Note 204 — Chapter VII

The Plymouth Colony tolerating the proscribed Baptists of Massachusetts Bay, the Court of Massachusetts Bay admonished them in a letter, in 1649, saying "that it had come to its knowledge that divers Anabaptists had been connived at within the Plymouth jurisdiction, and it appeared that the 'patient bearing' of the Plymouth authorities had 'encreased' the same errors; that thirteen or fourteen persons (it was reported) had been re-baptized at Sea Cunke, under which circumstances 'effectual restriction' was desired, 'the more as the interests of Massachusetts were concerned therein.' The infection of such diseases being so near us, are likely to spread into our jurisdiction, and God equally requires the suppression of error as the maintenance of truth at the hands of Christian magistrates."—British (Congregational) Quarterly Review for January, 1876, pp. 150, 151.

"The Massachusetts did maintain Punham (a petty Sachem in this province of Rhode Island) twenty years against this colony, and his chief Sachem, and did by armed soldiers besiege and take prisoners Gorton, Hamden, Weeks, Green, and others in this province, and carried them away to Boston, put them in irons, and took eighty head of cattle from them, for all of which they could never obtain any satisfaction. This colony (of Rhode Island) could never be acknowledged (by Massachusetts) for a colony till his Majesty's Charter was published (in 1663), though in the year 1643 they sent over some in England to procure the King's Charter; but finding that unnatural war begun, and the King gone from London, they took a Charter from the Lords and Commons." (Report of the King's Commissioners, in Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers relative to the History of Massachusetts Bay, pp. 415, 416.)