"They are a trouble unto me”: The
Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1656-1689
By Douglas Lehman
In July 1656, the ship Swallow lay at anchor in Boston
harbor with two women on board, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin. On shore, the
leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were greatly concerned by the presence
of these two women, who were members of the sect commonly known as Quakers.
Amongst themselves they referred to each other as “Friends.” Why were the
leaders so concerned? What did they have to fear from these two women? They had
dealt with rabble rousers in the past who refused to abide by their laws, most
notably Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson and the Baptists. The Quakers however, would
prove to be an entirely different matter. By the time the Quakers were provided
protection by the King, scores would be whipped and humiliated. Three Quaker
men and a Quaker woman would be hanged on Boston Common. The circumstances
surrounding the Quaker emergence in the Massachusetts Bay Colony led to the
tragic events discussed below. Puritan leaders believed they had to deal with
the Quakers harshly in order to preserve their way of life.
Massachusetts Bay
Colony
Massachusetts
Bay Colony, established by a charter from King Charles I in 1629, was the
second colony founded in what is now Massachusetts.
The Plymouth Colony had been founded in 1620. Originally, the men involved were
looking to establish commerce in the new world. In the original charter there
was no mention of a state religion, and Puritans and Anglicans settled in the
colony. Soon things began to change.
Some of the leaders began to explore another means of organizing the colony.
They discovered that unlike Virginia,
their charter included no clause dictating that the company had to remain headquartered
in England. A
group of the leaders of the Company, led by John Winthrop, met and agreed to
move to the colony if the residence of the Company could be moved. Winthrop, a
leading Puritan in England,
felt that the time had come to leave England.
He had a vision that the New World would provide a place
to escape the persecution of the Anglicans in England
and would allow him, and his followers, a place to raise their children as they
saw fit. Through secret meetings, Winthrop and others secured the change of
residence of the charter; they purchased the stock of those who did not wish to
migrate to New England. After this transaction, the
colony no longer belonged to commercial investors, but was in the hands of a
religious group. As a result, the colony became virtually independent of England.
With the
Puritans firmly in control of Massachusetts Bay Colony, the leadership set out
to establish a colony more to its liking. One of the ironies of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony was that although its founding was inspired by
religious freedom, it became the least tolerant of the British North American
colonies. The playing out of this dilemma proved an important series of events
in the early history of the colony.
Not
everyone who resided in the Massachusetts Bay Colony agreed with the colonial
leadership. Roger Williams led a group of early dissenters; Williams and his
followers were banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the winter of
1635-36. Ultimately, Williams purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and
founded the colony of Rhode Island
and Providence Plantations. Another dissenter was Anne Hutchinson, a leader of
the Antinomians. The term “antinomian” combined the Greek roots “anti” and
“nomos”, meaning against and law respectively. Founded in Europe
in the sixteenth century, Antinomians disputed most of the Puritan teachings,
arguing that Puritan ministers relied on their strict moral code and not enough
on the Holy Spirit. Hutchinson and her followers were expelled from the colony
in 1638.
The Puritan leadership of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony thwarted these dissenters and banished them from the colony. Their
efforts to preserve the Puritan way of life succeeded, yet events transpiring
in England soon
brought another threat to their shores.
The Situation in England
Puritanism had originated in England
in the sixteenth-century as a part of the Anglican Church. The Puritans,
inspired by Calvinist teachings, wanted to rid the Anglican church of the
remaining traces of Catholicism. Because of their beliefs, Puritans were
persecuted under the reigns of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), James I (1603-1625) and
Charles I (1625-1649). These persecutions led to the establishment of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The
Puritans believed that each congregation should be independent of the national
church. The ministers were elected by the congregation and they paid the
minister’s salary. Massachusetts,
unlike most other colonies, provided that church membership also gave one the
right to participate politically. Since
those in charge were those who were voted, they were able to maintain their
positions and their control in town politics.
The Quakers
sprang from the same Calvinist background as the Puritans; some historians see
the struggle between them as one of family warfare. Despite this common
background, the Quakers presented a challenge to the Puritans. Quakers in the
seventeenth century believed that “humans are ‘justified’ by God’s grace, not
human merit; that all believers share a mutual priesthood; and that God’s word
both in the Scriptures and by the Spirit in human hearts demands primacy over
human ideas and desires.” At the same time, the Quakers were greatly influenced
by more radical sects, particularly the European Anabaptists and the English
Baptists. These groups rejected the Reformers’ beliefs in predestination,
infant baptism, and nationwide churches, instead viewing the essence of
Christianity as obedience to God’s demands for purity of heart, honesty, simple
dress, and separation from the state and war-making.
In short, they were more radical than the Puritans had been.
The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, was
troubled and insecure as a young man. He came of age during the English Civil
War and struggled to understand his place in the world. He left home at the age
of twenty and tried to make sense of his feelings. Fox conversed at length with
Puritan ministers in northern England,
but could not find inner peace. Gradually, he came to have experiences in which
he drew understanding and truth from within himself. He submitted that this
“inner guide and power were the Light and Spirit of Christ.”
According to Hugh Barbour, Quaker historian, Fox’s feelings were “united with a
basic integrity both in self-support and in speaking truly; with awe and
openness of spirit he gave himself totally to what he felt to be God’s will.”
Fox himself outlined his beliefs in his journal, stating that he was to “turn
people to the inward light, spirit and grace” and “to bring them off from all
their own ways to Christ…and from their Churches…to the Church
of God.” Further, he was to “bring
people off from men’s inventions…with their schools and colleges for making
ministers of Christ…and from all their images and crosses and sprinkling of
infants, with all their holy days.” Fox continued by noting that he was to
address people by “thee” and “thou” and that he was not to take his hat off to
anyone.
Fox began a mission to “convince” the like-minded to join him. By 1651, he had
begun to gain adherents to his beliefs. He and his “friends” began their work
in the north of England,
an area where Puritanism was weakest.
By 1655
Quaker missionaries began to fan out to other parts of the world. Quaker
missions traveled to Rome where
they met with the Pope and to Turkey
where in 1660 Mary Fisher met with the Sultan Mahomet IV and was thought by him
to be insane.
Missions also visited Florence, Geneva,
Norway, France,
Tuscany, Italy,
Jerusalem, and The Palatine. They
set out for the colonies in the Americas,
such as Newfoundland, Jamaica,
Barbados, Antigua
and Surinam.
George Fox even prepared a letter to the Emperor of China, which was to be
carried by four Quakers. Due to several setbacks, the letter never reached the
Emperor. Convinced that they had discovered the true meaning of Christianity
and that all other religions were false, their goal was to convert the people
of those lands to Quakerism.
They met with mixed results; some people persecuted them, while the Muslims
believed the Quakers to be madmen and did them no harm.
While
Quakers today are noted for their pacifism, this was not always the case in the
early years of the Quaker religion. The early Quakers could be contentious,
argumentative and insulting to the established leadership of a community. They
truly believed that they were serving God and were led by the “Light Within.”
To the Quakers, all other religions were false and deserved no respect.
What was it
about the Quakers that concerned the Puritans? Perhaps the most difficult point
for both religions to overcome was that neither could accept the other’s
beliefs without seriously doubting their own.
This would, in itself, create an impasse. As each sect believed it was
practicing its religion as taught by Jesus Christ, it was difficult to accept
the other.
In addition, the Quakers seemed to strike at many ideas that the Puritans
considered essential to an orderly society. Quakers believed in the equality of
the sexes. In the Quaker religion, women and men were allowed to share their
testimonies; in the Puritan Church,
women were expected to be silent. Many of the early leaders and missionaries of
Quakerism were women like Ann Austin and Mary Fisher.
The
itinerant nature of the early Quaker religion often caused families to suffer.
Both men and women would often leave their families to spread the faith. Since Quakers detached themselves from their
communities, they were seen as purveyors of disorder. One of the strengths of Puritanism was a
desire for order in the community and the family.
Jonathan
Chu notes that this itinerant way of life led to another concern about the
Quakers. The name, Quaker, was given to the members of the sect because of the
way they trembled when praying or at meetings. This shaking seems to have been
caused by the passion raised by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Chu
points out that “the wild, ungovernable passions that moved all Quakers in
general, but seemed most apparent among their women” were responsible for the
behavior of Quaker women. He further argues that due to the itinerant way of
life, promiscuity was high among the early Quakers, especially the women. He
also relates that Quaker men and women used public nudity to emphasize their
protests. Given the nature and beliefs of the Puritans, it is easy to see why
they would be concerned about the arrival of the Quakers in Massachusetts.
The Quakers Arrive in Boston
As noted above, on July 11, 1656, the ship, Swallow, lay
at anchor in Boston Harbor.
On board were two Quaker missionaries, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher. Governor
John Endecott was absent from Boston
at the time. In his place Deputy Governor Richard Bellingham handled the Quaker
“crisis”. The Puritan leaders were concerned about the presence of these two
women and had them moved from the ship to the jail. Finding Quaker tracts and
pamphlets in their belongings, the leaders promptly had the papers and books
burned. Fearing witchcraft, they also had the women searched for the Devil’s
marks. Finding none, the leaders still held them in jail. Concerned that
colonists would come in contact with the women, they also had the windows and
doors of the jail boarded up. Although the authorities denied the women food
and drink for the duration of their nearly five week confinement, a Boston
innkeeper, Nicholas Upsall, bribed the jailer five shillings per week to
provide nourishment for the women.
The
Puritans had no law banning Quakers from the colony, but when the Swallow set
sail the two Quaker women were on board, bound back to Barbados
in the Caribbean. Within days after the departure of the
Swallow, another ship, the Speedwell, arrived in Boston
Harbor with eight Quakers on board.
While the Swallow had come from Barbados,
the Speedwell arrived from London.
Again, the Puritan authorities acted quickly and decisively. Their effects were
searched for writings and pamphlets. This group of Quakers won an extended stay
in Boston’s prison, where they
remained for eleven weeks.
Before they
were returned to England,
the Massachusetts General Court enacted the first anti-Quaker law. This law
required that any ship captain who brought Quakers to the Colony would be fined
one hundred pounds. The law further stated that any Quakers who entered the
Colony were to be kept in prison, whipped, forced to labor constantly and
denied visitors.
Additionally, any colonist who owned or imported Quaker writings could be fined
five pounds.
Nicholas Upsall, the innkeeper who had offered aid to Austin and Fisher, spoke
out against the act and was fined twenty pounds and banished from the Colony.
Upsall became the first Quaker convert in Massachusetts Bay Colony, moving
first to the Plymouth Colony and then on to Rhode Island
before he settled again.
As noted
above, the early Quakers could be antagonistic and vehement in their verbal
attacks on civil authorities. Mary Prince, one of the eight who had arrived on
the Speedwell, exemplified this behavior with her actions toward Governor John
Endecott. According to Endecott’s biographer, Lawrence Shaw Mayo, Prince seemed
to take special pleasure in hurling epithets at the Governor. The jail holding
the Quakers was on one of the paths to the Governor’s house. On a Sunday
morning, as Endecott was on his way to worship, Mary Prince unleashed a volley
of uncomplimentary remarks at him. Mayo relates that Endecott and his party
continued on to worship without responding to her attacks. Shortly after this
outing, a letter arrived for Endecott, written by Prince. As Mayo describes it,
Endecott “read the letter and saw in it only the outpouring of a distressed
embittered soul. The writer was deluded, probably unbalanced…” and Endecott
decided he needed to help her. He had her brought to his house to meet with him
and two ministers. Endecott felt that he might be able to make her see the error
of her religious beliefs. Prince proceeded to berate the Governor and the
ministers. The meeting ended in disappointment for Endecott. Undaunted, Mayo
says that Endecott had her brought to him yet again, but with no different
results. Prince was returned to prison and was soon banished with her fellow
Quakers.
With the departure of the Speedwell and its
eight Quaker passengers and the passage of the anti-Quaker law, the Puritans
had reason to believe that this threat had ended. After all, when Roger Williams
and Anne Hutchinson had been banished, they had left and stayed away. The
Quakers, however, would not stay away. They were determined that the
Massachusetts Bay Colony should be brought to the light and convinced that the
Quaker way was right.
The Puritans
had but a short reprieve from the Quakers. Of the eight Quakers banished in
1656, six of them determined that it was their mission to return to the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were joined by five other English Quakers to
make the journey across the Atlantic. They encountered
difficulty though, as no ship captain would risk the fine imposed by the
Puritan Anti-Quaker law. Finally, a Quaker with a ship, Robert Fowler,
presented them with his ship, the Woodhouse, as a means to return to the
Colony. Clearly, they were not sailors, however, as they missed Boston,
landing instead on Long Island. The party split, with
five going to New Amsterdam and the other six going on
to Rhode Island. They were
hospitably greeted in Rhode Island
and joined by three more Quakers arriving from Barbados.
This cadre made their way to Boston
over land, and the Puritans realized that the Quaker invasion was not only
sea-borne.
The first
of these Quakers to reach Boston
was Mary Clark. She traveled alone, having left her family in England.
Upon her arrival in Boston, she was
seized and placed in jail. Her punishment for entering the colony was to be
stripped to the waist and whipped. According to Selleck, this sentence “was
carried out with great barbarity.” Mary Clark became the first woman to be
whipped in America.
Other
Quakers followed Clark. It was almost as if they were
drawn to the Bay Colony like moths to a fire. They could not let the Puritans
lead their lives as they wished. Some
historians believe that some of the Quakers found their way to Salem
before moving on to Boston. There,
the Quakers found colonists who were “convinced” to join the Quaker faith and
became Quaker supporters. These individuals presented yet another challenge
from within for the Puritan authorities.
The resident Quakers were almost always dealt with in a more lenient manner
than the visiting Quakers.
Christopher
Holder and John Copeland were the next to visit the Puritans. After stopping in
Salem, the pair appeared at the
Puritan meeting house. It is unclear exactly what happened, but the Quakers
attempted to preach in the meeting house with the Puritan minister present.
Holder was stopped from speaking when a glove was stuffed into his mouth. He
and Copeland were taken away to jail, but not before Samuel Shattuck, a Salem
resident, removed the glove from Holder’s mouth.
With this action, Shattuck came to be seen as a Quaker sympathizer. Shattuck
was arrested and taken to Boston as
well. He became one of the first Quaker converts in Massachusetts
and would later play a prominent role in the conflict between the Quakers and
the Puritans. Holder and Copeland were flogged as prescribed by law in 1656.
Massachusetts
was not the only New World colony concerned by the
arrival of Quaker missionaries. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam
dealt harshly with the Quakers as well, expelling them from the colony. The
other English speaking colonies of New England, save for
Rhode Island, all enacted some
anti-Quaker laws. Connecticut
banished Quakers; New Haven dealt
with them more harshly, branding an “H” on the hand of Humphrey Norton, to
identify him as a heretic. The leaders of Plymouth
were concerned that Quakers seemed to use their colony as a waypoint in the
path to Massachusetts and that
they caused disruptive incidents in various towns in the colony.
Only Massachusetts, however,
remained the focal point of the Quaker invasion.
While the
New England Confederation agreed tacitly to work together to halt the Quaker
invasion and to deal with them harshly, Rhode Island
continued to provide a haven and a base for the Quakers. While many in Rhode
Island shared similar concerns about the Quakers,
they also felt it would go against the principles on which the colony had been
founded to shut them out of the colony. Chu
notes that Rhode Island used the
principle of toleration as their main argument, but in reality, the colony was
faced with the fact that many leading Antinomians were on the precipice of
becoming Quakers. Any anti-Quaker law would have been unmanageable in Rhode
Island.
As a result, the colony remained a staging ground for the Quaker invasion.
By the fall
of 1657, the General Court of Massachusetts determined that the 1656
anti-Quaker law was not working; stronger legislation was needed. The Colony
passed a new law, stating that Quakers who had been punished once and banished,
but who returned to Massachusetts should be punished in the following ways: For
the first offense, they would lose one ear; for the second offense, they would
lose the other ear; for the third offense, he or she should have their tongue
bored through with a hot iron.
Furthermore, the law fined individuals one hundred pounds for bringing Quakers
into the colony and allowed authorities to fine colonists forty shillings an hour
if they willingly sheltered Quakers.
The new
punishments did nothing to dissuade the Quakers from attempting to bring their
message to the Puritans of Massachusetts. The year 1658 saw further
confrontations between Quakers and the Puritan leaders. With the stronger law
in force, the Puritans utilized every resource at hand to stop the Quakers.
Like lemmings, the Quakers kept coming, and in some cases, returning to Massachusetts.
A number of
Quakers arrived in Massachusetts
in the spring of 1658, many of them coming through Rhode
Island. Catherine Scott, Horod Gardner, Sarah
Gibbons, Dorothy Waugh, William Leddra, William Brend, and Thomas Harris all
arrived by June 1658. Every one of them was arrested and whipped. As related by
Selleck, Brend was whipped until even the doctor thought him to be dead. When
word of the whipping of Brend reached the Quakers in Rhode
Island, two of them, Humphrey Norton and John Rous,
made the journey to Boston to see
if they could help him. At this point, Governor Endecott determined that the
men should be whipped with greater fury and severity than before. Unfortunately
for Endecott, public opinion turned against him and the citizens of Boston
raised a subscription to free the men and send them on their way back to Rhode
Island. It appears that the Bostonians could not
stand to see these men and women mistreated by their leaders, endeavoring
instead to save them, even if they did not agree with their beliefs. In the
summer of 1658, John Copeland, Christopher Holder and John Rous returned to Boston
and were the first Quaker males to have their ears cropped as punishment under
the anti-Quaker law of 1657. Barbour
indicates the reasoning behind the Quakers’ willingness to suffer pain and
mutilation. He states “to early Friends,
suffering served as a way of showing their faith, of identifying with the
apostles of the early church, of attracting new converts, and of witnessing
their unquestioning obedience to the demands of God.”
The
Death Penalty
By the
autumn of 1658, Massachusetts Bay Colony authorities were determined to take
more drastic measures to stop the unwanted influx of Quakers. Nothing they had
done so far seemed to stem the tide. Rather,
it seemed as if the Quakers took pleasure in forcing the Puritans into
punishing them. As the General Court met in October 1658, feelings were running
high against the Quakers. A group of prominent Puritan clergymen, led by John
Norton, minister of Boston’s First Church, encouraged members of the Court to
pass a more drastic law. This law would require the death penalty for
non-resident Quakers who returned to the colony after having been banished. It
further required a special court for trying of the Quakers. The Quakers
criticized this part of the law by arguing that it violated their right to a
trial by their peers. The General Court also dealt with resident Quakers,
especially those living in Salem.
They were given the opportunity to return to the Puritan fold; if they did not,
they were banished from the colony, under penalty of death.
In the
minds of Puritans, the Quakers were dangerous and according to Chu,
they “were clearly seditious and their presence posed a threat to public peace.
They maintained opinions that encouraged public disturbances, they threatened
the operations of orthodox churches, and they attacked the legitimacy of civil
authority.”
Given the nature of the Puritan way of life, where order and respect for
authority were of great importance, it can be seen why the Puritans saw the
Quakers as such great threats. The point had come at which the two groups were
standing on a razor’s edge. The Puritans had made the ultimate decision to
invoke the death penalty; the Quakers had shown no signs of backing down from
the Puritan laws.
Early in
1659, William Brend returned to Boston
proclaiming that he was a Quaker. He was imprisoned and eventually given his
release with the proviso that he was to be hanged if he were found in Massachusetts
more than forty-eight hours after his release. Brend determined that his life
was more important than spreading the word in Massachusetts
and he never returned to the colony.
In June the
situation worsened. Authorities arrived at the scene of a disturbance on June
15. Three non-resident Quakers, Nicholas Davis, Marmaduke Stephenson and
William Robinson, were trying to preach to a congregation. The three men
admitted to being Quakers then were taken away and imprisoned. At the next
session of the Court of Assistants, they were sentenced to hang, but the
sentence would be suspended if they agreed to leave the colony. The three
Quakers refused to abide by these conditions and remained imprisoned. Previous
experience with imprisoned Quakers had taught the Puritan authorities that
Quakers were poor prisoners. They would not work or behave as expected.
Governor Endecott attempted to reason with Robinson, but found it impossible.
Robinson indicated that he and Stephenson would not shy away from becoming
martyrs.
While the
trio of Quakers sat in the Boston
prison, Mary Dyer, one of Ann Hutchinson’s followers, arrived in Boston.
Dyer had come to visit the imprisoned Quakers. She soon found herself in prison
with them. With four Quakers in prison the General Court now found itself in a
situation where the new law would be tested. The Quakers continued to assert
that the laws of Massachusetts Bay Colony did not apply to them and that they
had a freedom to worship as they chose. As the General Court saw it, this was
just a Quaker attempt to convert colonists from the state church and to foment
public disobedience. On September 12,
1659, the General Court found Davis, Dyer, Robinson and Stephenson
to be Quakers and ordered them banished. It also ordered that if any of the
four remained in the colony and were found after forty-eight hours, they would
be hanged.
Dyer,
Robinson and Stephenson were found in Boston
within two weeks of their release. They were arrested and imprisoned. On
October 18, they were sentenced to death by a special Court of Assistants. By
this time a number of Quakers had arrived in Boston
to support their fellows. The General Court found itself in a corner. It had to
act on the sentence or else the law would be nothing more than an empty threat.
The welfare of the colony was at stake and the rebellion of the Quakers had to
be stopped. What the Quakers saw as an essential feature of their idealism,
Puritans viewed as the product of an irrepressible fanaticism born of
perversity and depravity. Puritan leaders began preparing for the executions.
They determined that Mary Dyer was not to be hanged. Rather, she would be
allowed to walk to the gallows, would have a noose placed around her neck, and
witness the death of Stephenson and Robinson, but she would not suffer death.
One of the reasons given for this decision was that her husband, William Dyer,
was an influential citizen of Rhode Island
and the General Court wanted to take care to not alienate the citizens of that
colony. Further, it was thought that this might be an opportunity to show
Quakers how close to death they could come.
And so, on October 27, 1659, Marmaduke
Stephenson, William Robinson and Mary Dyer were led to the gallows. Stephenson
and Robinson were hung by the neck until the were dead. Dyer, given her
reprieve, was banished yet again from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The bodies
of Stephenson and Robinson were dumped into a pit dug at the location and no
markers were erected to recall their burials. Nicholas Upsall, who had
previously been banished from the colony, had returned and was in prison.
Having a compassionate heart, he asked to be allowed to erect a fence around
the burial site. His request was denied. According to Selleck, “people’s
indignation at the hangings was great and the Court was alarmed at the large
crowds around the jail attempting to make contact with the suffering Quakers.”
Carla Pestana provides an alternate
view of the situation in her book, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial
Massachusetts. She contends the
Court installed a fence around the gallows, not because of alarm, but rather to
keep the general populace from coming in contact with the condemned Quakers.
This would be in keeping with the civil authorities practices of boarding the
windows and doors of jails holding Quakers. Pestana states that “although some
ordinary people, like some leaders, came to believe that the colony had gone
too far in killing these intransigent sectaries, there is no indication that
even a sizable minority held this view as the act was being committed.”
While there is some evidence that there may have been a small amount of
sympathy for the Quakers, it should be recalled that it is difficult to be sure
what the mood of the crowd was on that October day in 1659.
It seemed
to the General Court that perhaps the executions had made an impression on the
Quakers. Christopher Holder was one of the Quakers who had returned to Boston
for the executions. Holder had an ear cropped in 1657 and by coming back to Boston
faced the next penalty of having his tongue bored with a hot iron. For some reason, he was instead banished
under penalty of death. Chu
notes that Holder began to behave in a more civilized manner and he asked that
he be released from prison so that he could return to England.
Holder held good to his word and left the colony permanently. This seemed to
indicate to the authorities that the problems they were experiencing with
Quakers such as Mary Dyer, unlike Holder, had more to do with their criminal
intents than their beliefs.
Dyer had a long standing reputation in the Massachusetts Bay Colony as being a
problem, dating back to her relationship with Anne Hutchinson. Soon, the
authorities were to find out just what trouble they would have with her.
Mary Dyer
waited until the spring of 1660 to return to Boston.
Dyer was immediately arrested and imprisoned. She identified herself to the
judge as the same Mary Dyer who had been banished from the colony the previous
year. Again, the General Court was in a corner, and this time there appeared to
be no way out. Mary Dyer was determined to be a martyr. The General Court
sentenced her to hang, yet it offered her a way out, even on the gallows. An
offer of freedom was made, should she agree to leave the colony and stay out.
She refused, and on June 1, 1660,
Mary Dyer became the first and only Quaker woman to be hanged in the colonies.
By now the
leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to realize that their strategy
was not working. The death penalty for Quakers was not forcing them to stay
away; rather it was attracting them. The Puritan leaders needed to rethink
their strategy. As 1660 passed, no more Quakers were hanged but public opinion
was beginning to turn against the Puritans’ policies. Several colonists,
especially in the Salem area, had
become Quakers.
By this
time, the Puritans’ written defense of their actions against the Quakers,
written by John Norton, had been reprinted in England.
Norton’s work outlined the General Court’s case against the Quakers. It offered
reasons for the Puritans’ fear of the Quakers. According to Norton, the views
of the Quakers were a “threat to the godly experiment” in Massachusetts.
He argued that they were guilty of heresy and deserved to be expelled from the
colony. As Massachusetts was a
religious colony, it could not “maintain religious purity by permitting heretics
to remain within its borders.” Word of the executions of Stephenson and
Robinson had reached the English Quakers. The Quakers had responded to Norton’s
writings with their own tracts which were changing the minds of Englishmen. The
Quakers argued in pamphlet after pamphlet that Norton was erroneous in his
arguments, detailing point by point where he was incorrect.
Meanwhile, a king had been restored to the throne of England.
By the
spring of 1661, the jails of Boston
were filling with Quakers. The authorities had become reluctant to hang any
more Quakers after the execution of Mary Dyer, so the Quakers were left to
languish in the prisons. As winter drew to a close, Governor Endecott decided
to hang William Leddra. In March 1661, William Leddra became the last of the
four Quaker martyrs to hang on Boston Common.
Leddra, like Dyer, was determined to be a martyr for his beliefs. The General
Court offered him the same deal it had made with Holder to leave the colony and
not return. Leddra turned down the offer, claiming “there was a higher law than
the General Court and that it forbade his execution.” Based on examples such as
Dyer and Leddra, Chu posits that the General Court may
have believed that at least some of the Quakers were madmen, who could only be
controlled by hanging them.
Nevertheless,
another threat arrived in the person of Wenlock Christison, who challenged the
General Court by openly avowing to be a Quaker. The Court passed the death
sentence on Christison, but he claimed the right to appeal his case to the laws
of England. The
General Court denied him this right. In June 1661, the General Court of
Massachusetts repealed the death penalty in the Anti-Quaker law and replaced it
with a Cart and Whip Act. This Act required that all Quakers be tied to a
cart’s tail and whipped through the town. They were then to be taken to the
next town and whipped through that town. This was to continue until they
reached the borders of the colony. Christison and others were among the Quakers
whipped out of town. The act had no effect as Quakers continued to flock to Massachusetts.
The
Restoration in England
While the Puritans were attempting
to deal with the Quaker threat in Massachusetts Bay Colony, England
underwent radical changes. By the summer of 1660, Oliver Cromwell had died. His
son, Richard, had followed him as Protector, but had governed poorly and
Charles II (1660-1685) had been restored to the throne of England.
While Charles II was no friend of either Puritans or Quakers, he appears to
have favored the latter at the beginning of his reign. Given the extent to
which the Massachusetts Bay Colony had usurped royal authority with their move
in 1629 to take their company and charter to the colony, it is no wonder that
Charles II leant a sympathetic ear to the Quakers. Also, Puritans had been the
leaders of the opposition during the English Civil War and had been among those
who had executed his father.
Through the
writings of George Bishop, and the direct intervention of Edward Burrough,
Charles II heard more about the plight of the Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. Bishop, a leading Quaker in England,
gathered the reports of returning Quakers and published a book, New England
Judged. The physical evidence of Holder, Rous and Copeland, each minus an
ear upon their return to England,
added to the visual record of what had happened in Massachusetts.
Burrough had been one of George Fox’s first and most steadfast friends. He also
was a personal acquaintance of the king and knew he would need to continue
prodding him to action. Being told that innocent blood was being shed, Charles
II determined to stop it. He issued a writ of Mandamus to the Puritan leaders
directing that all Quakers in prison or under the death penalty should be
transported to England
for trial. To add insult to injury, Burrough suggested to the King that the
writ should be taken to Boston by
Samuel Shattuck. Shattuck, a resident of Salem,
had been banished from Boston for
his role in removing a glove from Christopher Holder’s mouth in 1657. The King
agreed and Shattuck set sail for Boston.
When
Shattuck arrived in Boston in
November 1661, he went straight to the home of Governor Endecott. The Governor
greeted him and insisted that Shattuck remove his hat, as befitted his meeting
with the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. When Shattuck was reluctant
to do so, the Governor had it forcibly removed. Shattuck announced that he was
there as a representative of the King and Endecott had Shattuck’s hat returned
to him. The Governor read the papers Shattuck delivered to him and with the
words, “We shall obey his majesty’s command,” the Governor ended the execution
of Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The
Puritans then set about to make their case to Charles II. The Reverend John
Norton and Simon Bradstreet, were sent by the General Court to appeal to the
king and explain the dangerous behavior of the Puritans. While it was a
difficult task, the situation in England
had changed since the spring and summer of 1661 when the Quakers had temporarily
gained the king’s favor. By late 1661, Charles had changed his mind about the
Quakers and allowed the Puritans a great deal of latitude in dealing with the
Quakers. While he would not allow any executions, he would not interfere with
further persecution. In fact, England
had enacted a strong law against the Quakers at the same time.
Renewal of Persecution Against
the Quakers
The writ of Mandamus from Charles
II had the effect of ending the execution of Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. It did not stop their persecution. The Puritans continued persecuting
Quakers for several years following the issuance of the writ. Governor Endecott
proved to be a formidable foe, even without the death penalty.
The civil
authorities in Massachusetts had
repealed the Cart and Whip Act for a brief period beginning in November 1661,
but in October 1662, they re-enacted it. With this act back in force, Endecott
continued persecutions of Quakers. As before, the Quakers proved to be an
especially tenacious foe. Elizabeth Hooton, a sixty-year old widow, had
suffered under the 1661 Cart and Whip Act. During the period between acts, she
had gone to England
and met with Charles II. He provided her a letter authorizing her to purchase
land in any of the colonies. Hooton, and her grown daughter, returned to Boston
late in 1662 and presented the letter to the General Court. The Court denied
her request and had her jailed. She was then subjected to punishment under the
Cart and Whip Act of 1662. She was whipped at least eight times and expelled
into the wilderness at least four times, but each after each episode she came
back and made the same request. All she wanted was a place to live, a place
where Friends may meet and a plot to bury the dead. Her faith kept her returning
to strike down these laws.
Nicholas
Upsall, the innkeeper who had suffered much in the preceding years, continued
to be persecuted by the Puritan authorities. He was again exiled, this time to
his brother-in-law’s home in Wollaston, with the understanding that he should
speak to no one about his beliefs. On Upsall’s death, he left a bequest that
one room in his inn, The Red Lyon, should always be reserved for visiting
Friends
Decline of Hostilities
Finally, in 1664, the extreme persecutions
in Massachusetts came to an end.
Governor Endecott became seriously ill and died in March 1665. He was succeeded
by Richard Bellingham, who was more lenient towards the Quakers. Bellingham,
it will be recalled, was acting as Governor when Fisher and Austin first
arrived in 1656 and set off the Quaker invasion. The anti-Quaker laws were
modified to allow Quakers to go quietly about their business. However, the laws
still stipulated that those Quakers disrupting church services would be
prosecuted. Most of the actions taken against Quakers at this time were
directed toward the visiting Quakers. Resident Quakers did not suffer
dramatically at the hands of the Puritan leaders.
Bellingham
died in 1672 and John Leverett, an even more lenient leader, became governor.
While this was a period of greater toleration toward the Quakers, events still
transpired to put them in the spotlight. The outbreak of Indian hostilities in
1674 and King Phillip’s War in 1675 brought a new period of persecution. As the
wars were going badly, several Puritan ministers in Boston
met and inquired of the Lord why this was so. The Lord replied that it was
because they had allowed the Quakers to be among them. According to George
Selleck, others in the community felt that the reason the Lord had allowed the
battles against the Indians to go poorly was because they were persecuting the
Quakers. Regardless of the reason, the General Court again revived the Cart and
Whip Act, but it was not vigorously pursued.
Toleration
finally came to Massachusetts Bay Colony, but again, as the result of royal
intervention. Quakers in England
suffered greatly after the initial brief period of peace with Charles II. With
the return of the Anglicans to power in England,
they attempted to force all other religions back into the Church of England.
The Anglicans were able to pass the Clarendon Code which was specifically aimed
at the puritan congregations and way of life. Quakers were targeted along with
the other puritan sects. In 1664, there were 1,240 dissenters convicted in London;
of these, approximately 850 were Quakers. Many Quaker leaders perished in
prison during the years under Charles II. The king they believed would be their
protector and ally turned out to be their great persecutor.
Charles II
was followed by the Catholic king, James II (1685-1689). James II had a brief
reign and lost the throne in the “Glorious Revolution” in 1689, to William
(1689-1702) and Mary (1689-1694), a pair of Protestants. One of their first
acts was the passage of the Act of Toleration. Following this Act was the new
royal charter combining Plymouth
and Massachusetts and ordering
religious toleration in the colony. Quakers were now free of the restrictions
placed on them for the past forty years in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
For Quakers
and Puritans the ordeal was over, but at a great cost. Four lives were lost and
dozens of men and women were whipped and mutilated. Eventually, the Quakers proved
victorious. The religious colony of Massachusetts
permitted all faiths to be practiced. The Puritan church lost power and status
with its members. The town of Salem
was to become one of the strongholds of Quakerism in the colony. The effort by
the Puritans to establish and maintain their orderly way of life, driven by
their belief that God was on their side, succeeded as long as they had strong
leadership, men like John Winthrop and John Endecott, men who were focused on
creating God’s kingdom on earth. As the population of the colony changed and
individuals arrived who did not hold the fervor that the early settlers did, it
became more difficult to maintain control. Arrival of the Quakers, twenty-five
years after the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony, became the lever to pry
open the door to change.
The Quakers
were a very tenacious group of people, were burning with the Inward Light and
the belief that their religion was the right religion. They were willing to
become martyrs to make their point and suffered greatly, never striking back
physically, although they were formidable verbal opponents. They were willing
to suffer repeated whippings, cropped ears and other indignities to change that
part of the world known as The Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Their
dealings with the Quakers revealed to many Puritans the inflexibility with
which their state religion dealt with dissenters. Their reputation for
tolerance was less than stellar before the arrival of the Quakers and much
worse after. Many Puritan writers spent years attempting to explain away this
chapter in the colony’s history. Most apologists placed all the blame on the
Quakers and accepted none for the Puritans. Yet, the arrogance of the early
Puritan leaders set the stage for the later events. Their disavowal of royal
control allowed them to set up their own self-governing colony and permitted
the establishment of the strictest toleration rules in the British
empire. It further exposed their treatment of women as
second-class citizens by focusing attention on Quaker women who received equal
treatment by Quaker men.
The
treatment of the Quakers by the Puritans in Massachusetts
was a violent response to the perceived threat they posed. Yet, compared to the
persecution of the Quakers in England
following the restoration of Charles II, the situation in Massachusetts
represented much smaller numbers. The impact of the hangings was felt from Massachusetts
to England and
ultimately played a role in the king’s decision to revoke Massachusetts’
charter and replace it with one more to his liking. The treatment of the Quakers
set in motion many events which altered governance in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. As time passed, the leaders and colonists of the Bay Colony accepted
and included Quakers in the normal activities of daily life in the colony.
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