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XII.

Oct.

The appearance of these fervid enthusiasts in New En- CHAPTER gland threw the theocracy into the greatest alarm. The existing laws of Massachusetts against heretics were not 1656. thought sufficient for the occasion. A special law was presently enacted, in the preamble of which the Quakers were denounced as "a cursed sect of heretics lately risen in the world." To bring a "known Quaker" into the colony was made punishable by this law with a fine of £100, besides bonds to carry him back again, or, in default thereof, imprisonment. The Quaker himself was to be whipped twenty stripes, sent to the house of correction, and kept at hard labor until transported. The importation or possession of Quaker books was strictly prohibited; all such books were to be brought in to the nearest magistrate to be burned. Defending Quaker opinions was punishable with fine, and, on the third offense, with the house of correction and banishment. Even these enactments did not suffice. By a law of the next year, the fines before imposed were in- 1657. creased; every hour's entertainment of a known Quaker May. was subjected to a fine of forty shillings; every male Quaker, besides former penalties, was to lose one ear on the first conviction, and on a second the other; and both males and females, on the third conviction, were to have their tongues bored through with a red-hot iron. Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, on the recommendation of the Commissioners for the United Colonies, adopted similar laws.

An urgent letter was addressed to Rhode Island, where Sept. 25. President Arnold had succeeded Williams as Governor, protesting against the toleration allowed to Quakers, and intimating that refusal to conform to the policy of the United Colonies would be resented by a total non-intercourse. Coddington and other principal men afterward

CHAPTER joined the Quakers; but, as yet, little sympathy was XIL felt in Rhode Island for their peculiar opinions. The 1657. people of that colony adhered, nevertheless, with admirable consistency, to their great principle of religious libOct. 13. erty. In reply to a second application on the subject, they stated that, "to those places where these people are most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and are openly opposed by arguments in discourse, they least desire to come, so that they begin to loathe this place, for that they are not opposed by the civil authority, but with all patience and meekness are suffered to say over their pretended revelations; nor are they like or able to gain many here to their way." "Surely," adds this very sensible letter, "they delight to be persecuted, and are like to gain more adherents by the conceit of their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings." But neither good advice nor good example made any impression on the United Colonies. A new law of Massachusetts, imposing fines on all who attended Quaker meetings, or spoke at them, did but increase the disposition to speak and to hear. In spite of whippings, brandings, and cropping of ears, the banished Quakers persisted in returning. They flocked, indeed, to Massachusetts, and especially to Boston, as to places possessed with the spirit of intolerance, and therefore the more in need of their presence and preaching.

While thus beset by enemies from without, the theocracy experienced also some opposition from within. Though constantly stretching its power, it did not take a single step in advance without encountering a vigorous resistance, of which a new instance was now exhibited. Cobbett, minister of Lynn, the persecutor of Clarke and Holmes, having had his salary reduced to £30 a year-in consequence of which, as we are told, the

XII.

town suffered a judgment by a loss of cattle destroyed by CHAPTER a sudden disease to the value of £300-had removed to. Ipswich, which town voted to give him £100 to buy or 1657. build a house-that sum to be levied on all the inhab

'tants." Some of the inhabitants resisted, and, distress being made, George Giddings, whose pewter platters had been seized to answer the tax, brought an action for damages before Samuel Symonds, one of the magistrates. Symonds sustained the action on the ground "that it is against a fundamental law of nature to be compelled to pay that which others do give." The case was carried by appeal first to the County Court, and then to the General Court. The deputies were disposed to sustain Symonds's decision; but, through the influence of the magistrates, it was finally carried the other way, and the right of the town to impose the tax being sustained.

In hopes to put a stop to the annoyance of returning Quakers, the Commissioners for the United Colonies final- 1658. ly recommended that such as returned a second time Sept. 23. should suffer death. The name of the younger Winthrop, who sat as one of the commissioners for Connecticut, a man of much more tolerant spirit than his father, is affixed to this vote; not, however, without the following qualification: "Looking at it as a quere, and not as an act, I subscribe." But it did not long remain a quere. In spite of a vigorous resistance on the part of the depu- Oct. ties, a law for the capital punishment of returned Quakers was presently enacted in Massachusetts, and Marma- 1659. duke Stephenson of Yorkshire, William Robinson of Lon- Oct. 20. don, and Mary Dyer of Newport, were soon found guilty under it. Mary Dyer, formerly a conspicuous disciple of Mrs. Hutchinson, widow of William Dyer, late recorder of Providence Plantation, was reprieved on the scaf- Oct. 27. fold, after witnessing the execution of her two compan

CHAPTER ions, and set at liberty on petition of her son, on condi

XII. tion of leaving the colony in forty-eight hours. The 1659. magistrates vindicated the execution of the other two in

a long Declaration, in which they dwelt with emphasis on the case of Mary Dyer, as proof that they sought "not the death, but the absence of the Quakers." There was this peculiarity, indeed, in all the New England persecutions, with the single exception of Gorton's case, that heretics were persecuted, not so much as enemies of God, whom it was fit and meritorious to punish, but rather as intruders, whom it was desirable to get rid of, or at least to silence. Mary Dyer, however, did not escape. Impelled by "the Spirit," she presently returned again to "the bloody town of Boston," where, like her fellow1660. convicts, she underwent death by hanging. The forJune 1. titude, and even triumphant joy with which these vic

tims met their fate, the sympathy which their execution excited, and the readiness with which their places were supplied by others, prepared and even anxious for a like extremity, alarmed and intimidated the magistrates. Not only the doubtful effect in the colony, but the late revolution in England, and the uncertainty how these proceedings might be regarded there, gave additional reason to hesitate. Several other returned Quakers were sentenced to death, but only one more execution, that of 1661. William Leddra, took place. Several others, condemned to death, were pardoned and discharged upon acknowledgment of their error.

March 14.

To prevent, as far as possible, the multiplication of these capital cases, the General Court, "willing to try all means, with as much lenity as may consist with safeMay. ty," provided by a new law that any vagabond coming into the jurisdiction should be arrested wherever found, and carried before the nearest magistrate, and, being

XII.

proved, by confession. or otherwise, to be a Quaker, CHAPTER
should be delivered, under the magistrate's warrant, to
the constable of the town, "to be stripped naked from 1661.
the middle upward, and tied to a cart's tail and whipped
through the town, and thence be immediately conveyed
to the constable of the next town toward the borders
of our jurisdiction, and so from constable to constable,
to any the outermost town," and so to be whipped over
the border. This process, in case of return, was to be
twice repeated. Those who came in a fourth time were
to be arrested and committed to the house of correction
for trial at the next court; and such as the court did not
judge meet to release were to be branded on the left
shoulder with the letter R., severely whipped, and then
flogged, as before, out of the jurisdiction. If, after all
this discipline, any persisted in returning, they were to be
proceeded against "as incorrigible rogues and enemies of
the common peace," under the law of banishment, with
pain of death if they returned. Those residents who be-
thrust out of the juris-

came Quakers were first to be
diction, and, if they came back, were to be proceeded
against as vagabond Quakers.

Meanwhile the philanthropic Eliot was pursuing his missionary labors, for the support of which the society in England now annually remitted a sum equivalent to about $3000. Out of this fund upward of twenty teachers, several of them Indians, received salaries of from $50 to $250 each, and a number of Indian youth were supported and educated. No impression could be made on the Wampanoags and Narragansets, notwithstanding the threats of the praying Indians, recorded by Williams, that unless they submitted to the Gospel, Massachusetts "would destroy them by war.". Even Uncas, the tool and favored ally of the colonists, was inflexible on this

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