It is a great mistake to say that they had come to the colony from a zeal for religious liberty. What they had come for was to be in a place where they could order religious affairs to suit themselves. As Besse, the Quaker historian, shrewdly remarks: “They appear not so inconsistent with themselves as some have thought, because when under oppression they pleaded for liberty of conscience, they understood it not as the natural and common right of all mankind, but as a peculiar privilege of the orthodox.”[22] The tragedy was performed on the twenty-seventh day of October 1659; the prisoners, walking hand in hand, were brought to the gallows by the soldiers. They were insulted in their last moments by the bigoted Wilson, and when they tried to address the people their voices were drowned by the beating of the drums. Robinson and Stevenson died bravely, and Mary Dyer mounted the ladder to meet her fate; her skirts were tied, the rope was about her neck, and she was on the point of being “turned off,” when she was released by the magistrates in consideration of the intercession of her son, who had come up from Rhode Island to try to save his mother’s life. She unwillingly accepted the grudging gift, and went back to Rhode Island.[23] The popular feeling was so strong against the magistrates for their severity, that they thought it best to put forth a declaration, in which they argued that their proceedings were justified by the law of self-defence, and by the precedent of the English laws against the Jesuits; and they calmly stated that what they had done was only to present the point of their sword in their own defence, that the Quakers who had rushed upon it had become “_felons de se_,” and that their former proceedings and their mercy to Mary Dyer upon the “inconsiderable intercession” of her son “manifestly evinced that they desired their lives absent rather than their death present.”[24] The bodies of the unfortunate men were treated with indecent brutality, and were buried naked beneath the gallows. Mrs. Dyer remained away for six months, and then the spirit moved her to return once more and die. Her husband wrote to Endicott to beg her life, but without avail. No mercy could be shown her as long as she defied the law. It is said that her life was offered her if she would promise to keep out of the colony henceforth, but she declined to receive the favor.[25] “In obedience to the will of the Lord I came,” said she, “and in his will I abide faithful to the death.”