ABSTRACT
When Alice Lake of Dorchester was about to be hanged for witchcraft in 1651, she insisted on her innocence, claiming she “owned nothing of the crime laid to her charge.” Declaring herself innocent of witchcraft, she nonetheless believed that she deserved to be exposed as a witch because, according to the minister John Hale, “she had when a single woman play'd the harlot, and being with Child used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin & shame.” Lake believed that her sexual transgression was enough to justify her guilt as a witch. Although she had not signed an explicit compact with Satan, she still concluded that she had covenanted with him through the commission of her sin. 1
