By the time she was 28 years old in 1653, Mary Fisher had been jailed several times for preaching in public. She had been an English indentured servant when she heard George Fox preach. Fox believed that God comes to each person, regardless of education, rank, or status. The inner light lives in everyone; God will inspire and speak to anyone.
Like other early Quakers, she felt called to confront all the forces of injustice she could find. Her first stint in prison was because she went to her local church and interrupted the priest during his sermon. She said: “Come down, come down, thou painted beast, come down. Thou art but an hireling, and deludes the people with the lies.”
When she was released, she felt inspired to travel to Cambridge with another Quaker to visit a seminary. So, picture this loud, zealous young woman who rejects the need for elaborate prayer books, rituals, and priests in front of a seminary where most of the men are Puritans. Mary and her friend railed against intellectually focused, paid ministry and the men were shocked. First, the men kind of laughed at them and made fun. But, seeing themselves as prophets, the women dug their heels in. They said to the men that “they were Antichrists, and that their College was a Cage of unclean Birds.” The men fetched the mayor who brought a constable. He had the women lashed to a post and whipped in the marketplace. Mary remembered, “Christ at his crucifixion, [and] prayed for God to forgive the mayor, ‘for he knew not what he did.’” They prayed and sang praises to the Lord. The crowd was astonished that the women endured, steadfast and rejoicing.
Fast forward to 1655. Mary feels called to prophesy to Puritans in Massachusetts. She arrived in July of 1656, but she was quickly identified as a Quaker, a heretic. She had brought 100 books and pamphlets with her. Those were immediately burned. She had done nothing against the law, but was taken to prison. Suspecting that she was a witch, the governor ordered her body searched “for signs of the Devil.” Ultimately, they locked her in a cell with the window boarded up. She had nothing to write with; she was not fed; she was left to die. Miraculously, an old man called Nicholas Upsall was moved by her extreme punishment. He ended up bribing her jailer 5 shillings a week so that he could send Mary food. She preached to him and he became the first Bostonian Quaker.1
[1] https://www.friendsjournal.org/mary-fisher/
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10055389/1/Palmieri_10055389_thesis.pdf
https://archive.org/stream/depositionsfromc00grea/depositionsfromc00grea_djvu.txt