In 1677 an order was passed requiring an oath of fidelity to the country, and legal liabilities were imposed upon all who refused the oath. This struck directly at the Quakers, and was believed by them, whether justly or not, to have been made for the purpose of vexing and plundering them.[40] A vigorous protest against it was made in writing by Margaret Brewster, who came from Barbadoes to bear her testimony against the law and to declare the evils that were coming upon the colony. Having, as she declared, “a foresight given of that grievous calamity called the Black Pox, which afterwards spread there to the cutting off of many of the People. Wherefore she was constrained in a prophetic manner to warn them thereof, by entering into their publick assembly clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and with her face made black.” For this she and four of her friends were arrested and cast into prison upon the charge of “making a horrible disturbance, and affrighting the people in the South Church in Boston in the time of the public dispensing of the Word, whereby several women ... are in danger of miscarrying.” She was whipped at the cart’s tail twenty lashes, and the young women who were with her were forced to accompany her during her punishment. Twelve Quakers, who were arrested the same day at a Quaker meeting, were whipped, and fifteen the week following.[41] In the other colonies the sufferings of the Quakers were not so severe, though in Plymouth they had to endure banishment, fines, and whippings. In Connecticut, thanks probably to the wisdom of John Winthrop, the only cases which occurred were met with banishment, and the Quakers seem to have respected the jurisdiction where they were mercifully treated. In New Haven there were several prosecutions; Southold on Long Island seems to have been the place most frequented by the Quakers, though they also appeared in Greenwich. The only case of extreme severity was that of Humphrey Norton, who had already borne his torturing in Massachusetts, where he had enraged the magistrates by his appeal to the laws of England. He was arrested at Southold and taken to New Haven, where he was “cast into Prison and chained to a Post, and kept night and day for the space of twenty Days with great Weights of Iron in an open Prison without Fire or Candles in the bitter cold Winter (December 1657), enough (reasonably) to have starved him,” as Bishop writes. When he attempted to reply to Davenport in the Court, he was not suffered to speak, but was gagged with “a great Iron Key, tied athwart his mouth.” After his trial was over he was whipped thirty stripes and branded H in the hand.[42] Several who sympathized with or who entertained Quakers were punished with heavy fines. In New Netherlands they fared little better;[43] and in Virginia the much-flogged Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose found little mercy from the cavaliers, being put in the pillory and whipped with a