Mary Dyer

During the earliest days of the Boston Church, before the arrival of Mary and William Dyer, there was a single minister, the Reverend John Wilson. In 1633, one of England's most noted Puritan clergymen, John Cotton, arrived in Boston and quickly became the second minister (called "teacher") in Boston's church. In time, the Boston parishioners could sense a theological difference between Wilson and Cotton.[12] Anne Hutchinson, a theologically astute midwife who had the ear of many of the colony's women, became outspoken in support of Cotton, and condemned the theology of Wilson and most of the other ministers in the colony during gatherings, or conventicles, held at her house.[13][14]

Anne Hutchinson, who was tried for slandering the ministers, was a friend and mentor of the much younger Mary Dyer. (Illustration by Edwin Austin Abbey.)

Differing religious opinions within the colony eventually became public debates and erupted into what has traditionally been called the Antinomian Controversy.[12] Many members of Boston's church found Wilson's emphasis on morality, and his doctrine of "evidencing justification by sanctification" (a covenant of works) to be disagreeable. Hutchinson told her followers that Wilson lacked "the seal of the Spirit".[15] Wilson's theological views conformed with those of all of the other ministers in the colony except for Cotton, who instead stressed "the inevitability of God's will" (a covenant of grace).[16] The Boston parishioners had become accustomed to Cotton's doctrines, and some of them began disrupting Wilson's sermons, even finding excuses to leave when Wilson got up to preach or pray.[17]

Both William and Mary Dyer sided strongly with Hutchinson and the free-grace advocates, and it is highly likely that Mary attended the periodic theological gatherings at the Hutchinson's home.[8] In May 1636, the Bostonians received a new ally when the Reverend John Wheelwright arrived from England, and immediately aligned himself with Cotton, Hutchinson and the other free-grace supporters.[18] Yet another boost for those advocating the free-grace theology came during the same month, when the young aristocrat Henry Vane was elected as the governor of the colony. Vane was a strong supporter of Hutchinson, but also had his own unorthodox ideas about theology that were considered radical.[12]

By late 1636, the theological schism had become great enough that the General Court called for a day of fasting to help ease the colony's difficulties. The appointed fasting day, in January, included church services, and Cotton preached during the morning, but with Wilson away in England, John Wheelwright was invited to preach during the afternoon.[19] Though his sermon may have seemed benign to the average listener in the congregation, most of the colony's ministers found Wheelwright's words to be objectionable. Instead of bringing peace, the sermon fanned the flames of controversy, and in Winthrop's words, Wheelwright "inveighed against all that walked in a covenant of works, ... and called them antichrists, and stirred up the people against them with much bitterness and vehemency."[19] In contrast, the followers of Hutchinson were encouraged by the sermon, and intensified their crusade against the "legalists" among the clergy. During church services and lectures, they publicly questioned the ministers about their doctrines which disagreed with their own beliefs.[19]

By signing the petition in support of the Reverend John Wheelwright (shown here), William Dyer was disarmed.

When the General Court next met on 9 March, Wheelwright was called upon to answer for his sermon.[20] He was judged guilty of "contempt & sedition" for having "purposely set himself to kindle and increase" bitterness within the colony.[20] The vote did not pass without a fight, however, and Wheelwright's friends protested formally. Most members of the Boston church, favoring Wheelwright in the conflict, drafted a petition justifying Wheelwright's sermon, and 60 people signed this remonstrance protesting the conviction.[21] William Dyer was among those who signed the petition which accused the General Court of condemning the truth of Christ. Dyer's signature in support of Wheelwright soon proved to be fateful to the Dyer family.[22]

Anne Hutchinson faced trial in early November 1637 for "traducing" (slandering) the ministers, and was sentenced to banishment on her second day in court. Within a week of her sentencing, many supporters of hers, including William Dyer, were called into court and were disenfranchised.[22] Fearing an armed insurrection, the constables were then sent from door to door throughout the colony's towns to disarm those who signed the Wheelwright petition.[23] Within ten days these individuals were ordered to deliver "all such guns, pistols, swords, powder, shot, & match as they shall be owners of, or have in their custody, upon paine of ten pound[s] for every default".[23] A great number of those who signed the petition, faced with losing their protection and in some cases livelihood, recanted under the pressure, and "acknowledged their error" in signing the petition. Those who refused to recant suffered hardships and many decided to leave the colony.[24] Being both disenfranchised and disarmed, William Dyer was among those who could no longer justify remaining in Massachusetts.[25]

While William Dyer appeared in the Boston records on several occasions, Mary Dyer had not caught the attention of the Massachusetts authorities until March 1638 as the Antinomian controversy came to an end. Following Hutchinson's civil trial, she was kept as a prisoner in the home of a brother of one of the colony's ministers. Though she had been banished from the colony, this did not mean she was removed as a member of the Boston church. In March 1638 she was forced to face a church trial to get at the root of her heresies, and determine if her relationship with the Puritan church would continue. While William Dyer was likely with other men finding a new home away from Massachusetts, Mary Dyer was still in Boston and in attendance at this church trial. At the conclusion of the trial, Hutchinson was excommunicated, and as she was leaving the Boston Church, Mary stood and walked hand in hand with her out of the building.[26] As the two women were leaving the church, a member of the congregation asked another person about the identity of the woman leaving the church with Hutchinson. A reply was made that it was the woman who had had the "monstrous birth". Governor Winthrop soon became aware of this verbal exchange and began conducting an investigation.[22]

Dyer had given birth five months earlier, on 11 October 1637, to a stillborn baby with dysmorphic features. Winthrop wrote that while many women had gathered for the occasion, that "none were left at the time of the birth but the midwife and two others, whereof one fell asleep".[27] Actually, two women present were midwives—Anne Hutchinson and Jane Hawkins, but the third woman was never identified. Hutchinson fully understood the serious theological implications of such a birth, and immediately sought the counsel of the Reverend John Cotton. Thinking about how he would react if this were his child, Cotton instructed Hutchinson to conceal the circumstances of the birth. The infant was then buried secretly.[28]

Once Winthrop had learned of the so-called "monstrous birth", he confronted Jane Hawkins, and armed with new information then confronted Cotton. As the news spread among the colony's leaders, it was determined that the infant would be exhumed and examined. According to Winthrop, a group of "above a hundred persons" including Winthrop, Cotton, Wilson, and the Reverend Thomas Weld "went to the place of buryall & commanded to digg it up to [behold] it, & they sawe it, a most hideous creature, a woman, a fish, a bird, & a beast all woven together".[27][29] In his journal, Winthrop provided a more complete description as follows:

it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape's; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp; two of them were above one inch long, the other two shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward; all over the breast and back full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback [i.e., a skate or ray], the navel and all the belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be, and the back and hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons.[30]

When Governor John Winthrop learned of Dyer's "monstrous birth", he had the infant exhumed and examined, then wrote a detailed report of the child's corpse.

While some of the descriptions may have been accurate, many puritanical embellishments were added to better fit the moral story being portrayed by the authorities. The modern medical condition that best fits the description of the infant is anencephaly, meaning partial or complete absence of a brain.[27] This episode was just the beginning of the attention emanating from Dyer's personal tragedy. The religion of the Puritans demanded a close look at all aspects of one's life for signs of God's approval or disapproval. Even becoming a member of the Puritan church in New England required a public confession of faith, and any behavior that was viewed by the clergy as being unorthodox required a theological examination by the church, followed by a public confession and repentance by the offender.[31] Such microscopic inspection caused even private matters to become looked at publicly for the purpose of instruction, and Dyer's tragedy was widely examined for signs of God's judgment. This led to a highly subjective form of justice, an example of which was the 1656 hanging of Ann Hibbins whose offense was simply being resented by her neighbor. In Winthrop's eyes, Dyer's case was unequivocal, and he was convinced that her "monstrous birth" was a clear signal of God's displeasure with the antinomian heretics. Winthrop felt that it was quite providential that the discovery of the "monstrous birth" occurred exactly when Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated from the local body of believers, and exactly one week before Dyer's husband was questioned in the Boston church for his heretic opinions.[32]

To further fuel Winthrop's beliefs, Anne Hutchinson suffered from a miscarriage later in the same year when she aborted a strange mass of tissue that appeared like a handful of transparent grapes (a rare condition, mostly in woman over 45, called a hydatidiform mole).[33] Winthrop was convinced of divine influence in these events, and made sure that every leader in New England received his own account of the "monster" birth, and he even sent a deposition to England. Soon, the story took on a life of its own, and in 1642 it was printed in London under the title Newes from New-England of a Most Strange and Prodigious Birth, brought to Boston in New-England. Though the author of this work was not named, it may have been the New England minister Thomas Weld who was in England at the time to support New England's ecclesiastical independence. In 1644 Weld, who was still in England, took Winthrop's account of the Antinomian Controversy, and published it under one title, and then added a preface of his own and republished it under the title A Short story of the Rise, reign and ruine of the Antinomians, Familists & Libertines, usually just called Short Story.[34] In 1648 Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish Presbyterian, included Winthrop's account of the monster in his anti-sectarian treatise A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist, Opening the Secrets of Familisme and Antinomianisme. Even the English writer, Samuel Danforth, included the birth in his 1648 Almanack as a "memorable occurrence" from 1637. [35] The only minister who wrote without sensationalism about Dyer's deformed infant was the Reverend John Wheelwright, Anne Hutchinson's ally during the Antinomian Controversy. In his 1645 response to Winthrop's Short Story, entitled Mercurius Americanus, he wrote that Dyer's and Hutchinson's monsters described by Winthrop were nothing but "a monstrous conception of his [Winthrop's] brain, a spurious issue of his intellect".[36]

Twenty years after the tragic birth, when Mary Dyer returned to the public spotlight for her Quaker evangelism, she continued to be remembered for the birth of her dysmorphic child, this time in the diary of John Hull. Also, in 1660, an exchange of letters took place between England and New England when the two eminent English clergymen, Richard Baxter and Thomas Brooks, sought information about the "monstrous birth" from 1637. A New Englander, whose identity was not included, sent back information about the event to the English divines. The New Englander, who used Winthrop's original description of the "monster" almost verbatim, has subsequently been identified as yet another well-known clergyman, John Eliot who preached at the church in Roxbury, not far from Boston.[37]

The most outrageous accounting of Dyer's infant occurred in 1667 when a memorandum of the Englishman Sir Joseph Williamson quoted a Major Scott about the event. Scott was a country lawyer with a notorious reputation, and his detractors included the famous diarist Samuel Pepys.[38] Scott's outlandish assertion was that the young Massachusetts governor, Henry Vane, fathered the "monstrous births" of both Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson; that he "debauched both, and both were delivered of monsters".[36] After this, the accounts became less frequent, and the last historical account of Dyer's "monstrous birth" was in 1702 when the New England minister Cotton Mather mentioned it in passing in his Magnalia Christi Americana.[38]

George Fox, founder of Quakerism

Mary Dyer's time in England lasted for over five years, and during her stay she had become deeply interested in Quakerism. Formally known as the Society of Friends, the Quakers do not practise water baptism or the Lord's Supper, nor do they believe in an ordained ministry. Both women and men can preach and exercise spiritual authority.[48] In addition to denouncing the clergy, and refusing to support the established church by paying tithes, Quakers emphasize liberty of conscience and demand the separation of church and state. Their worship is based in silence, with spontaneous Spirit-inspired preaching or prayer by any participant. They reject various customs that emphasised class distinctions (such as men bowing or doffing their hats to social superiors); they do not take oaths, and they do not fight in wars. The Puritans in Massachusetts viewed Quakers as being among the most reprehensible of heretics, and they enacted several laws against them.[49]

It is commonly asserted that while in England, Dyer became a Quaker and received a gift in the ministry. Details are provided by Plimpton, but these are fabrications completely without documentation. Altogether, no contemporary record has been found that addresses Dyer's time in England. Moreover, when Dyer and Anne Burden arrived in Barbados on their return to New England, the Quaker Missionary Henry Fell described Dyer to Margaret Fell, while not doing the same for Burden, whose Quaker ministry in England is documented.[50] Margaret Fell was the administrative heart of early Quakerism, raising funds for missionary efforts and receiving and forwarding voluminous correspondence. That Fell had to describe Dyer to the woman who knew the most about Quaker missions and ministry suggests that Dyer was not well known among Quakers prior to leaving England. It is likely that Dyer came to her Quaker beliefs only late in her stay in England and that she did not exercise her ministry until her return to New England.

Of all the New England colonies, Massachusetts was the most active in persecuting the Quakers, but the Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven colonies also shared in their persecution. When the first Quakers arrived in Boston in 1656 there were no laws yet enacted against them, but this quickly changed, and punishments were meted out with or without the law. It was primarily the ministers and the magistrates who opposed the Quakers and their evangelistic efforts.[51] A particularly vehement persecutor, the Reverend John Norton of the Boston church, clamored for the law of banishment upon pain of death. He is the one who later wrote the vindication to England, justifying the execution of the first two Quakers in 1659.[52]

The punishments doled out to the Quakers intensified as their perceived threat to the Puritan religious order increased. Dyer's Newport neighbor, Herodias Gardiner who had made a perilous journey through a 60-mile wilderness to get to Weymouth in the Massachusetts colony was punished by being whipped ten times. She had made the arduous trek with another woman and with her "Babe sucking at her Breast" to give her Quaker testimony to friends in Weymouth. Similarly, Katherine Marbury Scott, the wife of Richard Scott, and a younger sister of Anne Hutchinson, had received ten lashes for petitioning for the release of future son-in-law, Christopher Holder, who was imprisoned. This was the setting into which Mary Dyer stepped, upon her return from England.[53]

In early 1657 Dyer returned to New England with the widow Ann Burden, who came to Boston to settle the estate of her late husband.[47][54] Dyer was immediately recognized as a Quaker and imprisoned. Dyer's husband had to come to Boston to get her out of jail, and he was bound and sworn not to allow her to lodge in any Massachusetts town, or to speak to any person while traversing the colony to return home. Dyer nevertheless continued to travel in New England to preach her Quaker message, and in early 1658 was arrested in the New Haven Colony, and then expelled for preaching her "inner light" belief, and the notion that women and men stood on equal ground in church worship and organization.[55] In addition to sharing her Quaker message, she had come to New Haven with two others to visit Humphrey Norton who had been imprisoned for three weeks. Anti-Quaker laws had been enacted there, and after Dyer was arrested, she was "set on a horse", and forced to leave.[56]

In June 1658 two Quaker activists, Christopher Holder and John Copeland came to Boston. They had already been evicted from other parts of the colony, and were exasperating the magistrates. Being joined by John Rous from Barbadoes, the three men were sentenced to having their right ears cut off, and the sentence was carried out in July.[57] As biographer Plimpton wrote, the men "were so stalwart while their ears were removed" that additional punishments in the form of whippings were carried out for the next nine weeks.[58] Word of this cruelty reached Dyer while she was visiting Richard and Katherine Scott in Providence. Richard and Katherine Scott were considered to be the first Quakers in Providence. The Scotts had two daughters, Mary, the older, who was engaged to Christopher Holder, and Patience, the younger, aged 11. Mrs. Scott and her two daughters, along with Mary Dyer and her friend Hope Clifton, were all compelled to go to Boston to visit with Holder and the other men in jail. The four women and child were all imprisoned. Three other people who had also come to visit Holder and were then imprisoned were Nicholas Davis from Plymouth, the London merchant William Robinson and a Yorkshire farmer named Marmaduke Stephenson, the latter two on a Quaker mission from England.[58][59]

Governor John Endecott sent the Quaker martyrs to the gallows.

The Quaker situation was becoming highly problematical for the magistrates. Their response to the increasing presence of these people was to enact tougher laws, and on 19 October 1658, a new law was passed in the Massachusetts colony that introduced capital punishment. Quakers would be banished from the colony upon pain of death, meaning they would be hanged if they defied the law. Dyer, Davis, Robinson, and Stephenson were then brought to court, and then sentenced to "banishment upon pain of death" under the new law.[60] Davis returned to Plymouth, Dyer went home to Newport, but Robinson and Stephenson remained in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, spending time in Salem.[61]

In June 1659 Robinson and Stephenson were once again apprehended and brought back to the Boston jail.[59] When Dyer heard of these arrests, she once again left her home in Newport, and returned to Boston to support her Quaker brethren, ignoring her order of banishment, and once again being incarcerated. Her husband had already come to Boston two years earlier to retrieve her from the authorities, signing an oath that she would not return. He would not come back to Boston again, but on 30 August 1659 he wrote a long and impassioned letter to the magistrates, questioning the legality of the actions taken by the Massachusetts authorities.[62]

On 19 October Dyer, Robinson and Stephenson were brought before Governor Endicott, where they explained their mission for the Lord.[63] The next day, the same group was brought before the governor, who directed the prison keeper to remove the men's hats. He then addressed the group, "We have made many laws and endeavored in several ways to keep you from among us, but neither whipping nor imprisonment, nor cutting off ears, nor banishment upon pain of death will keep you from among us. We desire not your death." Having met his obligation to present the position of the colony's authorities, he then pronounced, "Hearken now to your sentence of death."[64] William Robinson then wanted to read a prepared statement about being called by the Lord to Boston, but the governor would not allow it to be read, and Robinson was sent back to prison. Marmaduke Stephenson, being less vociferous than Robinson, was allowed to speak, and though initially declining, he ultimately spoke his mind, and then was also sent back to jail.[65]

When Dyer was brought forth, the governor pronounced her sentence, "Mary Dyer, you shall go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and there be hanged till you be dead." She replied, "The will of the Lord be done." When Endicott directed the marshall to take her away, she said, "Yea, and joyfully I go."[66]

Reverend John Wilson implored Dyer to repent, but she said, "Nay, man, I am not now to repent."

On 1 June 1660, at 9 A.M., Dyer once again departed the jail and was escorted to the gallows. Once she was on the ladder, under the elm tree, she was given the opportunity to save her life. Her response was, "Nay, I cannot; for in obedience to the will of the Lord God I came, and in his will I abide faithful to the death."[80] The military commander, Captain John Webb, recited the charges against her and said she "was guilty of her own blood".[80] Dyer's response was:

Nay, I came to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desiring you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust law of banishment upon pain of death, made against the innocent servants of the Lord, therefore my blood will be required at your hands who willfully do it; but for those that do it in the simplicity of their hearts, I do desire the Lord to forgive them. I came to do the will of my Father, and in obedience to his will I stand even to the death.[81][82]

Her former pastor, John Wilson, urged her to repent and to not be "so deluded and carried away by the deceit of the devil".[83] To this she answered, "Nay, man, I am not now to repent." Asked if she would have the elders pray for her, she replied, "I know never an Elder here." Another short exchange followed, and then, in the words of her biographer, Horatio Rogers, "she was swung off, and the crown of martyrdom descended upon her head".[84]

The Friends' records of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, contain the following entry: "Mary Dyer the wife of William Dyer of Newport in Rhode Island: she was put to death at the Town of Boston with ye like cruil hand as the martyrs were in Queen Mary's time, and there buried upon ye 31 day of ye 3d mo. 1660." In the calendar used at the time, May was the third month of the year, but the date in the record is incorrect by a day, as the actual date of death was 1 June.[85] Also, this entry states that Mary was buried there in Boston where she was hanged, and biographer Rogers echoed this, but this is not likely. Johan Winsser presents evidence that Mary was buried on the Dyer family farm, located north of Newport where the Navy base is now situated in the current town of Middletown. The strongest evidence found is the 1839 journal entry given by Daniel Wheeler, who wrote, "Before reaching Providence [coming from Newport], the site of the dwelling, and burying place of Mary Dyer was shown me."[86] Winsser provides other items of evidence lending credence to this notion; it is unlikely that Dyer's remains would have been left in Boston since she had a husband, many children, and friends living in Newport, Rhode Island.[86]

In his History of Boston, Caleb Snow wrote that one of the officers attending the hanging, Edward Wanton, was so overcome by the execution that he became a Quaker convert.[87] The Wantons later became one of the leading Quaker families in Rhode Island, and two of Wanton's sons, William and John, and two of his grandsons, Gideon and Joseph Wanton, became governors of the Rhode Island Colony.[88]

Humphrey Atherton, a prominent Massachusetts official and one of Dyer's persecutors, wrote, "Mary Dyer did hang as a flag for others to take example by."[89] Atherton died on 16 September 1661 following a fall from a horse, and many Quakers viewed this as God's wrath sent upon him for his harshness towards their sect.[90]

A strong reaction from a contemporary woman and friend of Mary Dyer came from Anne Brinley Coddington, with whom Dyer spent her final winter on Shelter Island. Anne Coddington sent a scathing letter to the Massachusetts magistrates, singling out Governor Endicott's role in the execution. In addition, her husband, William Coddington sent several letters to the Connecticut governor, John Winthrop, Jr., condemning the execution.[91]

While news of Dyer's hanging was quick to spread through the American colonies and England, there was no immediate response from London because of the political turbulence, resulting in the restoration of the king to power in 1660. One more Quaker was martyred at the hands of the Puritans, William Leddra of the Barbadoes, who was hanged in March 1661.[89] A few months later, however, the English Quaker activist Edward Burrough was able to get an appointment with the king. In a document dated 9 September 1661 and addressed to Endicott and all other governors in New England, the king directed that executions and imprisonments of Quakers cease, and that any offending Quaker be sent to England for trial under the existing English law.[92]

While the royal response put an end to executions, the Puritans continued to find ways to abuse the Quakers who came to Massachusetts. In 1661 they passed the "Cart and Tail Law", having Quakers tied to carts, stripped to the waist, and dragged through various towns behind the cart, being whipped en route, until they were taken out of the colony.[93] At about the time that Endicott died in 1665, a royal commission directed that all legal actions taken against Quakers would cease. Nevertheless, whippings and imprisonments continued into the 1670s, after which popular sentiment, coupled with the royal directives, finally put an end to the Quaker persecution.[89][94]

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