of conscience, and for a general governor" from England, was hastily got up amongst several of the non-freemen of Boston and its neighborhood. Only a few signatures to this paper were obtained, probably on account of the risk which the signers ran; one of the most active of their number being put in irons, on the discovery of the affair by the magistrates. Child himself, and some of his fellowmemorialists, were also seized; their papers were examined, and their persons detained in custody until after the ship in which they intended to take passage for England had departed. A copy of their memorial reached London, but was never acted upon. "I have done too much of that work already," Baptists. John Winthrop, the governor for many years, is reported to have said in his last hours, when urged to sign an order of banishment against a believer in a different church than his own, (1649.) But he left others to carry out the austerities from which the approach of death might well recall a human spirit. Within two years, John Clarke, a minister amongst the Baptist exiles of Rhode Island, was arrested while preaching in a house at Lynn, (1651.) "They more uncivilly disturbed us," said he, "than the pursuivants of the old English bishops were wont to do." Imprisoned with some of his fellow-Baptists in Boston, Clarke did not give way, but demanded the opportunity of proving, prisoner as he was, "that no servant of Jesus Christ hath any authority to restrain any fellow-servant in his worship, where no injury is offered to others." The answer of the magistrates was, " Fined twenty pounds, or to be well whipped." One of his comrades escaped with a smaller, fine, but another was whipped, while two persons who showed compassion upon him were themselves arrested and fined. Clarke, after paying his fine, would have sailed to England. But not allowed even to do this, he made his way to New Amsterdam, where he met with humaner treatment, and found the means of crossing the sea. Arrived in England, he published his "Ill News from New England," "wherein is declared, that while old England is becoming new,* New England is becoming old." "The authority there established," he says, "cannot permit men, though of never so civil, sober, and peaceable a spirit and life, freely to enjoy their understandings and consciences, nor yet to live or come among them, unless they can do as they do, and say as they say, or else say nothing; and so may a man live at Rome also," (1652.) Saltonstall's remon strance. Clarke's case appears to have excited attention, notwithstanding the late indifference in relation to Child and his fellow-petitioners. Such as were opposed to the Puritans did not stand alone in condemning their intolerance. One of their own number, an early and a distinguished member of the Massachusetts Company, wrote to the elders, Wilson and Cotton, in terms of sorrowful remonstrance. "It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and persecution in New England, as that you fine, whip, and imprison men for their consciences. These rigid ways have laid you low in the hearts of the saints." Thus wrote Sir Richard Saltonstall, a Puritan, but not a persecutor, a lover of other men's liberty, as well as of his own. Dunster His letter was unheeded. Within a very brief of Har period, the first president of Harvard College, vard Col- Henry Dunster, a clergyman, a scholar, and a lege. true man, was tried, convicted, and obliged to resign his office, on the charge of being a Baptist, (1654.) "The whole transaction of this business," wrote he. “js In the time of the commonwealth. such, which in process of time, when all things come to mature consideration, may very probably create grief on all sides; yours subsequent, as mine antecedent. I am not the man you take me to be." In the following year, (1655,) the corporation of the college appealed to the General Court to pay the amount still due to the deposed president, as well as to allow him something additional," in consideration of his extraordinary pains." But so intemperate was the disposition of the authorities, as to refuse not only the additional grant, but even the actual balance of the president's account. The spirit of wisdom had not yet descended either upon Harvard College or upon the community by which it had been founded. Quakers. A new class of victims appeared. A few unhappy Quakers the more unhappy, if guilty of the fanatical excesses with which they were charged — came to Boston, some of them to brave, all of them to encounter, persecution, (1656.) Brought immediately before the magistrates, they were first contined, and then sent away beyond the limits of the colony. Laws were at once passed, inflicting a fine of one hundred pounds upon any master of a vessel who brought a Quaker with him, and ordering imprisonment and scourging for any Quaker that might appear. This not being deemed enough, a new batch of statutes was prepared within the next two years, (1657–58,) fining the spectator or the worshipper at a Quaker meeting, the host of a Quaker, and threatening the Quaker himself with loss of ears, mutilation of tongue, and, finally, if he returned after being banished, with death. In these horrible enactments, almost all New England, except Rhode Island, coincided. They did not remain dead letters. One of the oldest freemen of the colony, Nicholas Upsall, accused merely of kindness to the persecuted, was banished for three years, and, on his return, was thrown into a two years' imprisonment, (1656-59.) Nor was this the only case of the kind. As for the persecuted themselves, they were fined, imprisoned, scourged, and at length hanged, (1659-60.) Had it not been for the royal commands that these outrages should cease, (1660,) there is no saying how far they might have been carried. As it was, the persecution continued at intervals, until a fresh order came from the king, requiring liberty of faith for all Protestants, (1679.) Witches. The saddest deeds of oppression in Massachusetts are yet to be told. It is explicable that the Puritan authorities should be bitter upon those who opposed their institutions or their creeds. But that they should raise a hue and cry against those who had no thought of opposing them, those against whom no charge could be substantiated but that of feebleness, of age, or of deformity, seems inexplicable. An English law of older date than any existing English colony, (1603,) by which witchcraft was declared a capital crime, found a place amongst the so-called liberties of Massachusetts, (1641.) Some years elapsed before it was enforced, (1656;) nor did it then seem to set so well upon the consciences of the rulers as to make them desirous of keeping it in operation. A later attempt at the same sort of thing in Pennsylvania resulted in the acquittal of the unfortunate object of ill will, (1684.) When all was quiet, and the troubles of witchcraft appeared to have subsided forever, there was a sudden swell. witch, so styled and so condemned, was executed at Boston, (1688.) One victim not being enough, others were soon demanded, and found at Salem village, now Danvers. The magistrates of the colony had thrown a hundred persons into prison, when the governor, Sir William Phips, arrived from England to head the persecution. The lieutenant governor, William Stoughton, presided at the judicial tribunals. A Behind these official personages, several of the elders or ministers, led by Increase and Cotton Mather, father and son, urged on the ferocious pursuit. It lasted eight long months, devouring twenty victims, torturing many others, and threatening a still larger number, when the work of blood was arrested, partly by interference from England, and partly by accusations directed against some of the persecutors themselves, (1693.) "The Lord be merciful to the country," exclaimed Chief Justice Stoughton, on finding that he could sentence no more as guilty of witchcraft. Years later, the letters of Robert Calef, a merchant of Boston, who wrote against the fierce delusion of his neighbors, were burned in the yard of Harvard College by order of the president, Increase Mather, (1700.) Persecu We have lingered long in Massachusetts. It is tion else- there that we find the most striking traces of that where. persecuting spirit of which almost every colony had its share. New England, with one exception, occupied the same ground as its principal colony. New York ordered every Roman Catholic priest voluntarily entering the province to be hanged, (1700.) Protestants were likewise visited with penalties or with restrictions, unless they submitted to the church of England, (1704.) Maryland began by an act which proclaimed death to all who denied the Trinity, and fine, scourging, imprisonment, and banishment, to all who denied "the blessed Virgin Mary or the holy apostles or evangelists," (1649.) Long after, the Roman Catholics becoming, as has been mentioned, the objects of persecution, their public services were forbidden, and their offices as teachers, both private and public, were suspended, (1704.) Of all the colonies, however, none kept nearer to Massachusetts in the race of persecution than Virginia, the colony of the English, as Massachusetts was that of the Puritan church. A few Puritans, who had found a corner |