The General Court attempted to save its dignity by interposing a still greater number of shameful and unusual punishments between the first offence and the death penalty, and declared that, “being desirous to try all means with as much lenity as might consist with safety to prevent the intrusions of the Quakers, who had not been restrained by the laws already provided, they would henceforth order that such intruders should be tied to a cart’s tail and whipped from town to town toward the borders of the jurisdiction. Should they return after being dealt with thus thrice, they were to be branded with the letter R on their left shoulder, and be severely whipped and sent away again at the cart’s tail. Should they again return, they were to be liable to the former law of banishment under pain of death.”[31] It is quite possible that this appeared to be lenity to men like Endicott and Norton, but it is very doubtful whether the Quakers so considered it. It did not prevent, though it anticipated, an order from the king directing that any Quakers imprisoned or under sentence should be released and sent to England for trial.[32] To make this still more galling to the pride of the colony, it was sent by Samuel Shattuck, a Salem Quaker, who had been banished from the colony under pain of death if he should return, and who, we cannot doubt, thoroughly enjoyed his mission and the humiliation of Endicott. For a short time the order was obeyed and then the “lenient” laws were put in force again; and, as many delicately nurtured Quaker women found to their cost, the “tender mercies” of the saints were cruel. Palfrey remarks, with great gratification apparently, that “no hanging, no branding, ever took place by force of this law,” but that “under its provisions for other penalties the contest was carried on for a considerable time longer.” It would be wearisome to cite all of the subsequent proceedings; a few of them will suffice to show that the treatment of the Quakers still continued to be extremely severe, and that in spite of it all they persisted in braving the threats of the magistrates. It was not until 1679, when religious toleration was forced against their wills upon the good Christians of Massachusetts, that the Quakers found any safety within the boundaries of the colony. In 1661, when the Quakers were set free at the command of the king, some of them were whipped at the cart’s tail twenty stripes apiece, on the ground that they were vagabonds.[33]