Christopher Holder - Journey To North America

Journey To North America

Holder went to Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, aboard the Speedwell, landing on July 27, 1656. He and seven other passengers were listed with a “Q” (for Quaker) beside their names. At that time, the Puritans in England and in the English colonies were persecuting Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends. The port authorities were alerted to the presence of the Quakers and searched the ship before anyone disembarked. Governor John Endicott ordered that they be brought directly to court. Holder and John Copeland, another Quaker, were questioned by the court and demonstrated their thorough knowledge of the Bible and the law in their testimony.

Holder and Copeland were detained in jail to be deported on the next ship departing for England. While they were still in the jail, Mary Dyer and Anne Burden, two other Friends, arrived in another ship and were arrested on the spot. The authorities in the Massachusetts Bay Colony considered the teachings of the Quakers both heretical and blasphemous. Eventually they deported Holder and the seven who had come with him to England.

Read more about this topic:  Christopher Holder

Famous quotes containing the words north america, journey, north and/or america:

    “The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.”
    —Ivan Illich (b. 1926)

    “Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.”
    —William Golding (b. 1911)

    “The Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere intellect to any other set upon the continent of North America. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive.”
    —Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)

    “I have, indeed, even omitted facts, which, on account of their singularity, must in the eyes of some have appeared to border on the marvelous. But in the forests of South America such extraordinary realities are to be found, that there is assuredly no need to have recourse to fiction or the least exaggeration.”
    —J.G. (John Gabriel)