It is not intended to go into all the details of the many other and, happily, somewhat less terrible cases of the persecution; and the above extract from a contemporary has been given because the grim realities of the past are apt to be blurred by our easy modern phrases. The Reverend John Norton, the Reverend Charles Chauncey, and other divines, as well as the Governor and other leading laymen, continued to press for a law allowing them to execute the death-penalty legally. The struggle, as usual, ranged the people against the theocratical leaders, and the deputies refused to pass the law prepared by the clergy and voted by the magistrates, which not only imposed death upon any Quaker who should return after banishment, but denied the right of trial by jury, and relegated the cases to a court composed of three magistrates, a majority of whom could impose the penalty.[687] The House of Deputies, which contained twenty-six members, finally consented to the passage of the law, somewhat amended, by a majority of one, owing to the absence, on account of illness, of one of those who had opposed the bill.[688] In view of the severe penalties imposed upon all who might speak in defense of Quaker doctrines, the thirteen who stood out to the end deserve all praise. Footnote 687: Bishop, _New England Judged_, p. 101. Footnote 688: _Ibid._, p. 102. The law is in _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 345 _ff._ Immediate steps were taken to influence public opinion in favor of the new law, and Norton was appointed by the Court to write a treatise in support of it, which was published the following year.[689] Meanwhile, the persecution continued unabated. At the same court at which the law was passed, six Quakers were banished on pain of death, and four months later, the children of two of them, Daniel and Provided Southwick, were ordered sold into bondage in Virginia or the West Indies, by the County Treasurer, to pay the accumulated fines imposed upon them for not attending a Puritan church. No ship's captain, however, sufficiently hardened in the religion of New England could be found to share in the guilt of this transaction.[690] There is no need of going into the details of the other cases, which were soon overshadowed by those of the martyrs who voluntarily suffered the extreme penalty, in order to testify to the truth as they saw it, and to die for liberty of opinion. Footnote 689: