OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
Within the neat iron fence that surrounds the monument are also the graves of Perry's widow, Elizabeth Champlin, and of his eldest son, Christopher Grant Perry, with the fresher one of Rev. Francis Vinton, whose wife was a daughter of the naval hero. From this spot the bay and all ancient Newport are visible. Another monument in the cemetery is in memory of General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, "dead on the field of honor."
A prevailing ingredient of Newport society in the olden days was, doubtless, the Quaker element. As the religious asylum of New England, it alike received Jew and Gentile, Quaker and Anabaptist, followers of the Church of England and of Rome. Its complexion at the beginning of the eighteenth century might be in harmony with religious freedom, though little homogeneous; and although there was plenty of toleration, its religious character has been vaunted overmuch. It commands a passing thought that all these human components intermingling and assimilating in the active duties of life, separate in death. Their burial must be distinct.
FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE.
The Quaker-meeting has contributed to our vocabulary a synonym for dullness. Old England and New were in accord in persecuting the sect. It is related of a number under sentence of banishment to America, that soldiers from the Tower carried them on board the ships, the Friends refusing to walk and the sailors to hoist them on board. In the year 1662 Hannah Wright came from Long Island, several hundred miles to the "bloody town of Boston," into the court, and warned the magistrates to spill no more innocent blood. They were at first abashed by the solemn fervor of their accuser, until Rawson, the secretary, exclaimed, "What! Shall we be baffled by such a one as this? Come, let us drink a dram."
The sufferings of the Friends in New England were heightened, no doubt, by the zeal of some to embrace martyrdom, who, in giving way to the promptings of religious fanaticism, outraged public decency, and shamed the name of modesty in woman. Deborah Wilson went through the streets of Salem naked as she came into the world, for which she was well whipped. Two other Quaker women, says Mather, were whipped in Boston, "who came as stark naked as ever they were born into our public assemblies." This exhibition was meant to be a sign of religious nakedness in others; but the Puritans preferred to consider it an offense against good morals, and not a Godiva-like penance for the general sinfulness.[294]