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10a95d6b33d1568c46862dcefeaee848
Dublin Core
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Title
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1840
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Marietza.
_____
Some of you, my dear girls, remember that, in November, 1837, our secluded home was visited by a stranger whom all the civilized world delight to honour, and that you soon found the honour, reverence, and observance due to the celebrated writer merged in your love for the woman.
You remember the story of the Greek girl Marietza which she told us one happy evening when you were permitted to gather round her in the little parlour. We can recall her sweet voice, the graces of her language, and the varying expression of her face while she related the startling incidents of the young girl's life, and recalled the vivid interest that a personal knowledge of her had excited.
These pleasant recollections will invest the story with a charm to you, which it cannot possess for my other readers, for whom the picture must be transferred from a painter's to a common light. But, as there are some pictures worth looking at in any light, I trust to my true and unadorned story to fix attention for a few moments.
You do not remember, my young readers, but you may have heard of the bloody war which the oppressed Greeks waged for their independence against their cruel masters the Turks. It was a long time before the Grecian island of
[53]
Scio took any part in the contest. The Turkish dominion was less felt there than in Greece. The island, as you will perceive if you look at your maps, lies almost under the shadow of the Asiatic coast. It has a rich soil, and in its happy days was so highly cultivated, so loaded with the fruits and flowers of that fortunate clime, that it is described as filled with gardens. There was a higher cultivation there, too, than that of the earth. There were schools and colleges, richly endowed, where the people of both sexes were instructed in the sciences, and in the accomplishments of the most civilized parts of Europe. The Sciots had an extensive commerce. They had resident merchants in the great commercial cities of Europe. They carried on nearly all the trade between Greece and the Turkish cities of Smyrna and Constantinople. Their wealth was deposited in these cities, as we may say, in the very coffers of the Turks; they had, therefore, much more to hazard by a war than their compatriots. Their civil government was in the hands of elders, who adminis- tered it mildly and prudently. Prudence is the virtue (par excellence) of elders. They do not rashly risk the security, prosperity, and ease of peace, for the present glory, and distant and doubtful advantages of war. But if a war can ever be approved by Heaven, it was the war waged by the Greeks for religion and liberty. The patriot Sciots could not very long remain passive spectators of the struggles of their countrymen; nor did they long wait before the aggressions of their masters gave them occasion and impulse.
In May, 1821, a small squadron of Ipsariots (pa-
[54]
triot Greeks) appeared off their coast. The aga, or military governor, immediately resorted to measures that had already been taken at other Greek islands of the Archipelago. He seized forty elders and bishops, and shut them up in the castle as hostages for the good conduct of the people.
A large number of troops was brought from the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor, and garrisoned in the island, and the inhabitants were subjected to their excesses and lawless depredations. Assassinations were frequent; the wealthy inhabitants were plundered on every side, till, stung to madness, there was an attempt made to rouse the people to resistance. But hard it was themselves to light the fire that was to consume their pleasant homes and sweep over their garden-lands, and they were still hesitating, when two adventurers, Burnia and Logotheti, from Samos landed on Scio with a small band of followers. The prudent elders made every effort to prevent the peasantry joining them. The aga took his measures—tyrants never hesitate—and, selecting his victims from the best families, he doubled the number of hostages. The aga expected aid from the Continent. The Sciots hoped the Greek fleet would come to their aid, but they hoped in vain. On the 22d of April a Turkish fleet of fifty sail anchored in the bay, and immediately began to bombard the town. The Sciots were deserted by their Samian friends, who seemed to have come among them, as the falcon returns to his species, to lure them into the hands of their enemies.
Scio became the scene of indescribable horrors. Its inhabitants, men, women, and children, were all
[55]
massacred. The houses were plundered and then burned, not one left standing excepting those belonging to the foreign consuls.
Three days passed before the Turks left the city to penetrate into the recesses of the island. The following passage is from an eyewitness who escaped. He wrote to his friend, "Oh God! what a spectacle did Scio present on this memorable occasion! On whatever side I cast my eyes, nothing but pillage, murder, and conflagration appeared. While some were occupied in plundering the villas of rich merchants, and others in setting fire to the villages, the air was rent with the mingled groans of men, women, and children who were falling under the swords and daggers of the infidels. The only exception made during the massacre was in favour of young women and boys, who were preserved to be afterward sold as slaves. Many of these young women, whose husbands had been butchered, were running to and fro frantic, with torn garments and dishevelled hair, pressing their trembling infants to their breasts, and seeking death as a relief from the fate that awaited them."
My dear girls, when you read such details, horrible but not exaggerated, of the miseries that have been suffered in our days, do you realize them? I believe not. The people are thousands of miles removed from you. They speak a foreign language. Their religion is not your religion; their customs and manners differ from yours. But all human beings are essentially alike; they have the same passions, affections, and wants, and their resemblance increases as they approach the same grade in civilization. The Sciots were an in-
[56]
structed and accomplished people. They were Christians. And if in imagination you will transfer the scenes above described to your own town and villages—to your own happy homes, and, if you can, picture to yourselves your fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, the subjects of these cruelties, your sympathies, I think, will no longer sleep!
But I am aware that the picture of a famishing Jewish mother, wandering with her child away from her fallen city, would affect you more than a crowded canvass, which should represent all the multitude of the Jews realizing the curses that had been denounced upon them, so I fancy that the story of Marietza will interest you more than the most minute history of the massacre at Scio.
Perhaps you consider yourselves already taken in by being compelled to read this prefatory bit of history, as the customers of the Yankee pedlar were, who, if they purchased one of his cheeses, were compelled to take also one of his grindstones. Pardon me—I will go to my story without farther delay. Ten days were given to slaughter. Gardeners and others, who had been seized and carried on board the Turkish ships, on the supposition that they could reveal hidden treasures, were, to the number of 500, hung! This was the signal for the execution of the hostages in the citadel. Many young women, with their children, had fled to the mountains and hidden themselves in caves, where numbers died of terror and hunger, and others lived on fearing a worse destiny. Among these was a noble Grecian lady, the mother of Marietza. Her husband and three sons had been massacred
[57]
before her eyes; and with the two remaining children, Marietza and a boy, she had, almost by miracle, escaped, and hid herself and them in a cave in the mountains. There they were discovered and dragged forth by the hair of their head. They hoped and prayed for death, but death was no longer the order of the day. They were reserved for market, put on board a Turkish ship, and conveyed to Alexandrea.*[1] They were exhorted and commanded by the man who called himself their owner to renounce their religion. They endured all sorts of petty persecution; but, wretched, wearied, weak, and young as they were, they remained steadfast.
The Greek religion is a modification of the
[58]
Roman Catholic, and does not essentially vary from it. It is difficult for you, my dear girls, to conceive the detestation that an oppressed people feel for the religion of their oppressors; but, 1 hope, not equally difficult to imagine the clinging you would feel to the religion that had made you patient in such tribulations as our poor Greek mother and her children had endured. They were still very young; Marietza, I think, about twelve, her brother a year older: and their mother, fearing they might yield to the threats or persuasions of their Turkish master, continually exhorted them to steadfastness. She soon had the saddest proof that her fears were groundless. She was standing with her children in the balcony of a house near the river, and overlooking it. Their Turkish tyrant was insisting that her boy should give some sign of faith in the Prophet. The boy refused; and, with all the fervour of his Greek nature, expressed his hatred of Mohammed, his faith, and his followers. The Turk struck him. The boy was maddened; and, springing to the ground, he ran to the river. Whether he intended to drown himself, or whether he merely obeyed an impulse to escape anywhere from the presence of the Turk, no one could tell; for, while his head was still above water, the Turk drew a pistol from his belt and shot him through the brain. The mother and sister saw this, and lived; and I have no doubt that, after the first horror was past, they blessed God the boy had escaped from the evils that still impended over them.
The sister of the Pacha of Egypt was then at Alexandrea. She was a Mohammedan fanatic, so
[59]
sincerely devoted to her religion that she bought captives to convert them to the Mohammedan faith. The master of Marietza, hoping the zealous lady would set a due value on the possibility of offering to the Prophet two such beautiful converts (for the mother was still handsome, and Marietza lovely as an Houri), took them to the princess's apartments. They had entered the court, but there was some delay in getting admission. While they stood on the steps, the shrinking, frightened girl leaning on her mother, who could have recognised in her drooping figure the same being who, but a few weeks before, was gayest among the gay girls of Scio, dancing on the sea-beach, by the moonlight and by the music of rustic pipes, the Romaika, their classic national dance? Who could imagine this figure, that looked now pale and fixed as if it were cut in stone, linked with other young and graceful forms, chasing in the evolutions of this poetic dance the retreating wave, boldly following it till it turned, then, as it chased her back, dashing off the foam from her winged feet? Yet this had been, and, in spite of Marietza's present despair, something very like it was again to be.
After a tedious waiting they were led to a small antechamber, where persons having business with the princess were passing and repassing. Some Greeks, who had been that morning bastinadoed for refusing to abjure their religion, were stretched on the floor writhing with pain. A very old man beckoned to Marietza. She threw aside her veil, and leaned respectfully towards him. "Do not think, my poor child," said he, " that you can suffer stripes as well as bonds. I am old, and death is
[60]
better for me than life ; and yet, when I felt the bastinado to-day, I bit my tongue through to save myself from saying, as they bade me, that their cursed Mohammed was the prophet of God. Confess him now, my poor child, and retract when you can. You are young—you will have time for repentance —time to hope for God's forgiveness."
"No, father, no," replied Marietza; "my mother has told me there is double guilt in sinning because you know God forgives sin! No; mother says we must be baptized with Christ's baptism—"
"Poor child, you are so young—you cannot endure it."
"I can, if it be God's will. See here; I have been trying what I can endure;" and she pushed up her muslin sleeve, and showed the old man where, while she had been standing there, she had, to prove her fortitude, and without shrinking, pinched her arm black. The old man uttered an exclamation of mingled pity and admiration. "Besides, it would be a double shame for me to turn infidel," she added, "for my name is Marietza."*[2]
"A curse upon ye, then !" said a brutal old Turk, spitting in her face in token of the hatred he bore her name. Another Turk, an old man too (there are good Samaritans in all nations), extended to her an embroidered handkerchief drenched in a delicious perfume. She wiped away the defilement, and the blood gushed from her heart to her cheek, and she raised her eyes, glowing with a silent prayer, as she remembered that her Saviour was spit upon.
[61]
At this moment,, when she looked as beautiful as one of Raphael's saints, two young Englishmen came from the audience-room. They stopped, riveted to the spot by Marietza's beauty. Her mother advanced and drew down her veil, and directly after their master signed to them to follow him to the presence of the princess. She was evidently so much struck with the extreme beauty of Marietza, that the cupidity of the Turk was excited, and he asked for her double the price he had intended. The princess refused it. He abated, but still insisted on extravagant terms; and at last, the princess, quite disgusted, told him that she would have nothing more to say to him; and, like many a grasping trader, bitterly repenting his avarice, he withdrew. The hearts of our poor captives sunk as they turned away. They had hoped to escape from the hateful presence of the murderer of their son and brother, and there had seemed something like escape from despair—something bordering on protection, in passing into the hands of one of their own sex.
The two young Englishmen were awaiting their return, and followed them at a respectful distance. Soon after they sought an interview with their Turkish master, and eagerly inquired of him the names, rank, and former condition of his captives. They ascertained that he had failed in his treaty with the princess; and also that, in consequence of this disappointment, he was prepared to lower his terms. The young friends were filled with pity for the captives, no doubt augmented by Marietza's beauty; for it must be confessed that beauty is a wonderful
[62]
inciter of a young man's compassion. One of the young men, Reginald Butler,*[3] was the son, as those who heard the story will remember, of a friend of the lady who told it to us. He was an only son, most beloved, and most worthy of love. His mother, a widow in easy circumstances, was residing with her daughters in England, while he was seeking (and finding, too) his fortune abroad. He was not, however, rich enough to pay the money demanded for the redemption of the captives; but he would not leave them in the Turk's hands, and he and his friend agreed to pay equal portions of the purchase-money. They did so, and Marietza and her mother were transferred to them. My dear young friends, you know so little of the evil in the world, that I trust you will hardly understand me when I say that Butler's associate looked on Marietza with too bold an eye; and Butler, fearing that some undue advantage might be taken of her helpless and dependant position, paid to his partner his portion of the purchase-money, and removed the mother and daughter to a little country-house in the neighbourhood of Alexandrea, where he provided them with every comfort and indulgence within his power to procure for them.
They had no common language in which they could hold communication; and these poor females, believing that they had only changed owners, were apprehending every possible, and even impossible evil. The terrors they had suffered, the starvation they had endured, and, more than all, the unnatu-
[63]
ral disruption of their dearest ties, had impaired their health and affected their imaginations, so that they were on the brink of insanity, and looking on every side for new dangers and miseries. Butler said that Marietza was so emaciated, that he sometimes thought, when he looked at her, she might disappear from his sight like the White Lady of Avenel. He bought a horse for her to ride, in the hope that the exercise and the fresh air would give new impulse to her young life; but she afterward said that, whenever he took her out, she thought he was going to conduct her to some wild place to murder her! He provided every delicacy the market afforded, and bought her the most delicious fruits; but poor Marietza for a long while rejected everything, tormented with the imagination that he was fatting her to kill her!
By degrees, both mother and daughter truly interpreted the language of his generosity and most assiduous kindness, and then there was no limit to their gratitude. The mother, content and grateful for the present, became in some good degree resigned to her calamities; and Marietza, with the elasticity of girlhood, returned to health, and all the brightness of health and hope as soon as she was relieved from the pressure of her fears. Then she rode and ate, and became as fat and as blooming as her benefactor desired. You perhaps know that in warm climates the person is earlier developed and the physical system sooner matured than in our cold land. At twelve Marietta had the attractive graces of a girl of sixteen. Her benefactor's benevolence was transmuted to love. He wrote to his mother in
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England all the particulars of Marietza's story, confessed the state of his heart, and proposed to her to receive Marietza under her protection, and to give her an education fitting the wife of her son.
The project might have struck some elderly ladies as romantic, but Mrs. Butler sympathized perfectly with her son. She had entire confidence in the truth and steadfastness of his affections. She would have preferred, she said, that he would have married one of his own countrywomen; but, for the world, she would not thwart the wishes of one who had fulfilled all her wishes. Thrice blessed, my dear girls, is the mutual confidence of parents and children!
I do not know how Butler reconciled Marietza's mother to parting with her child; but you all know that mothers will make any personal sacrifice for the advantage of their children; and probably the hearts of both mother and child were so overflowing with gratitude to their benefactor, that they would have acquiesced in whatever he proposed, even their parting. Parted they were.
Marietza went to England, where she was received into Butler's family as if she had a natural claim to their love. She was at once daughter and sister. Her exquisite beauty, set off by her Greek costume and Oriental grace, riveted every eye; her enthusiasm, affectionateness, buoyancy of spirit, and the free and animated manner natural to her people—which no misfortunes could long depress, or conventionalism restrain, or even an English atmosphere damp—made her a perpetual spring of delight to every circle she entered. She was courted and flattered on every side. Men
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richer, handsomer, and of higher rank than Reginald Butler were devoted to her; but her affections never for a moment wavered from him.
Fashion robbed her of some of her outward graces, for they took her to Paris, and submitted her to the levelling processes of dressmakers, milliners, and hairdressers; but the world did not invade her heart.
At the expiration of four or five years Butler came to England to claim his bride. His friends dreaded the meeting. He had suffered from a protracted illness. His face was sallow and furrowed, and he had become, not absolutely bald, but so near it as to look a score of years older than when Marietza parted from him.
"Do I not look to you shockingly changed, Marietza?" he asked, as soon as the first emotions of meeting were over. "Shockingly! No, not shockingly changed, Reginald. Your heart is not changed—nor is mine."
These words, uttered with all her characteristic fervour, satisfied her lover; and he was not in the least disturbed when she said, with a mischievous curl of her beautiful lips, "I have danced in London with prettier men than you, Reginald!"
Marietza betrayed an Oriental love of magnificence when the arrangements for the wedding were making. The Butlers were a quiet people, who disliked display and notoriety; but they yielded in this, as in everything, to Marietza. She would have the church bells rung, and a procession of carriages, as in her own country. Her lover lavished the most costly bridal gifts upon her, and she showed her trousseau to my friend with the sort
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of ecstatic pleasure that a child has with its holyday gifts. She clapped her hands, and skipped over chairs and sofas. Immediately after their marriage they returned to reside in Alexandrea.
And here, if I had invented the story, I should leave it; for the wedding is the legitimate stopping- place in a tale, though in life but the beginning of its deepest interests.
Eighteen months after the departure of Butler with his beautiful young bride, his mother received a letter from him, informing her that Marietza had died in his arms with the plague!
This seems to you, my dear girls, a sad conclusion; and sad is always the disruption of happy domestic ties; but remember, it is but a passing sadness. Death is to the good the last of pain, and trial, and disappointment; and to the good, death opens the gates of immortality and felicity.
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* [1] The prisoners were for the most part sold in Smyrna and Constantinople. "On June 19th, an order came to the slave- market for the cessation of the sale; and the circumstances which are believed to have occasioned that order are singular, and purely Oriental. The island of Scio had been granted many years before to one of the sultanas as an appropriation, from which she derived a fixed revenue, and a title of interference in all matters relating to police and internal administration. The present patroness was Asma Sultana, sister of the sultan; and that amiable princess received about 200,000 piastres a year, besides casual presents, from her flourishing little province. When she was informed of its destruction, her indignation was natural and excessive; and it was directed, of course, against Valid, the pacha who had commanded the fort, and the capudan pacha, to whose misconduct she chiefly attributed her misfortune. It was in vain that that officer selected from his captives sixty young and beautiful maidens, whom he presented to the service of her highness. She rejected the sacrifice with disdain, and continued her energetic remonstrances against the injustice and illegality of reducing rajahs to slavery, and exposing them for sale in the public markets. The sultan at length yielded to her eloquence or importunity. A license, the occasion of hourly brutalities, was suppressed; and we have reason to believe that this act of care and unprecedented humanity may be attributed to the influence of a woman."— Waddington's Visit to Greece.
* [2] Marietza is the Greek for Mary, and the name is given in honour of the Virgin.
* [3] We have not given the true name, as that might not be agreeable to him if, by any strange accident, he should ever hear of the publication of his story.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Marietza
Subject
The topic of the resource
1822 Greek uprising on the island of Chios, cross-cultural romance.
Description
An account of the resource
A Greek/Chian girl witnesses the destruction of her home/island as a consequence of the 1822 uprising against Turkish domination, and subsequently marries her English protector.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria [by the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live & Let Live," &c]
Source
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<em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, pp. 52-66.
Publisher
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New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 1840, 52-66, reprinted 1841, 1842, 1846, 1855, 1860; reprinted 184? By the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live and Let Live," &c. London: W. Smith. <br /><br />Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 1789-1867, and Cairns Collection of American Women Writers. <em>Stories for Young Persons</em> ... New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840. HathiTrust Digital Library https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007092366 Accessed 11 July 2019.
Format
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Document
Language
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English
1840
Alexandria
captives
Chios
Christians
Constantinople
daughters
Death
Egypt
Englishmen
execution
Faith
girls
Good Samaritan
Greece
Greek Independence
Greek Orthodox
hostages
Houri
infidels
Jews
Juvenile fiction
London
marriage
massacre
Mohammed
Mothers
Muslims
Oriental
Ottoman Empire
Pacha
patriots
plague
Prophet
revolution
Romaika
Roman Catholic
Scios
Sir Walter Scott
Smyrna
sons
Stories for Young Persons
Turks
war
White Lady of Avenel
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ea256e30bdcfb4b2d7de082779324325
Dublin Core
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Title
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1830
Subject
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Stories published in 1830.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
“Mary Dyre”
By Miss Sedgwick
The subject of the following sketch, a Quaker Martyr, may appear to the fair holiday readers of souvenirs, a very unfit personage to be introduced into the romantic and glorious company of lords and ladye loves; of doomed brides; and all-achieving heroines; chivalric soldiers; suffering outlaws; and Ossianic sons of the forest. But of such, it is not now “our hint to speak.” Neither have we selected the most romantic heroine that might have been found in the annals of the sober-suited sect. A startling tale might be wrought from the perilous adventures of Mary Fisher, the maiden missionary, who, after being cast into prison, for saying “thee” instead of “you,” was examined before a judicial tribunal, and “nothing found but innocence;” who, released from durance, travelled over the continent of Europe, to communicate her faith; visited the court of Mahomet the Fourth, then held at Adrianople; was presented by the Grand Vizier to the Sultan, who listened to her with deference, and was, or affected to be, persuaded of her truth. A guard to Constantinople was gallantly offered her by Mahomet, which she refused; and safe and unmolested, in her armour of innocence, she proceeded to that city, receiving everywhere from the Turks the gentle usage that was denied her by those professing a more generous faith.
A tale of horrors, of cowled monks, and instruments of torture, might be framed from the “hair breadth
[p. 152]
scapes” of Catherine Evans and Sarah Chevers, the Quaker heroines who suffered with constancy, in the Inquisition at Malta. We have passed by these tempting themes, to tell a briefer story, and present a character in its true and natural light, as it stands on the historic page, without the graces of fiction, or any of those aids, by which the romance writer composes his picture - exaggerating beauties, placing them in bright lights, and omitting or gracefully shading defects. There are manifestations of moral beauty so perfect that they do not require the aids of fiction, as there are scenes in the material world, that no illusion of the imagination can improve.
Mary Dyre belonged to the religious society of “Friends;” a society, that, after having long resisted the tempest of intolerance and persecution, is melting away under the genial sun of universal toleration, and the ignoble, but no less resistless influence, of the tailor’s shears, and the milliner’s craft. As Voltaire predicted, some sixty years since, “Les enfans enrichis par l’industrie de leurs peres veulent jouir avoir des honneurs, des boutons, et des manchettes.”
Mary Dyre was among those, who, in 1657, sought in New England an asylum from the oppression of the mother country. But the persecuted had become persecutors; and, instead of an asylum, these harmless people found a prison, and were destined, for their glory and our shame, to suffer as martyrs in the cause of liberty of conscience.
Sewal, the historian “of the people called Quakers,” to whom we are indebted for most of the following particulars, has given very slight notice of Mary Dyre’s private history. “She was,” he says, “of a comely and grave countenance, of a good family and estate, and the mother of several children; but her husband, it seems, was of another persuasion.” From another document, which we have been so fortunate as to obtain, it appears that this defect of religious sympathy,
[p. 153]
had, in no degree, abated the affection and confidence of her husband.
Thus she possessed whatever comes within the aspiration of a woman’s ambition or affections; - beauty, for this is no violent paraphrase of the Quaker historian’s stinted courtesy, rank, fortune, conjugal and maternal happiness; yet she counted all these but loss, believing that her obedience to the inspirations of God required their sacrifice.
The Pilgrims, finding the penalties of fine, imprisonment, scourging with the “three-corded whip,” cutting off the ears, and boring the tongue with a red-hot iron, ineffectual in extirpating the “cursed heresy of the Quakers,” or “preventing their pestilent errors and practices,” proceeded to banish them from their jurisdiction, on pain of death.
This violence was done under a statute enacted in 1658. Mary Dyre, with many others, sought a refuge from the storm in Rhode-Island. Christian liberty, in its most generous sense, was the noble distinction of that Province. But she could not forget her suffering brethren in the Massachusetts Colony. She meditated on their wrongs till she “felt a call” to return to Boston. Two persons, distinguished for zeal and integrity, accompanied her; William Robinson, and Marmaduke Stevenson. Their intention and hope was, to obtain a repeal or mitigation of the laws against their sect. Their return was in the autumn of 1659. On their appearance in Boston, they were immediately seized, and committed to prison, and a few days subsequent, after a summary and informal examination before Governor Endicot, and the associate Magistrates, they were sentenced to suffer the penalty of death, which had been already decreed to such as, after being banished, should return.
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Mary’s companions replied to the annunciation of their sentence, in terms that savoured strongly of human resentment, which, alas for human weakness! is often betrayed in the anticipation of the judgments of Heaven. “Give ear, ye magistrates,” said Stevenson, “and all ye who are guilty, for this the Lord hath said concerning you, and will perform his word upon you, that the same day ye put his servants to death, shall the day of your visitation pass over you, and ye shall be cursed forevermore.” The passions of our infirm nature are sometimes confounded with the religion that accompanies them, as the cloud is, to an ignorant eye, identified with the prismatic rays it reflects.
Mary’s pure and gentle spirit dwelt in eternal sunshine; its elements were at peace. When the fearful words were pronounced, “Mary Dyre, you shall go to the prison whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and be hanged there till you are dead,” she folded her hands, and replied, with a serene aspect, “The will of the Lord be done.”
Her friends have described her demeanour at this moment, as almost supernatural, as if the outward temple were brightened by the communications of the Spirit within. They say, the world seemed to have vanished from her sight; her eyes were raised, and fixed in the rapture of devotion; her lips were moved by the ecstasy of her soul, though they uttered no articulate sound.
Governor Endicot seems to have felt an irritation at her tranquillity, not more dignified than a child’s when he vents his wrath in blows on an insensible substance.
“Take her away, Marshal,” he said harshly.
“I return joyfully to my prison,” she replied; and then turning to the Marshal, she added, “You may leave me, Marshal, I will return alone.”
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“I believe you, Mrs. Dyre,” replied the Marshal; “but I must do as I am commanded.”
The prisoners were condemned on the twentieth of October. The twenty-seventh was the day appointed for the execution of the sentence. With a self-command and equinimity of mind rare in such circumstances, Mary employed the interval in writing an “Appeal to the Rulers of Boston;” an appeal, not in her own behalf, not for pardon, nor life, but for a redress of the wrongs of her persecuted brethren. “I have no self-ends, the Lord knoweth,” she says, “for if life were freely granted by you, it would not avail me, so long as I should daily see or hear of the sufferings of my people, my dear brethren, and the seed with whom my life is bound up. Let my counsel and request be accepted with you to repeal all such laws, that the truth and servants of the Lord may have free passage among you, and you kept from shedding innocent blood, which I know there be many among you would not do, if they knew it so to be.” - “In love and in the spirit of meekness, for I have no enmity to the persons of any, I again beseech you.” There is not, throughout this magnanimous appeal the slightest intimation of a wish that her sentence should be remitted, no craven nor natural shrinking from death, no apologies for past offences, but the courage of an apostle contending for the truth, and the tenderness of a woman feeling for the sufferings of her people. Could it matter to so noble a creature, where, according to the quaint phrase of her sect, her “outward being dwelt,” or how soon it should be dissolved?
On the evening of the twenty-sixth, William Dyre, Mary’s eldest son, arrived in Boston, and was admitted to her prison. He came in the hope of persuading his mother to make such concessions in regard to her faith, as to conciliate her judges, and procure a reprieve. All night he remained with her. The particulars of
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this interview have not been preserved. Mary’s enemies have not been scrupulous in the record of her virtues, and her friends appear to have considered the affections of her nature scarcely worth a memorial, amidst the triumphs of her faith. We know the temper of a woman, the tenderness and depth of a mother’s love. We may imagine the intense feelings of the son, on the eve of his mother’s threatened execution, pleading for the boon of her life; we may imagine the conflict between the yearnings of the mother, and the resistance of the saint; and we may be sure that we cannot exaggerate it’s violence, nor its suffering. The saint was triumphant, and on the following morning, Mary was led forth, between her two friends to the place of execution. A strong guard escorted the prisoners, and, as if to infuse the last drop of bitterness in their cup, Mr. Wilson, “the minister of Boston,” attended them. There were coarse and malignant spirits among the spectators. “Are you not ashamed,” said one of them tauntingly to Mary, “are you not ashamed to walk thus hand in hand between two young men?”
“No,” she replied, “this is to me an hour of the greatest joy I could have in the world. No eye can see nor hear, nor tongue utter, nor heart understand the sweet incomes and refreshings of the spirit of the Lord, which I now feel.” Death could not appal a mind so lofty and serene. Man could not disturb a peace so profound. Her companions evinced a like composure. They all tenderly embraced at the foot of the scaffold. Robinson first mounted it, and called on the spectators to witness for him that he died, not as a malefactor, but for testifying to the light of Christ. Stevenson, the moment before the hangman performed the last act, said, “This day we shall be at rest with the Lord.”
Mary was of a temper, like the intrepid Madame Roland, to have inspired a faltering spirit by her ex-
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ample; far more difficult she must have found it, to behold the last quiverings and strugglings of mortality, in the persons of her friends. But even after this, she was steadfast, and ascended the scaffold with an unblenching step. Her dress was scrupulously adjusted about her feet, her face covered with a handkerchief, and the halter put around her neck.
The deep silence of this awful moment was broken by a piercing cry. “Stop! she is reprieved!” was sent from mouth to mouth, till one glad shout announced the feeling of the gazing multitude. Was there one of all those gathered to this fearful spectacle, whose heart did not leap with joy? - Yes - the sufferer and the victim, she, to whom the gates of death had been opened. “Her mind,” says her historian, “was already in heaven, and when they loosed her feet and bade her come down, she stood still, and said she was willing to suffer as her brethren had unless the magistrates would annul their cruel law.”
Her declaration was disregarded, she was forced from the scaffold, and reconducted to prison. There she was received in the arms of her son, and she learnt from him that she owed her life to his prolonged intercession.
Fortitude, the merit of superior endurance, has often been conceded to woman. One of our most celebrated surgeons had the magnanimity to say to a patient on whom he had just performed an excruciating operation, “Sir you have borne it like a woman.” But the most devoted champions of the weaker and timid sex, must concede, that they are inferior to man in courage to brave circumstances, and encounter danger; yet among all the valiant hearts in manly frames, that have illustrated our race, we know not where we shall find a more indomitable spirit, than Mary Dyre’s. The tribunal of her determined enemies; the prison; the scaffold; the actual presence of death; the joy of recovered life; and, more potent than all, the meltings of maternal love, did not abate one jot of her purpose. On the morning after her reprieve, she dispatched from her prison a letter to her judges, beginning in the following bold, and, if the circumstances are considered, sublime strain; -
“Once more to the General Court assembled in Boston, speaks Mary Dyre, 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 meekness and love I sought you.” She proceeds to charge them, most justly, with having neglected the measure of light that was in them, and thus concludes; “When I heard your last order read, it was a disturbance unto me, that was freely offering up my life to Him that gave it me, and sent me hither so to do; which obedience being his own work, he gloriously accompanied with his presence, and peace, and love in me, in which I rested from my labour.”
The minds of the magistrates must have been wonderfully puffed up, and clouded with an imagined infallibility, and their hearts indurated by dogmatical controversy, or they would at once have perceived, that Mary Dyre was maintaining a righteous claim to the same privilege for which they had made their boasted efforts and sacrifices; - the privilege of private judgement.
Whatever intimations they may have received from their conscience, they were not made public; no answer was returned to Mary’s letters, and no concessions made to her sect; but it was thought prudent to commute Mary’s sentence into banishment, with penalty of death in case of her return, and she was accordingly sent, with a guard, to Rhode Island.
The sympathies of the good people of Boston had been awakened by the firmness of the prisoners in their extremity. The tide of feeling was setting in
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favour of their cause, murmurs of dissatisfaction with the proceedings of the magistrates were running through the little community, and it was thought best to allay the ferment, by manifesto, which is throughout a lame defense, and which concludes in a manner worthy of the style of Cromwell and the school of the Jesuits. “The consideration of our gradual proceedings,” say they, “will vindicate us from the clamorous accusations of severity; our own just and necessary defence calling upon us, other means failing, to offer the point which these persons have violently and wilfully rushed upon, and thereby become felones de se, which, might it have been prevented, and the sovereign law, salus populi, been preserved, out former proceedings, as well as the sparing of Mary Dyre upon an inconsiderable intercession, will evidently evince we desire their lives absent, rather than their deaths present.”
Would the tragedy had ended here! But the last and saddest scene was yet to be enacted. We who believe that woman’s duty as well as happiness lies in the obscure, safe, and not very limited sphere of domestic life, may regret that Mary did not forego the glory of the champion, and the martyr, for the meek honours of the wife and mother. Still we must venerate the courage and energy of her soul, when, as she said, “moved by the spirit of God so to do,” she again returned to finish, in her own words, “her sad and heavy experience, in the bloody town of Boston.”
She arrived there on the twenty-first of May,1660, and appears to have remained unmolested, till the thirty-first, when she was summoned before the General Court, which had cognizance of all civil and criminal offences. In this court, Governor Endicot was the presiding officer. He began her examination by asking her, if she were the same Mary Dyre that was there before.
It appears that another Mary Dyre had made some
[p. 160]
disturbance in the Colony, and the Governor, probably pitying the rashness of our heroine, was willing to allow her an opportunity of evasion, but she replies unhesitatingly, “I am the same Mary Dyre that was here at the last General Court.”
“Then you own yourself a Quaker, do you not?”
“I own myself to be reproachfully called so.”
“I must then repeat the sentence once before pronounced upon you.”
After he had spoken the words of doom, “This is no more,” replied Mary calmly, “than thou saidst before.”
“But now it is to be executed; therefore prepare yourself for nine o’clock to-morrow.”
Still steadfast in what she believed her divinely authorised mission, she replied, “I came in obedience to the will of God, to the last General Court, praying you to repeal your unrighteous sentence of banishment, on pain of death, 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 Endicot.
“I spoke the words which the lord spoke to me; and now the thing is come to pass.”
“Away with her!” cried the Governor; and Mary was reconducted to prison. We lament the imperfection of human intelligence, and the infirmity of human virtue, for “perfection easily bears with the imperfections of others;” but we rejoice, that, in the providence of God, the vice of one party elicits the virtue of another; that bigotry and persecution bring forth the faith and heroic self-sacrifice of the martyr. The fire is kindled and burns fiercely, but the Phoenix rises; the furnace, heated with seven-fold heat, does not consume, but purifies.
Mary Dyre’s family was plunged into deep distress, by her again putting her life in jeopardy. As her
[p. 161]
husband’s religious faith did not accord with her own, he could not of course perfectly sympathize with her zeal in behalf of her persecuted sect, but the following letter, addressed to the Governor, which has not, we believe, before been published, bears ample testimony, that his conjugal affection had borne the hard test of religious disagreement.
“Honoured Sir - It is with no little grief of mind and sadness of heart, that I am necessitated to be so bould as to supplicate your honoured self, with the honourable assembly of your General Court, to extend your mercy and favour once again, to me, and my children. Little did I dream, that I should have occasion to petition in a matter of this nature; but so it is, that through the divine providence and your benignity, my sonn obtayned so much pity and mercy at your hands, to enjoy the life of his mother. Now my supplication to your honours is, to begg affectionately the life of my dear wife. ‘Tis true, I have not seen her above this half yeare, and cannot tell how, in the frame of her spirit, she was moved thus againe to run so great a hazard to herself, and perplexity to me and mine, and all her friends and wellwishers.
“So it is, from Shelter Island, about by Peynod, Narragansett, &c., to the town of Providence, she secretly and speedily journeyed, and as secretly from thence came to your jurisdiction. Unhappy journey, may I say, and woe to that generation, say I, that gives occasion thus of grief (to those that desire to be quiett), by helping one another to hazard their lives to, I know not what end, nor for what purpose.
“If her zeal be so great, as thus to adventure, oh! let your pitty and favour surmount it, and save her life. Let not your love and wonted compassion be conquered by her inconsiderate maddness, and how greatly will your renoune be spread, if by so conquering, you become victorious. What shall I say more! I know you are all sensible of my condition - you
[p. 62]
see what my petition is, and what will give me and mine peace.
“Oh! let Mercy’s wings soar over Justice’s ballance, and then whilst I live, I shall exalt your goodness; but otherways’t will be a languishing sorrow - yea, so great, that I should gladly suffer the blow at once, much rather. I shall forbear to trouble you with words, neither am I in a capacity to expatiate myself at present. I only say this, yourselves have been, and are, or may be husbands to wives; so am I, yea to one most dearly beloved. Oh! do not deprive me of her, but I pray give her me once again. I shall be so much obliged forever that I shall endeavour continually to utter my thanks and render you love and honour most renouned. Pitty me! I beg it with tears, and rest your humble suppliant, W. Dyre.”
It does not appear what answer, or that any answer was vouchsafed to this touching appeal. It is enough to know that it was unavailing, and that on the very next day after her condemnation, the first of June, Mary Dyre was led forth to execution.
Some apprehensions seem to have been entertained that the mob might give inconvenient demonstrations of their pity for the prisoner, for she was strongly guarded, and during her whole progress from her prison to the place of execution, a mile’s distance, drums were beaten before and behind her.
The scaffold was erected on Boston Common. When she had mounted it, she was asked if she would have the Elders to pray for her?
“I know never an Elder here,” she replied.
“Will you have none of the people to pray for you?” persisted her attendant.
“I would have all the people of God to pray for me,” she replied.
“Mary Dyre! O repent! O repent!” cried out Mr. Wilson the minister; “be not so deluded and carried away by the deceits of the devil.”
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“Nay, man,” she answered, “I am not now to repent.”
She was reproached with having said she had already been in paradise.
To this she replied, “I have been in paradise many days.”
She spoke truly. Her mind was the paradise of God. The executioner did his office. He could kill the body, demolish the temple, but the pure and glorious spirit of the martyr passed unharmed, untouched, into the visible presence of its Creator.
The scene of this tragedy was the Boston Common; that spot, so affluent in beauty, so graced by the peace, and teeming with the loveliness of nature, was desecrated by a scaffold! stained with innocent blood! We would not dishonour this magnificent scene by connecting with it, in a single mind, one painful association. But let those send back one thought to the Quaker Martyr, who delight to watch the morning light and the evening shadows stealing over it; to walk under the bountiful shadow of its elms; to see the herds of cattle banqueting there; the birds daintily gleaning their food ; the boys driving their hoops, flying their kites, and launching their mimic vessels on the mimic lake; whilst the little faineants, perhaps the busiest in thought among them, are idly stretched on the grass, seemingly satisfied with the bare consciousness of existence. The Boston Common, as it is, preserved and embellished, but not spoiled by art, still retaining its natural and graceful undulations, shaded by trees of a century’s growth, with its ample extent of uncovered surface, affording in the heart of a populous city, that first of luxuries, space; trodden by herds of its natural and chartered proprietors; encompassed by magnificent edifices, the homes of the gifted, cultivated, and liberal; with its beautiful view of water (Heaven forgive those who abated it!) and of the surrounding,
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cultured, and enjoyed country; crowned by Dorchester Heights, and the Blue Hills; - Boston Common, had always appeared to us one of the choicest of nature’s temples. The memory of the good is worthy such a temple; and we trust we shall be forgiven, for having attempted to fix there this slight monument to a noble sufferer in that great cause, that has stimulated the highest of minds to the sublimest actions; that calls its devotees from the gifted, its martyrs from the moral heroes of mankind; the best cause, the fountain of all liberty - liberty of conscience!
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mary Dyre
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mary Dyer, 17th century Quaker martyr, religious persecution, liberty of conscience.
Description
An account of the resource
An account of the persecution and execution of New England Quaker Mary Dyre by the Pilgrims in the 1660s.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Token</em> [edited by Samuel G. Goodrich]. Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1831 [pub. 1830], 294-312.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830
Contributor
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Ashley Taylor
L. Damon-Bach
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected in <em>Tales and Sketches, </em>Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard (1835): 151-164.<br />[Note: This transcription is from <em>Tales and Sketches</em>.]
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Boston
Boston Common
Catharine Evans
Constantinople
execution
inquisition
Jesuits
John Endicott
John Wilson
liberty of conscience
Madame Roland
Mahomet the Fourth
Malta
Marmaduke Stevenson
martyrs
Mary Dyre
Mary Fisher
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Oliver Cromwell
Pilgrims
Quakers
religious persecution
Religious Society of Friends
Rhode Island
Sarah Chevers
The Token
Voltaire
William Dyre
William Robinson
William Sewell