Essays in American history

by Henry Ferguson

Neither side would yield: the Quakers had come back with the declared purpose of dying for their faith and for the principle of religious liberty; the authorities did not dare to withdraw from the position in which they had rashly placed themselves, and the leaders do not seem to have had any desire to do so. They felt that the question of their authority was at stake, and that if they yielded their power over the people would be gone. They were willing to claim for themselves and their institutions the protection of the laws of England, but they would not admit any appeal to those laws when they conflicted with the colonial regulations. They claimed to own the colony in full sovereignty, in virtue of their charter on the one hand and their deeds from the Indians on the other, and they argued that they had the same right to exclude obnoxious and dangerous persons, and to destroy them if they persistently thrust themselves upon them, that a householder has of resisting a burglar, or a shepherd of killing the wolves that break into his sheepfold.

It is a great mistake to say that they had come to the colony from a zeal for religious liberty. What they had come for was to be in a place where they could order religious affairs to suit themselves. As Besse, the Quaker historian, shrewdly remarks: “They appear not so inconsistent with themselves as some have thought, because when under oppression they pleaded for liberty of conscience, they understood it not as the natural and common right of all mankind, but as a peculiar privilege of the orthodox.”[22]

The tragedy was performed on the twenty-seventh day of October 1659; the prisoners, walking hand in hand, were brought to the gallows by the soldiers. They were insulted in their last moments by the bigoted Wilson, and when they tried to address the people their voices were drowned by the beating of the drums. Robinson and Stevenson died bravely, and Mary Dyer mounted the ladder to meet her fate; her skirts were tied, the rope was about her neck, and she was on the point of being “turned off,” when she was released by the magistrates in consideration of the intercession of her son, who had come up from Rhode Island to try to save his mother’s life. She unwillingly accepted the grudging gift, and went back to Rhode Island.[23]

The popular feeling was so strong against the magistrates for their severity, that they thought it best to put forth a declaration, in which they argued that their proceedings were justified by the law of self-defence, and by the precedent of the English laws against the Jesuits; and they calmly stated that what they had done was only to present the point of their sword in their own defence, that the Quakers who had rushed upon it had become “felons de se,” and that their former proceedings and their mercy to Mary Dyer upon the “inconsiderable intercession” of her son “manifestly evinced that they desired their lives absent rather than their death present.”[24]

The bodies of the unfortunate men were treated with indecent brutality, and were buried naked beneath the gallows. Mrs. Dyer remained away for six months, and then the spirit moved her to return once more and die. Her husband wrote to Endicott to beg her life, but without avail. No mercy could be shown her as long as she defied the law. It is said that her life was offered her if she would promise to keep out of the colony henceforth, but she declined to receive the favor.[25] “In obedience to the will of the Lord I came,” said she, “and in his will I abide faithful to the death.”

Meanwhile the prisons and the house of correction had been the fate of other delinquents, and the jailer and executioner had had plenty of employment with the scourge. The Southwicks, with their eldest son Josiah, were whipped, fined, and imprisoned for withdrawing from the public services and worshipping by themselves, and their two younger children were ordered to be sold as slaves to the West Indies in satisfaction of the fines imposed.[26] W. Shattuck was whipped, fined, and imprisoned. Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh were whipped. Hored Gardner, a woman with a sucking babe, and a young girl who came into the colony with her, were scourged with the “three-fold knotted whip, and during her tortures she prayed for her persecutors.”

William Brand was thrown into the House of Correction, and, refusing to work, was beaten constantly by the brutal jailer with a tarred rope an inch thick. The pathetic record says: “His back and arms were bruised black, and the blood was hanging as in bags under his arms, and so into one was his flesh beaten that the sign of a particular blow could not be seen, for all became as a jelly.”[27]

William Leddra and Rouse, whose ears had been cut off, were ordered to be whipped twice a week with increasing severity until they consented to work, and were at last dismissed from the colony under pain of death if they returned.

Patience Scott, a girl eleven years old, was imprisoned as a Quaker, but discharged, after a period of detention, in consideration of her youth; but her mother, Catherine Scott, for reproving the magistrates for a deed of darkness, was whipped ten stripes, although she was admitted by them to be otherwise of blameless life and conversation.

Christopher Holden, who, in spite of losing his ears in 1658, had returned once more, was banished upon pain of death by the same court that had hanged Robinson and Stevenson.[28] Seven or eight persons were fined, some as high as ten pounds, for entertaining Quakers, and Edward Wharton, for piloting them from one place to another, was ordered to be whipped twenty stripes, and bound to his good behavior. Divers others were then brought upon trial, “for adhering to the cursed sect of Quakers, not disowning themselves to be such, refusing to give civil respect, leaving their families and relations, and roaming from place to place vagabonds like”; and Daniel Gold was sentenced to be whipped thirty stripes, Robert Harper fifteen, and they, with Alice Courland, Mary Scott, and Hope Clifton, banished upon pain of death; William Kingswill whipped fifteen stripes; Margaret Smith, Mary Trask, and Provided Southwick ten stripes each, and Hannah Phelps admonished.[29] In November, William Leddra, who had been released, returned, and was at once arrested. On his trial the opportunity of withdrawal was again extended, but he refused to accept it, and was executed March 1, 1661. As he ascended the ladder he was heard to say: “All that will be Christ’s disciples must take up the cross,” and just as he was being thrown from its rounds, he cried in the words of Stephen, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Wenlock Christison, who had been before this sentenced to death, but allowed to leave the colony, had returned, and during Leddra’s trial he came boldly before the Court and told the astonished judges: “I am come here to warn you that ye shed no more innocent blood.” He was at once arrested, and was brought up for trial three months later. There was an unusual difference of opinion in regard to the case, and the condemnation was only secured by the violence of Endicott, who was able to browbeat the others into consent. But the sentence they passed was never executed. The people were tired of bloodshed, and the opposition which was shown in the General Court to any further proceedings was so great as to make a change in the law necessary.[30]