Christopher Holder and his would-be savior Samuel Shattuck (my 10th GGF) were imprisoned and interrogated in Boston after the Salem incident (see our previous blog post). Also imprisoned were Holder’s companions Richard Doudney, who had accompanied Holder on the Woodhouse, and another named John Copeland.
We have yet to mention Copeland, but be assured he was with Christopher Holder nearly every step of this journey. The boon companions met as young men in the English town of Holderness (we mentioned the wealth of Holder previously, but not the fact the town/region of his origin was named for his family). Not only did John Copeland make the brave crossing in the Woodhouse, he had accompanied Holder on the Speedwell on their previous journey which led to their banishment from Boston under pain of death.
After the whipping of the older gentleman, Salem merchant and resident Samuel Shattuck, Holder, Doudney, and Copeland were also whipped. It was written that the whipping was so bloody and cruel, the witnesses there in 1657’s Boston Common were horrified by the sight. One woman fainted away “as if dead”.
The horror did not end with the whipping though. The two Quakers who had formerly been banished and forcibly returned to England on the Speedwell would now be mutilated. Shears were used to remove the right ears of Holder and Copeland.
In the meantime, the wealthy and influential Scott’s of Rhode Island would hear of the maltreatment of their future son-in-law Christopher Holder, and his Quaker friends. Catherine Marbury Scott (my wife’s 10th GGM) was the sister of the massacred Baptist heroine Anne Marbury Hutchinson, and long considered a force to be reckoned with in New England. Catherine’s daughters were raised in the image of their late aunt and their mother. The 10 year-old Patience was already preaching at meetings, much to the horror of the Puritans.
The Scott women were joined by Mary Dyer and William Robinson who had traveled with Mary on the Woodhouse. Newly arrived from Barbados in the West Indies, Quakers Marmaduke Stevenson, William Leddra, Thomas Harris and John Rous would also join their party.
Reaching the Boston jail, Catherine demanded to see the mutilated prisoners. Refused entry, she went around to the window outside of the jail and climbed a barrel so as to speak to the men imprisoned inside.
The Boston Marshal, a former servant of Catherine’s brother, ordered her down, but she ignored him and continued to communicate with the prisoners. In response, the marshal yanked Catherine down from her perch and arrested her. When Mary Dyer, the Scott children, and the rest of the party protested her treatment, they too were arrested.
During their incarceration, Christopher Holder, Richard Doudney, and John Copeland would write a now famous “Declaration of Faith” which was smuggled out of the jail for them. The missive was copied and spread throughout the colonies.
A copy of Holder’s “Declaration of Faith” was found in the possession of Cassandra Southwick (I seem to recall another important document called a “Declaration of” something). The elderly Smithwicks hosted the three Quaker missionaries in their home in Salem prior to the men’s arrests. Now, Cassandra Southwick and her husband Lawrence found themselves under arrest for their kindness.
The discovery of Holder’s “Declaration of Faith” so enraged Governor Endecott, he would have the three missionaries whipped twice a week every week from then on. The documented lashings would equal 357 for each prisoner at their release.
To further punish the elderly Southwicks, who were members of his church, Endecott ordered their younger remaining children fined for not having attended church since their parents’ arrest. The children could obviously not pay the fines, so Endecott ordered them arrested and sold as slaves for non-payment of the fines.
By this time, the community was becoming fed up with Endecott’s overreaches, and no captains could be found to transport the Southwick children to Barbados or Virginia as commanded. Endecott would instead have the family banished to Shelter Island off the coast of Long Island.
After a few weeks, the murmurs against Endecott’s treatment of the Scott’s and their “Friends” became so loud, he was afraid he might lose his position as governor. So when the next available ship was ready to sail, the men were released from jail and placed on board. Once again they were threatened not to return upon pain of death.
The protesters from Rhode Island would also be released, but not before Catherine Marbury Scott was publicly stripped to the waist and flogged in Boston Common. Another woman, who had traveled all the way from England to report on the mistreatment of the Quakers in Boston, was stripped and whipped, then put on the ship back to England.
The Puritan leaders of Massachusetts had criminalized nearly all forms of secular entertainment, including lawn bowling which carried a huge fine for everyone involved. I suppose the brutal flogging of topless Quaker women was the only form of diversion left to them.
With the banished Quakers, Boston authorities sent a letter explaining (really, bragging on) the methods they were using to defeat the Quaker menace. If they were expecting kudos, they would be sorely disappointed. Still, the Puritan reign of terror in Boston would continue.
If you have read my previous blogs, you will likely not be surprised to hear that our Quaker missionaries would return to New England as soon as the chance presented itself. Christopher Holder and John Copeland would travel to Sandwich where they found a thriving, though underground, community of Quakers having taken root since their banishment.
Unfortunately, they also met a Puritan marshal who arrested the ministers. He removed them from the friendly community in Sandwich to nearby Barnstable, where Holder and Copeland would be flogged with ropes covered in hot, melted tar and beaten nearly to “jelly”. Friends of the missionaries would see them to Rhode Island where the Scott ladies would nurse them back to health.
Some of our readers might wonder why the peaceful Quakers would suffer such abuse. Consider that their two favorite books were likely Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Bible (not necessarily in that order), and one can begin to understand their “No Pain, No Gain” mentality.
Speaking of which, Copeland and Holder had already given an ear to the cause, so they did not return straight to Boston. According to the King James’ Bible, Jesus said, “He that hath an ear, let him hear…”, so the Friends who still had two (one to spare) went straight to Boston Towne and were promptly arrested.
The routine of twice a week public thrashings was reinstated for all, but two of the men met Endecott’s personal ire. William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson had been threatened with death, and they would now be sentenced to hang. Mary Dyer could not be dissuaded from traveling to Boston to give Governor Endecott a piece of her mind, so he added her to the list.
Like Catherine Scott’s husband Richard (my wife’s 10th GGF), Mary Dyer’s husband was a government official in Rhode Island. Also like Richard Scott, William Dyer had been a respected member of the Boston colony until he threw his support behind banished preachers Anne Hutchinson and her brother-in-law Reverend John Wheelwright (see our previous blog on the Antinomian Controversy). Now, they were canceled, banned, deplatformed and dehumanized, with the upstanding citizens of Boston calling Rhode Island “the sewer of Boston”.
Unlike his father, William Dyer, Jr. (future Governor of New York) was not banned in Boston, so he visited Endecott on his families’ behalf. Endecott knew there would be trouble if he hanged the infamous Mary Dyer, who was already a celebrity in England and the West Indies, if not the Netherlands and elsewhere. He revealed to William Jr. his plans to pull a “scared straight” and place Mary in a noose, only to impress upon her the situation.
True to his word, on Oct. 27th, 1659, Mary Dyer, William Robinson, and Marmaduke Stevenson were marched to Boston Common in a grand procession. The Quakers were made to stand on ladders beneath a great elm while the executioner placed nooses around their necks. The ladders were pulled from beneath the men, and the blindfolded Mary was forced to listen while her fellow Friends swung from the branches of the elm and slowly strangled.
It is said that she stood there quite fearlessly as the crowd looked on. I’m sure Endecott made a big deal of it when he walked to the bottom of the ladder and pronounced his grant of clemency. Everyone took a deep breath, well everyone except William and Marmaduke, and William Jr. took his mother home.
I’m not going to bury the lead here. A few months later, Mary Dyer returned to Boston, and this time they hanged her for reals.
Catherine Marbury Scott, her daughters, Christopher Holder, and company boarded a ship and sailed to England to share the terrible news. Christopher Holder would take them to his home in Holderness (Olveston), where he would marry young Mary Scott. She would die following the birth of their second daughter Elizabeth.
Boston would eventually receive a Cease and Desist letter from London in regards to the torture and murder of Quakers, but not before they hanged Friend William Leddra from Barbados in January of 1661. When Leddra asked for what charges he was to be hanged, they told him he had failed to doff his hat and had used the old-timey Quaker pronouns, “Thee and Thou”. He quite hilariously responded, “So you’re hanging me for speaking English and not taking my clothes off?” (paraphrasing, but just barely).
He who laughs last, laughs best.
PS.
Mary Holder, daughter of Mary Scott and Christopher Holder, would marry Peleg Slocum, a successful Quaker merchant and minister. You can’t swing a cat in New England without hitting a Slocum descendant. They purchased Cuttyhunk Island in southeast Mass, which belonged to the Slocum family till near the 20th century. The Slocum’s have left a long line of ministers, politicians, doctors, architects, and so on, and also military heroes (think Ft. Slocum NY) and one fella that circumnavigated the globe early on, but the most famous is of course Eleazer Slocum, grandson of Christopher and Mary Scott Holder.
If you haven’t heard of Eleazer and Lady Elephel, they are the New England Romeo and Juliette. This post is already super long, so I’ll let our friend Henry Howland Crapo do the honors, courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum:
https://www.whalingmuseum.org/old-dartmouth-historical-society-sketches/old-dartmouth-historical-sketch-no-29/
In a previous post (click here) we mentioned that Anne Marbury Hutchinson was the ancestor of Elisabeth Shue. Well, Mary Dyer is also the ancestor of Elisabeth Shue, as well as this beauty who you may know:
