They were allowed no candle, and their pens, ink, and
paper were taken from them. They might have starved but that one
good old man named Nicholas Upshal, whose heart was grieved for
them, paid the gaoler to give them food. Thus they were kept until
a ship was ready to sail for England. Then they were put on board,
and the captain was made to swear that he would put them ashore
nowhere but in England.
"Such," says an old writer, "was the entertainment the Quakers first
met with at Boston, and that from a people who pretended that for
conscience' sake they had chosen the wilderness of America before
the well-cultivated Old England."
The next Quakers who arrived were treated much in the same fashion
and sent back to England; and a law was made forbidding Quakers
to come to the colony. At this time the same good old man who had
already befriended them was grieved. "Take heed," he said, "that
you be not found fighting against God, and so draw down a judgment
upon the land." But the men of Boston were seized with a frenzy of
hate and fear, and they banished this old man because he had dared
to speak kindly of the accursed sect."
It is true the men of New England had some excuse for trying to keep
the Quakers out of their colony. For some of them were foolish, and
tried to force their opinions noisily upon others. They interrupted
the Church services, mocked the magistrates and the clergy, and
some, carried away by religious fervour, behaved more like mad folk
than the disciples of a religion of love and charity.
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