He arrested the two women and
locked them up in jail, where, for fear they might proclaim their
heresies to the crowd gathered outside, the windows were boarded up.
There was no law as yet enacted against Quakers, but a council summoned
for the occasion pronounced their doctrines blasphemous and devilish.
The books which the poor women had with them were seized and publicly
burned, and the women themselves were kept in prison half-starved for
five weeks until the ship they had come in was ready to return to
Barbadoes. Soon after their departure Endicott came home. He found fault
with Bellingham's conduct as too gentle; if he had been there he would
have had the hussies flogged. [Sidenote: Anne Austin and Mary Fisher]
Five years afterward Mary Fisher went to Adrianople and tried to convert
the Grand Turk, who treated her with grave courtesy and allowed her to
prophesy unmolested. This is one of the numerous incidents that, on a
superficial view of history, might be cited in support of the opinion
that there has been on the whole more tolerance in the Mussulman than in
the Christian world. Rightly interpreted, however, the fact has no such
implication. In Massachusetts the preaching of Quaker doctrines might
(and did) lead to a revolution; in Turkey it was as harmless as the
barking of dogs.
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