Effect of

Several people were fined, imprisoned, and whipped in consequence. The other Quakers in the prison were also whipped and disthese meas charged. Some of them refused to pay their prison fees, but there were plenty of aggrieved and compassionate citizens to undertake that charge.

ures.

Mary Dyer resentenced

her answer.

Then Mary Dyer returned again to Boston, as it was required of her, she said, to finish her sad and heavy experience in that bloody town. She came in March, 1660. "Are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before?" asked Endicott. "I am the same Mary Dyer," she answered, "that was here the last General Court." A letter soon followed from her husband, who was not a Quaker, to Governor Endicott. It contained a touching appeal that the life of his wife might be preserved. "If her zeal be so great as thus to adventure, oh, let your pity and favor surmount it, and save her life." “I only say this, yourselves have been, and are, or may be, husbands to wives: so am I, yea, to one most dearly beloved. Oh, do not deprive me of her, but I pray give her me once again. Pity me! I beg it with tears, and rest your humble suppliant." But Endicott asked "You will own yourself a Quaker, will you not?" "I own myself to be reproachfully called so," was Then the Governor pronounced the sentence of death against her before the General Court. "This," said she, "is no more than thou saidst before." "But now it is to be executed therefore prepare yourself for nine o'clock to-morrow." And as she spake concerning the motives for her return, Endicott impatiently ordered her away. So next day, with a strong body of soldiers, for fear of the people, and with drummers before and behind to drown the dreadful, accusing voice, she reached Boston Common again. There she refused to purchase her life at the expense of not performing her present mission from the Lord. She declined the prayers of any elder; this was offered gratis to her. Wilson called out to her not to be so deluded by the devil. “Nay, man, I am not now to repent," she answered. Some one taunted her with having said that she had been in Paradise. "Yea, I have been in Paradise several days," Then came the end. "She did hang as a flag," said one of her judges scoffingly, "for others to take example by."

by Endicott.

Her execution

66

In this year monthly meetings of the Society were set up in many places in New England. Quarterly meetings were established a few years later.

William Leddra was a banished Quaker who dared to return in the same year. Early in 1661 he was brought before the Court, bound with chains to a log which he dragged behind him. His examination

1661.]

END OF THE PERSECUTION.

Leddra.

195

swarmed with trivial questions and absurd replies to his responses. But the court tried to persuade him to recant his opinions and save his life. "What! join with such murderers as you are! Then Execution of let every man that meets me say, Lo, this is the man that hath forsaken the God of his salvation." So on a day when a sermon was to be delivered he was sentenced to be executed. After the conclusion of it he too found his way to Boston Common, and died there as tranquilly as his predecessors.

Trial of

Christison.

This was the last execution in Boston for cause of religious opinion. A great many Quakers were still languishing in prison; among them was Wenlock Christison, a returned banished Wenlock Quaker, and liable to be hanged. He happened to return on the day that Leddra was sentenced and entered the Court at the moment of pronouncing the sentence. His presence struck dumb the magistrates. But he was soon brought to the bar, briefly questioned, and sent to prison. On the day when Leddra was hanged, he was brought to the bar again, the magistrates hoping to frighten him into a recantation. They offered him that or death. He preferred the latter, in such a style of speech and sweetness of temper as greatly to confuse his persecutors, which being noticed by Endicott much disturbed him. He was remanded until the next General Court, when a strong minority appeared against the death penalty; but Endicott passionately sentenced him. And he prophesied: "If you have power to take my life from me, the which I question, I believe you shall never more take Quakers' lives from them. Note my words." Sure enough; and they were notable; for about this time the news of the Restoration reached Boston, and there was no Cromwell of any name to The Restoracountenance the doings of the Puritan. This, coupled with tion. The the growing anger of the people, led to a general jail delivery Friends reof Quakers, including Christison. A new law was passed, substituting for the death penalty banishment on pain of a whipping from town to town; and several were so treated. Josiah Southwick — an elder brother of the two children who were sentenced to be sold as slaves — said, on hearing his sentence, "Here is my body; if you want a further testimony to the truth I profess, take it and tear it in pieces; it is freely given up; and for your sentence I matter not. It is no more terrifying to me than if ye had taken a feather and blown it in the air." Then he was whipped through Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham, and cast off into the wilderness.

imprisoned

leased.

It seemed advisable to enlighten Charles II. upon the opinions and practices of the Quakers, to make it appear that they were of An address such a nature as to justify the General Court in its exercise to the King. of the late severities. An address was prepared and sent to the King,

setting forth the necessity of extreme measures against those enemies of religion and government. The Friends in London furnished the King with a counter-declaration which took up severally the charges in the address, and showed how unlikely to be true they were, and how contrary to the principles of the Society. A book, entitled "New England Judged, written by a Friend, giving a minute account of the persecutions in the colony," was also put into the hands of the King, who was particularly struck by a passage that reported remarks by a prominent enemy of the Society, to this effect: "This year ye will go

and complain to the Parliament; and the next year they will send to see how it is; and the third year the government is changed." Whether or not this was accurately repeated, it had a great effect upon the King. "Lo, these are my good subjects of New England, but I will put a stop to them." And when about this time the news of the execution of William Leddra reached England, it was plain to the Quakers that they might count upon the royal interposition.

At the personal solicitation of Edward Burrough, a prominent and

1661.]

THE KING'S ORDER.

197

Charles in

terposes to protect the Friends.

influential member of the Society, the King put into his hands an order "To our trusty and well-beloved John Endicott, Esq., and to all and every other the governor or governors of our plantations," etc., commanding them to forbear to proceed any further against their prisoners, but to send them over to England, with the charges against them. With excellent policy and fine irony the order was entrusted to Samuel Shattock, a Quaker, banished under penalty of death; the Society hired a vessel and sent him over with dispatch.

The

presents the to Endicott.

King's order

En

pro

Its results.

It was a pardonable and not unnatural weakness in Shattock if he felt some satisfaction when he came into the presence of En- Shattock dicott with his hat on and that order in his pocket. captain of the vessel, also a Quaker, accompanied him. dicott ordered Shattock's hat to be removed, and was ceeding to make the old brutal interrogations preparatory to sending him to prison, when Samuel presented his credentials and the order. A sight of the Governor's face at that moment might have atoned for a good deal of persecution. In his amazement he handed back Shattock's hat to him, and took off his own in deference to the presence of the King's authority, then slowly read the papers. He withdrew awhile to collect himself, then took Shattock with him to the Deputy Governor, Bellingham. After a brief conference with him, Endicott simply said, "We shall obey his Majesty's commands."

But should the prisoners be sent to England? That would be to send loud and swift witnesses against their own doings. How, then, should the exigency be met? Simply by not having any prisoners! William Salter, keeper of Boston jail, was at once ordered to release and discharge all the Quakers in his custody.

Mission of
Norton and
Bradstreet

When soon after John Norton, the minister, and Simon Bradstreet were sent as commissioners to England to assure the King of the loyalty of Massachusetts which there was good reason for doubting the question of the treatment of the Quakers to England. was one pretty certain to confront and trouble them. They were met in London by Friends, among them John Copeland, whose mutilated ear was a swift witness against them of the trials and persecutions he and his fellows had suffered in Boston. George Fox himself was present at this conference, and questioned the Commissioners so closely that they soon became confused. William Robinson's father, who was not a Friend, might, it was suggested, institute an investigation as to the death of his son. Some there were who proposed that the Commissioners should be held personally responsible for the persecution of Friends in Massachusetts. When the Commissioners returned to Boston and they were received with marked ill-favor because their

mission was less successful than it was hoped it would be, the disappointment and chagrin was supposed to have caused Norton's death. At any rate he soon died suddenly, and this was of course accepted by the Quakers as a judgment.

Severities

against the Friends re

But when the magistrates found that the feeling against them was abating, and that no warrant would be likely to issue from England, they revived their exercises against the Quakers, so vived. far as to have them whipped whenever they could be found delivering their message. Men and women were tied to the cart's tail and scourged from town to town; and this happened also in New Hampshire, which then belonged to the jurisdiction of the Bay. Three women preaching in Dover were driven thus from constable to constable through several towns, receiving ten lashes in each town. This was in December, 1662, and the season was inclement also. Two bystanders who expressed commiseration were clapped in the stocks. In Cambridge a woman was thrown into the jail without food, and nothing to lie upon. A Friend brought her some milk; he was fined five pounds and put into the same jail. The woman was whipped through three towns. She returned several times to Boston, and was whipped each time. The last occasion happened in 1665, on the day when Endicott was buried. She attended the funeral, and making, probably, some unpalatable remarks, was imprisoned. She was then sixty-five years old.

Further in

structions from the

The cases of these persecutions are too numerous to mention singly, and they all have a revolting sameness. They lasted ten years, and did not come to an end until the King, offended King. by the prohibition of Episcopacy and of the reading of the Liturgy, issued sharp injunctions. To Massachusetts he said, "It is very scandalous that any person should be debarred the exercise of his religion, according to the laws and customs of England, by those who were indulged with the liberty of being of what profession or religion they pleased." To Connecticut he sent, "All persons of civil lives might freely enjoy the liberty of their consciences, and the worship of God in that way which they think best." So it came to pass that Quakerism conquered a life in New England.

"We own," wrote Penn from his cell in Newgate, "we own Civil

Penn's

doctrine.

Government, or Magistracy, as God's Ordinance for the punstatement of ishment of Evil-doers and the praise of them that do well; and though we cannot comply with those laws that prohibit us to worship God according to our Consciences, as believing it to be His alone Prerogative to preside in matters of Faith and Worship, yet we both own and are ready to yield Obedience to every Ordinance of Man relating to Human Affairs and that for Conscience-sake."