tious and evil conditioned." Endicott was reprimanded by the Company for this stretch of authority, but the complaints of the Brownes were unheeded. "This transaction," as Mr. Bartlett remarks, in his "Pilgrim Fathers," "not merely illustrates the character of Endicott, but exposes the secret principle upon which the new commonwealth was founded, the open avowal of which would have certainly prevented the concession of a royal charter. It was, while nominally subject to the authority of the Church of England, to establish a totally different system, in which all that was really vital to that system, such as its Episcopal government and appointed formularies, should be entirely set aside and no toleration granted to any other form of worship but that agreed upon by themselves. The expulsion of the Brownes was only the first of that series of oppressive actions which ended in the judicial murder of the quakers."
A plan to transfer the charter and the Company from England to the colony itself was next formed, which led to a very important increase in the number and distinction of the emigrants. The principal of these were, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Isaac Johnson, (brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln,) Thomas Dudley, and John Winthrop. Winthrop was chosen governor, and, by his admirable conduct, fully justified the general confidence. He was indeed a noble specimen of the English gentleman—loyal, yet no less firmly bent upon the assertion of public liberty, and, by old association, attached to the Church, which he nevertheless desired to see reformed upon what the Puritans deemed the pure basis of Scripture. The emigrants included many persons of high character, wealth, and learning. Their attachment to the mother country was manifested in a protestation against certain calumnious reports which had gone forth against them, wherein they declare their undying attachment, both to the Church that had nursed them in her bosom, and to the land, from which they were now voluntarily expatriating themselves.[1] The expedition was by far the most important that had ever left the shores of England for the wilds of America, consisting of fifteen ships conveying about a thousand emigrants, among whom were four
- ↑ We quote a striking paragraph from the letter addressed by them to " the rest of their brethren in and of the Church of England." It was dated from Yarmouth, aboard the Arbelia, April 7th, 1630. "We desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our company, as those who esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother; and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes; ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there, but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her; and while we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom of Christ Jesus." They also ask, further on in the letter, of their brethren in England, that they may not be despised nor deserted "in their prayers and affections."—See Hubbard's New England, pp. 126, 7. Consult, also, the famous Dr. Cotton Mather's "Magnolia" vol. i., pp. 74, 5, for some curious and edifying remarks on this letter and its purport.
