29. Suppressing Heresy: Massachusetts Persecutes the Quakers

After its persecution of the Hutchinsonians and the Gortonites, Massachusetts continued on its path of suppressing all deviations from the Puritan norm. The next important case was that of Dr. Robert Child. As early as 1644 a growing number of people subjected to oligarchic Puritan rule had found expression in an unsuccessful petition whose purpose was to widen the highly restricted civil privileges of nonmembers of the Puritan church. Two years later, in May 1646, Dr. Robert Child, a Presbyterian minister and graduate of the University of Padua, and Samuel Maverick, a very wealthy founder of the colony, headed a petition of seven important men of the colony protesting existing rule. The petition noted that there were many thousands of residents of Massachusetts who were disfranchised even though they were taxpayers and subject to all the levies and duties of the colony. The signers of the petition were leading merchants and property owners; they included Presbyterians, Anglicans, and men of diverse religious and political views, united only by their desire for a freer society.

The petitioners asked that Anglicans and Presbyterians either be admitted to church membership or be allowed to establish churches of their own. They also urged that “civil liberty and freedom” be speedily granted to all Englishmen, and that they no longer be compelled to attend Puritan service under penalty of a heavy fine. As Englishmen, they deserved to be treated “equal to the rest of their countrymen, and as all freeborn enjoy in our native country.” The petition also attacked the ruling “overgreedy spirit of arbitrary power” and the suppression of liberty in Massachusetts Bay—like “illegal commitments, unjust imprisonments, taxes... unjustifiable presses, undue fines, immeasurable expenses... non-certainty of all things... whether lives, liberties, or estates.”

The Child petition was denounced from numerous Puritan pulpits as sedition, “full of malignancy, subversive both to church and commonwealth.” Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, and the General Court also angrily rejected the petition, and the signers were taken into court, heavily fined, and warned “to be quiet and to meddle with your own business”—an injunction which the Puritan oligarchy itself had never been conspicuous for heeding. When the petitioners had the audacity to appeal to Parliament to attain in Massachusetts the degree of freedom enjoyed in the home country, Winthrop had them fined and imprisoned for criticizing and opposing the government. When Child and some of the others attempted to leave, to present their case to England, they were seized, searched, and imprisoned.

Child managed to escape to England, but proved to be the unfortunate victim of poor timing. Having made his appeal originally to a predominantly Presbyterian—and therefore presumptively sympathetic—Parliament, Child’s case now came before a body dominated by Cromwell and his Independents, far more sympathetic to Massachusetts Bay. Furthermore, Child made the mistake of getting involved in an altercation with a Massachusetts Puritan then influential in England. Child was arrested by Parliament and was freed only on a written promise never to speak badly of New England again.

The Child opposition had thus been quickly and efficiently suppressed by Massachusetts, even though it had the support of a large part of the population of the colony. But Massachusetts was soon to reach the turning point in its previously unchecked highroad of persecution; despite a frenzy of zeal, it was never able to suppress the determined and courageous Quakers—the individualist champions of the inner light and the next great wave of heretics in the colony.

The first Quakers to arrive in America came to Boston in July 1656. They were two Englishwomen, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher. Although no law had yet been passed in Massachusetts prohibiting the arrival of Quakers, the two women were immediately imprisoned and searched carefully for “witch-marks.” Deputy Governor Richard Bellingham sent officers to the ship, searched the ladies’ baggage, seized their stock of Quaker literature, and had it summarily burned. The women were imprisoned for five weeks, during which time no one was allowed to visit or speak to them. No light or writing material was allowed in their cell, and the prisoners were almost starved to death. At the end of this ordeal, they were shipped back to Barbados.

Bellingham denounced the two Quakers as heretics, transgressors with “very dangerous, heretical, and blasphemous opinions” and “corrupt, heretical, and blasphemous doctrines.” Bellingham’s litmus test for deciding if the ladies were Quakers was brusque indeed; one of them happened to say “thee,” whereupon Bellingham declared that “he needed no more; now he knew they were Quakers.”

Governor Endecott’s only criticism of Bellingham’s treatment of the two Quaker ladies was to say that if he had been present, the prisoners also would have been “well whipped.”

A few days after the Austin-Fisher “threat” had been disposed of, nine more Quakers arrived in Boston. They were summarily arrested, imprisoned for eight weeks, and then shipped back; the master of the ship that brought them was also jailed, no doubt as an instructive moral lesson to future ship captains. If the existence of the two ladies had driven the Massachusetts authorities to fury, this was nothing compared to the effects of the new goad. Governor Endecott, repeatedly haranguing the hapless prisoners, kept threatening to hang them; for example: “Take heed ye break not our ecclesiastical laws for then ye are sure to stretch by a halter.” Since it was very difficult for a Puritan in good standing, let alone a Quaker, not to break some ecclesiastical law, the halter was close indeed. It is no wonder that Mary Prince, one of the prisoners, was impelled to denounce Endecott as a “vile oppressor” and “tyrant,” and the Massachusetts ministers as “hirelings” and “Baal’s priests.” At their trial the Quakers had the impudence to ask for a copy of the laws against them, which request Endecott angrily refused—causing a murmur of sympathy in the audience for the prisoners. For, it was openly asked, “How shall they know when they transgress?”

From this point on, the persecution of Quakers was savage and fanatical, but the determination of the Quakers to keep coming and spreading their Gospel remained remarkably steadfast. In October the General Court passed a law providing for the fining of any shipmaster bringing a known Quaker to Massachusetts; the Quaker was to be imprisoned, severely whipped, “kept consistently to work” and not permitted to speak to anyone. Any existing resident of Massachusetts who dared defend any Quaker opinion was to be fined and banished on the third offense; any criticism of a magistrate or minister was to be met with a whipping and a heavy fine. Thus, not only the Quakers but anyone presuming to defend their rights or to criticize the brutally repressive acts of the authorities was to be dealt with as a criminal. An early example was Nicholas Upshall, a weak old man who had bribed the jailer to give Ann Austin and Mary Fisher some food while they were starving in prison. Upshall protested against the oppressive anti-Quaker law, and for this offense he was fined, imprisoned, and banished from the colony. From Plymouth, old Upshall was forced to walk to Rhode Island in the winter snows. The old man was given shelter by an Indian who exclaimed: “What a God have the English who deal so with one another about the worship of their God!” Upshall finally found sanctuary in Warwick.

In succeeding years, Quakers were repeatedly stripped (to be searched for witch marks) and whipped, the ears of the men were cut off, and mere attendance at a Quaker meeting was deemed by the authorities as automatic proof of Quaker belief. In 1661 the Cart and Whip Act decreed that all Quakers, men and especially women, were to be stripped, tied to a cart’s tail, branded on the left shoulder, and then whipped through every town until they had reached the borders of the colony.

Later apologists for Massachusetts Bay have maintained that all this was nothing more than a perhaps overzealous means of enforcing immigration restrictions. Among other things, this overlooks the fact that the persecutions were conducted as much against “native” converts to Quakerism as against new arrivals. Thus the Southwick family in Salem, converts to Quakerism, were repeatedly persecuted. Edward Batter, the treasurer of Salem and indefatigable Quaker hunter, had two children of Lawrence Southwick sold into servitude to Virginia and Barbados, in order to satisfy fines levied for aiding the Quakers.

Massachusetts lost no time after the first Quaker arrivals in urging the United Colonies to pass a general regulation prohibiting any “such pests” from being admitted into any New England colony. Generally, the sister colonies enthusiastically complied. New Haven, as we might imagine, was especially eager, and its torture methods were a match for Massachusetts Bay’s. Plymouth and Connecticut followed some distance behind. In 1658 the commissioners of the United Colonies urged the several colonies to decree the death penalty for all Quakers who dared return after banishment. Only Massachusetts, however, followed this advice. Plymouth, though not passing the death penalty, was hardly reluctant to persecute the Quakers, and one of its magistrates was deposed for being willing to tolerate the Friends. Most reluctant was Connecticut, Governor Winthrop virtually begging the Massachusetts magistrates not to enforce the death penalty. Connecticut did, however, outlaw heresy, but left it to the magistrates or elders to determine if heresy existed, and if so, what punishment was to be meted out.

Of all the New England colonies, we might expect that if any gave haven to the Quakers it would be doughty little Rhode Island, and this was the case. Rhode Island was happy to receive the Quakers, the first of whom arrived at Newport in 1657. On the Quakers’ arrival, the commissioners of the United Colonies immediately wrote to the Rhode Island government, demanding that it follow the “prudent” course of Massachusetts and banish all the present Quakers and prevent any new arrivals, so that this “devilish contagion” might not spread. Finally, the commissioners darkly threatened intervention if Rhode Island failed to comply. Interestingly, Massachusetts also warned that the Quakers were not only seditious but also “anarchistic”; their doctrines “turned the hearts of the people from their subjection to government.”

Rhode Island’s reply reasserted its religious freedom: “As concerning these Quakers... we have no law among us, whereby to punish any for only declaring by words, etc., their minds and understandings concerning the things and ways of God....” The General Assembly of Rhode Island also replied that freedom of conscience was the keystone of their charter, “which freedom we still prize as the greatest happiness that men can possess in this world.” The Assembly pointedly added that Quakers were being allowed their freedom in England. The United Colonies answered by threatening to embargo all trade to and from Rhode Island.

Quakerism found in Rhode Island not only a refuge, but also a ripe field for conversion. Its individualism made a deep impress on the colony, and in a decade it had even secured a majority. The Newport leaders—William Coddington and Nicholas Easton, and others—were converted and Quakerism completely dominated that town. The redoubtable Catherine Scott and many others of the numerous Baptists were now converted to the Quaker faith. William Dyer, one of the leading Quakers, soon became the secretary of Rhode Island.

As Massachusetts had fearfully predicted, the Quakers used Rhode Island as the base of their missionary operations in Massachusetts. As the Bay Colony had warned in its message to Rhode Island, the Quakers were using the base to “creep in amongst us” and to “infuse and spread their accursed tenets.”

The Quaker influx was met, predictably, by an accelerating ferocity. The Puritan divines were the zealous theoreticians of the persecution. The Reverend Urian Oakes denounced the Quaker principle of liberty of conscience as a “liberty of perdition” and “the firstborn of all abominations.” And just as many former Hutchinsonians were becoming Quakers, so the Massachusetts campaign of suppression drew echoes of the old Hutchinsonian battles. In the forefront of the Quaker hunt was none other than the fiery Rev. John Wilson, leading persecutor of Anne Hutchinson. Wilson thundered in a typical sermon that “he would carry fire in one hand and faggots in the other, to burn all the Quakers in the world.”

After the expulsion of old Nicholas Upshall, the next important Quaker case was Mary Dyer, wife of the secretary of Rhode Island. Two decades earlier, the beautiful young Mary had walked down the aisle with Anne Hutchinson when Anne was condemned. Now a determined Quaker, Mary arrived in Massachusetts and was quickly banished to Rhode Island. Mary Clark, entering Massachusetts on her Quaker mission, was given twenty lashes “laid on with fury,” was imprisoned for three months, and then banished in the snows of midwinter. Yet, alarming Quaker inroads were being made in Salem, led by Christopher Holder and John Copeland, who were seized by the authorities and lashed very severely. Thomas Harris, entering from Rhode Island, was denounced by the deputy governor of Massachusetts as deserving of being hanged, and was lashed unmercifully before being expelled.

The culmination of this first, pre-death-penalty phase of the Quaker persecutions was the torture of the venerable William Brend. Brend had landed at Newport in 1657 and became one of the leading Quakers in Rhode Island. He went to Salem in 1658. Along with other Quakers, Brend was imprisoned. At this point, the Quakers put into practice the now famous technique of nonviolent resistance, of refusing to cooperate with injustice, of refusing to grant to the oppressor the sanction of the victim. Commanded to work in prison, Brend and the others refused. To force them into submission, the authorities proceeded to a frenzy of torture against Brend. The old man was kept four days without food, then whipped ten lashes, starved again, then put into irons and starved for over a day, and finally given 117 blows with a pitched rope. And yet, despite this fever pitch of brutality, the weak and old Brend heroically refused to yield.

The people of Massachusetts had been getting increasingly restive at the reign of terror against the peaceful Quakers, but this treatment was, for many, too much to bear. Protests swelled; a large and angry crowd gathered outside the jail and began to storm the building, calling for the punishment of the jailer. At this point, the incipient revolt was quieted by the eminent theoretician of the anti-Quaker terror, Rev. John Norton. Stretching a metaphor, Norton declaimed: “William Brend endeavored to beat our gospel ordinances black and blue, and if he was beaten black and blue, it was just upon him.”

Soon, the Massachusetts authorities pressed on to mutilation of the Quakers. When in the summer of 1658 Christopher Holder and John Copeland were arrested, the magistrates ordered the cutting off of one ear each. Governor Endecott, however, was less successful at besting the Quakers at public argument than in using his superior force to mutilate them. Endecott denounced the Quakers for their custom of keeping their hats on in court and for addressing him by name instead of by title, and thus showing contempt for constituted authority. The Quakers quickly replied that the only honor due to all men is love, and that the Bible never required people to take off their hats before magistrates.

Witness to the mutilation of her friends was none other than Catherine Scott, the sister of Anne Hutchinson and future mother-in-law of Holder. For making critical comments at the execution, Mrs. Scott herself was seized and given ten lashes, and then warned by Endecott that she might be hanged if she returned: “We shall be as ready to take away your lives as you will be to lay them down.”

Since even mutilation could not stop the intrepid Quaker missionaries, the Massachusetts authorities decided to accelerate further their campaign of terror. After the Brend case, the Reverend Mr. Norton, the other divines, and the magistrates, decided to react to the popular resistance by decreeing the death penalty should any Quaker return after banishment. Norton instigated a petition signed by twenty-five citizens, urging banishment for all Quakers and death upon return, for the second “offense” of being a Quaker in Massachusetts. Resisting the oligarchy of magistrates and divines was the more democratic House of Deputies, which finally consented to the new law in October, by a hairline majority of one. To make sure that the death penalty would be enforced without shilly-shallying, the bill removed the right of a trial by jury, and left Quaker cases to the not too tender mercies of a court of three magistrates, two of whom would suffice for imposing the death penalty.

To defend the new law against rising popular opposition the General Court appointed the colony’s leading divine, and the foremost champion of the Quaker hunt, Reverend John Norton, to write its definitive apologia. The following year, 1659, Norton published his findings in The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation—a revealing title. Norton warned that the Quaker claim of individual divine inspiration made the authority of ministers and magistrates equally unnecessary—thus challenging the basic rule of church and state. And the temptation held out by the prospect of such overthrow was bringing many converts to the Quaker creed. Religious liberty, to Norton, was simply “a liberty to blaspheme, a liberty to tell lies in the name of the Lord.” Norton concluded that the Bible pointed to the proper path: “And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.”

With the persecution of the Quakers mounting to a critical pitch, the stage was now set for the tragic climax: murder. No one had long to wait. Defying the death penalty threat, Mary Dyer returned to Boston and was imprisoned, and was there joined by William Robinson, a merchant from London, and Marmaduke Stevenson, two Quakers who had crossed the border from Rhode Island. The three were released and ordered again to leave the colony on pain of death. Robinson and Stevenson refused to bow to oppression and remained. Mary left but returned again to comfort the imprisoned Christopher Holder.

Seized again, the three defiant Quakers were hauled into court in October 1659. Robinson asked permission to read a statement explaining their defiance of Massachusetts law but the fiery Governor Endecott thundered: “You shall not read it!” Endecott charged that “neither whipping nor cutting off ears, nor banishment upon pain of death will keep ye from among us.” He therefore sentenced them to hang. The death penalty had now passed from threat to reality. Marmaduke Stevenson retorted: “The Lord hath said... the same day ye put his servants to death shall... you be curst forevermore.... Therefore in love to you all I exhort you to take warning before it be too late.”

Nine days later, on October 27, the three condemned Quakers were led to their public hanging—the first execution for religion on American soil. It was a dramatic day on Boston Common and angry opposition among the people led the authorities to bring out a hundred armed soldiers to stand guard over the proceedings. When the condemned trio were led out of the prison, the soldiers deliberately drowned out the prisoners when they attempted to address the restive crowd. Reverend John Wilson contributed to the day’s festivities by taunting Robinson. As Robinson and Stevenson were about to be hanged, the former addressed the throng: “We are not evil doers,” he cried, “but witnesses to the truth and to the inner light of Christ.” Vigilant to the end, the Reverend Mr. Wilson shouted: “Be silent, thou art going to die with a lie on thy mouth.” “Hang them or die!” Wilson exhorted and the two Quakers were duly killed. Mary Dyer had gained a reprieve, but with calculated brutality the authorities did not tell her this until the halter was around her neck.

Driven back to Rhode Island, Mary Dyer remained undaunted, and again went back to Massachusetts Bay. Again condemned to death, Mary denied the validity of the law and declared that she had returned to bear witness against it. Upon refusing to agree to return to Rhode Island to stay, Mary Dyer was hanged on June 1, 1660. Perhaps the contemporaneous Quaker historian George Bishop was right and Mary Dyer indeed had the last word. For Bishop wrote, addressing the Massachusetts Bay: “Your bloody laws were snapped asunder by a woman, who, trampling upon you and your laws and your halter and your gallows and your priests, is set down at the right hand of God.”

And still the indomitable Quakers kept coming. Among the most determined to bear witness was William Leddra. Again and again, Leddra had visited Massachusetts, had been whipped, starved, and driven out, only to return. Now Leddra was being dragged into court in his shackles, having been chained to a log of wood all winter. He was charged with sympathizing with the executed Quakers, with using “thee” and “thou,” with refusing to remove his hat—in sum, with being a Quaker. Promised his life if he recanted his faith, Leddra answered: “What, act so that every man who meets me would say, ‘this is the man that has forsaken the God of his salvation!’” When a magistrate asked Leddra if he would agree to go to England if released, the prisoner coolly replied, “I have no business there.” “Then you shall be hanged,” retorted the magistrate. Leddra appealed to the laws of England, but the court held—as might be expected—that England had no jurisdiction in the case, and pronounced the sentence of death.

Still chained to the log, Leddra calmly wrote shortly before his execution:

I testify... that the noise of the whip on my back, all the imprisonments, and banishments on pain of death, and the loud threatenings of a halter did no more affright me, through the strength and power of God, than if they had threatened to bind a spider’s web to my finger.... I desire to follow my forefathers in suffering and in joy. My spirit waits and worships at the feet of Immanuel.

On March 14, 1661, William Leddra was led out to his execution on Boston Common. Once again, the heavily armed guard prevented him from addressing the crowd. But as the officers were taking him to the gallows, Leddra cried out: “For bearing my testimony for the Lord against deceivers and the deceived I am brought here to suffer.” The people were so moved by Leddra’s calmness and nobility that again the crowd threatened and once again the vigilant Reverend Mr. Wilson stepped into the breach, explaining to the people that many such criminals are willing to die for their “delusions.”

Leddra was destined to be the last American martyr, although there were to be a number of close calls. Wenlock Christison, a banished Quaker, returned to Massachusetts during the Leddra trial in order to protest it in court. In the midst of the trial, Christison had appeared in court and warned Endecott: “I am come here to warn you that you shed no more innocent blood, for the blood that you have shed already, cries to the Lord for vengeance to come upon you.” Christison was, of course, arrested immediately, and protested at his own trial that the law violated the laws of England. Given a chance to recant, Christison defiantly replied: “Nay, I shall not change my religion, nor seek to save my life. I do not intend to deny my Master, and if I lose my life for Christ’s sake, then I shall save it.”

Governor Endecott summoned the magistrates for the usual death sentence, but by now the groundswell of popular resentment against the blood-bath was becoming menacing and several magistrates, led by Richard Russell, refused to vote for death. Enraged at two split votes, and two weeks of determined opposition to the “bloody course,” Endecott shouted: “You that will not consent, record it. I thank God I am not afraid to give judgment,” whereupon he summarily and illegally declared the death sentence himself. Upon hearing his sentence, Christison warned the court: “What do you gain by it? For the last man that you put to death here are five come in his room; and if you have power to take my life from me, God can raise up the same principle of life in ten of his subjects and send them among you in my room, that you may have torment.”

By early 1661 two Quakers were under sentence of death. Beside Christison, Edward Wharton of Salem had been a fellow prisoner and cellmate of Leddra throughout his final ordeal. Wharton had been fined heavily and whipped with twenty lashes for denouncing the killing of Robinson and Stevenson and was later arrested for being a Quaker. When Leddra was sentenced to death, Wharton was banished on pain of death and given ten days to leave the colony. Instead, Wharton accompanied his friend to the gallows and buried Leddra’s body. He then went to Boston and wrote the authorities that he was there and there he would remain!

Yet these two courageous men, plus twenty-seven other Quakers awaiting trial, were never executed. For word now reached Massachusetts of an event that was to prove momentous in the history of New-England—and to spell the beginning of the long drawn-out end to the reign of the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts Bay: the reestablishment of the monarchy in England. Now there was no longer an indulgent Puritan rule in England or a civil war to distract the imperial power from the knowledge that Massachusetts and the other New England colonies were totally self-governing.

Knowledge of the Restoration therefore gave the Massachusetts authorities pause. The year before, rising internal protest within Massachusetts had led them to free a Quaker couple from the death sentence. They also knew that English and banished American Quakers had been protesting the persecution to the home government. Indeed, George Bishop’s New-England Judged* had just been published, and had made a deep impression on Charles II.

The king was particularly incensed at Massachusetts’ scornful refusal of appeal to the laws of England. The banished Quakers presented a petition to the king detailing the persecution that they had suffered to date. Massachusetts countered with the charge that the Quakers were “open blasphemers” and “malignant promoters of doctrines tending to subvert both our church and state.” Edward Burrough replied for the Quakers that they had never “lifted up a hand or made a turbulent gesture” against church or state, but had only warned sinners to repent. It was at this point that the news arrived in England of the martyrdom of William Leddra. Burrough gained a personal interview with the king and told him the news. Burrough warned: “There is a vein of innocent blood opened in thy dominions which will run all over, if it is not stopped.” To the king this was the last straw: “I will stop that vein.” “Then stop it speedily,” Burrough implored, “for we know not how many may soon be put to death.” The king promptly dispatched the banished Quaker Samuel Shattuck to Massachusetts with the order to stop all further execution and torture of the Quakers and to permit all imprisoned Quakers to leave for England.

Prudently, Massachusetts released all Quakers, and ordered them to leave for England or else leave the border of Massachusetts within eight days. Two recalcitrant prisoners were tied to a cart’s tail and whipped out of the colony. Among the Quakers released were Christison and old Nicholas Upshall, who had been imprisoned for two years.

Massachusetts, however, refused to obey the order to transfer Quaker prisoners to England for trial as an infringement of its charter rights and privileges. Furthermore, the General Court sent two of the colony’s most prominent leaders, Simon Bradstreet and Rev. John Norton, to England to justify persecution of the Quakers. The two denounced the Quakers’ “dangerous, impetuous and desperate turbulence, both to religion and the state civil and ecclesiastical.” The king now changed his mind and in effect rescinded his order, except for stopping the death penalty: “We have found it necessary... here to make a sharp law against them and we are well contented that you do the likewise there.” Charles added the acknowledgment that Quaker principles were basically incompatible with the existence of any kind of state.

The Massachusetts authorities needed no more encouragement to resume their campaign against the Quakers—of course, stopping short of execution. It was at this point that the Cart and Whip Act was passed. This provided for tying Quakers to the tail of a cart and whipping them out of the colony. Death was now only the penalty for the sixth offense, but this was never to be enforced. The peak of the terror campaign had passed.

Massachusetts proceeded to enforce the Cart and Whip Act as thoroughly as it could, particularly against Quaker women. Many Quakers, including several of the released prisoners, were whipped out of the colony only to return. Public pressure forced a modification of the terms of the Cart and Whip Act in the fall of 1662, but the persecution continued undiminished. Particularly important was the case of three English Quaker women— Alice Ambrose, Mary Tomkins, and Ann Coleman—who had, along with the released Edward Wharton, gone to the annexed New Hampshire town of Dover and made considerable progress there among former Hutchinsonians and Baptists, as they did also in Maine. Finally, the Reverend Mr. Rayner, Puritan minister of Dover, induced the Massachusetts magistrates to apply the Cart and Whip Act to the three women. The women were duly stripped to the waist, tied to a cart’s tail, and whipped through eleven towns, through deep snow, and lashed up to ten times apiece in each town. And yet the tortured women met their fate by singing hymns as they went. Finally, Walter Barefoot of Salisbury could stand the sight no more. Barefoot had himself made deputy constable and took it upon himself to liberate the three women—this despite the urging of old Rev. John Wheelwright, now residing in Salisbury, to continue the whippings. Wheelwright had now evidently made his peace with Massachusetts in every way and was busy repudiating his heretical and libertarian past.

As soon as they were freed, the three courageous women returned to Dover to continue their prayer meetings. Alice Ambrose and Mary Tomkins were promptly seized, dragged through the snow, imprisoned, and then tied to the tail of a canoe and dragged through deep and freezing water, almost being killed in the process.

Another important case was that of the unfortunate Elizabeth Hooton, an aging lady who had been the first woman Quaker in England. Her whole life a bloody hegira of persecution and torture, Elizabeth had walked virtually from Virginia to Boston where she was immediately jailed, taken to the border, and left in the wilderness, from which she walked to Rhode Island. Sailing back to Boston, she was arrested and shipped to Virginia. After being persecuted in Virginia, she went to England. Obtaining a special license from the king to build a house in America, she sailed to Boston once more. Here Massachusetts refused to allow Friends to meet in her home, and she left for the promising Piscataqua towns. At Hampton she was imprisoned, and in Dover put into the stocks and imprisoned. Then Elizabeth Hooton returned to Cambridge where she was thrown into a dungeon and kept two days without food. A Quaker, hearing about her sufferings, took her some milk, for which she was fined the large sum of five pounds. Despite her letter from the king, Elizabeth was given ten lashes in Cambridge, then taken to Watertown and lashed ten times more, and, finally, tied to a cart in Dedham and whipped through the town with ten more lashes. At the end of this travail she was left at night in the woods; from there she managed to walk to Seekonk and thence to Newport.

Incredibly, and notwithstanding this bloody odyssey, Elizabeth Hooton did not give up. Once again she returned to Cambridge, where after being subjected to verbal abuse by a group of Harvard scholars she was whipped through three towns to the Rhode Island border. Yet again Elizabeth returned to Massachusetts to bear witness to her faith. Again she was lashed ten times, put in prison, then whipped at a cart’s tail through three more towns, and left in the woods. Back again, she went to Boston, was whipped out of town once more and threatened with death if she returned. But Elizabeth continued to return and the authorities did not dare go all the way; she was whipped out of several more towns, and walked again to Rhode Island.

In protest against these punishments, many Quaker women began appearing naked in public as a “naked sign” of the persecution, for which behavior they were, of course, whipped through the towns.

Another turning point in the Massachusetts persecution of the Quakers came in the mid-1660s. As will be treated further below, King Charles II sent a commission to New England in 1664 with instructions to reestablish the royal power. The commissioners promptly ordered Massachusetts to stop all persecution of the Quakers, so that they might “quietly pass about their lawful occasions.” They added that it was surprising that the Puritans, who had received full liberty of conscience themselves, should refuse it to other religious groups. Although Massachusetts by no means submitted to commission rule, the Puritans dared not go too far in persecuting the Quakers for fear of losing their precious charter. Furthermore, the bloodstained older generation of the Puritan oligarchy had begun to die off, and to be replaced by a far more moderate generation. In 1663 the spiritual leader of the colony and of the persecutions, the Reverend John Norton, died at the age of fifty-seven, and the Quakers may be pardoned for exulting that this took place “by the immediate power of the Lord.” Two years later, the temporal leader of the colony, Governor John Endecott, followed Norton in death. It is ironic, incidentally, that none other than Elizabeth Hooton turned up at Endecott’s funeral and attempted to address the throng.

And so the ruthless attempt to eradicate Quakerism from Massachusetts Bay had signally failed. As Roger Williams had warned Massachusetts when the Quakers first arrived, the more savage the persecution the more adherence to the Quakers would multiply. Not only did this happen, but internal opposition to the oligarchy multiplied as well. By the 1670s, troubled by their failure and by the growing internal and external opposition, the Massachusetts authorities decided to slacken their campaign of terror. Despite the urgings of such diehards as the Reverend Thomas Shepard, an open Quaker meeting in Boston in 1674 was allowed to be held. By 1676 the Reverend Mr. Hubbard was concluding that “too much severity” in persecution could only lead to “incurable opposition and obstinacy.” The last case of Quaker persecution occurred in 1677, when Margaret Brewster came out from a sick bed in sackcloth and ashes “to bear a testimony and be as a sign to warn the bloody town of Boston to end its cruel laws.” She was duly whipped through Boston at the tail of a cart.

The bloody persecution of the Quakers was over. The Massachusetts theocracy, while succeeding in driving out Roger Williams and the Hutchinsonians, had failed completely to extirpate the indomitable Friends.

Massachusetts Bay also pursued the newly burgeoning sect of Baptists in the 1660s, but not with the same intensity with which it pursued the Quakers. The founder of the Baptists in Massachusetts was Thomas Gould of Charlestown, who was repeatedly harassed by ministers, elders, and high authorities to bring his infant for baptism. Refusing to do so because of his opposition to infant baptism, Gould tried to organize his own congregation. They were immediately hauled into court, convicted of heresy, fined, and imprisoned.

The Massachusetts authorities, fond of interminable argumentation, then arranged a public debate in Boston between six leading Puritan ministers and some of the humble Baptists, who were bolstered by several emissaries from the strong contingent of Baptists from Newport, Rhode Island. The debate, which took place in April 1668, lasted through two days, during which the Baptists were repeatedly denounced as enemies of the church and state. One of the leading Puritans, the Reverend Jonathan Mitchell, ended the debate on an ominous note—the injunction from Deuteronomy that “the man that will do presumptuously and will not hearken unto the priest... even that man shall die.”

But this time the threat remained only a threat. The authorities did proceed with further trial of Gould and two associates, who were charged with organizing a church without approval of the government and whose denial of infant baptism undermined the authority of “unbaptised” ministers and congregations. The court sentenced the Baptists to banishment, and when they refused to leave, they were imprisoned for many months.

However, as we have seen with the Quakers, sentiment against religious persecution was now growing in Massachusetts, even among Puritans. This was increased by a post-Restoration immigration of English Puritans, who were far more tolerant than the Old Guard of Massachusetts Bay. A group of sixty-six, including prominent men of the colony, pleaded for freedom for the Baptists. The oligarchy reacted, as was their habit: seizing and convicting the petitioners for contempt of authority. The petitioners were fined and forced to apologize.

But, as in the case of the Quakers, persecution only swelled the ranks of the persecuted. In 1679 the Baptists were strong enough to build their own meetinghouse. The General Court immediately passed a law confiscating all churches built without government permission. The authorities promptly seized the building, and banned services there “without license from authority.” The congregation continued to meet in the yard, and finally the General Court gave up, fearful of defying the king, who was leaning increasingly toward religious freedom. The court eventually returned the church to its owners. The Baptists too had won their right to worship in their own way.

*Published in 1661 as New-England Judged, Not by Man’s, but the Spirit of the Lord.