Chapter II: First Visit to New England

“Why touch upon such themes?” perhaps some friend
May ask, incredulous; “and to what good end?
Why drag again into the light of day
The errors of an age long passed away?”
I answer: “For the lesson that they teach;
The tolerance of opinion and of speech.
Hope, Faith, and Charity remain—these three;
And greatest of them all is Charity.”

LONGFELLOW, _New England Tragedies_, Prologue to “Endicott.”

We owe to their heroic devotion the most priceless of our
treasures, our perfect liberty of thought and speech; and all
who love our country’s freedom may well reverence the memory of
those martyred Quakers, by whose death and agony the battle in
New England has been won.

BROOKE ADAMS, _Emancipation of Massachusetts_.

Fierce and cruel as was the persecution in England it was far exceeded by the tortures which awaited the first Quaker missionaries in the New World. Barely fifty years earlier the Pilgrim Fathers had left the homeland and gone forth into an unknown wilderness, there to establish freedom of worship; their descendants, by bitter persecution of the Quakers, demonstrated their failure—in spite of their own sufferings—to learn the lesson of religious toleration. The general attitude of those in authority in the Colonies is very well pourtrayed in the writings of the Rev. Mr. Ward, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1645: “It is said that men ought to have liberty of conscience and that it is _persecution_ to debar them of it. I can rather stand amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment that the brains of a man should be parboiled in such impious ignorance”; and, further, John Callender, writing in 1739, said that in 1637 “the true Grounds of Liberty of Conscience were not then known or embraced by any Sect or Party of Christians.”[37]

The early history of the New England Colony shows that, some years before the advent of the Quakers, religious differences had arisen amongst the Colonists, and a certain section of the community had not escaped persecution. Anne Hutchinson, a brave and intrepid woman, had boldly protested against what might almost be termed a purely theological religion and the extreme power which was of necessity vested in the priest, which was the basis of the Puritan faith. Dr. Rufus Jones states the differing points of view very clearly:[38]

The real issue, as I see it in the fragments that are
preserved, was an issue between what we nowadays call “religion
of the first-hand type,” and “religion of the second-hand
type,” that is to say, a religion on the one hand which insists
on “knowledge of acquaintance” through immediate experience,
and a religion on the other hand which magnifies the importance
and sufficiency of “knowledge about.”

Anne Hutchinson was arraigned before a General Court of all the ministers, held in Boston in 1637. She defended herself with great ability, but without avail, in fact it is very possible that such unusual temerity on the part of a woman may have been largely responsible for the severity of the sentence passed upon her, for she was condemned to banishment and declared excommunicate. As the exiled outcast woman passed sadly down the aisle, one Mary Dyer[39] joined her and went forth with her, thus taking the first step on that path of suffering which led, twenty-three years later, to the gallows on Boston Common. Anne Hutchinson, after sentence of exile had been pronounced, joined her friends. She had a very considerable following in the new Colony of Aquiday, or Aquidneck, now called Rhode Island, which later became for the persecuted Quakers a veritable “little Zoar,”[40] for these early settlers learned the lesson of religious toleration which was reflected in their laws.[41]

The King’s Commissioners, who visited the Colony about 1664, reported that in Rhode Island “all who desire it are admitted freemen. Liberty of conscience and worship is allowed to all who live civilly. They admitted all religions, even Quakers and Generalists, and is generally hated by other Colonies.”[42]

Not only was Rhode Island a city of refuge for the persecuted Quakers, but their message was sympathetically received by many in the Colony. Anne Hutchinson did not live to witness the sufferings of the Quakers, as she and several members of her family were murdered by the Indians in the autumn of 1643; her sister Katharine Scot,[43] however, early joined the new sect; she is described as “a Mother of many Children, one that had lived with her Husband, of an Unblameable Conversation, and a Grave, Sober, Ancient Woman, and of good Breeding, as to the Outward, as Men account.”[44] She came from Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston on hearing of the sentence passed on three young men who, for the crime of being Quakers, were condemned each to the loss of an ear; on account of her comments thereon she was cast into prison and received “Ten Cruel Stripes with a three-fold-corded-knotted-Whip,” and warned that “if she came thither again they were likely to have a law to hang her,” to which she replied: “If God call us, Wo be to us, if we come not; And I question not, but he whom we love, will make us not to count our Lives dear unto our selves for the sake of his Name.”[45] Truly she and her sister Anne Hutchinson came of heroic stock.

In 1656 the first Quaker preachers in the persons of Mary Fisher and Anne Austin[46] arrived at Boston. In consequence of the many wild rumours which had reached the Colony of the strange actions and teaching of the Quakers in England, they were detained on shipboard and their luggage searched for Quaker books or tracts. Several were found and these were ordered to be burned by the common executioner, and the women themselves were stripped and examined to see if they bore upon them marks which should prove them to be witches. They were detained in gaol for about five weeks and then deported again to Barbados. Their inhospitable reception did not in the least quench the missionary zeal of the early Friends, and very shortly after, eight more arrived on the shores of New England, who, after two days’ examination, were sent back to England by the ship on which they came. The authorities of Boston then passed a law inflicting a fine of £100 on any shipmaster who knowingly conveyed a Quaker to the Colonies. This law failed as a deterrent, many Quakers obtaining an entrance to the Colonies, and still fiercer became the persecution. A strengthening of the law was deemed necessary and it was further decreed:

What Quaker so ever shall arrive from foreign Parts or Parts
adjacent shall be forth with committed to the House of
Correction; and at their entrance to be severely whipp’d, and
by the master thereof to be kept constantly at Work, and none
suffered to speak or converse with them.—If any Person shall
knowingly Import any Quakers Books or Writings concerning their
Devilish opinions, shall pay for every such Book or Writing
the Sum of £5. who soever shall disperse or conceal any such
Book or Writing and it be found with him or her shall forfeit
or pay £5—and that if any Person within this Colony shall take
upon them to defend the Heretical opinions of the said Quakers
or any of their Books, &c., shall be fined for the first time
40/—If they shall persist in the same and again defend it the
second time £4.—If they shall again so defend they shall be
committed to the House of Correction till there be convenient
Passage to send them out of the Land, being sentenced by the
Court of Assistants to Banishment [1656].

This law was proclaimed by beat of drum before the house of Nicholas Upsall[47] who was rightly suspected of sympathy with the hated sect; he protested against the law and suffered banishment in consequence. In 1657 the law was again strengthened; and if a male Quaker, after he had once been banished, returned again to New England, he was to suffer the loss of one ear and to be kept in the House of Correction, and every woman was to be severely whipped and consigned to the same place. This law was to apply to “every Quaker arising from amongst ourselves” as well as to “Foreign Quakers.” Three men suffered the penalty of loss of their ears at Boston. Further laws were made and penalties inflicted for meeting together to worship God after the manner of Friends. In 1658, in addition to the penalties already inflicted, any of the “Sect of Quakers,” after a trial by a special Jury and conviction by same, were to be sentenced to death.

In spite of, or rather because of these harsh laws and the inhumanity with which they were administered, the Quaker community rapidly increased; thus we are told[48] that

these Violent and Bloody Proceedings so affected the
Inhabitants of Salem and so preached unto them, that divers
of them could no longer partake with those who mingled Blood
with their Sacrifices, but chusing rather Peace with God in
their Consciences, whose Witness in them testified against such
Worships, than to joyn with their persecutors, whatsoever they
might therefore suffer, withdrew from the Publick Assemblies,
and met together by themselves on the first Days of the Week,
Quiet and Peaceable in one anothers Houses waiting on the Lord.

The authorities quickly noticed these abstentions from public worship and warrants were issued under a law of 1646, the offenders being fined for non-attendance 5s. a week; and on a second examination, after the Clerk of the Court had perverted their explanation as to their belief in the doctrine of the Inward Light, three of their number—Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, with Josiah their son[49] (“all of a Family to terrifie the rest”) were sent to Boston, and there in the House of Correction were “caused to be Whipp’d in the coldest Season of the Year with Cords, as those afore, tho’ two of them were Aged People.”[50]

Many examples of the ferocity with which the Quakers were treated in the New England Colonies might be cited, yet so inspired were these early pioneers with the deep significance and importance of their message that they were compelled to brave the untried wilderness paths and surmount difficulties which we in these days might be tempted to deem insurmountable, in order to deliver it; women with their babes at the breast would not hesitate to undertake “a very sore Journey, and (according to Man) hardly accomplishable, through a Wilderness above Sixty Miles,” knowing that it led inevitably to stripes and bondage and possible death; yet in spite of all, we are told of one such that she was enabled to kneel down and pray in the spirit of the Master for the forgiveness of her cruel persecutors. This “so reached upon a Woman that stood by, and wrought upon her, that she gave Glory to God, and said that surely she could not have done that thing, if it had not been by the Spirit of the Lord.”[51]

The Quakers still continued boldly to preach, and persecution waxed fiercer and fiercer. The Chronicler says: “Their lives (as men) became worse than Death and as living Burials.” The offences for which Friends suffered so severely were of a most trivial character, such as non-attendance at Public Worship for which they had been previously fined, and for not removing their hats. In the event of their refusal to pay any fines which might be imposed they became liable under a law made on accounts of debts, by which it was permissible to sell those persons who refused or were unable to pay their fines “to any of the English Nations as Virginia or Barbadoes to Answer the said Fines.”

Worse was to follow—in June, 1659, William Robinson, of London, Merchant, and Marmaduke Stevenson, a country-man from East Yorkshire, under a religious concern, passed from Rhode Island to Boston, where with an aged man named Nicholas Davis[52] they were speedily imprisoned, Mary Dyer, who came from Rhode Island, sharing the same fate; there they remained until the sitting of the Court of Assistants, when they were sentenced to banishment, and should they be found within the Jurisdiction of the Court after the 14th of September following they were condemned to death. They were kept prisoners till the 12th of September. Mary Dyer and Nicholas Davis “found freedom to depart” out of the Province; but William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson “were constrained in the love and power of God not to depart,” so they passed out of prison to Salem and remained there and at Piscataway and the parts thereabouts in the service of the Lord. On the 13th of October they returned to Boston “that metropolis of Blood” as it was styled, and with them Alice Cowland, “who came to bring Linnen to wrap the dead bodies of them who were to suffer.” Several other Friends joined them and the Chronicler tells us: “These all came together in the Moving and Power of the Lord as one, to look your Bloody Laws in the Face,” and to accompany those who should suffer by them. Mary Dyer had returned also and on the 19th of the same month she, with William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, was condemned to death. On the 28th of the same month they were led forth to execution, by the back way, we are told, for the authorities were afraid “of the fore way lest it should affect the people too much.” Drums, too, were beaten, so that no words from the prisoners might be heard; we are told that they came “to the place of Execution Hand in Hand, all three of them as to a Weding-day, with great Chearfulness of Heart.” The two men were hanged, but Mary Dyer was reprieved at the last moment, by petition of her son, only to suffer the death penalty a few months later.

Yet another martyr was to seal his testimony with his blood—William Leddra, described as of Barbados but a native of Cornwall, was executed at Boston the 14th of March, 1660/61, under the law of banishment, who, before his final trial, had suffered much persecution and grievous cruelty. His beautiful and saintly nature is revealed in a letter written by him “To the Society of the little Flock of Christ,” dated from Boston prison the day before his execution; therein is no fierce denunciation of his persecutors, but words of consolation and hope to his sorrowing friends.[53]

A contemporary letter, printed in _New England Judged_, is extremely interesting as showing the unbiassed opinion given by an entire stranger of the sentence passed upon this saintly man. So moved was he by the scene at the execution that he was impelled to remonstrate with those in authority. The letter is from Thomas Wilkie to his friend, George Lad, “Master of the _America_, of Dartmouth, now at Barbados,” dated Boston, 26th of March, 1661. It is as follows:[54]

On the 14th of this Instant, here was one William Leddra, which
was put to Death. The People of the Town told me, He might go
away if he would: But when I made further Enquiry I heard the
Marshal say, That he was Chained in Prison, from the time he
was condemned, to the Day of his Execution. I am not of his
Opinion: But yet Truly me thought the Lord did mightily appear
in the Man.

I went to one of the Magistrates of Cambridge who had been
of the Jury that condemned him (as he told me himself) and I
asked him by what Rule he did it? He answered me, That he was
a Rogue, a very Rogue. But what is this to the Question (I
said) where is your Rule? He said, He had abused Authority.
Then I goes after the Man [William Leddra], and asked him,
Whether he did not look on it as a Breach of Rule, to slight
and undervalue Authority? And I said, That Paul gave Festus
the Title of Honour tho’ he was a Heathen (I do not say these
Magistrates are Heathens) I said then, when the Man was on the
Ladder, He looked on me, and called me Friend, and said, Know,
that this Day I am willing to offer up my Life, for the Witness
of JESUS. Then I desired leave of the Officers to speak, and
said, Gentlemen, I am a Stranger, both to your Persons and
Country, and yet a Friend to both: And I cried aloud, For
the Lord’s sake, take not away the Man’s Life; but remember
Gamaliel’s Counsel to the Jews, If this be of Man, it will come
to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot Overthrow it; But be
careful ye be not found Fighters against God. And the Captain
said, Why had you not come to the Prison? The Reason was,
Because I heard, the Man might go if he would; and therefore I
called him down from the Tree and said, Come down, William, you
may go away if you will. Then Captain Oliver said, It was no
such matter; And asked, What I had to do with it? And besides,
Bad me be gone. And I told them, I was willing; for I cannot
endure to see this, I said. And when I was in the Town, some
did seem to Sympathise with me in my Grief. But I told them,
That they had no Warrant from the Word of God, nor President
from our Country; nor Power from his Majesty, to Hang the Man.
I rest,

Your Friend,

THOMAS WILKIE.

A bold protest, boldly made; the Chronicler, to our regret, is silent as to the fate of the protester.

Soon after the Restoration, Charles II., “judging it necessary that so many remote Colonies should be brought under uniform inspection for their future regulation, security and improvement,” signed a Commission appointing thirty-five members of Privy Council, the nobility, gentry and merchants, a Council for Foreign Plantations. (_Calendar of State Papers Colonial_). Wide powers were vested in this Council, any five members were empowered to “inform themselves of the condition of Plantations and of the Commissions by which they were governed as well as to require from any Governor an exact account of the constitution of his laws and government, number of inhabitants and any information he was able to give.” The Commissioners were also “to provide learned and orthodox ministers to reform debaucheries of planters and servants and instruct natives and slaves in the Christian faith.” The first meeting was held 7th of January, 1661, when Committees were appointed for the several Plantations; attention was first directed to the New England Colonies, and information, petitions and relations of those who had been sufferers were laid before the Council. At a subsequent meeting held on 11th of March, 1661, Captain Thomas Breedon, who had returned from New England in 1660, appeared and reported as to conditions in Massachusetts Colony. He presented a book of the Laws of the Colony which were stated to be by patent from the King, but he had never seen the patent and did not know whether they acted in accordance with the same. “Distinctions between freemen and non-freemen, members and non-members, is as famous as Cavaliers and Roundheads was in England, and will shortly become as odious. The grievances of the non-members who are really for the King, and also some of the members, are very many.”

In Breedon’s report, too, we have symptoms of discontent and disaffection—heralds of the storm which a hundred years later broke, and severed for ever the American Colonies from the mother-land. He continues:

They look on themselves as a free state, they sat in Council
December last, a week before they could agree in writing to
His Majesty, there being so many against owning the king or
having any dependence on England. Has not seen their petition
but questions their allegiance to the King, because they have
not proclaimed him, they do not act in his name, and they do
not give the act [? oath] of allegiance, but force an oath of
fidelity to themselves and their Governor as in the Book of
Laws.

That there was considerable doubt in the minds of those in authority in New England as to the manner in which the news of their high-handed and ferocious persecution of the Quakers would be received by the Home Government is evident from a letter written by Captain John Leverett, London Agent for Massachusetts, to Governor Endicott and the General Court, 13th of September, 1660. After some discourse on other matters he continues:

Yᵉ Quakers I hear have been with yᵉ King concerning your
putting to death those of theyr Frᵈˢ executed at Boston. Yᵉ
general vogue of people is yᵗ a Govʳ will be sent over. Other
rumours yʳᵉ are concerning you, but I omit yᵐ, not knowing how
to move & appeare at Court on your behalf. I spoke to Lᵈ Say &
Sele to yᵉ Eˡ of Manchester &c.

Yʳˢ in all faithfulness to serve you,

JOHN LEVERETT.

Some Quakers say yᵗ they are promised to have order for yᵉ
liberty of being with you.

News of the sufferings of Friends in New England had indeed reached their Friends in the old country; Edward Burrough[55] had obtained audience of the King and represented in powerful though simple language the story of their inhuman treatment. His appeal resulted in the issue of a Mandamus by the King, dated Whitehall, 9th day of September, 1661, to John Endicott, and the Governors of the other Colonies,[56] commanding that all Quakers condemned to death or imprisoned should be sent to England for trial; Edward Burrough urged that this order should be sent with all speed, but the King objected, in his usual spirit of procrastination, that he had “no occasion at present to send a ship thither.” Burrough, however, was given permission to send the Mandamus by the hand of a messenger of his own choosing; he at once decided that Samuel Shattuck,[57] of Salem, a Quaker exile from the Colony, should return as the bearer of the King’s message. English Friends at once chartered a vessel belonging to Ralph Goldsmith,[58] himself a Quaker. After a tempestuous voyage of six weeks the vessel reached the American shore. As she lay anchored in Boston Harbour one Sunday morning in October, 1661, Captain Oliver,[59] a Boston official, boarded her, and on his return to the town it is said he reported: “There is Shattock and the Devil and all.” The Mandamus was delivered in person by Samuel Shattuck to Governor Endicott and the immediate result was that, shortly after, many Quaker prisoners were set at liberty.[60] Whittier, in his poem, _The King’s Missive_, gives us a beautiful word picture of the incident and its setting; one can imagine how the weary prisoners “paused on their way to look on the martyr graves by the Common side,” and how surpassingly lovely the landscape seemed to eyes so long accustomed to the gloom of the prison-house for

The autumn haze lay soft and still
On wood and meadow and upland farms,

and

Broad in the sunshine stretched away,
With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay;
And over water and dusk of pines
Blue hills lifted their faint outlines.

And with awe and deep humility we can enter in some faint degree into their silent yet fervent thanksgiving for “the great deliverance God had wrought,” and ah! how vividly we can picture how

Through lane and alley the gazing town
Noisily followed them up and down;
Some with scoffing and brutal jeer,
Some with pity and words of cheer.

Into the heat of this persecution Elizabeth Hooton with her companion, Joan Brocksopp,[61] had ventured. They suffered imprisonment in Boston prison on account of visiting Friends confined there, and were liberated with twenty-five others, after the receipt of John Leverett’s warning letter to Governor Endicott and the General Court.

But we will let Elizabeth Hooton give the story of her call to the service, her journeyings and the hardships she endured on the American Continent, in her own words:[62]

This is to lay before freinds or all where it may come of the
sufferings & persecutions which we suffered in newe England J
Elizabeth Hooton have tasted on by the prefessours of Boston &
Cambridge, who call themselves Jndependants who fled from the
bishops formerly, which have behaved themselves, worse then
the bishops did to them by many degries, making the people
of God to suffer much more then ever they did by the bishops
which causeth their name to stink all over the world becaus of
cruelty.

Jn yᵉ year 1661 it was upon me from the Lord & my freind Joan
Broksopp [_paper rubbed at crease and writing illegible_] for
God & his people to those people in the heate of persecution,
& if God required us to lay down our lives for the testimony
of Jesus & in love to their soules, not knowing but what they
might heare & so be saved yᵗ they might be left without excuse
& God might have his glory & we cleare of their bloud if they
would not heare: ane old woman above three score yeares old
when J went thither & my companion, but they had made a lawe
of a hunder pounds fine to evry ship yᵗ caried a quaker & to
cary them back againe, so yᵗ no ship would cary us from England
thither, but we took ship to Virginia, & when we came there
many ships denied us, & therfore we knew nothing but to goe by
land which was a dangerous voyage, yet God was pleased to order
us a way by a Katch to carie us a part of the way, & so we went
the rest by land.[63]

When we came to Boston after a hard passage then there was no
house to receive us as we knewe of by reason of their fines,
yet did we venture in the night to a woman friends house where
when we were gotten in, it pleased the Lord yᵗ we stayed yᵉ
night by reason yᵗ the tyde did rise so speedily as we could
not get a way, & so we went away in the morning to prison to
visit freinds; but the Jaylour & his wife being filled full
of cruelty, they would not let us come neare to the prison to
see our freinds, but haled us away & he went to the Governour
Jndicot & brought us before him, & many questions he asked us,
to which the Lord inabled us to answer, but a mittimus he made
to cary us to the Goale; for if any called quakers came into
yᵗ country yᵗ was crime enough to commit us to prison without
any just offence of lawe, & four of our freinds was hanged upon
yᵗ same act of their own making for if they shall ask if they
be quaker, & if they own it then yᵗ was crime enough to hange
them: One of them called William Leathry [Leddra] was hanged
since the king came to England & he saide yᵗ he would appeale
to the Lawes of Old England, he was hanged; & another[64] he
did appeale to the generall Court of Boston he was reprieved
though once condemned with the other yᵗ was hanged:

Allso they put 29 of us into prison at Boston till the generall
Court did sit there, & when they sat in their Court they did
call severall Juries upon us, wherby some were condemned to
be hanged, some to be whipt at the carts taille, & some to be
kept into prison, till they should resolve how to dispose of
us; but another Jury after yᵗ was called which did condemne
us to be banished to the French Jland, but yᵗ did not hold &
after yᵗ they called another Jury which condemned us all to be
driven out of their Jurisdiction by men & horses armed with
swords & staffes & weapons of warre who went alonge with us
neire two dayes journey in the willdernes, & there they left us
towards the night amongst the great rivers & many wild beasts
yᵗ useth to devoure & yᵗ night we lay in the woods without any
victualls, but a fewe biskets yᵗ we brought with us which we
soaked in the water, so did the Lord help & deliver us & one
caried another through the waters & we escaped their hands.

And their lawes were broken, & yᵗ which they intendet against
us it may fall upon themselves, & was a deliverance never to be
forgotten praises be to the Lord for ever & ever & now their
Lawes being broken & we delivered, for the terrour of the Lord
did so seise upon them when we were in prison at the time of
the Court, they were distressed both night & day as Caen was
when he had Slaine his brother & they raised up all their
souldiers about in the country to defend themselves against us
that intended them no hurt, so did we come to Providence & Rhod
Jland where was appointed by freinds a generall meeting[65] for
New England where we were abundantly refreshed one with another
for the space of a week, so yᵗ the persecutors of Boston &
professors there were tormented because of innocent blood which
they had shed they thought ane army was comming against them
wᶜʰ was no other then yᵉ feare yᵗ surprised yᵉ hypocrite, yᵉ
wrath of yᵉ Lord exceedingly seised upon them while we were
kept in prison.

So we tooke shipping & went to Barbados & afterwards was moved
to returne to New Englᵈ againe, through much of this country we
went amonst ffriends & then was moved to goe to Boston againe
& cry through yᵉ towne, after yᵉ Lawe was broken, & then yᵉ
Constable tooke hold of us to carry me to yᵉ ship & yᵉ wicked
officer said it was their delight & could rejoice to follow us
to yᵉ execution as much as ever they did, in wᶜʰ ship we did
both of us Returne to England. & yᵉ bloud-thirsty men stopped
in their desires blessed be yᵉ Lord for ever & for ever.

Two contemporary letters to Margaret Fell[66] give us a glimpse of the travellers in Barbados. Joan Brocksopp, writing from that island, 9th of August, 1661, says:[67] “We came here about A week since. We expect to Returne thether [Boston] agayne. Elizabeth Houtton dearly saluts thee.”

Ann Clayton,[68] writing also from Barbados under the same date, says:[69]

I shall pas towards New England as soon as Conuenient
opertunity p̄sents, and Jeane Brocksopp hath thoughts of going
with mee, for she sayth shee is not yet Cleare of that Place, &
its like Elizabeth Houton may Returne againe alsoe. Theyer Law
is bad, but yᵉ Powre of yᵉ Lord is sufisient, hee alone p̄serue
vs in it to trust that hee may haue yᵉ whole prayes of his owne
worke, and be sanctified in all our Harts Amen.

A. C.

An account of Elizabeth Hooton and her companion’s sufferings and the perils they passed through is given in _New England Judged_, but this account somewhat lacks the vivid touches of the autobiographical narrative given above. In the following words the travellers conclude the record of their experiences:[70]

Now ffriends as yᵉ Lord hath delivʳed us from yᵉ first sore
travell that yᵉ hands of those bloud thirsty men could not
prevaile to take away oʳ lives, but we came home againe unlookt
for of many yᵗ we should ever returne so safelie because yᵉ
heate of persecution ranged over yᵉ Nations, & an ill savour &
example they set forth wᶜʰ strengthned yᵉ hands of yᵉ wicked
in all those Countries as Virginia & Mariland, & over all yᵉ
Dutch plantations, thinking to have rooted out yᵉ Truth & its
Children.

Joan Brocksopp, too, adds her testimony, and in her _Lamentation for New England_ writes:[71]

Oh how doth my Soul pity you, ye Rulers of Boston, that ever
ye should be so ignorant of your own Salvation, to turn the
truth of our God into a ly, and put his Servants to death when
he sent them among you to warn you.... Oh ye Rulers of Boston,
my heart is made sad when I remember your condition and your
state, how you are found out of the ways of God against your
own soules.... And say not but that you were warned in your
Life time by one who is a true Lover of the Seed of God, known
unto the World by the Name of

JONE BROOKSOP

The 4 Month 1662.

And so at length after many hairbreadth escapes, “Elizabeth,” in the words of the old Chronicler, “having also suffered for her Testimony to the Truth returned to old England and abode some space of time at her own Habitation.”[72]

A perilous journey for two women, neither of them young, to undertake, and one marvels at the high courage and faith, and the deep sense of the guiding hand of God, which sent them forth “looking death in the face” to deliver the message of their Lord.