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before him in his hall, where was a great assembly, and CHAPTER there laid before them their contemptuous carriage toward us, and their obstinacy against all the fair means 1643. and moderation we had used to reform them and bring them to do right, and how the Lord had now justly delivered them into our hands." "They pleaded in their excuse that they were not of our jurisdiction, and that, though they had now yielded themselves to come and answer before us, yet they yielded not as prisoners.' governor replied that they were brought to him as taken in war; but if they could plead any other quarter or agreement, we must and would perform it"-" to which," says Winthrop, "they made no answer." "So the governor committed them to the marshal to convey to the common prison, and gave order that they should be well provided for both for lodging and diet. Then he went forth again with the captain, and the soldiers gave him three volleys of shot, and so departed to the inn, where the governor had appointed some refreshing to be provided for them above their wages." These wages were ten shillings, or near two dollars and a half a week, the soldiers to victual themselves" very liberal," says Winthrop, "as is needful in such commonwealths as desire to be served by volunteers." The Sunday after their arrival, having refused to attend the forenoon public service, the magistrates determined that in the afternoon they should be compelled. They agreed, however, to go without force, "so they might have liberty, after sermon, to speak if they had occasion." "The magistrates' answer was, that they did leave the ordering of things in the church to the elders, but there was no doubt but they might have leave to speak, so as they spake the words of truth and sobriety." The prisoners accordingly came to the afternoon service, and were "placed in the fourth

CHAPTER seat, right before the elders." "Mr. Cotton, in his ordiX. nary text, taught out of Acts, xix., of Demetrius pleading 1643. for Diana's silver shrines." "After sermon, Gorton de

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sired leave to speak, which being granted, he repeated the points of Mr. Cotton's sermon, and, coming to that of the silver shrines, he said, that in the church there was nothing now but Christ, so that all the ordinances, ministers, sacraments, &c., were but men's inventions for pomp and show, and no other than those silver shrines. of Diana." He held, also, "that Christ was incarnate in Adam, and was the image of God wherein Adam was created." Another of his doctrines was, "that the only heaven is in the hearts of the good, and the only hell in the hearts of the wicked."

When the General Court came together, the prisoners were subjected to a long inquisitorial examination, and put on trial for their lives, on the charge of being "blasphemous enemies of true religion and civil government, particularly within this jurisdiction." Gorton made an ingenious defense, giving a symbolical and transcendental interpretation to his more offensive expressions; but this did not avail. Seven of the prisoners were found guilty, Gorton included; four others were discharged, two of them "on a small ransom, as prisoners taken in war." A majority of the magistrates were zealous for putting Gorton to death; but the deputies dissented. The sentence agreed upon was the separate confinement of the seven culprits, in seven different towns, there to be kept at hard labor, in irons, under pain of death if by speech or writing they attempted to publish or maintain any of their "blasphemous and abominable heresies." Their cattle, to the number of eighty, were seized to pay the expenses of their arrest and trial, assessed at £160. Notwithstanding the threat of death hanging over their heads, it was

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soon found that these stubborn enthusiasts were making CHAPTER converts, especially among the women. They were therefore ordered, at the next court, to depart out of the 1644. jurisdiction within fourteen days, and not to return ei- March. ther to Massachusetts or Shawomet under pain of death.

Having obtained from the Narraganset sachems, upon April 19. whose spirits the death of Miantonimoh lay heavy, a deed submitting themselves and their country to the king, Gorton sailed from Manhattan for England, there to seek redress. His mystic eloquence recommended him to some among the Independents; and though the Presbyterian clergy endeavored to stop him as not being "a university man," he was duly recognized as a "minister of the Gospel," and preached as such in London and elsewhere. These high-handed proceedings on the part of Massachusetts have been much misrepresented by most New England historians, who have overwhelmed Gorton with all sorts of reproaches. The account here given, extracted from Winthrop's journal, can hardly be suspected of undue partiality to the sufferers.

We have formerly seen an important political revolution in Massachusetts brought about by the laws in relation to stray swine. A particular case under those laws led now to a modification in the form of the General Court. Robert Kean, brother-in-law of Dudley, a leading Boston merchant and church member, captain of the "ancient and honorable artillery," an aristocratic corps recently instituted, had been sued by a poor woman for having killed and appropriated her stray pig. She was instigated to this suit, according to Winthrop, by one Story, a young London merchant, who lodged in her house, and whom Kean had caused to be summoned before the magistrates as "living under suspicion." Kean cast the woman in costs, and, becoming plaintiff in his

CHAPTER turn, had recovered twenty pounds in a suit for slander X. against her and Story. But Story was not so easily to

1643. be put down; he "searcheth town and country to find matter against Captain Kean about this stray sow ;" and, having got one of Kean's witnesses to confess that he had 1642. sworn falsely, he petitioned the General Court for a reMay. hearing. hearing. Kean was of "ill report" in the country on account of his "hard dealings" in the way of trade, for which he had been fined at a previous court, and censured by the church. In this state of public sentiment. against him, the petition for a re-hearing was favorably entertained. After a seven days' trial, two of the magistrates and fifteen of the deputies pronounced an opinion in favor of reversing the former decision, while seven magistrates and eight deputies went for sustaining it. This result, as it prevented any decision, raised a fresh outcry against the negative voice of the assistants, to appease which the governor and magistrates published a "True State of the Case," to which, however, Story put out a "Counter Statement." An "Answer" to this counter statement was presently drawn up, and the whole matter was discussed at a meeting of elders, magistrates, and deputies, at which a reconciliation was attempted. The two dissentient magistrates were Bellingham and Saltonstall, the latter of whom had not yet forgotten the affair of his treatise against the Standing Council. By the ef forts of the elders he was now reconciled to Winthrop, 1643. but Bellingham stood out. At the next court Story May.

presented a new petition for a re-hearing, and the whole quarrel threatened to revive. The suit was finally compromised by Kean's releasing the damages he had recovered; but the discussion about the assistants' negative continued, and the deputies generally were very earnest against it. Winthrop wrote a tract in its favor, and

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when that tract was replied to, he put out a rejoinder CHAPTER to the reply. One of the elders, in a small treatise, "handled the question scholastically and religiously, lay- 1644. ing down the several forms of government, both simple and mixed, and the true form of our government, and the unavoidable change into a democracy if the negative voice were taken away." The magistrates, with much ado, so far carried their point as to succeed in retaining their negative, and they sat thenceforward as a separate house; March. but it was agreed that when the two houses differed in the decision of suits, the majority of the whole court should decide.

Razzillai, late governor of Acadie for the Company of New France, had been succeeded in that office by D'Aulney de Charnisé, known in New England as M. D'Aulney. Besides La Hâve and Port Royal, D'Aulney occupied the trading post on the Penobscot, formerly captured from the Plymouth people, where he established, also, a Franciscan mission for the conversion of the Indians. But he had a rival and an enemy in La Tour, whose father, a Huguenot, had been one of the earliest French adventurers in Acadie. Taken prisoner by Kirk, whose invasion of Acadie has been formerly mentioned, the elder La Tour had agreed to assist in reducing Nova Scotia, and had been made a baronet of that province by Sir William Alexander, receiving at the same time a large grant of territory. La Tour, the son, who professed to be a Catholic, had declined to enter into his father's schemes; but, besides the posts which he held under French grants, he inherited, also, his father's Nova Scotia claims-invalid, indeed, under the cession of Nova Scotia to France, but sufficient groundwork for a claim on the part of La Tour to good will and assistance from the English colonists. The quarrel between La Tour

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