From Sandwich, Holder and Copeland moved on to Plymouth, in the Plymouth Colony and then several towns in the Massachusetts colony before being apprehended by Puritan authorities in Salem, and taken to Boston for imprisonment. Despite being cruelly flogged, and held for nearly three months, Holder, Copeland and another companion were able to write the first Quaker Declaration of Faith while in jail. After being released late in 1657 he returned to England and visited the Barbados, but was back in New England to continue his missionary work in early 1658. Returning to Sandwich with Copeland in April, the men were arrested and scourged, but not detained for long. Following time to recover in Rhode Island, a haven for Quakers, the men returned to Boston in June, being quickly apprehended. This time, in addition to a lengthy imprisonment and frequent whippings, the men faced the escalating Puritan laws, having their right ears cut off. Stalwart in the face of their mutilations, the men were eventually released. Holder went south to continue his missionary work during the winter, but returned to Massachusetts in 1659. The Puritans had by now enacted capital punishment for defying an order of banishment, and though Holder was arrested again that summer, it may have been his social position and education that compelled the authorities to allow him to sail back to England. Five days after his release, however, two men, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, became the first to hang as Quaker martyrs in Massachusetts.