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 Mary Dyer (Died 1660)
Abiding faith brings death on gallows

  By LINDA BORG
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

Mary Dyer was a gentlewoman by birth and a rebel by trade.

The wife of a London milliner, she could have spent her life as a dutiful Puritan, reading the Scriptures with other cossetted women of her class. Instead, she went willingly to her death, a martyr to the cause of Quakerism and religious freedom.

Quakers were considered dangerous subversives in 17th century England, where they were flogged, deported, even hanged. When they fled to the colonies, the Quakers hoped to find a more tolerant religious climate. But in Massachusetts, at least, they encountered a society as repressive as the one they left behind.

America was founded on the principles espoused by Quakerism: free speech, freedom of assembly, the separation of church and state.

These beliefs flew in the face of the strict religious orthodoxy of the Puritans.

Dyer wasn't always a Quaker. First, she became good friends with Anne Hutchinson, a notorious free-thinker who was kicked out of Massachusetts for her unorthodox views.

When the Hutchinsons took refuge in Rhode Island, Mary and her husband, William, followed and settled in Newport, where they became "people of consequence."

Several years later, during a five-year visit to England, Dyer converted to Quakerism.

When she arrived in Boston on her way home, Dyer was immediately thrown into prison because of her Quaker views. She was not set free until her husband promised that she would speak to no one until she reached the Massachusetts border.

Two years later, in 1659, Dyer was caught visiting several Quakers in a Boston prison. This time she was formally banished with a warning that she would be hanged if she ever returned.

But within a month, Dyer was back, demanding fair treatment for her fellow Quakers. She was imprisoned and, after a short trial, sentenced to be hanged.

On the day of her execution, the crowd was so great that the bridge between Boston and the North End broke.

Dyer was led to the gallows, a giant elm on the Boston Common. Her arms were bound, her skirts tied around her ankles and her face covered with a handkerchief.

"She was made to watch while her companions were executed," wrote H. Addington Bruce, author of Women in the Making of America. "The rope was placed around her neck. She ascended the ladder. Only then was she told that she would not die."

Her reprieve carried a price: She could never return to Massachusetts.

Once again Dyer was hustled off to Rhode Island, where she could have practiced her faith in the safety and comfort of her family and friends.

But she returned to Boston a few months later.

Again she was arrested and sentenced to die. Again she was given a chance to save herself on the gallows. And once again she refused.

"Nay, I cannot," she told the crowd. "For in obedience to the will of the Lord, I came. And in His will, I abide, faithful to the death."

Dyer was hanged June 1, 1660. The next day she was buried in an unmarked grave on the Boston Common. After her execution, a Puritan said scornfully, "She did hang as a flag for others to take example by."

He was right. The king of England then banned all further executions of Quakers in Boston.

Sources: Women in the Making of America by H. Addington Bruce; Rebel Saints by Mary Agnes Best; The Hanging of Mary Dyer by George Hodges.

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