Thus I have given an account of what the hand of the Lord hath brought to pass here by the king, as His arm had wrought with you to give a little breathing to His innocent servants, who bore testimony to His name and "loved not their lives unto the death," for whom He hath provided a crown of life; who have been faithful unto His name, and through great tribulation have entered into the kingdom of God; for whom He hath provided a dwelling-place, and a city which shall never have end; whose portion is with the Lord, who is the lot of their inheritance, though you have cast them out of your jurisdiction, and suffered some of them not to live amongst men. I shall now proceed to the consequence of your wills, which, notwithstanding what hath been related, you have exercised at your pleasure, to the sore suffering of the innocent; therefore, attend to your charge, and hear what I have further to say unto you in reference to the cruelties you have exercised, with a hard heart and cruel hand, on the people of the Lord, which are as follows: A little before the sitting of your Court aforesaid, George Wilson being within your town of Boston, (who afterwards in cruel irons, which rotted his flesh, and long imprisonment, departed this life in Virginia, for his testimony to the Lord,) ye laid hold on him; and because, as he was brought to your prison, he cried out in the street as he passed along, "That the Lord was coming with fire and sword to plead with Boston," and about that time the General Meeting was set up at Rhode Island, about sixty miles from Boston, you raised an alarm that the Quakers were gathering together to kill the people and to fire the town of Boston, when he only spoke of the judgments of the Lord that were coming upon you, and who with his friends, called Quakers, met at Rhode Island to wait upon the Lord, and to see the faces of one another. Yet, see how guilt pursued you, as the Scripture saith, "The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth," and you set watch and ward upon the passages by sea and land into your town, as if these poor people sought your blood, whose blood you had drawn and pursued, and who had greatly suffered; they left their sufferings to the Lord, and committed their cause unto Him. Thus like Cain, after he had slain his brother Abel, who thought that every one who met him would kill him, so you, having slain your innocent brethren, thought that every one would kill you; which was but a demonstration that you were of Cain, your father, and that the like guilt pursued you as it did him. The issue will prove, that not the people called Quakers, but your own wickedness, because of what you have done to those people, will be your ruin. So you drove the innocent through three of your towns, as a butcher doth a flock of sheep, into the howling wilderness. And old Nicholas Upshall, of whom I have made mention in the former treatise, who was an ancient man, having no teeth to eat his food, you sentenced to imprisonment in the Castle, or his brother's house, in Dorchester; who, having been banished by you for five years and imprisoned for two years, hath since laid down the body in a good old age, which he finished with a crown of glory and renown. And this shall be a memorial for him from generation to generation, and a record of the cruelty which you exercised upon him for his faithfulness unto the Lord. I shall now come to speak of your Cart-and-Whip Act, and what thereupon followed to the servants of the Lord. Not long after, John Smith and his wife, of Salem, determined to return to their home, from which they had been kept nearly two years by you in prison; she, falling sick, often fainted on the way. As she was driven by you through Boston, being very sick and weak, and leaning on a staff, Bellingham, your deputy-governor, met with them, and was so far from pity or remorse, or of having compassion toward her, that he committed them both to prison again, notwithstanding your former sentence to the contrary.. Not long after, John Chamberlain, of Boston, and George Wilson returned to Boston, whom you took hold of and sentenced, according to your new law, to be tied to a cart-tail and whipped through three towns into the wilderness,-which sentence your executioner most cruelly performed at Boston. George Wilson, being loosed, fell on his knees and prayed, which the executioner perceiving, he took hold of George by the collar and pulled him down. Then your executioner had them through the other two towns, and whipped them as in the former, saving that at the last town he had got such a cruel instrument, that he miserably tore their flesh therewith,-which they would have bought and sent to England for the novelty of the cruelty, but the executioner would not part with it, but drove them into the wilderness. This John Chamberlain was convinced at the tree, when you so barbarously shed the blood of William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, on the 27th of the Eighth month, 1659, and by the 9th of the Seventh month, 1661, he had been nine times thus dealt withal by you, namely, three times through three towns, after this cruel manner. But all that you could do was so far from beating him from the Truth, that it drove him nearer to it, and carried him through his sufferings with cheerfulness. Now, before I proceed further, I must give you to understand how you used Josiah Southwick,-whose father and mother, Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, you had banished, and who died within a few days; one after the other, in their banishment, being ancient people and sometime of your profession,-whose brother and sister, Daniel and Provided Southwick, you ordered to be sold for bondslaves, for the payment of their fines, so oppressing a man and his heritage. This Josiah* being also sentenced unto banishment, upon pain of death, in the Third month, 1659, with Samuel Shattock and Nicholas Phelps, who were in the same condemnation, went to England, there to lay your cruelties to the innocent before the then Parliament and their Council of State, that, not being ignorant of your work, it might lie to their score if they restrained you not. But their ears were not open as they should have been, for the helping of those who had no helper on the earth, and the relieving of the innocent; so their day went Josiah Southwick being banished on pain of death in Oliver Cromwell's days, went with Samuel Shattock and Nicholas Phelps over to England. Bradstreet called this prosecution, not persecution, when the said Daniel Southwick told him of his violence in that particular. over them, as it was written* unto them in the Name of the Lord that it should. So, with the other two, he stayed until some time after the king's return, and, when opportunity presented, he and Nicholas Phelps returned on the edge of your law, upon pain of death; but Nicholas being weak in body, after some time died, and Josiah being found by you in Boston, where he manfully appeared in the face of your law, you clapped him into the House of Correction for about the space of nine weeks. Then your Court of Assistants being come together, in the Seventh month, 1661, you had him before you, at which, according to your former law, he should have been tried for his life. But the great occasion you took against him was his hat, which you commanded him to take off. He told your governor, "He could not." You said, "He would not." He told you, "It was a cross to his will to keep it on, and that what he had done on that account was out of tenderness of conscience, and that he could not do it for conscience' sake." At this you wondered; but, seeing that his life lay at stake for it, you might well have judged he would not, if a greater thing did not constrain him, hazard his life for want of putting off his hat. For the keeping on of the hat you make the discrimination of a Quaker, and a Quaker coming into your jurisdiction, and being of yourselves so and so, and suffering the first, second, and third time, &c., he must die for it, and so you put several to death. This is no forcing upon you, but what your law speaks in broad letters; for you have not convicted them of principle or practice contrary to godliness, but of being Quakers, and that they are such, you say, the hat discovers, and so you take away their lives. Much reasoning had Josiah with you, it being a ridiculous thing that men of understanding should stumble at a hat, seeing it is part of a man's covering, as other garments are; yet you must have off the hat, who believe not, and that for your honour, not knowing the honour that cometh from God, which reacheth the heart. For "how can ye believe, who receive honour one of * See the book entitled "The Warnings of the Lord to the Men of this Generation," &c., page 32. another," said the Son of God, "and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?"-John v. 44. Much reasoning he had with you thereabouts, and your unjust dealings with him were laid open, which you could not gainsay; but your governor told him, "That he was to have been tried for his life, but that you had made your late law for to save his life, which was," you said, "a mercy to him." Then he asked you, "Whether you were not as good to take his life now as to whip him, after your manner, twelve or fourteen times at a cart-tail through your towns, and then put him to death afterward?" as was the consequence of your law; which so marred the clamour of your lenity that you sought to salve it with a sneer, namely, "That it might be that an order by that time might come to save his life." So your governor signified his sentence, which, according to the Order, was as followeth :: "To the Constables of Boston. "You are, by virtue of an Order of the Court of Assistants, "held at Boston the third instant, required to repair with the exe"cutioner unto the prison, and there forthwith take the person "of Josiah Southwick, a banished Quaker; and the executioner "is to take him, and to strip him from the girdle upward, and to "tie him to a cart-tail, and whip him ten stripes out of Boston, "and deliver him to the Constable of Roxbury, who is also to "cause him to be tied to the cart's tail, stripped as aforesaid, and "to whip him through Roxbury, with ten stripes as aforesaid, "and then deliver him to the Constable of Dedham, who is also "required to whip him at the cart's tail with ten stripes as afore"said, and so discharge him out of our jurisdiction. Make your "several returns on the back side of the Warrant to the Secretary "forthwith. "Dated at Boston, the 9th of September, 1661. "Secretary." |