FRIENDS,

Whereas it was your pleasures to commit us, whose names are under-written, to the house of correction in Boston, altho’ the Lord, the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, is our witness, that we had done nothing worthy of stripes or of bonds; and we being committed by your court, to be dealt withal as the law provides for foreign Quakers, as ye please to term us; and having some of us, suffered your law and pleasures, now that which we do expect, is, that whereas we have suffered your law, so now to be set free by the same law, as your manner is with strangers, and not to put us in upon the account of one law, and execute another law upon us, of which, according to your own manner, we were never convicted as the law expresses. If you had sent us upon the account of your new law, we should have expected the jaylor’s order to have been on that account, which that it was not, appears by the warrant which we have, and the punishment which we bare, as four of us were whipp’d, among whom was one that had formerly been whipp’d, so now also according to your former law. Friends, let it not be a small thing in your eyes, the exposing as much as in you lies, our families to ruine.

It’s not unknown to you the season, and the time of the year, for those that live of husbandry, and what their cattle and families may be exposed unto; and also such as live on trade; we know if the spirit of Christ did dwell and rule in you, these things would take impression on your spirits. What our lives and conversations have been in that place, is well known; and what we now suffer for, is much for false reports, and ungrounded jealousies of heresie and sedition. These thing lie upon us to lay before you. As for our parts, we have true peace and rest in the Lord in all our sufferings, and are made willing in the power and strength of God, freely to offer up our lives in this cause of God, for which we suffer; Yea and we do find (through grace) the enlargements of God in our imprisoned state, to whom alone we commit ourselves and families, for the disposing of us according to his infinite wisdom and pleasure, in whose love is our rest and life.

From the House of Bondage in Boston wherein we are made captives by the wills of men, although made free by the Son, John 8, 36. In which we quietly rest, this 16th of the 5th month, 1658.

LAWRENCE | CASSANDRA | SOUTHWICK JOSIAH | SAMUEL SHATTOCK JOSHUA BUFFUM. [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 74.]

What the prisoners apprehended was being kept in prison and punished under an ex post facto law, and this was precisely what was done. When brought into court they demanded to be told the crime wherewith they were charged. They were answered: “It was ‘Entertaining the Quakers who were their enemies; not coming to their meetings; and meeting by themselves.’ They adjoyned, ‘That as to those things they had already fastned their law upon them.’ ... So ye had nothing left but the hat, for which (then) ye had no law. They answered—that they intended no offence to ye in coming thither ... for it was not their manner to have to do with courts. And as for withdrawing from their meetings, or keeping on their hats, or doing anything in contempt of them, or their laws, they said, the Lord was their witness ... that they did it not. So ye rose up, and bid the jaylor take them away.” [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 85.]

An acquittal seemed certain; yet it was intolerable to the clergy that these accursed blasphemers should elude them when they held them in their grasp; wherefore, the next day, the Rev. Charles Chauncy, preaching at Thursday lecture, thus taught Christ’s love for men: “Suppose ye should catch six wolves in a trap ... [there were six Salem Quakers] and ye cannot prove that they killed either sheep or lambs; and now ye have them they will neither bark nor bite: yet they have the plain marks of wolves. Now I leave it to your consideration whether ye will let them go alive, yea or nay.” [Footnote: Idem, pp. 85, 86.]

Then the divines had a consultation, “and your priests were put to it, how to prove them as your law had said: and ye had them before you again, and your priests were with you, every one by his side (so came ye to your court) and John Norton must ask them questions, on purpose to ensnare them, that by your standing law for hereticks, ye might condemn them (as your priests before consulted) and when this would not do (for the Lord was with them, and made them wiser than your teachers) ye made a law to banish them, upon pain of death....” [Footnote: Idem, p. 87.]

After a violent struggle, the ministers, under Norton’s lead, succeeded, on the 19th of October, 1658, in forcing the capital act through the legislature, which contained a clause making the denial of reverence to superiors, or in other words, the wearing the hat, evidence of Quakerism. [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 100, 101; Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 346.]

On that very day the bench ordered the prisoners at Ipswich to be brought to the bar, and the Southwicks were bidden to depart before the spring elections. [Footnote: Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 349.] They did not go, and in May were once more in the felon’s dock. They asked what wrong they had done. The judges told them they were rebellious for not going as they had been commanded. The old man and woman piteously pleaded “that they had no otherwhere to go,” nor had they done anything to deserve banishment or death, though £100 (all they had in the world) had been taken from them for meeting together. [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 106.]

“Major-General Dennison replied, that ‘they stood against the authority of the country, in not submitting to their laws: that he should not go about to speak much concerning the error of their judgments: but,’ added he, ‘you and we are not able well to live together, and at present the power is in our hand, and therefore the stronger must send off.’” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 198.]

The father, mother, and son were banished under pain of death. The aged couple were sent to Shelter Island, but their misery was well-nigh done; they perished within a few days of each other, tortured to death by flogging and starvation.

Josiah was shipped to England, but afterward returned, was seized, and in the “seventh month, 1661, you had him before you, and at which according to your former law, he should have been tried for his life.”

“But the great occasion you took against him, was his hat, which you commanded him to pull off: ‘He told your governour he could not.’ You said, ‘He would not.’ He told you, ‘It was a cross to his will to keep it on; ... and that he could not do it for conscience sake.’ ... But your governour told him, ‘That he was to have been tryed for his life, but that you had made your late law to save his life, which, you said, was mercy to him.’ Then he asked you, ‘Whether you were not as good to take his life now, as to whip him after your manner, twelve or fourteen times at the cart’s tail, through your towns, and then put him to death afterward?’” He was condemned to be flogged through Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham; but he, when he heard the judgment, “with arms stretched out, and hands spread before you, said, ‘Here is my body, if you want a further testimony of the truth I profess, take it and tear it in pieces ... it is freely given up, and as for your sentence I matter it not.’” [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 354-356.]

This coarse, blustering, impudent fanatic had, indeed, “with a dogged pertinacity” persisted in outrages which “had driven” the authorities almost to frenzy; “therefore they tied him to a cart and lashed him for fifteen miles, and while he “sang to the praise of God,” his tormentor swung with all his might a tremendous two-handed whip, whose knotted thongs were made of twisted cat-gut; [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 357, note.] thence he was carried fifteen miles from any town into the wilderness.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 225.]

An end had been made of the grown members of the family, but the two children were still left. To reach them, the device was conceived of enforcing the penalty for not attending church, since “it was well known they had no estate, their parents being already brought to poverty by their rapacious persecutors.” [Footnote: Sewel, p. 223.]

Accordingly, they were summoned and asked to account for their absence from worship. Daniel answered “that if they had not so persecuted his father and mother perhaps he might have come.” [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 381.] They were fined; and on the day on which they lost their parents forever, the sale as slaves of this helpless boy and girl was authorized to satisfy the debt. [Footnote: Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 366.]