The Quaker Prophetess

As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

1677. THE Old South Church in Boston — not the present build- ing, but the one first erected upon the same spot — was the scene of an event without a parallel in the annals of our Puritan churches, in some of which, nevertheless, remarkable scenes had occurred. To the simple and austere Quaker manners, outdoing even Puritan ideas of moral and physical self-restraint, now and then comes the unexpected contrast of theatrical climax in its most bizarre forms. So the early history of the Friends in New England shows the dominant principle of passive opposition to persecution occasionally giving way, all at once, to an aggressive spirit that impelled the actors on through thorny ways toward the goal for which they strove 'and struggled. If, now and then, one half crazed by sufiering was betrayed into some act of folly, it is surely not a matter for astonishment or exultation. Their annals present the names of no informers and no apostates. Obeying the command of a hallucination to which she bowed as if it were a divine behest, the Quakeress Deborah Wilson had walked naked through the streets of Salem " as a sign of spiritual nakedness in town and country," and for so doing she was most uncharitably whipped with thirty stripes. Again, Lydia Wardwell, who is called " a young and tender chaste person," for startling the congregation of JSTewbury by walking into the meeting-house there, unclothed, in the time of public worship, was tied up to the fence-post of the tavern where the court sat, at Ipswich, to undergo a similar punishment. But the case of Margaret Brewster differs from these others in that a number of persons took part in carrying out what it was expected would strike terror to the hearts of the beholders, and to this end it was conducted with studied attention to dramatic effect. One quiet Sabbath morning in July, 1677, accompanied by several of the most noted persons of her sect, both male and female, Margaret Brewster presented herself at the door of the Old South Meeting-house in sermon-time, the strangest visitor that had ever crossed its consecrated threshold. She first took off her riding-habit and her shoes and stockings, and then entered. In his Diary, which perhaps may become as famous as that of the immortal Pepys, Judge Sewall notes that while the congregation was listening to the words of the sermon from the aged pastor's lips, there suddenly was seen the apparition of a woman walking slowly up the broad aisle between two men, while two others walked behind. The woman was bare- footed, her head was sprinkled with ashes, her loosened hair straggled wildly down about her neck and shoulders, her face was besmeared with soot, and she wore a sackcloth gown loosely gathered around her person. This appearance, says the indig- nant diarist, "occasioned the greatest and most amazing uproar that ever I saw." No one has told us, but we can imagine the congregation rising in consternation to their feet, the sudden stop in the sermon, the moment of silence, like the calm before the storm, during which the dark prophetess delivered her solemn warning of a grievous calamity shortly to signify to them the displeasure of God. Then the excited voices of the men, all talking and gesticulating at once, the women shrieking in terror or dropping in a dead faint, the surging to and fro of a multitude, all occa- sioning " the greatest and most amazing uproar " that was ever NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. heard inside these sacred walls, witnessed to the little central group that they had indeed created a profound sensation. The oifenders were all quickly taken into custody and hurried off to prison. When Margaret was arraigned before the court, the constable declared himself wholly unable to identify her as the _,^g^J^ ^i^^-^;^

Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)