[60] The regulation regarding churches was needful to supplement the restriction of the franchise to church members (No. 63 (4)).
[61] Presumably Winthrop and Cotton, who had stayed at Newtown for the Court.
[62] Observe the plain threat, cloaked in this language, that the colony would rebel rather than surrender its charter. The real leaders of revolt would have been, not "the common people," but Winthrop and his friends, who drew up this paper.
[63] For a brief history of this proceeding, cf. American History and Government, § 81. The code was established in 1641. See No. 78, below.
[64] This law shows that in 1641 the two orders of the Assembly had come to sit by themselves frequently. For the final separation, see No. 80.
[65] The "peremptory challenge" of the Plymouth Code does not appear here.
[66] Cf. No. 65 (8).
[67] These terms are relative. Winthrop describes, after this date, the cruel flogging of a woman for a matter of opinion, and says that she had her tongue put in "a cleft stick" for half an hour, for "abusing" the magistrates who punished her.
[68] This is a protest against the occasional arbitrary action of the Massachusetts governor in past years. Both Winthrop and Vane had been guilty of refusing to put motions to the General Court.
[69] The coroner's jury had existed by custom in the colony from the first.