The Whipping of the Quaker Women

In 1662 three young Quaker women from England came to Dover. True to their faith, they preached against professional ministers, restrictions on individual conscience, and the established customs of the church-ruled settlement. They openly argued with Dover's powerful Congregational minister John Reyner. For six weeks the Quaker women held meetings and services at various dwellings around Dover. Finally, one of the elders of the First Church, Hatevil Nutter, had had enough. A petition by the inhabitants of Dover was presented "humbly craving relief against the spreading & the wicked errors of the Quakers among them". Captain Richard Walderne (Waldron), crown magistrate, issued the following order: "To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Linn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction,you, and every one of you are required in the name of the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Ann Coleman, Mary Tompkins, and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip their naked backs, not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town; and so to convey them from constable to constable, till they are out of this jurisdiction". Walderne's punishment was severe, calling for whippings in at least eleven towns, and requiring travel over eighty miles in bitterly cold weather.

On a frigid winter day, constables John and Thomas Roberts of Dover seized the three women. George Bishop recorded the follow account of events. "Deputy Waldron caused these women to be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and tied to a cart, and after awhile cruelly whipped them, whilst the priest stood and looked and laughed at it." Sewall's History of the Quakers continues " The women thus being whipped at Dover, were carried to Hampton and there delivered to the constable...The constable the next morning would have whipped them before day, but they refused , saying they were not ashamed of their sufferings. Then he would have whipped them with their clothes on, when he had tied them to the cart. But they said, 'set us free, or do according to thine order. He then spoke to a woman to take off their clothes. But she said she would not for all the world. Why, said he, then I'll do it myself.. So he stripped them, and then stood trembling whip in hand, and so he did the execution. Then he carried them to Salisbury through the dirt and the snow half the leg deep; and here they were whipped again. Indeed their bodies were so torn, that if Providence had not watched over them, they might have been in danger of their lives." In Salisbury, Walter Barefoot convinced the constable to swear him in as a deputy. Barefoot received the women and the warrant, and put a stop to the persecution. Dr. Barefoot dressed their wounds and returned them to the Maine side of the Piscataqua River.

Eventually the Quaker women returned to Dover, and established a church. In time, over a third of Dover's citizens became Quaker.

John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized the suffering of the Quaker women in the following poem.

How They Drove the Quaker Women from Dover

The tossing spray of Cochecho's falls
Hardened to ice on its icy walls,
As through Dover town, in the chill gray dawn,
Three women passed, at the cart tail drawn,
Bared to the waist, for the north wind's grip
And keener sting of the constables whip
The blood that followed each hissing blow
Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow.
Priest and ruler, boy and maiden
followed the dismal cavalcade;
And from door and window, open thrown,
Looked and wondered, gaffer and crone.

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