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| William Dyer's 27 May 1660 letter to Massachusetts General Court. You can buy a high-resolution, ready-to-frame reproduction of this letter by clicking on the "letter" tab above this article. Image courtesy of Massachusetts Archives |
Honored
Sirs,
It
is no little grief of mind, and sadness of hart that I
am
necessitated to be so bould as to supplicate your Honored
self
with the Honorable Assembly of your General Court to extend your
mercy
& favor once again to me & my children. Little did I
dream
that ever I should have had occasion to petition you in
a
matter of this nature, but so it is that through the divine providence
and
your benignity my sonn obtained so much pitty & mercy att
your
hands as to enjoy the life of his mother. Now my supplication
to
your Honors is to begg affectionately, the life of my dear wife,
'tis
true I have not seen her above this half yeare & therefore
cannot
tell how in the frame of her spiritt she was moved thus
againe
to runn so great a Hazard to herself, and perplexity
to
me & mine & all her friends and well wishers. So itt is from
Shelter
Island about by Pequid Narragansett & to the towne of Providence…
This is a fragment of a complete letter by William Dyer, dated 27 May 1660, written from Portsmouth,
Rhode Island. It was an attempt
to free his wife, Mary Barrett Dyer, from prison and her death sentence. But
Mary had intentionally defied her death-penalty Massachusetts
banishment order, and sailed from Shelter
Island (northeastern end of Long
Island) into the Narragansett Bay, perhaps gliding past her own home on the
western shore of Rhode
Island north of Newport.
She kept going by water to Providence, and then,
in a reversal of her and William’s first exile from Massachusetts
in 1638, she walked to Boston.
She was arrested, imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death,
which was carried out on 1 June 1660.
A close inspection of the high-resolution image shows faded black
ink on linen-textured paper that browned over the intervening 350 years. The left edge is stained by
glue or book-binding. The right edge is understandably frayed and flaked.
William’s handwriting here is consistent with other documents he wrote, with a
fine-tipped quill and artistic flourishes. There are a few ink blots, particularly on loops, and the double t's (lett, quiett, att) are heavier than other letters, where he may have refreshed his quill.
The language, though tender when he
refers to Mary, is otherwise courtly and professional (honored sirs, render you Love and Honor), as one would
assume from a former clerk, secretary of state, and attorney general. He was no
friend or colleague of Governor Endecott or Deputy Governor Bellingham, but he
tried to appeal to their and the jury’s emotions about putting a beloved wife and mother
to death, a woman who could be suffering from delusions (William was not a Quaker and didn't share his wife's beliefs).
What do you think William Dyer’s handwriting says about his
personality or frame of mind? How does it compare with his wife’s
handwriting?
The background of William's 17th-century words and phrases that are unfamiliar to us more than 350 years later, is given in the book Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (Vol. 2 of the trilogy on the Dyers), by Christy K Robinson.
Related article: Found! More documents in William Dyer's hand
The background of William's 17th-century words and phrases that are unfamiliar to us more than 350 years later, is given in the book Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (Vol. 2 of the trilogy on the Dyers), by Christy K Robinson.
Related article: Found! More documents in William Dyer's hand
*****
Christy K Robinson is author of these sites:
- Discovering Love (inspiration)
- Rooting for Ancestors (history and genealogy)
- William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)
and of these books:
· We Shall Be Changed (2010)
· Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)
· Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)
· The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)
· Effigy Hunter (2015)
· Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)