[658]. The Court that passed the sentences was composed of the magistrates only.
[659]. Palfrey's far-fetched theory, that the whole affair was engineered by Clark in order to acquire a grievance to be used in England later, has no foundation whatever in any contemporary conjecture, and in any case would not alter in the slightest the facts so far as Massachusetts is concerned. It is of interest only as showing to what lengths that colony's clerical historians have gone in their efforts to defend in New England everything which they condemn in old England, and to treat the Massachusetts settlers as saints instead of very human Englishmen of the seventeenth century. Palfrey, History, vol. II, pp. 350, 354.
[660]. Cf. Chap. VII, supra.
[661]. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. II, pp. 127 ff.; Backus, Baptists, vol. I, pp. 198 f.
[662]. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. II, pp. 131 f.
[663]. Walker, Creeds, pp. 244 ff.
[664]. For example, Francis Higginson, Thomas Welde, Samuel Eaton, Christopher Marshall. Jones, Quakers, p. 29.
[665]. George Bishop, New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord (London, 1703), p. 2.
[666]. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 269.
[667]. Bishop, New England Judged, pp. 4 f., 12; Swarthmore Collection, vol. I, p. 66, cited in Jones, Quakers, p. 28 n. One of the curious elements in the psychology of the Puritans was their morbid interest in the most indecent sexual matters. One may find the details of a similar physical examination set forth by Winthrop, and the pages of his journal, as those of Bradford, the records of colonies and towns, the letters of clergymen, etc., all contain minute accounts of matters which to-day would find their place only in a limited class of medical textbooks.