Parris was not a natural minister. He had trained for the clergy at Harvard but left before completing his degree to try his hand at merchant trading in Barbados. The venture failed. He returned to Massachusetts in his mid-thirties, newly married, with a young daughter named Betty, a niece named Abigail Williams, and a Barbadian enslaved woman named Tituba, and resumed his pursuit of a pulpit.
Salem Village had been searching for a settled minister for years. The village was a fractious, litigious community — a farming hamlet that chafed under the commercial dominance of Salem Town and was perpetually divided against itself along lines of family, land, and theology. Several ministers had come and gone. Parris negotiated hard for his salary, his firewood, and the deed to the parsonage, and the village reluctantly agreed.
Satan's war is more particular and intense against churches and church members than against others.
When Betty and Abigail began exhibiting strange fits in January 1692, Parris's response set the crisis in motion. Rather than treating the girls' behavior as illness — as some neighboring ministers would later suggest — he called in the village doctor, William Griggs, who could find no physical cause and suggested the evil hand. Parris then sought the counsel of neighboring clergy, who advised prayer and fasting but warned against using counter-magic to identify the witch.
Parris ignored the warning. A witch cake — rye meal mixed with the girls' urine, fed to a dog — was baked in his household, almost certainly with his knowledge. When the girls began naming names, Parris did not restrain them. He recorded their accusations in his church records with a precision that would later serve as legal evidence.
