Convinced that the intolerant law of Massachusetts Colonybanishing Quakers violated God’s law, Mary Dyer would notstay quiet or stay away. Dyer was a Quaker, and Quakersbelieved that God could communicate directly to us and that salvationcould be assured. This was considered heresy by the Puritans in Massachusetts, so they banished her from the colony. Dyer challenged that law with a persistence that finally led authorities to a critical decision: Agree with Dyer and change the social structureof the colony, or silence her. Mary Dyer died on the gallows on June 1,1660, affirming her stand against the government that persecuted herQuaker faith. “Nay, man,” she said at the last, “I am not now to repent.”Dyer had other alternatives. For one, she was married to a respectedcolonial official, William Dyer, who more than once had rescued herfrom a Massachusetts jail through his political connections. He too wasa Quaker but less militant than she, who never dodged a fight over religious freedom, especially when her “inner light”—God’s voice to thesoul—bade her confront the secular powers. For another, Dyer had the testy patience of Massachusetts GovernorJohn Endicott on her side. When her fellow Quaker “lawbreakers,” William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, were hanged in 1658,
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