Activists With Attitude

thoughts on courage and creativity

  • Home
  • Pam’s Books
  • Savvy Sites
  • Cool Quotes
  • Archive
You are here: Home / Archives for Quaker persecution

Mary Dyer, Martyr for Religious Freedom

June 1, 2015 By Pam

On June 1, 1660, Boston’s Puritan patriarchs, minds snapped shut like oyster shells, executed Mary Dyer. They had come to the New World in search of the freedom to impose their own intolerant theocracy. Dyer had a wider vision, a New World of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience.

THIRD IN LINE AT THE HANGING ELM

43-Dyer&FriendsPuritan fathers, lips stiff as church pews, arrived in the New World with worthy dreams. They would build a shining city on the hill, a New Jerusalem of parks, libraries, and schools, and tend lovingly to the poor and ill.

But along with new dreams, the Puritans brought Old World tools — hellfire and damnation, branding irons and prison cells. Before long, they claimed a tree in the center of their Eden as the Hanging Elm. By the mid-1650s, Quakers were outlawed in the Massachusetts colony, their books burned, their bodies whipped and branded, their tongues mutilated.

Repeatedly throughout 1659, Mary Dyer and other Quakers disobeyed the law by entering Boston, pitting their belief in the “Inner Light” against the Puritan’s “wrath of God.” For this act of civil disobedience, they were imprisoned. In mid-October, they were found guilty of breaking the laws of Quaker banishment and sentenced to hang from the tree at Boston Neck. Upon hearing this judgement, Mary cried out defiantly, “Yea, and joyfully I go!” as if it were her decision, her choice, her moral triumph over unjust laws.

43-Hanging-ElmOn October 27, the three Quakers walked hand-in-hand to the Hanging Elm, Mary in the middle. They tried to address the crowd, but drummers had been ordered to maintain a steady beat and drown out their voices.

Dyer stood stoically, third in line. She watched one friend hanged, then the other. Then Mary herself was led to the tree, up a ladder, and a noose put around her neck. How furious the theocrats must have been that she acquiesced so calmly, as if she were waiting in line for strawberries at the market.

At the last minute, her execution was cancelled. The noose was removed from her neck, and she was sent back into exile, devastated, to her husband’s custody.

DYER’S DEATH, A TURNING POINT

43-2nd-timeMary Dyer waited out the long winter on Shelter Island, no doubt grieving the friends she’d watched die before her.  And then one day in May, she returned to Boston clothed, as it were, in disobedience, once again defying the law of “Quaker banishment.”

Some say she came back carrying her own shroud. Certainly this was true metaphorically, if not literally. Committed, body and soul, to upholding the right to freedom of conscience, she knew what she had to do. As she put it, “My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of the truth.”

The next morning, she was paraded through the streets once again, this time alone. At the tree, she was given a chance to repent and save herself, but she refused, believing that her death would heighten public awareness of the “unrighteous and unjust law of banishment.”

Mary Dyer statue in Boston, by Sylvia Shaw Judson

Mary Dyer statue in Boston, by Sylvia Shaw Judson

When her neck snapped, many wept. One of the officers, moved by the sight of Dyer’s slight body swaying in the breeze, became a Quaker convert.

Back in England, King Charles II was, finally, shocked into action and used his power to put an end to the execution of Quakers, although persecution (imprisonment and torture) by Puritans continued for more than a decade.

No one remembers the executioners who carried out the orders, but today in Boston, Philadelphia, and at Earlham College in Indiana there are statues of Mary Dyer, who is remembered for her courage in the fight for freedom of religion.

 

TO GO DEEPER

“Top 10 Things You May Not Know About Mary Dyer” by Christy K. Robinson (Excellent information and fun to read, written by a Mary Dyer scholar.)

 


This Day In History, June 1 (53 seconds)

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Boston’s Hanging Elm, Christy K. Robinson, Earlham College, freedom of religion, Mary Dyer, Puritans, Quaker banishment, Quaker persecution, Sylvia Shaw Judson

Pam McAllister

In 1982, I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence and then wrote two books about women’s use of resistance and action: You Can't Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage.

I've spent a lifetime compiling stories of courageous, creative actions, categorizing them (a la Gene Sharp), writing books and articles, speaking at university forums, church retreats, feminist conferences. I’ve also joined in the action -- antiwar protests in the '70s, Take Back the Night marches in the '80s, prison reform rallies in the '90s, and Occupy Wall Street actions in recent years.

I am currently researching more examples of nonviolent action for peace and justice around the world for two new books -- one for/about children and another about women (whose actions are still so often left out or overlooked).

Here I am with Barbara Deming, my mentor and friend, in Sugarloaf Key in the early ‘80s. The photo has faded, but the memories and love have not.

Connect With Pam Online

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
Your Comments: I’m new at blogging. After I've had some time to learn how to do this, I will have a way for you to leave comments and be in dialogue with me. My Author's Guild website is at: http://pammcallisterauthor.com. Also, see my Facebook Author Page Global Nonviolence: Stories of Creative Action and My Amazon "Author Page".

FOR EMAIL NOTICES

Sign up to be notified of new blog posts!
STEP 1: Enter info below
STEP 2: Click on purple bar
STEP 3: Then, an email will ask you to confirm this.
~ You're all set! ~

Search Site

Copyright © 2025, Activists With Attitude · Log in