A law was now passed forbidding the entrance of Quakers into the colony; but such a law rather invited than deterred men and women who, believing themselves the especial messengers of God, feared neither the power nor the wrath of the arm of flesh. The Quakers came, and the horrors of persecution began in earnest. One woman, who had come to London purposely to warn the magistrates against persecution, was whipped with twenty stripes. Some who had been banished, returned only to be imprisoned, fined, whipped and sent away under penalty of severe punishment if they returned; a fine of forty shillings was imposed for every hour’s entertainment of any “of the accursed sect,” and a Quaker, if a man, after the first conviction was to lose one ear, after the second the other, and after the third, his tongue was to be bored with a red-hot iron. If a woman, she was to be whipped with stripes proportioned to the repetition of the offence. Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven adopted similar laws. The colony, however, was soon ashamed of the statute of mutilation, and it was repealed; but, as was sure to be the case, New England was soon all the more actively visited by Quakers. The following year, therefore, by the advice of the commissioners of the united colonies, the younger Winthrop alone dissenting, a law was passed banishing them on pain of death. In the province of Rhode Island alone were the Quakers safe, favoured by the great principle of toleration. Again and again the united colonies remonstrated on the privileges which they here enjoyed, and in reply to one of their remonstrances, the more sensible Rhode Islanders said, “in those places where these people are most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and are openly opposed by argument in discourse, they least desire to come, so that they begin to loathe this place for that they are not opposed by the civil authority, but with all patience and meekness are suffered to say over their pretended revelations.” But Massachusetts could neither see nor understand the policy of forbearance; the very fines imposed on those who attended their meetings acted only as a whet to curiosity; and spite of finings, whippings, brandings and cropping of ears, the Quakers came and came again, and Boston of all places, the laws there being the severest, was the most attractive to them.