1656] PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS. 153 but in each of the towns there was an inferior court for the trial of petty cases. To every person was assured freedom of religious belief, as also permission to worship according to the dictate of his conscience; an enactment which is worthy of note, as it was the first legal announcement of entire religious liberty in the colonies. (1644.) Massachusetts and Connecticut likewise published their complete code of laws shortly afterward, in 1649 and 1650. They recite a lengthy list of opinions affirmed to be heretical, the promulgators of any of which were declared liable to banishment. Jesuits were prohibited from entering the country, a repetition of the offence being punishable with death. John Clarke, of Rhode Island, with two others, being on a visit to Lynn, the former delivered a public exhortation at the house of a friend, for which offence they were all arrested and carried by force to hear the regular preacher. Clarke was sentenced, in addition, to pay a fine of £20 or be whipped; part of the charge against him being that he refused to take off his hat in the meeting-house. Holmes, one of his companions, was fined £30, in addition to a flogging. Upon being loosed from the whipping-post, he exclaimed: "Although the Lord hath made it easy to me, I pray God it may not be laid to your charge.' Two persons, for shaking hands with him and uttering words of praise, were both fined and imprisoned. At a later date, the learned Dunster, president of Harvard College, was fined for his Baptist belief, and obliged to resign his position. We must now turn our attention to the far more bitter persecution of the Friends, or, as they were then in derision called, the Quakers. THE PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS. There existed no law in the province especially directed against the Quakers when, in 1656, Mary Fisher and Ann G* Austin, members of that greatly-traduced society, arrived in Boston harbor from the Barbadoes. The commissioners were duly apprised of the coming of these inoffensive women, who, it was declared, were "fit instruments to propagate the Kingdom of Satan," and a law was solicited to debar the entrance "from foreign lands of such notorious heretics." Their trunks being searched, a large number of books which they contained were carried ashore and burnt in the market-place by the hangman; the women were then imprisoned by order of Bellingham, the deputy-governor, and their persons searched for signs of witchcraft. Being clear of any indications of that nature, after enduring an imprisonment of five weeks, they were placed on board a vessel and sent away. In the meantime eight others of the same sect arrived. These were kept in jail for the space of eleven weeks, and then sent back to England at the charge of the master of the vessel; he having been imprisoned until he promised to take them away. A strenuous law was forthwith enacted, by which it was provided that any one who brought a Quaker into the colony should suffer a fine of £100, besides incurring the obligation to carry such a one away again. The punishment of the Quaker, in such a case, was to be flogging, and imprisonment at hard labor until transported. Any one defending the opinions of the Quakers was also liable to a fine and other penalties. But these enactments failed of their purpose. A widow who came from England to Massachusetts, having debts owing her there, was thrust into prison, and confined three months; then sent back to England, her long voyage resulting in no relief to herself and fatherless children. Beside many others who suffered, were Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, an aged couple living near Boston. Though not Quakers, yet upon beholding the cruelties which were inflicted 1657] PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS. 155 upon that peaceful people, they were led, with others, to forsake the appointed assemblies and to meet by themselves on the first day of the week. For this, Lawrence and Cassandra received thirty stripes with a knotted whip of three cords, and part of their household goods were sold to pay a fine imposed for being absent from the established meeting. The rulers, believing that the law was still too lenient-for the Quakers persisted in returning even after being fined, flogged and imprisoned-ordered that those found guilty of coming back after banishment, should suffer the loss of their ears, and have their tongues bored through with a hot iron. One, William Brend, having been apprehended and brought before the magistrates, was accused of holding certain unchris tian doctrines. The allegation was shown to be untrue; nevertheless, Brend was imprisoned in Boston, and having declined to work for the jailor, was put in irons, his neck and heels tied together, and kept in that trying position for many hours. No food was given him for several days. In this, his weak condition, having received about a hundred blows with a pitched rope, he nearly died under the inhuman torture. The news of this outrage becoming known in the town, caused such an outcry, that Endicott, the governor, sent his surgeon to the prison to see what could be done. The surgeon reported the condition of the victim to be so deplorable, that his flesh would rot off the bones ere the bruised parts could be healed. This still farther exasperated the people, but the magistrates cast the blame upon the jailor, and said that he should be duly dealt with. But John Norton, the principal clergyman in the town, as well as a chief instigator of the persecution, exclaimed, that as "Brend endeavored to beat our gospel ordinances black and blue, if he then be beaten black and blue, it is but just upon him-and I will appear in his behalf that did so." Thus, Norton and others of the clergy, apprehending that scourging and cutting off of ears, was still insufficient punishment for those who held to the faith and practice of the Quakers, petitioned the magistrates that a law be enacted to banish the so-called "heretics," upon pain of death. A court composed of twenty-five persons was accordingly held, and, by a majority of one vote only, a law was passed permitting a county court of three magistrates to decree the punishment of death, without benefit of trial by jury: a clear infringement of the fundamental law of England. This result so troubled one who was kept away from the court by illness, and whose vote would have defeated the measure, that, weeping, he declared he would have crept to the court upon his knees rather than it should have passed. The law, however, upon the earnest protest of the dissenting voters, was so amended as that trial by jury was allowed. Mention has been made of the harsh treatment endured by Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick. A son and daughter of these, likewise refusing to frequent the assemblies of those who had become such relentless persecutors, were each heavily fined for the offence. Upon account of their low estate, the penalty could not be produced; whereupon the court decreed that they should be sold "to any of the English nation, at Virginia or Barbadoes, to answer the said fines." But there was no master of a ship to be found who was base enough to carry them away: the mariners remembered better than did the rulers, that the judgments of the Lord were of old time against those who "sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes." In Whittier's ballad of "Cassandra Southwick" the above incident is narrated with much beauty and pathos: "Pile my ship with bars of silver,-pack with coins of Spanish gold, From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, By the living God who made me !-I would sooner in yon bay 1659] PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS. "Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!' 157 Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause. 'Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old, Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold ?" We now come to the cases in which certain of the Quakers suffered the penalty of death, rather than offend against the drawings of the Holy Spirit, as clearly revealed in their inmost souls. They doubtless felt that where the bloodthirsty spirit of intolerance prevailed, as it then did in New England, there were their presence and exhortations and even the sacrifice of their lives, particularly needed. In obedience to such plain intimations of duty as they felt that they could not, without guilt, withstand, came Marmaduke Stevenson, a yeoman of Yorkshire, William Robinson, merchant, of London, and Mary Dyer, widow of the recorder of Providence Plantation. These were all imprisoned upon the charge of being Quakers. They were then banished; but, having returned, the sentence of death was passed upon them by Endicott. Mary Dyer, however, was reprieved when on the scaffold. Robinson died, exclaiming, "I suffer for Christ, in whom I live, and for whom I die." Stevenson, as he stepped up the ladder, uttered the words, "Be it known unto all this day, that we suffer not as evil doers, but for conscience' sake." The following year Mary Dyer again returned, and being once more sentenced to death, remarked that her blood would be required at the hands of those who did wilfully shed it, adding, "But for those that do it in the simplicity of their hearts, I desire the Lord to forgive them. I came to do the will of my Father, and in obedience to his will, I stand even to death." But so hardened were some of these persecutors, that Adderton, a general, who was one of the court, said scoffingly," She did hang as a flag for others to take example by." Fearful of the result of these bloody proceedings, the |