VII. departure, were freely urged against them; charges to CHAPTER which Morton gave a new impulse by the publication of his "New English Canaan." 1632. In virtue of the extensive authority conferred upon them at the first General Court, the magistrates had exercised on several occasions the power of levying taxes. They voted in these cases a gross sum, apportioned to the towns according to their estimated ability, leaving each town to assess and collect its separate proportion-the same method still followed in New England. Two such rates, one for a creek or canal from Charles River to Newtown, which it was still proposed to make the capital of the colony, the other for fortifying that town by a palisade, had occasioned some opposition. The people of Watertown resolved that it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and their posterity into bondage." For this resistance to authority, Feb. they were had up before the magistrates, and were oblig ed to retract; but the next General Court took the mat- May 9. ter in hand, and an order was made for two deputies to be chosen from each plantation, to confer with the magistrates "about raising a common stock." The tenure of office, on the part of the assistants, was expressly limited by this court to one year. The choice of governor and deputy governor was also reassumed by the freemen, but it was agreed that they should always be chosen from among the magistrates. In the exercise of the rights thus vindicated, the freemen were very moderate. was little of change or rotation in the board of magistrates; persons once chosen to it were never left out but for some extraordinary cause. The seats at that board, which, notwithstanding the charter number of eighteen, never exceeded eight or ten, were held by a few leading per, sons, conspicuous for wealth and godliness, who remain There CHAPTER ed substantially magistrates for life, with the important VII. check, however, that they might at any time be left out 1632. by the freemen. The proposed capital at Newtown was 1633. presently abandoned; Boston was agreed to be the "fittest place for public meetings of any in the bay," and a fort and house of correction were ordered to be built there. The next year, the fourth since the great migration, several hundred settlers arrived; among them, John Haynes, "a gentleman of great estate," and those godly ministers, Cotton, Hooker, and Stone. Cotton became colleague with Wilson over the Boston church. Hooker and Stone settled at Newtown, where a church was presently constituted, over which they were placed. A new church had been gathered at Charlestown, and another at Roxbury, of which Eliot became teacher, and Welde pastor. This influx of immigrants caused an increased demand for labor, and led the magistrates to renew an experiment they had once tried already of regulating the rate of wages. Carpenters, masons, and other mechanics were to have two shillings-forty-eight cents-per day, and find their own diet; ordinary workmen one and sixpence, or thirty-two cents. The workmen, thus restricted, raised an outcry at the excessive cost of imported goods; and the magistrates, at their next session, limited prices at an advance of one third on the cost of importation. Corn at this time was six shillings-near a dollar and a half-per bushel, at which rate it was a tender in payment of debts; but it soon sunk to three or four shillings. These attempts to regulate wages, though not very successful, were long persevered in; but it was presently left to the towns to fix the rates. The traders were less manageable than the laborers, and the attempt to limit the price of goods was early abandoned. VII. As a terror to idlers, the constables, by another enact- CHAPTER ment of this court, were ordered to present all "common coasters, unprofitable fowlers and tobacco-takers"-one 1633. of many ineffectual attempts to restrain the use of tobacco. Equally vain were the endeavors of subsequent courts to limit the excessive use of other luxuries in food and apparel. Disappointed in the success of its legisla tion on these points, the court appealed to the elders for aid. Little, however, was done about it, "divers of the elders' wives," as Winthrop informs us, "being in some measure partners in this disorder."` By order of court, a market was set up at Boston, to 1634. be kept on Thursday, the weekly lecture-day for that March. town. Samuel Cole set up the first house of common entertainment, and John Cogan, merchant, the first shop. The narrow limits of the peninsula no longer sufficed for this growing capital. The inhabitants already had farms in what is now Brookline, and a year afterward they "had enlargement" at Rumney Marsh, now Chelsea, and also at Mount Wollaston. But this latter plantation was soon made a separate town, and called Braintree. The small-pox having broken out among the Indians of New England, it spread from tribe to tribe, and committed great ravages. The petty tribes in the immediate vicinity of Massachusetts Bay, the small remains left by former pestilences, were now almost exterminated by it. Much trouble had been experienced from the trespasses of swine on cultivated grounds. After several ineffectual regulations made by the magistrates, a new and harsher one, which authorized the killing of trespassing animals, occasioned a ferment, which led to an important constitutional change. Two delegates chosen April. by each town met, and requested a sight of the charter; VII. CHAPTER upon an examination of which, they concluded that the legislative authority rested not with the magistrates, but 1634. with the freemen. On that point they asked the governor's opinion, who replied, that when the patent was granted, it was supposed the freemen would be so few, as in other like corporations, that all might well join in making laws; but now they were grown so great a body, that was impossible, and they must choose others for that purpose. Yet the whole number of freemen admitted since the transfer of the charter, including those made at the next court, was but a few more than three hundred, and the "great body" which the governor esteemed too unwieldy for legislation did not exceed the present ordinary number of the Massachusetts Legislature. In the governor's opinion," the commons" were not yet furnished with a body of men adequate to the duties of legislation; he proposed, however, the appointment of a certain number yearly, not to make laws, but to prefer grievances to the Court of Assistants, whose consent might also be required to all assessments of money and grants of lands. The freemen were not to be satisfied with any such May 14. restricted power; and when the General Court met, that body claimed for itself, under the charter, the admission of freemen, the choosing of all principal officers, the making of laws, granting lands, raising money, and the revision, by way of appeal, of all civil and criminal procedures. By the terms of the charter, four General Courts were to be held in a year. It was arranged, however, that while all the freemen assembled annually for the choice of officers, they should be represented in the other three courts by a body of delegates elected by the towns, "to deal on their behalf in the public affairs of the Commonwealth," and for that purpose "to have derived to them the full voice and power of all the said CHAPTER freemen." VII. This political revolution was naturally followed by a 1634. change in the head of the government, though some ef fort was made to prevent it. Previous to the election a sermon was preached to the assembled freemen, a usage still perpetuated in the annual sermon before the General Court of Massachusetts. Cotton, the new minister of Boston, delivered on that occasion this doctrine, that a magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause, and a public trial on specific charges, "no more than the magistrates may not turn a private man out of his freehold without like public trial." This sermon, however, did not prevent the freemen from electing Deputy-governor Dudley into Winthrop's place. A jealousy between these two rival chiefs, which had already displayed itself on several occasions, recommended Dudley as the successor of Winthrop, though he was not a whit more moderate in his notions of magisterial authority, and was naturally of a much harsher and more exacting disposition. Dudley's place as deputy was filled by Ludlow. Yet Cotton's sermon was not entirely thrown away. Winthrop was still retained as an assistant, as were all his colleagues. Some of them "were questioned for some errors in their government," and some fines were imposed; but these were remitted before the court broke up. The ex-governor was a good deal mortified at being called upon for a statement of his accounts, which he seemed to regard, very unnecessarily, as a reflection on his integrity. This statement, promptly rendered and placed upon record at the ex-governor's request, showed Winthrop to have been a considerable loser by his office. During the continuance of the first charter, the station |