page_title: Nicholas Upsall
section_title: Met and joined Quakers
hierarchical_section_title: Nicholas Upsall / Met and joined Quakers
caption_attribution_description: English: John Endecott (c1588-1665)
context_page_description: Nicholas Upsall was an early Puritan immigrant to the American Colonies, among the first 108 Freemen in colonial America. He was a trusted public servant who after 26 years as a Puritan, befriended persecuted Quakers and shortly afterwards joined the movement. He was banished from Massachusetts at 60 years of age and helped to found the first Monthly meeting of Friends in the United States at Sandwich, Massachusetts.
context_section_description: In 1656, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin became the first known Quakers to set foot in the New World. They journeyed from England to Barbados and eventually arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their goal was to spread the beliefs of the Friends among the colonists.
  In Puritan-run Massachusetts, which was extremely antagonistic towards dissenting viewpoints, the women were harshly persecuted. They were imprisoned, stripped to the waist and publicly whipped, and their books and materials were burned. The magistrates were set on starving the women and burying them. An unknown individual, likely Upsall, offered to pay their fine if he could be allowed to speak with them. The magistrates, having boarded up their jail window to isolate them, refused. Upsall, "touched with compassion," gave their guard five shillings a week to permit him to bring food to the women. The women were deported back to Barbados after five weeks, having been unable to share their faith with anyone except perhaps Upsall.
  Upsall's act of kindness apparently escaped detection. But his contact with the women and their steadfast faith apparently moved him. On October 14, 1656, the Magistrates caused that a law prohibiting any citizen from aiding the Quakers was read in public. The act was apparently read before the door of his inn, and he is recorded as having raised his voice in protest. He later wrote, "...that he did look at it as a sad fore-runner of some heavy judgment to fall on the country." On the following morning he was called before the Court and charged with having expressed his disapprobation of the law against Quakers.
  A fine of twenty pounds was exacted from him, Governor Endecott saying, "I will not bate him [i.e., reduce his fine] one Groat." He was besides banished to depart in thirty days, including four in prison, and was fined three pounds more for not attending worship after banishment. At 60 years of age, Upsall abandoned the Puritan Church, giving up the rights and privileges accorded to him as a Freeman, and joined the Friends. He was banished as a result and took refuge during the winter of 1656 in Sandwich, Massachusetts. There he helped to found the first Monthly Meeting of Friends in the United States. It began meeting in 1657 at the home of William and Priscilla Allen. Other founding Quakers included Richard Kerbey, Elizabeth Newland, and Stephen and Daniel Wing.
  He made friends among the Indians, and one of the chiefs called him "friend," and offered to build him a comfortable house, if he could accept his hospitality. The chief commented about Upsall's persecutors: "What a God have the English who deal so with one another over the worship of their God."
  On October 19, 1658, the Puritans passed a law stating that any Quaker who refused banishment would face "pain of death." Upsall eventually left Sandwich for Rhode Island, though he returned to Boston after three years, when he was imprisoned for two years.
  When the "Boston martyrs", Quakers Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, were executed, their bodies were dumped in into a pit dug nearby without a marker. Upsall, from his prison, asked to be permitted to build a fence around their burial site, but his request was denied. From prison, he still attracted people to his beliefs, and he was then sent to the Castle in Boston harbor for another year. During 1660-1664, "twenty-two [individuals] had been banished on pain of death, three martyred, three had their right ear cut off, one had been burned in the hand with a letter H, three had been ordered by the court to be sent to Barbadoes as slaves, thirty-one persons had received six hundred and fifty stripes administered with extreme cruelty, £1044 of property had been taken from them, and another was martyred in 1661.
  His wife petitioned twice on his behalf, and when King Charles II ordered Governor Endecott to release all Quakers, Upsall along with many others was finally released. The court record recounts, "Nicholas Vpshall being formerly sentenced to perpetual Imprisonment, & obteyning a Reprivall, hath greatly abused 
caption: Detail of a contemporary portrait of Puritan Governor John Endecott.
exif: {}