"he would appear in the jailer's behalf." But the Lord appeared wonderfully to raise up this His servant, and heal his body beyond expectation; and ye appeared, when ye could do nothing else, to justify the action; which, when blood was like to lie upon you, ye would have cast upon the jailer, who did but execute your wills. But now life appearing in William, ye rose likewise and ordered, viz., your governor, and deputy-governor, and Rawson, your secretary, a chief instigator of all this cruelty, "that the Quakers in prison be whipped twice a week if they refused to work, and the first time to add five stripes to the former ten, and each time to add three to them," that is, to the fifteen, and so forwards, the stripes should be increased by the times of whipping. Which order ye sent to the jailer, to strengthen his hands to do yet more cruelly, he being somewhat weakened by the fright of his former doings, which order he executed, as will by and by appear. And because the jailer was under the censure of the people, ye in cool blood, and after all this cruelty and the noise thereof, proclaimed by your papers, when you were afraid William Brend would not have lived, "Ordered, that each time the jailer should warn two constables of the town to see the execution," which order he read to the prisoners the Seventh day of the week, and told them, "it should be executed on the Second day of the week following;" and which, on the Second-day, he accordingly executed on them with much cruelty, viz., Humphry Norton, John Rouse, William Leddra, and Thomas Harris, of Barbadoes, fifteen cruel lashes a-piece, laid on with the threefold corded whip, as aforesaid, so adding five to the first number of ten. Which bloody cruelty so affected the inhabitants of Boston, to see new stripes on the old sores, and some of the old sores were upon them when they came to be whipped a second time, who were whipped a fortnight before, I say, it so moved them, that they paid the charge required for them, which was about six or seven pounds, as they usually did as to all that were in prison, that they might be set free. But this you added and did, that it might be made appear how ye were one with and approved of the jailer's deed, and the hand of the Lord was in it; to suffer it to be so; though, because of the cry of the people, and the fear of blood, ye seemed to the contrary. This is another experiment of the penalty inflicted, which, you say, "proved insufficient." But as for the inhabitants then in prison, upon whom ye made this law as on strangers, without distinction, and executed on the strangers, though made after they were prisoners; and notwithstanding they sent you a paper, wherein they declared, "That they could not work for you, or hire conduct," the cause for which ye detained them in prison, they having before suffered your law,-yet ye made them suffer more cruelly for coming into the country than for the breach of your law; for that it was against their consciences, having not broken or transgressed any law of God, or wholesome law of the English nation; yet to the inhabitants, though they made ready their backs for the post, and were putting off their clothes to receive the like as their brethren, ye then did nothing. And now as to them, viz., Samuel Shattock, Lawrence Southwick, Cassandra his wife, Josiah their son, Samuel Gaskin, and Joshua Buffum,-whom I have been constrained promiscuously to touch at, because they have been intermixed with others in their sufferings, they were at a meeting, with as many more of their neighbours and friends as made up twenty, or upwards, at Nicholas Phelps' house, about five miles off Salem, in the woods, with the said two Friends, William Brend and William Leddra, waiting on the Lord; unto which came one Butter, a bloody man, one of your own commissioners, and a constable with him; and Butter required them to assist the Constable, a most unreasonable demand, those two being their friends, and they all in the same condition, which, they refusing, he went his way, after using the strangers with some violence. But the next week he gave their names into the Court, who-for so small a mattercaused them to be apprehended, and kept imprisoned in a neighbour's house two days, till the latter end of their session, and then had the aforesaid persons before them, accusing them "of being absent from their public meetings, and of meeting by themselves and with their enemies." So they accounted the servants of the Lord, who, being moved of the Lord, came in love to thein, and their great business was to prove them such as are called Quakers. It was demanded by one of them, "How they might know a Quaker?" Simon Bradstreet, one of the magistrates, answered, "Thou art one, for coming in with thy hat on." He replied, "It was a horrible thing to make such cruel laws, to whip, cut off ears, and burn through the tongue, for not putting off the hat." Then they charged them with blasphemy, and said, "That they held forth blasphemies at their meetings." One of them desired them "to make any such thing appear, if it were so, and that they might be convinced;" and told them, "they might do well to send some to their meetings, that they might hear, and give an account of what was done and spoken, and not conclude of a thing they knew not." Major-general Dennison, of whose cruelty I have much to say in this relation, said, "If ye meet together and say anything, we may conclude that ye speak blasphemy." A bad speech from a judge, whose place it is not to accuse any either truly or falsely, much less to draw unrighteous conclusions from his own spirit, and then to prosecute them without law or equity, as hath been the manner of this Dennison and of others so to do, but to judge according as witness doth present, Secundum allegata et probata, according to the things alledged and proved, as is the law of England. So to prison they were had, and the next morning sent away to Boston, viz., those six as aforesaid, that were inhabitants, and the said two strangers, as felons and murderers, and there put into the House of Correction apart from the two strangers, whom the jailer had put into the common jail and in a close room, that they might not come together, and this in the heat of Summer, the season of the year for them to follow their husbandry and tillage. The warrant bore date July 1, 1658. And, indeed, these cruel proceedings so sunk down into the hearts of many of Salem, that they withdrew more and more from your public meetings, though they knew they should suffer; upon which the Court sentenced "them to pay five shillings a week each that absented," by an old law made in 1646, as aforesaid, which they cruelly extorted; as they did the other fines of "forty L shillings each hour's entertaining of such a one as ye call a Quaker; and ten shillings a time for being at meetings of their own," with the rest of the penalties as occasion presented; yea, even for the women, whose husbands came to your meetings, to the value of some scores of pounds from first to last, to wit: On the poor inhabitants of Salem, whose cattle ye let them keep all the hard Winter till the Spring, that so they might consume their own fodder, and then took them, with other acts of cruelty too long to mention. So that, what by long and sore imprisonments from their houses, callings, business, and relations in the heat of Summer and the cold of Winter, and cruel whippings, beatings, fines, amercements, searchings, huntings, and such like, as I shall show more particularly by and by, their lives, as men, became worse than death and as living burials, though they thought not anything too much, nor their lives too dear, as anon will be made manifest, for the Truth and the testimony of it. The next day, after W. Brend was so used and laid for dead, Humphry Norton, on whom the sense of blood lay much, with his friend, John Rouse, came to Boston, where, in your meetinghouse on your lecture-day, notwithstanding the cry of the town on your cruelty and blood; and some speaking to the said Humphry, that if he loved his life, he should depart the town, for otherwise he was but a dead man; they having been looking for him some months, which could not hinder them, such was the sense and weight upon them they appeared; and having heard the grave uttering her voice, and death feeding death, through your painted sepulchre, John Norton; Humphry Norton stood up and said, after the other had ended, "Verily this is the sacrifice which the Lord God accepts not; for, whilst ye preach, and pray, and sing with the same spirit that ye sin, that sacrifice is an abomination to the Lord." Whereupon, yea, before he had spoken out all these words, but all those words he spake, he was haled down, and, in the same fury, both of them brought before you, and ye charged H. Norton with blasphemy for those words which he had spoken. They spake to you, "to act according to the law of God, or the wholesome laws of the English nation, and spare them not:" but neither of these would ye observe. Then they appealed to England, to be tried there, which they did once and again, thereby to leave you without excuse; but neither would ye yield to this, but slighted and disregarded their such appeal; your governor and deputy-governor with one voice saying, "No appeal to England! No appeal to England!" with other words of derision, and sentenced them forthwith to be whipped, though charged with blasphemy. And to John Rouse ye gave smooth words, seeking to ensnare him, because of your knowledge of his father, Lieutenant-colonel Rouse, of Barbadoes, who had formerly lived among you, of whom some of you then spoke. But heknowing your deceit and wickedness, and cruel usage of the innocent, and your seeking, by close rooms and denial of food for several days together, to consume and strangle them-required, in the audience of the people, convenient food for their money, or otherwise, if they perished, their blood would be upon you." This ye could not well deny before the people, who had heard much of your cruelty in this kind, and who were likely to have risen up against you, if ye had denied it; so ye granted this when ye could not help it, to the breaking of your own law. But the Seventh day of the week following, this being the Fifth, you broke their bodies, in revenge thereof, with ten cruel stripes each, according to your wonted cruelty; and then offered them to depart, "if they would hire a convoy." They not doing which, you detained them there the week following, and then whipped them fifteen stripes each, by the law aforesaid, with the same cruelty as before, "of five to be added to the ten, and, to the five, three each time they should be whipped, and to be whipped twice a-week" upon their old sores, with the rest of their brethren of whom I have spoken. Now, about three weeks after the said Court at Salem, the Court sat again, at which several of the inhabitants were presented for not coming to meetings, and the law read for five shillings a-week for them as should refuse so to do, which you exacted when you pleased; but as for the six persons aforesaid, they were continued still in your prison at Boston, and no course taken for their re 1 |