Note 201 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
"As a matter of course, this Church test of citizenship did not work well. The more unscrupulous the conscience, the easier it was to join the Church; and abandoned men who wanted public preferment could join the Church with loud professions and gain their ends, and make Church membership a byeword. Under the Charter by William and Mary, in 1691, the qualification of electors was then fixed at a 'freehold of forty shillings per annum, or other property of the value of £40 sterling.'" (Elliott's New England History, Vol. I., p. 113.)