USA > Rhode Island > The Narragansett Friends' meeting in the xviii century, with a chapter on Quaker beginnings in Rhode Island > Part 2
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have the English, who deal so with one another about their God!'"
Notwithstanding the severity of these laws, or rather because of their severity, Quakers continued to come to Massachu- setts. When the seaboard was closely guarded against them, they found entrance by " a back door," as Edward Rawson, the Secretary of the Colony, declares to the King and Council in 1661. The penalties were proved insufficient " to restrain their impudent and insolent obtrusions," and he goes on to describe the measures taken as " a defence against their impetuous, frantic fury," which " necessitated us to endeavor our security." We have already seen that Rhode Island was the " back door " through which these " malignant promoters of doc- trines directly tending to subvert both church and state " found entrance into the well-guarded colony. The worst of the of- fences against civil government seems to have been the failure to doff the hat to a magistrate. Some of the women bore testi- mony against the cruel laws by wearing sackcloth, with ashes on their heads, or de- clared the spiritual nakedness of the rulers by a visible exemplification. But in a time
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QUAKER BEGINNINGS
when it was no uncommon thing to see a woman, stripped to the waist, fastened to the tail of a cart, and whipped in the centre of the town by the public hangman by the magistrates' order, these voluntary testi- monies are the less surprising. "It must be admitted," Whittier writes of these early Friends, " that many of them manifested a good deal of that wild enthusiasm which has always been the result of persecution, and the denial of the rights of conscience and worship."
But Quakers simply travelling from one place to another, with no other offence than being Quakers, were unsafe. Hored Gardner, who is described as an inhabitant of Newport, came to Weymouth, "with her sucking babe, and a girl to carry it," in 1658, "whence for being a Quaker she was hurried to Boston, where both she and the girl were whipped with a three-fold knot. After whipping, the woman kneeled down, and prayed the Lord to forgive those per- secutors ; which so touched a woman that stood by, that she said, surely she could not have done this if it had not been by the spirit of the Lord."
The most famous case of suffering among
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the early Friends was that of Mary Dyer. Her husband, William Dyre, as the record spells it, was a man of importance in Rhode Island. He was one of the men appointed to lay out the town of Newport, and from 1640 to 1643 was Secretary of the Colony. He held the office of General Recorder later, and was General Attorney in 1650. Mary Dyer was a woman of strong charac- ter, great enthusiasm, and excellent under- standing. Sewel gives the history of her courage at length. She came to Boston from Rhode Island in 1657, he says, not knowing the laws which had been made against Quakers, and was imprisoned. Wil- liam Dyer, her husband, upon hearing this, came from Rhode Island and obtained her release, "becoming bound in a great pen- alty not to lodge her in any town of that colony, nor permit any to speak with her : an evident token that he was not of the So- ciety of Quakers so called, for otherwise he would not have entered into such a bond ; but then without question he would also have been clapped up in prison," the worthy Dutch historian adds. Two years later (in 1659) Mary Dyer was again in Boston, when William Robinson, a merchant of
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London, and Marmaduke Stevenson, came there. Nicholas Davis was also there, and after whipping Robinson, who was a teacher among the Quakers, all four were banished on pain of death. The sentence is dated September 12, 1659, and it appearing, " by their own confession, words, and actions, that they are Quakers," they are sentenced "to depart this jurisdiction on pain of death, and that they must answer it at their peril, if they or any of them after the 14th of this present month, September, are found within this jurisdiction, or any part thereof." Mary Dyer and Davis accordingly left Bos- ton and the colony, while the others only went to Salem, not being free in mind to comply. And it was not long that Mary Dyer remained away, for in the next month (October) she returned, and all three were taken into custody. On the 20th of the month these three were brought into court, when Endicott made them an oration, de- claring that the court desired not the death of any, but ending, " Give ear, and harken to your sentence of death." Robinson had prepared a paper expressly declaring that while in Rhode Island he was commanded of the Lord to repair to Boston, and lay
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down his life there, as a testimony against the wicked and unjust laws. This paper Endicott read, but refused to have read publicly. Stevenson was then called, and, seeing how his companion had fared, made no defence. He was sentenced to death, and it was the turn of Mary Dyer, "to whom Endicott spoke thus: 'Mary Dyer, you shall go to the place whence you came (to wit the prison) and thence to the place of execution, and be hanged there until you are dead.' To which she replied, ' The will of the Lord be done.' Then Endicott said, ' Take her away, Marshal.' To which she returned, ' Yea, joyfully I go.' And in her going to the prison, she often uttered speeches of praise to the Lord ; and being full of joy, she said to the Marshal, he might let her alone, for she would go to the prison without him. To which he an- swered, 'I believe you, Mrs. Dyer; but I must do what I am commanded.'"
In prison Mary Dyer wrote a very re- markable letter, addressed to the General Court in Boston, justifying her coming to Boston, as it was by the will of the Lord she came. " I have no self-ends, the Lord knoweth," she writes. Seeing the evil of
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their unjust laws, she entreats the court not to be found fighting against God, but "to repeal all such laws, that the Truth and servants of the Lord may have free passage among you. Seeing the Lord hath not hid it from me, it lyeth upon me in love to your souls thus to persuade you.
. Was ever the like laws heard of among
.
a people that confess Christ come in the flesh? and have ye no other weapons to fight against spiritual wickedness withal, as you call it? Woe is me for you! Of whom take ye counsel? Search with the light of Christ in you, and it will show you of whom, as it hath done me, and many more, who have been disobedient and deceived, as now ye are; which light as ye come into, and obeying what is made manifest to you therein, you will not repent that you were kept from shedding blood, though it were by a woman." She likens her request to Esther's before Ahasuerus, saying that he did not contend it would be dishonorable to revoke his decree. She appeals to " the faithful and true witness of God which is one in all consciences. If they put this request from them, she continues, the Lord will send more of his servants to gather
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the harvest; for the light of the Lord is surely approaching, even to many in and about Boston, which is the bitterest and darkest professing place . . . that ever I heard of. Let the time past, therefore, suf- fice, for such a profession as brings forth such fruits as these laws are. In love and in the spirit of meekness I again beseech you."
Mary Dyer's query as to whether the General Court had " no other weapons to fight against spiritual wickedness withal," reminds one of the Rhode Island way of dealing with doctrine. Roger Williams stoutly maintained the " freedom of differ- ent consciences from inforcements," but he was far from indifferent as to his neighbors' beliefs. How could he be, being a godly man, and certain that by belief, rather than by conduct, a soul is to be judged? There were long discussions in Rhode Island, de- bates on all conceivable questions, and pamphlets appealing to the reason and con- science of the reader. These " weapons " were always at hand in the Providence plantations, and doubtless were well known to Mary Dyer. Her appeal to the General Court, written as she supposed on the eve
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of her execution, is certainly a noble one. From her point of view, she could have done no less than offer up her life, if the offering should secure liberty to her op- pressed brethren. It is difficult to see just why she supposed it would do so. Some- thing of stubbornness must have crept into her constancy to make her persist in sacri- fice.
Her letter had small effect on the court, as may be imagined, and the day came for execution. It was the 27th of October, 1659, when the three prisoners were led to the gallows, in the afternoon, escorted by about two hundred armed men, beside horsemen, and the minister, John Wilson. The three friends walked hand in hand, Mary Dyer in the middle. As she was an elderly woman, the Marshal said to her, " Are you not ashamed to walk thus, hand in hand between two young men ?" " No," replied she ; " this is to me an hour of the greatest joy I could enjoy in the whole world. No eye can see, no tongue can ut- ter, and no heart can understand the sweet incomes or influences, and the refreshings of the spirit of the Lord which I now feel;" so " they went on with great cheerfulness,
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as going to an everlasting wedding feast," though the drummers drowned their voices.
At the gallows Wilson made a taunting remark to Robinson: " Shall such jacks as you are come before authority with their hats on?" he asked, and Robinson replied, " Mind you, mind you, it is for not putting off the hat we are put to death." He was the first to suffer. " I suffer for Christ," he said, " in whom I live, and for whom I die." Stevenson was next hanged, with a word of holy confidence upon his lips, and Mary Dyer stepped up the ladder. The halter was adjusted, " her coats were tied about her feet," the old record says, and John Wilson lent the hangman a handkerchief to cover her face. Just as the hangman was about to do his work a cry came, "'Stop, for she is reprieved!' Her feet being then loosed, they bade her come down. But she, whose mind was already as it were in heaven, stood still and said she was there willing to suffer as her brethren did, unless they would annul their wicked law." But they pulled her down and car- ried her back to prison. It now appears that this was a ghastly farce arranged by the authorities to intimidate this intrepid
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woman. The decree itself, signed before she left the prison, prescribes the cruel method of her release. She was to be car- ried " to the place of execution and there to stand upon the gallowes with a rope about her necke till the rest be executed, and then to return to the prison."1
It was at the entreaty of her son that this reprieve was granted ; " an inconsider- able intercession," the Secretary, Edward Rawson, says, in his account to the king of these proceedings. " Mary Dyer (upon pe- tition of her son, and the mercy and clem- ancy of this court) had liberty to depart within two days, which she accepted of," Rawson declares. From prison, the next day after the execution, at which she mani- fested such heroic courage, she wrote another letter to the General Court, full of the same spirit. " When I heard your last order read, it was a disturbance unto me, that was so freely offering up my life to him that gave it me." She warns the judges to put away the evil of their doings, to " kiss the Son, the light in you, before his wrath be kindled in you." And this she wrote while the image of her dead compan-
1 Horatio Rogers, Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr, p. 53.
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ions must still have been before her eyes, and the tale of the barbarous treatment of their dead bodies in her ears. But she re- turned to prison, she says, " finding nothing from the Lord to the contrary, that I may know what his pleasure and counsel is con- cerning me, on whom I wait therefore, for he is my life and the length of my days ; and as I said before, I came at his com- mand and go at his command."
The discontent among the people was so great that the magistrates resolved to send Mary Dyer away. She was accordingly put on horseback, and escorted by four horsemen fifteen miles toward Rhode Is- land, where she was left with a horse and a man to complete the journey. She spent the winter in Long Island, and then, com- ing home in the spring, she was moved " to return to the bloody town of Boston," where she arrived on the "twenty-first of the Third month, 1660," - that is, May, for the old style of reckoning the year from the first of March was still in use. Ten days after her arrival she was sent for by the General Court. " Are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before?" Endicott asked her, and it seems the court was
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preparing an escape for her, being disin- clined to proceed to extremities, for another Mary Dyer had come from England. But she replied undauntedly, and without eva- sion, " I am the same Mary Dyer that was here at the last General Court." She was then asked if she avowed herself a Quaker, to which she replied : " I own myself to be reproachfully so called." Endicott said her sentence had been passed, and was now the same. "You must return to prison," he said, " and there remain till to-morrow at nine o'clock, then, thence you must go to the gallows and there be hanged till you are dead." " This is no more than what thou saidst before," Mary Dyer rejoined. " But now it is to be executed, therefore prepare yourself to-morrow at nine o'clock," Endicott replied.
She then said, " I came in obedience to the will of God to the last General Court, desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death ; and that same is my work now, and earnest re- quest," and more she said of her call, and of others who would come to witness against these laws. Endicott asked her if she were a prophetess, to which she replied that she
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spoke the words the Lord spoke in her, but Endicott cried out, " Away with her ! away with her !" So she was taken to prison.
A letter from her husband arrived about the time Mary Dyer entered the colony, being under sentence of banishment on pain of death. " If her zeal be so great as thus to adventure, oh, let your pity and favor surmount it and save her life," her husband pleads.
I only say this, yourfelves have been, and are or may be, hufbands to wives : so am I, yea to one moft 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 reft your humble sup- pliant.1
But this touching appeal was of no avail. The next day, June Ist, the Marshal came and roughly commanded Mary Dyer to fol- low him. Then she was brought out, and with a band of soldiers led through the town, with drums beaten before and be- hind her. What a scene for the quiet streets of a New England town! The fresh leaves of early summer upon the trees, the sun shining overhead, the whole popula-
1 Bryant's History, vol. ii. p. 194.
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tion following the soldiers, the noisy drums rattling discordant notes, and the centre of of it all one lonely woman, " of a comly and grave countenance," and the undaunted car- riage of a pure and lofty spirit, calmly walk- ing to the fate which she had once before confronted, and which even now by a word from her could be averted! For after she had ascended the ladder it was said to her that if she would return she should be spared. "Nay I cannot," she replied, " for in obedience to the will of the Lord I came, and in his will I abide faithful to the death." Then the captain, John Webb, said that she had been there before, and was there- fore guilty of her own death, knowing the penalty of returning to Boston; to which she replied : -
1020235
Nay, I came to keep blood gununcis from you, defiring you to repeal the un- righteous and unjuft law of banifhment upon pain of death, made againft the innocent servants of the Lord; therefore my blood will be required at your hands who wilfully do it; but for thofe who do it in the simplicity of their hearts I defire the Lord to forgive them.
Then Wilson, the minister, who had lent
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his handkerchief to cover her face before, said to her, " Mary Dyer, oh repent, oh re- pent, and be not so deluded and carried away by the deceit of the devil." One can fancy the touch of scorn which must have tinged her manner, saintly as she was, as she replied, " Nay, man, I am not now to repent."
Then she was asked if she would not have the elders pray for her, but answered, " I know never an elder here."
They asked if she would have any of the people pray for her, to which she replied she desired the prayers of all the people of God. Some one scoffingly said, "It may be she thinks there is none here." And she, looking calmly about, said, " I know but few here." The prayers of the elders were again urged upon her. "Nay," she said, " first a child, then a young man, then a strong man, before an elder in Christ Jesus."
Then some one mentioned that she said she had been in paradise. " Yea, I have been in paradise several days," she an- swered, and continued to speak of the eter- nal happiness she was to enter upon. So she met her death, and died, as her chroni-
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cler says, " a martyr to Christ, being twice led to death, which the first time she ex- pected with undaunted courage, and now suffered with Christian fortitude."
I have dwelt at length upon the story of Mary Dyer's heroic courage, because she was the only woman who suffered death in that time of persecution, and because she was a Rhode Island woman, closely bound by ties of love and friendship to the Friends already in Rhode Island.
At this distance of time, we can see that the magistrates also had something to plead as warrant for their conduct. She had been warned, and in coming back took her life in her hand. The dignity of the law had to be upheld. We have had cases in more recent times of unjust laws being enforced, by judges who did not believe in them, in the very town of Boston, in the time of the fugitive slaves. There was something in their argument that her blood was upon her own head. But with the spirit of a saint she rose above all human argument. Like a Hebrew of old she could say, " The word of the Lord came unto me;" and with St. Paul, " Woe is me if I preach not the gospel." This zeal consumed her.
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Quaker though she was, and so bound to meekness by teaching and principle, she had tasted the glories of martyrdom, and could not rest till she was counted worthy to suffer to the end. If, in our modern spirit, we inquire what her husband and children said to her sacrifice not only of herself but of them, and the suffering and pain she brought them, her grave face, with its rapt expression, rises to rebuke us. This life was nothing, the next all, in those stern, heroic times. Earthly affections were to be trodden under foot. "Set your affections on things above " was an injunction to be literally followed. So, with a responsive thrill for her noble courage, and a sigh for the occasion of it, we finish the record of this heroic woman. Her death reaped its harvest. The " Seed," as Friends delighted to call the principles of truth they lived and died for, flourished abundantly. Within a year of Mary Dyer's death, the Rhode Island yearly meeting was established, which grew till it became the general meet- ing for the whole of New England.
II
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SOUTH KINGSTON MONTHLY MEETING
II
THE little colony which proved a refuge for Quakers not only, but for all those of oppressed conscience, had only been united as to civil government three years, when the Woodhouse landed her missionary band on the "isle of Aquiday." There were political dissensions as well as religious. After the charter had been granted to Roger Williams, in 1643, it was still four years before the towns united in setting " their hands to an engagement to the charter ; "1 a delay caused in part by the difficulties of travel, and the long voyage from England. The two island towns of Newport and Portsmouth were richer than the little towns of Providence and War- wick, and local jealousies were rife. Gov- ernor Coddington of Newport, in 1651, obtained a commission as governor for life, " whereby the Townes of Newport and Portsmouth were disjoynted from the Col- onie of Providence Plantations," and it
1 R. I. C. R., vol. i. p. 147. 2 R. I. C. R., vol. i. p. 268.
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was not till August 31, 1654, that the final union of the towns was accomplished.
With this disordered political condition, the religious conditions were still more disturbed. The disaffected from all the colonies came to Rhode Island. All vari- eties and shades of opinions could be found, from harmless mysticism to doc- trines subversive of the good order of so- ciety, and many a wild theory was pro- pounded. Rhode Island has often been spoken of as a colony of religious tolera- tion. But it was not toleration that Roger Williams taught. He laid down a larger principle, the " freedom of different con- sciences from inforcement," that is, the broad principle of each man's being the sole arbiter of his own fate, and directly responsible to his Maker for his belief. This was a new doctrine, a doctrine of growth and development, calculated to build strong and noble characters. But, while remaining true to it, Roger Williams did not weakly shake off all responsibility as to the spiritual condition of his colonists. On the contrary, while keeping clear from the "inforcements " which were so freely used in the neighboring colonies, he gave
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full rein to his tongue, using all the wea- pons of argument and invective to scourge the wayward fanatics who came to him back into what he considered the true way. The story has often been told, and needs no repeating here. Whittier, with true in- sight, has entered into Roger Williams's feeling, in " A Spiritual Manifestation," when he makes him say : -
"Each zealot thrust before my eyes His Scripture-garbled label ; All creeds were shouted in my ears As with the tongues of Babel.
" Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists Of stripes and bondage braggarts, Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched From Puritanic fagots.
" And last, not least, the Quakers came, With tongues still sore from burning, The Bay State's dust from off their feet Before my threshold spurning ;
" A motley host, the Lord's debris, Faith's odds and ends together ; Well might I shrink from guests with lungs Tough as their breeches leather :
" I fed, but spared them not a wit ; I gave to all who walked in, Not clams and succotash alone, But stronger meat of doctrine.
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" I proved the prophets false, I pricked The bubble of perfection, And clapped upon their inner light The snuffers of election."
It was in this country of "faith's odds and ends " that the Quakers found their opportunity. The martyrdom of Mary Dyer watered the seed, and when George Fox came, twelve years later, he confirmed the church. The visit of Fox was the starting point for many meetings in America, but in coming to Rhode Island he came to his own. He arrived on the 30th of the 3d month, 1672, from Long Island, and was "gladly received by Friends," he writes. This was the 30th of May that he arrived, when he " went to Nicholas Eastons, who was governor of the Island ; there we lay, being weary with travelling." He had a meeting the next first day, a large meet- ing, he says, " to which the deputy gov- ernor and several justices came, and were mightily affected with the truth." It is curious to note how often Fox mentions the dignitaries who attended his meetings, in spite of his being no respecter of per- sons. The week following his arrival, the June yearly meeting for Friends in New
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England was held. Fox himself tells the story of it. Some Barbadoes friends ar- rived; and the meeting lasted six days, he says, and -
Abundance of other people came. For having no priefts in the ifland, and no reftriction to any particular way of wor- ship ; and the governor and deputy-gov- ernor with several juftices of the peace daily frequenting meetings ; it so encour- aged the people that they flocked in from all parts of the ifland. . . . I have rarely obferved a people in the state wherein they stood, to hear with more attention, diligence, and affection, than generally they did during the four days.
Men's and women's meetings followed for "ordering the affairs of the church, . .. that all might be kept clean, sweet and savory amongft them." After which Friends dispersed. But Fox and Robert Widders stayed on the island, "finding service still here for the Lord through the great openness, and the daily coming in of frefh people from other colonies for some time after the general meeting." " After this I had great travail in spirit," he writes, "concerning the Ranters in those parts
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