1656, Mary Prince. 1662, Deborah Wilson.
1658, Sarah Gibbons. 1663, Thomas Newhouse.
“ Dorothy Waugh. “ Edward Wharton.
1660, John Smith. 1664, Hannah Wright. [Footnote: Uncertain.]
1661, Katherine Chatham. “ Mary Tomkins.
“ George Wilson. 1665, Lydia Wardwell.
1662, Elizabeth Hooton. 1677, Margaret Brewster.
“It was in the month called July, of this present year [1656] when Mary Fisher and Ann Austin arrived in the road before Boston, before ever a law was made there against the Quakers; and yet they were very ill treated; for before they came ashore, the deputy governor, Richard Bellingham (the governor himself being out of town) sent officers aboard, who searched their trunks and chests, and took away the books they found there, which were about one hundred, and carried them ashore, after having commanded the said women to be kept prisoners aboard; and the said books were, by an order of the council, burnt in the market-place by the hangman.... And then they were shut up close prisoners, and command was given that none should come to them without leave; a fine of five pounds being laid on any that should otherwise come at, or speak with them, tho’ but at the window. Their pens, ink, and paper were taken from them, and they not suffered to have any candle-light in the night season; nay, what is more, they were stript naked, under pretence to know whether they were witches Endicott was much dissatisfied with the forbearance of Bellingham, and declared that had he “been there ... he would have had them well whipp’d.” [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 10.] No exertion was spared, nevertheless, to get some hold upon them, the elders examining them as to matters of faith, with a view to ensnare them as heretics. In this, however, they were foiled. On the authority of Hutchinson, Dr. Dexter [Footnote: As to Roger Williams, p. 127.] and r. Palfrey complain [Footnote: Palfrey, ii. 464.] that Mary Prince reviled two of the ministers, who “with much moderation and tenderness endeavored to convince her of her errors.” [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. i. 181.] A visitation of the clergy was a form of torment from which even the boldest recoiled; Vane, Gorton, Childe, and Anne Hutchinson quailed under it, and though the Quakers abundantly proved that they could bear stripes with patience, they could not endure this. She called them “Baal’s priests, the seed of the serpent.” Dr. Ellis also speaks of “stinging objurgations screamed out ... from between the bars of their prisons.” [Footnote: Mem. Hist. of Boston, i. 182.] He cites no cases, but he probably refers to the same woman who called to Endicott one Sunday on his way from church: “Woe unto thee, thou art an oppressor.” [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. i. 181.] If she said so she spoke the truth, for she was illegally imprisoned, was deprived of her property, and subjected to great hardship. In October, 1656, the first of the repressive acts was passed, by which the “cursed” and “blasphemous” intruders were condemned to be “comitted to the house of correction, and at theire entrance to be seuerely whipt and by the master thereof to be kept constantly to worke, and none suffered to converse or speak with them;” [Footnote: Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 278.] and any captain knowingly bringing them within the jurisdiction to be fined one hundred pounds, with imprisonment till payment. “When this law was published at the door of the aforenamed Nicholas Upshall, the good old man, grieved in spirit, publickly testified against it; for which he was the next morning sent for to the General Court, where he told them that: ‘The execution of that law would be a forerunner of a judgment upon their country, and therefore in love and tenderness which he bare to the people and place, desired them to take heed, lest they were found fighters against God.’ For this, he, though one of their church-members, and of a blameless conversation, was fined £20 and £3 more for not coming to church, whence the sense of their wickedness had induced him to absent himself. They also banished him out of their jurisdiction, allowing him but one month for his departure, though in the winter season, and he a weakly ancient man: Endicott the governor, when applied to on his behalf for a mitigation of his fine, churlishly answered, ‘I will not bate him a groat.’” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 181.] Although, after the autumn of 1656, whippings, fines, and banishments became frequent, no case of misconduct is alleged until the 13th of the second month, 1658, when Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh broke two bottles in Mr. Norton’s church, after lecture, to testify to his emptiness; [Footnote: This charge is unproved.] both had previously been imprisoned and banished, but the ferocity with which Norton at that moment was forcing on the persecution was the probable incentive to the trespass. “They were sent to the house of correction, where, after being kept three days without any food, they were cruelly whipt, and kept three days longer without victuals, though they had offered to buy some, but were not suffered.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 184.] In 1661 Katharine Chatham walked through Boston, in sackcloth. This was during the trial of Christison for his life, when the terror culminated, and hardly needs comment. George Wilson is charged with having “rushed through the streets of Boston, shouting: ‘The Lord is coming with fire and sword!’” [Footnote: As to Roger Williams, p. 133.] The facts appear to be these: in 1661, just before Christison’s trial, he was arrested, without any apparent reason, and, as he was led to prison, he cried, that the Lord was coming with fire and sword to plead with Boston. [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 351.] At the general jail delivery [Footnote: Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 19. Order passed 28 May, 1661.] in anticipation of the king’s order, he was liberated, but soon rearrested, “sentenced to be tied to the cart’s tail,” and flogged with so severe a whip that the Quakers wanted to buy it “to send to England for the novelty of the cruelty, but that was not permitted.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 224.] Elizabeth Hooton coming from England in 1661, with Joan Brooksup, “they were soon clapt up in prison, and, upon their discharge thence, being driven with the rest two days’ journey into the vast, howling wilderness, and there left ... without necessary provisions.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 228, 229.] They escaped to Barbadoes. “Upon their coming again to Boston, they were presently apprehended by a constable, an ignorant and furious zealot, who declared, ‘It was his delight, and he could rejoice in following the Quakers to their execution as much as ever.’” Wishing to return once more, she obtained a license from the king to buy a house in any plantation. Though about sixty, she was seized at Dover, where the Rev. Mr. Rayner was settled, put into the stocks, and imprisoned four days in the dead of winter, where she nearly perished from cold. [Footnote: Besse, ii. 229.] Afterward, at Cambridge, she exhorted the people to repentance in the streets, [Footnote: “Repentance! Repentance! A day of howling and sad lamentation is coming upon you all from the Lord.”] and for this crime, which is cited as an outrage to Puritan decorum, [Footnote: As to Roger Williams, p. 133.] she was once more apprehended and “imprisoned in a close, stinking dungeon, where there was nothing either to lie down or sit on, where she was kept two days and two nights without bread or water,” and then sentenced to be whipped through three towns. “At Cambridge she was tied to the whipping-post, and lashed with ten stripes with a three-stringed whip, with three knots at the end: At Watertown she was laid on with ten stripes more with rods of willow: At Dedham, in a cold frosty morning, they tortured her aged body with ten stripes more at a cart’s tail.” The peculiar atrocity of flogging from town to town lay in this: that the victim’s wounds became cold between the times of punishment, and in winter sometimes frozen, which made the torture intolerably agonizing. Then, as hanging was impossible, other means were tried to make an end of her: “Thus miserably torn and beaten, they carried her a weary journey on horseback many miles into the wilderness, and toward night left her there among wolves, bears, and other wild beasts, who, though they did sometimes seize on living persons, were yet to her less cruel than the savage-professors of that country. When those who conveyed her thither left her, they said, ‘They thought they should never see her more.’” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 229. See New England Judged, p. 413.]