no eye could see, no ear hear, no tongue speak, and
no heart understand, the sweet incomes and refreshings of the Lord's
spirit, which she did then feel. This she spake aloud, so that all
about could hear, whereat Captain Oliver bid the drums to beat and drown
her voice. Now, when they did come to the gallows ladder, on each side
of which the officers and chief people stood, the two men kept on their
hats, as is the ill manner of their sort, which so provoked Mr. Wilson,
the minister, that he cried out to them: 'What! shall such Jacks as you
come before authority with your hats on?' To which one of them said:
'Mind you, it is for not putting off our hats that we are put to death.'
The two men then went up the ladder, and tried to speak; but I could not
catch a word, being outside of the soldiers, and much fretted and
worried by the crowd. They were presently turned off, and then the
woman went up the ladder, and they tied her coats down to her feet, and
put the halter on her neck, and, lacking a handkerchief to tie over her
face, the minister lent the hangman his. Just then your Uncle Rawson
comes a-riding up to the gallows, waving his hand, and crying out,
'Stop! she is reprieved!' So they took her down, although she said she
was ready to die as her brethren did, unless they would undo their
bloody laws. I heard Captain Oliver tell her it was for her son's sake
that she was spared. So they took her to jail, and after a time sent
her back to her husband in Rhode Island, which was a favor she did in no
wise deserve; but good Governor Endicott, much as he did abhor these
people, sought not their lives, and spared no pains to get them
peaceably out the country; but they were a stubborn crew, and must needs
run their necks into the halter, as did this same woman; for, coming
back again, under pretence of pleading for the repeal of the laws
against Quakers, she was not long after put to death. The excellent Mr.
Wilson made a brave ballad on the hanging, which I have heard the boys
in the street sing many a time."
A great number, both men and women, were--"whipped and put in the
stocks," continued the woman, "and I once beheld two of them, one a
young and the other an aged woman, in a cold day in winter, tied to the
tail of a cart, going through Salem Street, stripped to their waists as
naked as they were born, and their backs all covered with red whip-
marks; but there was a more pitiful case of one Hored Gardner, a
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