A Measure of Light (37 page)

Their mother had been gone most of their lives and their forbearance had been summoned so often that it had become less resentment than habitual irritation. On this evening, when they knew that Mary had ridden into the jaws of death but had not heard whether or not she would return, William did not say a word after the prayer but snapped open his napkin, took a bite of his food and sat chewing, staring over their heads. Then he set down his spoon. A muscle shifted in his cheek.

“It would do no good for me to go,” he said, refuting an accusation that had not been made. “Better that my words reach them by a rider speedier than myself.”

“Father?”

“Yes, Henry.”

“George Gawler walked all the way from his house to the schoolyard on stilts.”

Sinnie leaned between the boys to set down a rhubarb cobbler.

“Mind, it be hot,” she said.

With William’s permission to speak, Henry and Charles began a debate as to the height of George Gawler’s stilts. Littlemary was not
listening. She bent her head slightly sideways, a smile touching her eyes, and ran a fingertip along the rim of her bowl. Yesterday, she had confided in Sinnie. He was sixteen.

William’s face relaxed. He told them of the stilts that had carried him over East Anglian fields.

The peepers started up in the marsh. One frog’s shrill, then another, more and then more, insistent as tiny hands on the blanket of darkness, pulling it up, rolling the day into oblivion.

They heard the sound of horse hoofs, coming up the lane. William went to the door. The chime of peepers augmented as he opened it. Sinnie ran up behind him, peered out. It was Jurden Cooth, riding slowly.

MARY DYER WAS HANGED
on the morning of June first,
1660
. It is commonly believed that her family was allowed to collect her body and that she was buried at Dyer Farm.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell, support for the return of the monarchy gained strength. On May 8, 1660, Charles II was acknowledged rightful king and invited to return from his exile in France. Three days before Mary’s execution, May 29th, 1660, Charles II returned to London amidst wild rejoicing. Peaceably, the Puritan era ended.

News of William’s, Marmaduke’s and Mary’s executions spread across the Atlantic. George Fox wrote in his journal: “When those were put to death I was in prison in Lancaster, and had a perfect sense of their sufferings as though it had been myself, and as though the halter had been put about my own neck, though we had not at that time heard of it …” (“The Journal of George Fox,” Friends United Press, 1976.)

—

In March
1661
, a fourth Friend was hanged in Boston—William Leddra, formerly of Cornwall. Others awaited execution.

In England, the young king declared his support for religious tolerance. Alarmed, the Massachusetts authorities sent a letter justifying their actions. New England Friends countered with a letter of their own, detailing the punishments. Their letter was delivered to the king by the English Friend Edward Burrough. The king, appalled by the report of atrocities and hangings, responded with a mandamus requiring the authorities to forbear to proceed any further against those Quakers now already imprisoned and condemned to suffer death or other corporeal punishment; such persons, he wrote, must be sent to England, where they could be tried by English laws. He gave the mandamus to Burrough, who arranged for it to be delivered.

In Boston, two Friends, one himself banished from Massachusetts, delivered the king’s Order to Governor Endicott.

After reading it, Endicott removed his hat before the Quakers as representatives of the king, even though they retained their own hats upon their heads. He immediately sent a letter to the jailor.

In 1686, the Royal Charter was withdrawn from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The settlers lost their title to the land and the colony
was ruled by a British governor. In the once-Puritan stronghold, an Anglican church was built.

William Dyer remarried four years after Mary’s death.

In 1677, members of the Society of Friends were free to hold regular meetings in Massachusetts.

In 1959, a bronze statue of Mary Dyer by Quaker sculptor Sylvia Shaw Judson was placed on the west lawn of the Massachusetts State House, with the inscription:
My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of the truth
.

A Measure of Light
is based on a true story; but there is much that I have invented.

Mary Barrett did, indeed, marry William Dyer in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 1633, and she did have a brother. William and Mary did lose their first son, and they did travel to Boston. Mary did bear a severely deformed stillborn child, delivered by Anne Hutchinson; and she did rise and walk from the trial at Anne’s side. Mary and William did establish a farm in Newport, and Mary did go to England by herself; as did William, to dispute the charter, during the time that Mary was there. Whether or not he encountered her, while in England, is unknown. But Mary did, in fact, stop in Barbados, on her way home; and it is true that she returned to New England as a newly converted Quaker and was incarcerated for her belief on numerous occasions (including the incident with Patience Scott). It is true that she stayed at Sylvester Manor; and she did, famously, travel alone to Boston, one last time.

Nothing is known of Mary’s childhood: nor why she left Newport to go to England, leaving her children behind; nor why she stayed away for so long; nor what she did there. Thus I was free to create Mary’s early life in Yorkshire, as well as her married years in London. Sinnie stepped into my mind and onto the page. I invented
everything that happened to Mary when she returned to England, including her companion, Dafeny.

Of course, throughout the book, my imaginings of Mary’s life, both outer and inner, are lifted and eased through the warp threads of history. George Fox is real, as are his companions and many of the other Quakers I mention during Mary’s time in England. Fox’s sermons, too, are real, as are the atrocities visited upon those early English Friends. As well, the two letters that Mary wrote to the Boston Court of Assistants on
this page
and
this page
are real, as is William’s letter on
this page
-
this page
to the same magistrates. Mary’s writ of incarceration on
this page
, beginning “To the Keeper of the Prison,” is also real, as is the letter to the jailor on
this page
. These are in the public domain. I invented all the others.

Here are some facts and incidents that are either based on reality, or slightly altered, as well as definitions of some words that may be difficult for the reader to find.

– The incident with the martyrs in the opening scene is inspired by an historical account. On June 30, 1637, Puritans William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick were put in a pillory and had their ears sliced off. I have changed a few details, setting the scene in winter, adding the slit nostrils, and not describing the fact that William Prynne also had the letters “S” and “L” (seditious libeller) branded on his cheeks.
www.historytoday.com/richard-hughes/ears-william-prynne

–
this page
, “quintain”—an object hung or mounted on a pole used as a target during jousting training.

– The descriptions of the New World on
this page
and
this page
are based on
Wood’s New England’s Prospect
, by William Wood, published 1634,
written to inform prospective English colonists (on-line e-book); and
John Josselyn, Colonial Traveler
, an account of two voyages to New England in 1638 and 1663 (published 1675—I used the University Press of New England edition, 1988, ed. Paul J. Lindholt).

– “The lecturer” referred to on
this page
,
this page
and
this page
is the real John Everard, reader at St. Martin-in-the-Fields during the years Mary Dyer lived in London, and these words were taken from a collection of his sermons which can be found on-line (“Some Gospel Treasures Opened,” published 1653).
archive.org/details/somegospeltreasu00ever

– I found the hymn on
this page
in the Bay Psalm Book.
archive.org/stream/baypsalmbookbein00eame#page/n277/mode/2up

– Many of Reverend Cotton’s comments (including about how babies are born “sprawling in wickedness”) came from his writings, which can be found on-line.
www.digitalpuritan.net/johncotton.html

–
this page
, “gurnipper”—from
John Josselyn, Colonial Traveler
,
this page
: “There is another sort of fly called a Gurnipper that are like our horse-flyes, and will bite desperately, making the bloud to spurt out in great quantity …”

–
this page
, “eft”—a small lizard.

– Wheelwright’s famous sermon, with his admonitions to the Boston clergymen, makes fascinating reading and is far, far longer than the bits I quote on
this page
and
this page
. See Google Books, “John Wheelwright: His Writings, Including His Fast-Day Sermon, Volume 9.”

– The admonition to Anne Hutchinson on
this page
, determining her meetings to be “disorderly,” is taken verbatim from “The Journal
of John Winthrop” (ed. Dunn and Yeandle),
this page
, in which Winthrop tells about “questions debated and resolved” at the General Assembly.

–
this page
,
this page
,
this page
—“Nookick” is corn, baked and ground to powder.

– Anne Hutchinson’s trial came from my perusal of various sources, both Eve LaPlante’s
American Jezebel
and David D. Hall’s
The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History
. (see below)

–
this page
—“kersey” is a coarse, woollen cloth.

– Although it seems probable that large wolf packs would have been kept from the Shawmut Peninsula by guards at Boston Neck, I have taken the liberty of imagining that a few may have slipped through.

– Alice Tilly was a prominent Boston midwife. The story that Ann Burden (also a real person) tells Mary is true.

–
this page
, “metheglin”—“A strong, sweet drink made from fermented honey and water, and flavoured with aromatic herbs.” Glossary,
this page
,
The English Housewife
, originally published in 1615, Gervase Markham. (see below)

– The library books in Uncle Colyn’s study were such as would have been found in a gentleman’s library. My source was
Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century
, David Underdown. (see below)

– Somewhere in my readings I came across a description of early Friends crossing a moor, carrying bodies. It stuck in my mind, although I can no longer find the source.

– Here’s where I found George Fox’s sermons.
www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=category&cid=410

–
this page
, “cheat rye bread.” “Bread of middle grade, made of sour dough.” Again, from
The English Housewife
,
this page
, with detailed instructions.

– Dyota’s life in the stable is based on a true story, which I found in Alison Plowden’s
In a Free Republic; Life in Cromwell’s England
,
this page
, describing the “squatter problem” at Whitehall, when it was discovered that aged grooms and widows of former royal servants of Charles I were living over the stables.

–
this page
, “walkmill powder.” A walkmill was a fulling mill where cloth was thickened by beating with mallets. The resulting powder was mixed with egg white and wheat flour; the paste was laid on cloth, and applied to stanch blood.