ers according to the articles." They gave their judgment against a pretension of Massachusetts to the fee of certain lands on the Piscataqua, deciding that jurisdiction only, and not property, had been conveyed at the time of their annexation to that Colony. They disapproved her claim to a plantation, which had been made at Seekonk, and which they found to lie within the bounds described in the patent of Plymouth. And, "upon a serious consideration among themselves how the spreading course of error might be stayed, and the truths wherein the churches of New England walked set upon their own firm and clear foundations," they submitted to "the Elders now present at Hartford" the question, "Whether the elders might not be entreated seriously to consider of some confession of doctrine and discipline with solid ground, to be approved by the churches and published by consent, till further light, for the confirming the weak among ourselves, and stopping the mouths of adversaries abroad." 2

Dissension

Magistrates

Betts.

The aid afforded by Massachusetts to La Tour, which failed to command the approbation of the Commissioners, had been the occasion of much difference among among the the Magistrates, at the time when a majority of Massachu- favored it; and it continued to provoke division and debate, and to affect the course of the local business and the position of public men. Though, for the present, Bellingham, placed at a disadvantage by his recent defeat, prudently kept himself in the background, the old discontent of his party with the Governor took advantage of the posture of affairs to manifest itself anew. A joint written remonstrance was addressed to July 14. Winthrop by three Magistrates, Saltonstall of Wa

1643.

1 Comp. Mass. Rec., II. 68; Plym. Rec., II. 22, 23.

2 Records, &c., in Hazard, II. 16 25.

See Vol. I. 613.

To my eye this paper bears unmistakable traces of the pungent pen of Ward.

July 26.

Aug. 21.

tertown, and Bradstreet and Symonds of Ipswich, with their townsman, Nathaniel Ward, and three ministers, namely, Nathaniel Rogers and John Norton of Ipswich, and Ezekiel Rogers of Rowley. The Governor with warmth, but with a noble dignity, answered it at length. The hearty Endicott, though not altogether agreeing with his judgment in the case, sent him a letter of affectionate confidence.2 Bradstreet wrote to him, disclaiming the intention to "cast any dishonor" upon him or those who acted with him, or "to write anything that might be matter of just of fence," and exculpating himself from all share in an indecorum, of which Winthrop had complained, in "the time and manner of sending" the joint letter. In these documents, as well as in the debate which had preceded the action of the Magistrates, the argument respecting, first, the equity, and, secondly, the safety, of permitting La Tour to recruit at Boston, was rested, by the parties respectively, upon considerations of the general duty of succoring the distressed; of the practice of neutral nations in conniving at aid to belligerents; of the policy of weakening D'Aulnay; of the impolicy of provoking him and his sovereign; of the danger of a connection with Romanists (with whom it appeared probable, on the whole, that La Tour was to be reckoned); and of the Scriptural cases of Jehoshaphat, Ahab, Ahaziah, Josiah,

1 Rogers had matter of private of fence. He thought he had been unkindly treated by Winthrop in respect to an assignment of land which he desired. (Winthrop, II. 17.) In his Election Sermon in 1643, when Winthrop was Governor, he advised the freemen not to choose the same Governor twice in succession. (Vol. L 614; comp. Winthrop, II. 99.)

"Sir, be of good comfort. I doubt not but our God that is in heaven will

carry you above all the injuries of men; for I know you would not permit anything, much less act in anything, that might tend to the least damage of this people; and this I am assured of, that most of God's people here about us are of the same mind," &c. (Hutchinson, Collection, 120.)

These very interesting papers may be read in Hazard, I. 497, 502-516, or in Hutchinson, Collection, I. 113134.

Pharaoh-Necho, Amaziah, Nehemiah, Jehoram, Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and Joshua.1

the Magis

dicott elected

Governor.

1644.

The agitation, which had been created by this question, must have been revived by the return to Boston of the men and vessels which had gone thence with La Tour; and there can be little doubt of its influence on the next Changes in annual election, when Winthrop was again sutracy. En perseded. The party in opposition was not, however, strong enough to restore Bellingham; and the chief magistracy was conferred on Endicott, May 29. whose long services in a secondary capacity may well have seemed to entitle him to a requital of distin guished honor. Winthrop, from whom the public veneration could never wholly withdraw itself, was chosen to the second place; and the Magistrates of the last year were continued in office. As yet, in all the variations of popular sentiment, there had appeared little disposition to disturb the Magistracy, which, from the first, had been confided to only twenty-six different persons. Scarcely a Magistrate had ceased to be such, except by death, or by his leaving the Colony. The change now made was a moderate one, but it indicated a reversal of the policy towards the rival Frenchmen; and an evidence of this, still more significant, was given when Bradstreet and William Hathorne - the latter a young man rising into notice were appointed to succeed Winthrop and Dudley as Federal Commissioners, and Saltonstall was desig nated to "supply Mr. Bradstreet's place," in case a substitute should be needed. These were men of Essex county, except Saltonstall, and he was the fast friend of Bellingham. One of the elements of the temporary dis

1

3

Winthrop, II. 109 - 114.

266 "Through the Lord's mercy, we still retain among our democracy the godly Captain William Hathorne, whom the Lord hath endued with a quick apprehension, strong memory and rhetoric,

volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make use of him often in public service, especially when they have had to do with any foreign government." (Johnson, 109.)

3 Mass. Rec., II. 69. "Another

satisfaction with Winthrop was a local jealousy. It was feared that he had been influenced favorably to La Tour by the merchants of Boston, some of whom had business affairs depending on the success of that adventurer.

Cabal in

County.

The fire which had been smouldering broke out in other ways. A local caucus (not yet so called) arranged a combination to dictate the proceedings of the government. "Those of Essex had procured, at the Court before, that the Deputies of the several shires should Essex meet before this Court to prepare business, &c., which accordingly they did, and propounded divers things which they agitated and concluded among themselves, without communicating them to the other shires, who conceived they had been only such things as had concerned the Commonwealth; but when they came now to be put to this Court, it appeared that their chief intent was to advantage their own shire. As,-1. By drawing the government thither. 2. By drawing the Courts thither. 3. By drawing a good part of the country stock thither. 4. By procuring four, of those parts, to be joined in commission with the Magistrates. And for this end they had made so strong a party among the Deputies of the smaller towns (being most of them mean men, and such as had small understanding in affairs of state) as they easily carried all these among the Deputies. But when the two bills came to the Magistrates, they, discerning

.....

great error the Deputies committed; . . . . namely, the choosing one of the younger magistrates (though a very able man), Mr. Bradstreet, and one of the Deputies, Mr. Hathorne (the principal man in all these agitations), a young man also, to be Commissioners for the United Colonies, both Eastern men." (Winthrop, II. 171, 172.) The course, however, of Bradstreet and Hathorne, as Commissioners, in respect to that past policy of their own Colony

which they disapproved, was forbearing and dignified. (See above, 150, 151; comp. Records, &c., in Hazard, II. 19, 21, 22.) - Two hundred years ago, it seems, Essex men were thought to be aspiring to rule the Colony, as fifty years ago an "Essex Junto" was cried out against for its alleged ambition to rule the Commonwealth. A vital local influence has its ebbs and flows, which sometimes history discloses.

the plot, and finding them hurtful to the Commonwealth, refused to pass them; and, a committee of both being appointed to consider the reasons of both sides, those of the Magistrates prevailed."

As to one of its features this radical policy was presently developed in "a commission which the Deputies sent up, whereby power was given to seven of the MagisAttempt to trates, and three of the Deputies, and Mr. Ward abridge the (sometime pastor of Ipswich and still a preachMagistrates. er), to order all affairs of the Commonwealth in the vacancy of the General Court."1 Here was a practical assertion of the new doctrine that the Magistrates were not, of right, the standing council of the Colony when the General Court was not convened, as well as its executive at all times.

The Magistrates protested against the measure, as a revolutionary deposition of them from the authority vested by the Charter in the office which the freemen should only control by their annual election of its administrators. The Deputies argued, that the freemen "had varied from their patent in some other things, and therefore were not bound to it in this." The Magistrates proposed some compromises, but without avail. As the time approached which had been agreed upon for a prorogation of the Court, the Deputies desired them to engage to exercise no powers of government in the recess. "To this was

answered, that, if occasion required, they must act according to the power and trust committed to them. Their Speaker [Hathorne] replied, 'You will not be obeyed."

1 Winthrop, II. 167.- Ward's very active mind tempted him to be a little ambitious, and perhaps a little factious. In the year in which his friend Bellingham was made Governor (Vol. I. 611), Ward, being then no longer the minister of a congregation, was, contrary to all theory and former practice, chosen

by "some of the freemen" to preach the annual Election Sermon to the General Court; and in it, "among other things, he advised the people to keep all their magistrates in an equal rank, and not give more honor or power to one than to another." (Winthrop, II. 35.)