The law was passed in October 1658, and at first it seemed to have accomplished its object. The first six Quakers who were banished after it had been put in force went away and made no attempt to come back; but in June 1659 four who were more resolute and determined appeared in Boston with the avowed intention of defying the law. They were William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, Nicholas Davis, and Mary Dyer. They were arrested and sentenced to banishment (September 12th), with the threat that they should suffer death if they remained or returned to the colony. Nicholas Davis and Mary Dyer “found freedom to depart; but the other two were constrained in the love and power of the Lord not to depart, but to stay in the jurisdiction, and to try the bloody law unto death.”[20] They withdrew to the New Hampshire settlements, but in about four weeks returned to Boston prepared to die, and were joined there by Mary Dyer, who had decided to share their fate. They were arraigned before the General Court, which was then in session, and admitting that they were the persons banished by the last Court of Assistants, were sentenced to be hanged in a week from that time (October 19th).[21] The authorities evidently were afraid of popular sympathy, for they gave orders for a military guard of one hundred men to conduct them to the gallows, while another military force was charged to watch the rest of the town, and the selectmen were instructed to “press ten or twelve able and faithful persons every night to watch the town and guard the prison.” Neither side would yield: the Quakers had come back with the declared purpose of dying for their faith and for the principle of religious liberty; the authorities did not dare to withdraw from the position in which they had rashly placed themselves, and the leaders do not seem to have had any desire to do so. They felt that the question of their authority was at stake, and that if they yielded their power over the people would be gone. They were willing to claim for themselves and their institutions the protection of the laws of England, but they would not admit any appeal to those laws when they conflicted with the colonial regulations. They claimed to own the colony in full sovereignty, in virtue of their charter on the one hand and their deeds from the Indians on the other, and they argued that they had the same right to exclude obnoxious and dangerous persons, and to destroy them if they persistently thrust themselves upon them, that a householder has of resisting a burglar, or a shepherd of killing the wolves that break into his sheepfold.