In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called Quakers -- led , as they professed , by the inward movement of the spirit -- made their appearance in New England . Their reputation as holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them , the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further intrusion of the rising sect . But the measures by which it was intended to purge the land of heresy , though more than sufficiently vigorous , were entirely unsuccessful . The Quakers , esteeming persecution as a divine call to the post of danger , laid claim to a holy courage unknown to the Puritans themselves , who had shunned the cross by providing for the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness . Though it was the singular fact that every nation of the earth rejected the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace toward all men , the place of greatest uneasiness and peril , and therefore in their eyes the most eligible , was the province of Massachusetts Bay . The fines , imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our pious forefathers , the popular antipathy , so strong that it endured nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased , were attractions as powerful for the Quakers as peace , honor and reward would have been for the worldly-minded . Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the sect , eager to testify against the oppression which they hoped to share ; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from affording them passage , they made long and circuitous journeys through the Indian country , and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a supernatural power . Their enthusiasm , heightened almost to madness by the treatment which they received , produced actions contrary to the rules of decency as well as of rational religion , and presented a singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day . The command of the Spirit , inaudible except to the soul and not to be controverted on grounds of human wisdom , was made a plea for most indecorous exhibitions which , abstractedly considered , well deserved the moderate chastisement of the rod . These extravagances , and the persecution which was at once their cause and consequence , continued to increase , till in the year 1659 the government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect with the crown of martyrdom . An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to this act , but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon the person then at the head of the government . He was a man of narrow mind and imperfect education , and his uncompromising bigotry was made hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions ; he exerted his influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the enthusiasts , and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by brutal cruelty . The Quakers , whose revengeful feelings were not less deep because they were inactive , remembered this man and his associates in after-times . The historian of the sect affirms that by the wrath of Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the `` bloody town '' of Boston , so that no wheat would grow there ; and he takes his stand , as it were , among the graves of the ancient persecutors , and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them in old age or at the parting-hour . He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and in madness , but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome disease and `` death by rottenness '' of the fierce and cruel governor . * * * * * On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of two men of the Quaker persuasion , a Puritan settler was returning from the metropolis to the neighboring country-town in which he resided . The air was cool , the sky clear , and the lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon . The traveller , a man of middle age , wrapped in a gray frieze cloak , quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts of the town , for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him and his home . The low straw-thatched houses were scattered at considerable intervals along the road , and , the country having been settled but about thirty years , the tracts of original forest still bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground . The autumn wind wandered among the branches , whirling away the leaves from all except the pine trees and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which it was the instrument .
The road had penetrated the mass of woods that lay nearest to the town , and was just emerging into an open space , when the traveller 's ears were saluted by a sound more mournful XXXXX even that of the wind .
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