Note 29 — Chapter V

This is the only mention of Christopher Holder in these volumes. He was a great sufferer in the New England persecution. In 1657 he and another Friend being at Salem, went to the Puritan place of worship there, and after the priest had concluded, Christopher Holder addressing the assembly, was not allowed to proceed; one of the commissioners with much fury “seizing him by the hair of his head,” and violently thrusting a glove and handkerchief into his mouth. These two Friends were subsequently sentenced, under “the law against Quakers,” to receive thirty lashes. The brutal manner in which this sentence was carried out, was in accordance with the spirit that prompted the rulers to pass the cruel law. A three-corded knotted whip was used on the occasion; and the executioner, to make more sure of his blows, “measured his ground,” and then “fetched his strokes with all his might.” Thirty strokes thus inflicted, as will be readily imagined, left the sufferers miserably torn and lacerated; and in this state they were conveyed to their prison cell. Here, without any bedding, or even straw to lie on, the inhuman jailer kept them for three days without food or drink; and, in this dismal abode, often exposed to damp and cold, were these faithful men confined for the space of nine weeks. We may wonder that, under such aggravated cruelties their lives were spared; but He, for whose holy cause they thus suffered, was near to support and console them. His ancient promise was fulfilled in their experience, and they rejoiced in the comforting presence of his living power.—Bowden’s History of Friends in America.

Previous to this, Christopher Holder and his companion had been banished from Rhode Island. The governor having hired an Indian to convey them off the island, ordered the Friends to pay for the passage themselves. But not being willing to facilitate their own banishment, and not feeling that it was their Divine Master’s will for them to leave the island, they declined to go, or to pay the Indian who was hired to take them. The governor directed the constable forcibly to obtain the requisite sum from the strangers, and gave peremptory orders to the natives to take them away in their canoes. The Algonquins, however, not being in any great haste to execute the bidding of the governor, contrary to the will of the Friends, and at a time too when the weather was stormy, entertained them for three days with marked kindness and hospitality. A change in the weather then taking place, and the banished ones feeling that it was no longer required of them to stay on the island, the Indians, at their own request, prepared to take them across. Before leaving the island the Friends offered to remunerate the natives for their kindness, but these poor people, from the generous impulses of their hearts, acting more in unison with the spirit of Christianity than those who were wont to be their teachers, declined to receive any reward. “You are strangers,” they replied, “and Jehovah hath taught us to love strangers.” Such simple and feeling language from the lips of North American Indians, was a striking rebuke to the bigotry and intolerance which marked the conduct of their highly professing teachers.—Bowden’s History of Friends in America.