Christopher Holder
Christopher Holder was an early Quaker evangelist who was imprisoned and whipped, had an ear cut off, and was threatened with death for his religious activism in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and in England. A native of Gloucestershire, near Bristol in western England, Holder became an early convert to the Society of Friends, and in 1656, at the age of 25, made his first voyage to New England aboard the Speedwell to spread his Quaker message. All of the Quakers in his group were imprisoned, and then sent back to England on the same ship. Undeterred, Holder returned to New England aboard the small barque Woodhouse, landing in New Amsterdam in August 1657 despite few predictions of success. Though young, he was a leader among the eleven Quaker missionaries that fanned out among the American colonies. Holder, with his frequent companion John Copeland, went north to begin their evangelistic efforts in the face of increasingly threatening anti-Quaker laws. With little success on Martha's Vineyard, they moved to Cape Cod in the Plymouth Colony where they were warmly received in Sandwich, establishing the earliest Quaker meeting in America.
From Sandwich, Holder and Copeland moved on to Plymouth, also in the Plymouth Colony, and then several towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony before being apprehended by Puritan authorities in Salem, and taken to Boston for imprisonment. Despite being cruelly flogged, and held for nearly three months, Holder, Copeland and another companion were able to write the first Quaker Declaration of Faith while in jail. After being released late in 1657 he returned to England and visited the Barbados, but was back in New England to continue his missionary work in early 1658. Returning to Sandwich with Copeland in April, the men were arrested and scourged, but not detained for long. Following time to recover in Rhode Island, a haven for Quakers, the men returned to Boston in June, being quickly apprehended. This time, in addition to a lengthy imprisonment and frequent whippings, the men faced the escalating Puritan laws, having their right ears cut off. Stalwart in the face of their mutilations, the men were eventually released. Holder went south to continue his missionary work during the winter, but returned to Massachusetts in 1659. The Puritans had by now enacted capital punishment for defying an order of banishment, and though Holder was arrested again that summer, it may have been his social position and education that compelled the authorities to allow him to sail back to England. Five days after his release, however, two men, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, became the first to hang as Quaker martyrs in Massachusetts.
In England Holder was able to confer with Quaker founder George Fox, and was likely involved in the excitement of new religious freedoms emanating from the Declaration of Breda and from the influence of Quaker Edward Burrough with the king. Holder was back in New England by 1663, but continued to travel extensively between New England, England, and the West Indies. He became a resident of Newport, Rhode Island, and twice married to Quaker activists. He was so highly respected in Rhode Island that during the colony's devastation during King Philip's War, he was one of 16 colonial leaders whose counsel was sought in April 1676 during the very difficult times. Holder had returned to England by the early 1680s, where, following continuing persecution of Quakers, he was arrested on several occasions and imprisoned for more than a year. Following his release in 1685, he lived just a few more years, dying in Gloucestershire in 1688. He is best remembered for his leadership, evangelism, and sufferings in confronting the cruel anti-Quaker laws in the Massachusetts colony.
Early life
Almost nothing is currently known about the early life of Christopher Holder. He was born in Gloucestershire, near Bristol in western England, in about 1631 based on his age of 25 on a ship passenger list in 1656. As a very young man he became an avid member of the Society of Friends, a religious group commonly called Quakers, founded by George Fox about 1647.The Quakers did not believe in baptism, formal prayer or the Lord's Supper, nor did they believe in an ordained ministry. Each member was a minister in his or her own right, women were treated essentially as men in matters of spirituality, and they relied on an "Inner Light of Christ" as their source of spiritual inspiration above the scriptures as found in the Bible. In addition to denouncing the clergy and refusing to support it with their tithes, they claimed liberty of conscience as an inalienable right and demanded the separation of church and state. Their worship consisted of silent meditation, though those moved by the Spirit would at times make public exhortations. They abstained from the customs of bowing or men removing their hats, would not take an oath, and would not fight in wars. The Puritans in Massachusetts viewed Quakers as being among the most reprehensible of heretics.
Holder would spend much of his life in jail for his religious activism, being jailed as early as 1655 in Ilchester, Somerset for refusing to remove his hat. By the early 1650s Fox had been sending Quaker missionaries into Wales and Ireland, and by 1656 he deemed it time to send evangelists to the American colonies, an undertaking readily embraced by Holder. The first Quakers to arrive in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who landed in Boston in the early summer of 1656 aboard the Swallow. Although there was no law barring their presence, they were jailed for three weeks and sent back to England.
Visit to New England aboard the ''Speedwell''
The second group of Quaker missionaries to leave England for New England sailed on the small ship Speedwell. Robert Locke was the master, and the passenger list, dated at Gravesend on 30 May 1656, included 40 names. The names of eight passengers were marked with a 'Q', indicating that they were Quakers and signifying that officials in England were already concerned about the religious fervor of these people. Holder, aged 25, was one of the eight, whose home was given as Winterbourne and others included his companion, John Copeland, aged 28, from Holderness, a 21 year old convert named Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh.The ship landed in Boston on 27 July 1656, and the four men and four women who were Quakers were taken in for questioning by the authorities. They were questioned primarily on their religious doctrines, and both Holder and Copeland, as leaders of this group, likely surprised the authorities with their thorough command of the Bible; Holder was also well versed in the law. The group of eight was jailed, though Holder let it be known that there was no law for detaining them. When Holder asked Governor Endicott why they had been deprived of their liberty, the governor threatened them with hanging by replying "Take heed ye break not our ecclesiastical laws, for then ye are sure to stretch by a halter."
The Quakers had their books and pamphlets publicly burned, and while they were imprisoned the order given to the jail keeper on 18 August 1656 was to keep the "abominable tenets of the Quakers" from being spread and to keep the Quakers "close prisoners, not suffering them to speak or confer with any person, nor permitting them to have paper or ink." While the group was still in jail, a law was passed on 14 October 1656 assessing a 100-pound fine to the commander of any vessel bringing Quakers into the colony. After nearly three months of confinement, the group of eight Quakers was put back on the Speedwell, and sent back to England.
Return to New England aboard the ''Woodhouse''
As soon as Holder arrived back in England, he was ready to turn around and go back to New England to fulfill his mission. He was of sufficient means to finance an expedition, but a ship was needed. Holder asked the master of the Speedwell to return his group to Boston, but Locke would not do it in the face of a 100-pound fine. However, Holder found a Quaker ship builder named Robert Fowler who had just finished a small barque and given it the name Woodhouse. Fowler was willing to offer the small craft for the trans-Atlantic trip, feeling he had been "divinely commissioned". Without any knowledge of navigation, he offered to captain the vessel to America "on the Lord's service". When the ship sailed, Fowler was one of 17 people aboard, of whom he and five others were crew members, consisting of three men and three boys. Among the eleven passengers were several who had been on the earlier Speedwell mission, including Holder and Copeland, but also including William Robinson, who would later be hanged as the first of the four Boston martyrs.The vessel departed on 1 April 1657 "entirely inadequate for the purpose", wrote historian Charles Holder, and an observer added, "they did go on in the name and power of the Lord." Weather required the ship to put in at Portsmouth, then again at Southampton, until on 11 April it finally cleared the English coastline for the open sea. The group sailed without a compass, or any knowledge of navigation, with Fowler writing, "We saw the Lord leading our vessel as if it were a man leading a horse by the head; we regarding either latitude or longitude." The original manuscript of the ship's log, endorsed by George Fox, was later kept at the Society of Friends in London. Its lengthy title is telling: "A true relation of the voyage undertaken by me, Robert Fowler, with my small vessel the Woodhouse, but performed by the Lord like as he did Noah's ark wherein he shut up a few righteous persons and landed them safe even at the hill Ararat."
Following its journey, the ship arrived along the coastline of Long Island in late May, and landed at New Amsterdam on 1 June 1657 after seven weeks at sea. Once ashore, a majority of the passengers headed south to Maryland and Virginia for their mission. Holder and Copeland then took the ship, and headed back to New England, sailing up the Narraganset Bay to Providence. Holder attempted to give a message from George Fox to the town's founder, Roger Williams, but Williams was not interested. Williams had some serious theological differences with the Quakers, writing that "they admit no interpreter but themselves, for the spirit within they say, gave forth the Scripture, and is above the Scripture... and that all they do and say is scripture--Papists and Quakers most horribly and hypocritically trample it under their proud feet."
Holder and Copeland stayed at the home of Richard Scott, said to be the first Quaker in Providence. Richard's wife, Katherine Marbury Scott, was a daughter of the Reverend Francis Marbury of London, and a much younger sister of the famed Antinomian heretic Anne Hutchinson, who had been banished from the Massachusetts colony for her religious opinions. Katherine was described as a "grave, sober, ancient woman, of blameless conversation and of good education and circumstances." The Scotts had two daughters, Mary being the older and Patience a pre-teen. In a few years Holder would marry Mary Scott.