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CHAPTER reduced him. Bellingham, however, was rechosen a X. magistrate, and was sitting on the bench as such when 1642. the indictment which the grand jury had found against

him for violation of the publishment law came up for trial. He did not leave the bench; and, as but one or two other magistrates were present, the secretary, not thinking it proper that he should sit on the trial of his own case, passed it by; and so the matter seems to have dropped.

Dudley was so much mortified at the repeated preferences given to Winthrop as governor, that he threatened to leave the colony, and was with great difficulty prevailed on to retain his place as a magistrate. The spirit of emigration, coeval with the planting of New England, and parallel with its growth, had received a new impulse from the late decline in the value of property. Undeterred by the "meager, unhealthful countenances" of Virginia and the West Indies, many were so taken with the supposed ease and plenty of those countries as to propose removing thither. Migration to Long Island was already begun, of which we shall have occasion to speak further in another chapter. Thomas Mayhew having purchased Martha's Vineyard of an agent of Lord Sterling, presently, with a colony from Watertown, com1643. menced a settlement there. Lord Say was engaged in a new project for a colony at New Providence, one of the Bahamas; he also had a settlement on foot at Trinidad; and some people of Massachusetts, through the importunities of Humphrey, his agent, were persuaded to remove thither. It was vainly attempted to quiet Humphrey by choosing him major general of the Massachusetts militia, an office he was the first to hold.

Jealous of these migrations, Winthrop wrote to Lord Say, showing him "how evident it was that God had

X.

chosen New England to plant his people in, and there- CHAPTER fore how displeasing it would be to the Lord, and dangerous to himself, to hinder this work." The Spaniards, 1642. who claimed the Bahamas, attacked New Providence, and the settlement was broken up. Nor did that at Trinidad succeed any better. "Much disputation there was," says the patriotic Winthrop, "about liberty of removing for outward advantages, and all ways were sought for an open door to get out at; but it is to be feared many crept out at a broken wall. For such as come together into a wilderness where are nothing but wild beasts and beast-like men, and there confederate together in civil and church estate, whereby they do, implicitly at least, bind themselves to support each other, and that society, whether civil or sacred, of which they are members, how they can break from this without free consent is hard to find, so as may satisfy a tender or good conscience in time of trial." To remain in Massachusetts was to submit, however, to a pretty strict regimen, of which some curious instances presently appeared. The young Richard Saltonstall, lately elected a magistrate, had written a treatise against the Standing Council for Life, which he had delivered to Hathorne, a sort of leader of the deputies, to lay before the General Court. Hathorne, with the fate of Stoughton before him, hesitated to do it. The existence of this treatise presently leaked out, and an order was passed to bring it into court. Some passages appeared to Winthrop "very offensive and unwarrantable ;" yet the deputies resisted all attempts to censure the author. He was very roughly answered, however, in two counter treatises, one by Dudley, the other by one of the ministers. The elders, to whom Saltonstall's book was referred by the General Court, made an elaborate report upon it, lenient, indeed,

But

CHAPTER toward Saltonstall, but justifying the Council for Life against his censures.

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1642.

Briscoe, "a rich man, a tanner," but not a church member, and, of course, not a freeman, who "published underhand" a treatise against taxation for the support of the ministers, did not escape so easily. He was fined ten pounds, and one of the publishers forty shillings.

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A transaction, some two or three years afterward, in which Saltonstall was concerned, has been magnified by too precipitate an admiration into a protest on the part of Massachusetts against the African slave trade. So far, however, from any such protest being made, at the very birth of the foreign commerce of New England the African slave trade became a regular business. The ships which took cargoes of staves and fish to Madeira and the Canaries were accustomed to touch on the coast of Guinea "to trade for negroes," who were carried generally to Barbadoes or the other English islands in the West Indies, the demand for them at home being but small. In the case above referred to, instead of buying negroes in the regular course of traffic, which, under a fundamental law of Massachusetts already quoted, would have been perfectly legal, the crew of a Boston ship joined with some London vessels on the coast, and, on pretense of some quarrel with the natives, landed a "murderer"-the expressive name of a small piece of cannon-attacked a negro village on Sunday, killed many of the inhabitants, and made a few prisoners, two of whom fell to the share of the Boston ship. In the course 1645. of a lawsuit between the master, mate, and owners, all

this story came out, and Saltonstall, who sat as one of the magistrates, thereupon presented a petition to the court, in which he charged the master and mate with a threefold offense, murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath

X.

breaking; the two first capital by the fundamental laws CHAPTER of Massachusetts, and all of them "capital by the law of God." The magistrates doubted their authority to pun- 1642. ish crimes committed on the coast of Africa; but they ordered the negroes to be sent back, as having been procured not honestly by purchase, but unlawfully by kidnapping.

Ever since the termination of the Pequod war New England had been disturbed by rumors of Indian hostilities. An opinion, indeed, had gained ground, current at the same time in Virginia, that the Indians were of the "cursed race of Ham," fit only to be rooted out. This cruel opinion had been reprobated in a joint letter, addressed to the General Court of Massachusetts by the 1640. magistrates of Connecticut, New Haven, and Aquiday, in which it was recommended to gain over the Indians by justice and kindness. To these humane sentiments the General Court of Massachusetts had responded; but they refused to include the magistrates of Aquiday in their answer, or to have any intercourse with such schismatics. Presently new reports began to spread—propagated, it seems probable, by Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, a restless chief, very jealous of his Narraganset neighbors-rumors which so wrought upon the magistrates of Connecticut that they sent to invite 1642 Massachusetts to join with them in a sudden attack on Sept. the Indians. By way of precaution, the magistrates of Massachusetts ordered Cutshamikin, the principal sachem in the neighborhood of Boston, to be arrested and disarmed. Passaconaway, on the Merrimac, was also called upon to deliver up his guns, which he did readily, notwithstanding some violence and insults to his family on the part of the messengers, for which the magistrates ordered an apology to be made. Miantonimoh, the Nar

CHAPTER raganset chief, being sent for, came freely to Boston ; X. and the General Court, convinced that the charges 1642. against him were false, refused to take up arms. Miantonimoh demanded justice on his false accusers, but was obliged to promise not to make war on Uncas without first obtaining permission to do so. A law was passed on occasion of this alarm, requiring all the towns to keep themselves provided with powder-the origin of those powder-houses, perched on some lonely hill, which formed, in past years, marked objects in the New England landscape.

1643.

Meanwhile letters arrived from several lords, commoners, and ministers in England, "who stood for the independency of the churches," addressed to Cotton of Boston, Hooker of Hartford, and Davenport of New Haven, inviting them to come over and assist in the famous Assembly of Divines, then about to meet at Westminster. Cotton "apprehended greatly a call of God in it." So did Davenport; but his church could not spare him. Hooker thought it not worth while to go so far to be in a small minority, since it was evident that Presbyterianism on the Scotch model was chiefly in favor with the English Puritans. Letters bringing accounts of the breach between the king and the Parliament, and presently of the commencement of the civil war, caused a final relinquishment of the idea of going.

Applications also came to Massachusetts from Barbadoes, the Leeward Islands, and Virginia, to furnish those colonies with faithful ministers; and, in the case of Virginia, as we shall presently see, this call was not disregarded. The West Indies, being much infested by "Familists"-enthusiasts, that is, of the Hutchinsonian species did not seem to present so promising a field. At the next Court of Elections, notwithstanding a

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