Mary Dyer Illuminated

My guest today is Christy K. Robinson, author of the 2013 historical novel, Mary Dyer Illuminated, its forthcoming sequel Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This, and the non-fiction The Dyers of London, Boston, and Newport.

I hold a great deal of enthusiasm for both Christy and her books about Mary Dyer, not only because they encompass the life and times of Herodias Long, but also because Mary Dyer Illuminated is a superb read, and Christy is a superb friend. And now, without further ado, here’s Christy!

Thank you, Jo Ann, for hosting this interview on your website. Your readers should know that through our research into Herodias Long and Mary Dyer, Jo Ann and I became acquainted in Facebook, and then close friends who shared research, after which personal details bonded us together. When Jo Ann took a road trip, we got to spend some hours together in my home. We’re even cousins, going back to late-17^th century New Englanders.

JB: Your history is impeccable. When did you begin research for your book?

CR: I did a lot of genealogy research on my family lines when I was a teenager, driving my mom to the LDS genealogical library about 30 miles across the city. These were printed books and microfilms, long before the Internet came to town! She discovered that she and I were direct descendants of Mary Barrett Dyer, whom I’d never heard of. 

We both believed the stuff you read now on the Wiki and genealogy pages, which were copied from the Quaker historians: that Mary Dyer was hanged (the word is hanged, not hung) “for the crime of being a Quaker.” But as you’ll see in my research blog, two novels, nonfiction book, Facebook pages, etc., that is NOT the case. It wasn’t a crime to “be” a Quaker, and no one died for it. Mary and three men deliberately chose to die in civil disobedience, though they had several clear opportunities to just leave Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Mary Dyer's statue

I was commissioned to write and photograph a women-in-ministry convention in New England during leaf-peeping time in October 1997.  As we traveled by coach, a history professor lectured on the Quaker women who were persecuted in the area, and that Hutchinson and Dyer had memorial statues “on Boston Common.” (Actually, they face the Common.) When I learned I’d be stuck at Logan Airport for hours before my plane would board, I jumped into a taxi for a ride to the Common for a personal quest. I was not wearing proper shoes for city walking, cobblestones, or the half-run I made through the park, peering at every monument. Finally, I found Mary, and took several photos before taking another taxi back to the airport. I went home, consulted my files, and counted up the “greats” behind “grandmother”: nine greats. Twelve generations.

The philosophical and theological bits have been a lifelong interest, and while doing some hobby genealogy study on Mary Dyer in about 2006, I ran up against terms I didn’t understand. So I started reading about Anne Hutchinson and antinomian beliefs, and then early Quaker beliefs. It was a revelation to learn that my own church was rooted deeply in New England’s Puritan ways (not in doctrines, necessarily, but in the “corporate culture” of the believers). In 2010, I decided to write a novel about both Mary and William Dyer, and the research began with scores of books and hundreds of internet searches.

JB: How much is known of William Dyer and Mary Barrett’s early lives? Do you know where they were born?

CR: Very little is known of their early lives. There’s a christening record for William in September 1609 that lists his father’s name, but not his mother’s. Mary was born about 1610-11, probably in or near London. There are snippets of rumors that say she was in attendance at the court of Charles I, but no proof. The first real record of Mary is her wedding to William on September 27, 1633, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church. 

JB: You write about Mary Dyer’s life as if you know her. How much is actually known of Mary’s early life?

CR: I think I do know her! But not because of any family stories, legends, or mystical experiences. As I explained above, what little I knew was wrong. But I so thoroughly researched her culture, religious beliefs, friends and enemies, surroundings, what took place later in her life, etc., that I could place her in situations and then project what probably happened based on what the people around her did and said.

As for what is actually known about Mary, I learned that many of the things I thought were established fact, were written by Quaker historians who had an agenda, which was not to write factual details or investigative journalism. Their agenda was to promote their beliefs and persuade others to support or at least tolerate their practices. In essence, they were public relations and communications managers for their new sect. I recognized that because it’s what I did for years, for two universities and a nonprofit organization!

JB: John and Margaret Dyer were real people. Why did you choose them for Mary’s guardians?

CR: I saw John’s name in a tax record on Johan Winsser’s trustworthy research website. John’s poor-roll tax was substantial, so they had some money. Then I went hunting for, and found, his childless wife that he married rather late in life. They lived in the right place and had a name that would fit my novel plotting.

1625 London plague woodcut

I also decided that with major plague epidemics regularly raging in London, and killing tens of thousands of residents at a time, Mary Barrett and William Dyer and his master must have had an escape hatch. And since Mary would be a mistress of garden and farm servants in just a few years, she would have to learn practical economics. So I needed people who lived out in the country but had ties in the city. I created the Stansbys, in the real village of Willesden.

JB: I remember being told in school that the Puritans came here for religious freedom. You write that they hid their religious intent behind stated plans to make investors rich.

CR: Yes, they were a corporation designed to make money in development and export of New England’s natural resources of timber, shipbuilding, furs, food production, fishing, and other commercial pursuits, plus all the support industries to make a viable, flourishing community. Really, who could blame them, when they had to sell their homes, farms, animals, and businesses in England that were being heavily taxed? They were imprisoned by the king’s men for their dissent and refusal to conform to religion or government. Some of them had to flee their homeland in secrecy to avoid imprisonment. So often, incarceration itself caused death.

Of course, religious freedom meant that they were free from Anglican rule, but they held themselves to a far more strict code. In London, John Winthrop worked as a magistrate in wills and estate trusts, but his refusal to take the usual bribes and deal dishonorably as his colleagues did made him stand out, and he had to resign and try to melt into his Essex manor until the fleet could depart from England. They seemed very moderate when they were in England, but when they got to Massachusetts, they were religious extremists. John Endecott, in particular, was a proto-Taliban! They truly intended to build a New Jerusalem that would hasten the second coming of Christ.

You might be surprised to learn that I wrote John Winthrop, a man who became a principal enemy of Hutchinson and Dyer, as a sympathetic character in his private life.  But I could never get into Endecott’s head or find a sympathetic trait. I had other characters describe him.

JB: The Puritans took the royal charter for Massachusetts with them. What does that signify?

CR: The charter should have been kept in London with every other official document. With the king’s seal on it, they acted as if in his name and authority. But they always intended to form their own theocratic government with minimal oversight from the king they considered pro-Catholic and politically repressive. King Charles demanded the return of the charter numerous times, but Winthrop ignored the orders. When an envoy tried to come over and take it back, his ship seemed to disintegrate under him like some X-Files scene. Winthrop gloried in that, saying that God had miraculously protected them.

JB:  We think of Puritans all dressed in black and white. However, your women wear rainbow colors.

CR: Black clothes were only for the very rich because they were expensive to dye and maintain without fading in the sun or the washing.  The few portraits from New England at that time were done of the elite members of society who were wearing their best duds at the sittings: black. I read lots of blogs on fashions, including Plimoth Plantation’s, and studied paintings of the 17^th century, to see what men and women wore. Guess what: not that many ball gowns! I also chased down what Englishwomen wore to their weddings, and they were not wearing white until Queen Victoria, two centuries later.

"Blood Moon"

JB:  Was there really a lunar eclipse on the night of Anne Hutchinson’s miscarriage? New Englanders’ hair must have been standing on end at the sight of the blood moon.

CR: There really was a blood-red lunar eclipse on June 25, 1638, and it was observed on Aquidneck Island—by our people! The blood moon was, to them, a sign of the Apocalypse. But no one knows the date of Anne’s miscarriage. I timed out the reports of it in July, and I knew how long a molar pregnancy can last (about 12 weeks), and that there was no report of it on June 1, when the huge earthquake hit, so for dramatic purposes and Anne’s labor, I chose the lunar eclipse near the end of June—which would be 12 weeks after Anne was released from house arrest and had a celebratory conjugal reunion with her husband!

Christy K. Robinson

That’s one of the things that distinguishes my books from what’s come before and has been so heavily reliant on the Quaker writers. I used real events, internet research into science and medicine and astronomy, and a timeline!  The timeline opened my eyes to all kinds of surprises, and blew me away many times, as Jo Ann and my sister-in-law can attest. You’ll have to see the “signs and wonders” that begin in Mary Dyer Illuminated and come with even more importance in the second volume, Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (to be released in December 2013).  There’s also a Kindle-only companion book to the two novels, full of research into the culture and fascinating factoids I’ve found. That one is called The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport.  

Witches vs Winthrops

A witch with her familiars

Seventeenth-century folk believed strongly in divine forces beyond their understanding. Though we now understand earthquakes, lightning, hurricanes, and birth defects to be natural occurrences, those phenomena were thought to be created – and aimed at humans – by both God and Satan. Witchcraft was another force believed to be very real, especially by New England’s Puritans.

The first accusation of witchcraft in New England occurred in 1638, eight years after the settlement of Massachusetts. Several months before April 4, 1638, Mary Dyer of Boston bore a deformed child. The stillborn infant was secretly buried, but when word leaked out, it was exhumed. Governor John Winthrop recorded the investigation of this ‘supernatural’ birth in his journal [All of Winthrop’s accounts are edited here]:

Midwives

The wife of one William Dyer had been delivered of child some few months before, October 17, and the child buried, (being stillborn,) and viewed by none but Mrs. Hutchinson and the midwife, one Hawkins's wife … The midwife, after this discovery, went out of the jurisdiction; and indeed it was time for her to be gone, for it was known that she used to give young women oil of mandrakes and other stuff to cause conception; and she grew into great suspicion to be a witch, for it was credibly reported, that, when she gave any medicines, she would tell the patient if she did believe, [Hawkins] could help her.

This was the first suspicion of witchcraft recorded in New England. Jane Hawkins sensibly fled to Portsmouth, Rhode Island. If there was ever an accusation of witchcraft within Rhode Island, it was not given enough credence to enter the colonial record.  Rhode Island’s Puritan neighbors could not say the same.

MA governor John Winthrop

In summer 1640, Winthrop mused about a second woman skilled in midwifery. Anne Hutchinson once dwelt in Boston, but when she began interpreting Scripture to a large party of followers she was purged, along with any adherents who would not recant. Much of Anne’s party settled Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Puritans suspected that Anne Hutchinson used witchcraft to sway others to her beliefs, and Winthrop’s voiced his thoughts in his journal:

Mr. Collins, a young scholar full of zeal, and one Mr. Hales (a young man very well conceited of himself and censorious of others) went to Aquiday [Rhode Island], and so soon as Hales came acquainted with Mrs. Hutchinson, he became her disciple. These [influences], and others when [Hutchinson] dwelt in Boston, gave suspicion of witchcraft.

June 4, 1648: This time Winthrop, who still governed over Massachusetts, elaborated on a woman who was executed for witchcraft in his own colony: At this court one Margaret Jones of Charlestown was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was:

 1. She was found to have such a malignant touch, as many men, women, and children whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.

 2. Her medicines being such things as were harmless, as aniseed, liquors, etc., yet had extraordinary violent effects.

3. She would tell such as would not make use of her medicine that they would never be healed, and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.

 4. Some things which she foretold came to pass; other things she could tell of (as secret speeches, etc.) which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of.

5. She had an apparent teat in her secret parts as fresh as if it had been newly sucked. After it had been seen upon a forced search it was withered, and another began on the opposite side.

6. In the prison there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it vanished. The like child was seen in two other places, and one maid that saw it fell sick and was cured by the said Margaret.

Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously and railing upon the jury and witnesses, and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc. 

Witch with familiar spirits

To 17^th century Puritans, Margaret Jones exhibited classic signs of a witch: a familiar spirit by which she communicated with Satan, a witch’s teat created by suckling the devil (probably a skin tag resulting from childbirth), supernatural knowledge and skill in medicine, and the ability to sicken and kill merely by touching.

However, after the hanging of Margaret Jones, there were no more executions in Massachusetts during John Winthrop’s life. He was a keen observer of natural – and supernatural – phenomena, but apparently not a strong believer in witchcraft. He did not possess the persecuting zeal of Governor John Endecott, who sent four Quakers to the gallows between 1659 and 1661, including Mary Dyer of Newport, Rhode Island. Herodias (Long) Gardner of Newport was one of dozens who stood at the whipping post for preaching or defending Quaker beliefs. Neither did Winthrop have the credulity of Governor Simon Bradstreet, who oversaw the Salem witchcraft hangings in 1692.

John Winthrop died in 1649. He apparently came to regret his earlier persecution of Anne Hutchinson and her followers, Anabaptists, and other free thinkers. It was reported that Winthrop was asked to sign an order of banishment while on his deathbed. He refused, saying, “I have done too much of that work already.”

CT governor John Winthrop

In 1650, his son John Winthrop removed to the fledgling town of New London, Connecticut. In 1651 he became a magistrate in the Connecticut government, and on May 21, 1657 John Winthrop, Junior no longer because his father was dead, was elected Governor of Connecticut.

Before the notorious 1692 outbreak in Salem, Massachusetts, Connecticut was the hotbed of New England’s witchcraft. Not every convicted person on this list was executed, but those known or strongly suspected of having died are in red:

Young, Alice	1647	Hanged
Johnson, Mary	1648	Hanged
Bassett, Mrs.	1651	Hanged
Carrington, Joan	1651	Hanged
Carrington, John	1651	Hanged
Goodman, Elizabeth	1653, 1655	Convicted
Knapp, Goodwife	1654	Hanged
Gilbert, Lydia	1654	Hanged
Mary Staples	1654	Accused
Bailey, Mrs. Nicholas	1655	Convicted
Bailey, Nicholas	1655	Convicted
Meaker, William	1657	Convicted
Palmer, Katherine	1660, 1672	Accused
Jennings, Nicholas	1661	Tried, found not guilty
Jennings, Margaret	1661	Tried, found not guilty
Ayers, William	1662	Accused, fled
Ayers, Goodwife	1662	Accused, fled
Greensmith, Nathaniel Greensmith, Rebecca	1662-3 1662-3	Hanged Hanged
Barnes, Mary Mary Sanford	1662-3 1662-3	Hanged Hanged
Wakeley, James Sanford, Andrew	1662-3, 1665 1662-3	Accused, fled Tried, found not guilty
Seager, Elizabeth	1662-3, 1665	Convicted
Grant, Mrs. Peter	1662-3	Accused
Varleth, Judith	1662-2	Tried, found not guilty
Blackleach, John	1662-3	Accused
Blackleach, Elizabeth	1662-3	Accused

Connecticut’s Puritan magistrates and ministers fervently prosecuted alleged witches, and seven women were executed for witchcraft before 1657. In May of that year, John Winthrop became Connecticut’s governor. He was elected again in 1659, and remained governor until his death in 1676. Notice that in the list of witches, there were no hangings between Winthrop’s election and 1662.

However, from mid-1662 through much of 1663 there was a major witchcraft outbreak which resulted in four executions. It began when eight year-old Elizabeth Kelly died after several days of severe stomach pain. An autopsy determined that the girl died of ‘preternatural causes,’ and before her death, Betty Kelly repeatedly accused Goodwife Ayres of witching her to death. 

Witches' cauldron

The evidence against Goody Ayres is scant – she ate broth from a boiling kettle and shared it with Betty. When the girl fell ill many hours later, her parents no doubt questioned her closely about who was tormenting her. Betty told them that Goody Ayres was kneeling on her belly and pinching her. After Betty’s death, the blood pooled in her arms looked like bruises – evidence that Goody Ayres’ specter had indeed pinched Betty.

Soon another ‘possessed’ girl, Ann Cole, cried out on Elizabeth Seager, Goodwife Ayres, Rebecca and Nathaniel Greensmith, Mary Sanford, and others. William Ayres and his wife saved their lives by fleeing to Rhode Island. The Greensmiths, Mary Sanford, and Mary Barnes stayed in Hartford, were tried and convicted, then executed. Accused witches pointed fingers at their neighbors, and a score of people awaited their fates in jail. It seemed that there would be no end to the trials and executions.

Alchemist - Teniers

Walter Woodward, Connecticut state historian, notes that Governor John Winthrop Jr. “drew on his own fascination with alchemy and magic to save, rather than condemn, the accused.” Winthrop was a physician and an alchemist. Alchemy is the study of chemistry and minerals, with an eye to magically transform base metals to another element – gold. Some alchemists were accused of witchcraft, but Winthrop was fascinated by the notion. He was no magician or witch, and he used that knowledge to block trials and overturn convictions.

So, what happened to Governor Winthrop’s benign influence during the 1662 outbreak? John Winthrop had gone to England in 1661 in search of a royal charter for Connecticut. Though he was elected in absentia, Winthrop did not return until 1663, after four people had already been executed. After Winthrop’s return, the remaining trials were quickly concluded and convictions dismissed.

The 1662 Hartford witchcraft outbreak is of particular interest to me because Herodias (Long) Gardner, my favorite obsession, has a Connecticut witch connection. Herod’s son George was called to court in October, 1662 to answer for reproaching Rhode Island’s Governor Benedict Arnold a few months earlier. George was only fourteen, and was found not guilty, no doubt after apologizing for his rash words.

John Smith was not so lucky. For the same offense, the Rhode Islander had to pay a bond of £20 to ensure his future good behavior, and to nail up an apology on the jail house door. At Smith’s trial, it was revealed that he’d accused governor Arnold of issuing a “warrant to apprehend the wife of William Ayres who was sent after from Conneticott for breaking prison, & that having given out his warrant did send private notice to sayd Smith’s house that the woman might be convayed away so to escape the said warrant.”  I surmise that Governor Arnold did not believe in witchcraft either. While he was duty-bound to arrest a jail-breaker, it appears he warned the Ayreses so they could escape a spurious, and potentially lethal accusation.

Trial by Water

Goodwife Ayres (whose first name I cannot learn) is the same unfortunate woman accused of witching Betty Kelly to death in 1662. The Ayres couple may also have been subjected to the ‘swimming test.’ A letter written by Rev. John Whiting of Hartford to Rev. Cotton Mather of Boston, tells us that, “some had a mind to try whether the stories of witches not being able to sink under water, were true; accordingly a man and woman [accused by Ann Cole] had their hands and feet tied, and so were cast into the water, and they both swam after the manner of a buoy.’  Fortunately, that feeble evidence was not deemed legal means to convict the unhappy couple. 

However, Goody Ayres was jailed for trial in Betty Kelly’s death. A neighbor said he saw her dancing around a steaming cauldron with other witches. Another testified that Goody Ayres told her she had been courted by Satan in London. 

It looked grim for Goodwife Ayres until her husband William helped her escape from Hartford’s jail. The unhappy couple fled to Rhode Island, and with the help of Herodias Gardner and her family, disappeared from New England. I am featuring this incident in The Golden Shore, the sequel I am currently writing to Rebel Puritan and The Reputed Wife, my historical novels about Herodias Long.

Sources:

Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England  David D. Hall  1991

The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut  John M. Taylor  1908

http://www.wethhist.org/articles-from-the-community/2012/06/connecticuts-witch-trials.html

http://www.progenealogists.com/colonialwitches.htm

http://www.countytimes.com/articles/2011/11/07/l_c_t_monthly/doc4eaaa6c3c1e38564081222.txt

http://www.americanancestors.org/uploadedFiles/American_Ancestors/Content/Blogs/eNews/TWG%20555_AAmarticle.html.pdf

http://www.cslib.org/archives/Finding_Aids/RG000_samuel_wyllys_papers.html

http://library.brown.edu/bamco/bamco.php?eadid=mswyllys

http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351-21.htm

http://www.samthomasbooks.com/history-midwifery/intro-midwifery/introduction.html

www.wikipedia.com