Nicholas Upsall

Nicholas Upsall ( 20 August 1666) was an early Puritan settler in the English Massachusetts Bay Colony, among the first 108 Freemen in early colonial America. He was a trusted public servant who after 26 years as a Puritan, befriended persecuted Quakers and shortly afterwards joined the movement. He was banished from Massachusetts at 60 years of age and helped to found the first monthly meeting of Friends in colonial America, at Sandwich, Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Arrival in the colonies

From their first arrival aboard the Mayflower in 1620, until 1629, only about 300 Puritans had survived in New England, scattered in small and isolated settlements. In 1630, their population was increased when the ship Mary and John arrived in New England carrying 140 passengers from the English West Country counties of Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. These included Nicholas Upsall, Roger Ludlowe, John Mason, Samuel Maverick, William Phelps, Henry Wolcott and other men who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation.

It was the first of the ships later called the Winthrop Fleet to land in Massachusetts. Nicholas married Dorothy Capen (1611–1675). They had fours daughters: Amasa, born December 1635; a daughter Elizabeth born December 1637 who married William Greenough on July 4, 1651; a daughter Susannah born July 12, 1639, who married Joseph Cooke on November 10, 1659; and Experience born January 19, 1640, who died August 2, 1659.

Became Freeman and led community

The earliest record of Nicholas Upsall was on September 28, 1630, when he was impanelled on a jury by the Court of Assistants to look into the death of Austen Bratcher. Upsall was an upstanding Puritan and citizen for more than a quarter of a century. He was among the first to become a Freemen, possessing full citizenship as a result, and gained public trust, respect and esteem. He later found that his prior role in the community did not protect him against religious persecution. The magistrates, having boarded up their jail window to isolate them, refused. Upsall, "touched with compassion," gave their guard five shillings a week to permit him to bring food to the women. The women were deported back to Barbados after five weeks, having been unable to share their faith with anyone except perhaps Upsall.

Upsall's act of kindness apparently escaped detection. But his contact with the women and their steadfast faith apparently moved him. On October 14, 1656, the Magistrates caused that a law prohibiting any citizen from aiding the Quakers was read in public. The act was apparently read before the door of his inn, and he is recorded as having raised his voice in protest. He later wrote, "...that he did look at it as a sad fore-runner of some heavy judgment to fall on the country." On the following morning he was called before the Court and charged with having expressed his disapprobation of the law against Quakers.

He made friends among the Indians, and one of the chiefs called him "friend," and offered to build him a comfortable house, if he could accept his hospitality. The chief commented about Upsall's persecutors: "What a God have the English who deal so with one another over the worship of their God." Upsall eventually left Sandwich for Rhode Island, though he returned to Boston after three years, when he was imprisoned for two years.

When the "Boston martyrs", Quakers Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, were executed, their bodies were dumped in into a pit dug nearby without a marker. Upsall, from his prison, asked to be permitted to build a fence around their burial site, but his request was denied. From prison, he still attracted people to his beliefs, and he was then sent to the Castle in Boston harbor for another year. During 1660-1664, "twenty-two [individuals] had been banished on pain of death, three martyred, three had their right ear cut off, one had been burned in the hand with a letter H, three had been ordered by the court to be sent to Barbadoes as slaves, thirty-one persons had received six hundred and fifty stripes administered with extreme cruelty, £1044 of property had been taken from them, and another was martyred in 1661. Upsall along with many others was finally released. The court record recounts, "Nicholas Vpshall being formerly sentenced to perpetual Imprisonment, & obteyning a Reprivall, hath greatly abused their lenity, do therefore Order him to be Confined again to ye house of John Capen." "Reprivall" [i.e., a "reprieve"] still meant banishment, and his transfer to his brother-in-law John Capen's home stipulated that he may remain free, "provided he does not corrupt any with his pernicious opinions," or does not teach "the diabolical doctrines and horrid tenets of the cursed sect of Quakers." He died there in August 1666 and was buried in Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

Death and legacy

On October 13, 1666, Nicholas' estate after payment of his debts was valued at £543, 10s, a large estate for his times, especially given that for the last ten years of his life he lived in exile for having become a Quaker. His will specifically includes the Quakers:

Historians believe the furniture he bequeathed to the Friends were in the Red Lyon Inn, which he owned at the time of his death.

In 1694, Edward Shippen, the first mayor of Philadelphia under the city charter, gave a piece of land for a Friends Meeting House. On Brattle Street, near the site of the Quincy House, the Friends recorded that the "money from Nicholas Upsall's Chamber to go towards it." The records of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for New England, dated April 7, 1694, contain the following: