BIO: Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr (1 Jun 1660) < rev 1 Nov 1999>

MARY DYER, QUAKER MARTYR (1 JUN 1660)

This series includes biographical sketches of about ten Quakers.
Most sketches are accompanied by sections on various topics
related to the Quaker movement. A Table of contents, enabling the
reader to find material on various Quakers and various aspects of
Quakerism, can be reached by clicking <here>. A reading list,
sorted according to topic, can be reached by clicking <here>.

The Quaker movement was founded in England by George Fox (see 13
Jan) in the mid-1600s. Before discussing its martyrs, we offer a
little background.  Fox proclaimed that Jesus Christ was present
in and among his people to teach them all things, and that
therefore they had no need of the traditional clergy.  This
doctrine had an electrifying effect on those who accepted it.

$$$ THE QUAKER EXPERIENCE

One early Quaker (Edward Burrough, 1633-1663) writes:
          We obeyed the Light of Christ in us, and took up the Cross
     to all earthly glories, crowns, and ways, and denied
     ourselves, our relations, and all that stood in the way
     between us and the Lord. And while waiting on the Lord in
     silence, as often we did for many hours together, we
     received often the pouring down of the Spirit upon us and
     our hearts were made glad, and our tongues loosed, and our
     mouths opened... and the glory of the Father was revealed;
     and then began we to sing praises to the Lord God Almighty
     and to the Lamb forever, who has redeemed us to God, and
     brought us out of the captivity and bondage of the world,
     and put an end to sin and death.

Francis Howgill (1618-1669) writes:
          The Kingdom of Heaven did gather us and catch us all, as in
     a net, and his heavenly power at one time drew many hundreds
     to land. We came to know a place to stand in and what to
     wait in; and the Lord appeared daily to us, to our
     astonishment, amazement, and great admiration, insomuch that
     we often said one unto another with great joy of heart:
     "What, is the Kingdom of God come to be with men? And will
     he take up his tabernacle among the sons of men, as he did
     of old? Shall we, that were reckoned as the outcasts of
     Israel, have this honour of glory communicated amongst us,
     which were but men of small parts and of little abilities,
     in respect of many others, as amongst men?" And from that
     day forward, our hearts were knit unto the Lord and one unto
     another in true and fervent love, in the covenant of Life
     with God; and that was a strong obligation or bond upon all
     our spirits, which united us one unto another. We met
     together in the unity of the Spirit, and of the bond of
     peace, treading down under our feet all reasoning about
     religion. And holy resolutions were kindled in our hearts as
     a fire which the Life kindled in us to serve the Lord while
     we had a being, and mightily did the Word of God grow
     amongst us, and the desires of many were after the Name of
     the Lord. O happy day! O blessed day! the memorial of which
     can never pass out of my mind. And thus the Lord, in short,
     did form us to be a people for his praise in our generation.

     Isaac Penington (son of the Lord Mayor of London) and his
wife Mary were among the first members of the upper classes to
become Quakers. Penington wrote of his experience as follows:
     [NOTE: Quakers often refer to Christ, or the Logos of John
1:1, as the Seed, referring to such passages as Galatians 3:16; 1
Peter 1:23; 1 John 3:9.]
               At last, after all my distresses, wanderings, and sore
     travels, I met with some writings of this people called
     Quakers, which I cast a slight eye upon and disdained, as
     falling very short of that wisdom, light, life and power,
     which I had been longing for and searching after.... After a
     long time, I was invited to hear one of them.... When I
     came, I felt the presence and power of the Most High among
     them, and words of truth from the Spirit of truth reaching
     to my heart and conscience, opening my state as in the
     presence of the Lord. Yea, I did not only feel words and
     demonstrations from without, but I felt the dead quickened,
     the seed raised; insomuch as my heart, in the certainty of
     light and clearness of true sense, said: "This is he: this
     is he: there is no other; this is he whom I have waited for
     and sought after from my childhood, who was always near me,
     and had often begotten life in my heart, but I knew him not
     distinctly, nor how to receive him or dwell with him." And
     then in this sense (in the meltings and breakings of my
     spirit) was I given up to the Lord, to become his, both in
     waiting for the further revealing of his seed in me, and,
     and to serve him in the life and power of his seed.
               But some may desire to know what I have at last met
     with. I answer, "I have met with the Seed." Understand that
     word, and thou wilt be satisfied and inquire no further. I
     have met with my God, I have met with my Saviour, and he
     hath not been present with me without his Salvation, but I
     have felt the healings drop upon my soul from under his
     wings. I have met with the Seed's Father, and in the Seed I
     have felt him my Father; there I have read his nature, his
     love, his compassions, his tenderness, which have melted,
     overcome, and changed my heart before him.

John Eliot, having determined to adopt the "plain" speech and
dress and manner, wrote in 1757: 
               I assure thee, grandfather, that unless my present and
     everlasting peace had not been so nearly concerned, and I
     may say dependent on my obedience to this discovery of duty,
     I had never submitted my will to become a fool among men and
     be the jest of those who before thought well of me;
     especially at a time when I had expectations of making a
     figure in life in an eminent and honorable branch of
     business. Yet even this, with the friendship of  so many
     gentlemen of fortune, I am willing to give up, if I can't
     enjoy it without betraying the cause of truth.

$$$ PERSECUTION OF QUAKERS

     Inevitably, the Quakers' firm rejection of the existing
churches, reinforced by their peculiarities of dress, speech, and
manner (their use of "thee" and "thou," their refusal to take off
their hats to dignitaries, their "plain" manner of dress for
details, see QUAKER TABOOS), and above all their refusal to take
oaths, aroused suspicion and hostility.
     Some Protestants believed that the Quakers kept their hats
on to conceal the fact that their heads were tonsured, shaved
after the manner of monks, and that they were secretly agents of
the Pope. The fact that Barclay, their principal theologian, had
been trained by the Jesuits, seemed to confirm this. A similar
charge was brought in the following century against the early
Methodists.
(See THE QUAKER JESUITS, OR, POPERY IN QUAKERISM, by William
Brownsword. London, John Gwillim, 1691; or THE QUAKERS PEDIGREE
TRACED, OR, SOME BRIEF OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR AGREEMENT WITH THE
CHURCH OF ROME, by Edward Cockson, London, Edw. Ebets, 1703; or
THE QUAKING MOUNTEBANK, OR THE JESUIT TURNED QUAKER, by Donald
Lupton, London, E.B., 1655; or A NEW DISCOVERY OF SOME ROMAN
EMISSARIES, QUAKERS, by William Prynne, London, 1656. For more on
William Prynne, a Puritan hero, see William Laud (10 Jan 1645).)

     Between 1649 and 1675, Fox was imprisoned eight times for a
total of about six years. It must be understood that prison in
those days was a greater hardship than it is in England today.
Prisons were often unheated in the winter. One notorious prison,
the Tolbooth, where several Quakers were imprisoned for many
months, was a large room, built of stone, with no windows, and no
beds or other furniture or toilet facilities. The prisoners were
left in almost total darkness to stand, sit, or lie in the
accumulated filth of years.

     In 1653, Fox was arrested on suspicion of disloyalty to
Cromwell's government, and was sent to Cromwell, who spoke with
him, found no harm in him, and released him. However, soon after,
Cromwell ordered that persons suspected of Roman Catholic
leanings must take an Oath of Abjuration, forswearing all
allegiance to the Pope, on pain of imprisonment and loss of
property. Since Quakers did not take oaths, many of them were
imprisoned under this law. Moreover, the law required prisoners
to pay for their food while in prison, and to remain in prison
until their bills were paid. The Quakers said that they had been
wrongfully imprisoned, and refused to pay. Accordingly, many of
them were in prison far longer than their original sentences
required.
     In January 1656 Fox and others got themselves arrested in
Cornwall and sentenced to jail, where they made themselves so
troublesome that the officials finally left the door of the
prison wide open in the hope that the prisoners would escape.
Hugh Peter, a Congregationalist minister from Cornwall and
adviser to Cromwell, told the authorities that "they could not do
George Fox a greater service for the spreading of his principles
in Cornwall than to imprison him there." Thus, in September 1656
they were set free.
     In 1657 Fox said: "There are seldom fewer than one thousand
in prison in this nation for Truth's sake." By this time, there
were about 40,000 Quakers altogether.

     In May 1660, Charles II returned from exile and was
proclaimed King in London <51:30 N 0:10 W>. In January 1661, a
group called the Fifth Monarchy Men (taking their name from the
prophecy in Daniel 2 of the four earthly empires to be succeeded
by the Empire of Christ) made an armed uprising against him. They
were put down, and the Quakers were suspected of being part of
the plot, or of having similar intentions. When the uprising was
suppressed, Quakers were arrested at their meetings the following
Sunday--4200 altogether, 500 in London alone.

     In 1663 Fox was arrested on suspicion of plotting against
the Crown. When there was no evidence of his guilt, the judges
required him to swear allegiance to the Crown. They brought him a
Bible, and he took it into his hand, and said: "Ye have given me
a book here to kiss and swear on. And in this book, the Son says,
'Swear not at all!' Now I say as the book says, and yet ye
imprison me. Why do ye not imprison the book?"
     The majority of Quakers who were imprisoned during the
twenty-five years following the Restoration were punished more
for the rejection of the Oath than for any other single reason.
It was naturally difficult for all the magistrates to make a fine
distinction between those who rejected the Oath because they
hated King Charles and those who rejected it because an oath of
any kind seemed to be an act of disobedience to the specific
command of Christ (Matt. 5:34-37) and a rejection of the single
standard of truthtelling, to which all sincere Christians should
adhere.

    In early 1662, the Quaker Act was passed. It penalized any
person who denied, or spoke against, the lawfulness of taking
oaths. It penalized Quakers for gathering in groups of five or
more for unauthorized worship. The penalty was five pounds for
the first offense, ten pounds or six months' imprisonment for the
second, and banishment for the third. In July 1664 the
Conventicle Act was passed, essentially the same as the Quaker
Act, but broadened to apply to religious dissenters generally. 
     Many Puritans and Baptists met secretly, or gathered around
tables with food and drink, so that if anyone came to arrest them
they could claim that they were simply holding a dinner party.
But the Quakers scorned such tactics, and publicly announced the
time and place of their meetings, which were held with the doors
open to the street, so that anyone might observe them. Richard
Baxter (see 15 June), a severe critic of the Quakers, wrote of
them:

               ...they were so resolute, and gloried in their
     constancy and sufferings, that they assembled openly...and
     were dragged away daily to the common gaol [jail], and yet
     desisted not, but the rest came the next day nevertheless,
     so that the gaol at Newgate was filled with them. Abundance
     of them died in prison, yet they continued their assemblies
     still! And the poor deluded souls would sometimes meet only
     to sit still in silence....Yea, many turned Quakers because
     the Quakers kept their meetings openly and went to prison
     for it cheerfully.

     A historian named Davies, in an article called "Quakers in
Essex" (sorry, that's all I've got) shows that the greatest
increase in Quaker membership in that county occurred precisely
during the times of fiercest persecution there. 

Professor Masson of Edinburgh, in his LIFE OF MILTON (vi. 587f),
writes: 
               No denomination so amazed and perplexed the authorities
     by their obstinacy as the Quakers. It was their boast that
     their worship, from its very nature, could not be stopped
     "by men or devils."
               ... In a meeting of Lutherans or Independents or
     Baptists or Socinians there is always some implement or set
     of implements on which all depends, be it the liturgy, the
     gown or surplice, the Bible or hourglass; remove these and
     make noise enough, and there can be no service. Not so with
     a Quaker meeting. There, men and women worship with their
     hearts, without implements, in silence as well as by speech.
     You may break in upon them, hoot at them, roar at them, drag
     them about; the meeting, if it is of any size, essentially
     still goes on till all the component individuals are
     murdered. Throw them out at the doors in twos and threes,
     and they but re-enter at the window and quietly resume their
     places. Pull their meeting house down, and they reassemble
     next day most punctually amid the broken walls and rafters.
     Shovel sand or earth down upon them, and there they sit, a
     sight to see, musing immovably amid the rubbish. This is no
     description from fancy; it was the actual practice of the
     Quakers all over the country. They held their meetings
     regularly, perseveringly, and without the least concealment,
     keeping the doors of their meeting houses purposely open so
     that all might enter, informers, constables, or soldiers,
     and do whatever they chose. In fact, the Quakers behaved
     magnificently. By their peculiar method of open violation of
     the law and passive resistance only, they rendered a service
     to the common cause of all the Nonconformist sects which has
     never been sufficiently acknowledged.

     Where all the men were arrested, the women continued the
meetings. Where all the men and all the women were arrested, the
children continued the meetings. During the first two years of
the Restoration, more than 3,000 Quakers were imprisoned. By
1689, 12,000 more had been in jail. More than 450 died there, and
about 50 more shortly after being released.

Brayshaw [slightly edited by JEK] writes:
               James Parnell... was arrested at Coggeshall in
     consequence of a disturbance which arose while he was
     disputing with a preacher. On a charge of causing a riot he
     was committed to Colchester jail and was imprisoned in a
     hole high in the castle wall. Being refused permission to
     draw up his food by means of a cord and basket, he used a
     ladder which stopped short six feet below his hole, and for
     the intervening space he was compelled to climb up and down
     a rope. At last, after eight months' imprisonment, owing to
     extreme cold, he slipped and fell to the stones below.
     Terribly injured, he was put into a lower hole which had no
     window. There, a few days later, he died on or before 11
     April 1656 at the age of nineteen, being with one exception
     the first Friend to die in prison.

In 1672 Charles II issued a Declaration of Indulgence suspending
the execution of the laws under which Roman Catholics and
Dissenters were being imprisoned. Opposition in Parliament forced
the cancellation of the Declaration within a year (largely
because the King was suspected of Roman Catholic leanings, and it
was thought that the Declaration was intended to pave the way for
a Roman Catholic takeover), but meanwhile many prisoners were set
free, and they were not automatically re-arrested. The list of
Quakers to be set free by Royal command included a few
non-Quakers, one of them John Bunyan, author of PILGRIM'S
PROGRESS, who had previously written attacking the Quakers, but
did not do so thereafter. 

In 1689, with William and Mary on the throne (and not suspected
of Roman Catholic leanings), Parliament passed the Toleration
Act, granting Friends and other non-conformists almost full
liberty. The Affirmation Act of 1722 released Quakers from the
requirement that they take oaths. After 1832 they were no longer
barred from holding public office.

$$$ MARY DYER AND COMPANIONS, MARTYRS

     Although many Quakers in the British Isles were imprisoned
under severe and life-shortening conditions, and some died in
prison, none were actually sentenced to death for their beliefs.
However, in the colony of Massachusetts <@ 42:10 N 72 W>, there
were executions.

     William and Mary Dyer, of Somerset <@ 51 N 3 W>, England,
moved to Massachusetts in 1635. In 1638, when Anne Hutchinson was
expelled from the colony for religious dissent, they went with
her to Rhode Island <@ 41:30 N 72:30 W>, a colony founded on the
principle of religious liberty. In 1650 they returned to England
and there became Quakers.

In 1656 two women Friends arrived at Boston with boxes of Quaker
literature. They were Ann Austin, mother of five children, and
Mary Fisher, twenty two years old. The colonists, who had heard
wild rumors from England about the Quakers, were alarmed. The
boxes of literature were seized to be burned, and the women
imprisoned. They were searched for marks of witchcraft at the
order of the Deputy-Governor, whose own sister-in-law had been
hanged as a witch a few months earlier. After five weeks, they
were put on an outbound ship. Two days after they left, nine more
Quakers came.... In 1657 the Dyers returned to New England. Also
in 1657, two male Quakers, William Robinson and Marmaduke
Stevenson, were arrested for trying to speak to the congregation
after the regular Sunday service. They were imprisoned for nine
weeks and whipped twice a week and then banished. A law was
passed, levying a fine of 100 pounds for bringing a Quaker into
the colony, and two pounds per hour for concealing or harboring a
Quaker. Any Quaker who returned from banishment was to lose an
ear each of the first two times he returned, and to have his
tongue bored through with a hot iron the third time.

     Mary Dyer visited Quakers in prison, and was banished from
the colony.
     In 1658 Robinson and Stevenson returned. At this, returning
after banishment was made a capital offense. In 1659, Mary Dyer
returned, and was sentenced to be hanged. On 27 October 1659, she
watched as Robinson and Stevenson were hanged, one after the
other. Then she was placed on the scaffold, and the noose was
fastened about her neck. She was then released and banished from
the colony, with a warning that she would be hanged if she
returned. She returned, and was arrested and sentenced to be
hanged, but was offered her life if she would promise to leave
the colony and not return. She refused, and said, as she walked
to the scaffold: 
               This is to me the hour of greatest joy I ever had in
     this world. No ear can hear, no tongue can utter, and no
     heart can understand the sweet incomes and the refreshings
     of the spirit of the Lord, which I now feel.

     She was hanged on Boston Common, 1 June 1660. A bystander
remarked, "She hangs there like a flag." The modern composer Ned
Rorem has written an organ piece called "Mary Dyer did hang like
a flag" in her memory (one of 11 pieces in his organ suite A
QUAKER READER). Mary Dyer was the only woman to die for the cause
of religious freedom in the American colonies.
     On 14 March 1661 one more Quaker was hanged. William Leddra,
in a small dark cell, chained to a log, wrote on the last day of
his life: 
               The sweet influences of the Morning Star like a flood,
     distilling into my habitation, have so filled me with the
     joy  of the Lord in the beauty of holiness that my spirit is
     as if it did not inhabit a tabernacle of clay, but is wholly
     swallowed up in the beauty of eternity from whence it had
     its being.... As the flowing of the ocean doth fill every
     creek and branch and then retires again toward its own being
     and fulness, leaving a savor behind, so doth the life and
     power of God flow into our hearts, making us partakers of
     the Divine nature. 

At the very moment when sentence was being pronounced on Leddra
there strode into court Wenlock Christison, who also had been
banished. Seeing him thus defy death, the magistrates were
"struck with a great damp." A few days later, when he too was
sentenced, he said:
               Do not think to weary out the living God by taking away
     the lives of His servants. What do you gain by it? For the
     last man you put to death, here are five come in his room.
     And if you have power to take my life from me, God can raise
     up the same principle of life in ten of his servants and
     send them among you in my room.

The magistrates, whether overawed by Christison's words or
fearing intervention from England, set Christison free, together
with other imprisoned Friends. Meanwhile, Quakers in England
pointed out to the King that the Massachusetts courts were
disallowing appeals to the Crown, and this smacked of rebellion.
Moved by their arguments, the King sent a Royal Mandamus to
Massachusetts, ordering that the imprisonments, executions, and
floggings should cease, and that the accused should be sent to
England for trial. The letter was given to Samuel Shattock, a
Quaker banished from Massachusetts and under sentence of death
should he return. The story of his arrival is told in the poem,
"The King's Missive," by John Greenleaf Whittier. (To read the
poem, link to www.kimopress.com and go to Whittier.)
     After this there were no more hangings, but, despite the
Royal decree, the floggings continued for several years.  Any
convicted Quaker was to be tied to a cart's tail, and made to
walk behind the cart all the way to the border of the colony,
being whipped at every step. In 1665 the London government
forbade further molesting of the Quakers in Massachusetts.

     In June 1658 Mary Fisher (mentioned above as one of the
first two Quakers who tried to preach in Massachusetts) visited
Adrianople in Turkey, and was granted an audience with the Sultan
(the 17-year-old Mohammed IV), to whom she preached at length. He
listened courteously, and invited her to stay and speak with him
further, but she went on to Constantinople, and eventually back
to England. (It is tempting to speculate on how the course of
history might have been different if she had stayed, and if the
Sultan and his family had become Quakers.)