USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume I > Part 6
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ber of their church to the communion nor their children to bap- tism, yet they will marry their children to those whom they will not admit to baptism, if they be rich. * * * Those whom they will not admit to the communion they compel to come to their sermons by forcing from them five shillings for every neglect; yet these men thought their own paying of one shilling for not coming to prayer in England was an insupportable tyranny. They convert Indians by hiring them to come and hear sermons, by teaching them not to obey their heathen Sachems, and by appointing rulers amongst them, over tens, twenties, fifties, &c. The lives, manners and habits of those whom they say are converted cannot be distinguished from those who are not, except it be by being hired to hear sermons, which the more generous natives scorn."
Such criticisms were made by wise, candid and just men, who knew well the spirit and practices of the ministers of Massachusetts and their followers. Those who sternly adhere to the letter that killeth work all the more mischief because they are conscientiously wrong. Their reverence for outgrown au- thorities and commandments of men hinder them from the exer- cise of charity and independent thinking. Though persecutions and martyrdoms could not crush out the religious convictions of the Puritans, called heresy by the ruling church in England, yet they knew no better way of saving their neighbors from be- ing heretics of another class. Hence Antinomians, Baptists, Quakers and witches were banished, flogged, imprisonned, or hanged. Such Puritans deserve to be ranked with Saul of Tar- sus rather than with Paul the Apostle.
The most conspicuous illustration of the bigotry, cruelty and spiritual blindness of the rulers in Massachusetts was their treatment of members of the Society of Friends, called Quakers, for which many apologies have been written. The accusations of the oppressors have been received by some recent writers as evidence of face value against the spirit and conduct of the Quakers. Indeed by some it is made to appear that the Quakers were the real persecutors and that they ought not to have come across the Atlantic to disturb the Puritans in their worship and government, forgetting that four-fifths of the Quakers, who were whipped, banished and hanged, had been for years worthy
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and peaceable citizens of Massachusetts. Yet it is asserted that the Quakers were not punished for their heresy, or differences in religious belief, but for disturbing and threatening the peace of the communities in which they lived and for speaking evil of magistrates and ministers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Their writings of that time, their court examinations, their preserved letters and petitions, all breathe the spirit of charity, fortitude, forgiveness and christian forbearance. They felt that they were suffering and dying for the truth of the living God, with whom they lived in abiding communion. None but their bitter enemies spoke evil of them. There were two or three Quaker women, who manifestly were driven to insanity by persecutions of themselves or of others and committed offences. against public decency by appearing naked in the streets, for which they should have been sent to a hospital. No violation of moral law is laid to their charge. They believed somewhat differently from the ministers of the standing order. Their modes of worship were different from those of Congregational churches. Their speech and manners were odd, as judged by customary etiquette. Therefore more than four thousand of them suffered imprisonment in England, three were hanged on Bos- ton Common, women were stripped to the waist and beaten at the cart's tail from town to town, three had an ear cut off, scores were whipped with a threefold knotted whip, and every blow was meant to "kiss the bone," as one writer says. Others: were thrown into prison in the dead of winter, without bed or covering, and kept without food for three and five days. Some. with their backs bleeding were driven into the wilderness and left to the mercy of wild beasts. By heavy fines some were robbed of all their property, reduced to poverty and then ban- ished from the colony. Two children of the Southwick family of Salem were sold into slavery after that their parents had been driven to death by persecution,-sold as slaves because they had no means left of paying unjust fines. Not only the Quakers. themselves but also those who showed to them any kindness, hospitably sheltered them for a night, attended their religious: services, or spoke in their defence, were fined and whipped. The spirit and methods were those of the Spanish inquisition, although we do not read of the use of racks, thumbscrews and gridirons. The three-knotted and three-fold lash, added to cold"
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and hunger, were enough to vent the rage of clerical inquisitors. and, as they hoped, repress and prevent further heresy.
And what was the heresy taught by these peaceful and pious Friends? Their fundamental teaching was the doctrine of the Inner Light, by which they meant the spirit of God in the spirit of man is the ultimate test of truth. No external authority of men can be substituted for the revelation and inspiration of the divine Spirit within. The sacred Scriptures are indeed the record of a revelation gradually perceived, but their truths must be re-revealed to the soul of the individual believer. In other words, as the Hebrew prophets foretold, all must be directly taught
of God. This is now admitted by the best religious philosophers of all Protestantism to be the fundamental prin- ciple of true religion. 4 Thus the Quakers were in religious philosophy two centuries in advance of New England Congrega- tionalism, because they were guided by the Inner Light rather than by twisted interpretations of imperfect records. Conscien- tious religionists have never been persecuted for their sins and follies ; it has always been for their truths and virtues. It is the genuine prophet that gets sawn asunder, or forced to hide in the dens and caves of the earth. History has demonstrated that the persecutor of the conscientious has been wrong in mind as well as in heart. The simple-hearted piety of the early Quakeress was more than a match, in the intellectual field, for the pretended wisdom of the graduates of Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard. It is the pure in heart that see the things divine.
Yet the principle for which Protestantism contended, the right of private judgment, was implied in the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. The Puritan divines contradicted their own doctrine and history in their failure to tolerate and treat kindly those who differed from them in religious beliefs and practices. By their unchristian tempers, words and deeds, by their cruelty and injustice, by their narrowness and egotism they presented a contrast to the spirit and conduct of the Pentecostal disciples of Jesus. Excuses for their doings, by clerical pettifoggery, have been found in the ancient laws and practices of the Hebrews and in the twisted sayings of Saint Paul, but surely nobody could
4 See Prof. Sabatier's Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit.
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ever appeal to Jesus for justification of the spirit and conduct of Governor Endicott, the Rev. John Norton and the General Court of Massachusetts in their treatment of the Quakers. Neither can the comparative ignorance of the times, nor the faults of the age, excuse them. There were many who de- nounced them then. Even the mob was feared, lest common humane sentiment might rescue prisoners out of their bloody hands. One hundred armed soldiers guarded to the gallows those who were hanged on Boston Common.
It is true that the Inner Light of the individual was some- times opposed to the common sense of the many, and so it needed to be brought for regulation to the judgment of the wise and good. The Quakers never maintained the infallibility of private judgment nor scorned the advice of the sincere and holy. They learned from one another as well as from the Spirit of Truth. They sought the concurrent opinion of all those who gave evidence of being divinely guided and in the impartial court of collective and consecrated human wisdom they found their final authority in religion. To seek it elsewhere has always proved to be vain and harmful. The Puritan divines found their final authority in a collection of sacred books, of which they thought themselves to be the proper interpreters, and they suf- fered no appeal from their decisions. The Bible to them was absolutely infallible, and they were the divinely appointed ex- positors of its truths. Their claim was not much different in theory from that of the Roman Catholic Church for its Popes and Councils. It was not so much the basal doctrine of Quaker- ism that was feared as its political consequences. The doctrine of the Puritans kept all authority in the hands of the few church members, who alone were freemen and consequently had power to vote and hold office. They meant the State to be a theocracy, of which they were the earthly agents. They would not divide their power with others. Those who could not and would not agree with them had liberty to go and stay elsewhere if they went silently. All who dissented from them were denied the common rights of Englishmen and were barred out of a certain portion of the King's dominion.
The traditional stories about the impertinence, extravagan- cies and fanaticism of the early Quakers in Massachusetts may safely be thrown out of court as the prejudiced and exaggerated
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reports of their enemies. All such charges have been abundantly refuted by trustworthy authors. 5
As an illustration of the intolerance of the leaders in Massa- chusetts, that intolerance which was magnified as a virtue, take this choice passage from The Simple Cobler of Aggawam, a book written by the Rev. Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, the same who drew up the first codified laws of the colony, wherein the criminal code was copied almost word for word from the Penta- teuch. He says, "He that willingly assents to the last [tolera- tion], if he examines his heart by daylight, his conscience will tell him, he is either an atheist, or an heretic, or an hypocrite, or at best a captive to some lust. Polypiety is the greatest impiety in the world. To authorize an untruth by toleration of the state, is to build a sconce against the walls of heaven, to batter God out of his chair. Persecution of true religion and toleration of false are the Jannes and Jambres to the kingdom of Christ, whereof the last is by far the worst. He that is will- ing to tolerate any unsound opinion, that his own may be tolerated though never so sound, will for a need hang God's Bible at the devil's girdle. It is said that men ought to have liberty of conscience and that it is persecution to debar them of it: I can rather stand amazed than reply to this; it is an astonishment that the brains of men should be par- boiled in such impious ignorance."6 But who shall be the judge of truth? The Pope, or the King, or the General Court, or the Congregational ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony? It is true that one should not compromise with one's own conscientious convictions, but that does not make it one's duty to force those convictions upon others. Ministers are still pledged to banish and drive all strange doctrines from their parishes, although our laws allow heathen worshipers of every name to build their temples in our land. Some have learned that error must be overcome by reason and right living, rather than crushed out by force.
The facts here related have been told again and again, yet they can not properly be left out of a history of New Hampshire.
5 The Emancipation of Massachusetts, by Brooks Adams; the Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts, by Richard P. Hallowell, and Sewel's Hist. of the Quakers.
6 Farmer's Belknap, p. 46.
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On the fourteenth of October, 1656, the General Court of Massa- chusetts made the following record: "Whereas there is a cursed sect of hereticks lately risen up in the world, which are com- monly called Quakers, who take upon them to be immediately sent of God, and infallibly assisted by the spirit to speake & write blasphemouth opinions, despising government & the order of God in church & commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turn the people from the faith & gain proselites to their per- nicious waies," the Court doth order that no master of a vessel should bring a Quaker into the colony under penalty of one hundred pounds and if he did bring one he should carry him back or be imprisoned ; that any Quaker arriving in the colony should be at once imprisoned and severely whipped and set at hard labor, no person being allowed to converse with the same; that no books or writings that contained the "devilish opinions" of the Quakers should be brought into the country, nor be dis- persed nor concealed, under penalty of five pounds ; that nobody should undertake to defend the heretical opinions of the Quakers, under penalty of forty shillings for the first offence, of four pounds for the second offence, and for the third offence he should be committed to prison and banished from the jurisdic- tion of Massachusetts; and lastly that any person who should revile the office or person of magistrates or ministers should be severely whipped or pay five pounds. This law proved to be not sufficiently barbarous, and so the following year it was strengthened by the decree that whosoever might entertain or conceal a Quaker should forfeit to the country forty shillings for every hour's entertainment or concealment, and that "if any Quaker or Quakers shall presume, after they have once suffered what the lawe requireth, to come into this jurisdiction, every such male Quaker shall, for the first offence have one of his eares cut off and be kept at worke in the house of correction till he cann be sent away at his owne charge, and for the second offence shall have his other eare cut off, &c., and kept at the house of correction as aforesaid; and every woman Quaker that hath suffered the lawe heere that shall presume to come into this jurisdiction shall be severely whipped and kept at the house of correction at work till she be sent away at her owne charge, and so also for her coming again she shall be alike used as afore-
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said; and for every Quaker, he or she, that shall a third time herein again offend they shall have their tongues bored through with a hot iron & kept at the house of correction, close to worke, till they be sent away at their owne charge. And it is further ordered, that all and every Quaker arising from amongst our- selves shall be dealt with and suffer the like punishment as the lawe provides against forreigne Quakers." 7
Major Richard Waldern of Cochecho was one of the depu- ties at the court when these wicked laws were enacted, and he lifted not his voice against them. A few years later he made himself odious by sentencing three Quaker women in a manner that would now disgrace the court of any petty ruler in heaven- dom. The order was issued December 22, 1662, in the dead of winter.
To the Constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and untill these vaga- bond Quakers are out of this jurisdiction :-
You and every one of you are required in the King's Majestie's name to take these vagabond Quakers, Anna Coleman, Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail; and drawing the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked backs, not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town; and so convey them from constable to constable till they are out of this jurisdiction, and you will answer it at your peril; and this shall be your warrant. Per me, Richard Walderne.
It has been asserted by Quaker authorities that this dis- graceful order was drawn up by the Rev. John Reyner, who was at that time the minister of Dover, and it is almost certain that it was done with his consent and approval, for any minister within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts could have prevented such barbarity in his own town, had he been so disposed. Traditions concerning the gentle disposition of Mr. Reyner do not save him from the condemnation of history, for a "a man may smile and smile and be a villain," and it is well known that then a minister could weep and pray and be gentle to his friends and still be a persecutor of heretics in the most bitter spirit and cruel manner.
The occasion of the above merciless order may be told as follows, condensed and modified from the account as given by
7 N. H. Prov. Papers, Vol. I, pp. 226-230.
-
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George Bishop in his book, New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord, published in 1667. Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose from old England and George Preston and Edward Wharton from Salem visited Dover in the year 1662. There they conversed with many of the people at the inn on Dover Neck. Some of the inhabitants ran to parson Rayner's house and fetched him to refute the arguments which they could not answer. A theological wrangle ensued about the mysteries of the Trinity, and parson Reyner is said to have been much fretted and in a rage. However, many were convinced that the Quakers were in the right, who abode there a few days and then crossed over to Kittery, where they were lodged by Major Nicholas Shapleigh. Toward winter of 1662 Mary Tomkins, Alice Ambrose and Ann Coleman went again to Dover to visit those who had embraced their faith and to scatter more seeds of truth, when a "flood of persecution arose by the instigation of the Priest," which led to the above given order of Major Walderne. On examination before Walderne he began to tell them of the law against Quakers. Mary Tomkins replied, "So there was a law that Daniel should not pray to his God," to which he answered, "and Daniel suffered and so shall you." He asked Alice Ambrose her name, which appeared in the warrant. "My name," she said, "is written in the Lamb's Book of Life." He replied, "Nobody here knows the Book and for this you shall suffer." One of the tender women was little and crooked, yet in a very cold day they were all stripped from the waist upward and tied to the tail of a cart with ropes, seeing which James Heard asked if those were the "cords of the covenant." After a while they were cruelly whipped, "whilst the Priest stood and looked on and laughed at it, which some of the friends seeing testified against, for which Walderne put two of them, Eliakin Wardel of Hampton and William Fourbush of Dover, in the stocks." This William Furbish, Scotchman, soon afterward set- tled in what is now Eliot, Maine, and many of his descendants united with the Society of Friends in that place.
"Having dispatched them in this town and made way to carry them over the waters and through woods to another, the women denied to go unless they had a copy of their warrant, so your executioner sought to set them on horseback, but they slid off; then they endeavored to tie each to a man on horse-
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back; that would not do either, nor any course they took till the copy was given, insomuch that the constable professed that he was almost wearied with them. But the copy being given them, they were with the executioner to Hampton, and through dirt and snow at Salisbury, half way the leg deep, the Constable forced them after the Cart's tayl at which he whipped them, under which cruelty and sore usage the tender women traversing their way through all was a hard spectacle to those who had in them anything of tenderness; but the Presence of the Lord was so with them (in the extremity of their sufferings) that they sung in the midst of them to the astonishment of their enemies."
This outdoes Paul and Silas singing in the Philippian jail at midnight. The sentence meant death by the most cruel torture, for the minister and the judge well knew that the Quakeresses could not survive to be dragged thus a distance of eighty miles and receive one hundred and ten blows with a whip of three cords. It is a wonder that they lived to reach Salisbury. It is a greater wonder that before they reached that town nobody had the pity and courage to rescue them from the bloody hands of the executioner. It shows how human law, however repulsive, is stronger than the divine in the hearts of weaklings. The people feared the spoiling of their goods and like punishment for themselves, if they interfered with the judgment of the court and the work of the constable. It is to the honor of Salisbury that the inhuman outrage could proceed no further. Sewel says that "their bodies were so torn, that if Providence had not watched over them, they might have been in danger of their lives. But it fell out so that they were dis- charged: for the constable at Salisbury who must have carried them to Newbury, was desired by one Walter Barefoot to make him his deputy, who thus receiving the warrant set them at liberty ; though John Wheelwright, the priest, advised the con- stable to drive on, as his safest way." We shall meet this Walter Barefoot again. It is said that he acted with the connivance of Major Robert Pike. Just as no sea-captain could be found to bear Cassandra Southwick away to slavery in the Barbadoes, so nobody was found in Salisbury who would further torture and pass on to the next town's torture three feeeble Quaker
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women, their naked backs lacerated and bleeding in the wintry cold. And so they escaped death, but
"Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame, Rejoicing in their wrtchedness, and glorying in their shame."
Nothing can silence prophetic impulse. Sooner will the stones cry out than the religious reformer keep still. These persecuted women returned to work, moved thereto by a thus- saith-the-Lord within them. They found shelter with Major Shapleigh in Kittery and after a little while revisited their friends just across the river, on Dover Neck. There, while they were met together on the first day of the week and were in prayer, "the constable Thomas Roberts and his brother John, like sons of Belial, having put on their old Cloaths with their aprons, on purpose to carry on their Drudgery, taking Alice Ambrose, the one by the one Arm and the other by the other Arm, they unmercifully dragged her out of Doors, with her face towards the snow which was knee deep, over stumps and old Trees near a Mile: in the way of which when they had wearied themselves they commanded two others to help them and so laid her up prisoner in a very wicked man's house (Thomas Canney's), which when they had done they made haste with the rest that were with them to fetch Mary Tomkins; whom as they were dragging along with her face towards the Snow, the poor father of those two wicked Constables, following after Lamenting and Crying "Wo that ever he was the father of such wicked children," (From this man, Thomas Roberts, whose Labour was at an end, and who had lived in Dover thirty years and a member of their church above twenty years, they took his cow away which gave him and his wife a little milk, for not coming to their worship). So thither they haled Mary Tomkins also and kept them both all night in the same house ; and in the morning, it being exceedingly cold, they got into a certain Boat or Canoe or kind of Trow, hewed out of the body of a tree which the Indians use in the water, and in it they determined to have the three women down to the harbor's mouth; and there put them in, threatening that they would now so do with them that they would be troubled with them no more." The women, being unwilling to go, were forced down a very steep place, in deep snow, and Edward Weymouth
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furiously took Mary Tomkins by the arms and dragged her on her back over the stumps of trees down a very steep hill to the water side, so that she was much bruised and after was dying away. Elder Hatevil Nutter was present, stirring up the con- stables to do this thing for which they had no warrant. Alice Ambrose they plucked violently into the water and kept swim- ming by the Canoe, being in danger of drowning or to be frozen to death. Ann Coleman they put in great danger of her life, and the three might have perished, had not a great tempest arisen, which drove them back to Canney's house, where they were kept prisoners till midnight. Then they were cruelly turned out of doors in the frost and snow, Alice Ambrose's cloths being frozen like boards. Still they lived to suffer more persecutions elsewhere. The best and the worst men of Dover combined to maltreat and drive away three helpless women, while old Thomas Roberts, who had once the honor of being chosen President of the Court, feebly cried out in pity and was fined for subsequent sympathy expressed. What a tragedy. Had the Indians known and understood all this, they would have hardly kept away from Dover Neck, when a few years later they ravaged Cochecho and Oyster River. Perhaps they stayed away because during the next twenty years so many persons on the Neck had turned Quaker, for here, too, the blood of the Quaker martyrs was the seed of their church.
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