While the horrors of the 1692 Salem witch hysteria are widely known, some years before a less infamous trepidation—the Quaker persecutions—swept the colony during “one of the darkest blots in time.” Several Quakers seeking religious liberty in the Massachusetts Bay Colony suffered torture, and even the scaffold, at the hands of the Puritans. Absence from local parish services typically resulted in a summons, the consequences of which included heavy fines, whippings, or banishment. One Massachusetts Quakeress, Lydia (née Perkins) Wardwell made a stark declaration of protest in response to her summons, appearing naked in Newbury as a “sign” unto her persecutors who had stripped women to whip them. Lydia was also exposing the “spiritual nakedness” of the colonies most influential citizens who were using their positions of power for both personal and financial gains.

Yes, it’s true; Newbury can boast of its very own Lady Godiva. Unfortunately, she could not step into a house of worship to pull off her impromptu strip without getting the strap. Though most historians question her sanity, Lydia’s motives for disrobing resembled the signs acted out by Hebrew prophets, a doctrine taken very seriously by both the Puritans and the Quakers. Her bold act was driven by the abuse and torture inflicted upon her family and friends by the Puritans.

Lydia Perkins was the daughter of Isaac Perkins and Susannah Wise. Isaac was a noted Puritan and wealthy shipbuilder. On October 16, 1659, Lydia married Eliakim Wardwell, son of Thomas Wardell and Elizabeth Woodruff of Boston.

Eliakim and Lydia moved to a large farm in Hampton, New Hampshire. The family history suggests it was during this time that the couple embraced the Quaker faith. Eliakim was repeatedly harassed, bullied, and stripped of his assets because of his Quaker faith. He endured the stocks on more than one occasion, and records show that on April 8, 1662, in Dover, New Hampshire, Eliakim was fined for his absence from church. In addition to these offences, the Wardwell home was also the scene of a conflict while the couple harbored Wenlock Christison, a notable Quaker who was jailed in Boston with Mary Dyer and William Leddra in 1661. Though he escaped the scaffold, Christison was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Hampton’s Reverend Seaborn Cotton felt it his duty to “keep the wolves from his sheep.” Cotton, with “truncheon in hand, led a party of order-loving citizens” to the house of Wardwell, seized Christison, and shuffled him off to jail. Christison moved to safer territory in 1665, eventually settling in Talbot County, Maryland. He was elected to the lower house of the Maryland General Assembly and later inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s hero in “John Endicott,” one of three dramatic poems in a collection called New England Tragedies.

According to Jennings Cropper Wise to satisfy one fine, Cotton took Eliakim’s favorite saddle-horse worth fourteen pounds. Since the sum exceeded the fine, a vessel of green ginger was left at his house to balance the account. However, more fines accumulated and the green ginger “speedily went the way of the horse.” Wardwell was also fined for Lydia’s absence from church, and in time was rendered almost penniless by repeated seizures of his property. As Cotton confiscated lands from the Wardwell estate and bankrupted them with heavy fines for non-attendance of Sabbath services, Lydia managed to muster strength—a true testimony to her faith. She witnessed the heinous punishments inflicted by the courts, who viewed Quakers as “dangerous social outlaws.” Several of her friends were hanged or tortured: their ears severed, and their tongues and body parts bored and branded with hot irons. Those sentenced to jail were often denied food and water.

Lydia was present in Dover, N. H. when three women, Alice Ambrose, Mary Tomkins, and Ann Coleman (who had refused to attend church) were stripped naked to the waist, tied to a cart, and—though the weather was “bitter cold” that day—paraded around several local towns. While the public flogging was administered, the Reverend Mr. Rayner “stood and looked and laughed at it.” Eliakim Wardwell did not shy away from verbalizing his two cents on the matter. After calling the reverend a brute, back in stocks he went.

Lydia was also pursued by the church to answer for her absence from communion. By the time she was summoned for “separating from the church and teaching false doctrine,” Lydia well understood her fate with church elders. But surely her exhibitionist act was barely imaginable to the pious Puritan elite. She, being “a chaste and tender woman of exemplary modesty,” must have jolted quite a reaction from the locals. One account notes that the church meeting was so disrupted they could not reconvene nor assemble order. On the records of the court at Salem (Essex County Quarterly Sessions Court), her sentence for the outburst was recorded as follows:

May 5th, 1663. Lydia Wardwell on her presentment for coming naked into Newbury meeting house. The sentence of the court is, that she shall be severely whipt and pay the costs and fees to the marshall of Hampton for bringing her. Costs, ten shillings, fees two shillings and sixpence.

After the session, Lydia was lugged off by Ipswich lawmen and taken to a tavern, the Joseph Baker House. “Amid a large circle of men and boys,” she was tied to a rough post and “lashed to the satisfaction” of the crowd of onlookers. One can only imagine the scene of pathetic prigs sipping ale and leering pitilessly while the constables who whipped her “tore her bosom as she writhed.”

To dodge the fussbudget herds and avoid further abuse, the Wardwells moved to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, after Lydia’s shocking protest. The Wardwell family owned extensive tracts of land near the Shrewsbury River, not far from the present site of Long Branch.

According to town records Eliakim sold to Edward Gove a “dwelling house and about thirty acres of land in Hampton, “with one share in the Cowe Comons,” also a grant of fourscore acres of land at the New Plantation, with the privileges thereto belonging.” In 1666 Eliakim became the Quaker minister of Shrewsbury and it was the first monthly meeting of Quakers in that province of New Jersey.

Heather Wilkinson Rojo, genealogist and author of Nutfield Blog, explains:

There were many Quakers who protested the ‘spiritual nakedness’ of the Puritans with actions similar to Lydia Wardwell. My 9th great grandmother, Deborah Wilson, walked naked into the Salem meeting house in June 1662 for the same reasons. She was punished by being ‘tied at a cart tail with her body naked downward to her waist, and whipped…till she come to her own house, not exceeding thirty stripes.’ Other famous cases included Margaret Brewster in 1677 in Boston, and Solomon Eccles 1663 in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

Rojo further adds:

I find these cases sad, in that the Quakers had to resort to such extreme measures in order to dissent, and that the Puritans retaliated with such heinous punishments. Those who continued to protest could be executed, like Ann Hutchinson and Mary Dyer. The colony of Massachusetts was a theocracy, with the government headed by the Puritan authorities.

Perhaps the Woodwell family rested some satisfaction on the fact that the judgment of Heaven would fall upon their persecutors (a belief shared by the Puritans). It is bemusing to think that the Puritans, who left Mother England to escape similar persecution, would exact such brutal tactics of torment on the pacifistic Quakers.

Even more of a mystery is the whereabouts of Lydia’s petticoat. According to the story, she was wrapped in cloth and shuffled off to Hampton very abruptly. Her garments were left for safekeeping with fellow friend of the light, Gov. John Easton, who perhaps stood outside to cheer his prophetess on. Though her petticoat may never be found, Lydia Wardell certainly taught us that the naked truth is always better than a well-dressed lie.

Some notable Perkins-Wardwell descendants include convicted Salem witch Mary Bradbury, statesman, brewer, governor and Declaration of Independence signer Samuel Adams, actor James Dean, actress Lucille Ball, and four U.S. presidents—Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon.