The town stocks its marshal

What happened

In June 1658 Plymouth Colony made George Barlow constable of Sandwich and special marshal for the Cape towns, and paid him on commission for the heretics he found. Rothbard calls him "the Quaker Terror": his zeal was unbounded, he plundered the town, and he disfranchised eight freemen. Sandwich was the wrong town to try it on. Almost the whole place had turned Quaker, and between 1658 and 1661 the town fought him at every turn. The Newland daughters abused the marshal, the Allen family was charged with tumultuous carriages against him, and when Barlow locked Benjamin Allen in the stocks without cause, the Court fined the marshal himself. Plymouth never flayed, branded or killed its Quakers, Rothbard says, because most Pilgrims balked at it, and in Sandwich the people went further and turned the state's own instrument on the officer paid to use it. Rothbard tells the end in two sentences: the town answered him by "resisting, harassing him and his family, and putting him into the stocks," and "Finally the people triumphed, and Barlow was driven out of town" (CiL, p. 265).