As early as April, when Abigail Hobbs tearfully confessed that she had always been wicked—that for the sake of fine clothes, she had accepted the Devil's temptation, signed a pact, agreed to pinch and torment the girls, and accused the mother of a Topsfield constable—Philip English sensed that the wind had shifted and fled straight to Boston.
He and his wife Mary lived in an extravagant house with many gables, the most luxurious building in Salem, grander even than the meetinghouse at the center of the village. The couple also employed many servants from Jersey in England, Philip Langlois's homeland, a small island under the Anglican Communion.
Langlois had been English's former surname. As a teenager, like many Jersey residents, he had left his homeland because he could no longer endure poverty and set out alone to make his fortune in the New World. In barely twenty years, this ruthless richest man in Salem had become a business tycoon. He owned fourteen houses, a warehouse, a wharf, and twenty-one ships regularly traveling between the coasts of Virginia and Nova Scotia. He also maintained extensive dealings with France, Spain, and the West Indies.
This "outsider" with shallow roots had married the daughter of one of Salem's early founders. Though he still spoke with an accent, his hardline manner undoubtedly met American standards. Aside from his seemingly magical way of making money, no one could possibly associate him with witchcraft.
Yet eighteen-year-old orphan Susanna Sheldon still dared to accuse the English couple alone. She claimed to have seen both of them at a Devil's gathering held behind the minister's house. Furious, Philip English vaulted over the church benches and lunged at her throat, threatening to slit Sheldon's neck. Meanwhile, a yellow bird rested on Mary English's chest, and Sheldon said Mary had