Quaker martyr; was the wife of a leading citizen of
Rhode Island.
Having embraced the doctrines and discipline of the Friends, or Quakers, she became an enthusiast, and went to
Boston, whence some of her sect had been banished, to give her “testimony to the truth.”
In that colony the death penalty menaced those who should return after banishment.
Mary was sent away and returned, and was released while going to the gallows with
Marmaduke Stevenson with a rope around her neck.
She unwillingly returned to her family in
Rhode Island; but she went back to
Boston again for the purpose of offering up her life to the cause she advocated, and she was hanged in 1660.
Mary had once been whipped on her bare back through the streets of
Boston, tied behind a cart.
