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CHAPTER V

THE WORKING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SYSTEM AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE CONTROVERSIES WITH THE PRESBYTERIANS, THE BAPTISTS, AND THE QUAKERS

The maintenance of religious tests and their employment for the purpose of favoring one confession and partially or wholly excluding all others from political influence, was in the seventeenth century a prominent characteristic of the policies of nearly all European states. The policy which in this respect was pursued by Massachusetts, and by the other distinctively Puritan colonies, was quite in harmony with the spirit of the times. The only point at which, according to the accepted views of the time, it was fairly open to attack, was this: it was adopted by a colony, or a group of colonies, and the sect which in their case it favored was not the one to which similar favors were extended in the mother country. Instead, it was a sect which the home government had endeavored to suppress, but which of late had risen in revolt and was prominently concerned in events which might overthrow the English kingship. With the Independents, whose church polity was in substantial agreement with that which was upheld by the religious test in the Puritan colonies of New England, the Presbyterians of both England and Scotland had been associated in the struggle against Charles I. Minor points of church polity, and jealousies growing out of national and political rivalry, separated these two sects, rather than any differences of theological belief. The Presbyterians were even less tolerant than the Independents, and were strongly in favor of a religious establishment. Still their rivalry became intense, and in 1646 the Presbyterians seemed likely to win in the diplomatic

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game which they were playing with the king, and thus to be able to dictate their policy to England.

These events led certain Presbyterian sympathizers and other discontented residents of Massachusetts to present a petition before the court of election in Boston.¹ The leaders among them were Dr. Robert Child,² a physician who had studied at Padua, but who lived in the colony without practising his profession; Samuel Maverick, who had lived in New England since the time of Robert Gorges, but had held aloof from its churches and leaders; Thomas Fowle, a merchant, who, though a church member, had not procured admission as a freeman; and John Dand, who was formerly a grocer of London. They also had the support of Major John Child, a brother of the first named, and of William Vassall of Plymouth, who had been one of the first assistants of the Massachusetts company and was a brother of Samuel Vassall, the influential Presbyterian leader in England. William Vassall himself was a man of energy and for some time had been laboring among the discontented in both Plymouth and Massachusetts to secure larger indulgence³ for all law-abiding Protestant dissenters, and greater conformity with English law in the administration of government. The petitioners declared that a settled government according to the laws of England did not seem to them to have been established there; they were not sure of the comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberties, and estates as freeborn English subjects. They lived in fear of illegal commitments, unjust fines, taxes, and impressments, undue oaths subject to exposition according to the will of those who imposed them and not according to the “due and unbowed rule of law.” Though the class of men whom the petitioners represented were good and loyal subjects and friends of parliament, though they had shared all burdens in

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the colony, yet they were debarred from civil employments and could not even vote for civil or military officers.¹

The reason for this was that they were not church members. And yet they were in sympathy with the latest and best reformation in both England and Scotland. They therefore asked that the conditions of church membership be so broadened that members of the Church of England, who were not scandalous in their lives, might be admitted to full fellowship in the congregations. Further than this, they insisted that, upon the taking of the oath of allegiance, without the imposition of any oaths² or covenants which were not warranted by the patent, they might be admitted to the liberties to which all free Englishmen were accustomed both at home and in the plantations. They asked that none be banished from the colony unless they violated known laws of England. They objected also to the law of 1637 which required the assent of two magistrates as the condition of settlement by a newcomer in any town in the colony. This they said “hath procured a kind of banishment to some who might have been serviceable to this place, as they have been to the state of England.”

It is probable that the men who drew this petition had suffered little in their families or estates from the conditions of which they complained. Their purely religious disabilities could have been removed by restoring in part the parish system of England and Scotland in the way later urged by the supporters of the so-called halfway covenant. Of the demand for that, this petition was an early intimation. It is not unlikely that the petitioners sought supremacy for their own party rather than full admission to the Massachusetts churches. It is certain that political change was what they chiefly sought, and that, if they were genuine Presbyterians, and could have reached political control, they would have favored a religious establishment with the proscription

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of many forms of dissent. Their petition also contained exaggerations and gave undue prominence to some matters of inferior importance. But notwithstanding these facts, it touched the most vulnerable point in the Massachusetts system, the religious test, and therefore was rightly regarded by the magistrates and clergy as a serious attack.

The petition was a protest of the unenfranchised against the policy which, without express warrant in the charter or in English law, excluded them from equal privileges in church and commonwealth. A colony franchise which was limited by a freehold qualification could provoke no criticism, because the qualification was of the same kind as that which existed in the mother country. But a religious qualification pure and simple, one, too, the object of which was to commit the control of a colony to a body of dissenters which until recently had enjoyed no special recognition at home, naturally occasioned comment. The justification for that comment was increased by the prominence which was given to the Mosaic Law and the practice of Israel as a source of precedents. It might be within the authority of the Massachusetts company to establish such a qualification and follow such a course, but it was an unusual, an exceptional, thing to do. It involved a radical departure from general usage, one which sharply distinguished the colonies that adopted it from other colonies and from all the leading states of Europe as well. It gave to them a certain Utopian character. For this reason intelligent non-freemen, men of respectable social position, in such a colony might properly feel that they were cut loose from the moorings of English law and policy and were subjects of a new régime. The main purpose sought by this government was distinct from those objects toward which English effort had been directed. Its laws might not be generally or directly repugnant to those of England, but some of the most important among them would look strange in an English statute book. The course of argument by which policies were frequently approved or condemned would sound still more strange to English ears. The non-freeman, moreover, however large the amount of property which he might possess in the colony, could in no appreciable manner

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influence its political life. He was embarked in a craft over whose steering apparatus he had no control. So far as he was concerned the discretion of the colony government was absolute. It might tax him as it chose, he was without representation; while before its tribunals, civil or ecclesiastical, his cause was likely to receive a prejudiced hearing.

The guaranties which protected the freeman against governmental oppression were insufficient; for the simple inhabitant they were almost non-existent. Winthrop’s arguments on arbitrary government did not fully reach his case, and were scarcely intended to do so. It was through the petition of Child and his associates that these thoughts found almost their only expression in Puritan Massachusetts.

As complete religious freedom, or the separation of church from commonwealth, was not claimed, but instead attention was called to a divergence of the law and polity of Massachusetts from that of England, an appeal to the home government was at once suggested by the petitioners as a means of redress. It was from that quarter alone that the assumed independence of the colony could be threatened. For this reason a committee of the general court was appointed to answer the petition, and preparation was made to meet, through an agent, any charges which might be presented in England. Winthrop, Dudley, and Bellingham were the principal members of the committee. After emphasizing the frugal and honest manner in which the government of Massachusetts was conducted—a fact which the petitioners admitted at the outset—the committee in its reply undertook to compare at length the provisions of the Body of Liberties with those of Magna Carta and the principles of the common law, for the purpose of showing that they were in fundamental agreement, and that civil liberty was as well guarantied by the one as by the other. The comparison, though far from being exhaustive, showed, as a matter of course, a very satisfactory agreement, so far as the letter of the law concerning property, family relations, and the administration of justice went. But it failed to meet the chief point raised by the petitioners, for the reason that the law of the colony excluded the adherents of the leading religious confessions in

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England from political rights in the colony. That condition of things was too unnatural to continue permanent. So long as it continued, if the dissenters in Massachusetts, emboldened by the favors they were enjoying in England, should attempt to worship by themselves they would at once be exposed to prosecution. If they petitioned against this, their petitions were more than likely to be treated as constructive sedition. Upon this charge they would speedily be brought before the magistrates or the general court and banished from the colony. The scenes enacted in the trials of the Antinomians would be repeated. There was no room for religious freedom and, as things then were, little room for schemes of religious comprehension, in Massachusetts. In its attitude toward non-freemen or others who were promoting such schemes the Massachusetts government was intolerant and arbitrary. Its judges and juries were prejudiced, and its judicial procedure offered no protection for the accused. When Winthrop undertook to defend the colony government against the charge of arbitrariness, he had in mind only its structure and the application of its power for the purposes of protecting such civil rights as non-freemen were generally believed to possess. Religious freedom was not among these, and almost any means were considered to be lawful which were found necessary for the suppression of dissent.

The knowledge that the petitioners intended to appeal to parliament or to the commissioners of plantations, drew from the Massachusetts authorities some very suggestive statements concerning the relations in which they understood the colony to stand toward the home government.¹ Both magistrates and clergy gave their opinions before the general court. All the magistrates agreed that the charter was the foundation of the government, but they divided on the extent of subordination which it required to the home government. Some thought that parliament might repeal the laws and reverse the judgments of Massachusetts, and therefore that a petition should be sent for an enlargement of power. Others were of opinion that, though the obligations of allegiance were due, yet Massachusetts was given authority by

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the charter to establish all the necessary organs of government and to use them for administrative purposes. They did not need the help of a general governor or other superior power to complete their government. Allegiance did not involve subjection in matters of government, but was a relation growing out of tenure of land and a dependence upon the parent state for protection, advice, and counsel, and a continuance of the advantages of naturalization for the colonists and their posterity. In other words, it involved privileges without corresponding duties.

In a later conference with the petitioners the magistrates declared, “Our allegiance binds us not to the laws of England any longer than while we live in England, for the laws of the parliament of England reach no further, nor do the king’s writs under the great seal go any further.”¹ Corporations that were resident in England were bound by the laws of that kingdom, but those which were resident elsewhere were not so bound. Again emphasis was laid upon the claim that plantations, though bodies corporate, were higher in rank than ordinary corporations. Among the Greeks and Romans colonies like these had been esteemed “other than towns, yea than many cities, for they have been the foundations of great commonwealths.” For this reason the petitioners were warned not to despise the day of small things. To those who held these views a petition for another charter seemed unnecessary and unwise. The time, moreover, was inopportune, since they could hope to procure only such a document as the Narragansett settlements had received, a charter granted by ordinance of parliament without the royal assent, and likely to contain a reserve of full parliamentary supremacy.

The clergy expressed substantially the same views, adding that the colony answered complaints in England only in way of justification, not of appeal or petition. Such full and ample powers of government had been conferred by the charter, that “no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against us.” The course of

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passive resistance, which was later followed, was outlined in the statement that, if parliament should oppose the colony, “we must wait upon Providence for the preservation of our just liberties.”

When, after prolonged conferences and arguments, it was seen that Dr. Child and his associates were resolved to appeal to parliament, they were heavily fined. This, however, did not deter them, and Child began as rapidly as possible to collect signatures among the non-freemen and the discontented. Preparations were also made for his departure. The magistrates now, by a procedure which reminds one very much of Star Chamber, had him arrested and searched his trunk and study and the study of Mr. Dand, another petitioner, for incriminating evidence. In Dand’s study two petitions were found, addressed to the commissioners of plantations. In one of these, signed by the seven leaders of the movement, it was urged¹ that Presbyterian churches might be established in Massachusetts, that the laws of England might be introduced, that freeholders should enjoy the same privileges there as in England, that the oath of allegiance should be administered to all the colonists there, that a general governor or commissioners should be appointed to execute these measures. The other petition was signed by about twenty-five non-freemen, mostly young men of the artisan or servant class or temporary residents. A paper was also found containing queries about the validity of the charter, how it might be revoked, whether certain speeches which had been made in the pulpit and the court were not high treason, and whether the general court could prevent the organization of Presbyterian churches.

Though there was no proof that the movement which found expression in these papers was widespread, the magistrates considered that they now had positive evidence of a plot against the government of the colony. Five of the leading offenders were therefore arrested and again heavily fined. Those who were unable or unwilling to pay were imprisoned. The petition, however, was carried to

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England¹ by William Vassall and Thomas Fowle. But when they arrived there, in 1647, the activity of the army had brought the Independents into the ascendant, and nothing could be accomplished. Had they seriously attempted it, Edward Winslow was present with instructions from Massachusetts to oppose the hearing of appeals from the colony.

To the Puritan mind, whether in England or in New England, the name Anabaptist was synonymous with anarchy in its most revolting forms. It suggested the excesses of John of Leyden and his followers at Munster in the sixteenth century, which culminated in a system of polygamy, sanction for which was found in alleged divine revelations. Extravagant enthusiasm, however, and not insistence on the rebaptism of adults, was the characteristic of the radical reformers in Germany who first bore the name Anabaptist. The later Baptists of England and America had nothing in common with the early fanatics of Germany, though they were forced throughout the struggles of the period to bear the stigma of their names. The Baptists were Calvinists in theology and independents in church polity, differing from the Puritans of Massachusetts and the adjacent colonies only in their denial of the validity of infant baptism and their insistence upon religious toleration. The name of Roger Williams was identified with the early history of the sect, and, though working within the limits of Calvinistic theology, it helped to disseminate and make effective his doctrine of soul liberty. In church polity they adhered to the simple democratic ideal of the group of autonomous local congregations united under some voluntary compact. Union with the civil power and coercion of the local body by secular authority they avoided. Their strict allegiance to the letter of Scripture also led them to reject the doctrine and practice of infant baptism, a feature of church polity by which the New England Puritan set great store.

It thus appears that the views which the Baptists really held, if publicly preached, were such as to make them sufficiently obnoxious to the magistrates and elders of Massachusetts,

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even if none of the stigma of Anabaptism had attached to their name. But the Baptists who were known to the New Englander congregated chiefly in Rhode Island. At Newport, in 1640 or 1644, the first Baptist church in America was organized.¹ To the mind of an adherent of the dominant Puritan sect the Narragansett Plantations seemed a faint reflection of Munster, not that any thought the sexual excesses of the German enthusiasts were repeated there, but that it was the home of all strange and extreme opinions which by any chance found their way into New England. The Massachusetts Puritan of the first generation never lost his feeling of supercilious contempt for the colony which was founded by men whom he had cast out. He was always quick to note manifestations of anarchy or disturbance among them, and slow to mark their social progress. It was the “back door” through which many of the sectaries who troubled Massachusetts found their entrance.² Not only did Williams and some of his followers become Baptists, but some of the Antinomian exiles as well. Winthrop,³ referring perhaps to the organization of the first Baptist church at Newport, wrote, “They also gathered a church in a very disordered way; for they took some excommunicated persons, and others who were members of the church of Boston and not dismissed.”

After Massachusetts had been in existence as a colony for about a decade, Baptist opinions began to appear here and there among its inhabitants. In 1642 Lady Deborah Moody of Lynn and two others were presented before the quarter court at Salem for holding that “the baptizing of infants is noe ordinance of God.”⁴ Lady Moody was also admonished by the church at Salem; but persisting in her belief, to avoid further trouble, she removed to New Netherland, where, with those who accompanied her, she founded the town of Gravesend, Long Island. Early in 1644, and again in 1645, the case of William Witter, also of Lynn, was before the court

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at Salem. He was charged with holding Baptist opinions and speaking disrespectfully of authority. Though he was at length summoned before the assistants at Boston, final action seems not to have been taken in his case. In November, 1651, however, he was again presented at the Salem court “for neglecting discourses and being rebaptized.”

In July, 1644, a poor and worthless man, named Painter,¹ who refused to suffer his wife to have their child baptized, was whipped. No law had then been enacted for the punishment of such an offence, and Winthrop states that it was inflicted, “not for his opinion, but for his reproaching the Lord’s ordinance, and for his bold and evil behaviour both at home and in the Court.”

But, owing to the increase within the colony of Baptist opinions,² the magistrates and elders were already considering a measure for their restraint. This was passed in November, 1644³ In the preamble of this act not only is the rising sect charged with being successors of the Anabaptists of Munster, but they are made to deny the lawfulness of magistracy and of making war, both of these being opinions which they never held. The act provided that, if any within the colony should openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or secretly attempt to seduce others from the use of that ordinance, or obstinately deny the ordinance of magistracy or the right of the magistrate to make war or to punish outward breaches of the first table of the law, on conviction such persons should be banished.

In 1651 the Massachusetts authorities, acting partly under this law and in part under the general laws for the maintenance of the established faith,⁴ punished three of the foremost Baptists in the colonies. They were Mr. John Clarke, founder of the Baptist church at Newport; Obadiah Holmes, who had formed a Baptist society at Rehoboth in Plymouth colony, and John Crandall, who had previously been a deputy to the general assembly from Newport. They were in no sense fanatics, though they were persistent in the assertion of their

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views. Holmes had previously been a resident of Salem. Clarke had arrived in Massachusetts from England in the midst of the Antinomian excitement, and because of the dissensions had gone elsewhere, finally settling upon Rhode Island. He was from the first a leading man of the colony, and somewhat later than the date of which we are speaking was to render it the most important services in England. His writings, as well as his career, show him to have been an energetic, clear-headed, and practical man.

These men, visiting Massachusetts on business, were entertained over Sunday at the house of William Witter, in Lynn. In the forenoon of the Sabbath Clarke discoursed on the subject of temptation to the family and a few friends who came to the house. In the midst of his talk two constables appeared, and, upon an order from a Salem magistrate, arrested Clarke and his two companions. In the afternoon they were taken to church, although Clarke declared in advance that when there he should testify freely in opposition to the accepted faith. When he and his friends entered the church, they at first uncovered by way of greeting, but immediately put on their hats again, and Clarke began reading. The constable then snatched the hats from their heads. After the sermon was over Clarke began to speak, but before he had proceeded far he was silenced, and at the close of the service all three were taken back to the place of detention, which was the village inn. The next day, however, Clarke found an opportunity to administer the sacrament at Witter’s house. A week later the three offenders were brought to trial before the magistrates at Boston.

Endicott was now governor, and for a decade to come was to enjoy a leadership in Massachusetts affairs from which the superiority of Winthrop, among other causes, had hitherto excluded him. He was a much harsher and more violent man than Winthrop, and evidences of this fact were abundant both in his earlier and later career. He presided at the court when Clarke and his friends were brought before it. The usual heated colloquy was held between the judge and the accused. “The governor,” says Clarke, “upbraided us with the name of Anabaptist; To whom I answered, I disown

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the name. I am neither an Anabaptist, nor a Pedobaptist, nor a Catabaptist! He told me in haste I was all.” After a further colloquy in much the same spirit, a trial in which, according to Clarke’s statement, neither accuser, witness, nor jury was produced, Clarke was sentenced to pay a fine of £20, Holmes of £30, Crandall of £5, or to be “well whipped.” Clarke demanded to be shown the law under which the sentence was pronounced; and well he might, for the only penalty mentioned in the law against Anabaptists was banishment. The governor then, says the narrator, “stepped up and told us we had denied infant baptism, and, being somewhat transported, broke forth and told me I had deserved death, and said he would not have such trash brought into their jurisdiction.” The accused were then sent back to prison. As Endicott, notwithstanding his passion, had given a hint that a public discussion might be held, Clarke tried to get permission to debate the points of his belief with some of the ministers, but failed. While this matter was under discussion, some friends paid Clarke’s fine, and he returned to Rhode Island. Crandall chose the same course. But Holmes resolved to testify to the truth of his belief under the lash, and has left a remarkable account of the extent to which his religious enthusiasm assuaged the pain, and enabled him to bear with ease what would otherwise have been a sharp infliction. Two of the spectators ventured to express admiration for Holmes’s courage, but they were at once arrested and fined.

Clarke at once went to England, where he published an account of his experience, and that of his friends, in Massachusetts, with an address to parliament and the council of state. But the cause of Massachusetts was strongly supported in England by Hopkins¹ and Winslow, the latter of whom now stood high in the councils of the government. Owing, however, to the attitude of Cromwell toward Anabaptists and others with whom they were popularly associated, there was not at this period any prospect that the English government would interfere to check the strenuous measures of Massachusetts. The Baptists, however, persisted. Henry

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Dunster, the second president of Harvard College, accepted their views, and, because of his avowal of them, was compelled to resign his position. Soon after the Restoration a Baptist society was organized in Boston and public services began. Against this the authorities struggled for a number of years, but at last they were compelled to acquiesce, and the existence of the society was thereafter silently tolerated.

Antinomian, Presbyterian, and Baptist had been forced to yield before the Massachusetts government when its power was fully exerted against them. The first-named party had for a short time seriously menaced the peace and unity of the jurisdiction, but it had been completely vanquished and its leaders cast out. The efforts of the Presbyterians and Baptists were of minor importance, except as they foreshadowed later changes, and they received no organized support. The controversy with Roger Williams was little more than a debate with an individual. These events gave clear evidence of the strength of the union between clergy and magistrates and of the difficulty of forming other combinations. Whether church or commonwealth was attacked, the full resources of both were readily brought to its defence.

 

With the advent of the Quakers, however, appeared an enemy of different character, one whose attack was more determined and perplexing. The earlier enemies of the Puritan system had shared to a greater extent than did the Quakers in its spirit, and in the purposes which were sought through it. Their social standing was in general higher than that of the Quakers, and they proceeded more from the body of New England people. Quakerism was an ultra-democratic phase of Protestantism, and the early adherents of the sect were decidedly plebeian in origin. Their views reflected well the character of the social classes whence they came. Though retaining the common ethical system of Protestantism, they sought to wholly dispense with its clerical and sacramental features. Many of the externals of religion—the sacraments, a paid and specially trained clergy, consecrated churches, the Sabbath as a specially sacred “Lord’s day,” formal prayer, and the usual forms of church service

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—they discarded. With these went also the oath, war, and spiritual coercion in all forms. In the place of the Scripture as learnedly interpreted, and of the impressive externals of worship, the Quakers substituted the inner light which proceeded from the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost. By this they claimed to be directly guided in all affairs of life; the following of this was to them the essence of all religion.

It thus appears that the Quakers cherished all the beliefs and practices which had made Roger Williams and the Antinomians offensive to the Puritans, and many more of a similar nature. The rejection of oaths and the insistence on soul liberty were only two among a long list of articles in their belief which were unacceptable in Massachusetts. If the Antinomians had talked much about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, about its light and inspiration, and about the superiority of grace to works, the Quakers far exceeded them in all this. When, moreover, Quakers first made their appearance in New England and legislation against them began, their beliefs were in the formative and controversial stage. The time had not yet come when Barclay could begin to systematize them, and bring them into the best possible harmony with accepted Protestant doctrine. Fox, Burroughs, Howgil, Nayler, and certain others had for a decade been travelling to and fro through the British Isles in uncouth garb, violating many accepted social customs, using a new form of personal address, and glorying in their eccentricities. Not a few women had enlisted among their followers and were imitating their example. One female convert journeyed as an apostle of the truth as far as the court of the Grand Turk. They had preached in the fields, in the streets, in private houses, wherever and whenever it was possible to hold conventicles. As occasion offered, these self-constituted preachers had appeared in the churches, and, with or without invitation, had proclaimed a gospel which they declared was purer than any to which the hireling who occupied the living and the pulpit could give utterance. With a towering self-conceit, born largely of simplicity and of ignorance concerning the difficulty which attends efforts at sweeping change in ancient and complex societies, they

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denounced the clergy, their preaching, and the ordinances which they administered, as useless or inadequate human institutions and inventions.

We are told that George Fox,¹ on one typical occasion, stood up in a steeple-house yard and told his hearers that he came not to hold up their idol temples, nor their priests, nor their tithes, nor their Jewish and heathenish ceremonies; that the ground on which their temples stood was no more holy than any other piece of ground; that all preaching and hearing ought to be free, as to time and place, as it was in the age of the apostles, and that the Lord God of heaven and earth had sent him to preach freely, and to draw the people away from the temples made with hands, where God dwelleth not. They ought to leave all their superstitious ceremonies, traditions, and doctrines of men, and not regard teachers of the word who took tithes and great wages, preaching for hire and divining for money. These, according to their own confession,—for they said they had never heard God’s voice,—God and Christ had never sent. The people, therefore, should turn their backs on these preachers, and come to the spirit and grace of God in themselves, to the light of Jesus in their own hearts; that so they might come to know Christ their free teacher, who would bring them salvation and open to them the Scriptures.

This teaching, though it sprang from the same root as Protestantism itself, was offensive both in manner and substance to the Puritan consciousness. By relegating the text of Scripture, authoritatively interpreted, to a second place, and appealing directly to the spirit or light which dwells in the soul of every man, even though it might have been kindled there by divine grace, seemed to the genuine Puritan a reversal of the true order of things. To him the word of God, and a church and civil order carefully and logically deduced therefrom, were the sum and substance of the truth. The Quaker found the truth, not in the letter of Scripture, in Sunday observance, or in preaching and church ordinances, but in a direct and immediate inspiration. This, he claimed, raised him to a higher level than the Puritan.

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and made many of the latter’s beliefs and observances as needless as was the ritualism of Anglican or Catholic. This position, moreover, at the first was somewhat proudly and defiantly maintained, in a spirit and manner which generally characterized the numerous sects that sprang into existence in the seventeenth century. From Quaker speech and bearing customary forms of respect toward dignities were excluded. No more pronounced assertion of social equality than this has been made. To the Puritan this seemed to be libertinism, anarchy, an attack an the foundations of social order. The restraints which he had so carefully devised as a means not only of holding the colony together, but that they might facilitate the transition from a mediæval to a modern Protestant society, seemed to him to be thrown aside. It seemed to be an effort to substitute ignorance for learning, license for liberty, and chaos for order. There was one word in his vocabulary which to the Puritan expressed the essence of Quakerism, and that was blasphemy. Into that biblical expression he concentrated his hatred of the Quaker dress, of his forms of expression, of his bearing toward magistrates and the clergy, of his contempt for the externals of religion, of his insistence upon individual liberty, and his resolve to follow the inner light; in short, of what was regarded as his irreverence and essential impiety. Blasphemy, moreover, stood in the Puritan code near the head of the list of capital crimes. Those who carried themselves toward magistrates and others in authority as did the Quakers, should, in his opinion, be visited with the punishment of Shimei.¹

Another charge which held a prominent place in the indictment preferred by Massachusetts against the Quakers was this: that without permission they had entered the colony, had thrown it into agitation, and, as it were, had attempted to take possession of it by force. The right of themselves as grantees of the soil, the colonists compared to that of the individual to his house and private estate.¹ [i.e. ²] As he might forcibly expel intruders who came without legal authority,

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so they might exclude or drive out Quakers who, coming from England, the Barbadoes, or Rhode Island, were found entering or wandering through the colony. They had left homes and in many cases dependent families to wander from place to place, pursuing their supposed divine mission. It is not surprising that they were regarded as vagabonds and so treated. Pushing the analogy to the extreme point, the general court agreed that, if private persons might rightfully shed the blood or take the lives of such invaders, the Quakers would have none to blame but themselves, if the guardians of the commonwealth should insist that their lives be forfeited as the penalty of their rash intrusion. And if this argument were not sufficient to justify the infliction of the death penalty, the magistrates and elders held still in reserve the necessity of protection against wild animals and contagious diseases.

In thus describing the attitude which was assumed by the Puritan toward the Quaker, and the arguments by which he supported it, no effort is made to justify or condemn the one party or the other. The sole object has been to show how the case appeared to minds of men in the seventeenth century whose intelligence was above the average, though their sympathies may not have been broader than those of most of their contemporaries. Both parties, as is customary in such cases, exaggerated their own excellencies and the faults of their opponents. The Quakers were not libertines, though some of them behaved as if they were such. Through their insistence upon the right of private judgment, their passive but determined opposition to war and to oppression in all forms, the preference they everywhere showed for simple and quiet modes of life, they contributed toward the humanitarian trend of the eighteenth century. But these things the Puritan could neither see nor appreciate. Had he seen or welcomed them, he would not have been a genuine Puritan; such a feat would have proven that the individual who performed it was free from some of the essential limitations of Puritanism. Even Roger Williams was unable to perceive the excellencies which lay concealed under the harsh exterior of the early Quakers. That men with the views

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and temper of the Massachusetts leaders would make no effort to discover them goes without saying. To imply that they might have reacted against the impact of Quakerism otherwise than they did, is to becloud the subject and to apply to the events criteria which lay outside the mental horizon of the Puritan. Under the limitations which were inherent in their views concerning the mission they were to fulfil in the world, they could not have met the stubborn aggressiveness of the Quakers with measures essentially different from those which they employed. If Roger Williams or the Antinomians or the Baptists, after being banished because they refused to yield to admonition and conform, had repeatedly returned and sought to win converts, they would have been visited with the penalties from which the Quakers suffered. The infliction of the death penalty did not awaken the feelings in the seventeenth century which it occasions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The list of capital crimes was then far larger than now, and the courts threw the burden of proof on the accused rather than on the government. When the general court explained the motives by which Massachusetts had been guided in its treatment of Quakers, it did not seek to apologize. It felt no need of apology; it had simply acted naturally. The conduct of the other Puritan colonies was fundamentally the same as their own, the fact that they refrained from executing the death penalty being a matter of degree only, due perhaps to their lack of charters and to the fact that they were not molested so much as was Massachusetts.

Some modern writers have contended that Massachusetts, and therefore the other colonies as well, had no right to exclude Quakers from her borders; but, however desirable it might be that she should not have that right, it is difficult to find the law that would deny it to her. No colony was required by charter to receive all who might come or be sent across its borders. We know that since 1637 one of her statutes had forbidden the harboring of strangers for more than three weeks within any town without the approval of the magistrates. That was still in force. It had not been submitted to the home government for its approval or disapproval;

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but Massachusetts was not required by her charter to do this, and none of her acts prior to 1690 were so submitted. They were, however, all valid laws in Massachusetts, and we know of no English enactment which would have made an exception of the so-called alien act of 1637, or of the acts which were specifically directed against Quakers or other sectaries. In Massachusetts itself there was no guaranty, either for freeholder, resident, or newcomer, against a law once passed and promulgated. Such was the neglect at the time of legal security for intellectual or religious dissent.

No English statute required that all subjects of the crown should be admitted into the colonies, and it is very doubtful if any principle of the common law deducible from Magna Carta required it. We know that the colonies generally exerted influence to prevent undesirable settlers from being forced upon them. All proprietors and others who had control over the despatch of emigrants exercised some choice and selection; they sought persons with desirable qualities and encouraged them to go; they avoided or discouraged the undesirable. This would imply the recognition of a certain right of that character. For aught we know it was as lawful for Massachusetts to exclude persons for religious reasons, as for Virginia to exclude them because they had been criminals or vagabonds. That matter had not been regulated by the English government, and hence remained under the control of the colonies. That the home government in the seventeenth century would never have forced any except a penal colony to receive Quakers is practically certain. In view of these considerations, and to those who are familiar with its religious system and with the efforts that were put forth to uphold it, the attitude which the Massachusetts authorities assumed toward the Quakers should occasion no surprise. To the adherents of the English Church, whether at home or abroad, the Quaker in the seventeenth century was an object of intense aversion. Among the Dutch he was far from welcome. To Catholics, had they been in power, he would have been equally offensive. To the Puritan, in whatever country or colony he

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might be, Quaker doctrines seemed to imperil not only the church and civil power, but the very foundations of morality as well.

The magistrates of Rhode Island wrote that “their doctrines tend to very absolute cutting downe and overturninge relations and civil’ government among men, if generally received.” That Roger Williams’s denunciation of them was unmeasured is well known, and it found abundant utterance in his disputation with the friends of George Fox.¹ The general court of Plymouth declared that their doctrine and practices tended to the Subversion of the foundamentalls of the Christian Religion, Church order and the Civill peace of the Government, as appears by the Testimonies given in sundry depositions and otherwise.”² The commissioners of the United Colonies, moved certainly in part by the strenuous feelings which prevailed in Massachusetts and New Haven, expressed Puritan sentiments in characteristic form in the preamble to their resolution³ of September, 1658, “Whereas there is an accursed and pernisious sect of heretiques lately Risen up in the world whoe are commonly called Quakers whoe take upon them to bee ymediately sent of God and Infallably assisted; whoe doe speak and write blasphemos thinges dispising Government and the order of God in Church and Commonwealth, speaking evill of dignities, Reproaching and Reviling Magistrates and the ministers of the Gospell, seeking to turne the people from the faith and to gaine proselites to theire pernisious wayes; and whereas . . . they . . . arogantly and presumptuously doe presse into severall of the Jurisdictions and there vent theire pernisious and divellish opinions, which being permitted tends mannifestly to the Desturbance of our peace; the withdrawing of the harts of the people from their subjection to Government and soe in Issue to cause Devision and Ruein if not timely prevented . . . .” These views were reechoed in the laws⁴ of the several colonies which were enacted in pursuance of this resolution.

The Rev. John Norton, in his Heart of New England Rent,

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which was prepared at the request of the general court of Massachusetts and therefore contains an authoritative argument on the subject, traced Quakerism to an origin among the “libertines and enthusiasts” of the early Reformation, who in turn reproduced some of the most dangerous tendencies that appeared in the early church. The Quakers, according to his view, were imitators rather than innovators, and the model which they copied was the Anabaptism of Münster. Norton’s history was in this case as good as most which passed under that name in his time, though a modern would consider it worthless. But it was greedily accepted as truth, and it was confidently believed that the excesses of Munster would be reproduced in New England if the Quakers were allowed to gain a foothold there. Norton argued that their doctrines would undermine belief in the Trinity, in Christ as the Saviour, in the authority of Scripture, in the ordinances, in the ministry, in Christian magistrates,¹ and in civil order. To his mind, as to the minds of many others, Quakers seemed to be as dangerous as Jesuits, and it was inferred that laws which had been passed to rid the country of the latter might well be applied to the former. The conclusions set forth by Norton in his book were repeated in the declaration issued by the general court after the execution of Robinson and Stevenson.² In the declaration a characteristic turn was given to the argument, to the effect that, as one would protect his family from persons infected with the plague, or other contagious, noisome, or mortal diseases, and from those, too, who, while in that condition, should try to force their way into private dwellings, so the fathers of the commonwealth should protect it against the moral contagion which must result from the teachings of the Quakers. “And if sheepe and lambes,” they continued with a change of figure, “cannot be preserved from the dainger of woolves, but the woolves will breake in amongst them, it is easy to see what the shepherd or keeper of the sheepe may lawfully doe in such a case.”

In 1656 Quakers began to visit New England. In July of that year Mary Fisher and Anne Austin came to Boston

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in a vessel from Barbadoes. No sooner had they arrived than the council,¹ under the authority of the laws against heretics which were already in existence, ordered that their books should be seized, and that the women themselves should be kept in close imprisonment until the shipmaster who had brought them could remove them from the colony. The captain was put under heavy bonds to do this speedily. The Quakeresses were then brought on shore, the pamphlets found in their possession which set forth and defended the principles of their sect were burned, and after they had been lodged in prison, the accused were strictly examined to see if they might not be witches. After an imprisonment of about five weeks, during which time the window of their prison was kept boarded up so that no one should communicate with them, and they were denied writing materials and light, they were shipped for Barbadoes. A few days before their release eight more Quakers arrived from London, and they were treated in a similar manner, with the exception that the Rev. John Norton² held conferences with them in prison for two days, chiefly over the question whether the Scriptures were the only rule and guide of life, or were subordinate to the quickenings of the inner light. Endicott was governor, and Bellingham was deputy governor. The three men with whom the Quakers thus early came in contact were distinctly the leaders in the measures of opposition to the new sect which were adopted by the colony.

The commissioners of the United Colonies immediately adopted a resolution in favor of the expulsion of Quakers and Ranters, while the general court of Massachusetts, at its meeting in October, passed the first act directed specifically against them.³ This forbade the master of any ship, under a penalty of £100 or imprisonment, to knowingly land Quakers in the colony. If under oath he could prove that he had brought them in by mistake, he must give bond to

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carry them back to the place whence he brought them. All Quakers who came within the jurisdiction were forthwith to be committed to the house of correction, whipped, and set to hard labor. Penalties were also affixed to the importation and sale of Quaker books, and to the defence of their opinions. Those who should revile magistrates or ministers, “as is usuall with the Quakers,” should be punished with whipping or fine. Nicholas Upshall, a respected citizen of Boston, sixty years of age, had expressed sympathy with Mary Fisher and Anne Austin, and had given the jailer five shillings a week for being allowed to bring food to them. When the law just outlined was being proclaimed through the town, Upshall uttered a protest against it,¹ for which he was fined, imprisoned, and banished. He was the first among the inhabitants of Massachusetts who openly declared his sympathy with Quakers.

Anne Burden and Mary Dyer were the first² to appear after the passage of this law. The former was a widow, who had returned to Massachusetts to collect certain debts which were due to her husband. The latter, who as a young woman had been associated with Mrs. Hutchinson, was on her way to join her husband in Rhode Island. Both were imprisoned and sent out of the colony. Mary Clark, “being a Mother of Children and having a Husband in England,” came to Massachusetts under the inspiration of the Lord to deliver his message unto them. She received twenty stripes and was sent away. Christopher Holder and John Copeland, being two of the eight who had previously been sent out of the colony, now reappeared.³ Holder tried to speak in the Salem meeting-house after the close of the sermon, whereupon the two were arrested with great show of violence and sent to Boston. There they each received thirty stripes. Samuel Shattuck, a resident of Salem, because of the sympathy which he showed for the sufferers, was imprisoned and afterwards whipped and banished. Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, an aged couple and members of the church at Salem, were imprisoned because they had entertained Holder and Copeland. Richard Dowdney, who came

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with a message from England, was arrested in Dedham, taken to Boston, and whipped with thirty stripes. His books were taken from him, and he was sent out of the country with the threat that, if he should return, he would lose his ears.

By this time sympathy with the Quakers was showing itself among the inhabitants of Salem and at other points. Because of the fact that at Salem they began to absent themselves from church and met for worship at their houses or in the woods, William Hathorne, the resident magistrate,¹ proceeded under the law of 1646 to fine them five shillings a week for absence from church. This occasioned more imprisonments, in which the Southwicks and others suffered. Fines were imposed on the accused; they, like all others, were compelled to pay for their support in prison. They were withdrawn for months at a time from their farms or shops, and their property was distrained for the payment of fines or for their support as prisoners. In this way not a few families were ruined or seriously crippled by the persecution.

Sarah Gibbens and Dorothy Waugh, who had already been once sent out of the colony, because of their reappearance and attempt to speak in the meeting-house at Boston, were whipped and nearly starved in prison. Thomas Harris, coming through Rhode Island to Boston, warned the people after sermon of “the Dreadful Terrible Day of the Lord which was coming upon that Town and Country,” for which he was haled to prison, severely whipped, and kept five days without bread. He would have starved had not sympathizers fed him at night through the window. William Brend and William Leddra, “being moved of the Lord,” came to Salem. After a conference which they had with “a priest at Newbury,” they, with a number of sympathizers, were arrested and taken to Boston. Both Leddra and Brend were whipped, and the latter, because he refused to work in the prison, was nearly killed by the cruelties of the jailer.² This outrage awoke such response in the community that the jailer would have been prosecuted had it not been for the intervention of

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Norton. Jailers were then instructed to whip Quakers who were in their custody twice a week if they refused to work, adding five stripes each time.

Humphrey Norton proved himself to be one of the boldest of the early witnesses. He stood up before “priest Norton” in his church at Boston and declared that, because of his sin, the sacrifice which he was offering was an abomination unto the Lord. For this he and his companion were hurried to prison under the charge of blasphemy. The prisoners insisted on appealing to England, but that was refused with derision. Then they were twice whipped, nearly starved in prison, and sent out of the colony. Norton was later branded in New Haven as a heretic.

The arrests were often accompanied by popular outrage and assault. The hearings were in all cases summary and most informal. Much invective was used to the prisoners by the judges and other officials who had them in charge, and by many of the accused equally sharp and denunciatory language was uttered in return. In the prisons hard labor was enforced; the coarsest food, and that in very small quantities, was provided, and weekly payments for lodging were enforced by the jailers. Imprisonments were prolonged, in many cases for months after scourging had been inflicted. Access of friends or relatives to the imprisoned was, so far as possible, prevented, and we presently find the general court ordering that a fence be built around the jail and house of correction¹ in Boston to debar persons from conversing with the prisoners. But the activity of the authorities was followed by a steady increase of the evil which they were trying to suppress. New offenders kept appearing, some coming direct from England, but more through the West Indies and Rhode Island. Some landed at New Amsterdam and traversed the New England colonies from that centre. Many who had been punished soon returned under alleged divine guidance, that they might testify and suffer again. The number of sympathizers with them, especially among the lower class of the people, tended to increase. The Quakers, native and foreign, gloried in their violations of custom and

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rules of conduct, especially by wearing the hat in the meeting-houses and before the courts. This, with their persistent interruptions of public services, contributed as much as did their doctrines to provoke persecution. As months passed, it became evident to the authorities that severer repressive measures must be resorted to. Many who had suffered punishment and some who had been sent out of the colony, returned and defied the authorities anew. The Puritans of Massachusetts could not understand the policy followed by Rhode Island, a course of action which was well described in 1657 both by its magistrates and its general assembly in reply to a letter from the Commissioners of the United Colonies. They said they had found that, where the Quakers were opposed by argument and not by force, they gained few converts, and did not like to come. They wished to be persecuted, because thereby they won more adherents. They began to loathe Rhode Island, because there they were not opposed and won few converts. The general assembly took its stand upon the principle of freedom of conscience, and maintained it, even though Massachusetts threatened to prohibit trade with her in order that the Puritan faith might be preserved intact.¹

In May, 1658,² Quaker meetings were forbidden, and those who were found attending them were required to pay for every such offence ten shillings, while every one who spoke at such meeting should pay five pounds. If the offenders had already suffered punishment for venting Quaker opinions, they should be imprisoned at hard labor until they gave bond, with two acceptable sureties, that they would keep silent or leave the jurisdiction. In October of the same year, acting on the advice of the Commissioners of the United Colonies, who had recently met at Boston and whose resolution on this subject we may suppose emanated largely from the Massachusetts members, the general court passed the act³ denouncing banishment against convicted Quakers on pain of death if they should again return. The petition which brought the subject of the penalty in this form before the general court was signed by twenty-five inhabitants of Boston, among them being

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Wilson and Norton, the pastor and teacher of the Boston church.¹ Though individuals had in repeated instances been threatened by Massachusetts with this penalty, and though it was the common form of enactment against Catholic priests, Bishop² is authority for the statement that the act passed the deputies by a majority of only one, it being brought to vote when one of the opposition members was absent because of sickness. The magistrates also, supported by the clergy, are said to have originally excluded from the measure all provision for trials by jury. After the bill passed, the twelve who voted against it desired to enter their protest. The magistrates, seeing that the opposition was so strong, consented that a clause should be introduced permitting trial by “a special jury.” The accused, however, in the absence of a magistrate, might be arrested without warrant. To John Norton the court at the same time committed the duty of preparing an authoritative declaration concerning the evils of Quaker tenets and practices. This was approved and published the next year,³ as was also Norton’s Heart of New England Rent.

The magistrates and clergy were fully prepared for the execution of this act, and their opponents soon showed themselves ready to squarely meet the issue. Six Quakers, among them Southwick and his wife, were banished by the October court and did not return.⁴ The son and daughter of Southwick, because they could not pay their fines and would not work, were ordered to be sold as servants to any of the English in Virginia or Barbadoes who would contract for them. But no captain could be found who would transport them, and therefore they were allowed to remain. Meantime the law was preparing its own victims, though a year passed before they were ready. In the interval seven returned, after they had been banished with the sentence of death impending over them if they came back. But they all agreed finally to go away rather than meet death.

William Robinson, sometime in 1659, while walking with Christopher Holder from Newport, in Rhode Island, to the

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house of his friend,¹ Daniel Gold, felt constrained by the power of God to go to Boston and there to lay down his life for the accomplishment of the divine will. Marmaduke Stevenson, who in response to what he believed to be a divine call to be a prophet to the nations had left the plough and a dependent family in Yorkshire, and had journeyed to Barbadoes, now heard that Massachusetts had made a law “to put the Servants of the Living God to Death, if they returned after they were sentenced away.” As he pondered this, the Lord seemed to say to him, “Thou knowest not but that thou mayest go thither.” Acting under this impulse, he took ship for Rhode Island, and there joined Robinson on his journey into Massachusetts. About the same time Mary Dyer was moved of the Lord to visit Massachusetts again. The three were in due time banished on pain of death. Robinson and Stevenson went only to Piscataqua, and about a month later, shortly before the general court met, returned to Boston. Mary Dyer left the colony for a time, but afterwards returned. When arrested² and brought before the general court, they freely confessed the reason of their return. Upon them the death sentence was immediately passed. It was duly executed upon Robinson and Stevenson, while Mary Dyer was reprieved when at the place of execution, on condition that she leave the colony within forty-eight hours.³ This offer she was persuaded to accept. She went to Rhode Island, but returned the following spring⁴ to bear witness against the law of Massachusetts. Being again condemned to death, another reprieve was offered her at the gallows on the same condition as the former. This she declined, saying that she had come “in obedience to the will of the Lord” and “would abide faithful unto death.⁵ In this spirit she died, June 1, 1660.

In October of that year the general court ordered that all who were in prison should receive their liberty if they would leave the colony.⁶ Several availed themselves of this, but

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William Leddra, who had been often and severely punished and banished with the threat of death if he should return, came back in November. He was imprisoned till March, 1661, and was then brought to trial. Though he claimed the right, of appeal to the English courts, as did many other Quakers, he was condemned and executed.¹ During Leddra’s trial Wenlock Christison, who had also been banished under penalty of death, appeared boldly in court.² When arrested and brought up for preliminary examination, he declared that he would neither change his religion nor seek to save his life. None had spoken with greater boldness than he. When on trial, he called down upon the court the wrath of God, denied its authority to pass such a law as that under which he was tried, and claimed the right to appeal to the home government for protection. The question, whether sentence of death should be executed, was laid before the court. As the Quakers did not appear at all daunted by whippings, imprisonments, or executions, and as the return of the king had made the problem of Massachusetts government more complex than it previously had been, it was seen that the time had come to hesitate. Some members of the general court refused to vote for the execution of Christison. The governor in a rage ordered that the names of the dissentients should be recorded. After the majority had voted yea, he pronounced sentence of death. But it was not executed. Instead, in May, 1661, a new law was passed providing that Quakers who came into the colony should first be whipped at the cart’s tail from town to town till they reached the border, and then should be expelled. If they returned three times, they should be dealt with in the same way each time, or at the discretion of the court be branded. Should they return a fourth time, they might be put to death. Under this act Christison and twenty-seven others were released and expelled from the colony.

By Edward Burroughs and others in England the attention of the king was called to the treatment of the sect in

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Massachusetts, and in September, 1661, a royal order¹ was sent commanding that Quakers who were under sentence of death, or who were imprisoned and were liable to other corporal punishment, should be sent to England for trial. This missive was brought and delivered to Governor Endicott by Samuel Shattuck, a banished Quaker from Salem. At once, upon advice of the elders, the general court resolved that the death penalty and corporal punishment should not again be executed upon Quakers until further order. In harmony with further advice from the elders, it was decided to send the prisoners to England, and also to send a declaration to the king explaining the reasons for the conduct of the colony toward the Quakers. The despatch of Bradstreet and Norton as agents was decided on at the same time. It however appears that, though the prisoners were liberated and allowed to go to England if they chose, none were actually sent.²

The apparent intervention of the king in their behalf not unnaturally encouraged the Quakers to greater activity. This resulted in an increase of what the general court was not slow to term vagabondage throughout the colony. “Sundry persons,³ as well inhabitants as forreigners,” it was said, “wander from their familys, relations & dwelling places, from toune to toune, thereby drawing away children, servants & other persons„ both younger & elder, from their law full callings and imployments, and hardening the hearts of one another against all subjection to the rules of God’s holy word and the established lawes of this collony . . .” Against the offence of Quakerism under this description corporal punishment and imprisonment were again decreed. The court in the following October,⁴ especially because of the large number of Quakers in the eastern parts, declared that the law of May, 1661, should again be in force, “provided that their whipping be but through three townes.” As the fires of persecution were still raging hotly against the sect in England, the magistrates were justified in the assumption that they had little to fear from that quarter.

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This fact became evident when the king’s letter of June, 1662, arrived,¹ in which he declared that he did not wish to be understood as directing that any indulgence should be granted to Quakers. It was still the belief of the authorities in England that Quaker principles were “inconsistent with any kind of government,” and since it was found necessary to make sharp laws against them there, the king was content if Massachusetts did the like.

This was decisive, and repressive measures continued to be vigorously enforced. In October, 1663,² an act was passed disfranchising all, Quakers and others, who persistently absented themselves from church. At intervals for more than a decade whipping at the cart’s tail and other forms of punishment continued to be inflicted in all parts of the colony. Many women suffered cruel punishments. Not a few families were ruined by the prolonged imprisonment of their members and by the seizure of their property for the payment of fines and jailers’ fees. The enthusiasm of the proscribed was not diminished by their sufferings. In some cases it rose to the height of frenzy. It was during this period that meetings were most seriously disturbed, and that the worst outrages against public decency were committed. It is reasonable to suppose that the extreme exhibitions of zeal were to a large extent occasioned by the persecution itself, and would have been avoided had the milder course of the other Puritan colonies been pursued. But with the deaths of the magistrates and elders who had been zealous opponents of Quakerism at its first appearance, with the Indian war and the struggle with the home government that followed, attention was gradually diverted and officials as well as people became indifferent. At the same time the crudities of early propagandism somewhat abated among the Quakers, and, as in England, by this gradual process they won the toleration which they had sought.

With men of the type and strength of personality of Roger Williams, with Antinomians and Baptists, the other Puritan colonies had no experience of importance. But Quakers visited them all, or developed within their borders

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in considerable numbers. The policy which those colonies pursued toward them differed from that of Massachusetts only in the fact that it was less severe: the death penalty was not inflicted nor were ears cropped save in the Bay colony. Connecticut responded to the first suggestion from the Commissioners of the United Colonies, and forbade any town entertaining Quakers, Ranters, or Adamites for more than fourteen days, under penalty of £5 per week.¹ Such heretics, if landed within the colony, were to be kept in prison and the master who brought them was bound to take them away at his next sailing under penalty of a fine of £20. In 1657 and 1658 acts were passed for the banishment of heretics and the infliction of corporal punishment upon them.

New Haven prohibited any one settling in the colony without the consent of a magistrate. In 1658 an elaborate act against Quakers and their writings was passed by this colony. Both were to be excluded from it on heavy penalties, though not involving death in any case. Branding, hard labor, and banishment were the heaviest punishments. Quakers, coming into the colony to do business, were allowed to go about for that purpose under guard, so that they might not disseminate their ideas. New Haven also had a general law for punishing heresy when actively published, the penalties for which were fine, banishment, or such additional inflictions as the magistrates thought that the danger warranted.²

Plymouth was much disturbed by Quakers, especially by a group who lived in Sandwich. In 1657 it was ordered that Quakers should not be entertained in the colony, on penalty of £5 or a whipping for every offence. The following year provision was made by law for the arrest, imprisonment, and banishment of all Quakers; also that no Quaker, or other person who refused to take the oath of fidelity, should become a freeman or have a voice in town affairs. Freemen who became Quakers or defenders of them should be deprived of their political rights. In 1658 it was enacted that a house of correction should be built for the reception of wandering Quakers and other vagrants. Any

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one who brought a Quaker, or other notorious heretic, into the colony, should upon order remove him or pay a fine of twenty shillings for every week of delay thereafter. All Quaker literature which might be found was ordered to be seized and brought to the magistrates. It was made lawful for any one to apprehend a Quaker and deliver him up to a constable. Public meetings could not be held¹ without permission. Magistrates, like Thomas Prince, Thomas Hinckley, and Josiah Winslow, very actively interested themselves in imprisoning, whipping, and banishing heretics.

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