Note 542 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 3)

There was no minister at Plymouth in the spring of 1628, when Morton was there. William Brewster was the ruling elder in the church and officiated in its pulpit, where, from the beginning, he had “taught twice every sabbath, and that both powerfully and profitably, to the great contentment of the hearers, and their comfortable edification.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 467; Bradford, pp. 187-8.) In the summer of 1628, but after Morton had been sent to England, Allerton brought over Mr. Rogers as a preacher, who soon proved to be “crased in his braine” (Bradford, p. 243), and the next season was sent home. In the autumn, apparently, of 1629, and while Morton may have been at Plymouth at Allerton’s house (Ib. p. 253), before his final return to Mount Wollaston, the Rev. Ralfe Smith, who had come over with Skelton and Higginson in the previous June (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 151), was found at Nantasket and brought down to Plymouth. (Bradford, p. 263.) He was not, however, chosen into the ministry there until a later time. (Ib.) It is unlikely that Morton here refers to Plymouth personages. He was at Salem in 1629 (Supra, 306), and in Boston, where as a prisoner he was undoubtedly made regularly to attend divine service, from early September to the end of December, 1630. (Supra, 45; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321.) At Salem he had come in contact with Skelton and Higginson; and it has been seen (Supra, 300, note 1) that he probably knew something of Francis Bright of Charlestown. The only other ministers then in the colony were John Warham and John Maverick at Dorchester, George Phillips at Watertown, and John Wilson at Boston.