Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/125

 were kept from shedding blood, though it was by a woman." With a courage that would be sublime were it not tinctured with insanity, she returned to defy the tyrants of "the bloody town," and to seal her testimony against them with her life. She was taken and hanged on Boston Common in June, 1660.

The discontent caused by such shocking scenes compelled the magistrates to enter upon a formal defence of their action. The language of it is worth noticing. "Although the justice of our proceedings against William Robinson, Marma-duke Stephenson, and Mary Dyer supported by the authority of this Court, the laws of the country, and the law of God, may rather persuade us to expect encouragement and commendation from all prudent and pious men than convince us of any necessity to apologize for the same; yet, forasmuch as men of weaker parts, out of pity and commiseration—a commendable and Christian virtue, yet easily abused, and susceptible of sinister and dangerous impressions—for want of full information, may be less satisfied, and men of perverser principles may take occasion hereby to calumniate us and render us bloody persecutors—to satisfy the one and stop the mouths of the other, we thought it requisite to declare, That about three years since, divers persons, professing themselves Quakers—of whose pernicious opinions and practices we had received intelligence from good hands, both from Barbadoes and England—arrived at Boston, whose persons were only secured to be sent away by the first opportunity, without censure or punishment. Although their professed tenets, turbulent and contemptuous behaviour to authority, would have justified a severer animadversion, yet the prudence of this Court was exercised only to make provision to secure the peace and order here established, against their attempts, whose design—we were well assured of by our own experience, as well as by the example of their predecessors in Munster—was to undermine and ruin the same. And accordingly a law was made and published, prohibiting all masters of ships to bring any Quakers into this jurisdiction, and themselves from coming in, on penalty of the house of correction until they should be sent away. Notwithstanding which, by a back door, they found entrance, and the penalty inflicted upon themselves, proving insufficient to restrain their impudent and insolent intrusions, was increased by the loss of the ears of those that offended the second time; which also being too weak a defence against their impetuous fanatic fury, necessitated us to endeavor our security; and upon serious consideration, after the former experiment, by their incessant assaults, 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, which sentence being regularly pronounced at the last Court of assistants against the parties above named, and they either returning or continuing presumptuously in this jurisdiction after the time limited, were apprehended, and owning themselves to be the persons banished, were sentenced