Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

‘ [349] the room down a pair of stairs by the heels into the open street, and carried me in a wheelbarrow to prison; and was whipped (as I have been at several courts), which is no shame for me to tell of, though I am sure 'tis a shame for some to hear of. I am about sixty years of age, thirty of which I have dwelt within about a mile of Cambridge town. What my life and conversation hath been amongst them, and what I have suffered this fifteen years for not going to the public meeting is well known to many of my neighbors.’ He then appealed for relief. Dated, ‘From Cambridge Prison the 24th 3d mo., 1677,’ and signed ‘Benanuel Bower.’¹ This address, like the former, is not an autograph except the signature. ‘In answer to the petition of Benanuell Bowers, the Court judgeth meet to refer the consideration thereof to the next County Court in Middlesex for answer.’² At the session of the County Court, Oct. 2, 1677, ‘The remonstrance exhibited by Benanuel Bowers to the General Court in May last being, by order of said Court referred unto the consideration of this Court for answer,—this Court sent for the said Bowers, and gave him liberty to declare what he had to say, and no just exception appearing against the sentence of the Court that committed him unto prison, but on the contrary he manifesting much perverseness and peremptory obstinacy against the laws and government here established, making his appeal to England: the Court declared unto him that they judged his sentence to be just, and his imprisonment just, and that it was the pride and perverseness of his own spirit that was the cause and ground of his suffering by his imprisonment.’³ He had now been in prison a year, and he again appealed to the General Court, which Court summarily settled the whole matter, Oct. 22, 1677: ‘In answer to a paper signed by Benanuel Bower, it is ordered that the marshal general do forthwith levy upon the estate of the said Bowers such fine or fines as have been laid on him according to law by the County Court of Cambridge, and that thereupon he be discharged the prison.’⁴

Imprisonment for more than a year, however, was not the full measure of punishment endured by Mr. Bowers. Naturally impatient of confinement, he gave vent to his feelings in some doggerel poetry, which he sent by his wife to Mr. Danforth, whom he seems to have regarded as his chief opposer. For this he was convented before the General Court, convicted and punished. The official record appears in ‘Mass. Col. Rec.,’ v. 153.