Ann Austin and Mary Fisher arrive in Boston aboard the Swallow.

(July) [1655] They are members of the Religious Society of Friends, founded in England by George Fox in Lancashire in 1052. The first Quakers in Boston, they are immediately arrested, their books and papers are burned, and they are jailed and ordered back to Barbados on the return trip. A Quaker letter says of the panic, “Two poor women arriving in your harbor so shook ye, to the everlasting shame of you, and of your established peace and order, as if a formidable army had invaded your borders.”