby are reversed made and declared to be null and void to all Intents, Constructions and purposes whatsoever, as if no such convictions Judgments, or Attainders had ever been had or given. And that no penalties or Forfeitures of Goods or Chattels be by the said Judgments and attainders or either of them had or Incurred. Any Law Usage or Custom to the contrary notwithstanding. And that no Sheriff, Constable, Jailer or other officer shall be Liable to any prosecution in the Law for anything they then Legally did in the execution of their respective offices.

Made and passed by the Great and General Court or Assembly of Her Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England held at Boston the 17th day of October, 1711.

Faulkner’s daughters were released from prison in October 1692, along with their cousins Stephen and Abigail Johnson, on a 500 pound bond paid by Nathaniel Dane and John Osgood. Her niece, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., was found guilty of witchcraft, and sentenced to death in January 1693. Her death warrant was signed by William Stoughton. Elizabeth, like her aunt, managed to escape the gallows due to the intervention of Governor Phips. Faulkner’s sister, Elizabeth Johnson Sr., was acquitted and released in January 1693, but her attainder was never reversed. Faulkner’s sister-in-law, Deliverance Dane, was released in December 1692, when the case against her was dismissed.

Abigail (Dane) Faulkner died in Andover, Massachusetts on February 5, 1730. Her husband, Francis Faulkner, died in Andover two years later on September 19, 1732.