In Massachusetts the action of the General Court was most decided and severe. Shipmasters who brought Quakers into the jurisdiction were to be fined one hundred pounds, and to give security for the return of such passengers to the port from which they came. Quakers coming to the colony were to be “forthwith committed to the House of Correction, and at their entrance to be severely whipped, and by the master thereof to be kept constantly at work, and none suffered to converse or speak with them during the time of their imprisonment.” A fine of five pounds was imposed upon the importation, circulation, or concealment of Quaker books; persons presuming to defend heretical opinions of the said Quakers should be fined two pounds for the first offence, four pounds for the second; for the third offence should be sent to the House of Correction till they could be conveniently sent out of the colony; and what person or persons soever should revile the officer or person of magistrates or ministers, “as was usual with the Quakers,” should be severely whipped, or pay the sum of five pounds.[9] It was not long before the law was put into operation. The first cases were Ann Burden and Mary Dyer. They were imprisoned for two or three months, and then Burden, after having all of her little property taken from her in fines and jail charges, was sent back to England, and Dyer was delivered to her husband, the Secretary of Rhode Island, upon his giving security not to lodge her in any town in the colony nor permit any to speak with her.[10] Mary Clarke, however, who had come from England “to warn these persecutors to desist from their iniquity,” was whipped, receiving twenty stripes with a whip of three cords, knotted at the ends. Charles Holden and John Copeland, who had been sent away the year before, returned to the colony, and were whipped thirty stripes apiece and imprisoned, and Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were imprisoned and fined for harboring them. Richard Dowdney, who arrived from England to bear his testimony, was scourged and imprisoned, and, together with Holden and Copeland, was reshipped to England.[11] The authorities now thought that their laws were too lenient, and in October 1657 they were made more rigorous. The fine for entertaining Quakers was increased to forty shillings an hour, and any Quaker returning into the jurisdiction after being once punished, if a man, was to lose one ear, and on a second appearance to lose the other. If he appeared a third time, his tongue was to be bored through with a red-hot iron. Women were to be whipped for the first and second offences, and to have their tongues bored upon the third.[12] In May of the following year, a penalty of ten shillings was laid upon every one attending a Quaker meeting, and five pounds upon any one speaking at such meeting.[13]