John Greenleaf Whittier: His Life, Genius, and WritingsKennedy, William Sloane
General
John Greenleaf Whittier: His Life, Genius, and Writings
Kennedy, William Sloane
Abolitionists -- United States -- Biography; Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892
"But Boston, at least, had no voluntary Godivas. The only disrobed
women in its streets were made so by Puritan sheriffs and
constables, who dragged them amidst jeering crowds at the cart-tail,
stripped for the lash, which in one instance laid open with a
ghastly gash the bosom of a young mother!"[29]
[Footnote 29: Mr. Whittier stated to a member of the Massachusetts
Historical Society that it was his intention "at some time to prepare a
full and exhaustive history of the relations of Puritan and Quaker in
the seventeenth century." It may be added that the newspaper articles
quoted above, with the several replications of their authors, may all be
found in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for
1880-81 (see the index of that volume).]
We may conclude this discussion by giving a few instances of Quaker
persecutions, in addition to those mentioned by Mr. Whittier. In England
the members of the sect suffered a whole Jeremiad of woes: they were
dragged through the streets by the hair of the head, incarcerated in
loathsome dungeons, beaten over the head with muskets, pilloried,
whipped at the cart's-tail, branded, their tongues bored with red-hot
irons, and their property confiscated to the State. One First Day,
George Fox went into the "steeple-house" of Tickhill. "I found," he says
in his Journal, "the priest and most of the chief of the parish together
in the chancel. I went up to them and began to speak; but they
immediately fell upon me; the clerk got up with his Bible, as I was
speaking, and struck me in the face with it, so that my face gushed out
with blood, and I bled exceedingly in the steeple-house. The people
cried, 'Let us have him out of the church.' When they had got me out,
they beat me exceedingly, threw me down, and threw me over a hedge. They
afterwards dragged me through a house into the street, stoning and
beating me as they dragged me along; so that I was all over besmeared
with blood and dirt. They got my hat from me, which I never had again."
Fox was at various times thrust into dungeons filled ankle-deep with
ordure, and was shot at, beaten with stones and clubs, etc.
One evening he passed through Cambridge: "When I came into the town, the
scholars, hearing of me, were up and exceeding rude. I kept on my
horse's back, and rode through them in the Lord's power; but they
unhorsed Amor Stoddart before he could get to the inn. When we were in
the inn, they were so rude in the courts and in the streets, that the
miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. The people of the
house asked us what we would have for supper. 'Supper!' said I, 'were it
not that the Lord's power is over them, these rude scholars look as if
they would pluck us in pieces and make a supper of us.' They knew I was
so against the trade of preaching, which they were there as apprentices
to learn, that they raged as bad as ever Diana's craftsmen did against
Paul."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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