July 11. Aug. 5. The Governor, Deputy-Governor, and four other Magistrates, met, and ordered that the master of the vessel should give bonds to carry the women back to Barbadoes;1 that they should be kept in gaol till their departure; and that some books which came with them should be burned by the executioner. The two unwelcome visitors from Barbadoes had but just left Boston on their return, when another vessel brought from England eight other persons Aug. 7. of the same persuasion, four men and as many women, besides a man who had joined the party at Long Island, and been converted on the passage thence. Officers went on board in the harbor, and led them away to gaol. At their examination before the Magistrates, they confirmed the opinion which had spread respecting the proficiency of the sect in the use of opprobrious language. One of them, Mary Prince, taken to Endicott's house for a conference with two ministers, reproached them as "hirelings, Baals, and seed of the serpent." Sept. 8. Oct. 21. The master of the vessel which had brought this company was laid under bonds to convey them back again to England; and, after eleven weeks' confinement, they were accordingly re-embarked and sent away. The shipmaster complained of the hardship of the engagement into which he was made to enter. But the Magistrates suspected what was indeed true that the Quakers intended to get on shore again after leaving the harbor. While in Boston gaol, they had corresponded with Gorton, who, though no Quaker, was willing to do his best to help them in annoying Massachusetts. He wrote to them that, if he could but be informed when they would sail, he would make arrangements to take them out of the English vessel at sea, and land them reference to the friends of Mrs. Hutchinson. See Vol. I. 483. I suppose this proceeding was had under the law passed in 1637, with in Narragansett Bay. This scheme was frustrated by the caution of the Magistrates. The prisoners wrote to Gorton, that the terms of the security required of the shipmaster were peremptorily persisted in, and that his plan in their behalf must be abandoned.1 Action of the missioners. Sept. 17. The alarm which had been excited was not confined to Massachusetts. While the second party of Quaker missionaries were in prison, the Federal Commissioners at their annual meeting resolved to "propose Federal Comto the several General Courts, that all Quakers, Ranters, and other notorious heretics, should be prohibited coming into the United Colonies, and, if any should hereafter come or arise, that they should be forthwith secured, or removed out of all the jurisdictions." 2 Each of the confederated Colonies proceeded to act upon this recommendation. Connecticut imposed a fine of five pounds a week upon every town that should "entertain any Quakers, Ranters, Colonies. Adamites, or such like notorious heretics;" directed magistrates to commit such intruders "to prison, for the securing of them until they could conveniently be sent out of the jurisdiction;" and ordered that shipmasters, who should land them, should "be compelled to transport them again out of the Colony, at their first setting sail." New Haven and Plymouth made similar enactments.5 Action of the Oct. 2. 1657. May 27. June 3. When the General Court of Massachusetts met, they at once took up the case of what they described as the "cursed sect of heretics lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers, who in Massachutake upon them to be immediately sent of God, and infallibly assisted by the Spirit to speak and Proceedings setts. 1656. Oct. 14. ter, &c., 102, 103. Plymouth about the same time (1657, May 19) forbade the holding of Quaker meetings by "strangers or others." (Ibid., 104.) write blasphemous opinions, despising government and the order of God in church and commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turn the people from the faith, and gain proselytes to their pernicious ways." And, in order "to prevent the like mischief as by their means was wrought in their native land," the Court now required shipmasters, who should bring Quakers into the jurisdiction, to pay a fine of one hundred pounds, and to give security for the re-transportation of such passengers to the port whence they came. It was at the same time enacted, that Quakers coming into the Colony should "be forthwith committed to the House of Correction, and at their entrance to be severely whipped, and by the master thereof to be kept constantly to work, and none suffered to converse or speak with them during the time of their imprisonment;""—that a fine of five pounds should be incurred by the importation, circulation, or concealment of Quaker books; that persons presuming "to defend the heretical opinions of the said Quakers" should be punished, for the first offence, by a fine of two pounds; for a second, by a fine of four pounds; and for a third, by imprisonment in the House of Correction till there should "be convenient passage for them to be sent out of the land;"-and that "what person or persons soever should revile the office or person of magistrates or ministers, as was usual with the Quakers, such person or persons should be severely whipped, or pay the sum of five Oct. 21. pounds." This law, forthwith "published, in several places of Boston, by beat of drum," betrays the excitement into which the government had been thrown by the transactions of the previous summer. Nicholas Upsall,2 an ancient citizen, for "reproaching the 1 Mass. Rec., IV. (i.) 277. A Nicholas Upsall took the freeman's oath among the first, in 1631. (Mass. Rec., I. 366.) I suppose this was the man. Comp. Gerard Croes, Historia Quakeriana, 394 et seq. honored Magistrates, and speaking against the law made and published against Quakers," was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty pounds, and to "depart the jurisdiction within one month, not to return under the penalty of imprisonment."1 The admonition designed by the new laws was, before long, to be practically enforced. Anne Burden and Mary Dyer came to Boston from England. The latter 1657. was the wife of the Secretary of Rhode Island, to which Colony, twenty years before, she had gone from Boston after the Antinomian dissension.2 Both were imprisoned. Burden, after two or three months, was sent back to England. Dyer, pleading ignorance of the law, was delivered to her husband, to be conducted home, on his giving security "not to lodge her in any town of the Colony, nor to permit any to speak with her." But Mary Clarke, who had made the voyage from London" to warn these persecutors to desist from their iniquity," was scourged. Christopher Holden and John Copeland, two of the party who had been reshipped to England in the preceding autumn, appeared again at Salem, "and spoke a few words in their meeting after the priest had done;" they were whipped and imprisoned, and Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, of Salem, were imprisoned for having harbored them. "The next that came from England, as being under a necessity from the Lord to come to this land of persecution, was Richard Dowdney." He received the same treatment as Holden and Copeland, and the three were 1 Mass. Rec., IV. (i.) 277, 280. Dyer was an object of peculiar abhorrence in Boston, on account of an absurd story of her having given birth to a monster, a divine judgment for her attachment to Mrs. Hutchinson. Winthrop tells the story in unpleasant detail (I. 261-263). 3 "An evident token," says Sewel, who relates the proceeding, (History, &c., 167,) "that he was not of the society of Quakers, for otherwise he would not have entered into such a bond.” Ibid., 168; Bishop, New England Judged, 50-53; Croes, Histor. Quaker., 398. July. sent away together. The four visitors last named belonged to a party of fifteen who, having arrived from London at New Amsterdam, thence dispersed themselves into New England.1 Three women of this company, Sarah Gibbons, Mary Wetherhead, and Dorothy Waugh, had been sent to England with Holden, Copeland, and others, in the year before. Oct. 14 2 It seemed probable that the recent enactments had had some effect, while, on the other hand, it was clear that they were not fully adequate to their purpose; and both considerations prompted to the trial of measures more severe. The fine for harboring Quakers was now increased to the amount of forty shillings for every hour; the forfeiture for bringing them was enforced by a more rigid rule; and it was ordered that every Quaker, coming into the jurisdiction after having been once punished, should, for the first offence, suffer the loss of one ear; for a second offence, the loss of the other; and for a third, should have the tongue "bored through with a hot iron." Of the three lastmentioned provisions, the last two never took effect. The other, after the lapse of nearly a year,- for the repugnance to it must have been hard to overcome,— was executed in three instances. Holden, Copeland, and John Rouse, who had twice come back Sept. 16. after being banished, each had the right ear cut off by the constable. The sad scene took place within the prison walls, in the presence of only a few witnesses. Of this mutilation-a mode of punishment then well known in the mother country there has been no example since that time in New England.3 The Federal Commissioners were at this moment in 1658. In 1 Brodhead, History, &c., 636. the British Museum is a copy of a journal of this voyage, under the title, “A Quaker's Sea-Journal, being a True Relation of a Voyage to New England, 3 Bishop, New England Judged, 91. |