This article is copyrighted 2015 by Christy K Robinson.
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Mary never claimed that, either. She committed civil disobedience believing that God had commanded her to go back to Massachusetts to ask them to "repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death."
It was no accident that Mary Dyer returned to Massachusetts against her death-penalty banishment--she didn't sneak back, she arrived on a specific date for the purpose of civil disobedience. She forced the theocratic government to execute her, a high-status, well-known woman innocent of anything but carrying out Jesus' commission in Matthew 25, in the hope that her death would be so shocking that the people would cry out to the government to cease their bloody persecution and allow liberty of conscience (what we call religious freedom and separation of church and state).
My extensive research, just for this short section, included books by Quaker historians, and the records of Massachusetts Bay Colony General Court, as well as the backgrounds of all the people involved, from Gov. Endecott to the militia (their formation and purpose), and the hangman.
Excerpt from Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This,
copyright 2014 by Christy K Robinson.
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| https://www.amazon.com/dp/1496026136 |
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June 1, 1660
Boston, Massachusetts
As she had been
last October, Mary was surrounded by a troop of more than a hundred musketeers
and pikemen who were there to protect the officials of the court from the angry
mob. Captain Oliver was the officer in charge of the guard today.
Word had spread
quickly overnight, and this day thousands of men, women, and children were
spread out along the streets as if for a parade. Others waited at the gallows
for the spectacle to come to them. Should she attempt to speak, before and
behind her, military men beat the slow execution drum call to drown out the
sound of her voice.
Brrr-tap-tap-rest.
Brrr-tap-tap-rest. Brrr-tap-tap-rest. Brrr-tap-tap-rest.
The monotonous,
repetitive beat set the pace for the walk along Tremont Road, part of the Common, and
finally, to the fortification and gate of the city of Boston. Then they were out on the isthmus, or
Boston Neck, where the road led to Roxbury. Hundreds more people surged up from
the towns of Roxbury and Weymouth.
Mary remembered
that the last execution here had been a chilly autumn day, appropriate,
perhaps, for the murder of the two dear young men. Today, though, was a day at
the height of spring, with daisies on the Common turning their faces toward the
sun, and dandelion seed puffs drifting on the breeze from the bay.
It was just such
a day, exactly twenty-two years ago, that the great earthquake had rumbled
across New England, and the little group of people praying with Anne Hutchinson
had felt the Pentecostal filling of the Holy Spirit.
And thirty years
ago this day, Mary remembered seeing the noon-day comet that marked the birth
of the future King Charles the Second, and presaged war, famine, and plague.
What was it that John Donne had preached at St. Paul’s? That
“all mankind is
of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn
out of the book, but translated into a better language; God's hand is in every
translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for
that library where every book shall lie open to one another.”
Like all
memories, these flashed through Mary’s mind in still pictures, like landscape
paintings. One could view the scene all at once, or stop and decipher the
symbolism. She had lived them and learned from them, but were they connected
with today?
She and the
guard and drummers, and all of Boston
behind them, arrived at the gallows. Michaelson ceremoniously handed the end of
her tether to Edward Wanton, the man at the foot of the gallows.
Mary climbed the
ladder, the drumbeat ended, and she stood ready.
The crowds of
men and women, packed shoulder to shoulder on the slim neck of land, jostled
one another and a few on the edges of the marsh actually trod in the mud.
“Mistress Dyer,”
a man shouted over the din of the people, “if you’d only leave this colony, you
might come down and save your life!”
As beautiful as this world is, and as much
as I love my life with family, friends, health, and prosperity, what does it
avail? How does it compare to the Paradise
I’ve already glimpsed? If my momentary death can shine Light on the human right
to worship and obey God, then let it be. I shall be with the Lord.
She answered,
projecting her voice while she motioned for silence, “No, I cannot, for in
obedience to the will of the Lord I came, and in his will I abide faithful—to
the death.”
The man in
charge of her execution was Captain John Evered-Webb. She recognized him from
1635, when he and his shipmates had been caught in the great hurricane as they
approached Massachusetts,
but miraculously avoided shipwreck and limped in with broken masts and mere
rags of sails. He and his sister and her husband had settled near Salem, and that made Webb
one of Endecott’s men.
He stood on the
platform and shouted to be heard. “The condemned woman has been here before,
here on this very gallows. She had the sentence of banishment on pain of death,
but she has come again now and broken the law. Therefore she is guilty of her
own blood. The executioner shall not ask her forgiveness as would be customary.”
The masked hangman
bowed as if he were an actor.
At this insult,
some in the crowd grumbled at Webb’s lack of godly grace. The angry murmur
spread through the crowd like a wave as the nearest told their neighbors behind
them what they’d heard.
Mary answered,
looking pointedly at Reverend Wilson, Major-General Humphrey Atherton (an
assistant to the governor), and others of her accusers, “No, I came to keep
blood guiltiness 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
desire the Lord to forgive them.”
She raised her
voice to a victorious shout. “I came to do the will of my Father, and in
obedience to his will, I stand even to death!”
“’Tis wrong to
murder this innocent woman! Take her down! Let her go home!” came the shouts
from every direction.
Edward Wanton
tied Mary’s legs together with the rope over her skirts for modesty when she’d
be dropped.
John Wilson, the
man who had examined Mary and William for church membership, and baptized her
baby Samuel nearly a quarter-century before, put on a dramatic act for the
audience, far larger than any Sunday congregation he’d ever preached to. He added
a sob to his voice: “Mary Dyer, O repent! O repent! And be not so deluded, and
carried away by the deceit of the devil.”
It was difficult
to control her facial expression at this hypocritical display of concern for
her soul, but Mary answered, “No, man, I am not now to repent.”
One of the
ministers asked if she would have the elders pray for her soul, if she would
not pray for herself. They meant an appointed elder of the First Church of
Christ in Boston.
She said, “I do
not know of a single elder here.” She meant she didn’t recognize their elders
as having authority over her. As Anne Hutchinson had rejected the authority of
that body over her.
“Would you have any of the people to pray for you?”
“I desire the
prayers of all the people of God.” As she looked over the crowd, she recognized
Friends, including Robert and Deborah Harper of Sandwich.
She knew they kept her in prayer continually, and being encouraged, she felt
warmth and strength fill her.
A scoffer from
the church cried out, “It may be she thinks there is none here!”
Mary replied
softly, “I know that there are only a few here.”
The Light became
brighter now, Mary thought. She was closer to heaven than she’d ever been.
Another from the
crowd below her urged, “Woman, you’re about to die, and a heretic at that.
Don’t throw away your soul. Ask for an elder to pray, that his effectual,
fervent prayer will be heard by God.”
Mary answered,
“No, first a child, then a young man, then a strong man, before an ‘elder’ in your
Church of Christ.”
“What?” called the
critic. “You said ‘an elder in Christ Jesus?’ You don’t want a Christian man to
pray for you? If not an elder in Christ Jesus, you prefer to go, then, with
your master the Devil?”
She said, “It is
false, it is false; I never spoke those words. I said an elder in the church.”
“Are you not
afraid to die, knowing that you are a cursed Quaker? A heretic?” said the
minister Norton.
“The Lord has
said to me, as to all who come to him in repentance and humility, ‘Today shalt
thou be with me in Paradise.’”
“You and the
dead Quakers said last time that you have
been in Paradise.”
“Yes, I have
been in Paradise several days,” she said with
a blissful smile.
John Wilson, who
had a look of fear on his face now, produced a handkerchief from his coat, and
young Wanton draped it over Mary’s face and tucked it under the rope before
than hangman made it snug.
She remembered
what Sir Harry Vane had said, “Death does not bring us into darkness, but takes
darkness out of us, us out of darkness, and puts us into marvelous light.”
As she spoke
further of the eternal happiness into which she was now to enter, Mary felt
that familiar buoyancy of light and love, as if she were being borne away by
angels.
“Mary.”
“Yes, Lord?”
*****
Read everything that led up to this moment, and what transpired afterward, in Mary Dyer Illuminated and Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This, both by Christy K Robinson.
As I wrote in the foreword to both volumes on Mary Dyer and her husband William, they weren't written to be religious books for a religious market. But I did want to show that though religion in that generation was everything to them (they'd staked their lives, families and possessions on a New Jerusalem in the New World), the colony of Rhode Island, of which William Dyer was an important government member, incorporated itself as a secular democracy, with religion distinctly separate from government matters. Their founding documents influenced and inspired generations to come, and formed a template for the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
Related articles:
Mary Dyer's victory, not victimhood (New in 2018)
The anniversary of our civil rights (published in
Providence Journal)
Mary
Dyer’s last 44 miles Mary Dyer’s last journey, toward her death
The
great New England quake of June 1, 1638 Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson
The 1630
comet of doom Charles II of England
was born at the time of the comet, and crowned in 1660 as Mary waited in prison
for her execution
Christy K Robinson is author of
‘Mary Dyer Illuminated’ and ‘Mary Dyer For Such a Time as This;’ and
the nonfiction ‘The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport.’ All three of the Dyer books tell the story of theocratic oppression, and the birth of
democracy and religious liberty in colonial America.
*****
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)
FACEBOOK COMMENTS:
ReplyDeleteLinda Christian-Herot: A good read for those who want to further their understanding of the entanglement and complexities of religion and social structure (for both good and bad)in the earliest days of our country.
Pat Barton: All your books are soooo enlightening and great reads!!!!