with respect to his faith and sanctity. The form of worship they instituted was without a liturgy, disencumbered of every superfluous ceremony, and reduced to the most extreme standard of Calvinistic simplicity. The Browns, however, and their friends met as usual on Sunday, and read the service, and offices for the day from the Prayer Book. For this offence they were summoned to appear before the Governor, and answer for their contumelious conduct, and heretical doctrine. At the time appointed they expostulated with their bigoted and arbitrary ruler. They told him they were Episcopalians (as they had believed, when they entered into the association, every other member was); that they thought so wide a departure from the Charter and their oaths, as exhibited by the covenant which they had so recently executed, would lead to the lowest forms of dissent, and eventually terminate in the loss of their patent. At all events, they said, to belong to the National Church was not a criminal act in any part of the King's dominions; that their Charter reserved to them all the rights of British subjects and above all, expressly forbad them from making any law repugnant to those of England.

They were given to understand in very violent language, that they were not in Europe, but in “America, and that though they might be right as to its not being illegal to profess the doctrine of the

establishment, yet creating divisions (which separation did) was a serious offence, and very dangerous in its tendency. They were accordingly sentenced to close confinement, and to be transported back to London by the first vessel. While their persons were thus secured, their desks were forced, and their letters to their private friends abstracted, for the purpose "of preventing the reputation of the colony from being injured." Bancroft, their devoted admirer and apologist, thus condenses the reasons of the colonists for this persecution.* "Should the emigrants give up the very purpose for which they had crossed the Atlantic? should hierarchy intrude upon their devotions in the forests of Massachusetts? They deemed the co-existence of prelacy and their liberty impossible. Anticipating an invasion of their rights, they feared the adherents of the establishment, as spies in the camp, and the form of religion from which they had suffered was repelled, not as a sect but as a tyranny. They were banished from Salem because they were Churchmen. Thus was Episcopacy first professed in New England, and thus was it exiled."

On their release in their native country, the Browns remonstrated bitterly against the perversion of the Charter by so gross an outrage committed on themselves. The company, with a caution and

* "History of the United States," vol. 11. p. 349.

adroitness that never forsook them, and ever after formed their most striking characteristic, stifled the complaint by having it referred to arbitration, and escaped animadversion by withdrawing it from public discussion.* The Browns found in the course of these proceedings the whole aspect of affairs changed. Many of the original shareholders had sold out or lost their interest in the speculation. Everything was managed with such secrecy by a few influential members, that it was manifest some very serious and dangerous plot was in agitation, and they quitted the company in disgust. Their suspicions were soon justified, by one of the most singular events in the history of England, and by far the most important one in that of America, the fraudulent and clandestine removal of the Charter to Massachusetts.

We have seen how the King and the Church were duped as to the real objects of the association. The merchant adventurers were equally deluded. Their contributions were spent in founding a colony; no trade was ever carried on for their joint account, or ever intended to be, and at the end of seven years the partnership was closed and no dividend whatever declared, or any compensation made to the unfortunate absentees by those who had pos

* Hutchinson says the result of this reference is not known.

sessed themselves of the whole property.

The

repeated instances of duplicity in which they had succeeded, paved the way for the seizure of the patent, an act that surpassed them all in boldness of design and dexterity of execution. Several persons of station and means attached to the party who, as it has been well observed, "feared more than they suffered," privately tampered with the governor, Mr. Craddock, and offered to emigrate with their families provided the Charter could be removed with them. With this important instrument in their hands, three thousand miles away from the Star Chamber and visitorial power of the King, they said they would feel secure from intrusion. Craddock knowing how much better their affairs would be managed by a local administration, fell into their views, and at a meeting at the general court in London, in 1629, proposed to the board "for the advancing the plantations, for the inducing of persons of wealth and quality to remove thither, and for other weighty reasons, to transfer the government to those who shall inhabit them, and to continue no longer the same subordination to the company here."

Such an extraordinary proposition naturally led to a warm debate. Those who were not in the plot were taken by surprise, and argued the point as if it had not been predetermined upon.* They

* Hutchinson (vol. 1, p. 18) says, "It is evident from the Charter, that the original design of it was, to constitute a

said their Charter, like those of all other trading associations, and especially like that of the East India Company, was intended to be kept, and its officers to meet, in England; that to remove it would be utterly useless, for it was not a constitution, but a corporation, and wholly inapplicable to the purposes of a civil government, which it never contemplated; that it contained no provision for a judicature, or executive body, or a legislature; that a whole people, though freemen, could not assemble four times a year, and there was no power of delegation given to them; but above all that it was a flagrant act of usurpation, and a daring attempt to infringe upon the King's rights. The conspirators affected to be strongly impressed with these powerful reasons, and said there was so much

corporation in England like to that of the East India and other great companies, with power to settle plantations within the limits of the territory, under such forms of government, and magistracy, as should be fit and necessary." Bancroft (Hist. vol. 1. p. 384), speaking of Sir Harry Vane, says, "His clear mind, unbiassed by previous discussions, and fresh from the public business of England, saw distinctly what the colonists did not wish to see, the really wide difference between the practice under their Charter, and the meaning of the instrument on the principles of English jurisprudence." Kent and Story are of the same opinion, and so is Robertson. See his "History of America," vol. iv, p. 282. Indeed the only wonder is, that any person could be found to think it even admitted of a doubt.