Mary and William Dyer: Quaker Light and Puritan Ambition in Early New England by Johan Winsser

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mary and William Dyer: Quaker Light and Puritan Ambition in Early New England by Johan Winsser Steven Jay White Mary and William Dyer: Quaker Light and Puritan Ambition in Early New England. By Johan Winsser. North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. xii, 345 pp. Notes and index. Paper $24.95. This is a well written and thoroughly researched book. Its self-assigned task is to sort through all the time-worn myths which have circulated about the Quaker martyr Mary Dyer and put them into a proper perspective. This work has a foot in both the "puritan" and Quaker camps of early American history. Winsser does not capitalize "puritan" citing that "recent scholarship has recognized the wide diversity among puritans. Thus, many historians now eschew capitalization, which implies a more [End Page 58] discreetly defined concept and body" (p. 219). Thus, this review will adhere to this practice. The author attempts, successfully, to correct many of the myths surrounding Mary Dyer. She, as a devout Quaker, provides half of the story. Her husband William, identified as a puritan, provides the other half. Mary Dyer is famous in Early American history for her death. She was executed by the Massachusetts puritans in Boston in 1660 as a disruptive force conflicting with their "city upon a hill" and its "errand into the wilderness." After her death, Mary became more and more sanctified. It is this mythology that Winsser wishes to correct. The lore surrounding Mary Dyer over the years has distorted what actually happened. Mary became a legendary figure and this legend produced three identical statues all erected in 1958. Produced by Sylvia Shaw Judson, they were spread across the country in Boston, Philadelphia, and Earlham, Indiana. It would be the Indiana statue that would spark Winsser's interest in Mary Dyer and her husband. Winsser has produced a reliable and readable dual biography of a wife and her husband. The couple's story begins in old England, then travels across the Atlantic to Massachusetts, where it concentrates on the troubles that would cause Mary's death. But the book does not stop with Mary's demise, it concludes only at the death of William and examines the last years of his life without her. The book winds down with an epilogue that discusses the contributions of the couple and their impact on New England. The book concludes with a sampling of letters from both Mary and William which adds depth and puts their story into a proper perspective. Mary Dyer is widely revered as one of the four "Boston Martyrs" hung for religious dissent. She had been twice exiled from the colony and once almost hung to scare her away. But when she returned a third time, she was sentenced to death and executed. While Winsser admits that "by all accounts, Dyer was an extraordinary person," he cautions us to not make more of her in death than she was in life (p. 1). He believes "it is a mistake to cast Dyer and the New England Quakers as progressive proponents of broad religious toleration" (p. 7). Winsser wants to correct the traditional view of the puritans as "radicals . . . certain of their own righteousness" by pointing out that there were sanctimonious radicals on both sides of the Mary Dyer controversy (p. 7). He further states that neither side—Quakers or puritans—were supporters of religious toleration. Mary Dyer, he believes, should not be held up as an icon of religious [End Page 59] freedom. The Quakers, including Mary Dyer, challenged the laws and practices of Massachusetts to provoke a royal response. The Quakers were different from other dissenters because they were willing to suffer persecution and boldly sought it out. And Friends were highly effective in portraying the puritans as the persecuted who became persecutors themselves. Additionally, the Quakers were well funded and organized in their attack on the anti-Quaker laws of New England (p. 9). Winsser broaches the theory that the Mary Dyer Affair was a symbol of the "tension between individual liberties and the state's mandate to govern; between free speech and speech deemed to be offensive or disruptive; between the right...