The City upon a Hill under Siege: The Puritan Perception of the Quaker Threat to Massachusetts Bay, 1656-1661

Abstract

SHORTLY after sailing into Boston harbor aboard the ship Swallow in July 1656, Anne Austin and Mary Fisher found themselves in jail. The two Englishwomen had been stripped and searched for witches teats, evidence that they suckled a demonic familiar. Recalling the ordeal later, Austin said that had not suffered so much in the birth of them all [her five children] as she had done under their barbarous and cruel hands.1 The women who had examined the matronly Austin and her companion, a former serving woman, had been thorough. Finding no strange marks or appendages between