In 1662 three English Quakers arrived in Dover, N.H. It didn’t take long before the Puritan townspeople spoke up about the newcomers. They petitioned Richard Waldron, the magistrate at Dover, “humbly craving relief against the spreading and the wicked errors of the Quakers among them.” Dover was frontier country and Waldron was the vice president of the New Hampshire colony. He also served as representative to the Massachusetts General Court, which hotly debated Quaker persecution.
Illustration of Mary Dyer, a victim of Quaker persecution
An ornery English Puritan who arrived in New Hampshire in 1635, Waldron came from wealth. He expanded it greatly, acquiring lands in Dover and building mills on the Cochecho River. He also ran an active trading post with the local Pennacook Indians, with whom he maintained largely friendly relations.
The Quakers, meanwhile, proved themselves a thorn in the side of New England’s Puritans. They had begun arriving in the colonies in 1656, and agitated for religious freedom. The General Court in Massachusetts repeatedly voted to ban them.
Quaker Persecution
The Puritans punished Quakers by an assortment of methods, including whipping and branding.
But the Quakers persisted in demanding their rights. Several chose to suffer as martyrs rather than accept offers of leniency. They insisted the colonial authorities rescind the bans on Quakerism. In 1660, Massachusetts had even executed four Quakers who refused to renounce their faith. They included Mary Dyer, a martyr who knew her execution would prove controversial for the political leaders of Massachusetts.
Statue of Mary Dyer in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.
In 1662, Waldron had the three Dover Quakers – Ann Coleman, Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose – arrested as vagabonds. He ordered them tied to the back of a cart and made to walk the 60-plus miles to Boston. Waldron ordered that at each town along the way they were to be stripped and whipped by the local constable.
After carrying out the sentence in Dover, the cart was dispatched to Hampton. There, the constable also carried out the punishment.
They then came to the next stop along the punishment trail — Salisbury, Mass. The whippings then stopped.
Robert Pike
Robert Pike served as constable, militia leader and deputy to the Massachusetts General Court for Salisbury. Though the General Court had outlawed Quakerism, the decision was far from unanimous. Pike and others supported religious freedom, and he and others in Salisbury were outraged at the order to whip the women.
Pike and Walter Barefoot, a political rival to Waldron in New Hampshire, treated the three Quakers’ wounds and helped them escape to Maine. The Quakers correctly believed that the persecution was backfiring. Each incident brought greater attention to their struggle and fresh converts to their faith.
In 1661, the King of England had ordered the colonies to stop executing and imprisoning Quakers. Rather, they were to be sent to England. Waldron probably intended to have them sent to England from Boston.
Instead, the three Quakers returned quietly to Dover and established a church there. Fully one third of Dover’s population would eventually convert to Quakerism. Active persecution of the Quakers died out around 1670.
Karma
Waldron, in New Hampshire, would meet a horrific fate. Following King Philip’s War in 1678, a group of Indian fighters had fled to New Hampshire. Waldron managed to trick the Indians into attending a “war game.” As soon as they had discharged their muskets, he seized the Indians and sent them to Boston. From there they were sold into slavery.
As a result, many New Hampshire Indians viewed Waldron with contempt. In 1689 a band of Indians tortured and killed him. Waldron was 80.
Robert Pike, meanwhile, had continued his protests for greater religious tolerance. In 1692, as the Salem witch hysteria gained momentum, Pike authored a letter to one of the witch trial judges. Pike criticized the way the trials were conducted. While he did not dispute the reality of witchcraft, he argued the trials used flawed methods to determine guilt and credibility.
Pike’s letter made him the first of many who began attacking the witch trials, eventually bringing them to an end. He died in 1706.
Memorial to Robert Pike in Salisbury, Mass.
John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized Robert Pike’s stand against Quaker persecution. In the poem, How the Women Went from Dover, the word of justice Pike are recorded:
Cut loose these poor ones and let them go;
Come what will of it, all men shall know
No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown,
For whipping women in Salisbury town!
This story last updated in 2022.
Images: Memorial to Robert Pike By Ricky Pike – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22303717
1 comment
Do you have the lineage of Pike or Waldron? Funny note; my mother was a Waldron. Oh, my name is Robert Pike.
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