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PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

"Exasperated," says Grahame, "by the repetition and increase of these enormities, and the extent to which the contagion of their radical principle was spreading in the colony, the magistrates of Massachusetts, at length, in the close of this year, introduced into the assembly a law, denouncing the punishment of death upon all Quakers returning from banishment. This legislative proposition was opposed by a considerable party of the colonists; and various individuals, who would have hazarded their own lives to extirpate the opinions of the Quakers, solemnly protested against the cruelty and iniquity of shedding their blood. It was at first rejected by the assembly; and finally adopted by the narrow majority of a single voice. In the course of the two following years, this barbarous law was carried into execution on three separate occasions when four Quakers, three men and a woman, were put to death at Boston. It does not appear that any one of these unfortunate persons had been guilty of the outrages which the conduct of their brethren in general had associated with the profession of Quakerism. Oppressed by the prejudice which had been created by the frantic conduct of others, they were adjudged to die for returning from banishment and continuing to preach the Quaker doctrines. In vain the court entreated them to accept a pardon on condition of abandoning for ever the colony from which they had been repeatedly banished. They answered by reciting the heavenly call to continue there, which on various occasions, they said, had sounded in their ears, in the fields and in their dwellings, distinctly syllabling their names, and whispering their prophetic office and the scene of its exercise. When they were conducted to the scaffold, their demeanour evinced the most inflexible zeal and courage, and their dying declarations breathed in general the most elevated and affecting piety. These executions excited much clamour against the government many persons were offended by the representation of the opinions in which they might have originated, could have escaped the heavy imputation of punishing errors of opinion with death. Unfortunately, in this respect they were not in advance of the age in which they lived.

TRIAL OF CHRISTISON.

221 severities against which the establishment of the colony itself seemed intended to bear a perpetual testimony; and many were touched with an indignant compassion for the sufferings of the Quakers, that effaced all recollection of the strong disgust which the principles of these sectaries had heretofore inspired. The people began to flock in crowds to the prisons, and load the unfortunate Quakers with demonstrations of kindness and pity. The magistrates at first attempted to combat the censure they had provoked, and published a vindication of their proceedings, for the satisfaction of their fellowcitizens and of their friends in other countries, who united in blaming them; but at length the rising sentiments of humanity and justice attained such general and forcible prevalence as to overpower all opposition. On the trial of Leddra, the last of the sufferers, another Quaker, named Wenlock Christison, who had been banished with the assurance of capital punishment in case of his return, came boldly into court with his hat on, and reproached the magistrates with shedding innocent blood. He was taken into custody, and soon after brought to trial. Summoned to plead to his indictment, he

222

RELEASE OF CHRISTISON.

desired to know by what law the court was authorized to put him on the defence of his life. When the last enactment against the Quakers was cited to him, he asked who empowered the provincial authorities to make that law, and whether it was not repugnant to the jurisprudence of England? The governor very inappositely answered, that an existing law in England appointed Jesuits to be hanged. But Christison replied, that they did not even accuse him of being a Jesuit, but acknowledged him to be a Quaker, and that there was no law in England that made Quakerism a capital offence. The court, however, overruled his plea, and the jury found him. guilty. When sentence of death was pronounced upon him, he desired his judges to consider what they had gained by their cruel proceedings against the Quakers. "For the last man that was put to death," said he "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, that you may have torment upon torment."

The magnanimous demeanour of this man, who seems to have been greatly superior in understanding to the bulk of his sectarian associates, produced an impression which could not be withstood. The law now plainly appeared to be unsupported by public consent, and the magistrates hastened to interpose between the sentence and its execution. Christison, and all the other Quakers who were in custody, were forthwith released and sent beyond the precincts of the colony; and as it was impossible to prevent them from returningonly the minor punishments of flogging and reiterated exile were employed. Even these were gradually relaxed in proportion as the demeanour of the Quakers became more quiet and orderly; and in the year after the restoration of Charles II., the infliction of flogging was suspended by a letter from the king to Governor Endicott, and the other magistrates of the New England settlements, requiring that no Quakers should thenceforward undergo any corporeal punishment in America; but if charged with offences that might seem to

GROWTH OF THE COLONIES.

223

deserve such severity, they should be remitted for trial to England. Happily the moderation of the provincial government was more steady and durable than the policy of the king, who retracted his interposition in behalf of the Quakers in the course of the following year.

The persecution which was thus happily closed had not been equally severe in all the New England states: the Quakers suffered most in Massachusetts and Plymouth, and comparatively little in Connecticut and New Haven. It was only in Massachusetts that the inhuman law inflicting capital punishment upon them was ever carried into effect. At a subsequent period, the laws relating to "vagabond Quakers" were so far revived, that Quakers disturbing religious assemblies, or violating public decency, were subjected to corporeal chastisement. But little occasion ever again occurred of executing these severities; the wild excursions of the Quaker spirit having generally ceased, and the Quakers gradually subsiding into a decent and orderly submission to all the laws except such as related to the militia and the support of the clergy; in their scruples as to which, the provincial legislature, with corresponding moderation, consented to indulge them.

During the long period that had now elapsed since the commencement of the civil war in Britain, the New England provinces have continued to evince a steady and vigorous growth, in respect both of the numbers of their inhabitants, and the extent of their territorial occupation. The colonists were surrounded with abundance of cheap and fertile land, and secured in the enjoyment of that ecclesiastical estate which was the object of their supreme desire, and of civil and political freedom. They were exempted from the payment of all taxes except for the support of their internal government, which was administered with great economy; and they enjoyed the extraordinary privilege of importing commodities into England free from all the duties which other importers were obliged to pay. By the favour of Cromwell, too, the ordinances by which the Long Parliament had restricted their

224

ARRIVAL OF WHALEY AND GOFFE.

commerce were not put in force; and they continued to trade wherever they pleased. Almost all the peculiar circumstances which had thus combined to promote the prosperity of New England during the suspension of monarchy, contributed proportionally to overcast the prospects awakened by the Restoration.

There were the strongest reasons to expect an abridgement of commercial advantages, and to tremble for the security of religious and political freedom. Other circumstances combined to retard the recognition of the royal authority in New England. On the death of Cromwell, the colonists had been successively urged to recognise, first his son Richard as Protector, afterwards the Long Parliament, which for a short time resumed its ascendency, and subsequently the Committee of Safety, as the sovereign authority in England. But, they had prudently declined to commit themselves by positive declaration. In the month of July, a vessel, on board of which were Generals Whaley and Goffe, two of the late king's judges, arrived with news of the restoration of Charles II.; but no official communication of this event was received; and England was represented as being in an unsettled condition. Massachusetts had no inducement to imitate Virginia in a premature declaration for the king; and while farther intelligence was anxiously expected, Whaley and Goffe were permitted to find shelter in the province.*