Mary dyer statue

Early in my career I worked at Earlham College, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana. On my way to teach in the upstairs gathering room used for classes at the Stout Meetinghouse, I walked by a statue of Mary Dyer, an early Quaker who was punished by hanging in 1660 in Boston, Massachusetts for her belief in religious freedom. Another bronze statue of Mary Dyer stands in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston and a copy stands in front of the Friends Center in central Philadelphia. All of the Quakers I met at Earlham from around the world seemed like gentle, thoughtful, peaceful, and caring people, so the idea of hanging a Quaker felt like an oxymoron. Why would anyone hang a Quaker woman?

Mary Dyer was born in England in 1611. She was an American Puritan who later became a Quaker. Coming to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636, Mary and her husband William joined the Boston Church, the church of the Puritans (not the same as Pilgrims). 

At that time, as Jim Carnes writes in Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America, “the Puritan Church governed all aspects o

Mary Dyer

1611–1660
Mary Dyer was born in England, and during her childhood she was an occasional guest in the court of Charles I. At the age of 22, she married William Dyer, and soon afterward the two set sail for America, arriving at the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1637, she joined with Anne Hutchinson and began to promote her ideas of antimonianism, believing that, because Protestantism relied on faith alone for salvation, one need not depend on the clergy to understand the Word of God. She and her husband were banished along with the Hutchinsons, and after their departure authorities learned that Mary had recently given birth to a deformed stillborn child. The baby was dug up and its hideous countenance used as further proof of the Dyers' sacreligious preaching. The couple, meanwhile, had moved to Rhode Island and soon left once more for a visit to England, where Mary became a Quaker. Upon her return to America, she traveled to Boston on several occasions to protest their laws banning Quakers from joining the colony, and each time she was arrested and exiled. F

Mary Dyer

American Quaker martyr (c. 1611 – 1660)

For the voice for Anti-Shakerism, see Mary Marshall Dyer.

Mary Dyer (born Marie Barrett; c. 1611 – 1 June 1660) was an English and colonial American Puritan-turned-Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony due to their theological expansion of the Puritan concept of a church of individuals regenerated by the Holy Spirit to the idea of the indwelling of the Spirit or the "Light of Christ" in every person, which was deemed dangerous heresy. She is one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs.

Dyer's birthplace has not been established, but it is known that she was married in London in 1633 to William Dyer, a member of the Fishmongers' Company but a milliner by profession. Mary and William were Puritans who were interested in reforming the Anglican Church from within, without separating from it. As the King of England, Charles I increased pressure on the Puritans; they left England by the thousands to go to New England

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