outside, the windows were boarded up.  There was no law as yet enacted against Quakers, but a council summoned for the occasion pronounced their doctrines blasphemous and devilish.  The books which the poor women had with them were seized and publicly burned, and the women themselves were kept in prison half-starved for five weeks until the ship they had come in was ready to return to Barbadoes.  Soon after their departure Endicott came home.  He found fault with Bellingham’s conduct as too gentle; if he had been there he would have had the hussies flogged. [Sidenote:  Anne Austin and Mary Fisher]

Five years afterward Mary Fisher went to Adrianople and tried to convert the Grand Turk, who treated her with grave courtesy and allowed her to prophesy unmolested.  This is one of the numerous incidents that, on a superficial view of history, might be cited in support of the opinion that there has been on the whole more tolerance in the Mussulman than in the Christian world.  Rightly interpreted, however, the fact has no such implication.  In Massachusetts the preaching of Quaker doctrines might (and did) lead to a revolution; in Turkey it was as harmless as the barking of dogs.  Governor Endicott was afraid of Mary Fisher; Mahomet III. was not.

No sooner had the two women been shipped from Boston than eight other Quakers arrived from London.  They were at once arrested.  While they were lying in jail the Federal Commissioners, then in session at Plymouth, recommended that laws be forthwith enacted to keep these dreaded heretics out of the land.  Next year they stooped so far as to seek the aid of Rhode Island, the colony which they had refused to admit into their confederacy.  “They sent a letter to the authorities of that colony, signing themselves their loving friends and neighbours, and beseeching them to preserve the whole body of colonies against ’such a pest’ by banishing and excluding all Quakers, a measure to which ’the rule of charity did oblige them.’” Roger Williams was then president of Rhode Island, and in full accord with his noble spirit was the reply of the assembly.  “We have no law amongst us whereby to punish any for only declaring by words their minds and understandings concerning the things and ways of God as to salvation and our eternal condition.”  As for these Quakers we find that where they are “most of all suffered to declare themselves freely and only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come.”  Any breach of the civil law shall be punished, but the “freedom of different consciences shall be respected.”  This reply enraged the confederated colonies, and Massachusetts, as the strongest and most overbearing, threatened to cut off the trade of Rhode Island, which forthwith appealed to Cromwell for protection.  The language of the appeal is as touching as its broad Christian spirit is grand.  It recognizes that by stopping trade the men of Massachusetts will injure themselves, yet, it goes on to say, “for the safeguard of their religion they may seem to neglect themselves in that respect; for what will not men do for their God?” But whatever fortune may befall, “let us not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men’s consciences.” [25] [Sidenote:  Noble conduct of Rhode Island]