[528] I am unable to suggest any explanation of the allusions contained in this chapter. There is no apparent clew either to the “zealous Professor” whose conscience did not permit him to cut tombstones, or to the “gentleman newly come into the land,” who “incurred the displeasure” of Governor Winthrop and was degraded.
[529] “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
[530] “Antonomasia (Rhet.). The use of the name of some office, dignity, profession, science or trade, instead of the proper name of the person; as where his majesty is used for a king, or his lordship for a nobleman, or when, instead of Aristotle, we say the philosopher; or, conversely, the use of a proper name instead of an appellative, as where a wise man is called a Cato, or an eminent orator a Cicero, the application being supported by a resemblance in character.” (Webster.)
[531] The phrase “them that are without [the church]” calls for no explanation. It was common in early New England, and both Lyford and Bradford are found using it (Bradford, pp. 184, 187) exactly as Morton uses it, who probably picked it up at Plymouth.
[532] Innocence Fairecloath is the name under which Morton alludes to Philip Ratcliff. This man was a servant or agent of Governor Matthew Cradock. He got into trouble with Endicott and the members of the Salem church, and, according to Winthrop, “being convict, ore tenus, of most foul, scandalous invectives against our churches and government, was censured to be whipped, lose his ears, and be banished the plantation, which was presently executed.” (p. *56.) Another authority speaks of the offence as a “most horible blasphemy.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 323.) In the Records of Massachusetts (p. 88), under date of June 14 (24 N. S.), 1631, the sentence read as follows: “It is ordered, that Philip Ratcliffe shall be whipped, have his ears cut off, fined 40 l., and banished out of the limits of this jurisdiction, for uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the government and the church of Salem, &c., as appeareth by a particular thereof, proved upon oath.” The severity of this sentence caused much scandal in England after Ratcliff returned there, and in April of the next year Edward Howes wrote out to John Winthrop, Jr.: “I have heard diverse complaints against the severitie of your Government especially Mr. Indicutts, and that he shalbe sent for over, about cuttinge off the Lunatick mans eares, and other grievances.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix. p. 244.) In regard to Ratcliff’s subsequent connection with the Gorges-Mason attacks on the company before the Privy Council, see supra, [50-2], [62], and Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xx., January meeting, 1883.
[533] See supra [304], note 2.
[534] The first two deacons of the church at Charlestown were Robert Hale and Ralph Monsall. The Charlestown church, however, was not organized until November, 1632, sixteen months after Ratcliff’s punishment. (Budington’s First Church of Charlestown, pp. 31, 34.)
The Boston church in June, 1631, had but one deacon, William Aspinwall (Ellis’s First Church of Boston, p. 328), in regard to whom there is a detailed note in Savage’s Winthrop (p. *32). He was the deacon of the Charlestown church at the time Morton was arraigned and punished, and it is possible that Morton refers to him as Shackles. Aspinwall was a man of prominence in the settlement; but it must be remembered that, thirteen years later, “two of our ministers’ sons, being students in the college, robbed two dwelling-houses in the night of some pounds. Being found out, they were ordered by the gouvernours of the college to be there whipped, which was performed by the president himself—yet they were about 20 years of age.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *166.) If the president of the college could officiate at the whipping-post in 1644, in a case of what Winthrop calls “burglary,” there seems no good reason why the deacon of the church should not have officiated there in 1631 in a case which the same authority calls “foul, scandalous invectives against our churches.”
[536] The character of the New Canaan as a political pamphlet of the time, intended to effect a given result in a particular quarter, has already been referred to. (Supra, pp. [68-9].) In this respect the present chapter is the most significant one in the book. It was intended to act on the well-known prejudices of Archbishop Laud, the head and controlling spirit of that Board of Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations which then had supreme authority over the colonies. To that Board Morton dedicated his book; and at the time he was writing it the Lords Commissioners, and especially the Archbishop, were taking active measures to vacate the Massachusetts charter and to assume the direct government of the colonies. It is its connection with these facts which alone gives any great degree of historical value to the present chapter. In itself it is not deserving of careful annotation, as it contains nothing that is new, and the ground is much better covered by Lechford in his Plaine Dealing. Like Morton, Lechford was a lawyer; and, unlike Morton, he was by nature a devout man. A member of the Church of England he has given in his book a remarkably vivid and fair-minded description of the practice of the New England churches during the earliest days of the settlement. Mr. Trumbull’s very learned and elaborate notes to his edition of the Plaine Dealing, which is the edition referred to in the notes to the present chapter, have cleared up Lechford’s text wherever it is obscure; and they obviate the necessity of any careful annotation of the present chapter, except where it is desirable to call notice to the special bearing any particular assertion made may be supposed to have had on Archbishop Laud’s idiosyncrasies.