USA > Massachusetts > The Puritans versus the Quakers : a review of the persecutions of the early Quakers and Baptists in Massachusetts, with notices of those persecuted and of some of their descendants and tributes to Roger Williams and William Penn > Part 1
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NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 3 3433 07998455 9
AN HISTORICAL ESSAY.
THE PURITANS versus THE QUAKERS
A REVIEW OF THE PERSECUTIONS OF
THE EARLY QUAKERS AND BAPTISTS
IN MASSACHUSETTS,
WITH NOTICES OF THOSE PERSECUTED AND OF SOME OF THEIR DESCENDANTS, AND TRIBUTES TO
Roger Williams and William Penn,
AND THE DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY QUAKERS.
?
BY CALEB A. WALL. \212 - 1591
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WORCESTER : PRESS OF DANIEL SEAGRAVE, NO. 442 MAIN STREET. M.D. VIII. LXXX. VIII.
THE NE'T YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 511083 A ASTOR, LENOY AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS R L
PREFATORY.
This Essay was first read by invitation, before " THE WORCESTER SOCIETY OF ANTIQUITY," Oct. 4, 1887, and after- wards before other bodies, including the SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, at their meeting-house on Oxford Street, and it has been so well received that it is now offered to the public in print, in response to the general request.
On page 38th, in 6th line from top, read "great-great-grandfather," instead of great-grandfather. On page 49th, 18th line from top, read " 1639," instead of 1630.
C. A. W.
Worcester, Mass., May 1, 1888.
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THE PURITANS versus THE QUAKERS:
A REVIEW OF SOME OF THE DOINGS OF OUR NEW ENGLAND FOREFATHERS, FROM THE QUAKER STANDPOINT.
f propose to consider the subject matter of the doings of the founders of Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies towards those differing from them in religious sentiments, and especially towards the Quakers, whom they treated with the most extreme severity and vindic- tiveness, and then contrast this with the humane policy pursued by the Quakers and others acting with them in the founding by them of other communities elsewhere. I desire to do this with as much charity as possible for the persecutors, on account of the persecuting age in which they lived, bearing in mind the important fact that they came here to escape persecution at home, and to establish in these then wilds a free government for themselves, where they could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, although they ap- peared unwilling to accord the same privileges to others who had equal rights here with themselves.
With what profound feelings of reverence and awe do we all study the history of our Puritan and Pilgrim Fathers, and gaze upon the suggestive pictures and memorials connected with their departure from the Old
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World and their landing and subsequent record in the new, and what ennobling thoughts do all such represen- tations and study call up in our minds concerning a period in history more fraught than any other with the subsequent destinies of the New World, and of all humanity the world over.
Yet this fact, of the high claims of the early Puri- tans and Pilgrims to our veneration and regard, on account of their professed principles and proclaimed pur. poses, and the remarkable circumstances under which they left the Old World, should not blind us to a just view of their errors and defects, when we follow their actions after they came here and compare them with their previous professions, and square them by the impartial and eternal laws of that God whose divine aid they are represented as having implored with so much reverence at every important movement they made.
It may properly become me to attempt this criti- cism, considering that my ancestors were among the persecuted and proscribed for their religious opinions, many of them being obliged, rather than longer suffer as martyrs here at the risk of their lives, to retire, among other places, to Rhode Island, where the banished Quakers were gladly welcomed with the proscribed Bap- tists, with whom they co-operated in the building up of a commonwealth on the just basis of free toleration of all religious denominations.
Of all the religious denominations which have arisen in the world, the Friends or Quakers were the most in advance of the age in which they first appeared, and this accounts for the severe persecutions they encoun- tered, though this is no sufficient excuse for offenders
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having the superior light which the Puritans professed. The most distinguishing feature of the religious tenets of the Quakers, for which they were persecuted in the early times, was their belief in divine inspiration, in the "Inner Light," or the power of the Holy Spirit of God in the soul of man, as the great factor in reformation and salvation ; they trusted in this, rather than in the forms, ceremonials, rituals and theological creeds which consti- tuted the christianity of that day. And it was in con- sequence of so much outwardness, superficiality and mere show, in the prevailing religion of that time, that the Quakers arose, as a denomination, substituting the inward for the outward, spirituality for formality, and plainness and honesty for extravagance and pretence, in their religion and all other relations in life. While they reverenced the teachings of the Sacred Scriptures as containing the record of God's dealings with holy men of the past, they looked beyond and behind them to the Spirit of God which gave them forth, claiming that the s me divine spirit should illumine our own minds and enable us to judge correctly of the meaning of what has been revealed to others. Discarding the use of any but spiritual weapons in their warfare against evil, they were the most harmless people on earth, so far as any fear of injury from their presence was concerned, and herein consists the chief error of their persecutors in opposing them in the manner they did, by physical vio- lence and torture, even to the putting of several of them to death, merely for their religious views.
The rise of " the people called Quakers" is consid- ered as one of the most remarkable results of the Protestant revolution, or reformation, three centuries
ago. It was a consequence, says Bancroft, of the " moral warfare against corruption ; the aspiration of the human mind after a perfect emancipation from the long reign of bigotry and superstition. It grew up with men who were impatient at the slow progress of the reformation, the tardy advances of intellectual liberty." The vast influence resulting from the Quaker spirit on American institutions is acknowledged on every hand.
The Quakers as a religious body arose in England about 241 years ago, in 1647, when George Fox, the pioneer of this denomination, began his ministry, he being then 23 years old. A pioneer in every moral as well as religious reform, he is said to have been the first person to make public declaration of opposition to the injustice of that gigantic iniquity of his time and of later times, the slavery of the African race. The reli- gious views which he early espoused and which, like the primitive ministers of Christ, he and his fellow-laborers and followers most frequently declared to their hearers as the corner-stone of their religious faith, was, "The uni- versal appearance of the Light of Christ in the heart, by which He enlighteneth every person that cometh into the world," of which truth there is the most ample ground of illustration and proof in Scripture. The first of the members to make their appearance in New Eng- land, of which there is any account, were two women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who came from England to Boston in July, 1656. That was three months before the passage of the first law by the General Court of Massachusetts against the Quakers, and, without waiting to see how the new comers would conduct themselves, such was the keenness of the scent of the " Puritans "
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against " theological heresy," that before they came ashore the Deputy Governor, Richard Bellingham, (the Governor himself being out of town,) sent officers aboard the ship, who searched the trunks and chests of the two women and took away the books they found there, which were about one hundred, (says the Quaker historian, Wm. Sewel, who was living at that time). These books, harmless publications advancing the religious views of the Friends, the officers carried on shore, after having commanded the said women to be kept prisoners on board; and the said books were, by an order of the Council, burnt in the market place by the hangman. Afterwards the Deputy Governor had the women brought on shore, and committed them by a mittimus to prison as Quakers, upon this proof only, that one of them speaking to him had said "thee" instead of " you ; " whereupon he said he needed no more evidence, for now he saw they were Quakers. And then they were shut up close prisoners, and command was given that none should come to them without leave ; a fine of £5 being laid on any that should otherwise come at, or speak with them, though but at the window. Their pens, ink, and paper were taken from them, and they were not suffered to have any candle light in the night season ; nay, what is more to the everlasting shame of these falsely named "Puritans," the two women were stripped naked, under pretence to know whether they were witches, though in searching no token was found upon them but of innocence; and in this search the women were so barbarously misused, says the account, that " modesty forbids to mention it;" and that none might have communication with them, a board was
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nailed up before the window of the jail. And seeing they were not provided with victuals, Nicholas Upshal, keeper of the Red Lion Inn, one who had lived long in Boston, and was a member of the (Orthodox) church there (no other church being allowed), was so concerned about liberty being denied to send them food that he purchased it of the jailor at the rate of five shillings a week, lest they should have starved. And after the women had been thus imprisoned about five weeks, Wm. Chichester, master of a vessel, was bound in £100 bonds to carry them back to England, and not suffer any one to speak to them after they were put on board ; and the jailer kept their beds, which were brought out of the ship, and ALSO KEPT THEIR BIBLE, for his fees !
Such was the treatment the Quakers first met with at Boston, and that from a people who pretended that for conscience' sake they had come here to escape per- secution at home and establish here freedom to worship God; but it seems to have been a freedom confined to their own narrow and bigoted conceptions of religion, and not after the broad, humane and Christ-like pattern of Roger Williams and the Quakers in Rhode Island, and William Penn and his associates and followers in Penn- sylvania.
Scarce a month after the arrival of the aforesaid women at Boston, there came also eight others, Chris- topher Holder, Thomas Thirstone, Wm. Brend, John Copeland, Mary Prince, Sarah Gibbens, Mary Whitehead and Deborah Waugh; they were locked up in the same manner as the two former, and after about eleven weeks' stay sent back ; Robert Lock, master of the ship which brought them here, being compelled to carry these eight
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persons back on his own charge, and to land them no where but in England ; he having been imprisoned till he undertook so to do.
The Governor, John Endicott, whose bloodthirstiness appears in sad light in subsequent proceedings, being now come home, bid the prisoners " take heed ye break not our ecclesiastical laws, for then ye are sure to stretch by a halter." And when they desired a copy of those laws, it was denied them; which made some of the people say, " How shall they know, then, when they transgress." But Endicott remained stiff in his deter- mination, he having said before when at Salem when he heard how Ann Austin and Mary Fisher had been dealt with at Boston, " If I had been there I would have had them well whipped." Then a law was enacted by the General Court, Oct. 14, 1656, prohibiting all masters of ships from bringing Quakers into that jurisdiction, and themselves from coming in. on penalty of being "com- mitted to the house of correction, severely whipped, kept constantly at work, and none suffered to converse or speak with them," and it was in the same enact- ment
" Further ordered, that if any person shall knowingly im- port into any harbor of this jurisdiction any Quaker books or writings containing their devilish opinions, shall pay for every such book or writing the sum of five pounds ; and whosoever shall disperse (circulate) or conceal any such book or writing, and it be found with him or her, or in his or her house, and shall not immediately deliver in the same to the next magis- trate, shall forfeit and pay five pounds for the dispersing or concealing of every such book or writing. And it is hereby further enacted that if any persons within this colony shall take upon them to defend the heretical opinions of the said
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Quakers, or any of their books or writings, shall be fined for the first time forty shillings ; and if they shall persist in the same, and so again defend those opinions, they shall be fined for the second time four pounds; if still, notwithstanding, they shall again defend and maintain the said Quakers' here- tical opinions, they shall be committed to the house of correc- tion till there is convenient passage to be sent out of the land, being sentenced by the Court of Assistants to banishment."
The enactment comprising these cruel provisions, passed Oct. 14, was published Oct. 21, 1656, by beat of drum by order of the court. When this law was pub- lished, Nicholas Upshal, already mentioned, could not forbear to show the persecutors the unreasonableness of their proceedings; warning them to " take heed that they were not found fighting against God, and so draw a judgment on the land." But this advice was taken so ill by the persecutors, that though Upshal was a member of their church, and of good repute as a man of unblam- able conversation, yet he was fined £23 and imprisoned also for not coming to church, and next day they ban- ished him out of their jurisdiction. This fine was ex. acted so severely that Endicott said, " I will not bate him one groat." And though Upshal was a weakly old man, yet they allowed him but one month's space for his removal, so that he was forced to depart in winter. Coming at length to Rhode Island, the land of religious refugees, where he found a quiet resting place, he met an Indian prince, who having understood how he had been dealt with, treated him very kindly, and told him if he would live with him he would make him a warm house. The Indian further said, " What a God have the English, who deal so with one another about their God !" Who was the true Christian in this instance, the Good
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Samaritan Indian, who "looked through nature up to na- ture's God," and manifested the divine spirit in his own soul, or the inhuman, falsely-named " Puritan," John Endicott, then Governor, under whose administration the persecution of the Quakers increased in violence, from fines and imprisonments and banishments and the burn- ing of their books, to the cutting off of their ears, burn- ing holes through their tongues with red hot irons, whipping on their naked backs through the streets from town to town through the Colony tied to the rear end of carts driven by oxen, and other savage cruelties, cul- minating in the hanging of four of them upon the gal- lows in order to get rid of them. These cruel acts com- prised a series of barbarities to be classed side by side with the Spanish inquisition, unexceeded in atrocity by any of the enormities ever before or since recorded of religious persecutions for opinions' sake.
The second enactment against the Quakers, passed by the General Court, Oct. 14, 1657, just one year from the first one, exacted a fine of £100 against the
"Coming of or bringing in of any Quaker, and forty shil- lings for every hour's harboring of, or entertaining of, any Quaker by any person ; and if any Quakers presumed, after once suffering what the law requires, to come into this jurisdic- tion, for the first offense each was to have one ear cut off and be kept at work in the house of correction till they can be sent away at their own charge, and for the second offense the other ear was to be cut off and they to be kept in the house of cor- rection, as before. And every woman Quaker coming into this jurisdiction in like circumstances to be severely whipped and kept at work in the house of correction till sent away at her own charge, and for her coming again to be alike used. And any Quakers, male or female, offending the third time, by
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coming, to have their tongues bored through with a red hot iron and kept close at work in the house of correction till sent away at their own charge. And every Quaker arising from amongst ourselves to be dealt with and suffer likewise, accord- ing to the law against those coming from other places."
It was further enacted, May 19, 1658 :
" In order that Quakers and such accursed heretics arising amongst ourselves may be dealt with according to their deserts, and their pestilential errors, etc., prevented, that any person professing any of their pernicious views, by speaking, writing, or meeting on the Lord's day or any other time, to strengthen themselves or seduce others to their diabolical doctrines, shall pay ten shillings each for each time's attendance on such meet- ing, and five pounds cach for each time's speaking therein ; and if any such persons have been punished by scourging or whipping the first time, according to former laws, they shall be kept at work in the house of correction till they give security in two sufficient men each that they will not vent their hateful doctrines, or else shall depart this jurisdiction at their own charge ; and if any return again they shall suffer the severe laws against others coming in."
Oct. 20, 1658, another act, banishing Quakers on pain of death, was passed, in these words :
" Whereas, there is a pernicious sect, commonly called Quakers, lately risen, who by word and writing have published and maintained many dangerous and horrid tenets, denying all established forms of worship, withdrawing from orderly church fellowship allowed and approved by all Orthodox professors of religion, and instead thereof and in opposition thereto frequently meeting by themselves," etc., the former laws by which the ears of John Copeland, Christopher Holder, John Rous and many others had been cut off, the tongues of many others bored through with red hot irons, and numerous other inhuman cruelties inflicted, proving insufficient to rid the colony of Quakers, the General Court ordered that " every per-
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son of the cursed sect of Quakers, or any person adhering to their tenets and practices, which are opposite to the orthodox received opinions of the godly, shall be closely confined in prison for one monthi, where continuing obstinate and refusing to re- tract or reform the aforesaid opinions, they shall be sentenced to banishment upon pain of death."
In pursuance of these cruel enactments, which Rev. John Norton was paid by a grant of land in Worcester and Sudbury for his great labors in helping to enact and carry into execution, four Quakers were hung upon Bos- ton Common, viz. : William Robinson, a merchant, from London, and Marmaduke Stephenson, from Yorkshire, Eng., who were executed Oct. 27, 1659 ; Mary Dyer, a Quakeress preacher, June 1, 1660; and William Leddra, March 14, 1661.
Mary Dyer was condemned to death on the same day with the first two prisoners above mentioned, Rob- inson and Stephenson, and she was marched with them to the place of execution on Boston Common, a distance of about a mile from the jail, escorted by armed military with beat of drum, to drown the voices of the captives if they should attempt to speak. In violation of English law, there was no jury trial. The sentence of the Court of Magistrates, pronounced by Governor John Endicott, was : " That the Secretary, Edward Rawson, issue out his warrant to Edward Michelson, Marshal General, for re- pairing to the prison on the 27th day of October inst., and take the said Win. Robinson, Marmaduke Stephen- son and Mary Dyer, into his custody, and them forthwith, by the aid of Captain James Oliver, with one hundred soldiers taken out by his order proportionably out of each company in Boston, completely armed with pikes and muskets, with powder and bullets, to lead them to the
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place of execution, and there see them hang till they are dead."
At the same time it was " ordered that Rev. John Norton and Rev. Zachary Simes repair to the prison and tender their endeavors to make the prisoners sensible of their approaching danger by the sentence of this Court, and prepare them for their approaching ends !"
While these Puritans thus sought to destroy the bodies of their victims, they desired, if possible, to save their souls! These prisoners had been in the colony but a few days, coming in September, when they were brought before the Court and sentenced, first, to impri- sonment, severe whippings and banishment, and then to death, merely for being Quakers. On the morning of the day set for execution, Oct. 27, the Court so far re- lented in the case of Mary Dyer, on the petition of her son, that she was given "forty-eight hours after this day to depart out of this jurisdiction, after which time, being found therein, she is forthwith to be executed, and in the meantime that she be carried to the place of execution with the two others condemned and there stand upon the gallows with a rope about her neck till the rest be executed, and then return to the jail and be kept close prisoner till her execution, or till her son or some other person carry her away within the aforesaid time."
Thus Mary Dyer, " with her clothes tied about her feet, the halter put upon her neck, and her face covered with a handkerchief which the priest, John Wilson, lent the hangman for the purpose," stood upon the scaffold, just as if she was about to be executed, in presence of the horrible spectacle of her two companions being ex- ecuted and hanging dead before her, when the announce-
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ment was made that she was reprieved on the conditions just stated, her feet were unloosed and she was bade to come down the ladder. But she, unwilling to accept of the conditions, said she "preferred to suffer as her brethren did, unless her persecutors would annul their wicked laws, for the repeal of which she came among them, to plead the cause of her unjustly persecuted friends." But little heed was given to what she said, and she was pulled down the ladder, the Marshal and others taking her by the arms and carrying her back again to the jail.
The magistrates, now perceiving that the putting of Robinson and Stephenson to death caused great dis- content among the people, resolved forcibly to send away Mary Dyer, thereby to calmn the public mind a little. And so she was put on horseback, and by four horsemen conveyed fifteen miles towards that land of free toleration, Rhode Island, where she was left with a horse and a man, to be conveyed the rest of the way. The remainder of the fall and the coming winter she spent in Rhode Island and Long Island. The following spring, May 21, 1660, she returned again to the " bloody town of Boston," to protest against the cruel, unright- eous laws under which her companions suffered death and she and others were banished. May 31, she was brought before Governor Endicott, and by him sentenced to prison, there to remain till the next day, June 1, at 9 a. m., and " thence to the gallows and there be hanged till you are dead." Mrs. Dyer, in answer to her sentence, said : " I came in obedience to the will of God desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws, and that is my earnest request now ; I told you before that if you re-
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fused to repeal them the Lord would send others of His servants to witness against them." At the time set, June 1, she was escorted as the others had been with soldiers and beat of drum before and behind her, all the way from the jail to the place of execution, the same officers with priests Wilson and Norton, as before, act- ing their part in the diabolical work of strangling this poor woman to death because of her religious opinions.
To those of the present day who think Mary Dyer and others unwise for remaining among a people who had so persecuted them and threatened them with death, I would say : What would people have thought of Wil- liam Lloyd Garrison had he run away from Boston when that rope was put about his neck there by the descend- ants, in spirit, of the Endicotts and Wilsons and Nortons ? He chose rather to remain and continue rebuking his persecutors, who have since seen cause for joining in the general applause of Garrison for his heroic sayings and martyr-like devotion, and their effect on the world.
The last execution, that of Wm. Leddra, took place after the change of government in England, Charles II. being restored to the throne of his father in May, 1660. In consequence of this change of government, the Massa- chusetts colonial authorities took great pains to smoothe over to the new king their doings here in the persecution of the Quakers, and sent over to him a deputation head- ed by Captain John Leverett, with an address in which they tried to justify their proceedings on the ground that the Quakers were "seducers from the glorious Trinity," and other ludicrous pretences. After the ex- ecution of Leddra, March 14, 1661, for the saine offence as the others, his religious opinions, it was resolved to
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