During the remainder of the Commonwealth period the most serious question which arose in New England was what to do with the Quakers. In the theocracy of the seventeenth century the attitude of the sect was both theologically and politically well calculated to arouse hostility. They would strip all formalities from religion, they would recognize no priestly class, they would not take up arms in the common defence, would pay no tithes and take no oath of allegiance, they doubted the efficacy of baptism, had no veneration for the Sabbath, and had a large respect for the right of individual judgment in spiritual matters. They were aggressive and stubborn, and, goaded on by persecution, broke out into fantastic displays of opposition to the State religion. In England four thousand of them were in jail at one time. When Anne Austin and Mary Fisher arrived in Boston (1656) from England, by way of the Barbados, as a vanguard of the Quaker missionary army, the colonial authorities were aghast with horror. The adventurous women were shipped back to the Barbados, and a law was enacted against "all Quakers, Ranters, and other notorious heretics," providing for their flogging and imprisonment at hard labor. Despite this harsh treatment, the Quakers continued to arrive. Roger Williams said, when applied to by Massachusetts to harry them out of Rhode Island: where they are "most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come.... They are likely to gain more followers by the conceit of their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings." Nevertheless, Rhode Island was and is the stronghold of the Friends in New England. In 1657 it was enacted that Quakers who had once been sent away and returned, should have their ears lopped off, and for the third offence should have their tongues pierced with red-hot irons. Banishment on pain of death was recommended by the federal commissioners in 1658; and in 1659-1660 four Quakers lost their lives by hanging on Boston Common. Public sentiment revolted at these spectacles, and in 1660 the Massachusetts death-law was repealed, and Quakers were thereafter subjected to nothing worse than being flogged in the several towns; even this gradually ceased, with the growth of a more humane spirit. In Connecticut the sect suffered but little persecution, and in Rhode Island none; while Plymouth and New Haven were nearly as harsh in their treatment as Massachusetts. Sidenote: New England in the hands of the council for the plantations.