USA > Rhode Island > The "Old Stone Bank" history of Rhode Island, Vol. II > Part 3
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Mrs. Hutchinson arrived at Boston on the good ship "Griffin," in 1634. She was accompanied by her husband and their fif- teen children, and it is reported that they brought with them a thousand guineas in gold. Mrs. Hutchinson's voyaging to Amer- ica from England was the outcome of the Reverend John Cotton's leaving his home because of religious persecution there. She had "sat under" his preaching in the church in England, and was most anxious to bene- fit again by his teachings, so she and her family followed the clergyman to this new Boston.
Anne Hutchinson was born at some time during the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. One writer says that she was barely turned forty years old when she arrived in America. If so, she was prob- ably born around 1594, which was a point of religious controversy in England. Her father was a Puritan minister, preaching both in Lincolnshire and in London. It was said that, "She was a gentlewoman in the fullest English sense of the word, related to the distinguished, aristocratic family, the Blounts." Her mother was a sister of Sir Edward Dryden, father of the poet Dryden, and Anne herself is said to have enjoyed every advantage of education and culture that the times afforded.
In her girlhood she evidently heard con- siderable theological controversy, for this was the time of the Puritan revolt in Eng- land, and of great religious excitement. Naturally intelligent and earnest, her men -- tal powers were aroused and quickened. While she was still a child, Queen Eliza- beth died and James the First succeeded her. King James desired most intensely "an ordered and obedient Church, its synods that met at the royal will, its courts
that carried out the royal ordinances, its bishops that held themselves to be royal officers." The Puritans still ventured to dispute the infallibility of the King. The policy of the Crown was revealed when James said, "I will make them (the Puri- tans) conform, or I will harry them out of the land."
During the last eight or nine years before Anne sailed for Boston she must have been constantly informed of the fight of the people for their rights against the Crown. Always, people were studying the Bible, pondering on its meaning, rebelling against the arbitrary dictates of the bishops. As has been said, her father was a Puritan min- ister and she doubtless felt indignation at the persecution by the bishops of him and of her beloved pastor, John Cotton.
So, unhappy Anne, with her husband and family, sailed away to Boston, where, for three years, the Hutchinson home was across the street from John Winthrop's resi- dence. Anne was a capable, energetic, amiable woman, and a great nurse. As she went from house to house on her errands of mercy, she would talk with the women to whom she ministered, and won their af- fection and respect. In fact, both men and women welcomed her intellectual and mag- netic personality. She had a vigorous mind, a dauntless courage, and a natural gift for leadership.
At this point in history the women in America participated fully in the long Sun- day religious services, and might also be present at a Saturday evening service; but while they mingled with the numerous as- semblies for constituting churches, and for ordaining ministers and elders, there were meetings for religious discourse from which women were excluded. Mrs. Hutchinson thought she was supplying a deficiency when she instituted a meeting for her own sex. This enterprise of hers met with fa- vor, rather than with disapprobation, at first. From fifty to sixty, and sometimes one hundred women met at her home, listening with devoted interest to her more than metaphysical distinctions of the two covenants, the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works.
For one period she held two such meet- ings weekly, and the nominal purpose of
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them was for the repetition and the im- pression of the sermons delivered by Mr. Cotton at his Sunday and Thursday serv- ices. Then it was said of her "That Anne Hutchinson was the first organizer of the earliest woman's club in the world." At first these meetings met with general favor, and how long it was before they invited criticism from most of the clergy and the authorities, it is not recorded, but certainly, by the end of the first two years of Mrs. Hutchinson's abode in the New World she was being severely regarded as an instigator of strife and dissention.
Mrs. Hutchinson claimed to have had a revelation relative to the Covenant of Grace. She was regarded as affirming that a state in which a man is justified before God precedes and is independent of his obedience to the law of holiness. The at- tempt to prove, or to find a ground of confidence for our justification by means of outward sanctification, she pronounced to be a walking by a Covenant of Works; she looked to a far higher covenant, that of "grace." The moment that distinction is stated, it may be perceived that it could not fail to bring into discredit the formal and methodical observances of the scrupu- lous forefathers of New England. The outward manifestations of piety were then much regarded, and stringently en- forced; perhaps their importance was ex- aggerated; they certainly were open to the charge of too much resembling display. Not only was a grave and reverend bearing ex- pected, but austerity in looks, and sancti- moniousness in dress and phrase, were con- sidered all-essential.
Soon the seditious doctrines of this apostle brought denunciation upon her head. She was tried by a civil court, dur- ing the proceedings of which she valiantly defended herself and her doctrines. Some of the deepest controversialists of that scholastic day found her a woman whom all their trained and sharpened minds were in- adequate to foil. However, the odds against her were too great; she was excommuni- cated and banished from the Colony with the bidding that "she go out from among them, and trouble the land no more."
Anne and her husband, with, perhaps, eighteen sympathizers from Boston, de- parted for Rhode Island, where she was welcomed by Roger Williams. At Provi- dence, Mrs. Hutchinson drew around her a goodly number of people, including Quakers and Baptists, who listened to her discourses with interest. Roger Williams was much in sympathy with Mrs. Hutchin- son personally, although not adopting all her views. He thought that in view of the great usefulness of Mrs. Hutchinson as a nurse and neighbor, she should be allowed to speak when she chose and say what she wished. "Because, if it be a lie, it will die; and if it be true, we ought to know it."
The Hutchinsons lived on the island of Aquidneck until the death of Mr. Hutchin- son. Then Anne moved to New York State with the surviving members of her family, where her life ended in a tragedy not un- known in those perilous times. In August, 1643, Mrs. Hutchinson and the fifteen mem- bers of her household at the time, with one exception, perished in an attack by the Indians.
MARY DYER, A QUAKER MARTYR
W HEN Anne Hutchinson heard her sen- tence of excommunication pronounced by the Elders of the Puritan Church in Massachusetts and rose to walk out of the church from which she had been banished, she did not go alone. Another woman, as fearless as she, also rose from the congre- gation and passed down the aisle and out the door at her side. This other woman, soon to begin her own ordeal of martyr- dom, was Mary Dyer.
Perhaps Mary Dyer would have done the same if another woman had been in Anne Hutchinson's place. Her kindness of heart and deep sympathy with all who were per- secuted and oppressed urged her to the side of any who suffered, but how much greater was her feeling for this particular sufferer who was both her leader and her friend. That Mrs. Hutchinson should have undergone persecution at the hands of the Puritans had already brought a great deal
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of grief to Mary Dyer, but her distress at the misery of her friend had only sub- jected her to the jeers of pitiless neighbors. These two had always been bound together in one common feeling, and together they found strength and solace in sorrow.
Mary Dyer had come to this country with her husband in 1635. They had lived in London where William Dyer had been a milliner in the New Exchange. Mrs. Dyer was described by several writers of the time in various ways. Gerald Croese, a Dutch writer, spoke of her as "a person of no mean extraction and parentage, of an estate pretty plentiful, of a comely stature and countenance, of a piercing knowledge in many things, of a wonderfully sweet and pleasant disposition, so fit for great affairs that she wanted nothing that was manly except only the name and sex." George Bishop, writing a year after her death, depicts her as "a comely, grave Woman, and of a goodly Personage, and one of good Report, having a Husband of an Estate, fearing the Lord, and a Mother of Children." Governor Winthrop himself admitted that she was "a very proper and fair woman" although he also said that she was "notoriously infected with Mrs. Hutch- inson's errors, and very censorious and troublesome, she being of a very proud spirit and much addicted to revelations." From the opinions of the time it appears that it was actually her superior education and outstanding intelligence which formed a great basis for the jealousy, disfavor, and persecution which the members of the Puritan Church-and, in particular, its ministers-vented upon her.
Upon the arrival of the Dyers in Boston, they were immediately admitted to mem- bership in the Boston church of which John Wilson was the pastor and John Cot- ton the teacher. When Mrs. Hutchinson be- gan her meetings the following year, the Dyers became her intimate friends and followers. Shortly before the excommuni- cation of Mrs. Hutchinson, the Rev. Mr. Wheelright had been condemned for his ad- herence to the principles of Antinomian- ism, the act causing a written protest to be drawn up and presented to the Elders who had judged him. Inasmuch as William Dyer was one of the signers of this protest,
he was disarmed and disfranchised. Conse- quently it was not at all strange that when the Hutchinsons went into exile the Dyers should have gone with them. They came to Rhode Island and were among the founders, eighteen in number, of the town of Ports- mouth, and later among the eight founders of Newport.
It was shortly before she left the Massa- chusetts Colony that Mary Dyer was forced to listen to a foolish rumor spread in Boston by her enemies. They circulated the story that she had given birth to a mon- ster which they said was a sign of divine retribution for her faith in Anne Hutchin- son. That stories of this sort could even be started is a biting testimony of the ignor- ance and stupidity of those who were later to kill the woman whose intelligence they feared.
As inhabitants of Rhode Island the Dyers were well received. William Dyer was made Clerk of Rhode Island in 1638, and two years later Secretary of Portsmouth and Newport, holding the latter office for seven years. In the course of his life he held many other prominent offices in the Colony, including that of Attorney-General. With his family he began the steady and regular life of a sound and well-respected townsman. Mary Dyer was a good mother just as she was a zealous friend and raised her six children well.
In 1652, William Dyer accompanied John Clarke and Roger Williams to Eng- land to obtain a revocation of the extra- ordinary powers once granted to William Coddington. Mary Dyer went with her hus- band but did not returnto Rhode Island with him the following year. For five years she remained in England and during that time became a Quaker.
In the meantime the Boston Colony had been invaded by the Quakers and was fairly seething with fury against them. And yet, it was not the Boston Colony as a whole which so violently opposed the entrance of this sect in its midst, but rather the few magistrates and clergymen who saw in the newcomers a menace to the religious and political dictatorship they had enjoyed. It must be remembered that when the Puri- tans broke from England, crying that they wanted to be free to worship as they pleased,
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they did not mean that they believed in in- dividual beliefs and worship. On the con- trary, upon founding their colonies in New England, they became as despotic in their interpretation of what religion should be as the Church of England had been before them. It was an instance where the dictator- ship of princes had been exchanged for that of bigoted clergymen.
So great was the hatred for the simple, truth-seeking Quakers that a law was passed which imposed a fine upon any sea captain who brought them into Boston. Under this law Quakers who did come into the Colony were to be thrown in the house of correction, whipped, and placed at hard labor. Strangely enough, among the first Quakers to arrive after the passage of such a brutal law were Ann Burden and Mary Dyer.
Both were immediately thrown into prison, and only when her husband came for her was Mary Dyer released. Even then he was ordered to take her out of the Colony at once and to allow her to speak to no one on the way. The next arrivals did not have such an easy fate. They were whipped, imprisoned, fined, and finally banished. One woman, Margaret Brewster, was stripped to the waist and dragged through the streets of Boston tied to a cart, with a whipping afterwards for good measure. Laws were enacted by which Quakers could be punished by cutting off their ears or boring a hole through their tongues with a red-hot iron. A final de- cree, however, stated that any Quaker who returned to the Boston Colony after once having been banished would suffer the death penalty.
This would seem to deter all Quakers from entering the forbidden territory. Yet, in 1659, in protest against the authorities who had conceived such cruel laws, Wil- liam Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson went to Boston. They were thrown into prison at once. Mary Dyer, hearing of their plight, came to Boston to visit them and was also imprisoned. For three months these three remained in jail and then were tried and ordered to leave the Colony within two days. Mary Dyer returned to Rhode Island, but the two men decided to stay within the Colony and test the bloody laws
unto the death. Other Quakers began to swarm into the Colony and with them came Mary Dyer again. Robinson and Stevenson who had not left when banished were seized with her, and in a few days the three were sentenced to death by hanging.
It was in October, 1659, that they were taken to the Boston Common where the rope was already strung from a great elm near the Frog Pond. So great had been the force of public opinion against the pro- cedure that the magistrates had provided a force of militia to quell any disturbance or attempt at rescue. Arm in arm with the two younger men Mary Dyer went to her executioners, with no fear in her eyes but the calm smile of a martyr lighting her face. The other two were hanged before her eyes and she, herself, with the rope about her neck, had ascended the ladder, when the magistrates announced her re- prieve. They had suffered her to undergo all the terrors of death merely as a warn- ing. Their heartless treatment had only prepared Mrs. Dyer for death and she did not wish her life. Yet once again she was sent out of the Colony.
After she was out of the State the Boston magistrates used her case to soften the pub- lic opinion which had arisen against them because of the other two hangings. Then it was that Mary Dyer realized that be- cause of her, the death of her fellow mar- tyrs would have no lasting influence, and she solemnly made her way back to Boston. Once again she appeared before Governor Endicott and the church officials, calm and undaunted. Once again she received the sentence of death, and this time there was no reprieve. Even the pleading of her hus- band, himself not a Quaker, had no effect.
In the month of June, 1660, Mary Dyer went to join Robinson and Stevenson in the Great Beyond. Her body was buried on Boston Common, but its location is un- known. Thus died Mary Dyer, the Quaker martyr of Rhode Island, friend of Anne Hutchinson. Her death was not in vain, for it paid the price of the Quakers' freedom from persecution.
The terrible story was soon carried to the King of England and, though one other Quaker, William Leddra, was hanged be- fore he could act, he put an immediate end to such cruel proceedings in Massachusetts.
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COCUMCUSSOC
AM N OLD house stands off the "Great Post Road" about thirteen miles north of Narragansett Pier, in Wickford, and a neat- ly lettered sign at each of the two entrances to the grounds indicates the approach to the mansion "Cocumcussoc". The genial master of the house says that the word looks and sounds both like a welcome to the visitor and an urge to his profanity, but that is misleading. The name is merely Indian.
It is recorded that in the exodus of dis- affected children who fled from their moth- er country's arms in the reign of Charles the First, was one Richard Smith, a well- to-do gentleman, and a man of courage and enterprise. Leaving England in 1637, he soon afterward erected, here in the heart of the Narragansett Country, the first white man's house. Here he lived with his family and here for a long time he engaged in trading with the savages. At one time his estate covered 27 square miles, and was known for many years as the Richard Smith Blockhouse. "Smith's Castle" was another name for the house.
Because of religious persecution, Rich- ard Smith left England and came to this country, and his son doubtless felt a similar rebellion against the Royal tyranny, for later on we read that Major Richard Smith, Jr., served as a Major under Oliver Crom- well.
The Smiths' first neighbor would seem to have been Roger Williams, for after Rich- ard had built his home and established his trading-post in it, Williams built a trading- station nearby. The inmates of the block- house and their white neighbors must have enjoyed some measure of comfort and con- tentment when at peace with the Indians. Bacon says that "It was no unusual thing to hang upon the spit a quarter of a lamb or a haunch of venison at the same time that turkeys, ducks and fowl were being roasted.
"The fireplaces in which such cooking was done were enormous. The logs were hauled in cord lengths and rested upon great andirons that would alone fill a mod- ern fireplace."
One fireplace typical of the 17th century is to be seen in a quaint room of the old house now. The present owner, wishing to bring the original hearth to light-for it had long been closed-set men at unbrick- ing it. They opened a fireplace, but it was not the original fireplace, for a second one, back of the first, was revealed. Back of the second they found still a third hearth-pre- sumably the old, original one about which hang several gruesome stories.
Besides the material comforts the in- mates of the blockhouse had spiritual com- fort as well, for it is said that Roger Wil- liams habit was to go to Cocumcussoc monthly when it was in any way possible, where he held religious meetings. This cus- tom he kept up nearly to the close of his consecrated life.
But presently, at Cocumcussoc, the peace- ful days of trading and cheesemaking were interrupted, for the fire long smouldering had burst into flames, and there was trouble with the Indians. Of the time preceding the actual hostilities "Honest John Easton" said: "So the English were afraid, and Philip was afraid, and both increased in Arms."
Williams had long been back in this country when the war broke out, but even he, who had been charged with loving the red men better than he did his white broth- ers, could not stay their rage. The torch and the tomahawk avenged the alleged wrongs of the Indians, while with the Whites their motto was "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."
Here in the blockhouse of Richard Smith, on a bitter December night in the year 1675, gathered the Massachusetts and Connecticut forces preparatory to "The Great Swamp Fight." Here the Rhode Island volunteers joined them, and from this house they all set out to that dreadful conflict in the frozen swamp in which the "power of the Narragansetts was forever broken." The details of that conflict would make another story, but, suffice to say that a large number of the red men perished with their squaws and their papooses, many
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were taken prisoners and their well en- trenched fort with their grain and supplies of every nature was burned. The white vic- tors marched back many miles that dread- ful night by the light of the conflagration they had kindled, and of this victory Dr. Increase Mather said: "There were two and seventy Indian Captains slain, all of them, and brought down to Hell in one day."
It is recorded that 68 of the English fell and that 150 were wounded.
When visiting the old, historic house, one must not fail to walk over the sunny lawns to nearly the water's edge to the boulder that marks the common grave of forty of the men who marched out so bravely from the blockhouse that bitter night nearly three centuries ago-one of them a son of the house. A tablet on the boulder reads:
HERE WERE BURIED IN ONE GRAVE FORTY MEN WHO DIED IN THE SWAMP FIGHT OR ON THE RETURN MARCH TO RICHARD SMITH'S BLOCKHOUSE DECEMBER 1675
Kimball says that "Shortly after this fight the troops of the united colonies were withdrawn from the Narragansett Country, leaving a garrison of 70 men in the block- house .... Their stay was of brief duration. The Council at Boston decided on their withdrawal, and a letter written at Boston, in the following July, narrates that the very next day after their departure the Indians came and burned the said Garrison-house."
This was probably in the year following the Swamp Fight, which occurred at the close of 1675. The old house, then, was burned in 1676, but it is said that the dam- age was not great and that it was quickly repaired. They used the old timber-the great horizontal beam of oak over the pres- ent fireplace of sinister associations is the original lintel-and the house was made somewhat larger with material from the old trading-station which Mr. Williams had sold to Richard Smith.
Smith and his family had fled to New Amsterdam after their home was burned, remaining there until the Indian troubles were quieted, and it was prudent to rebuild.
And now romance lightens the temporary
exile, for Dr. Gysbert op Dyck ("Updike" now) married a daughter of Richard Smith, and the old, rebuilt house in Wickford eventually became the "Updike" house. The date of the erection of the present man- sion was sometime in 1677.
Longfellow has said that: "All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses," and if that be so one cer- tainly feels a thrill on recalling some of the legends connected with this house. For Bacon says: "At the time of King Philip's War, tradition tells us that a band of set- tlers, inflamed with the smell of 'villainous saltpetre' and blood and perhaps somewhat exhilarated by a fluid then much valued by good New Englanders, arrived at Smith's blockhouse with Indian prisoners. Having tied these captives to chairs, the doughty men of Massachusetts still further refreshed themselves with some of the trader's pri- vate stock and soon became delightfully mellow. It is well understood that to make a Puritan New Englander convivial some- thing out of the ordinary was required, and we must believe that the potations were long and deep, for a vein of rare pleasantry was developed among its members. Even in his mirth, however, the Puritan was not as other men, and there was a dreadful grimness in his pleasantry. It happened at last that one of the Indian fighters in the course of the carousing hilariously struck off a captive's head with his sword. As the gory ball rolled away it struck a tall clock in the corner and the sensitive timepiece, unable to contain itself, struck one."
But today the pleasant rooms suggest none of these horrors. The sun shines through the narrow windows with their wooden shutters on to rows and rows of enticing books, and through the casements one glimpses the shining waters of the bay and hears, on the lawn, the voices of laugh- ing children.
One of the great rooms has a flood tradi- tion of some baby in its cradle being lifted by the encroaching waters nearly to the ceiling, from which precarious situation it was happily rescued.
Wilkins Updike roamed through these pleasant rooms in his happy childhood. His mother, Mrs. Ludovick Updike, was an aunt of the "unfortunate Hannah Robin- son," and it was to a great ball, given at
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Cocumcussoc that Hannah ostensibly set out, on the night of her elopement. The mansion, even then a century old, must have been a beautiful sight with its many lights shining out over the waters beyond the lawn, and no doubt the music sounded while the guests from Boston, Providence and Newport danced merrily - "Pea Straw," "Lady Hancock" and "Boston De- light"-until, perhaps, the whisper spread that "The most beautiful girl in the Amer- ican Colonies" had mysteriously failed to join them.
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