Bethink thee with what mirth Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm, dark hearth; How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads white and fair, On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.
'O weak, deluded maiden!¯by crazy fancies led, With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread; To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound, And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth-bound,
I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell, And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell, Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an Angel's robe of white, And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.
Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine fell, Flocked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell; The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet.
We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock; The merchant-ships lay idle there, in hard clear hues on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky.
And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old, And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand, Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.
Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flash of anger spread; 'Good people,' quoth the white-lipped priest, 'heed not her words so wild, Her Master speaks within her--the Devil owns his child!'
But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made, Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.
I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-way drawn, Swept around the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn; Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back, And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track.
Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye, A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky, A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and woodland lay, And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay.
In 1659, the youngest son and daughter of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, who themselves were imprisoned, deprived of all property and ultimately banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony, were fined £10 each for non-attendance at church, which they were unable to pay due to the severity of the family's legal and financial hardships.
The case of Daniel and Provided Southwick was presented to the General Court at Boston, which issued an order signed by Edward Rawson empowering the treasurer of Essex County "to sell the said persons to any of the English nation at Virginia or Barbadoes [sic] to answer said fines."