"The charge that the Quakers who suffered were 'vagabonds' and 'ignorant, low fanatics,' is unfounded in fact. Mary Dyer, who was executed, was a woman of marked respectability. She had been the friend and associate of Sir Henry Vane and the ministers Wheelwright and Cotton. The papers left behind by the three men who were hanged show that they were above the common class of their day in mental power and genuine piety. John Rous, who, in execution of his sentence, had his right ear cut off by the constable in the Boston jail, was of gentlemanly lineage, the son of Colonel Rous of the British army, and himself the betrothed of a high-born and cultivated young English lady. Nicholas Upsall was one of Boston's most worthy and substantial citizens, yet was driven in his age and infirmities, from his home and property, into the wilderness." Mr. Whittier further remarks:-- "Dr. Ellis has been a very generous, as well as ingenious defender of the Puritan clergy and government, and his labors in this respect have the merit of gratuitous disinterestedness. Had the very worthy and learned gentleman been a resident in the Massachusetts colony in 1660, one of his most guarded doctrinal sermons would have brought down upon him the wrath of clergy and magistracy. His Socinianism would have seemed more wicked than the 'inward light' of the Quakers; and, had he been as 'doggedly obstinate' as Servetus at Geneva (as I do him the justice to think he would have been), he might have hung on the same gallows with the Quakers, or the same shears which clipped the ears of Holder, Rous, and Copeland might have shorn off his own." Let us look a little more closely at the evidence on both sides. In the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia" we have a specimen of Quaker rant. After stating that he is opposed to the capital punishment of Quakers, but advises shaving of the head, or blood-letting, the proud and scornful old doctor concludes as follows:--