John Hale was born on June 3, 1636, in
Charlestown,
Massachusetts Bay Colony. The oldest child of Robert Hale, a blacksmith, he was educated at
Harvard College in
Cambridge, graduating in 1657. He began preaching in Bass-river-side, later called
Beverly, about 1664, and was ordained as the first minister of the parish church there on September 20, 1667, when the congregation formally separated from Salem. He married his first wife, Rebecca Byly, on December 15, 1664, and she died April 13, 1683, at the age of 45. As a child, Hale had witnessed the execution of
Margaret Jones, one of the first of 15 people to be executed for witchcraft in
New England and the first to be executed in Massachusetts, between 1647 and 1663. He was present at the examinations and trials of various people who were accused of
witchcraft in the
Salem witch trials of 1692, and supported the work of the court. However, on November 14, 1692, 17-year-old Mary Herrick accused his second wife, Sarah Noyes Hale, and the ghost of executed
Mary Eastey of afflicting her, but his wife was never formally charged or arrested. A later commentator on the trials,
Charles Upham, suggests that this accusation was one that helped turn public opinion to end the prosecutions, and spurred Hale's willingness to reconsider his support of the trials. After the trials, Sarah died and Hale began writing his book "A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft", in which he suggested the fear of witchcraft was so great that it impaired the judgment of everyone involved in the trials, possibly resulting in the death of innocent people. Hale died at the age of 63 in 1700, and the book was published two years later. ==Adaptation in 'The Crucible'==