BAPTISTS AND QUAKERS.

151

In Virginia, after the restoration in 1662, very severe laws were enacted against Quakers, Baptists, (stigmatized as Anabaptists), and Puritans, the religion of the Church of England being established by law. Even twenty years before, Puritan ministers from Boston and New Haven were warned to 66 depart out of the colony with all conveniency," and more were banished in 1649. Simply entertaining a Quaker rendered one liable to imprisonment.

In Pennsylvania, all Christians and Jews were tolerated, and in Carolina there was toleration of a certain sort which did not include Jews, and declared the Church of England the only true and orthodox church. The settlement of Georgia was late enough to permit the framers of the laws to take advantage of the experience of older colonies and grant greater freedom of conscience.

The most marked intolerance was found in the Massachusetts colony, the Baptists and Quakers being in turn the victims.* We have already seen how Williams was banished in 1636, thirty-six years before Baptists were permitted to hold their meetings without molestation in Boston, and it was not until after 1680, that all proceedings against them were discontinued. In that year the General Court forbade them to assemble in their meeting-house, but the prohibition seems to have been merely a matter of form. "No doubt the New England fathers thought with the tolerant Jeremy Taylor, that Anabaptism

*It is a somewhat curious fact, that during the lives of the first generation of settlers upon the soil of Massachusetts, not a single year passed by, in which they did not bring the civil power to bear upon a strange succession of persons obnoxious for a religious tenet. Ellis's "Life of Anne Hutchinson," page 172

was 'as much to be rooted out as anything that is the greatest pest and nuisance to the public interest.'"* They felt that the sect was adverse to the public interests of the colony as well as a spreader of false doctrines. During this period the "learned, reverend and judicious" Dunster, President of Harvard College, was tried, convicted, and compelled to resign his office, for being a Baptist, and was not paid the balance of his account as president.

More severe were the steps taken against the people called Quakers, and for four years they were persecuted with great austerity. The sect had arisen in England in 1647, and its persecutions lasted there from 1656 to 1685. It was in the spring of 1656, that the General Court of Massachusetts appointed a "public day of humiliation," to seek the face of God on behalf of England, distressed by the abounding of errors, especially those of the Ranters, or Quakers. In July, two months later, Boston was invaded by two women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, † members of the body so much feared. They were ordered to jail, their books were burned by the public executioner, and the master of the vessel in which they came, was obliged to give bonds to take them away again. The women were put in the Boston jail, their cell was boarded up, that they might not communicate with the people, they were denied writing materials, and one Nicholas Upshall, who protested against such treatment, and gave the jailer privily, money for food for the women, was fined, and eventually banished to *Palfrey's "History of New England, volume iii., page 92.

†The coming of these women is referred to in Longfellow's "New England Tragedies."-" John Endicott," act. I, Sc. 2.

MARY DYER EXECUTED.

153

Rhode Island. In August the shipmaster carried them away, but the next day another vessel arrived, bringing five men and four women of the same persuasion. After similar proceedings as had occurred in the first case, these were safely shipped to England again. In order to provide for future emergencies, a law was passed laying a fine of five hundred pounds on any shipmaster who should bring Quakers to the colony, threatening the Quakers themselves with imprisonment, and severe whipping, and levying a fine of five pounds on every one who should import their books, or writings, concerning their "devilish opinions." This did not keep back the tide of emigration. Two more women arrived in 1657, Anne Burden and Mary Dyer, the latter, wife of the secretary of Rhode Island, both having been banished twenty years previously for holding with Anne Hutchinson. Anne Burden had come to collect some debts due to her deceased husband, but no mercy was shown her. After a tedious imprisonment she was shipped penniless to England. Mary Dyer was delivered to her husband, who took her to Rhode Island, whence she returned, however, in 1659, in time to come under condemnation of a new law which prescribed death as the penalty for daring to return. Though two men were hanged on the Common in Boston, Mary Dyer, after she had stood with the halter about her neck, was set free, to go again to Rhode Island. The next spring she was "moved" to go to Boston to bear witness against the law. was condemned to die, and her execution occurred on June 1st, 1660, her body hanging, as one of her judges said, “as a flag for others to take example by.”

She

The inoffensive people were goaded to the most extraordinary acts. Men and women cried through the streets that the Lord was coming with the sword. One woman walked through Boston in a gown of sackcloth, another exhibited herself with her face covered with grease and lampblack, one walked through Salem naked, "as a sign," another went naked * amongst the People of Newbury, for the like reason. During the persecution thirty Quakers were scourged, fined or imprisoned, several were hung, and some were branded in the hand with the letter H, for heretic. The end approached in 1661, when there came from England a royal order to Governor Endicott, directing him to proceed no further against his Quaker prisoners, but to send them to England for trial. The order was sent by the hands of Samuel Shattuck, a Quaker, who had been banished upon pain of death. In response to it, the Governor directed that all the Quakers then in custody should be discharged. The laws were modified, but it was only for a time. When the feeling of the people had subsided, men were again whipped at the cart's tail from town to town, and banished, and even women were treated in the same shameful manner. The persecutions did not entirely cease for some years, when the king demanded that no one should be hin

*Mr Whittier says that these persons, having been accustomed to seeing women punished in a condition of nakedness, and examined for "marks of the devil," had less compunction in thus presenting themselves in public than they otherwise would have had. Mary Fisher and Ann Austin had been thus stripped and examined on their arrival, by orders of Deputy-Governor Bellingham. Governor Endicott on his return, thought they had been treated too leniently, declaring that he would have had them whipped.