Content area
Full Text
Between 1659 and 1661, the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed four Quakers who refused to stay away from the Puritan commonwealth. Quaker missionaries began arriving in Massachusetts in 1656 intent upon spreading the news of the imminent end of the world and exhorting everyone to accept the truth of the light within. Driven by the zeal that participation in the new sect inspired, the first missionaries traveled from England; soon Quaker witnesses converted in the New World (especially from Rhode Island and Barbados) were also drawn to Massachusetts. The Puritan leaders of the colony greeted the "invasion" with horror, passing increasingly repressive laws intended to drive away the self-proclaimed "publishers of the truth." When whipping, mutilation, and sentences of banishment failed to contain the Quaker threat, the authorities threatened to execute any banished sectaries who returned to the colony. Numerous missionaries defied the law, and four died for their transgression. In 1659 the court sentenced to death Marmaduke Stephenson, a Yorkshire farmer, William Robinson, a young London resident, and Rhode Islander Mary Dyer, a former Boston resident and staunch supporter of Anne Hutchinson. On the intercession of her merchant husband and son, Dyer was reprieved, although she was made to accompany her companions to the place of execution and to stand with a halter around her neck as they were hanged. Dyer then left the colony but, continuing to feel called to witness there, returned to meet her death in 1660. William Leddra of Barbados became the last Quaker martyr in 1661.(1)
By then the colonial authorities may have suspected that the newly restored English monarchy would not approve of their policy of executing its subjects. In addition, they were aware that the threat of death was not having the desired effect, a point brought home when another Quaker banished on pain of death risked execution himself to interrupt the sentencing of Leddra by haranguing the court. Whether fearful of monarchical displeasure or aware of the ineffectiveness of killing Quaker prophets, the magistrates quietly dropped the policy later in 1661. With that, the deadly confrontation between Quaker missionaries and Puritan authorities came to an end.(2)
Adherents of a radical sect that coalesced during the English interregnum, the Quakers believed that the spirit of God dwelled within...