Note 558 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 3)

Edward Howes, in writing from London to John Winthrop, Jr., in November, 1632, describes how, on going home at noon one day, he met the master of a vessel which had just arrived from New England, together with three others who had come over with him. The master passing into the house on some matter of business, Howes had a talk with one of the other men, whom he describes as an “egregious knave.” The report given by this man of the Massachusetts community strikingly resembles that given by Morton in this chapter. He would, writes Howes, “give none of you a good word, but the governor [Winthrop]; he was a good man and kept a good table, but all the rest were Hereticks, and they would be more holy than all the world; they would be a peculiar people to God, but go to the Devil; that one man with you being at confession, as he called it, said he believed his father and mother and ancestors went all to Hell; and that your preachers, in their public prayers, pray for the governor before they pray for our king and state; ... that you never use the Lord’s prayer; that your ministers marry none; that fellows which keep hogs all the week preach on the Sabbath; that every town in your plantation is of a several religion; that you count all men in England, yea all out of your church, in the state of damnation. But I believe and know better things of you; but here you may partly see how the Devil stirs up his instruments.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Col., vol. vi. p. 485.)