Such words had never been heard in Massachusetts. The saints were aghast. Winthrop speaks of the offence as “being in nature capital,” and Johnson thought the Lord’s gracious goodness alone quelled this malice against his people.

Of course no mercy was shown. It is true that the writings were lawful petitions by English subjects to Parliament; that, moreover, they had never been published, but were found in a private room by means of a despotic search. Several of the signers were imprisoned for six months and then were punished in May:—

Doctor Childe, (imprisonment till paid,) £200
John Smith, “ “ “ 100
John Dand, “ “ “ 200
Tho. Burton, “ “ “ 100
Samuel Maverick, for his offence in being party
to ye conspiracy, (imprisonment
till paid,) 100
Samuel Maverick, for his offence in breaking his
oath and in appealing against ye
intent of his oath of a freeman, 50
[Footnote: Mass. Rec. iii, 113. May 26, 1647. £200 was the equivalent
of about $5,000.]

The conspirators of the poorer class were treated with scant ceremony. A carpenter named Joy was in Dand’s study when the officers entered. He asked if the warrant was in the king’s name. “He was laid hold on, and kept in irons about four or five days, and then he humbled himself...for meddling in matters belonging not to him, and blessed God for these irons upon his legs, hoping they should do him good while he lived.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 294.]

But though the government could oppress the men, they could not make their principles unpopular, and the next December after Vassal and his friends had left the colony, the orthodox Samuel Symonds of Ipswich wrote mournfully to Winthrop: “I am informed that coppies of the petition are spreading here, and divers (specially young men and women) are taken with it, and are apt to wonder why such men should be troubled that speake as they doe: not being able suddenly to discerne the poyson in the sweet wine, nor the fire wrapped up in the straw.” [Footnote: Felt’s Eccl. Hist. i. 593.] The petitioners, however, never found redress. Edward Winslow had been sent to London as agent, and in 1648 he was able to write that their “hopes and endeavours ... had been blasted by the special providence of the Lord who still wrought for us.” And Winthrop piously adds: “As for those who went over to procure us trouble, God met with them all. Mr. Vassall, finding no entertainment for his petitions, went to Barbadoes,” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 321.] ... “God had brought” Thomas Fowle “very low, both in his estate and in his reputation, since he joined in the first petition.” And “God had so blasted” Childe’s “estate as he was quite broken.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 322.]

Maverick remained some years in Boston, being probably unable to abandon his property; during this interval he made several efforts to have his fine remitted, and he did finally secure an abatement of one half. He then went to England and long afterward came back as a royal commissioner to try his fortune once again in a contest with the theocracy.

Dr. Palfrey has described this movement as a plot to introduce a direct government by England by inducing Parliament to establish Presbyterianism. By other than theological reasoning this inference cannot be deduced from the evidence. All that is certainly known about the leaders is that they were not of any one denomination. Maverick was an Episcopalian; Vassal was probably an Independent like Cromwell or Milton; and though the elders accused Childe of being a Jesuit, there is some ground to suppose that he inclined toward Geneva. So far as the testimony goes, everything tends to prove that the petitioners were perfectly sincere in their effort to gain some small measure of civil and religious liberty for themselves and for the disfranchised majority.

Viewed from the standpoint of history and not of prejudice, the events of these early years present themselves in a striking and unmistakable sequence.

They are the phenomena that regularly attend a certain stage of human development,—the absorption of power by an aristocracy. The clergy’s rule was rigid, and met with resistance, which was crushed with an iron hand. Was it defection from their own ranks, the deserters met the fate of Wheelwright, of Williams, of Cotton, or of Hubbert; were politicians contumacious, they were defeated or exiled, like Vane, or Aspinwall, or Coddington; were citizens discontented, they were coerced like Maverick and Childe. The process had been uninterrupted alike in church and state. The congregations, which in theory should have included all the inhabitants of the towns, had shrunk until they contained only a third or a quarter of the people; while the churches themselves, which were supposed to be independent of external interference and to regulate their affairs by the will of the majority, had become little more than the chattels of the priests, and subject to the control of the magistrates who were their representatives. This system has generally prevailed; in like manner the Inquisition made use of the secular arm. The condition of ecclesiastical affairs is thus described by the highest living authority on Congregationalism:—

“Our fathers laid it down—and with perfect truth—that the will of Christ, and not the will of the major or minor part of a church, ought to govern that church. But somebody must interpret that will. And they quietly assumed that Christ would reveal his will to the elders, but would not reveal it to the church-members; so that when there arose a difference of opinion as to what the Master’s will might be touching any particular matter, the judgment of the elders, rather than the judgment even of a majority of the membership, must be taken as conclusive. To all intents and purposes, then, this was precisely the aristocracy which they affirmed that it was not. For the elders were to order business in the assurance that every truly humble and sincere member would consent thereto. If any did not consent, and after patient debate remained of another judgment, he was ‘partial’ and ‘factious,’ and continuing ‘obstinate,’ he was ‘admonished’ and his vote ‘nullified;’ so that the elders could have their way in the end by merely adding the insult of the apparent but illusive offer of cooperation to the injury of their absolute control. As Samuel Stone of Hartford no more tersely than truly put it, this kind of Congregationalism was simply a ‘speaking Aristocracy in the face of a silent Democracy.’” [Footnote: Early New England Congregationalism, as seen in its Literature, p. 429. Dr. Dexter.]