Again, the said Eliakim was had to your Court, and being by them fined, they took from him almost all his marsh and meadow ground, which was for the keeping of his cattle alive in Winter, to satisfy it. Just as it was said of old, "As troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder in the way by consent; for they commit lewdness," (Hos. vi. 9,) so it may be said now of New England, the priests and rulers destroy and undo men by consent, who from this poor man in particular from time to time so carried away and seized and took his estate, that they plucked from him most of what he had, yet notwithstanding, in the strength of the Lord, he was carried through the spoiling of his goods with patience.

But this was not all with which he was tried, but himself and his wife, in person, suffered sorely at your unreasonable hands, in manner following:

Lydia Wardel, his wife, being a young, tender, and chaste woman, seeing the wickedness of your priests and rulers to her husband, was not at all offended at the Truth, but as your wickedness abounded so she withdrew, and separated from your church at Newbury, of which she was sometime a member; and being given up to the leading of the Lord, after she had been often sent. for to come thither, to give a reason for such separation, it being at last laid upon her, in the consideration of their miserable condition, who were thus blinded with ignorance and persecution, to go to them; and, as a sign to them, she went in naked among them, though it was exceeding hard to her modest and shamefaced disposition. Which put them into such a rage, instead of consideration, that they soon laid hands on her, and had her to the next Court at Ipswich, where they condemned her without law to be tied to the fence-post of the tavern where they sat, and which is usually the place for their Court, where they may serve

*This might be permitted as a stumbling-block, rather for their hardening than conversion, after they had rejected better examples and warnings; and as a sign of their wretchedness and inhumanity, in stripping and whipping others, even women, in such an immodest and shameless manner as they did.

their ears with music* and their bellies with wine and gluttony, whereunto she was tied, stripped from the waist upward, with her naked breasts to the splinters of the posts, and then sorely lashed with twenty or thirty cruel stripes; and yet, though it miserably tore and bruised her tender body, to the joy of her husband and friends who were spectators, she was carried through all these inhuman cruelties quiet and cheerful, to the shame and confusion of these unreasonable men, whose names shall rot and their memories perish. And this is the discipline of the Church of Newbury, in New England, and the admonition of the elders, whose weapons are cruel whips and torturing of the body, instead of reaching to the spirit; and this is their religion, and their usage of the handmaid of the Lord, who, in great cross to her natural temper, thus came in among them,-a sign, indeed, significant enough to them and suitable to their state, who, under the mask of religion, were thus blinded into cruel persecution.

Thus they served the wife, and the husband escaped not free; they having a keen edge against these servants of the Lord, to undo and destroy them in body and estate, having lashed her so cruelly, and Eliakim Wardel† taxing Simon Bradstreet, at the Court at Hampton, a little after his return from Old England, for upbraiding his wife, and reproaching her who was an honest woman, for coming as she did into the church at Newbury, where he sat judge, with old Wiggins, Thomas Bradbury, Robert Pyke, and Bryan Pembleton, his associates, upon him, the said Eliakim and his said wife, and John Hussey and his wife, to fine them for not coming to their worship, and telling Simon of his malicious reproaching of his wife, who was an honest woman, who without a law they had made to suffer, and of that report that went abroad of the known dishonesty of Simon's daughter, Seaborn Cotton's wife; Simon, in a fierce rage, told the Court, "That if such fellows should be suffered to speak so in the Court, he would

Priest Cobbet used to sing to the music.

The woman came not to the Court, upon which Simon Bradstreet took occasion to upbraid his wife, in her absence, for coming into their worshiphouse at Newbury, which gave the occasion of the encounter.

sit there no more.' So, to please Simon, Eliakim was sentenced to be stripped from his waist upward, and to be bound to an oak tree that stood by their worship-house, and to be whipped fifteen lashes; which, to execute upon him, as they were having him out of the Court, he called to Seaborn Cotton, the priest aforesaid, Simon's son-in-law, to come and see the work done, so far was he from being daunted by their cruelty, who hastened out, and followed him thither, and so did old Wiggins, one of the magistrates, who, when Eliakim was tied to the tree and stripped, said, "I pity thee for thy father's sake;" and to the whipper he said, "Whip him a good;" which the executioner cruelly performed, with cords nearly as big as a man's little finger, which made him very sore. So they loosed him, having satisfied their bloodthirsty cruelty upon him at that time. Priest Cotton was standing near by, among the people, when Eliakim was loosed from the tree, which presently perceiving, he said to him, "Seaborn, hath my pied heifer calved yet?" which Seaborn, the priest, hearing, he stole away like a thief.

Near unto Eliakim Wardel, at Hampton, lived John Hussey and Rebecca his wife, another young couple, who in heart and hand were the same, and fared much as the others had done for not coming to your worship, to whom your robbers often came and took away what they pleased. Among the many times-to mention one for all-your officers came, and finding neither John Hussey nor his wife at home, they got into the house, like impudent thieves, and made search therein, and finding some flitches of bacon, they took a flitch or two; but, not finding a way to go forth below, because they could not make fast the door after them and there were none in the house, they attempted, like felons, to get out at the hole of the window above. Before they had quite finished, John Hussey's wife's father, Isaac Perkins, came forth, who, espying them, although one of your people, he rated them soundly, and made them leave one of the flitches behind them. This as to Hampton. Now to touch a little at Salem, in my return to Boston again, and to give an account of some passages there.

A Court being soon to be held at Salem, by Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Dennison, and William Hathorn, three bloody persecutors, against the sitting of this Court there was a town-meeting for the choosing of constables, which that it might be effectually done, that the innocent might suffer and their laws be as bloodily executed, as they were made by them, and in their hearts, William Hathorn desired them to choose one Philip Cromwel, "Because," said he, "he will scour the Quakers," (see, a bloodthirsty persecutor! how he is not ashamed, in the face of the country, to pour forth his desired thirst of persecution,) who, being chosen, was heated by this Hathorn and John Higginson, priest of Salem, who blasphemously said, "That the Quakers' light was a stinking vapour from hell," a resister of the higher power, Christ Jesus, the Light of the world, "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;" who saith, "I am the light of the world," who is the covenant of light to the Gentiles; an evil speaker of dignities, a presumptuous person, a well without water, a cloud without rain, driven about with every tempest, a bloody persecutor, who hath had to do in the blood and sufferings of many of the servants of the Lord, whose wickedness is well known unto the Lord, before whom are all his ways and wickedness, who will render unto him according to his deeds. This Cromwel made it his business to hunt up and down the town, to find them out and disturb them in their innocent meetings, while waiting upon the Lord; which one Michael Shafflin, a man of an honest conversation, always tender of those who suffered for conscience, and who, for these twenty years, hath separated* more or less from your wicked priests, their traditions and their abominations in New England; and he telling this Cromwel thereof, as he came into the said Michael's house, and asking him, "Why he would run about and trouble a harmless people, that did him no hurt?" he replied, "Of his conscience, he must needs run whom

It being demanded of Michael Shafflin by your Court, "How long he had absented from their worship?" he answered, "Ever since you put the servants of the Lord to death," who were William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson.

the devil drives;" so ingenuously confessing what drove him on into these persecutions. And although the said Philip would say sometimes in his rage, "He would have them all hanged," meaning the Quakers, and that "they deserved to have their tongues cut out of their mouths," and that, "if he had the whipping of them, he would make the blood run down at their heels;" yet at other times, when he was cool, he would say, "Of his conscience, he knew no more what the Quakers held than his horse." See into what rage and fury men will turn, prompted by a bloody, persecuting spirit in priests and magistrates, against a people of whom they know nothing, and of whose principles also they are ignorant.

This Cromwel having put a deputy, one Benjamin Felton, into his place, who, like a wolf, having hunted for the prey at the command of his masters, he brought into the Court certain persons called Quakers, so answering to the end for which Cromwel was chosen, of whom, being brought before your magistrates, it was demanded, "Wherefore they came not to your public ordinances?" This question was put to Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick's two children, Daniel and Provided Southwick,*—of whom, namely, Lawrence and Cassandra, their cruel banishment, other sufferings, and death, and their children, mention is made in the former treatise, and what is now spoken of is something not then mentioned, to make up the sum of your cruelty,-to which Daniel answered, "That, if they had not so persecuted his father and mother, perhaps he might have come." Simon Brad

street replied, "That what they had done was not persecution, but prosecution." Whereupon Edward Wharton, being in the Court, sought to have leave to ask the Court one question, which was, "Whether what the cruel jailer of Boston had done to William Brend,”—whose flesh he had beat into a jelly with a pitched rope, with one hundred and seventeen blows,-" which brought him near to death, was persecution or prosecution?". To which Simon said, "Wharton, hold your tongue, or we will lay you by

They were both ordered afterwards to be sold for slaves to pay their fines, as is mentioned in the former treatise.