As in the old days, the “blood of martyrs was the seed of the church,” and persecutions, petty or great, did but serve to increase the number of heretics, who as time went on not always practised the pacifism they preached. Two women were sentenced to be publicly whipped for “disturbance of public worship, and for abusing the minister”; there were fines for “tumultuous carriage at a meeting of Quakers.” There were fines, also, for sheltering Quakers; Nicholas Davis, of Barnstable, and others, were banished on pain of death. A Cape man, chancing to be at Plymouth when Nicholas Upsall, the aged Boston Puritan who had been outlawed for protesting against the persecutions, was driven thence, took compassion on him and brought him to Sandwich only to be ordered to “take him out of the government.” In no long time, however, reaction set in; the fair-minded of the community were roused to protest at the senseless persecution; and men were beginning to say that such intolerance was not in accord with the spirit of their faith. Mr. Walley, the parson, and Cudworth, driven from Scituate for his liberalism, and Isaac, the third son of old John Robinson of Leyden, spoke up for the oppressed. Edmund Freeman and others, of Sandwich, were fined for refusing aid to the marshal in his work. And later, when Quakers resisted the payment of tithes, it even became the custom to make up the required sum by levying an additional tax upon churchmen. Nor were the Quakers, for the most part, strangers, though refugees were harbored: for converts were many among the first settlers of the region, and we are told that after the laws against them were relaxed they were “the most peaceful, industrious, and moral of all the religious sects.” And in 1661, when King Charles sent his injunction against the persecutions by the hand of Samuel Shattuck, the Quaker who had been banished from Massachusetts Bay on pain of death, Plymouth welcomed the occasion to restore those whom she had disfranchised, and returned to the milder government that better suited her temper. III