Note 829 — Chapter XII

It may not, however, be out of place to mention here the chief reasons on which the followers of Fox base their objections to the manner in which it is customary to speak of the first Quakers who visited New England. It is generally represented that it was the behavior of these early ministers which caused their persecution; but before a European Quaker had set foot on Massachusetts the court had denounced them, and in October, 1656, a law was passed which spoke of them as a “cursed sect of heretickes.” It is also customary to speak of the executions of Quakers in Boston in connection with certain acts of indecency committed by women who were either laboring under mental aberrations or believed that they were fulfilling a divine command, leaving on the mind of the reader the impression that the capital law was called into existence to correct such abuses. No such acts were committed until after the capital law had fallen into disuse. Nor is it clear, from printed authorities, that the death penalty was only inflicted after every possible means had been tried by the Massachusetts authorities to rid themselves of their unwelcome visitors. The language of the law of 1658, which declared that if a banished Quaker returned he or she should suffer death, does not show that it supplemented that of 1657, by which punishments increasing in severity were visited on Quakers upon their first, second, and third return. Neither will the practice under the law of 1658 justify this interpretation. The penalties of the law of 1657 had not been exhausted in the cases of Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and William Ledera, when they were hanged.