The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XV. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I.
§ 13. Alice Curwen
In the year 1660, “hearing of the great Tribulation that the Servants of the Lord did suffer in Boston, of cruel Whippings, of Bonds and Imprisonments, yea, to the laying down of their natural Lives,” Mistress Curwen felt the call to go and profess in that bloody town. “Having this Testimony sealed in my Heart,” she writes, “I laboured with my Husband day and night to know his Mind, but he did not yet see it to be required of him,” he having but just returned from the Lancashire gaol in which he had been confined for refusing to pay the tythe. The call reached him in season to enable him to embark on the vessel on which his wife had taken passage for America. Journeying to Boston, they missed imprisonment through a legal technicality, and went on their way to the eastward. They were more fortunate on their return, for the constables drove them “all along the Street, until they came to the Prison, whereinto they thrust us; but the Lord was with us, and our Service there was great; for many people, both rich and poor, came to look upon us.”