Martyred by the Saints: Quaker Executions in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts

In October 1659, two men and a woman walked through the streets of Boston to their deaths. An armed guard of a hundred men accompanied them. A crowd of curious onlookers watched the condemned persons and the unprecedented display of military might. All gathered at the place of execution. The three embraced. The matronly woman stood with a halter around her neck as her two younger companions were killed in turn. The soldiers then moved to release her. The woman, who seemed stunned that she was not to die along with her martyred friends, refused to leave the platform. She had to be pulled down and carried back to prison. Later she would be transported out of the colony. Less than one year later, this aspiring martyr, Mary Dyer, would join her companions. Brought back to the place of execution on May 21, 1660, Dyer, too, would suffer death. All three were Quakers, executed by the authorities in Massachusetts Bay Colony as part of a vigorous but ultimately unsuccessful effort to rid the colony of these dangerous heretics. ¹