Note 92 — Chapter IV

Mr. Palfrey says: "While in England the literary war against Presbytery was in great part conducted by American combatants, their attention was presently required at home. William Vassal, a man of fortune, was one of the original assistants named in the Charter of the Massachusetts Company. He came to Massachusetts with Winthrop's fleet in the great emigration; but for some cause—possibly from dissatisfaction with the tendencies to Separatism which he witnessed—he almost immediately returned. He crossed the sea again five years after, but then it was to the colony of Plymouth. Establishing his home at Seituate, he there conducted himself so as to come under the reproach of being 'a man of a busy, factious spirit, and always opposite to the civil government of the country and the way of the Churches.'" (Winthrop, II., p. 261.) His disaffection occasioned the more uneasiness, because his brother Samuel, also formerly an assistant of the Massachusetts Company, was now one of the Parliament's Commissioners for the government of Foreign Plantations.

In the year when the early struggle between the Presbyterians and Independents in England had disclosed the importance of the issues depending upon it, and the obstinate determination with which it was to be carried on, Vassal "practised with" a few persons in Massachusetts "to take some course, first by petitioning the Courts of Massachusetts and of Plymouth, and if that succeeded not, then to the Parliament of England, that the distinctions which were maintained here, both in civil and church state, might be done away, and that we might be wholly governed by the laws of England." In [93] a "Remonstrance and Humble Petition," addressed by them to the General Court [of Massachusetts], they represented—1. That they could not discern in that colony "a settled form of government according to the laws of England;" 2. That "many thousands in the plantation of the English nation were debarred from civil employments," and not permitted "so much as to have any vote in choosing magistrates, captains, or other civil and military officers;" and, 3. "That numerous members of the Church of England,... not dissenting from the latest reformation in England, Scotland, etc., were detained from the seals of the covenant of free grace, as it was supposed they will not take these Churches' covenants." They prayed for relief from each of these grievances; and they gave notice that, if it were denied, they should "be necessitated to apply their humble desires to the honourable Houses of Parliament, who, they hoped, would take their sad condition into their serious consideration."

After describing the social position of the representative petitioners, Mr. Palfrey proceeds: "But however little importance the movement derived from the character or position of the agitators, it was essentially of a nature to create alarm. It proposed nothing less than an abandonment of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, which the settlers and owners of Massachusetts had set up, for reasons impressing their own minds as of the greatest significance and cogency. The demand was enforced by considerations which were not without plausibility, and were presented in a seductive form. It was itself an appeal to the discontent of the numerical majority, not invested with a share in the government. And it frankly threatened an appeal to the English Parliament—an authority always to be dreaded, for encroachment on colonial rights, and especially to be dreaded at a moment when the more numerous party among its members were bent on setting up a Presbytery as the established religion of England and its dependencies, determined on a severe suppression of dissent from it, and keenly exasperated against that Independency which New England had raised up to torment them in their own sphere, and which, for herself, New England cherished as her life."

"It being understood that two of the remonstrants, Fowle and Smith, were about to embark for England, to prosecute their business, the Court stopped them with a summons to appear and 'answer to the matter of the petition.' They replied 'to the Gentlemen Commissioners for Plantations;' and the Court committed them to the custody of the Marshal till they gave security to be responsible to the judgment of the Court. The whole seven were next arraigned as authors of divers false and scandalous statements in a certain paper ... against the Churches of Christ and the civil government here established, derogating from the honour and authority of the same, and tending to sedition. Refusing to answer, and 'appealing from this government, they disclaimed the jurisdiction thereof.' This was more than Presbyterian malcontents could be indulged in at the present critical time in Massachusetts. The Court found them all deeply blamable, and punished them by fines, which were to be remitted on their making 'an ingenuous and public acknowledgment of their misdemeanours;' a condition of indemnity which they all refused, probably in expectation of obtaining both relief and applause in England."—"Four deputies opposed the sentence; three magistrates—Bellingham, Saltonstall, and Bradstreet—also dissented."—Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 166-170.