So passed the Quakers through Boston town,
Whose painful ministers sighed to see
The walls of their sheep-fold falling down,
And wolves of heresy prowling free.
But the years went on, and brought no wrong;
With milder counsels the State grew strong,
As outward Letter and inward Light
Kept the balance of truth aright.
The Puritan spirit perishing not,
To Concord's yeomen the signal sent,
And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot
That severed the chains of a continent.
With its gentler mission of peace and good-will
The thought of the Quaker is living still,
And the freedom of soul he prophesied
Is gospel and law where the martyrs died.
John Greenleaf Whittier.
CHAPTER VII
KING PHILIP'S WAR AND THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION
Metacomet, or Philip, had succeeded his father, Massasoit, as chief of the Wampanoags, and endeavored to maintain friendly relations with the English, but in June, 1675, some of his young men attacked the village of Swansea, and started the desperate struggle known as King Philip's War. For months the Indians ravaged the frontier, and on September 18 all but annihilated a picked force of eighty men, the "Flower of Essex," under Captain Thomas Lathrop, which had been sent to Deerfield to save a quantity of grain which had been abandoned there. Only nine of the eighty survived.
THE LAMENTABLE BALLAD OF THE BLOODY BROOK
[September 18, 1675]
Come listen to the Story of brave Lathrop and his Men,—
How they fought, how they died,
When they marched against the Red Skins in the Autumn Days, and then
How they fell, in their pride,
By Pocumtuck Side.