Note 242 — Chapter XX
Reading edition
Of Macy it is known that he fled from the rigorous persecution of the Quakers by the government of Massachusetts Bay. The penalties were ordinarily cropping the ears, branding with an iron, scourging, the pillory, or banishment. These cruelties, barbarous as they were, were merely borrowed from the England of that day, where the sect, saving capital punishment, was persecuted with as great rigor as it ever was in the colonies. The death-penalty inflicted in the Bay Colony brought the affairs of the Friends to the notice of the reigning king. Thereafter they were tolerated; but as persecution ceased the sect dwindled away, and in New England it is not numerous. The Friends' poet sings of Macy, the outcast:
"Far round the bleak and stormy Cape The vent'rous Macy passed, And on Nantucket's naked isle Drew up his boat at last."