rship in New England than the reading of Quaker George
Bishop's account of _New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord_. Page
after page of merciless cruelty is displayed in forcible, simple
language. Here is an account of a Quaker's treatment in New Haven for
worshipping God in his chosen way:

"The Drum was Beat, the People gather'd, Norton was fetch'd and stripp'd
to the Waste, and set with his Back to the Magistrates, and given in
their View Thirty-six cruel Stripes with a knotted cord, and his hand
made fast in the Stocks where they had set his Body before, and burn'd
very deep with a Red-hot Iron with H. for Heresie."

Quaker women were punished with equal ferocity. Bishop says of Mary
Clark:

"Her tender Body ye unmercifully tore with twenty stripes of a
three-fold-corded-knotted whip; as near as the Hangman could all in one
place, fetching his Stroaks with the greatest Strength & Advantage."

The constables of twelve Massachusetts and New Hampshire towns were
notified of four "rougue and vagabond Quakers" named Anna Coleman, Mary
Tompkins, Alice Andrews and Alice Ambrose.

"You are enjoined to make them fast to the cart-tail & draw them through
your several towns, and whip them on their naked backs not exceeding ten
stripes in each town, and so convey them from Constable to Constable on
your Perill?"

These women were whipped until the blood ran down their shoulders and
breasts, and the men of the town of Salisbury rose in righteous wrath
and tore them away from the cart and the constables. Quakers were
ordered never to return after being banished from any town. In the
"Massachusetts Colonial Records" of the year 1657 read the penalty for
disobediently returning:

"A Quaker if male for the first offense shall have one of his eares cutt
off; for the second offense have his other eare cutt off; a woman shalbe
severely whipt; for the third offense they, he or she, shall have their
tongues bored through with a hot iron."

They were also to be branded with the letter R on the right shoulder.
They were called "blasphemous hereticks" by the magistrates, and any who
read books of their "devilish opinions" were to be punished with
severity. New York and Virginia were likewise intolerant and cruel to
the Quakers, but were less visited by them than Massachusetts.

In the despotism of early Virginia, under the Code of Martial Law
established by Sir Thomas Dale, the fierceness of punishment was
appalling; possib