The Persecution of the Quakers: Massachusetts

This feeling finally became so strong that the magistrates dared no longer oppose it. After the condemnation of Wenlock Christison, who had defended himself with marked ability, the magistrates felt it necessary to change the sentences of the condemned Quakers to flogging and banishment. As the demeanor of the Quakers grew more quiet and orderly, the toleration of them increased, and the flogging of Quakers was soon after prohibited by Charles II.

The persecution thus happily closed was not equally severe in all the New England States: the Quakers suffered most in Massachusetts and Plymouth, and comparatively little in Connecticut and New Haven. It was only in Massachusetts that the inhuman law inflicting capital punishment upon them was ever carried into effect. At a subsequent period, the laws relating to vagabond Quakers were so far revived that Quakers disturbing religious assemblies, or violating public decorum, were subjected to corporal chastisement. But little occasion ever again occurred of executing these severities, the wild excursions of the Quaker spirit having generally ceased, and the Quakers gradually subsiding into a decent and orderly submission to all the laws, except such as related to the militia and the support of the clergy,--in their scruples as to which the provincial legislature, with reciprocal moderation, consented to indulge them.