   
Winfield's Martyred GreatGrandmother
The content of this page is the creation of Susanne
"Sam" Behling.
Please see the footnote of this page.
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Mary Barrett Dyer was
the 8th great grandmother of Winfield Dyer Gallup. She left almost no record of her early
life, and this probably led to the often encountered but totally unfounded speculation
that she was the estranged daughter of Lady Arabella Stuart by her secret marriage with
her cousin, Sir William Seymour. (Click here for
details this myth.)
 Mary
married William Dyer in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 27 October 1633. William was
a milliner in the New Exchange, a Puritan and a member of the Fishmongers' Company. Her
maiden name was recorded in the parish record (NEHGR Vol. 94, p. 300, July 1940) as
"Barrett". Sometime between 1634 and 1635, the Dyers emigrated to Massachusetts
where, on December 13, 1635, they were admitted to the Boston church. They were considered
to be among the citizens of quality there, being above reproach and above the usual in
education and culture. Mary's detractors and defenders alike describe her as
"fair" and "comely." William became a freeman of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony on March 3, 1635/1636 in which he held many positions of public importance. In 1638
he was elected Clerk, and he was granted land at Rumney Marsh (Chelsea, MA) on Dec. 14,
1635 and Jan. 16, 1637/1638.
>>>>>William and Mary were open
supporters of Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson and Rev. John Wheelwright during the Antinomian
controversy. Mary and Anne were friends, and when Mary went into premature labor on
October 17, 1637, Anne, an experienced midwife, was called to her side. After hours of
agonizing labor, Mary's body gave forth a stillborn daughter. The child was badly
deformed. Also present at the stillbirth were the midwife Jane Hawkins, and at least one
other unnamed woman, who was reputed to be the source of the information later spread
about the monstrous birth that, one observer later wrote, was "whispered by s[ome]
women in private to some others (as many of that sex as[semble] in such a strang
business)." William Dyer and Anne agreed that the birth must remain a secret, knowing
that the unfortunate birth could play into the hands of the Boston magistrates. Mary
herself could be personally blamed for the malformed baby.
While English law permitted a midwife to bury a child
in private, a midwife could not lawfully deliver or bury a child in secret. Anne
Hutchinson immediately sought the counsel of Rev. John Cotton about whether the stillbirth
should be publicly recorded. Although he had betrayed her politically, Anne felt she could
count on him in this crisis. Cotton, with a flash of nonconformity, dismissed the ancient
folk wisdom that held that infant death was conspicuous punishment for the parents' sins
and advised her to ignore the law and to bury the deformed fetus in secret.
Acting on this special dispensation, Jane Hawkins and
Anne buried the stillborn child - exactly as they had always done in old England where
custom-imbedded law dictated to the midwife: "If any child be dead born, you yourself
shall see it buried in such secret place as neither hog nor dog, nor any other beast may
come unto it, and in such sort done, as it may not be found or perceived, as much as you
may." The birth and burial remained a secret for five months.
 In November,
1637, William was disenfranchised and disarmed along with dozens of other followers of
Anne Hutchinson. On March 22, 1638, when Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated from the
church and withdrew from the assemblage, Mary Dyer rose and accompanied her out of the
church. As the two women left, there were several women hanging around outside the church
and one was heard to ask, "Who is that woman accompanying Anne Hutchinson?"
Another voice answered loud enough to be heard inside the church, "She is the mother
of a monster!" Governor Winthrop heard this and was excitedly questioned Cotton, who
broke down and confessed that "God, Cotton and Anne Hutchinson" had buried a
deformed child five months ago. Although the child had been buried "too deep for dog
or hog," it was not too deep for Winthrop who ordered it exhumed. Winthrop and the
clergymen who examined it showed an inordinate interest in the physical characteristics of
the "monster." According to John Winthrop's Journal, Mary Dyer, who was
"notoriously infected with Mrs Hutchinson's errors," was divinely punished for
this sinful heresy by being delivered of a stillborn "monster." Winthrop
included gruesome, detailed descriptions in his journal and in letters sent to
correspondents in England and New England:
It was a woman child, stillborn,
about two months before the just time, having life a few hours before; it came hiplings
[breach birth] till she turned it; it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head,
and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape's; it had no forehead, but over
the eyes four horns, hard and sharp, two of them were above one inch long, the other two
shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward all over the
breast and back, full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback; the navel and all the
belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be; and the back and
hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two
mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as
other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl,
with sharp talons.
Excommunicated and banished in their turn, the Dyers
followed Anne Hutchinson to Rhode Island where William became one of the founders of
Portsmouth. On 7 March 1638 he was one of the eighteen who signed the companct and he was
elected Clerk. The Dyers ultimately settled in Newport where by 19 March 1640 William had
acquired 87 acres of land. He served as Secretary for the towns of Portsmouth and Newport
from 1640-47; General Recorder 1647; Attorney General 1650-1653.
 In 1652 William and Mary Dyer accompanied Roger Williams and
John Clarke on a political mission to England. Mary remained for five years, becoming a
follower of George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, whose doctrine of the Inner
Light was not unlike Mrs. Hutchinson's "Antinomianism."
Mary's return to New England in 1657 was ill-timed.
John Endicott had succeeded John Winthrop as Governor in 1649 and he was far more
intolerant of religious dissention. He feared that if he permitted the Quakers to express
their views in Massachusetts Bay Colony, the whole structure of the Church-State
partnership might collapse.
Mary Fisher and Ann Austin were the first Quakers to
arrive in Boston. No sooner did they disembark than they were led to the Boston jail for
three weeks before being sent back to England. On August 9, 1656, the port authorities
were alerted to search the Speedwell as it entered Boston Harbor before anyone landed. The
passenger list had "Q's" beside the names of four men and four women, and
Endicott ordered these eight brought directly to Boston court. Christopher Holder and John
Copeland led the group and they dumbfounded Endicott and the local ministers with their
familiarity with the Bible. More irritating to Endicott was Christopher Holder's knowledge
of the law. When they were marched off to jail, Holder and Copeland made immediate demands
for their release, stating that there was no law that justified their imprisonment.
Governor Endicott knew this was true. There was nothing
in the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter which permitted the imprisonment of anyone merely
on grounds of their religious beliefs, and so he devised a tactic to get rid of the
Quakers. The Massachusetts General Court met in mid-October of 1656 and 1657 and succeeded
in passing several laws against "the cursed sect of heretics ... commonly called
Quakers" which permitted banishing, whipping, and using corporal punishment (cutting
off ears, boring holes in tongues). On October 14, 1656 the Court ordered:
That what master or commander of
any ship, barke, pinnace, catch, or any other vessel that shall henceforth bring into any
harbor, creeks, or cove without jurisdiction any known Quaker or Quakers, or any other
blasphemous heretics shall pay ... the fine of 100 pounds ... [and] they must be brought
back from where they came or go to prison.
 After
trying to cover all the loopholes in any possible entry to Boston, the Court addressed
what it would do with anyone who persisted successfully. It was decided that such a person
should go to the House of Correction and be severly whipped, kept constantly at work, and
not allowed to speak to anyone. They set up certain fines: 54 pounds for having any Quaker
books or writing "concerning their devilish opinions," 40 pounds for defending
any Quaker of their books, 44 pounds for a second offence, and the "House of
Corection for a third offence ... until there be a convenient passage for them to be sent
out of this land." These laws were read on the street corners of Boston with the beat
of drums for emphasis.
Christopher Holder and John Copeland sat in their cells
where they could hear the rattling of the drums and realized they were going to have to
leave on the next available ship departing for England.
Mary Dyer and Anne Burden, unaware of the new laws,
arrived on the third ship and were at once arrested. Despite their protests, they were
kept in jail incommunicado in darkened cells with boarded up windows. Mary's books and
Quaker papers were confiscated and burned. Mary finally was able to slip a letter out
through a crack to someone outside the jail, but it took a long time to reach William Dyer
in Newport.
Two and a half months later, Governor Endicott was
startled when William Dyer barged into his home, demanding that his wife should be freed
immediately. While Endicott knew that William had been disenfranchised by Boston, he was
still highly respected by the Boston authorities for his prominent position in Rhode
Island. They would have to free Mary Dyer because of William's prestige, but only on a
condition. William was put under a heavy bond and made to "give his honor" that
if his wife was allowed to return home, he was "not to lodge her in any town of the
colony nor to permit any to have speech with her on the journey." Under no condition
should Mary ever return to Massachusetts.
How galling for Mary to be silenced like a misbehaving
child as she returned to her home! Back in Rhode Island, Mary became a prominent Quaker
minister, traveling over the new country. Preaching "inner light," Mary rejected
oaths of any kind, taught that sex was no determinant for gifts of prophecy, and contended
that women and men stood on equal ground in church worship and organization. In 1658 she
was expelled from New Haven for preaching.
Meanwhile, Christopher Holder and the seven other
banished Quakers had returned to England. Christopher wasted no time in getting in touch
with George Fox in order to secure a ship for a return trip to New England. While Mary was
being rebuked in New Haven, Christopher Holder and John Copeland were being ordered to
leave Martha's Vineyard. Hiding in the sand dunes for several days, they met up with
friendly Indians who volunteered to help them cross over to Massachusetts.
They landed in Sandwich where they found a community of
people unsettled in their religious affiliations and had who had just lost their minister.
Holder and Copeland were received with enthusiasm by about eighteen families who were
ready to become Quakers. Finding a beautiful dell by a quiet stream in the woods, they
called their enchanted hideaway "Christopher's Hollow," a name which has
remained with the place. A circle of Friends gathered together and sat on a circle of
stones to share their religious convictions. It was the first real Friends meeting in
America, and the start of regular meetings.
Happy with this success, Holder and Copeland moved from
Sandwich to Duxbury, from town to town in Massachusetts, leaving fifteen converted Quaker
"ministers" in their wake. Eventually, Governor Endicott got wind of their
activities and alerted scouts throughout New England to arrest them, but they remained
free until they walked into Salem, Endicott's home town.
When Holder arrived at the Salem
Congregational Church, he listened to the sermon of the day, then arose from the rear of
the church to challenge what had been said and present Quaker alternatives. One of
Endicott's men seized Holder, hurled him bodily to the floor of the church and stuffed a
leather glove and handkerchief down his throat. Holder turned blue, gagged, and gasped for
life. He was close to death when Samuel Shattuck, a member of the congregation, pushed
Endicott's man aside and retrieved the glove and handkerchief from Holder's throat and
worked hard to resuscitate him. A lifelong friendship between Shattuck and Holder started
at that moment.
Holder, Copeland and Shattuck were all
taken to Boston prison. Shattuck was freed by paying a 20 shilling bond. Holder and
Copeland were brought before Endicott who ordered that each should have thirty lashes.
After several months, they were released from prison, but were soon to return.
On April 15, 1658, Holder and Copeland
returned to Cape Code. Despite a joyouse reunion in Sandwich, Endicott's spies arrested
them in the middle of a meeting and marched them to Barnstable where they were stipped and
bound to the post of an outhouse. With the standard three-corded rope, they were each
given 33 lashes until the bodies ran with blood. The Friends of Sandwich stood in horror
as "ear and eye witnessses" to the cruelty."
After recovering from the scourging,
Holder and Copeland returned again to Boston on June 3, 1658 where they were once again
arrested. On September 16, 1658 by the order of Governor Endicott, Christopher Holder, a
future son-in-law of Richard Scott, had his right ear cut off by the hangman at Boston for
the crime of being a Quaker. Richard's wife, Katherine Marbury Scott (Anne Hutchinson's
sister), was present, and remonstrating against this barbarity, was thrown into prison for
two months, and then publicly flogged ten stripes with a three-corded whip.
On October 19, 1658, the Massachusetts
authorities during a stormy session had passed by a single vote a law banishing Quakers
under pain of death. In June 1959, Quakers William Robinson of London and Marmaduke
Stephenson of Holderness, now in Rhode Island, felt a call to enter Massachusetts. They
were accompanied by Patience Scott, a young girl who later became a sister-in-law of
Christopher Holder, and Nicholas Davis. They were all promptly thrown in jail. Learning of
her Friends' incarceration in Boston, Mary Dyer went there in the summer of 1659 to visit
them and was herself again imprisoned.
William Dyer wrote a letter to the
Massachusetts authorities, dated August 30, 1659, chastising the magistrates for
imprisoning his wife without evidence or legal right. "You have done more in
persecution in one year than the worst bishops did in seven, and now to add more towards a
tender woman," wrote William, "... that gave you no just cause against her for
did she come to your meeting to disturb them as you call itt, or did she come to reprehend
the magistrates? [She] only came to visit her friends in prison and when dispatching that
her intent of returning to her family as she declared in her [statement] the next day to
the Governor, therefore it is you that disturbed her, else why was she not let alone."
(Click here to read full text of William's letter.)
On September 12, the Quakers were
released from prison and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony under threat of
execution should they return. Nicholas Davis and Mary Dyer obeyed, but Robinson and
Stephenson felt it their duty to remain and continue their ministry, deteremined to
"look [the] bloody laws in the face." Within a month they were again arrested.
When it was learned Christopher Holder was again in jail and threatened with further
torture, Mary Dyer, Hope Clifton and Mary Scott (future wife of Christopher Holder and
Anne Hutchinson's niece) walked through the forest to Boston from Providence to plead for
his release and that of others. Mary Dyer was arrested while speaking to Holder through
the prison bars.
There was no mistaking the moves of
Holder, Robinson, Stephenson and Mary Dyer. They deliberately challenged the legal right
of Endicott to carry out the death penalty. Doing what their compatriots were doing in
England, they returned to the field as soon as they were released, willing to lay down
their lives, if necessary, yet never striking a blow in retaliation. Passive
non-resistance and religious appeals constituted the ammunition and weapons of this
Colonial Quaker army. They had all been banished with the assurance that if they returned
death awaited them.
On October 19 Mary Dyer was brought before
the General Court with Robinson and Stephenson. Asked why they had returned in defiance of
the law, they replied that "the ground and cause of their coming was of the
Lord." When Gov. John Endicott pronounced sentence of death, Mary Dyer replied,
"The will of the Lord be done." "Take her away, Marshal," commanded
Endicott. "Yea and joyfully I go," responded Mary Dyer.
That week in jail, Mary, William Robinson
and Marmaduke Stephenson sat in their cells writing pleas to the General Court to change
the laws of banishment upon pain of death. (Click here to read the full text of Mary's letter.)
On October 27, the three Quakers were led
through the streets to the gallows with drums beating to prevent them from addressing the
people. Robinson and Stephenson were hanged, but Mary Dyer, her arms and legs bound and
the noose around her neck, received a prearranged last-minute reprieve as a result of
intercession of Gov. John Winthrop, Jr. of Connecticut, Gov. Thomas Temple of Nova Scotia
and her son.
Back in her cell, Mary
composed another letter to the General Court, from which comes the inscription on her
statue at Boston: "Once more the General Court, Assembled in Boston, speaks Mary
Dyar, even as before: My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in Comparison of the
Lives and Liberty of the Truth and Servants of the Living God, for which in the Bowels of
Love and Meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless, with wicked Hands have you put two of
them to Death, which makes me to feel, that the Mercies of the Wicked is Cruelty."
(Click here to read this second letter in its entirety.)
On October 18, 1659, William Dyer, Jr.'s
petition on behalf of his mother to MA authorities, was thus answered: "Whereas Mary
Dyer is condemned by the General Court to be executed for her offence; on the petition of
William Dyer, her son, it is ordered the said Mary Dyer shall have liberty for forty-eight
hours after this day to depart out of this jurisdiction, after which time being found
therein she is to be executed."
Mary returned unwillingly back to Rhode
Island. She was accompanied by four horsemen who followed her fifteen miles south of
Boston. From there she was left in the custody of one man to escort her back to Rhode
Island.
Once home, Mary longed for the
companionship of other Quakers. She busied herself across Long Island Sound on Shelter
Island where a group of Indians had approached her, asking if she would hold Quaker
meetings with them. Although Mary was out of danger in this environment, she was not
content. She made it known that she must return to Boston to "desire the repeal of
that wicked law against God's people and offer up her life there." In late April,
1660, in obedience to her conscience and in defiance of the law and without telling her
husband, she returned once more to Boston.
It took a week for the news to reach
William Dyer that Mary had left Shelter Island. Quickly, he wrote again to the magistrates
of Boston. (Click here to read William's moving letter.)
Governor Endicott received the letter and presented it to the General Court. Too bad if
William was having trouble with his wife. She was giving them trouble, too. She had no
right to come back and defy their orders. The General Court summoned Mary before them on
May 31, 1660.
"Are you the same Mary Dyer
that was here before?" Governor Endicott asked her.
"I am the same Mary Dyer that was here at the last
General Court," she replied.
"You will own yourself a Quaker, will you
not?"
"I am myself to be reproachfully called so,"
Mary said stiffly.
Governor Endicott said, "The sentence was passed
upon you by the General Court and now likewise; you must return to the prison and there
remain until tomorrow at nine o'clock; then from thence you must go to the gallows, and
there be hanged till you are dead."
Mary Dyer did not flinch. "This is no more than
what you said before."
"But now it is to be executed," said
Endicott. "Therefore prepare yourself tomorrow at nine o'clock."
"I came in obedience to the will of God to the
last General Court desiring you to appeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of
death," said Mary, "and that same is my work now, and earnest request, although
I told you that if you refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of his servants
to witness against them."
"Are you a prophetess?" asked the Governor.
"I speak the words that the Lord speaks in me and
now the thing has come to pass."
Endicott reached his saturation point and, waving to a
prison guard, yelled, "Away with her! Away with her!"
At the appointed time on June 1, 1660,
Mary was escorted from her prison cell by a band of soldiers to the gallows a mile away.
Apprehensive that a gathering crowd might become uncontrollably compassionate, the
Magistrates took every precaution to cut off communication between Mary Dyer and her
followers. Led through the streets sandwiched between drummers, with a constant
rat-a-tat-tat in front and behind her, Mary Dyer walked to her death.
Despite these precautions, some of the
followers were able to get close enough to appeal to her to acquiesce in banishment.
"Mary Dyer, don't die. Go back to Rhode Island where you might save your life. We beg
of you, go back!" "Nay, I cannot go back to Rhode Island, for in obedience to
the will of the Lord I came," Mary said, "and in His will I abide faithful to
the death."
At the place of execution the drums were
quieted and Captain John Webb spoke, trying to justify what was about to happen. "She
has been here before and had the sentence of banishment upon pain of death and has broken
the law in coming again now," he said. "It is therefore SHE who is guilty of her
own blood."
Mary contradicted him. "Nay, I came
to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desiring you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust laws
of banishment upon pain of death made against the innocent servants of the Lord.
Therefore, my blood will be required at your hands who wilfully do it." Mary then
turned towards the crowd and continued, "But, for those who do it in the simplicity
of their hearts, I desire the Lord to forgive them. I came to do the will of my father,
and in obedience to this will I stand even to death."
Pastor Wilson cried, "Mary Dyer, O
repent, O repent, and be not so delued and carried away by the deceit of the devil."
Mary looked directly at him and said, "Nay, man, I am not now to repent."
John Norton stepped forward and asked,
"Would you have the elders pray for you?" Mary responded, "I desire the
prayer of all the people of God." A voice from the crowd called out, "It may be
that she thinks there is none here." John Norton pleaded, "Are you sure you
dont' want one of the elders to pray for you?" Mary answered, "Nah, first a
child, then a young man, then a strong man, before an elder in Christ Jesus."
Someone from the crowd called out,
"Did you say you have been in Paradise?" Mary answered, "Yea, I have been
in Paradise several days and now I am about to enter eternal happiness."
Captain John Webb signalled to Edward
Wanton, officer of the gallows, who adjusted the noose. Mary needed no assistance in
mounting the scaffold and a small smile lighted her face. Pastor Wilson had his large
handkerchief ready to place over her head so no one would have to see that look of rapture
twisted to distortion - only the dangling body. As her neck snapped, the crowd stood
paralyzed in the silence of death until a spring breeze lifted her limp skirt and set it
to billowing. "She hangs there as a flag for others to take example by,"
remarked an unsympathetic bystander. That was indeed Mary Dyer's intention - to be an
example, a "witness" in the Quaker sense, for freedom of conscience.
Despite all the frantic attempts of the
Boston magistrates to rid themselves of the challenging Quakers, they failed. Mary's death
came gradually to be considered a martyrdom even in Massachusetts, where it hastened the
easing of anti-Quaker statutes. In 1959 by authority of the Massachusetts General Court,
which had condemned her nearly 300 years before, a bronze statue was erected in her memory
on the grounds of the State House in Boston. A statue of her friend, Anne Hutchinson,
stands in front at the other wing. The words of Mary Barrett Dyer, written from her cell
of the Boston jail, are engraved beneath:
"My Life not Availeth Me
in Comparison to the
Liberty of the Truth"
Mary Dyer Memorial - Founders' Park, Portsmouth, RI
Photo courtesy Elliot J. Wilcox � 1997
Mary Dyer Statue, Boston State House - Sam Behling �
1995
The Hanging - artist rendition, courtesy Reader's Digest. Strange Stories, Amazing
Facts of America's Past. New York: Reader's Digest Association, Inc, 1989
Gov. John Endicott - courtesy MA Historical Society
Gov. John Winthrop - courtesy MA Historial Society
George Fox - courtesy Haverford College
Sources:
- Austin, John Osborn. Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island; Comprising Three
Generations of Settlers Who Came Before 1690. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing
Co., Inc., Reprint, 1995.
- Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York:
Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, 1964.
- Hollowell, Richard. The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts. Maryland:
Heritage Books, Reprint 1987.
- Norton, Mary Beth. Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming
of American Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
- Moriarty, G. Andrews, A.M., LLB., F.A.S.G., F.S.A. "The True Story of Mary
Dyer," The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 104,
(January, 1950): 40-42.
- Plimpton, Ruth. Mary Dyer: Biography of a Rebel Quaker. Boston: Branden
Publishing Company, Inc., 1994.
- Williams, Selma R. Demeter's Daughters: The Women Who Founded America, 1587-1787.
New York: Atheneum, 1976.
- Williams, Selma R. Divine Rebel: The Life of Anne Marbury Hutchinson. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
- Winsser, Johan "Mary (Dyre) Ward: Mary (Barrett) Dyre's Missing Daughter
Traced," The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 145,
(January, 1991): 22-28.
While all of the material on this page may be found in the public
domain, the assembling, organizing and integrating of it as it appears here is the work of
Susanne "Sam" Behling whose efforts have saved me considerable time, and for
which I am very much in appreciation. More of her work may be found at:
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~sam/index.html
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