The
Quaker “Invasion” and Religious Violence in Massachusetts
Andrew McInnes (CAS '07) is a history
major. His academic interests and experience focus on the history
of the early modern period in Europe and the Americas. After
graduation, Andrew plans to travel before continuing his education.
This paper was written for Prof. Diefendorf's HI414: Tolerance
and Intolerance in Early Modern Europe.
In July 1656, the merchant vessel Swallow sailed into the Boston
Harbor on a routine trading voyage from Barbados, transporting
its usual cargo of goods and people northward from the southern
reaches of the British Empire. As the Boston port authorities
inspected the ship, however, their discovery of two female passengers
of English birth and middle age changed the nature of the Swallow’s
arrival from mundane to monumental. The Quakers, matronly Anne
Austin and her companion, a former serving woman named Mary
Fischer, quickly found themselves in the custody of the Boston
jailer. Upon their incarceration, Austin and Fischer were ordered
“to be stript naked, and so to be search’d and mis-used,” in
an effort by the Puritan authorities to identify “witches teats”
or other “Tokens” of the satanic affiliation (Bishop 12). When
“there was no Token found upon them but that of Innocency,”
the authorities did not relent; they quickly boarded up the
prison windows, preventing any contact between the prisoners
and the public, and they kept the women under close watch for
the following five months, until another shipmaster agreed to
remove them from the colony. These events mark the beginning
of the Quaker “invasion” in New England, and they set the tone
for the period of persecution that would follow.
In George Bishop’s contemporary assessment, the Puritan authorities
reacted to the arrival of the “Two Poor Women… as if a formidable
Army had Invaded [their] borders” (Bishop 8). For the most part,
the events of the following decade support Bishop’s statement.
During these years, Puritan authorities persecuted Quaker “invaders,”
a harmless group from the perspective of the modern west, with
a unique severity. While early Quakers did encounter persecution
across the Atlantic as well during this period, the level of
violent persecution in New England significantly surpassed that
of mainland Europe, resulting in large-scale imprisonments and
banishments, physical mutilations, and even public executions.
Evaluating this unique severity, two essential questions emerge:
Why did colonial Puritans react so harshly to the immigration
of Quakers into New England? And how did the level of persecution
escalate in the colony to the extent that it did? Of course,
in an attempt to answer such broad questions, one must begin
by identifying the several significant factors that contributed
to the situation. Here, one can largely account for the unique
development of religious violence by examining the perceived
threat of Quakerism, the actual character of early Quakerism
in Massachusetts, the Puritan and Quaker worldviews, and the
chronological progression of the persecution.
Returning to the example of Austin and Fischer, the first identifiably
Quaker Antinomians to reach New England, one recognizes that
the Boston authorities held preconceived notions about this
religious group based on information they had received. As the
Puritan Edward Rawson reported, “We had received intelligence
from good hands from Barbadoes and England” (Rawson 1). Significantly,
these preconceived notions were, to a large extent, extreme
misconceptions. In the case of the first “invaders,” the Puritan
reaction demonstrates a tendency common on both sides of the
Atlantic: to associate Quakers with witchcraft and satanic practices.
Beyond the example of Austin and Fischer, the prominent Boston
minister John Wilson pleaded with Mary Dyer on the eve of her
execution in 1660 to “Repent, and be not so deluded and carried
away by the deceit of the Devil” (Burrogh 1). Likewise, a 1659
anti-Quaker tract written by John Norton, a fiery Boston minister
and an influential voice in colonial society, asserts that the
Quaker “ministers of Satan” sought “to amuse ignorant spectators
with superstitious astonishment, and so to dispose them to the
expectation of some strange discovery… in pretense divine
but indeed diabolical” (Norton 22, 6). Furthermore,
as Puritans “so closely associated [them] with the devil, Quakers
were often suspected of witchcraft; …English Quaker leaders
were described as witches, and individual Quakeresses were believed
by New England authorities to be witches” (Pestana 337). In
a highly exclusive society with a notorious fear of witchcraft
and diabolical possession, the perceived presence of a demonic
sect posed a real threat.
In addition to inaccurately associating Quakers with witchcraft
and the devil, Massachusetts Puritans falsely connected Quakers
to other allegedly evil forces of the day: the Roman Catholic
Church and, particularly, Jesuits. For example, a contemporary
source states that “there is a great deal of agreement betwixt
these [Quakers] and Papists… take heed there be not a Roman
Foxe to lead and guide your Lambs [a term referring to Quakers]”
(Anon. 29). Further demonstrating the misconception, Secretary
Edward Rawson of the General Court at Boston justified the Court’s
anti-Quaker legislation by arguing that “a law was made that
such persons should be banished, on pain of death, according
to the example of England in their provision against Jesuits”
(Rawson 1). Like the perceived threat of witchcraft, “the fear
of popish plots was real” for seventeenth-century Puritans,
and Puritan authorities often interpreted the Quaker “invasion”
as a “popish” attack (Pestana 338). The fear of Jesuitical presence
in the colony explicitly appears in a letter from John Davenport
to John Winthrop, Jr., in which Davenport expressed his suspicion
that a Quaker bid for White Hall as a meeting place was backed
by Jesuit money in order to open the colony to Catholic operations
(Pestana 339). Notably, the “association between Catholics and
Quakers had a slight basis in fact; namely, the two faiths shared
the same regional basis in England” (Pestana 339). In reality,
the connection was only geographical, but it nevertheless prompted
a convincing misconception.
Like their European countrymen, colonial Puritans also believed
that early Quakers engaged in immoral sexual acts. In one contemporary
account, an anti-Quaker author asserts that the group actively
defied “Gods prohibitions of lusts, and of mens lying with other
mens wives, or with single women, to whom they are not marryed”
(The Querers and Quakers 24). The account continues: “And they
had an invention to call their lying with women, Spirituall
Marriages; a rare way to save women, to perswade them to be
uncleane. … and they have beene heard to talke of being married
in the Spirit to those that were not their Husbands or Wives”
(The Querers and Quakers 25). In New England, to a larger extent
than in its mother country, society valued strict moral regulations
and restrictions as an essential aspect of maintaining a Christian
society. Indeed, this marks a fundamental reason for the group’s
departure from England and their establishment of an isolated
“City upon a Hill,” where they could live as “saints, not only
technically, but actually sanctified – upright and honorable
and morally reliable in all daily contacts and dealings” (Park
63). Accordingly, reports of licentious sexual behavior proved
significantly threatening and repulsive to Puritan authorities.
Additionally, Massachusetts Puritans demonstrated a misconception
that early Friends, a non-pejorative term for Quakers, were
associated or synonymous with other feared sects of Protestantism.
In an example related to the notion of the invaders’ immorality,
Puritans often confused Quakers with Ranters, a superficially
similar group that “argued that salvation led to personal perfection
and an exalted state that put them beyond man’s law … and went
out of their way to flaunt their freedom from ordinary moral
constraints” (Worrall 6). In fact, Puritan authorities commonly
equated Quakers with all Antinomian movements of the seventeenth
century; and for New Englanders, the most notorious was the
movement led by local resident Anne Hutchinson. Years before
the Quaker invasion, Hutchinson had nonviolently attacked the
tenets of Puritanism and the authority of Puritan elites, following
a spiritual argument like that of Quakerism, which emphasized
the ability of all individuals to seek salvation without clerical
guidance and denied the notion that the church exercised unique
religious authority (Worrall 8). Understanding Hutchinson’s
movement as a threat to society, Puritan authorities expelled
her from the colony, demonstrating their intolerance of dissenters
and establishing a “hair-trigger suspicion of all forms of Antinomianism”
in the colony (Park 67). Additionally, once the immigration
of Quakers into New England increased after 1656, “the welcome
[they] received from all sorts of radicals and heretics [including
Hutchinsonians and Native Americans] offered further proof of
the social dangers inherent in their evil nature” (Pestana 341).
Perhaps the most significant misconception about early Quakers
was their alleged connection to Anabaptism and the bloody Anabaptist
episode in Munster. In his influential Heresiography,
for example, London’s Ephraim Pagitt expresses the pre-invasion
notion that “the Quaker is an upstart branch of the Anabaptists”
(Pagitt 136). Five years later, John Norton explicitly mentioned
the Munster episode as a warning of the Quaker threat in Massachusetts,
implicitly encouraging magistrates to act aggressively against
it: “Those in Germany held that none with good conscience could
exercise the power of a magistrate, that is, none but such who
were of their mind: witness their doctrine, & practice,
in Munster and else where … they held also that it was lawful
for people to depose their magistrates” (Norton 4). Likewise,
Edward Rawson justified the actions of the General Court by
claiming that the institution aimed only “to secure the peace
and order here established against their attempts, whose designes
(we were all assured by our own experience, as well as by the
example of their predecessors in Munster) were to undermine
and ruine the same” (Rawson 1). Looking to the bloody Munster
episode as a predictor of events to come, Puritan authorities
perceived the Quaker invasion as a phenomenon that threatened
to turn their holy experiment upside down. George Bishop, on
the other hand, passionately denied the misconception in 1661:
“That they at Munster are their Predecessors, Is a heap of Lies
and Calumnies forged out of Your own, and the Brains of Your
Priests, on purpose to asperse the Innocent” (Bishop 6). While
Bishop correctly identified the connection as false – the misconception
did not represent an anti-Quaker conspiracy – the Puritan leadership
genuinely feared a Munster episode in Massachusetts.
Before and throughout the period of intense persecution in Massachusetts,
Puritan misconceptions about early Quakerism undoubtedly amplified
the perceived threat of the invasion and enlivened anti-Quaker
attitudes among Puritan authorities. However, these attitudes
largely stemmed from Puritans’ actual encounters with early
Quakers, rather than from slanderous rumors. Unlike the modern
Society of Friends, “which is remarkable for a guarded composure
of language, an elaborate stillness, precision, and propriety
of demeanor, [Quakers] at the time were referred to as guilty
of conduct which the experience of a rational and calculating
age [made] it difficult to conceive” (Chandler 37). In other
words, early Quakerism was exceptionally radical, and the actions
and attitudes of early Quakers clashed fundamentally with the
traditional worldview of Massachusetts Puritans.
First, one must address the practice that gave the group its
derogatory title. For early Friends, truly saved Christians
could receive direct revelations from God, and the experience
of divine contact caused them literally to quake. As described
by the suspicious Ephraim Pagitt, “they cannot avoid quaking
and trembling… so extremely that [they] could not stand upon
[their] feet, and [they] howled and cryed as it was usual with
them” (Pagitt 137-8). Puritans, on the other hand, believed
that direct revelation occurred only in biblical times and not
in their present world, as illustrated in John Norton’s anti-Quaker
tract: “Touching the querie, whether we have any Scripture warrant
to expect persons immediately sent of God in these days … We
have no promise of any such ministry in our times … yet in the
Scripture we have frequent prediction & caution of pretenders
to immediate missions” (Norton 54-5). As Norton’s account suggests,
the Puritan perception of “quaking” was distinctly associated
with the image of Quakers as agents of the devil. More generally,
these “intoxicating and fanatick animosities” challenged the
sober, rational style of Puritan worship and represented a seed
of heresy in a fragile community, fueling the fear and contempt
of a concerned Puritan leadership.
The broader implications of quaking illustrate fundamental incompatibilities
between the two religious groups. As a part of their belief
in direct and continuous divine contact, which they understood
as a guiding “inner light,” early Friends necessarily and enthusiastically
believed in the spiritual equality of all Christian individuals
on earth; “anyone, regardless of age or sex, could witness the
truth of Christ” (Pestana 350). Accordingly, the meetings of
early Quakers often included preaching by women and children,
and audiences accepted these informal sermons just as they accepted
the words of men: “Men, women, boyes and girls, may all turne
into Prophets and Preachers by Quaking, and all other Preachers
and Ministers [such as Puritan clerics] are but deluders and
without calling” (Anon. 49). In this sense, “the Quakers elevated
women and children to the level of patriarch,” and manifestations
of the empowered, equal status of women within Quaker circles
certainly distressed traditional Puritans. One disturbed witness
even published a tract on the subject, entitled, A Novelty:
Or, a Government of Women distinct from Men erected amongst
some of those People, call’d Quakers … Published for no other
end, but to deter all honest Hearts … from erecting the
like Unscriptural Government. Throughout the period of persecution,
Quaker women visibly promoted the inner light with radical proselytizing,
as in the following case: “Lydia Wardell, a respectable married
women, entered stark naked into the church in Newbury, and was
highly extolled for her submission to the inward light, that
had revealed to her the duty of illustrating the spiritual nakedness
of her neighbors by this indecent exhibition of her own” (Chandler
54). Similarly, women played a significant role in protesting
anti-Quaker legislation, exhibiting an empowered status that
Puritan society not only lacked but expressly forbade.
The Quaker belief in earthly equality also appeared in their
daily interactions with Massachusetts Puritans, as Friends actively
ignored status-specific language and refrained from the common
practice of hat tipping. In seventeenth-century New England,
as in England itself, citizens used the informal terms “thee”
and “thou” only when addressing social inferiors or familiar
social equals; when addressing social superiors or strangers,
polite speakers used the more formal “you” (Worrall 7). For
Quakers, on the other hand, the exclusive “use of the intimate
address symbolized the equality of all people in Christ; the
Puritans, depending as they did on social and spiritual hierarchies
to order the world, rejected these gestures of equality” (Pestana
343). Early Friends also refused to remove their hats in the
presence of social superiors, and court reports describe several
cases of Quaker men having their hats removed by force. The
return of Samuel Shattuck, an obdurate Quaker banished on pain
of death, provides a particularly remarkable example. During
his absence from Massachusetts, Shattuck traveled to England,
where he addressed his grievances directly to the king. Returning
to Boston with the king’s written response in hand, Shattuck
appeared before the colonial governor still wearing his hat.
Predictably, the governor ordered it removed, “but when Shattuck
disclosed that he had come directly from the king, the governor
ordered Shattuck’s hat restored, and removed his own” (Selleck
16). As the Puritan leadership correctly observed, the Quakers’
blatant nonparticipation in customary acts of deference represented
a nonviolent, though aggressive, attack on traditional social
hierarchies.
When Quakers invoked the inner light as a guiding divine presence
in their earthly bodies, they necessarily devalued scripture
and formal religious education in the eyes of Puritans. John
Norton disapprovingly described the situation in his 1659 tract:
“They deny Scripture or written word as the Rule of life, &
make the light within them, & the spirit without the Scripture,
to be their guide” (Norton 5). Accepting the experience of divine
revelation, Quakers regarded their intuitive understandings
of Christianity as equal, and often superior, to scripture.
In his Heresiography, Pagitt contemptuously wrote,
“They value their own raptures beyond the Scriptures … [With]
high conceits of themselves, they appropriate all expressions
of the Scriptures to themselves” (Pagitt 141). For Puritans,
on the other hand, scripture was the “Rule of life,” and rational,
learned study of the bible provided one’s primary access to
divinity on earth. As Quakers diminished the power of scripture,
they also undermined the Puritan vision of education; if one
received God’s message directly and unconditionally, one had
no need for formal religious education. Consequently, Puritan
authorities concluded that “all learning is odious to … [these]
dregs of the common people” (Pagitt 141). Furthermore, with
no need for guidance in understanding scripture, early Friends
denied the necessity and authority of Puritan clerics, which
threatened secular as well as religious authorities. For example,
Pagitt offers the Quaker stance “against the ministry” as proof
of their heretical nature: “They deny the Power, Authority,
and Office of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons” (Pagitt 140). Likewise,
Norton noted the anti-establishment character of early Friends:
“They account Church-instituted-worship, & waiting upon
God for the efficacious presence and co-operation of the Spirit
of grace in the ministry of the word and Sacraments for conversion
& edification to be idolatry … and the political Order of
Church-Officers and members, they affirme to be an Image” (Norton
5).
Lastly, Quakers overtly denied the necessity of the Church itself,
the institution that provided the foundation of Puritan society
and worship. For early Friends, belief in the inner light made
all outer forms of religion superfluous, so the Puritans’ central,
regimented church was considered particularly problematic: “They
insisted that a church is not only unnecessary, but downright
objectionable, as it sets up distracting bureaucracy … and absorbs
more attention than it deserves; … it puts into operation a
… meretricious cluster of symbolic acts and words that… turn
worship into sacrilegious mummery” (Park 58). Perceiving Puritan
churches as spiritual distractions, and likely recognizing unique
opportunities to address large audiences of unbelievers, early
Friends frequently disrupted Puritan church services: “Not seldom
… they are moved by the Lord to crowd into Churches on the first
day of the week, and other daies of devotion, where they interrupt
the Minister, and trouble all things, roaring aloud, Who
art thou that wilt withstand the Lord” (Pagitt 140). For
example, John Copeland and Christopher Holder “invaded” the
Puritan church in Salem only days after their arrival in Massachusetts
from England in 1657. As Worrall describes, “Holder attempted
to speak, perhaps after the clergymen had finished speaking,
perhaps before that … When commanded to cease disturbing the
meeting, he refused to be silent, had a glove stuffed in his
mouth to gag him, and was hauled off to jail with Copeland”
(10). Even in the most sacred spaces, early Quakers visibly
and radically challenged Puritan society.
By challenging Puritan social and religious hierarchies and
actively displaying their deviations from Puritan ideals, early
Quakers did far more than agitate a group of repressive, traditionalistic
elites. They threatened to dismantle Puritan society itself,
while Puritan clerical and political leaders were intensely
committed to maintaining it. First, one must acknowledge that
Massachusetts Puritans were deeply religious. Though in its
second generation by 1656, this group had abandoned their homeland
and crossed 3,000 miles of stormy Atlantic waters for solely
religious reasons, to establish a pure church. Second, their
“holy experiment” relied on the maintenance of a unified church
within a unified state, according to the following principles:
having created a church of “only regenerated baptized Christians,
they would then proceed to organize these saints [church members],
and none but these saints, into a political state;” if the church
“was embedded in a state that was just as pure as itself, it
could not help but staying pure” (Park 62). Consequently, as
historian John Coffey confirms, “Massachusetts Puritans were
markedly more hostile to pluralism and toleration than Cromwell
and other leading English Puritans;” indeed, they left their
homeland largely to escape religious pluralism (Coffey 155).
The words of the minister John Norton, for example, illustrate
a commitment to conformity: “It concerneth N.-E. always to remember
that Originally they are a Plantation Religious, not a plantation
of Trade. The Profession of the purity of doctrine, worship
& discipline is written upon her forehead” (Norton 58).
Lastly, for the purposes of this essay, one must understand
that “Puritan leaders believed that their authority was God-given,
that they were called by God to labor in the office of magistrate,
minister, or elder”(58) Elite males had a distinct religious
imperative to lead and protect Puritan society, and they willfully
accepted their grave responsibilities.
Considering the character of Puritan society, the series of
misconceptions associated with the invaders, and the radical
actions of early Quakers, the initial reaction of the Puritan
authorities becomes comprehensible. As in the case of Austin
and Fischer, Puritan leaders initially sought only to remove
the sect from the colony; they did not punish the first Friends
physically, aside from invasive bodily searches, and they did
not demonstrate a desire to terminate the sect entirely. The
first anti-Quaker law, passed shortly after the Swallow’s
arrival in 1656, began as follows:
Whereas there is an accursed sect of heretics lately risen
up in the world, which are commonly called quakers, who take
upon themselves to be immediately sent of God, to speak and
write blasphemous opinions, despising government, and the order
of God in church and commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities,
reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers; …any master
of a ship bringing any known quaker within the jurisdiction,
should forfeit one hundred pounds, and should give security
to carry such quakers back to the place whence he brought them.
(Rawson 35-6)
This law was passed in the secular General Court by a group
of upper-level officials, including the Royal Governor, locally
elected Deputies, and Assistants elected by the Deputies (Hartwell
210-24). As the leaders of Puritan society, and perhaps as that
society’s most privileged members, they were particularly interested
in maintaining it. Notably, the secular Court offered religious
as well as secular grounds for legislating against the Quakers.
From A Brief Narration of the Practices of the Churches,
one discovers that the secular courts officially enforced religious
authority: “When corrupt opinions … or suspicious practices
cannot well be healed by any Church alone, the Elders of the
Church desirous to maintaine verity and unity of judgement,
doe doth acquaint the Magistrate … to consider and discerne
of the matters in question” (Weld 16). Throughout the period
of intense persecution, anti-Quaker laws identified Quakers
by name, referencing religion as an element of their criminality.
After the King curbed the Puritans’ power in 1661, anti-Quaker
laws were restricted to secular crimes, and Puritans arrested
only “Vagabond Quakers,” who “hath not any Dwelling or orderly
allowance as an inhabitant of this Jurisdiction” (Rawson 1).
As the Court directed its first anti-Quaker law against Quakers
by name, it only threatened those Friends who visibly advertised
their faith to Puritan observers. In other words, a highly guarded
or secretive membership might have avoided persecution. Likewise,
the law expressly arranged for the removal of Quakers from the
colony, suggesting that early Friends could have avoided Massachusetts
and remained unharmed. As these they certainly understood, England
was far more lenient with Quakers, and Rhode Island actively
accepted Quaker refugees. However, the spiritual mission of
early Friends fundamentally precluded secret worship or permanent
departure, and “they proclaimed their doctrines with a bold
and fearless confidence that astonished people” (Chandler 37).
Early Friends envisioned themselves as engaged in a “Lamb’s
War,” which demanded constant, visible proselytizing and spurred
them to concentrate their nonviolent efforts on places of resistance
and persecution in particular. In the words of the Quaker Edward
Burrogh, “It is our Principle … to walk in meekness and humility
toward all, being subject for Conscience sake … either by doing
or suffering, for our Doctrines are to convert, and not to subvert”
(Burrogh 8). Consequently, an intense struggle began in Massachusetts,
in which two fervently religious groups remained steadfastly
committed to their respective beliefs. The Quakers continued
to proselytize radically and challenge Puritan authority, and
the Puritans refused to relent, seeing the fate of their holy
experiment hanging in the balance. Within this situation, the
level of persecution escalated rapidly, and perhaps inevitably.
As Quakers in America and abroad heard of the anti-Quaker laws
enacted in Massachusetts, “a number of individual Friends felt
themselves divinely chosen to confront this wicked state in
the name of the Divine imperative, and to protest its laws forbidding
Quakers” (Selleck 6). Mary Dyer, for example, reportedly “had
Movings from the Lord, to go to Boston… and it being laid upon
them [Mary and her Quaker companions] from the Lord not to depart
that Jurisdiction, they in obedience passed abroad” (Burrogh
21, 28). In response to the intensified “invasion,” the General
Court intensified their anti-Quaker laws, boosting fines for
transporting Quakers, adding fines for entertaining Quakers
within the colony, and ordering that Friends receive severe
whippings for second offences; for third offences, Friends were
to have their tongues pierced with a hot iron (Chandler 36).
Between 1656 and 1660, several Quakers received severe whippings
at the hands of the Boston executioner, as in the following
case: “Anne Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, were tied
to a cart’s tail [and stripped from waist up] in Dover, and
whipped, with ten stripes in each town, through Dover, Hampton,
Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury,
and Dedham;” not surprisingly, a witness reported that “Anne
Coleman’s breast was split by the knots of the whip, causing
extreme torture” (Chandler 54). These measures, entitled the
Cart and Whip Act, proved as futile as the lighter first laws,
and the invasion continued. Again, the Puritan Court responded
with harsher penalties: “The Penalties inflicted on themselves
proving insufficient to restrain their Impudent, and insolent
obtrusions, was increased by the losse of Eares of those who
offended a second time” (Bishop 34). Several Quaker men accepted
this punishment, but it too failed to curb the Quaker invasion.
On the contrary, increasing the severity of anti-Quaker laws
proved completely counterproductive.
As in 1656, the Puritans’ ruthless response to the Quaker threat
radicalized the Quaker presence in the colony, intensifying
the phenomenon the Puritans had intended to extinguish. In the
year following the arrival of Austin and Fischer, Quakers were
visible in the Puritan community as radical proselytizers and
practitioners of strange religious rituals. With increased violence
against them, however, early Quakers began to engage in more
radical demonstrations, which further threatened the Puritan
leadership. The case of Margaret Brewster offers a representative
example of the Quaker reaction: On the Lord’s Day, Brewster
rushed into the South Church with three female companions and
created “an alarm in the astonished assembly, that baffles description;
she was clothed in sackcloth [meaning she was mostly naked],
with ashes upon her head … and her face was begrimed with coal-dust[;]
she announced herself as an illustration of the black pox, which
she predicted as an approaching judgment upon the people” (Chandler
56). Significantly, Quaker women like Brewster and Lydia Wardell
did not disrupt Puritan churches with exhibitionist demonstrations
until after many Quaker women had been publicly stripped to
the waist and whipped by Puritan authorities (Chandler 57).
These women responded to increasingly excessive punishments
with increasingly radical expressions of defiance. In addition,
convicted Quakers accepted their punishments peacefully, even
gratefully, using their meekness to highlight the harshness
of anti-Quaker laws and to demonstrate the power of the inner
light. George Bishop emphasizes this nonviolent weapon in his
New England Judged: “Against a few innocent Lambs among
Wolves… who came to you not with Swords or with Spears, but
in the name of the Lord … ye have whipt and scourged, burnt
in the hand, and cut off their ears” (Bishop 36).
In a final effort of the Puritan leadership, and with calls
from clerics to “be as faithful in the application of the remedy
as Satan is watchful to cause the malady,” the General Court
passed the following law in 1659: Previous measures “being too
weak a defense against their impetuous frantick fury necessitated
us to endeavour our security, and upon serious consideration,
after the former experiments by their incessant assaults, a
law was made that such persons should be banished on the pain
of death” (Rawson 1). Once banished from the colony, Friends
would now be executed for returning. Like previous measures,
the law failed to discourage determined invaders, and by March
of 1661, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, Mary Dyer and
William Leddra had died at the Boston gallows. In each case,
the royal governor alone decided the sentence, following a trial
by an Assembly of Assistants. The Assembly consisted of elected
and appointed secular officials, with the prerequisite that
all were good-standing members of the Puritan church (Hartwell
215-6). Significantly, the martyred Friends clearly understood
that returning to Boston would result in death; the governor
explained this fact upon their initial arrests and expulsions.
Mary Dyer, the third of the group to die, reportedly said “she
was their willing to suffer as her Brethren did, unless they
would null their wicked Law” (Burrogh 25). Each of the convicted
Quakers accepted death peacefully and without resistance, “triumphing
in the strength of the Lamb over all the wrath of man” (Burrogh
24).
While the Puritan authorities carried out serious, perhaps cruel,
measures of religious violence against early Friends, evidence
suggests that the Puritan leadership genuinely sought to avoid
violence, especially executions. Firstly, the General Court
initially rejected the proposition to banish Quakers on the
pain of death. When the Court adjourned, a small group of Puritan
clerics led by John Norton encouraged members to act aggressively,
reminding them, “Impunity of the sinner encourageth others to
do like; but punishment speedily and seasonably inflicted, makes
others more afraid of such evils than they were before.” At
the Court’s next meeting in October of 1658, the law passed
by a majority of one vote, suggesting that Court members questioned
the need for increased religious violence (Burrogh 39). The
royal governor, John Endicott, also demonstrated a desire to
avoid inflicting capital punishment. During the second trial
of Mary Dyer, Endicott conspicuously asked Dyer if she was not
another women of the same name, Endicott conspicuously asked
Dyer if she was not another women of the same name, providing
her with a clear opportunity to escape execution without sacrificing
the appearance of authority; she did not follow his lead, but
she took the opportunity to reprimand him for his cruelty (Chandler
44). Similarly, magistrates afforded several Quaker convicts
the opportunity to escape punishment by departing the colony;
allegedly, only Winlock Christianson accepted this offer (Burrogh
50). Generally, Puritan political authorities wished to avoid
extreme religious violence, but they recognized acts of toleration
as threats to the survival of Puritan society, a notion which
influential clerics clearly encouraged. Still, this does not
necessarily suggest a level of compassion on the part of Puritan
magistrates and Assemblymen, though genuine compassion or an
aversion to violence might have factored into the situation.
From a cynical standpoint, the reluctance of Puritan authorities
to execute Quakers may represent political calculation rather
than moral objection; it may represent a response to public
dissatisfaction.
As Puritan authorities resorted to violence against early Friends,
Puritan citizens visibly expressed their disapproval of the
harsh measures, which they perceived as inconsistent with the
actual threat of the Quaker presence. Throughout the period
of persecution, public punishments provoked clear displays of
popular resentment, most notably on execution days. At the execution
of William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson in October of 1659,
for example, the prisoners were escorted by “a Band of Armed
Men … which were prepared to Guard them to, and at the place
of Execution, with Drums … Guns, Swords, Pikes &c. besides
many Horsemen to keep off the Multitude of People” (Burrogh
24). Other accounts indicate that the drummers were intended
to prevent discourse between the prisoners and a receptive Puritan
audience (Chandler 42). In another example, a group of Puritans
who witnessed the severe whippings of Humphrey Norton and John
Rous sympathized to the extent that “a subscription was quickly
raised to pay for their fines and for their transportation out
of the colony back to Rhode Island” (Selleck 11). Lastly, one
may note that Edward Rawson wrote A true Relation of the
Proceedings against certain Quakers with the explicit purpose
of addressing public dissatisfaction, introducing the report
with the following words: “For as much as men of weaker parts,
out of pitty and commiseration … for want of full information,
may be less satisfied… and render us bloody persecutors, we
thought it requisite to declare … [the reasons for anti-Quaker
actions]” (Rawson 1). Since Friends made up a small and visible
group at the time, and since the vast majority of citizens belonged
to a Puritan congregation, one can reasonably assume that nearly
all protestors were, in fact, Puritans. In general, demonstrations
of popular discontent suggest that “a large minority of Boston
people sympathized with [the Quakers],” in the sense that many
citizens felt compassion toward Friends as they endured harsh,
excessive punishments (Park 72). Notably, some Puritan observers
also sympathized with the Quakers’ religious beliefs, and episodes
of violence inspired several Puritans to accept the inner light.
At the same time, one must avoid overestimating the compassion
of the Puritan public, as citizens also encouraged violence
in some cases. When Lydia Wardell stunned the Newbury congregation
with her nakedness, for example, ordinary church members dragged
her to the center of town to watch her receive a brutal whipping
(Chandler 54).
With Samuel Shattuck’s triumphant return to Boston in 1661,
the period of intense religious violence against Quakers came
to an end. Shattuck carried a mandamus from King Charles of
England, in which the monarch demanded that Puritan magistrates
cease all corporal punishments against Quakers and send all
subsequent cases to England for trial (Chandler 52). As the
mandamus indicated, and as both Puritans and Quakers had understood
all along, the colonial charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony
did not provide for the Puritan authorities to persecute Quakers
as they did, especially concerning capital punishment. Prior
to the arrival of the King’s orders, however, the geopolitical
isolation of the colony allowed the Puritan leadership essentially
to govern as they saw fit, regardless of the royal order that
“they shall make no Lawes contrary to the Lawes of England.”
In fact, the Quaker Edward Burrogh reported that Boston officials
actively prevented Friends from appealing to England before
1661, suggesting that they recognized their abuses of authority
(Burrogh 15). During the year after Shattuck’s return, the Quaker
presence in New England grew significantly within the atmosphere
of increased toleration, and only vagabond Quakers faced legal
persecution. Over the next decade, the colonial government reinstated
some of its anti-Quaker policies, such as the Cart and Whip
Act, in correspondence with new laws against Friends in England.
Still, religious violence against Quakers never again reached
the level of state-sponsored execution, and Friends throughout
the world never again experienced the kind of persecution that
occurred in Massachusetts between 1656 and 1661.
Examining the persecution of Quakers in Massachusetts, one recognizes
an intense religious struggle between two fervently committed
groups, in which the fulfillment of religious ideals by each
side fundamentally prohibited peaceful coexistence or permanent
separation. As Puritan religious and secular authorities observed
the radical, heretical nature of early Quakers, they perceived
the Quaker invasion as a serious threat to the survival of Puritan
society; and a series of misconceptions amplified this threat.
Early Friends, on other hand, saw themselves as engaged in a
religious war with Massachusetts Puritans, and they sought to
use their own martyrdom as a weapon against Puritan intolerance
and a promoter of the inner light. Essentially, Puritan authorities
had created a boundary around Puritan society, a line which
they felt they could not allow invaders to cross, and Early
Friends were fundamentally committed to erasing that line completely.
With each side envisioning complete victory as the outcome ordered
by God, the situation quickly escalated, and, before long, four
Quakers were dead. In the end, one might conclude that the Society
of Friends won the day, as anti-Quaker attitudes and actions
were gradually replaced by public tolerance during the nineteenth
century. However, the struggle between Puritans and Quakers
in Massachusetts must be considered a cautionary tale rather
than a story of triumph. The development of this small-scale
episode demonstrates the potential dangers of fervent, perhaps
fanatical, commitments to religious ideals in general. Of course,
the phenomenon of religiously motivated violence is not unique
to the Quaker invasion; history provides an abundance of examples.
Unfortunately, current events suggest that the many examples
of religious violence from the past will not prevent the survival
of this destructive phenomenon in the future.
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