Then the servants, at Captain Hull’s command, heaped double handfulls of shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the other.  Jingle, jingle, went the shillings, as handful after handful was thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the young lady from the floor.

“There, son Sewell!” cried the honest mint-master, resuming his seat in Grandfather’s chair.  “Take these shillings for my daughter’s portion.  Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her.  It is not every wife that’s worth her weight in silver!”

The children laughed heartily at this legend, and would hardly be convinced but that Grandfather had made it out of his own head.  He assured them faithfully, however, that he had found it in the pages of a grave historian, and had merely tried to tell it in a somewhat funnier style.  As for Samuel Sewell, he afterwards became Chief Justice of Massachusetts.

“Well, Grandfather,” remarked Clara, “if wedding portions now-a-days were paid as Miss Betsey’s was, young ladies would not pride themselves upon an airy figure as many of them do.”

Chapter VII

When his little audience next assembled round the chair, Grandfather gave them a doleful history of the Quaker persecution, which began in 1656, and raged for about three years in Massachusetts.

He told them how, in the first place, twelve of the converts of George Fox, the first Quaker in the world, had come over from England.  They seemed to be impelled by an earnest love for the souls of men, and a pure desire to make known what they considered a revelation from Heaven.  But the rulers looked upon them as plotting the downfall of all government and religion.  They were banished from the colony.  In a little while, however, not only the first twelve had returned, but a multitude of other Quakers had come to rebuke the rulers, and to preach against the priests and steeple-houses.

Grandfather described the hatred and scorn with which these enthusiasts were received.  They were thrown into dungeons; they were beaten with many stripes, women as well as men; they were driven forth into the wilderness, and left to the tender mercies of wild beasts and Indians.  The children were amazed to hear, that, the more the Quakers were scourged, and imprisoned, and banished, the more did the sect increase, both by the influx of strangers, and by converts from among the Puritans.  But Grandfather told them, that God had put something into the soul of man, which always turned the cruelties of the persecutor to nought.

He went on to relate, that, in 1659, two Quakers, named William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, were hanged at Boston.  A woman had been sentenced to die with them, but was reprieved, on condition of her leaving the colony.  Her name was Mary Dyer.  In the year 1660 she returned to Boston, although she knew death awaited her there; and, if Grandfather had been correctly informed, an incident had then taken place, which connects her with our story.  This Mary Dyer had entered the mint-master’s dwelling, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and seated herself in our great chair, with a sort of dignity and state.  Then she proceeded to deliver what she called a message from Heaven; but in the midst of it, they dragged her to prison.