[34] F.P.T. 219.
[35] It must be remembered that according to the Old Style, the year began with March, which the Quakers designated First Month. Hence Fourth Month was June.
[36] Suff. i. 553.
[37] Callender, Historical Discourse, Boston, 1739. Both these quotations are taken from The Quakers in the American Colonies, by Rufus M. Jones, London, 1911, p. xxi.
[38] Quakers in American Colonies, p. 8.
[39] Mary Dyer (????-1660) was the wife of William Dyer, then of Newport, Rhode Island. She was described by George Bishop as “A Comely Grave Woman, and of a goodly Personage, and one of a good Report, having an Husband of an Estate, fearing the Lord, and a Mother of [six] Children” (New England Judged, 1703, p. 157). Her husband and she emigrated from London to Boston in 1635. See Rogers, Mary Dyer, 1896.
[40] Calamy, Account of the Ejected Ministers, i. 481, calls Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England, a “little Zoar.” In the chapel known as the Old Meeting House, in Mansfield, which was built in the year 1702, by the descendants of the congregation which had formerly received the Ejected Ministers, there are two commemorative brasses above the altar, placed there by the late Rev. A. W. Worthington, a former minister, which bear the following inscription: “In memory of the conscientious sacrifice and Christianity of the Rev. Robert Porter, Vicar of Pentrich, the Rev. John Whitlock, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, the Rev. William Reynolds, M.A., lecturer at the same church, the Rev. John Billingsley, M.A., Vicar of Chesterfield, Joseph Truman, B.D., Rector of Cromwell, the Rev. Robert Smalley, Vicar of Greasley, and others, who resigned their livings when the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662.
“Driven from their homes by the Oxford Act, in 1666, they found in Mansfield a little Zoar, a shelter and a sanctuary; and united in hearty love and concord, they worshipped together till the Act of Toleration was passed in 1688, when all who survived the day of persecution returned to their ministry, save the Rev. R. Porter, who remained in charge of this congregation till his death, January 22nd, 1690.”
[41] In 1641, the assembled citizens made the following declaration: “This Body Politick is a Democracie; that is to say, it is in the Power of the Body of Freemen, orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make Just Lawes by which they will be regulated.” Under the same date the following act was passed: “It is ordered that none bee accounted a delinquent for doctrine,” and later in the same year this was re-affirmed in these words: the “Law of the last Court made concerning Libertie of Conscience in Point of Doctrine be perpetuated.” Quoted from Rhode Island Colony Records, by Jones, op. cit., p. 23.
[42] Calendar of State Papers Colonial.