Who is Mary Dyer?
1: Mary was a colonial American Puritan turned Quaker.
2: Mary is one who practices or preaches a strict moral/spirtual code.
3: She is an important person because she is one of the four executed quakers.
4: One of Mary Dyer’s famous quotes are within these sentences “Mary Dyer, you shall go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and there be hanged till you be dead.” She replied, “The will of the Lord be done.”
5: Born in England, Mary Dyer challenged the religious persecution of Quakers in the American colonies in the 1600’s a challenge she paid for with her life. She and her husband, William Dyer, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1635. She sympathized with Anne Hutchinson’s religious views and moved to Rhode Island in 1638.
6: The four Quakers who were hanged, including Mary Dyer, actually chose to die, rather than agree to permanent exile from Massachusetts and their preaching and religious support there. They were given the opportunity to leave—and live—and chose instead to take a stand for liberty of conscience in the hope that their deaths would be so shocking that the persecution would end. They were hanged for civil disobedience. Mary Dyer’s letter to the Boston magistrates shows that she was opposed to their “bloody” laws of religious intolerance and persecution, and that she rejected their conditional offer of release.
7: Mary Dyers last words were:
“Nay, I came to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desireing you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust law made against the innocent servants of the Lord. Nay, man, I am not now to repent.”