The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers: Intermixed with Several Remarkable Occurrencs.Sewel, William
History
The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers: Intermixed with Several Remarkable Occurrencs.
Sewel, William
Society of Friends -- History -- Early works to 1800
shillings for the jailer, to whom she owed nothing. Now, though this
widow had made such a great voyage, to get something of what was due to
her, to relieve her, and her fatherless children, yet after three years
she had nothing of it come to her hands; and whether she got any thing
since I never understood.
The next of the Quakers that came to Boston, was Mary Clark, who,
having left her husband, John Clark, a merchant taylor, with her
children at London, came thither to warn these persecutors to desist
from their iniquity: but after she had delivered her message, she was
unmercifully rewarded with twenty stripes of a whip with three cords,
on her naked back, and detained prisoner about twelve weeks in the
winter season. The cords of these whips were commonly as thick as a
man’s little finger, having each some knots at the end; and the stick
was sometimes so long, that the hangman made use of both his hands to
strike the harder.
The next that came were Christopher Holder and John Copeland, who
had been banished before; and coming to Salem, a town in the same
colony, Holder spoke a few words in their meeting, after the priest
had done; but was hauled back by the hair of his head, and a glove
and handkerchief thrust into his mouth, and so turned out with his
companion; and next day had to Boston, where each of them received
thirty stripes with a knotted whip of three cords, the hangman
measuring his ground, and fetching his strokes with the greatest
strength he could: which so cruelly cut their flesh, that a woman
seeing it fell down as dead. Then they were locked up in prison, and
the jailer kept them three days without any food, not giving them so
much as a draught of water; and so close that none might come to speak
with them; lying on the boards without bed or straw. Thus they were
kept nine weeks prisoners, without fire, in the cold winter season. And
Samuel Shattock, of Salem, who endeavoured to stop the thrusting of the
glove and handkerchief into Holder’s mouth, lest it should have choaked
him, was also carried to Boston, and there imprisoned, till he had
given bond for twenty pounds, to answer it at the next court, and not
to come at any meeting of the Quakers.
The career of this cruelty did not stop here; for Lawrence Southick
and Cassandra, his wife, members of the public church at Salem, and an
ancient and grave couple, having entertained the aforesaid C. Holder
and J. Copeland, were committed to prison, and sent to Boston, where
Lawrence being released, his wife was kept seven weeks prisoner, and
then fined forty shillings for owning a paper of exhortation, written
by the aforesaid Holder and Copeland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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