The Direct Influence Mary Dyer had to the First Amendment.

By Margaret Cotton, author of The Radiance of Grace

 1638 : As a supporter of the Covenant of Grace and experiences of being led by God’s Spirit in prayer and guidance, Anne Hutchinson was accused of doing great harm to Boston and was banished. She led a clergy-approved meeting attended by 140 women twice a week that emphasized Jesus’ teaching. Anne’s style of teaching asked more questions than gave answers.  Following that pattern, attendees began to question if church and civil policies were consistent with Jesus’s teaching. Policies most divisive included those regarding treatment of the poor, the natives, slavery, and requirements for church attendance and punitive fines.  

            The Puritan theocracy of Boston did not like being asked questions. When influential, wealthy men also began to attend the meetings and to challenge the clergy/magistrates counsel and judgment, Anne’s meetings were considered a serious threat. Governor Winthrop and Reverend Wilson tried to correct and reduce her influence with both a civil and church trial. The prosecutors served as judges in both trials. 

            As Anne received her sentencing of banishment and rejection by God and the community, a young woman, Mary Dyer, stood up and walked forward to stand beside Anne and hold her hand. That courageous act drew unwanted attention to Mistress Dyer, including the exhuming of her recently stillborn child, thereafter, referred to by the courts as a monster child. The Hutchinson, Dyer, and thirty other families settled on barren Aquidneck Island, 40 miles south. Harassment from Boston continued, but the new villages of Portsmouth and Newport thrived. As did Anne’s teaching.

1650-51: Mary Dyer traveled to London, renewing past relationships with persons connected to the Royal Court, and became a follower of George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends. George Fox claimed to be healed of melancholy, and Mary may have desired the same relief. He also recognized the ministry of women and the fair treatment of all persons without regard to station in life.  Mary became well-known in powerful circles as an intelligent, charitable, and religious woman. The five-year absence from her home and family is controversial for today’s women, but in Europe it was the social norm for wealthy women in the seventeenth century to prioritize the advancement of their husband’s career and to use trusted servants to care for daily family life. In London, she most likely provided hospitality for the Rhode Island leaders, who made frequent trip, hoping to procure a charter protecting them from the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s desire to incorporate all the Narragansett Bay lands. 

1659-1660:  After returning to Boston, Mary was arrested for newly passed laws against Quakers’ presence within their jurisdiction. Fox’s followers rejected the authority of the Puritan Church and spoke openly and sometimes loudly against policies of annihilation of native tribes, the selling of debtors’ families into slavery, allowing domestic violence, and imprisonment with the whipping and starvation of all others faithful. She and two other men were taken to the gallows. The men were executed, and she was released at the very last minute. Hearing the Puritan leadership had published that she recanted faith, Mary returned and was hanged.  Her last words were, “Yea, I have been in Paradise several days, and now I am about to enter eternal happiness.”

1661.  When London was informed that the gentle woman so many admired had been hanged, outraged Friends and acquaintances petitioned for justice. King Charles ll issued a royal mandate, ordering the Boston General Court to stop imposing capital punishment for anyone’s faith or conscience, but instead to send them to England for trial. Once Governor Endecott was presented with the mandate, he obeyed. Hangings that had been scheduled for the following day were canceled, and about twelve Quakers held in confinement were released. No one was ever tried in London under this mandate. King Charles ll’s father had been beheaded by Puritan leaders, and his return from exile provided sympathetic attention.  Queen Marie remained in close correspondence with her son, now King, and some speculate that may also have been an influence. 

1663. Within a markedly short time following Mary’s execution and after twenty years of Rhode Island’s efforts, King Charles II signed the 1663 Royal Charter for Rhode Island. The Charter guaranteed (for the first time anywhere) full liberty in religious concernments, speech, and travel. This freedom was unique in a social and political time when wars of religion and persecution of people for religious beliefs prevailed. The Charter held a unique place in the evolution of human rights in the modern world. (sos.ri.gov). 

1790+   Although Thomas Jefferson was dependent on various writings for his own evolution of liberty, the clarity granting conscience and religious liberty in Rhode Island’s Charter and its success for over 120 years would have been well-known to Mr. Jefferson. Benjamin Bourne was a pivotal Federalist leader from Bristol, Rhode Island, who played a crucial role in navigating the state's reluctant and late ratification of the U.S. Constitution (1790). He believed the reasons people fought for independence needed to be specifically guaranteed by the new government. He argued that Rhode Island would lose protection it had enjoyed for 130+ years. Within the document of compromise, The Bill of Rights, the same liberty was guaranteed to the entire nation. Although the commonly held belief that Mr. Jefferson and founding fathers are uniquely responsible for this freedom, scholars do attribute the Royal Rhode Island Charter of 1663 to be the first document of such liberty. Few look close enough to understand that Anne Hutchinson’s leadership, Mary Dyer’s execution, and the outrage that followed was a powerful incentive to achieve such unique vision and protection for an emerging nation.