Thomas Maule - Advocate for Witches
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 30, 2022
Proverbs 31:8-9 (NRSV)
8 Speak out for those who cannot speak,
for the rights of all the destitute.
9 Speak out; judge righteously;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.
A couple weeks ago, Sue and I were watching Hocus Pocus 2. As we watched the opening scene about the Sanderson sisters as children in Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem Witch Trials, it began to pique my interest once again in the real history of the trials and the Quaker’s response of that time. I grabbed my phone and opened-up the Google search only to find a rather interesting history.
I was reminded that several years ago during an interview with Phil Gulley, we talked about how many people grew up wrongly connecting Quakers with the Salem Witch Trials. Often, Quakers get lumped in with the Puritans, especially in our history textbooks where we want to cover things rather quickly. But lumping us with the Puritans is far from the truth. Quakers were nothing like the Puritans and were considered outcasts by most of them.
As Phil told me in that interview, our history shows us a much different picture. We weren’t the ones trying to burn women and young girls at the stake, often we were the ones taking the heat for standing up for and defending the real and so-called witches of the time.
I found it ironic, that this year at the Indy Festival of Faiths our booth was next to only one other booth – the Indiana Pagan Community Outreach and Dialogue – including witches, psychics, and other local Earth Based and Non-Abrahamic Spiritual groups. Ed Morris said when I arrived at the festival, “They must have known to put the Quakers next to the Witches because not every religious group would be as welcoming as us.” And there is some major historical truth in Ed’s words.
Thus, today’s sermon is going to be more of a history lesson. I sense now more than ever we need to spend time re-engaging our past (at all levels of society) so we can learn from it and not continue to make the same often horrific mistakes.
How many of you have heard the name Thomas Maule?
Thomas Maule was born on May 3, 1645 and died on July 2, 1724. He happened to be a prominent Quaker in colonial Salem, Massachusetts.
Actually, the New England Historical Society says that Thomas Maule was an outspoken Quaker, who went to prison five times for criticizing Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts. The Puritans also whipped him three times and fined him three times.
Why was he imprisoned, whipped, and fined so many times?
Well, Thomas Maule believed in witches as a religious group, and he also believed God would punish the Salem Witch Trial prosecutors for miscarrying justice.
Before we get into what should have put him more prominently in our history books, let me give you a bit of Thomas Maule’s backstory.
Thomas Maule was born May 3, 1645 in Warwickshire, England. His family opposed Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan followers. Maule immigrated to Barbados at about the age of 13. Some speculate he went to Barbados to find his father, who Cromwell may have imprisoned there.
The “Quakers in The World” web portal points out that in the seventeenth century, Barbados was the main port for trade and travel between Britain and her growing number of American colonies along the eastern seaboard. At this time, many people were exploiting the potential of burgeoning transatlantic trade. Many others were emigrating from Britain to the ‘New World’: some saw economic opportunities, and some saw the prospect of putting their political ideas and religious beliefs into practice.
Quakers were caught up in all these developments. Soon there were Quaker settlers in Barbados and Jamaica. Many Quaker merchants were involved in transatlantic trade. Other Quakers reached the Caribbean as convicts and had to work on the plantations: at the time many Quakers were being imprisoned for their beliefs, and it was common practice to ‘transport’ prisoners to various colonies to provide cheap labor, rather than keeping them in British jails.
Quakerism also came to the Caribbean through mission activity. Early Quaker missionaries all passed through Barbados – Elizabeth Hooton and Joan Brocksop in 1661, Ann Robinson and Oswell Heritage in 1662, George Fox, William Edmundson, Elizabeth Hooton in 1671, and many others. Quaker George Rofe described Barbados then as ‘the nursery of the (Quaker) truth’.
Thomas Maule left this hotbed of Quakerism in Barbados and moved to Boston in 1668, and he settled permanently in Salem in about 1679.
At some point he converted to Quakerism, most-likely in Barbados. There he also took up the occupation of tailor. He would continue his tailoring business in Massachusetts. Smart and successful, he expanded into merchandising, real estate, and construction — despite the Puritan discrimination against Quakers at the time.
In Salem, Thomas Maule supplied the lumber and the land for the first known Quaker Meeting House in the United States, built in 1688. (It is now part of the Peabody Essex Museum)
Eventually the Puritans repealed the harshest laws against the Quakers, but tensions continued. The Puritans viewed the Quakers as dangerous intruders. The Quakers did not forget the way the Puritans had whipped, branded, mutilated, and hanged them.
Like many Quakers of the era, Thomas Maule spoke out against the Puritans for their cruelty and intolerance. He received 10 stripes of the whip for saying Salem’s John Higginson, “preached lies and was instructing in the doctrine of devils.”
The truth was that Thomas and his wife Naomi believed in witches. When the Salem witch trials began, they testified against Bridget Bishop, the first victim to be hanged.
But Maule grew disillusioned with the prosecutors’ murderous frenzy. Twenty people were executed within four months, and 100 more awaited trial when Gov. William Phips returned to his senses and halted the trials.
In 1695, several years after the release of the last accused witch, Thomas Maule published a pamphlet. He called it Truth Held Forth and Maintained. In cool and cutting sarcasm, he wrote that God would condemn the witch trial judges. He famously stated,
“[F]or it were better that one hundred Witches should live,
than that one person be put to death for a Witch, which is not a Witch.”
The Puritans were sensitive on the point that they had gone too far in the Salem witch trial prosecutions. So, on December 12, 1695, officials arrested Maule on charges of slanderous publication and blasphemy.
He was taken to Boston and brought before the governor and council. He refused to answer any questions and insisted on a trial in his own county by a jury of his peers. Then, after a year in jail, a court finally tried him in Salem.
The judges ordered the jury to convict Thomas Maule. But Maule argued they had no standing to rule on religious matters. He pointed out the King’s law bound the jury, and he had not broken it. And he said the pamphlet wasn’t enough evidence to convict him, since the printer, not he, put it there.
The jury, probably influenced by the backlash against the witch trials, ruled the court had no right to suppress his expression of religious belief.
The decision marked the first time a jury disregarded instruction to convict. it also reflected the growing impatience with the Puritan theocracy.
Emerson W. Baker discussed the trial in his book A Storm of Witchcraft writing:
“Regardless of the reasons for their verdict, the jury’s acquittal of Thomas Maule was a turning point in the history of not only the Salem Witch Trials, but also American jurisprudence. Before 1692, a Massachusetts jury would have undoubtedly convicted a troublemaking Quaker, a habitual offender who impudently challenged authority…Maule’s not guilty verdict, announced in the same courtroom and before some of the same magistrates who had sat in judgement of the victims of witchcrafts, signals a dramatic change. The case was a landmark for freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of religion.”
Not only did Thomas Maule’s acquittal pave the way for the First Amendment in our country, but it also set a precedent for freedom of the press in America. Lawyers cited it as precedent for the John Peter Zenger trial, which established the right to print controversial opinions.
According to the Cultural Center for the Maule’s Estate:
Knowledge of the acquittal in Maule’s trial went immediately to the three printing houses in Boston, and by mail to New York and Philadelphia. Local Boston printers stopped seeking approval for many items, and authors stopped sending controversial works out of the colony for printing. The volume of pamphlet publishing increased significantly. To printers, the Maule case meant the right to print controversial pamphlets without being subjected to penalties.
Thomas Maule continued to write. He married twice, reared 11 children, and put his energy into his store and his Quaker Meeting. He died July 2, 1724, at the age of 79.
I admire Thomas Maule for living his life to defend the rights of marginalized people who could not speak for themselves. What he did was both advocate for religious freedom, as well as the rights of women in colonial Salem.
He, like many Quakers of his day, was a “change agent” - a person with the skill and desire to transform a community or ultimately a society. Thomas Maule knew something was inherently wrong in the Salem Witch Trials and believed strongly in standing up for the rights of witches and those wrongly accused of being witches.
It is clear that Maule held a fundamental belief in the value of each person and that there was that of God in each person. Acting on his beliefs led Thomas Maule to become what Friends would call a “witness in society.” In other words, Thomas Maule became a change agent to improve the daily reality of those who were witches or wrongly accused of being witches in his community.
His imprisonment and persecution for his beliefs led to much action and witness in society. Maule’s actions would put his advocacy of the witches in a long line of Quaker witnesses who would call for improved conditions in prisons, mental health hospitals to stop the practice of jailing mentally ill people, the end of the enslavement of black people in America, and the rights for women to vote in this country.
As well, Thomas Maule spoke directly against the government or theocracy of his day. Some consider our country under a theocracy of sorts as fundamental Christianity has been swept up as a major part of the political dialogue, as well as making decisions and policies in this country.
Today, Quakers still must stand, like Thomas Maule, and advocate for people of other faith communities who are being abused or neglected by the systems in place.
And I am not just talking about being tolerant of people who believe different than us Quakers – I mean being willing to defend them and stand with them when they are being treated wrongly.
This week on the news I was saddened to see antisemitism on the rise again in this country. The Anti-Defamation League shows that anti-semetic incidents have increased by 34% since 2021 and the numbers are rising as we get closer to elections.
As well, the United Nations recently said there is an overall increase in Islamophobia specifically in the United States and Europe. Over 30% of people still hold Muslims in a “negative light.”
2019 saw the greatest increase in violence against religious communities in almost a decade in our country and the numbers continue to rise.
I think we too quickly forget that religious freedom, one of our core First Amendment principles, supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.
Sadly, too many religious folks (who many call themselves Christian), think much like the Puritans in colonial Salem that religious freedom is to be perceived as something that is only meant to protect some citizens at the expense of others.
By speaking up like Thomas Maule, we can demonstrate that such rhetoric does not hurt only a subsection of the population, but ALL of us.
And please understand, it does not have to mean we must do this only in the court of law. No, this means you and I standing up for our siblings of other faiths in conversations within our families, at work, in classrooms, in our neighborhoods and communities, and especially through our vote.
So, as we enter waiting worship this morning, I want us to ponder the following queries:
· Am I aware of someone of another faith community that is being mistreated, neglected, or simply not heard?
· How might I advocate for them?
· What rhetoric might I need to change or stop using altogether, so that ALL people will benefit?