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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 03687 4961
Gc 974.4 H15g Hallowell, Richard P. 1835- 1904. The Quaker invasion of Massachusetts
THE QUAKER INVASION OF MASSACHUSETTS. -----
BY
RICHARD P. HALLOWELL.
THIRD EDITION.
Beb+ All.
BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. Che Ciiverside Press, Cambridge. 1884.
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
Copyright, 1883, BY RICHARD P. HALLOWELL. All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by H O. Houghton and Company.
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1218308
PREFATORY NOTE.
THE object of this little volume is to cor- rect popular fallacies and to assign to the Quakers their true place in the early his- tory of Massachusetts. Any one who con- sults it with the expectation of finding a de- tailed and harrowing recital of every case of suffering by the Friends will be disap- pointed. This branch of the subject is treated only so far as is necessary to illus- trate the mode of persecution resorted to by the Colonial authorities and the spirit in which it was resisted by the Quakers.
In addition to Puritan laws and other documents already published by the State, the Appendix contains some very interest- ing evidence never before published, and much material which, while it may be fa-
Laurial 1.00
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PREFATORY NOTE.
miliar to students who have made the sub- ject one of special inquiry, will be both new and instructive to the general reader.
R. P. H. BOSTON, MASS., 4th mo., 1883.
CONTENTS.
- -
CHAPTER I
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY. - THE RISE OF QUAKERISMI
.
1
CHAPTER II.
THE INVASION. - MEASURES OF RESISTANCE AND DE-
FENSE .
32
CHAPTER III.
THE WARFARE
56
CHAPTER IV.
CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF THE INVADERS. - MOD- ERN REVIEWERS REVIEWED 69
CHAPTER V.
THE CAUSE OF THE WAR, AND ITS RESULTS
.
117
APPENDIX.
.
Colonial Laws for the Suppression of Quakers . . . . 133 Petition for Severer Laws against the Quakers, October, 1658 153 The Examination of Quakers at ye Court of Assistants in Boston, March 7, 1659-60 157
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CONTENTS.
PAGE James Cudworth's Letter, written in the Tenth Month,
1658 162 The Story of Hored Gardner . 172 Recapitulation of the Sufferings of Laurence and Cas- sandra Southick 173
A Brief Sketch of the Sufferings of Elizabeth Hooten . 177 Order for sending Quakers out of the Jurisdiction ; to- gether with the Petition of John Rouse, John Cope- land, Samuel Shattock and others to the King for interference . 182
The King's Missive . 190
Order for Release and Discharge of Quaker Prisoners . 191 Subsequent Legislation and Persecution 192 Trial of Margaret Brewster and Others 193
Abstract from Joint Letter of William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson 202
Letter of Mary Dyer 206
Abstract of Letter from William Leddra, written to his Friends on the Day before his Execution 208
Daniel Gould's Letter 210 Letter from Mary Traske and Margaret Smith, accusing the Government. 213
John Burstow's Letter .
217
Letter from Josiah Suthick, a Quaker, to the Deputies assembled in the General Court 220
THE QUAKER INVASION OF MASSACHUSETTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY. - THE RISE OF QUAKERISM.
PURITANISM, as the word implies, origi- nated in an effort to purify the Protestant Christian Church. It inaugurated a reform almost as radical as the Protestant Refor- mation.
At a later day the name was narrowed in its significance, and was applied only to those who adhered to Calvinistic doctrines of religion, and attempted to establish both in Old and New England a theocracy based npon the Mosaic law and other teachings of the Old Testament. It was the parent, however, from whose loins issued the brood of religious sects which, as we shall see, divided the English people into hostile camps, and ultimately bequeathed to us the religious liberty we now enjoy.
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THE QUAKER INVASION
Under Queen Elizabeth, and notwith- standing her repressive measures, Puritan- ism secured a permanent foothold in the English nation, and before the death of James I. it had become a mighty power. The introduction of the Bible into every cottage in the land inaugurated a revolu- tion of which the end is not yet. All other literature was subordinated to the Old and New Testaments. During the greater part of the seventeenth century the people abandoned themselves to the con- sideration of questions appertaining to civil and religious liberty, and to the solution of religious problems. Ecclesiasticism, in- trenched in the government, disputed with bitterness and ferocity every step of the people in the direction of freedom. The daring but abortive effort of Laud to bring about a reconciliation between Rome and the Anglican Church contributed largely to the overthrow of Charles I., and ended in the execution of both the Archbishop and his master.1 The bigotry and cruelty of Laud were matched by the bigotry and cruelty of the Presbyterian. Milton be-
1 See account of Laud's trial. Neal's History of the Puri- tans, Toulmin's edition, vol. iii. p. 231.
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
queathed to us an epigram that will live until religious intolerance ceases to plague the world. It runs, " new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."
During the period of the Commonwealth toleration was fostered by the genius of Sir Harry Vane, and in a measure by Oliver Cromwell, but during those years and the succeeding reigns of Charles II. and James II., coercion and persecution, as well as political intrigue, played a conspicuous part in the vain effort to stay the progress of free inquiry and to arrest the development of liberal principles. Dissent increased under the stimulus of restraint and perse- cution. The middle of the century was a period of intense excitement. The spirit of controversy seemed to possess all classes. Thousands of controversial books and tracts were published. Parliament turned aside from the consideration of state affairs to discuss questions of religion. The courts of justice were continually the arena of relig- ions debate. Itinerant preachers addressed multitudes of eager men and women in pub- lie houses, in the market-place, in barns, and in the open fields. The churches were filled with congregations gathered not only
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THE QUAKER INVASION
to hear aggressive sermons delivered by reg- ular pastors, but to listen to the harangues of speakers representing other sects. At Leicester, in 1648, no less than four differ- ent sects met in the parish church for the purpose of religious disputation. Officers of the Parliament army, after exhorting their soldiers in camp-meetings, visited the churches and there assumed the role of clergymen. One of the tenets of the Inde- pendents was that "any gifted brother, if he find himself qualified thereto, may in- struct, exhort, and preach in the church," and laymen constantly had access to the pulpit. It was not uncommon for some one, after the usual service, to rise in his place and proceed with his own exposition of the law and the gospel. This was done by Episcopal divines as well as by non-con- formists. It is on record that, in 1656, Dr. Gunning, afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Bishop of Ely, went into the congregation of John Biddle, " the father of English Unitarians," and be- gan a dispute with him.1
George Fox was a frequent visitor at the " steeple-house." On very rare occasions he
1 Supplement to Neal, vol. iii. p. 556.
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
imitated the example of the Bishop, but it was his custom to wait quietly until the minister had ended, when he would often be invited to speak. The sects grew and multiplied. The enumeration of them as classified by Masson 1 is well worth repro- duction. Beside the Papist who was faithful to Rome and the Churchman who was loyal to the bishops, there were Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists or Anabaptists, Old Brownists, Antinomians, Familists, Mille- naries or Chiliasts, Expecters and Seekers, Divorcers, Anti - Sabbatarians, Traskites, Soul-Sleepers or Mortalists, Arians, Socini- ans and other Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scrip- turists, Skeptics or Questionists, Atheists, Fifth Monarchy Men, Ranters, The Mug- gletonians, Boehmenists, and Quakers or Friends.
The ferment of religious and irreligious speculation was something prodigious. In 1645 one Thomas Edwards, a prominent Presbyterian, who is described as a " fluent, rancorous, indefatigable, inquisitorial, and, on the whole, nasty kind of Christian," pub- lished the " Gangræna," a catalogue of one hundred and seventy-six miscellaneous "er- 1 Life of Milton, vol. iii. pp. 143-159 ; vol. v. pp. 15-28.
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THE QUAKER INVASION
rors, heresies, and blasphemies " of the sec- taries, and during the following ten years many others might have been added to the list.
Mysticism and materialism, devout piety and impious scoffing, noble conceptions and shallow theories of liberty, honest self-abne- gation and Pecksniffian cant, all found utter- ance in the babel of voices that resounded through the nation. It was an age when, as Milton phrases it, men undertook " to re- assume the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands again."
Inevitably, in such a transition period, fanaticism played a conspicuous part. It manifested itself in whipping, scourging, mutilation of the bodies of offenders, in long imprisonments, - some men and women liv- ing for years in noisome and filthy gaols, - and in the confiscation and destruction of property. Weak minds were unhinged by it, and men of strong intellects, and ordi- narily of sober judgment, defended and even committed excesses, both in speech and ac- tion, that to us, when they do not seem su- premely ridiculous, are simply incredible.
Robert Barclay, author of the well-known " Apology," an able " explanation and vin-
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
dication " of Quakerism, was one of the few controversial writers of that period whose books are still read with interest and profit. He was the peer of the best scholars, an ad- mirable logician, and subtle even to profun- dity. A contemporary describes him as a man "sound in judgment, strong in argu- ment, cheerful in sufferings, of a pleasant disposition, yet solid, plain, and exemplary in conversation. He was a learned man, a good Christian, and able minister, a dutiful son, a loving husband, a tender and careful father, an easy master, and good, kind neigh- bor and friend."
It taxes our credulity to believe that such a man, even in such an age, could, in any serions degree, be possessed by the spirit of fanaticism, but even as late as 1672, being overpowered by a sense of what he con- ceived to be religious duty, he walked through the streets of Aberdeen covered with sack-cloth and ashes. We read with a feeling of pity akin to sympathy, his ex- planatory address to the people. " I was," he says, " commanded of the Lord God ... great was the agony of my spirit . . . I be- sought the Lord with tears, that this cup might pass away from me . . . and this
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THE QUAKER INVASION
was the end and tendency of my testimony, -to call you to repentance by this signal and singular step, which I, as to my own will and inclination, was as unwilling to be found in, as the worst and most wicked of you can be averse from receiving or laying it to heart." He further explains that he acted " after the manner of some of the an- cient prophets, and with similar motives." It was accounted a great virtue by the Puri- tans to imitate the ancient prophets, and they searched their Bibles for names as well as for example and divine law.
Hebrew names were almost as familiar to the ears of that generation as the names of Patrick and Bridget are to our own. It was said that the genealogy of Jesus might be learned from the names in Cromwell's regiments, and that the muster-master used no other list than the first chapter of Mat- thew.1
In Brome's " Travels," a book published in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the author, with evident intent to ridicule these manifestations of pious enthusiasm, professes to have seen the following names on a jury list in Sussex : " Accepted Tre-
1 Neal, vol. iv. p. 96.
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
vor, Redeemed Compton, Faint-not Hewit, Make-Peace Heaton, God-Reward Smart, Hope-for Bending, Earth Adams, Called Lower, Kill-Sin Pimple, Return Spelman, Be-Faithful Joiner, Fly-Debate Roberts, Fight-the-good-Fight-of-Faith White, More- Fruit Fowler, Stand-Fast-on-High Stringer, Graceful Herding, Weep-not Billing, and Meek Brewer." Neal, Hume, and other historians accept this list as one of genuine baptismal names. Forster, in his "States- men of England," recognizes its true charac- ter, but believes that Brome was the victim of a joke, and that he reports the names in good faith. It is more probable, however, that he was the perpetrator, not the victim of the jest, for after reciting the list, he says soberly, and as if to justify his humor, " I myself have known some persons in London and other parts of this kingdom who have * been christianed by the names of Faith, Hope, Charity, Mercy, Grace, Obedience, Endure, and Rejoice," and he might have added, Praise-God, for such was the name of a member of Oliver Cromwell's Parlia- ment.
Fanaticism revived old and enacted new laws under which churches and cathedrals
10 THE QUAKER INVASION
were despoiled with ruthless barbarism : im- ages, pictures, painted glass, organs, copes, and fonts were mutilated or destroyed. Frenzied and pious Puritans drove horses, swine, and calves into the churches and baptized them with mock solemnity. They tore up the surplice as a remnant of Baby- lon and burned the book of "Common Prayer."1 In the Puritan " Anatomy of the Service-Booke." we read, " As they are altars of Baal, erected and maintained by Baalites or Balaamites, so they, and all their ceremoniall accoutrements, and the Service- Booke itself, are an abomination." The Litany is styled, " not the least sinful, but rather the most offensive " part of the Lit- urgy.2
Bible phraseology was incorporated into ordinary speech; tracts and treatises were full of it, orators adopted it, state papers and proclamations were embodied in it. Scriptural and unscriptural denunciation and invective were legitimate weapons of warfare, and the pens of controversialists were often dipped in gall. Not only igno- rant and obscure writers, but men conspicu-
1 Marsden's Later Puritans, pp. 55-57. Brome, p. 258. Coit's Puritanism, p. 61.
2 Coit, pp. 51-59.
1
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
ous for their piety, learning, and refinement, used language bitter, harsh, extravagant, and offensive to good taste. The Rev. Dr. Daniel Featley, a Presbyterian and a mem- ber of the historic Assembly of Divines at Westminster, published a tract in 1644, entitled " The Dippers dipt; or the Ana- baptists ducked and plunged over head and ears at a disputation in Southwark," in which he calls the Baptists an idle and sot- tish sect ; a lying and blasphemous sect; an impure and carnal sect ; a bloody and cruel sect ; a profane and sacrilegious sect.1 In the same year he petitioned the House of Lords that John Milton might be cut off as a pestilent Anabaptist.
Prynne ridiculed the church choir in set terms. He said, "Choristers bellow the tenor, as it were oxen ; bark a counterpart, as it were a kennel of dogs ; roar out a treble, as it were a sort of bulls ; and grunt out a bass, as it were a number of hogs." 2
Milton says of the bishops, " they . . . shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell . . . the trample and spurn of all the other damned
1 Quoted in Ivimey's Milton, p. 104.
2 Quoted in Coit's Puritanism, p. 455.
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THE QUAKER INVASION
. . . shall exercise a raving and bestial tyr- anny over them . . . they shall remain in that plight forever, the basest, the lower- most, the most dejected and down-trodden vassals of perdition." 1 In his reply to Sal- masius, who, in 1649, published a vindica- tion of Charles I., he calls him a " pimp " and a " starving rascal," and denounces him in quaint but vigorous verse thus: -
" And in Rome's praise employ his poisoned breath,
Who threatened once to stink the Pope to death." 2
It would be both pleasant and profitable to pause a moment to contemplate Puritan- ism in its larger and nobler aspect, but it has a place in this treatise only so far as it relates to Quakerism. The preceding sketch of the religious enthusiasm and fa- naticism that marked its rise and progress, it is hoped, will serve a twofold purpose. Though necessarily incomplete, it will aid us to a better understanding of the nature and significance of the conflict between the Founders of Massachusetts and the Qua- kers, when we come to consider it, and in the mean time it will, in a measure, indi- cate some of the conditions under which Quakerism was developed.
1 Coit, p. 455. 2 Ivimey, p. 146.
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
George Fox was the founder of the sect .. Macaulay, utterly unable to understand or appreciate this remarkable man, can " see no reason for placing him, morally or in- tellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote." He thinks his intel- lect was " too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered for Bedlam." Carlyle, with a deeper insight, recognizes in Fox a religious genius and reformer. " This man, by trade a shoemaker," he, says, " was one of those to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself, . . . who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed. . . . Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning when he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox ; every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slavery and World-worship, and the Mam- mon.god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer's strokes, and every stroke is bear-
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THE QUAKER INVASION
ing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Work-house and Rag-fair, into lands of true Liberty ; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he!" Fox's parents were members of the Established Church, and were noted for their probity and piety. He was born in Leicestershire, England, in 1624. His school education was limited and insufficient. Very early in life he manifested a serious disposition, sometimes bordering upon melancholy. His pious mother, instead of luring him on to the enjoyment of childish sports, encour- aged his precocity, and, as a consequence, he was never a boy in anything but years. The child was father of the man. He was honest almost to a fault. He would not re- sent an affront, but never flinched in times of trial. " Verily," with him, stood for protestation and determination, and it was a common remark among his companions, that, " if George says ' Verily,' there is no altering him." At the age of nineteen, and for three continuous years, he experienced mental suffering that would have unseated an intellect less vigorous and rugged. He withdrew from all companionship, but was
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
soon made miserable by the reflection that he had forsaken his relations. Returning home, he spent much of his time in solitary meditation and prayer. The Bible was his favorite, and almost his only study. His condition, he tells us, was often one of ab- solute despair. He consulted preachers of the various denominations, but found them " miserable comforters." He likens them to " an empty, hollow cask." The outcome of this mental conflict was the conviction that the paramount object of human exist- ence is to get into a proper spiritual relation with the Creator. The moral faculties are to be quickened, the law of Love must gov- ern our relations with our fellow-men ; but a spiritual oneness with the Deity attained, the rest would follow as naturally as light follows the rising sun. He learned that the divine law is written upon the hearts of men ; and that to construe or interpret it correctly, he must give heed to the voice of God in his own soul. His mission was now revealed to him. "I was commis- sioned," he says, "to turn people to that Inward Light - even that Divine Spirit which would lead men to all truth."
This doctrine of the Inward Light was
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THE QUAKER INVASION
the corner-stone upon which Fox builded and upon which Quakerism rests. It was no new doctrine. Neither Fox nor his as- sociates laid claim to a discovery. It was older than Christianity itself, but since the days of Jesus and his followers, it had been a mere theory, subordinate to doctrines em- bodied in the creeds. Jesus, in substance, taught the same lesson, but the Christian Church had forgotten it. Christ had come to be God, and the Bible the only revealed word. Fox sought to restore primitive Christianity by calling upon men not to forsake Jesus, but to worship God and to realize, in full, the relation to Him implied when we call him Father. The epithet, heretic, has so often been applied to the early Quakers that it is frequently assumed that they formally denied and denounced theological opinions alleged to be funda- mental. This is a serious error. It is true they were not creed bound. " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," and liberty of conscience, liberty to think and to speak, not only found protection in a Quaker meeting, but zealous advocates and defend- ers wherever a Quaker voice was heard. Such liberty inevitably develops variety
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OF MASSACHUSETTS. 17
of opinion, and there was more latitude among the Friends than within the narrower limits of other sects. They all, however, be- lieved in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; in Christ the Saviour ; in the atonement ; in the resurrection ; and in the inspiration of the Bible. Nevertheless, they held that " the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life," and that to interpret the written word, men must be inspired by the Spirit that guided the hands of those who wrote it. Fox said "the holy men of God wrote the Scriptures as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ; and all Christendom are on heaps about those Scriptures, because they are not led by the same Holy Ghost as those were that gave forth the Scriptures ; which Holy Ghost they must come to in them- selves and be led by, if they come into all the truth of them." Barclay, in his " Apol- ogy," declares, " We do firmly believe that there is no other gospel to be preached, but that which was delivered by the apostles. . We distinguish betwixt a revelation of a new gospel and new doctrines, and a new revelation of the good old gospel and doctrines ; the last we plead for, but the first we utterly deny." He is careful, how-
2
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THE QUAKER INVASION
ever, to maintain the supremacy of the Spirit, and in this connection he assures the reader that some of his friends, " who not only were ignorant of the Greek and Hebrew, but even some of them could not read their own vulgar language, who being pressed by their adversaries with some cita- tions out of the English translation, and finding them to disagree with the manifes- tation of truth in their own hearts, have boldly affirmed the Spirit of God never said so, and that it was certainly wrong ; for they did not believe that any of the holy prophets or apostles had ever written so; which, when I, on this account, seri- ously examined, I really found to be errors and corruptions of the translators; who (as in most translations) do not so much give us the genuine signification of the words, as strain them to express that which comes nearest to that opinion and notion they have of truth." On another page he says the Scriptures "may be esteemed a second- ary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty ; for as by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify that the Spirit is that Guide
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OF MASSACHUSETTS.
by which the saints are led into all truth ; therefore, according to the Scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader."
The famous Richard Baxter, in a discus- sion with some Quakers, referring to this Inward Light, asked them, " If all have it, why may not I have it?" And a learned Unitarian clergyman of Boston calls this "one of his most pertinent questions." If so, Baxter must have been sorely pressed and at his wit's end for argument, for the Quakers could not too strongly urge the universality of the Divine Spirit, and their response no doubt was, that having it, he should heed it. Heed it, friend Baxter, and it will lead thee into all truth. The diffi- culty lay in his denial of it.
The logic of this cardinal principle of Quakerism led straight to repudiation of the authority of an ordained ministry, to the withdrawal from church membership, and the refusal to pay church tithes. In- tellectual training alone cannot fit men to be religious teachers. The Spirit of God must first illuminate their souls and sanc- tify their lives. The Puritans rebelled against prelacy, and held in special abhor- rence the forms and ceremonies borrowed
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