Josiah Southwick, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Buffum, and others, Quakers, for making disturbances in the meeting-house, etc., were whipped at the cart’s tail through the town.  Southwick, for returning after having been banished, was whipped through the towns of Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham.  These are only a few of the cases of the punishments inflicted upon the Quakers.  Mr. Felt says in reference to the persecution of the Quakers: 

“Before any new denomination becomes consolidated, some of its members are apt to show more zeal than discretion.  No sect who are regular and useful should have an ill name for the improprieties committed by a few of them.”

Our “pious forefathers,” we must confess, were too apt to be a little hard towards those who annoyed them with their tongue and pen upon Church doctrine and discipline or the administration of the government.  As early as 1631, one Philip Ratclif is sentenced by the Assistants to pay L40, to be whipped, to have his ears cropped, and to be banished.  What had he done to merit such a punishment as this?  He had made “hard speeches against Salem Church, as well as the Government.”  “The execution of this decision,” Mr. Felt says, “was represented in England to the great disadvantage of Massachusetts.”  Jeffries was not yet on the bench in England.

In 1652 a man was fined for excess of apparel “in bootes, rebonds, gould and silver lace.”

Mr. Charles W. Palfrey contributed in 1866 to the “Salem Register” the following interesting item on the Salem witchcraft trials: 

Among the many attempts to remedy the mischiefs caused by the witchcraft delusion, the subjoined is not without interest.  About eighteen years after the memorable year, 1692, four members, a committee of the Legislature, were sent to Salem to hear certain parties and receive certain petitions, and the following is the record, in the Journal, of their Report:—­

    October 26, 1711.  Present in Council, His Excellency Joseph
    Dudley, Esqr., Governor, John Hathorne, Samuel Sewall, Jonathan
    Corwin, Joseph Lynde, Penn Townsend, John Higginson, Daniel Epes,
    Andrew Belcher, etc., etc.

    Report of the Committee appointed, Relating to the Affair of
    Witchcraft in the year 1692; viz.—­

We whose Names are subscribed in Obedience to your Honours’ Act at a Court held the last of May, 1710, for our inserting the Names of the several Persons who were condemned for Witchcraft in the year 1692, & of the Damages they sustained by their prosecution; Being met at Salem, for the Ends aforesaid, the 13th Septem., 1710, Upon Examination of the Records of the several Persons condemned, Humbly offer to your Honours the Names as follows, to be inserted for the Reversing their Attainders:  Elizabeth How, George Jacob, Mary Easty, Mary Parker, Mr. George Burroughs, Gyles Cory & Wife, Rebecca Nurse,