1650: The FIRST attorney general in America -- a firebrand

Engaged for the people, by, or in the peoples' name

William Dyer, the son of a yeoman farmer from a village near Boston, Lincolnshire, was apprenticed as a haberdasher in London, where his guild brothers often became mayors, councilmen, or government officers. After his emigration to New England in 1635, he held a succession of appointments as surveyor, clerk, Secretary of State, and General Recorder, and was appointed the first Attorney General of Rhode Island in 1650. But as I discovered, Dyer was also the first Attorney General of any colony in North America! And wait until you read his commission. It’s brilliant. It will make you long for a return to that ideal of government today!

In 1628, the founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony followed the lead of the Plymouth Colony, and obtained a royal charter to form a community that was self-governed but answerable to the King, Parliament, and laws of England. The Massachusetts Bay Company purchased a huge tract of wilderness that was later subdivided to become part of New Hampshire and Connecticut.

In late 1637, a large group of religious dissidents in the Boston area, including Anne and William Hutchinson, and William and Mary Dyer, were given the choice of submitting to the Massachusetts Bay theocracy, or being banished. They may have been planning to leave anyway, but the expulsion of Anne Hutchinson for heresy certainly hurried their departure. While she was under house arrest in the winter of 1637-38, the men were searching for and purchasing land from the Narragansett Indians, for what would become the Colony of Providence Plantations and Rhode Island.

The group may have sent their belongings by ship around Cape Cod, but some of them walked out of Boston and through the Indian trails of the forest in hip-deep snow, near the time of Passover and Easter. They walked 44 miles in what must have been an impressive Exodus from Egypt.

Upon their arrival, they immediately began building a town at the top of Rhode Island, later called Portsmouth. And a year later, a group of them moved to build a town and harbor called Newport. William and Mary Dyer were co-founders.

They formed the first democracy in America—and a secular one at that— (Massachusetts governors John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley were disdainful of democracy), and obtained their own charter from the English government in 1643, after Massachusetts Bay’s Gov. Winthrop implied that Rhode Island would be annexed to Massachusetts, thus bringing the heretics back under his control.

In May 1650, the General Assembly, meeting in Newport, created the offices of Attorney General and Solicitor General. William Dyer and Hugh Bewitt/Buit, respectively, were immediately engaged.

Notice the wording in the order and commission for Attorney General below, that he was “Engaged for the people, by, or in the peoples name…”  Does that sound familiar, like, say, the Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, when he said that “Government by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”?  

Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address

You won't see many “one people” or “We the People” empowering statements until 1776, in the Declaration of Independence, or 1787, when the United States Constitution was written. But Rhode Island was there in 1650, advocating for us—the People.

How wise and creative and brilliant were those Rhode Island founders?! Huzzah! This office of Attorney General was not created for the use of oligarchs, or “the cutthroat of prosperitie” and commerce, or for preferment of the representatives and executive officers (feel free to contrast with modern government). It was for the interests of the people—of any background or social structure or financial status.  

The. Free. People. 

The job description promised protection from criminals, and from officers of the state. These assemblymen were not creating laws to cover their behinds, they were creating laws for transparency and accountability. It’s mind-boggling, contrasting what the United States (and its allies) have come to over the last few decades.

Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, p. 220 and 225:

Acts and Orders made at the Generall Courte of Election held at Newport, May the 23d, (1650), for the Colonie of Providence Plantations.

It is ordered by this Courte, to apoynt an Atturney Generall for the Colonie, as also a Solicitor. That the Atturney Generall shall have full power to impleade any transgression of the lawe of this State in any Courte of this State; but especially to bringe all such matters of penal lawes to tryall of the Generall Courte of Tryalls, as also for the tryall of the officers in the State at the Generall Assemblies, and to impleade in the full power and authoritie of the free people of this State, their prerogatives and liberties; and because envy, the cut throat of all prosperitie will not faile to gallop with its full careere, let the sayed Atturney be faithfully ingaged and authorized and encouraged. Engaged for the people, by, or in the peoples name, and with their full authoritie assisted; authorized, that upon information of transgressions or transgressors of the lawes, prerogatives and liberties of the people, and their penal lawes, he shall under hand and seale take forth summons from the President or Generall Assistants, to command any delinquent, or vehemently suspected of delinquencie in what kind soever accordinge to the premises, to appeare at the Generall Courte, if it be thereto belonginge, or to the Generall Assemblie in those matters proper thereunto; and if any refuse to apeare at that mandamus in the State of England’s name and the free people of this State, he shall be judged guiltie; and so proceeded with according to fine or penaltie.

Mr. William Dyre is deputed Generall Atturney for the Colonie, and ingaged.

I created the table by searching for the first attorney general of every English colony or early state of America. William Dyer is, indeed, the very first appointment, by 27 years!

First Attorneys-General of colonial/east-coast America

Year instituted	Colony/east coast of America	First attorney general
1650	Rhode Island	William Dyer
1677	North Carolina	George Durant
1684	New York	crown appointee
1686	Pennsylvania	David Lloyd
1686	Massachusetts	Benjamin Bullivant
1686	western New Jersey	??
1688	Maryland	Charles Carroll
1698	South Carolina	Nicholas Trott
1704	Vermont	Alexander Griffith
1712	Virginia	Sir John Randolph (deputy AG)
1754	Georgia	William Clifton
1778	Delaware	Gunning Bedford, Jr.
1785	New Hampshire	Samuel Livermore
1820	Maine	Erastus Foote
1897	Connecticut	Charles Phelps

The most famous segment of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address is:  “…that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Note the similarity to the 1650 commission to the office of Rhode Island attorney general: “engaged for the people, by, or in the peoples' name.”

Well done, Rhode Island, and well done, William Dyer.  

The Dyers trilogy, by Christy K Robinson

Christy K Robinson has written a trilogy (two historical novels based in fact, and a nonfiction book) on Mary and William Dyer. Traditionally, Mary Dyer, who is known for giving her life in the cause of religious liberty, gets all the attention because Quaker historians used her story for political and evangelization purposes. Because he never became a Quaker, William Dyer’s history has been much more difficult to tease out of archives and records in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and the British Library. But this English farmer's son was a foundation stone of American democracy. One might call him a Firebrand.

A mystery cloaked in the obvious

            Who is buried in Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb? Is the Pope Catholic? Who wrote Mary Dyer’s last letter?

In previous books about Mary Dyer, in internet genealogy sites that copy from one another, and going all the way back to the 17^th-century Quaker chroniclers, we are told that Mary Dyer (known as the “Quaker Martyr”) wrote two letters in late October 1659: the night before her death sentence was to be executed, and again, after her reprieve. Those writers give us the text content of the letters. The inscription on the Mary Dyer sculpture in Boston is taken from the text of the second letter.

While researching my novels on the Dyers, I tracked down original documents to see what the penmanship was like. (I didn't attempt graphological analysis.) Were there cross-outs, ink blots, even margins, evidence of a bumpy surface on which the paper was placed, or did the text flow freely from mind to the page? Many men who were fairly high in colonial government could only make marks instead of signatures. William Dyer was a businessman, clerk, and eventually a colonial official (first attorney general in all of America)—was he measured in his phrasing, did he cram his handwriting to save space at the end of a line, did he write in even planes or slant it up or down, and did he use standard spellings of his day or write phonetically?

Of course, I had similar questions about Mary’s writing. Many women could read their Bibles, at least, but not every man or woman could also write (print or cursive), and if they did, it looked like chicken scratches.

So I set about looking for these original holographs. After many hours of research, I found two of William’s letters regarding Mary (the ones transcribed accurately on several websites), and one of Mary’s letters, in the Massachusetts Archive and its state library.

Fragmentary image of Mary Dyer's letter to the Boston court,
26 October 1659.
Image courtesy of Massachusetts Archive

As soon as I read Mary’s letter, I noticed that it bore little resemblance to the text she’s supposed to have written the night before she expected to die.

First lines of the letter everyone thinks Mary wrote:

Whereas I am by many charged with the Guiltiness of my own Blood: if you mean in my Coming to Boston, I am therein clear, and justified by the Lord, in whose Will I came, who will require my Blood of you, be sure, who have made a Law to take away the Lives of the Innocent Servants of God, if they come among you who are called by you, 'Cursed Quakers,' altho I say, and am a Living Witness for them and the Lord, that he hath blessed them, and sent them unto you: Therefore, be not found Fighters against God, but let my Counsel and Request be accepted with you, To repeal all such Laws, that the Truth and Servants of the Lord, may have free Passage among you and you be kept from shedding innocent Blood, which I know there are many among you would not do, if they knew it so to be: Nor can the Enemy that stirreth you up thus to destroy this holy Seed, in any Measure contervail, the great Damage that you will by thus doing procure: Therefeore, seeing the Lord hath not hid it from me, it lyeth upon me, in Love to your Souls, thus to persuade you: I have no Self Ends, the Lord knoweth, for if my Life were freely granted by you, it would not avail me, nor could I expect it of you,…

First lines of the letter Mary actually wrote (line breaks follow Mary’s line breaks in the original holograph):

from marie dire to the generall court now this present 26th of the 8 moth 59

assembled in the towne of boston in new Ingland greetings of grace mercy

and peace to every soul that doth well : tribulation anguish and wrath to all that doth evell

Whereas it is said by many of you that I am guilty of mine owne death by my

coming as you cal it voluntarily to boston: I therefore declare unto every one

that hath an eare to hear: that in the fear peace and love of god I came and in weldoing

did and stil doth commit my soul and body to him as unto a faithful creator

and for this very end hath preserved my life until now through many trialls and

temptations having held out his royal scepter unto mee by wch I have accesse

into his presence and have found such favoure in his sight as to offer up my

life freely for his truth and peoples sakes :

So what accounts for the huge difference in the two versions? The short answer is that somehow, Quaker minister and writer Edward Burrough received a copy of Mary’s original letter, and created his own letter, putting Mary’s name to it for persuasiveness and authority. And for 350 years, everyone has thought Burrough’s letter was Mary’s.

But it’s not.

Why would Burrough do that?  His purpose was not to preserve Mary’s words, but to put an end to the Quaker persecutions raging in England and New England by writing a pamphlet to King Charles II, refuting the defensive pamphlet written by the Boston magistrates after Mary’s unpopular execution in June 1660. Burroughs’ efforts succeeded, and the king ordered Governor Endecott to stop executions and refer any capital cases to England for trial.

Cover page of Burrough's 1660 pamphlet

My training and career have been focused on writing and editing magazines, books, and websites for nonprofit organizations, religious entities, and universities. It’s the practical, workhorse side of public relations and marketing. It was my job to mold (and often rewrite) the words of the CEO or other executives to more precisely fit the mission and message of the organization. If I may project backward by 350 years, I suspect that immediately after Mary’s execution in 1660, someone in Boston stole and copied Mary’s letter(s) to the General Court, and sent the copy to Burrough in England. It was his purpose to craft an image for the new Quaker movement, and do to King Charles what Mary had already done to the people of Massachusetts:

1.      create outrage that the Boston authorities were out of control,

2.      that they’d gone too far by killing a high-status woman who was innocent of a capital offense, and

3.      that they must stop the persecution of people who were only obeying God.

But Mary’s letter(s) contained words meant only for the Boston magistrates—words of softer persuasion, that they would listen to God’s voice in their hearts and stop the torture and killings of God’s people, the Quakers. So Burrough rewrote or ghost-wrote the letter in fiery, angry language to fit his agenda, presented the pamphlet (containing only the first letter) to the king in audience in winter 1661, and obtained the desired writ. Only one more Quaker was hanged after Mary, because of the delay in trans-Atlantic travel. Another Quaker who had been condemned to die was reprieved and banished because the writ came in time to save him.

Then in 1662, Burrough, a Quaker preacher and political advocate, was arrested for holding illegal religious meetings in his home. He was sent to Newgate Prison, and despite a release order from the king (which was ignored, probably by anti-royal Puritan rebels left over from the Cromwell days). Burrough remained in prison and died there at age 29 in February 1663. Prison conditions were extreme: starvation, filth, vermin, and disease killed many prisoners, and unheated dungeons in freezing winters would certainly hasten death.

With Mary Dyer and Edward Burrough dead and Quaker persecutions surging again, no one remained to think about or argue who wrote the letters. Somehow, Mary’s letter was returned to the General Court files kept by the malevolent Edward Rawson, secretary, and that’s the letter that remains in the archive vaults to this day. A second letter—if it ever existed—is not preserved, though someone wrote a letter that purports to be Mary’s, for which we have no holograph. It’s as strongly worded as the other letter’s Burrough version, so perhaps he wrote the second letter and didn’t use it in his pamphlet.

If Mary’s first letter was changed so radically, we have to assume that the second letter was also altered significantly. But we have no original with which to compare.

I used the text of Mary’s original first letter, making it more modern with paragraph breaks and conventional spellings, in my second novel, Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This. I used phrases from the second letter (whether written by Mary and edited or rewritten by Burrough) in dialog, but chose not to reproduce the second letter.

Someday, when my fantasy of all of this intricate and fascinating Great Migration-era story becomes a TV series on PBS and BBC, it would be fun to explore or invent who purloined Mary’s letters and sent copies to England.

Was there a Quaker mole in the midst of the Boston wolves?   

 

The letter in Mary Dyer’s hand

Mary came to the end of the large sheet of paper, and turned it over to write six more lines, the ghost image you see behind the words in the middle of this fragment. On the right vertical edge of the paper are water stains which smeared the ink. Perhaps it was raining when the messenger carried her letter from the jail to the Massachusetts General Court, presided over by Governor John Endecott. The letter was folded at some point, and the paper has flaked away at some folds and edges, but for the most part, it's legible, even after more than 350 years! 

Front of the Oct. 26, 1659 letter that
Mary Dyer wrote in prison.

Paper was a luxury commodity in seventeenth-century New England because it had to be imported. In Europe, paper was milled from macerated hemp, flax, and linen or cotton rags. (Wood pulp was not used until 1843.) Important documents like royal charters were written on vellum (calf skin) or parchment (sheep or goat skin).

William Dyer, Mary’s husband, would have had a ready supply of paper for his work as clerk, recorder, secretary, attorney general, and solicitor to the colonial assembly. His penmanship is fine, and contains few corrections, which means the documents were copied from draft notes, or that he was confident of his writing and reporting abilities and got it right the first time.

As I mentioned before, Mary Dyer was among the privileged few women who could both read and write. And judging from the even, consistent appearance of her handwriting, she had plenty of practice. Perhaps Mary kept a journal that was lost or burned, or wrote letters to friends that have been lost to the ages. In my novels, I suggested that Mary kept farm and business accounts for the family, and during her time in England, kept a journal and wrote letters. Keeping ledgers was common among merchant-class women, and in England the aristocratic women kept journals and wrote letters and books.

The letter she wrote to the General Court while in prison was very legible, but she had more words to write than she had paper, so she had to turn the paper over and write six more lines on the back, which most writers did not do because the ink could bleed through. She probably had to buy the sheet of paper and use of a quill pen and ink from the jailer, as Quakers were not allowed any books or writing materials in the prison—upon conviction, the law required that those items be burned to prevent them from proselytizing, journaling, or fomenting more rebellion.

(Of course, burning Quaker possessions also destroyed evidence that might have been used against them, but the Governor and assistants didn’t seem to have thought of that—nor  had they ever watched CSI or Law and Order. I find it amusing that one of the Plymouth Colony Quakers used the lack of evidence because his books were burned, to successfully to defend himself.)

All of New England’s paper was imported from England at this time. There, all the paper for books, broadsheets, pamphlets, government and private use, was made by one or two companies who held a monopoly on the process. Mary’s paper’s finish was a horizontal “laid,” which is a fine texture of parallel lines rolled onto the paper when it’s still wet. Cheaper paper of the era, made at most paper mills in England, was a coarse gray, but this paper’s original color may have been a white or cream, which browned with age. Its content was probably 100 percent linen rag. It appears it was a quality sheet of paper, perhaps obtained from the office of Edward Rawson, MassBay Colony secretary, and is the same type of paper that William Dyer used for Rhode Island business and the letters he sent to the Boston court on behalf of his wife.

I wondered if Mary had written the letter in a prison cell, or if she was in a room with a table and some light. There’s no evidence of an uneven or rough surface under the writing, so I think a table was used. In comparison to William’s fine-tipped pen which perhaps had a metal nib, Mary’s writing is much more thick or bold, so the pen might have been of low quality or needed trimming. But she had enough light to keep her lines and letters even. She didn’t write words that she scribbled over. And if she made a mistake, perhaps she was able to scrape off the ink and rewrite a word, but I can’t tell from a computer screen.

In the text she wrote, Mary Dyer cast herself in the role of biblical Queen Esther, a Jewess who threw herself on the mercy of the Babylonian King Ahasuerus to save her people from slaughter. No one approached the totalitarian, oft-drunken monarch Ahasuerus and lived unless the king held out his scepter in acceptance, which he did for Esther. Esther’s guardian, Mordecai, had told her that it was her destiny to persuade the king to stop the persecution and genocide, saying that God had brought Esther to her role “for such a time as this.” And Esther was successful in saving her people.

Mary saw herself as called by God to take a stand before the ultra-fundamentalist government of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, at “such a time as this,” the height of Puritan-on-Quaker persecution, by saying that they were persecuting Christ’s children, and therefore, Christ himself. She asked them to search themselves for any spark of the Light of Christ within them, and warned them of eternal damnation if they persisted in their policies and attitudes. 

Mary Dyer: "but to me to live is Christ and to die is gaine"

At the page turn, Mary asked that Quakers be allowed to attend the execution and clothe the bodies of her Friends Stevenson and Robinson (and herself) with shrouds. The aftermath of the death penalty was to strip the bodies after death and throw them naked into an open pit near the road where birds, tidewater, and nature would decompose them and serve as a warning and crime deterrent to passersby. There was a fence around the pit to prevent the bodies being taken away.

Boston court records do not show if Mary’s letter was read in court, or if they denied or accepted her request. Many letters of the time, in England and New England, show the date they were read and recorded. They say “endorsed” or “denied” and are dated. There was no such notation on her letter, although there’s a scrap of paper taped to the letter which states that it’s from Mary Dyer, with the date she wrote it. It’s not in Mary’s hand, though. It seems to be a file note.

Perhaps there was no resolution noted on the letter because nine days before the October execution, her fate had already been decided by the court.

Did Mary’s letter have any effect, then, on stopping Governor Endecott and Reverends John Norton and John Wilson from their bloody persecution and death penalties? Probably not.

But her death itself, seven months later, did cause considerable outrage amongst even the non-Quaker populace, and of course Edward Burrough used Mary’s letter as a model for his successful pamphlet.

The unintended effect of Mary Dyer’s letter is that 350 years later, we gain insight into the real story and intimate details behind the legend.

Christy K Robinson is the author of three books set in the 17^th century: the biographical novels Mary Dyer Illuminated, and Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This, and (nonfiction) The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport. For more information: http://marybarrettdyer.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Did education drive Miss Yale crazy?

 This week the Hoydens are delighted to welcome CHRISTY K. ROBINSON to their den. Christy is passionate about all things seventeenth century and the author of two recent autobiographical novels on Mary Dyer (more about Christy and Mary later...)

When asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, 

'As much as the living are to the dead.' 

~Diogenes Laetius

1647--Lady Mary Fairfax, with her tutor.  Her father was Thomas Fairfax, third Baron Fairfax of Cameron, a general in Cromwell’s New Model Army.

Stunning statements about education have come to light in the American political process. One presidential candidate said that America needs “a leader, not a reader.” Another said that the desire to educate more Americans is snobbery and “There are good, decent men and women … that aren't taught by some liberal college professor, trying to indoctrinate them. Oh I understand why he wants [you] to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.” A radio commentator who flunked out of college after two semesters said that a female “authorette” with a recent BA degree and a journalism award for her first book was “over-educated.” 

In the 1600s, higher education was prized, and boys and young men were trained in science, literature, history, religion, and liberal arts. After the home-schooled Anne Hutchinson defended herself so eloquently and bested the magistrates in debates at trial in November 1637 and March 1638, Massachusetts established Harvard College to train its teen boys to the ministry.

New England women guided the household, but remained subject to their fathers’ or husbands’ authority. Men believed women had the mental capacity to manage large households, many children and servants, and often a cottage industry like brewing beer, tending a shop, seamstressing, or cooking, but apparently not to be formally-educated women who discussed theology, as did Anne Hutchinson and later, Mary Dyer. Both of those women were logical thinkers who could read and write—a dangerous combination which could lead to unorthodoxy and heresy.  

1630--Old Woman Reading a Bible, Gerrit Dou, Netherlands

A few women were well-educated from their early years in England, as a result of tutors or fathers guiding their learning. They were the exception, not the rule. Most Puritan women could read well enough to get through their Bibles, but that was all. In the first decades of colonial New England, schools were only for boys.

Ann Yale Hopkins, the wife of Governor Edward Hopkins of Connecticut in the 1640s and ‘50s, was believed to have gone insane not because she inherited madness or was driven to it by illness, injury, fear, or unbearable hardships of first-generation settlers (understandable contributing factors), but because of her scholarship and the resulting mental exhaustion.

Massachusetts Bay colonial Gov. John Winthrop, whose beloved wife Margaret wrote letters and conducted her husband’s business in England while he started the colony in Boston, wrote of Ann Hopkins: 

“Mr. Hopkins, the governor of Hartford upon Connecticut, came to Boston, and brought his wife with him, (a godly young woman, and of special parts,) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her [about spending too much time in reading and writing]; but he saw his error, when it was too late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her.” ~John Winthrop's Journal

The Hopkins' house,
Hartford, Connecticut

Edward Hopkins (born 1600) and Ann Yale Hopkins (born 1615) were among the co-founders of New Haven, Connecticut in 1637, but after only two months, moved to Hartford and set up a 120-acre farm and merchant trade with Turkey. Edward was elected governor or deputy governor for many one-year terms, even after he returned to England. The house they lived in from 1640 still exists on Popieluszko Court in Hartford.

It was sometimes seen as a judgment from God that a woman was barren. Ann had no children, which was a huge disappointment to Puritans. As Winthrop wrote, “such things as belong to women,” and “the place God had set her.” Coming from an education-minded family, reading and writing may have been a consolation to her, just as people in our day sometimes bury themselves in creative pursuits or work. Ann exhibited signs of insanity beginning at about age 32 in 1647. Because men disapproved of women exhausting their brains, it is highly probable that her books and writing materials were removed from her at that time.

Interestingly, her husband survived an Indian assassination attempt in 1646, the year before Ann’s illness was observed. It’s possible that fear helped push Ann past the threshold of reason.

Edward and Ann returned to England permanently in 1652, perhaps because of Ann’s condition. He was engaged by Parliament as a naval commissioner, but died in 1657. Ann was cared for until her death by her Yale relatives in north Wales.

Edward's large bequests helped fund a New Haven, Connecticut school named in his honor. ‘Hopkins is the third oldest independent school in the country. The School has been operating since 1660, and has retained as its historic mission, ‘the breeding up of hopeful youths...for the publique service of the country in future tymes.’ Congressmen, doctors, lawyers, Yale Presidents, and civil activists all had their start at Hopkins and are the embodiment of Hopkins' mission,” says a fundraising site. Another generous bequest by Edward Hopkins benefited Harvard College in Boston.

In the next generation, Elihu Yale, born in Boston in 1649, was one of the major benefactors of Yale University. Elihu is entombed at Wrexham, Wales, where there’s a Yale College, founded in 1950. Both the Welsh college and Connecticut university are named after Elihu Yale, Ann’s nephew.

A French asylum

Other New England women suffered mental illness, which was sometimes charged as witchcraft or being possessed by Satan. Several women killed or attempted murder on their children, and were hanged. One woman flung her child into a pond, and when the toddler crawled out and returned to its mother, the mother threw her child back in the water. A witness saved the child and reported the mother, who said that she wanted to spare her child from “further misery.” Yet another delusional mother wanted to save her baby from going to hell, so she killed it.

There were no asylums, but family members or hired help became caretakers of the insane. The magistrates granted latitude to people who were known to be seriously disturbed when committing lesser crimes, but when it came to murder, the insane were executed for that crime.

That Ann Yale Hopkins was the wife and then widow of a wealthy man who was a governor probably lent to her long life in the care of family members instead of an insane asylum. Anne lived until 1698, and died at age 83 near Wrexham, Wales. Knowing the love of learning in the Yale family, perhaps Ann was permitted to read during times of lucidity, or be read to.

We can thank our 17^th-century forefathers and foremothers for their deep commitment and personal sacrifices to improving their own minds and the minds of their children, and setting a tradition of pursuit of first-class education. They knew that with education comes prosperity in virtually every aspect of human life.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth. 

~Diogenes Laetius

*************

Christy K Robinson is a freelance copy editor of books, magazines, and websites. She recently published the first of two biographical novels on Mary Dyer, an Englishwoman who committed civil disobedience in the cause of liberty of conscience and separation of church and state. Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston in 1660, and her death brought Charles II’s order for tolerance and cessation of death penalty that was echoed in a colonial charter the next year *breathe here* which became a model for America’s constitutional rights to free speech and religious expression. (That sentence is nearly as long as the time it took to bring Mary’s sacrifice to codification!). Mary Dyer Illuminated is available in paperback and Kindle editions, worldwide. Christy’s website is http://ChristyKRobinson.com .

Rhode Island Firebrands: Guest Post - Jo Ann Butler

Thanks to the Hoydens and Firebrands for having me as their guest today, and my thanks also to Kim Murphy, who invited me. I am Jo Ann Butler, genealogist, once a colonial archeologist, and author of Rebel Puritan and the Reputed Wife, historical novels set in seventeenth-century Rhode Island.

We remember few seventeenth century New England women. Perhaps we think of Priscilla Mullins, the Pilgrim bride of John Alden, at Thanksgiving. However, Rhode Island was home to several famed hoydens and firebrands who deserve to be remembered.

A Firebrand is one who stirs up trouble or conflict, and Rhode Island had plenty of them. Canonchet led his Narragansett nation, and after being attacked by a Puritan army, joined Metacomet’s Wampanoags in rising against the Englishmen in King Philip’s War. Roger Williams was chased out of Puritan Massachusetts for heresy. The same colony sent an army into Rhode Island to arrest Samuell Gorton. Massachusetts said Gorton was treating the Narragansetts unfairly, but their aim was to annex Gorton’s holdings into the Puritan colony. Rhode Island was noted for its female firebrands. Perhaps Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer are still mentioned by history teachers searching for female participation in New England society. I hope so, for by their words and deeds these women changed their world.

In 1635 Boston women began meeting at the home of William and Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson on the day after Sabbath. In many respects, Anne was like most other New England wives. With twelve children, she must have run her household with military efficiency. However, unlike nearly all of her contemporaries, Anne had been educated by her minister father. She and her audience discussed the Puritan ministers’ sermons, and Anne gave her own interpretation of Scripture. Soon she held two meetings each week, and upwards of eighty women – and men – participated.

When one of Anne’s followers, Lord Henry Vane, was elected as governor the Puritans mobilized. They overturned the election, then prevented a possible uprising by disarming over 140 men from the Boston area. Anne’s supporters were told to recant, or to leave. In 1637 over half of them took their families and left, most of them to Rhode Island.

Assisted by New England’s ministers, Governor John Winthrop led the trial of Anne Hutchinson. There was no separation of church and state, so she was banished as “not fit for our society” for her religious beliefs. A few months later Anne joined her followers in Rhode Island after being excommunicated. She “gloried in her sufferings,” and as she swept out of the Boston church, Anne was joined arm in arm by Mary (Barrett) Dyer.

Mary Dyer was very well known to Bostonians. “A very proper and fair woman,” she was married to a rising merchant and minor official, and they had a two-year old son. Mary and William Dyer followed the Hutchinsons to Rhode Island. However, without Puritan laws and beliefs to oppose, Anne lost influence. After her husband’s death, Anne and most of her family moved to the margins of New Amsterdam. In 1643 all but one daughter were slain by the Siwanoy Indians.

Mary Dyer left Newport, Rhode Island in 1651, and did not return from England until 1657. The year before her return, English Quaker missionaries had begun arriving in Puritan Boston. The Quakers were notorious for their civil disobedience in England, and New England’s Puritans were on the alert. The first two Quaker women were jailed before being deported back to England. The next group of Quakers sat in Boston’s jail for much longer. John Endecott was governor when whipping Quakers became Massachusetts law that autumn. When Mary returned she was jailed, but escaped the lash, probably because the Dyers had been friends with so many Bostonians. The English Quakers did not fare so well, and several, including women, were whipped in the Puritan colonies. One of them was Herodias (Long) Gardner of Newport.

In summer 1657 Mary returned to Newport after her jailing in Boston. Herodias – who was known as Horred – was a few years younger than Mary. The two women had come to Newport about the same time, had several young children, and knew each other well.

In May 1658, after Mary brought her Quaker beliefs to Rhode Island, Horred Gardner shouldered her nursing infant. With Mary Stanton, a neighbor’s daughter who came to help, Horred walked fifty wilderness miles from Newport to Weymouth, Massachusetts, where she had once lived. There she spoke in public, perhaps at a market, telling of the scarred, starved, and traumatized Quakers recuperating in Rhode Island, and pleading that the abuse be stopped.

Horred Gardner and Mary Stanton were whisked to Boston by the militia. There, Governor Endecott ordered both of them whipped 10 lashes. Afterward, Horred prayed that God would forgive them. However, her whipping marked the last of Horred’s firebrand days.

Despite Horred and the other Quakers’ ordeals, the whippings, brandings, and ear-cuttings continued. In 1659 two Quaker men hanged when they returned to Massachusetts after being banished. Mary Dyer, who had also been banished on pain of death, then mounted the gallows and had the noose placed around her neck before being reprieved. She again defied her order of banishment and was hanged in 1660. However, her sacrifice finally ended the execution of Quakers after the newly-restored King Charles II read of Mary’s hanging.

Now, let's consider Rhode Island’s hoydens. A Hoyden is a lively or boisterous young woman, and perhaps there were plenty of them to go around in Rhode Island. That colony was called “Rogues Island” by Puritan detractors: rude, illiterate, and unchurched. Perhaps one birth in ten occurred within nine months of a couple’s marriage in Rhode Island, but about the same proportion occurred in Puritan colonies. Rhode Island punished women for theft, sexual misconduct, and scolding, but not overly many of those lesser crimes.

However, a few notable cases made Rhode Islanders whisper. In 1655 a stone mason bragged that not only had he built Elizabeth (Baulstone) Coggeshall’s house; he had “laid many a stone there” and was confident that her youngest child was his. Betty’s husband, John Coggeshall divorced her and repudiated her two youngest children. Lesser couples might have been fined or whipped, but John was son of Rhode Island’s ex-governor, and Betty was the only child of the colony’s richest man.

Horred Gardner’s full name was Herodias (Long) Hicks Gardner Porter, and her marital hijinx also made Rhode Island talk. In 1644 she and her first husband, John Hicks, parted after Horred charged him with abuse and he accused her of whoredom. In 1655 her second husband, George Gardner, was tried for keeping John Hicks’ wife as his own. Gardner was found not guilty because the Hickses had been legally separated. However, in 1665 the forty-two year-old Horred asked for a divorce from George because they had never married. Horred got another separation from the shocked colony. Only a couple of years later she and John Porter, who was a good twenty years older than she, were tried for cohabitation.

By the way, the image here is of Horred’s granddaughter, Hannah Gardner. No contemporary image exists of Horred, Mary Dyer, or Anne Hutchinson.

I believe that ‘hoyden’ is an appropriate description for Horred Long, but she was also a firebrand in her defense of the Quakers. Many years ago I learned about Horred when compiling my genealogy, and I am proud that she is my 8th-great grandmother. I also thought her story would make a dandy historical novel. I hope that Horred is proud that I wrote Rebel Puritan, an Indie BRAG Award-winning novel, about her, and followed it this year with The Reputed Wife. Horred shares the pages of my novels with Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson, all three of them formidable Rhode Island Firebrands.

Want to know more?

American Jezebel – Eve La Plante. An excellent biography of Anne Hutchinson.
Wayward Puritans – Kai Erikson. Fine social history with sections about both Hutchinson and Dyer
www.rebelpuritan.com/. My website about Herodias Long.
http://marybarrettdyer.blogspot.com/. Christy Robinson’s superb blog about William and Mary (Barrett) Dyer
The Winthrop Woman – Anya Seton. Superb historical fiction with Anne Hutchinson as a main character
Rebel Puritan and The Reputed Wife – Jo Ann Butler. I humbly recommend my own novels about the development and disputes in early New England as experienced by Herodias Long.
Mary Dyer, Biography of a Puritan Rebel – Ruth Plympton. This book contains inaccuracies, and is as much fiction as biography, but also covers Mary’s life.

Jo Ann Butler
http://www.rebelpuritan.com/
http://rebelpuritan.blogspot.com/