** Whipping was the usual punishment. Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and Will iam Leddra were hanged. Mary Dyer was publicly whipped through the streets of Boston. Dorothy Waugh was three times imprisoned, three times banished, and once whipped, and her clothes sold. William Brand was four times imprisoned, four times banished, twice whipped, and branded. John Copeland was seven times imprisoned, seven times banished, three times whipped, and had his ears cut off. Christopher Holden was five times banished, five times imprisoned, twice whipped, and had his cars cut off. These four were the leading characters who suffered in one year.—New England's Ensigne, p. 105.
Origin of the Quakers.—Their Peculiarities.—Sufferings in America of those calling themselves Quakers.
first tenderly dealt with and kindly admonished. Penalties ensued, and life was finally taken, before some of them would cease interference with the popular ceremonials of religion. The exercise of power to maintain subordination finally grew to persecution, and the benevolent Puritan became, almost from necessity, a persecutor. Enactments for the preservation of good order were necessary, but the sanguinary laws against particular doctrines and tenets can not be defended.
The Quaker sect sprang up in England about 1650, under George Fox, and received their name from the peculiar shaking or quaking of their bodies and limbs while preaching. They went further than the straitest Puritans in disregarding human authority when opposed to the teachings of the Bible, yet they were allowed full liberty of action during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. They denounced war, persecution for religious opinions, and, above all, the slavish idolatry demanded by rulers in Church and State of those under their control. They condemned all ordained and paid priesthoods, refused to take oaths, and thus struck a direct blow at the hierarchy. They differed from the Puritans in many things, and became noxious to them. They derived their system of morals and politics chiefly from the New Testament, while the Puritans took theirs from the more sanguinary and intolerant codes of the old dispensation. Laying aside the falsehoods of politeness and flattery, they renounced all titles, addressed all men, high or low, by the plain title of Friend, used the expressions yea and nay, and thee and thou; and offices of kindness and affection to their fellow-creatures, according to the injunction of the Apostle James, constituted their practical religion. "The Quakers might be regarded as representing that branch of the primitive Christians who esteemed Christianity an entirely new dispensation, world-wide in its objects; while the Puritans represented those Judaizing Christians who could not get rid of the idea of a peculiar chosen people, to wit, themselves." *
The English Puritans had warned their brethren in America against these "children of hell," and the first appearance in the colony of Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who came from Barbadoes, and professed the new doctrine, greatly alarmed the New England theocracy. A special law was enacted, by which to bring a "known Quaker" into the colony was punishable with a fine of five hundred dollars, and the exaction of bonds to carry him back again. The Quaker himself was to be whipped twenty stripes, sent to the House of Correction, and kept there until transported. The introduction of Quaker books was prohibited; defending Quaker opinions was punishable with fine, and finally banishment; and in 1657 it was enacted that for every hour's entertainment given to a Quaker the entertainer should pay forty shillings. It was also enacted that every male Quaker should lose an ear on the first conviction, and the other on a second; and both males and females, on a third conviction, were to have their tongues bored through with a red-hot iron. In 1658 the death penalty was enacted. Under it those who should return to the colony a second time, after banishment, were to suffer death. From unwillingness to inflict death, it was provided by a new law, in 1658, that any person convicted of being a Quaker should be delivered to the constable of the town, "to be stripped naked from the middle upward, and tied to a cart's tail, and whipped through the town, and thence be immediately conveyed to the constable of the next town toward the border of our jurisdiction, and so from constable to constable, to any the outermost town, and so to be whipped out of the colony." In case of return, this was to be twice repeated. The fourth time the convict was to be branded with a letter R on the left shoulder, and after that, if incorrigible, to incur the death penalty. Chiefly through the instrumentality of King William, these penal laws against the Quakers were abrogated by royal authority, and that sect became an important element in American society during the eighteenth century. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as we shall hereafter see, the Quakers had a strong controlling influence during the Revolution.
In 1675 King Philip's war commenced, and almost all the Indians in New England were involved in it. This will be noticed when we are considering my visit to the neighborhood
* Hildreth, i., 404.
Arrival of Andross.—His Extortions.—Revolution in England.—Government of Massachusetts.—Hostilities with the French.
of Mount Hope, the residence of the great sachem. Upon the heels of this war, when the colonies were much distressed, the ministers of the second James conspired, as we have seen, to destroy popular government in America, and consolidate power in the throne. A decision was procured in the High Court of Chancery, declaring the American charters forfeited, because of the alleged exercise of powers, on the part of the colonial governments, not recognized by those charters.