Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/124

 fines were imposed upon any who should introduce Quakers into Massachusetts or spread abroad Quaker tracts and books. No one was to harbor a Quaker under any pretence, and if one were found, whipping was the mildest punishment inflicted; and this, too, upon females equally with males. On the first conviction they were to lose one ear, on the second the other one, and, although the law proscribed torture, on the third were to have their tongues bored through with a hot iron. But the zeal of this sect amounted almost to insanity; they insulted and defied the magistrates—disturbed the public worship with contemptuous clamor—nay, instances afterwards occurred in which women, to testify after prophetic fashion against the spiritual nakedness of the land, and regarding the violence thus done to their natural modesty as "a cross" which it behooved them to bear, displayed themselves, without a particle of clothing, in the public streets.

Many of them had repaired to Rhode Island, where the free toleration afforded to all sects indiscriminately, allowed them to propagate their tenets undisturbed. But they were not content with this; they preferred persecution to every thing else; so Boston became the centre of attraction. It was war to the knife between ecclesiastical bigotry and insane fanaticism. The Puritans, as we may well believe, did not desire to take the lives of the Quakers, but they were determined to put them down. Hitherto all had been in vain; fines, whippings, croppings, and imprisonments; and now, by a decree of the council, as a last resource, though not without the strenuous resistance of a portion of the deputies, banishment was enforced on pain of death. But the indomitable Quakers gloried in the opportunity of suffering martyrdom. Robinson, Stephenson, and Mary Dyer, persisting in braving the penalty denounced against them, were tried and condemned. The younger Winthrop earnestly sought to prevent their execution, and Colonel Temple offered to carry them away, and, if they returned, fetch them off a second time. There was a struggle among the council, many regarding them as mere lunatics, against whom it would be as foolish as cruel to proceed to extremities; but the majority prevailed, and Stephenson and Robinson were brought to the scaffold. "I die for Christ," said Robinson. "We suffer not as evildoers, but for conscience' sake," said Stephenson. Mary Dyer, with the rope round her neck, after witnessing the execution of her two companions, exclaimed, "Let me suffer as my brethren, unless you will annul your wicked law." At the intercession of her son, she was almost forced from the scaffold, on condition of leaving the colony in eight and forty hours, but the spirit of the wretched woman was excited almost to insanity by inward enthusiasm and the horrible scenes she had witnessed, and after the trial she addressed from her prison an energetic remonstrance against the cruelty of the council. "Woe is me for you! ye are disobedient and deceived," she urged to the magistrates who had condemned her. "You will not repent that you