The King’s Commissioners, who visited the Colony about 1664, reported that in Rhode Island “all who desire it are admitted freemen. Liberty of conscience and worship is allowed to all who live civilly. They admitted all religions, even Quakers and Generalists, and is generally hated by other Colonies.”[42]
Not only was Rhode Island a city of refuge for the persecuted Quakers, but their message was sympathetically received by many in the Colony. Anne Hutchinson did not live to witness the sufferings of the Quakers, as she and several members of her family were murdered by the Indians in the autumn of 1643; her sister Katharine Scot,[43] however, early joined the new sect; she is described as “a Mother of many Children, one that had lived with her Husband, of an Unblameable Conversation, and a Grave, Sober, Ancient Woman, and of good Breeding, as to the Outward, as Men account.”[44] She came from Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston on hearing of the sentence passed on three young men who, for the crime of being Quakers, were condemned each to the loss of an ear; on account of her comments thereon she was cast into prison and received “Ten Cruel Stripes with a three-fold-corded-knotted-Whip,” and warned that “if she came thither again they were likely to have a law to hang her,” to which she replied: “If God call us, Wo be to us, if we come not; And I question not, but he whom we love, will make us not to count our Lives dear unto our selves for the sake of his Name.”[45] Truly she and her sister Anne Hutchinson came of heroic stock.
In 1656 the first Quaker preachers in the persons of Mary Fisher and Anne Austin[46] arrived at Boston. In consequence of the many wild rumours which had reached the Colony of the strange actions and teaching of the Quakers in England, they were detained on shipboard and their luggage searched for Quaker books or tracts. Several were found and these were ordered to be burned by the common executioner, and the women themselves were stripped and examined to see if they bore upon them marks which should prove them to be witches. They were detained in gaol for about five weeks and then deported again to Barbados. Their inhospitable reception did not in the least quench the missionary zeal of the early Friends, and very shortly after, eight more arrived on the shores of New England, who, after two days’ examination, were sent back to England by the ship on which they came. The authorities of Boston then passed a law inflicting a fine of £100 on any shipmaster who knowingly conveyed a Quaker to the Colonies. This law failed as a deterrent, many Quakers obtaining an entrance to the Colonies, and still fiercer became the persecution. A strengthening of the law was deemed necessary and it was further decreed:
What Quaker so ever shall arrive from foreign Parts or Parts adjacent shall be forth with committed to the House of Correction; and at their entrance to be severely whipp’d, and by the master thereof to be kept constantly at Work, and none suffered to speak or converse with them.—If any Person shall knowingly Import any Quakers Books or Writings concerning their Devilish opinions, shall pay for every such Book or Writing the Sum of £5. who soever shall disperse or conceal any such Book or Writing and it be found with him or her shall forfeit or pay £5—and that if any Person within this Colony shall take upon them to defend the Heretical opinions of the said Quakers or any of their Books, &c., shall be fined for the first time 40/—If they shall persist in the same and again defend it the second time £4.—If they shall again so defend they shall be committed to the House of Correction till there be convenient Passage to send them out of the Land, being sentenced by the Court of Assistants to Banishment [1656].
This law was proclaimed by beat of drum before the house of Nicholas Upsall[47] who was rightly suspected of sympathy with the hated sect; he protested against the law and suffered banishment in consequence. In 1657 the law was again strengthened; and if a male Quaker, after he had once been banished, returned again to New England, he was to suffer the loss of one ear and to be kept in the House of Correction, and every woman was to be severely whipped and consigned to the same place. This law was to apply to “every Quaker arising from amongst ourselves” as well as to “Foreign Quakers.” Three men suffered the penalty of loss of their ears at Boston. Further laws were made and penalties inflicted for meeting together to worship God after the manner of Friends. In 1658, in addition to the penalties already inflicted, any of the “Sect of Quakers,” after a trial by a special Jury and conviction by same, were to be sentenced to death.
In spite of, or rather because of these harsh laws and the inhumanity with which they were administered, the Quaker community rapidly increased; thus we are told[48] that
these Violent and Bloody Proceedings so affected the Inhabitants of Salem and so preached unto them, that divers of them could no longer partake with those who mingled Blood with their Sacrifices, but chusing rather Peace with God in their Consciences, whose Witness in them testified against such Worships, than to joyn with their persecutors, whatsoever they might therefore suffer, withdrew from the Publick Assemblies, and met together by themselves on the first Days of the Week, Quiet and Peaceable in one anothers Houses waiting on the Lord.
The authorities quickly noticed these abstentions from public worship and warrants were issued under a law of 1646, the offenders being fined for non-attendance 5s. a week; and on a second examination, after the Clerk of the Court had perverted their explanation as to their belief in the doctrine of the Inward Light, three of their number—Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, with Josiah their son[49] (“all of a Family to terrifie the rest”) were sent to Boston, and there in the House of Correction were “caused to be Whipp’d in the coldest Season of the Year with Cords, as those afore, tho’ two of them were Aged People.”[50]
Many examples of the ferocity with which the Quakers were treated in the New England Colonies might be cited, yet so inspired were these early pioneers with the deep significance and importance of their message that they were compelled to brave the untried wilderness paths and surmount difficulties which we in these days might be tempted to deem insurmountable, in order to deliver it; women with their babes at the breast would not hesitate to undertake “a very sore Journey, and (according to Man) hardly accomplishable, through a Wilderness above Sixty Miles,” knowing that it led inevitably to stripes and bondage and possible death; yet in spite of all, we are told of one such that she was enabled to kneel down and pray in the spirit of the Master for the forgiveness of her cruel persecutors. This “so reached upon a Woman that stood by, and wrought upon her, that she gave Glory to God, and said that surely she could not have done that thing, if it had not been by the Spirit of the Lord.”[51]
The Quakers still continued boldly to preach, and persecution waxed fiercer and fiercer. The Chronicler says: “Their lives (as men) became worse than Death and as living Burials.” The offences for which Friends suffered so severely were of a most trivial character, such as non-attendance at Public Worship for which they had been previously fined, and for not removing their hats. In the event of their refusal to pay any fines which might be imposed they became liable under a law made on accounts of debts, by which it was permissible to sell those persons who refused or were unable to pay their fines “to any of the English Nations as Virginia or Barbadoes to Answer the said Fines.”