custody of the marshal till they gave security to be responsal to the judgment of the Court." The whole seven were next arraigned as authors of "diverse false and scandalous passages in a certain paper. . . . . . against the churches of Christ and the civil government here established, derogating from the honor and authority of the same and tending to sedition." Refusing to answer, and appealing from this government, they disclaimed the jurisdiction thereof." 1 66 This was more than Presbyterian malecontents could be indulged in, at the present critical time, in Massachusetts. The Court found them all "deeply blamable," and punished them by fines, which were to be remitted on their making "an ingenuous and public acknowledgment of their misdemeanors;" a condition of indemnity which they all refused, probably in expectation of obtaining both relief and applause in England. Child was fined fifty pounds; Smith, forty pounds; Maverick (who either had not joined the rest in their appeal, or had withdrawn from it), ten pounds; and the others, thirty pounds each. Four Deputies opposed the sentence. Three Magistrates, Bellingham, Saltonstall, and Bradstreet, also dis sented.2 In consideration of the plots of Gorton and Child, and England. This inclined Sir Richard to interest himself with the Massachusetts Magistrates in favor of greater indulgence towards dissentients, which he did in a letter sometimes referred to in proof of his peculiarly liberal spirit. (Mass. Hist. Coll., XIV. 171.) Vane's position was the same; and he also wrote to Winthrop (June 10, 1645), expressing his apprehensions, "lest while the Congregational way among you is in. its freedom, and is backed with power, it teach its oppugners here to extirpate it and root it out, from its own principles and practice." (Hutch. Coll., 137.) Mission of England. their respective friends, "it was thought needful to send some able man into England, with commission and instructions to satisfy the Commissioners for Plantations." The Governor, and Mr. Norton, minister of Ipswich, were thought of for the agency; but it was feared that the Governor might be detained in England by the rising party for the sake of his valuable aid in Parliament. It was finally determined to employ Edward WinsWinslow to low, of Plymouth, "both in regard of his abilities of presence, speech, courage, and understanding, as also being well known to the Commissioners." It was material that Winslow should be precisely instructed as to the relation in which the Colony "stood to the state of England; whether our government was founded upon our charter or not; and if so, then what subjection we owed to that state." In a conference which was held upon the subject, the relation of Massachusetts to England was compared with that of Burgundy and Flanders to France, which was not inconsistent with "absolute power of government." And in the formal declaration which the Elders drew up, at the request of the Court, they said: "We conceive that, in point of government, we have, granted by patent, such full and ample power of choosing all officers that shall command and rule over us, of making all laws and rules of our obedience, and of a full and final determination of all cases in the administration of justice, that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against us."1 1 Winthrop, II. 278-283; comp. Mass. Rec., II. 162, 171, 175.-Peter and Welde had had their agency terminated by a vote of the Court, of Oct. 1, 1645. (Mass. Rec., II. 137.) John Pocock, one of the original Assistants under the charter, had been associated with them (Winthrop, II. 212), and, after their dismission, was in charge of the Colony's affairs, till Winslow's arrival. It is probable that Governor Haynes, of Connecticut, went out with Winslow, and remained in England as much "Mr. Winslow as a year and a half. set sail from Boston about the middle of December, 1646." (Winthrop, II. 317.) In the preceding month, the General Court of Massachusetts had desired to give Winslow a colleague, but had not been able to effect it. Being informed that Child and Dand were preparing to go to England with a petition to the Parliament from a number of the non-freemen, the Magistrates made a seizure of their papers. The searching officers "found the copies of two petitions and twenty-three queries, which were to be sent to England to the Commissioners for Plantations." These papers complained of civil and ecclesiastical maleadministration in the Colony, and of personal injuries done to the petitioners. They prayed, among other things, "for settled churches according to the Reformation of England;" for the establishment, in the Colony, of the laws of the realm; and for the appointment of "a General Governor, or some honorable. Commissioners," to reform the existing state of things. They submitted various inquiries as to the chartered rights of the Massachusetts Company on the one hand, and their practice on the other, accompanied with sufficiently explicit intimations, not only that the Company had forfeited their charter, but that they had been guilty of treason.1 For this new offence, such of the conspirators as remained in the country were punished by additional fines. Child and Dand were sentenced to pay two hun (Mass. Rec., II. 175.) They at the same time applied to the other Colonies to bear their part in the expense of Winslow's mission. (Ibid. 165; comp. III. 79.) Connecticut may well have been inclined to have her own representative on this errand. There is a letter from Hooker, of Hartford, to his son-in-law, Shepard, of Cambridge, not dated, but evidently written in the autumn of 1646, in which he mentions writing "letters for England, by our honored Mr Haynes, who intends, God willing, to go by the next passage." Mr. Haynes was "half-way from Connecticut to Boston, November 4, when he was overtaken by "a most dreadful tempest." (Winthrop, II. 278.) And between that time and October 17, 1648 (Conn. Rec., I. 167), his name never appears in the lists of Magistrates present at the Courts, though he was chosen Governor in May, 1647, and a Magistrate in May, 1648. 1 Winthrop, II. 293. Hutchinson, I. 138, 139. From Hutchinson's minute account of these papers, I presume he had seen them. Winthrop says (II. 294): "We could hear of but twenty-five [subscribers] to the chief petition, and those were (for the most part) either young men who came over servants, and never had any show of religion in them, or fishermen of Marblehead, profane persons." dred pounds each; Smith and Burton, a hundred pounds each; and Maverick, a hundred and fifty pounds.1 Winslow after a while was followed by Child to England, where he was hard pressed before the Commissioners for Plantations, as well as attacked by Child's brother 1647. in a vigorous pamphlet.2 But the tide was now on the turn. Presbytery could no longer be arrogant in England. Winslow commanded the favorable attention of a powerful party, when, in a printed reply to Child's book, he professed to prove that the Massachusetts government had proceeded blamelessly and liberally, and that the conduct of the remonstrants had been factious and seditious. The Presbyterians in Parliament had now neither leisure to bestow on the distant colonists, nor courage to provoke the ubiquitous and sturdy Independents; and Child and two of his confederates, who had accompanied him to England, imme 1 Mass. Rec., III. 113, 114. 2 Its title, "New England's Jonas cast up at London," &c., referred to the safe arrival at London of the petition to Parliament. It was said (New England's Jonas, &c., 18), that Cotton, in a sermon at Boston just before the sailing of the ship that bore the petition, had recommended that, if she met with stormy weather, her company should for their safety treat it as the Tarshish sailors had treated the prophet. The author of the pamphlet did his best to put Parliament on its guard against the ambitious aims of the NewEnglanders. (Ibid., 19-22.) * New England's Salamander discovered by an Irreligious and Scornful Pamphlet, &c. By the phrase "Salamander discovered" was indicated Winslow's supposed detection of Vassall as the real author of the piece. "Whom I call New England's Salamander, because of his constant and many years' exercise and delight in op position to whatsoever hath been judged England. diately saw that they were engaged in an undertaking which could produce nothing but harm to them- Ill success of selves. "Dr. Child preferred a petition to the the appeal to Committee against us, and put in Mr. Thomas Fowle's name among others; but he, hearing of it, protested against it, for God had brought him very low, both in his estate and in his reputation, since he joined in the first petition." Child was prevailed upon by his friends "to give it under his hand never to speak evil of New-England men after, nor to occasion any trouble to the country, or to any of the people." "Mr. Vassall, finding no entertainment for his petitions, went to Barbadoes. As for those who went over to procure us trouble, God met with them all." And before the King's death, the Massachusetts Magistrates had the happiness of hearing from their agent, that "the hopes and endeavors of Dr. Child and other the petitioners had been blasted by the special providence of the Lord, who still wrought for" his people.1 1648. Dec. 3. Before the reception of this intelligence, the Synod also had done its work; and Independency, -or Congregationalism, as in New England it had come to be more generally called, adopting some modification of its original theory, formally recognized an arrangement designed to introduce order and unity, and to create a capacity for more efficient action and influence than now seemed to have been provided for in the original Result of frame of the churches. The constitution of the the Synod. Independent congregations in England was strictly indicated by the name which they bore. Each was competent in itself to all ecclesiastical offices, and there was no instituted connection among them, nor established method of joint or mutual action. In their infancy they 1 Winthrop, II. 321, 322. I do not mean to say that the idea of Congregational Synods, or Councils, as they came into universal use in New England, was never entertained by the English Independents. It had |