If you’re a descendant or admirer of the people mentioned in
this chapter, you’re already primed to appreciate the historical research and writing
expertise that went into this biographical novel:
Mary Barrett Dyer
Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick
Nathaniel Sylvester
John Endecott
And in the preceding chapter, you’d find:
Katherine Marbury Scott
Isaac Robinson
William Dyer
Sir Henry Vane
Giles Slocum
William Brenton
There’s a lot of real, historical names and
characterizations in my Mary Dyer books, because they were the people in
William’s and Mary’s lives that helped define who they were, how they were interacting with one another, and what they were doing at the time.
Book extract from Mary
Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014),
© 2014 Christy K
Robinson
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May 12, 1660
Shelter Island, Long
Island
Mary
was exhausted. She was not in the mood to hear or make another condolence. She
didn’t want to hear, much less feel, more angry words about the wickedness of
the colonial governments against the Friends, not in New England, and not in
Virginia. She wanted something, but what?
This
morning, she and the Shelter Island Friends had gathered for a blessedly silent
Meeting and then a burial service for Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick. Both of
those dear people had died this week: first Cassandra and then a day later,
Lawrence. Though Mary had done all she could to loosen the terrible knots under
their skin caused by the triple lash, and soothe their pains by gently working
scented and pain-relieving balm into their scars, all it took in the end was a
respiratory fever. Once Cassandra was gone, Lawrence gave up and followed her.
Again, Mary thought of the life
force in a human being: sometimes it was strong, like a mighty river current,
and other times, it was merely a trembling leaf on an aspen. The
sixty-two-year-olds could endure savage beatings, they could tolerate the loss
of every material thing they’d worked so hard for, they could hear of their
adult children sitting in dark, cold prison, and grieve that their adolescent
children had barely escaped being sold as slaves. But finally, they had left
behind their torn old bodies for freedom and eternal joy in God’s presence.
She
wasn’t sure whether to rejoice or to weep, or to nurse a very natural fury at
the evil that could inhabit the governor, assistants, and ministers of Boston,
Salem, and Plymouth, who claimed to speak for God but were voracious lions
seeking to devour harmless lambs.
Nathaniel
Sylvester hadn’t been convinced of the Friends’ teachings when Copeland,
Holder, Robinson, and others visited here in previous years. Perhaps his
sympathetic support of the Friends had something to do with his Barbados
partners and past experience with Friends there—and something to do with his
antagonistic attitude to the New Haven Colony which administered the English
settlements on Long Island and had so gravely injured the Quaker missionaries.
But something had changed. Perhaps
it was Lawrence and Cassandra, perhaps it was Mary herself, for now Sylvester
was in a hot lather to send a letter to the General Court at New Haven and
declare himself a Friend. An outraged Friend, furious about the unwarranted,
malevolent persecution by New England’s governments. How dare they, to hold
Mary Fisher and Ann Austin in prison for five weeks, and inspect their naked
bodies for marks of witchcraft or imp teats, to threaten death, and then ship
them off to Barbados. Ann had said that though she’d borne five children in
England, she’d never suffered as much as she had under those barbarous and
cruel hands.
Mary already knew what the false
minister Davenport would say: that Nathaniel was slandering New England’s godly
magistrates and himself in particular, and blaspheming God with his pernicious
doctrines, and that he was entertaining members of a cursed sect. There would
be fury, accusations, and perhaps arrests. These were the people who had begun
their bloody work with Humphrey Norton.
New Haven. Davenport. The earthquake.
Was it really only two years ago? How the faces had changed in that time. Some
had gone back to England. Sarah Gibbons drowned. William Robinson and Marmaduke
Stephenson hanged. Richard Doudney, Mary Clark, and Mary Wetherhead all drowned
in a shipwreck off Barbados. Anne Robinson dead of a fever in Jamaica. Now the
Southwicks. And soon, Mary Dyer. She felt it. She knew the time was near, for
the madness and hate of New England were still not ripe.
But did she mourn her Friends? Deep
down, no, for she knew that their salvation was secure and they were now part
of that great cloud of witnesses. Instead, she mourned the suffering of the
converts who were only obeying the quiet voice of God, and acting as scripture
prescribed: to visit the sick and imprisoned, to be just, merciful, and humble,
to love one another. She mourned for the families and children who didn’t
understand where the hate came from, and why their naked, bleeding mothers had
been dragged out to the wilderness and left to die, or suffered the winter in
Boston prison, with no heat and little food. And because these women were not
well-known, were not as educated or experienced as men, and to be honest, not
as privileged and connected as Mary Dyer, they needed an obelisk or flag to
rally around. They needed an advocate, and someone important enough to draw the
attention of Endecott and Bellingham away from the outrages they visited upon
the faithful. They needed the hearts of the people of New England turned from
bloodthirst to pity and charity.
And that Mary could do by God’s
grace. She would have done it last October, but the Lord in his wisdom had used
his two willing servants, Robinson and Stephenson, and reserved Mary’s
sacrifice for such a time as this, when it would have a greater effect.
Ah! That’s what Mary had been
longing for. Not the prison and hardship, but knowing that every moment, she
was fulfilling God’s will. She longed for the kingdom that was closer and more
real than this world, and being in that place of perfect love.
The annual Court of Elections would
be held in Boston in ten days’ time, and she would be there. Even in taking the
Southwicks home and releasing Mary from their care, the Lord was preparing her
way. She had nothing to fear.
Read more from the five-star Mary
Dyer: For Such a Time as This.
*****
On May 27, 1660 (360
years ago), Mary’s husband, William Dyer, wrote an impassioned letter to the
General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony, pleading with them to save his wife
from the gallows. You can own a high-resolution 16x20” print of that letter
written in William’s beautiful hand, by ordering it at this page: http://bit.ly/DyerHandwriting
*****
Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the
colored title):
And of these
sites:
Discovering
Love (inspiration and service)
Rooting
for Ancestors (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of
England and New England)