The New World "Freedom of Religion" Hanged This Woman for practicing her Quaker Religion

 

1.       1660 - Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for practicing the Quaker religion in colonial Puritan America. The Puritans had banned the Quaker religion. She was just one of four, now known as the Boston Martyrs. The Court documents the exchange between then Governor Endicott and Mary Dyer as follows:

“Endicott: Are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before?

Dyer: I am the same Mary Dyer that was here in the last General Court

Endicott: You will own yourself a Quaker, will you not?

Dyer: I own myself to be reproachfully so called.

Endicott: Sentence was passed upon you the last General Court; and now likewise. You must return to the prison, and there remain till tomorrow at 9 o’clock. Then you must go to the gallows and there be hanged till you are dead.

Dyer: This is no more than what thou sadist before.

Endicott: But now it is to be executed. Therefore prepare yourself tomorrow at nine o’clock.

Dyer: I came in obedience to the will of God the last General Court, desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death and that same is my work now, and earnest request, although I told you that if you refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of his servants to witness against them.”

 

It is assumed Mary Dyer was about 49 years old at the time she was hanged. So much for religious freedoms in the New World.

A statue of Mary Dyer was erected in 1959 outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston.  The statue was sculpted by Sylvia Shaw Judson.

 

In 1661 the King sent a letter to the Governors in New England directing them to cease all executions and imprisonments of Quakers.  Subsequently, the Puritans passed a new law called The Cart and Tail Law wherein they would tie suspected Quakers to carts, strip them to the waist and drag them through town behind the cart.

 

 

The people that settled here so they would not be persecuted for their religion are now persecuting others for their religion.

Quaker persecution finally stopped later in the 1670s when public sentiment had begun to change.

You can read more about Mary Dyer in this book by Ruth Plimpton: https://amzn.to/3BKv3aU