On June 1 1660, Mary Dyer, an unrepentant #Quaker, was hanged on Boston Common. She repeatedly courted arrest, challenging authorities either to change their anti-Quaker laws or, by her death, to awaken indignation against them.
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On one occasion she was led to the gallows with two companions. She watched them hang. Then she felt the noose put over neck and readied herself for death, only to receive a last minute reprieve. “The Mercies of the Wicked is Cruelty,” she said.
6 months later she returned from exile and was arrested. She called on the court to repeal its “unrighteous laws,” and promised that if they refused “the Lord would send others of his servants to witness against them.” She was the last Quaker executed in Boston.
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