The Boston Martyrs

[MrJim]

A bit of history I'd never heard before...

Boston martyrs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Boston martyrs is the name given in Quaker tradition to the three English members of the Society of Friends, Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson and Mary Dyer, and to the Friend William Leddra of Barbados, who were condemned to death and executed by public hanging for their religious beliefs under the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659, 1660 and 1661. Several other Friends lay under sentence of death at Boston in the same period, but had their punishments commuted to that of being whipped out of the colony from town to town.

The settlement of Boston was founded by Puritan chartered colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop, and acquired the name of Boston soon after the arrival of the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. It was named after Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the 1640s, as the English Civil War reached its climax, the founder of English Quakerism George Fox (1624-1691) discovered his religious vocation. Under the Puritan English Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell, the Quakers in England were persecuted, and during the 1650s various parties of Quakers left England as 'Publishers of Truth'.

Quaker Mary Dyer

Massachusetts Puritan leadership saw the Quaker faith as a far more threatening influence than an individual heretic like Hutchinson. In 1658 they enacted laws to punish anyone who aided a Quaker, and to torture or kill those who professed that belief.

This time they were sentenced to hang. On October 27th, 1659 the three were paraded across the Boston Common to the gallows by two hundred guards. The Quakers tried to call out to the crowd, but were drowned out by the beating of drums. Robinson and Stevenson professed their beliefs as they died. Next Mary Dyer stood with a noose tightened around her neck, facing the crowd, as her husband begged for her life.

Governor John Endicott stayed her execution and exiled her again with a final warning to be gone. Seven months later she returned to face the law; the middle-aged mother of six was finally executed on June 1st, 1660.

 

[WayneinMaine]

A bit of history I'd never heard before...

I took a local history class at Salem State College in Massachusetts. The professor pointed out that the persecution of the Quakers was much more widespread and deadly thatn the famous "Salem With Trials". Some of my ancestors (Lawrence and Casandra Southwick) were imprisoned for harboring quaker refugees. The family was nearly starved to death by the Puritan authorities.

 

[MrJim]

I took a local history class at Salem State College in Massachusetts. The professor pointed out that the persecution of the Quakers was much more widespread and deadly thatn the famous "Salem With Trials". Some of my ancestors (Lawrence and Casandra Southwick) were imprisoned for harboring quaker refugees. The family was nearly starved to death by the Puritan authorities.

Growing up in the midwest I guess that piece of history just wasn't much taught~~interesting family history; good to know it was passed on.

Sort of the same parallels as the anabaptist persecutions-one religious group feeling threatened by another, with that "another" being a nonviolent group..