Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/48

16 The settlement of Massachusetts. [1629-31 and most attractive in Puritanism. His definiteness of mind and his constructive statesmanship were invaluable to a young colony, while his moderation, humility, and sweetness of temper enabled him to work with men of a narrower and more austere cast and to modify what might have been evil in their influence. Some of Endecotfs settlers had already established themselves in a settlement to which they gave the name which it retains, Charlestown. Winthrop and his company joined them. But Winthrop soon moved to Boston. The colonists were not, like these of Plymouth, kept together by dread of the natives ; and within a year eight small settle ments had sprung up along Boston Bay. Such a dispersion made some system of representation necessary, if the colony was to preserve its unity and its liberties. In 1632 delegates from the various towns met to settle a question of taxation. Two years later this developed into the creation of a regular representative body, which, with the governor and assistants, made up the legislature of the colony. Two other measures were so far-reaching in their effect on the development of Massachusetts that they deserve special mention. In 1631 it was enacted that no one might be a freeman unless he belonged to a Church ; that is, unless he accepted a complex theological creed and conformed to an exacting system of morals and devotion. In 1635 this principle was carried further by an Act which required the same qualification before a man could vote at a town-meeting. In the following year the rights of such meetings were determined by an Act conferring on townships the right to divide their land, to elect constables and surveyors, and to impose fines up to twenty shillings. This system of exclusiveness was not to be enforced without strife; and the early history of Massachusetts records a long series of ejections, mainly on theological grounds, though in some cases moral considerations came in and supplied a justification. So early as 1629, while Endecott was provisionally in power, he had expelled two brothers, John and Samuel Browne, prominent members of the Council, because, being dissatisfied at the disuse of the Book of Common Prayer, they had collected a congregation and read the Church of England service. Morton, already mentioned, and another profligate named Gardiner, were banished ; but their moral character was such that it would be unfair to set them down as victims of persecution, though probably the guilt of the parties was enhanced by their non-conformity with the dominant creed. But in 1631 and 1632 we read of punishment inflicted in two cases for speaking evil of the government, once for threatening to appeal to the Crown. There was probably nothing in the character of any of these victims to call for any special sympathy. The evil lay in the principle of action, not in the application of it. But orthodoxy was soon to find more important victims. In 1631 there came to the colony a brilliant,