For some time disaffection had been increased among all classes of society. The weakness and incapacity of the government in general, notwithstanding the efforts of Strafford and Laud, the pecuniary exactions and religious tyranny attacked and exasperated all citizens; numerous emigrations had begun; men passionately attached to their faith went to seek upon the Continent, and even in America, the liberty of worship which was refused to them in their own country. {51} Obscure and unknown sectaries had been the first to adopt the refuge of exile; by degrees men of greater consideration followed their example. When an order of the royal council forbade emigration, a ship anchored in the Thames already bore the future heroes of the revolution of England, ready to expatriate themselves in order to escape an odious government. It was the hand of the king himself which retained in England Pym, Haslerig, Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell. The wrath of the people did not yet burst forth, but it began to be heard in suppressed tones; the assemblages of nonconformists increased everywhere under different names. The Independents or Brownists were the most numerous of those who separated themselves openly from the Anglican Church, and all the vigilance of Laud did not suffice to disperse the faithful, nor his severity to punish them. Numerous pamphlets circulated among the people of an insolent and vigorous kind. They were bought eagerly, and the rigors of the star chamber did not succeed in arresting the smugglers who brought them from Holland, and the pedlars who spread them throughout the country. It was resolved to make a great example; a lawyer, a theologian, and a physician, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, were arrested at the same time, and, after an iniquitous trial, were condemned to the pillory, to lose their ears, and to pay an enormous fine. Their imprisonment was to be for life. {52} The populace of London thronged around the pillory, when the three condemned men, pale and bleeding, were fixed there. Their courage did not falter for a moment, and their sufferings served their cause better than all their writings. A libeller by profession, John Lilburne, condemned to a punishment of the same kind, received at the hands of the nation the same impassioned, albeit still silent sympathy. The whole country was moved, but it awaited a chief who should give the signal of legal resistance--a name around which the scattered forces might range themselves. It was for John Hampden that this honor was reserved.