PARA PAR@ ` TEXT ` ■Dyer, Mary?╨1660religious martyrBorn on a date unknown, probably in Somersetshire, England, Mary Barrett left little record of her early life. In October 1633 she was married in London to William Dyer, with whom she came to America about 1635 and settled in Boston. She became a subscriber to the antinomian religious views of Anne Hutchinson and in 1638 followed her into banishment in Rhode Island. Her husband joined in the founding of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and became a leading figure in the new colony. In 1652 Mary Dyer returned to England with her husband and remained for five years, during which time she became a member of the Society of Friends. On returning to New England in 1657 she took up missionary work on behalf of the Quakers. Severe anti-Quaker laws passed in 1657 and 1658 made her work in Massachusetts extremely perilous. She suffered imprisonment in Boston in 1657 and expulsion from New Haven in 1658 in the course of her missionary travels. In 1659 she was again imprisoned briefly in Boston, where she had gone to visit two other imprisoned Friends, and then in September she was formally banished, a sentence that carried the threat of execution should she return. She nonetheless did return in October; arrested and condemned, she was reprieved while atop the gallows (two others were hanged that day) by the intercession of her son and the governors of Connecticut and Nova Scotia and again expelled. In May 1660, in obedience to her conscience and in defiance of the law, she returned once more to Boston. An appeal to her to acquiesce in banishment failed, and she was hanged publicly on June 1, 1660. Her death came gradually to be considered a martyrdom even in Massachusetts, where it hastened the easing of anti-Quaker statutes. ╓styl `
