Estate / Collection: The Victor Gulotta Collection

WINTHROP, WAIT

Document signed. Newport, Rhode Island: 15 December 1688. Manuscript document on vellum with red wax seals, the document regarding the estate of "William Peirce of Boston in New England Mariner" who died intestate, the document signed by both his son William Peirce and his wife Elizabeth Peirce, with a six-line docketing on the verso in the hand of and signed "Wait Winthrop," with later docketing dated 1697. 9 x 23 1/2 inches (23 x 60 cm); not framed. Usual folds, some staining along folds and puncture at fold points, one small old vellum repair with manuscript infill, the docketing by Winthrop large and dark.

Waitstill Winthrop (1642-1717) was the son of John Winthrop the Younger and grandson to John Winthrop, head of the Winthrop Fleet and the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Wait Winthrop here recognizes this estate document as administrator of the short-lived Dominion of New England, which attempted to unify the Mid-Atlantic colonies of New England from New Jersey to Maine, from just 1686-89. During this period Wait Winthrop also led the Massachusetts militia as he had during King Philip's War in the 1670s and again during King William's War in the 1690s.

In May of 1692, during the investigatory period before the Salem Witch Trials, Wait Winthrop was appointed one of the nine magistrates to the court of Oyer and Terminer by Colonial Governor Sir William Phips. When this court was terminated in October 1692, Winthrop was appointed to the Supreme Court of Judicature which heard the remaining cases through 1693. In this period, due to the allowance of spectral evidence to the courtroom, cases under Winthrop and the other judges sentenced 20 convicted witches to death. His signature is scarce, particulalry this close in date to the trials themselves, and is important as a member of the influential Winthrop family.

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