witnesses." The governor feared that the culprit might yet escape. With the advice of his Council, he sent a message to Kidd that "if he would make his innocence appear, he might safely come to Boston." Thither, accordingly, Kidd came in his sloop. After an unsatisfactory examination before the governor and Council he was June 1. "committed close prisoner with divers of June 6. his crew." The governor transmitted his minutes of the examination to the Lords of Trade, and asked that a ship of war might be sent to convey the rover to England for trial, there being no provincial law for punishing piracy with death. He was tried at the Old 1701. Bailey for murder and for piracy, found May 8. guilty under both indictments, and executed.

July 8.

The murder was that of one of his sailors, whom, provoked by rude language, he had struck with a mortal blow. The piracies specified on the trial were the capture and robbery of a ship named the "Quedah Merchant," owned by Armenians, commanded by an Englishman, and navigated by a Moorish crew; of three Moorish vessels, one of them having also an English and another a Dutch captain; and of a ship of Portugal. It appeared on the trial that, after the capture of the "Quedah Merchant," Kidd had transferred himself to her with part of his crew. On his return voyage, he had left her with some twenty of his men in the West Indies, and there had bought the sloop in which he came to New England.

In the latter part of the time of Lord Bellomont's stay in Massachusetts, the Indians divided his attention with the pirates. The recent peace with the Eastern tribes had inspired confidence, and the English who had fled from Maine were returning to reinstate their ravaged dwellings, when a report was spread that those tribes had made another conspiracy so extensive as to include even the Iroquois, and the remnants of the nations in the more compact English settlements.

1700. The governor of Connecticut wrote to Jan. 29. Lord Bellomont that he had information to this effect on such authority as to justify vigilance. At the same time, a rumor got into circulation among the Indians that the whites had resolved upon their extirpation, and were all but ready to strike the blow; and this apprehension of theirs lent probability to the story that they were preparing for new disorders. The gov

ernor, believing the danger to be real, issued his proclamation, enjoining upon the people to abstain on the one hand from all offensive or questionable conduct, and on the other to observe their savage neighbors, and take precautions for defending

themselves, in case of any outbreak. He March 13. even proceeded to convene the General Court, which took vigorous measures of precaution. Laws were passed for raising and equipping troops, for punishing mutiny and desertion among them, and for marching them out of the province at the governor's discretion; and

small garrisons were posted at three or four places in the western part of Maine. But either there had in fact been no danger, or these proceedings averted it. The natives remained quiet, and the alarm passed away, having continued through nearly all the year.

Boston is believed to have contained at this time more than a thousand houses, and more than seven thousand inhabitants. At the capital especially, what remained of the primitive religious strictness could not fail to be relaxed by the extension of commercial activity, as well as by the influence of that provision of King William's charter which detached the political franchise from church membership. The only place of worship in New England of the English establishment had had a hard struggle for life against the passionate dislike of the people; its supporters had been dispersed, and its minister had gone home discouraged, at the time of the recent revolution; and it recovered with difficulty from the disrepute contracted by its connection with the usurpation of Andros. Lord Bellomont, the first governor, except Andros, attached to its communion, attempted to revive it in Boston. He brought from England a present from the Bishop of London of a collection of books for the Boston church, and an assistant for the rector, Mr. Myles, who had succeeded to the place of Randolph's friend, Ratcliffe. The assistant, dying in the West Indies on the voyage, was followed

by another, Mr. Bridge, who held the place some eight or nine years. The governor, while in Boston, worshipped at King's Chapel on Sundays, but he did something by way of amends by a regular attendance at the weekly Thursday 1699. lecture of the First Church. He wrote Oct. 24. to the Lords of Trade that some persons in New England desired "a Church-of-England minister," and expressed his hope that they would "patronize so good a design." In the temper of England, at that moment especially, the patronage of the Board for that good design 1700. did not need to be solicited, and they inFeb. 2. terested themselves with the Bishop of London to obtain for the colonists the advantage of ecclesiastical supervision.

A transaction much more important than these in the religious history of the time related to an abatement of the ancient rigor of Congregational administration. A fourth Congregational church in Boston was established upon principles extremely distasteful to the friends of the old order of the churches. Most, if not all, of the undertakers, as the associates in this enterprise were called, were persons of substance and of social consideration, though none were high in office. In their form of worship they proposed no deviation from the existing practice, except in respect to the reading of the Scriptures without comment, which

probably on account of its being prescribed in the English rubric- had hitherto not been prac

The

tised in the churches of New England. But the great changes, which, to the extreme displeasure of the leaders of religious opinion, they introduced into their own use, were such as struck at the foundation of the dignity of church-membership. Hitherto, in the churches of New England, the practice was for a candidate for admission to the privileges of communion to give an account in public of his personal religious experiences; the terms of admission to baptism, though they had been modified, were still strict; and the church (the body of communicants) invited and contracted with a minister, whom the body of worshippers was then compelled to support according to the terms which the church had made. projectors of the "Church in Brattle Square," in a "manifesto or declaration" which the 1699. clamor around induced them to publish, Nov. 17. professed that they "dared not refuse baptism to any child offered by any professed Christian, upon his engagement to see it educated, if God gave life and ability, in the Christian religion. But this being a ministerial act," they thought it "the pastor's province to receive such professions and engagements. . . We judge it fitting and expedient," they continue, "that whoever would be admitted to partake with us in the Holy Sacrament be accountable to the pastor, to whom it belongs to inquire into their knowledge and spiritual state, and to require the renewal of their baptismal covenant.

But we assume not to our