From 1635 to 1637 was an awful time of persecution in England. Fines, imprisonments, the bloody cruelties of the lash and the shears, the pillory, the red-hot firebrand and the gallows reigned triumphant; and the suffering were impelled “by heaps to leave their native country.” “Nothing,” says Milton, “but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter them from the fury of the bishops.” But even this last resource was attempted to be taken from them; and in 1637 the king again issued a proclamation against emigration, and the following year a squadron of eight ships, about to embark for New England, was forbidden to leave the Thames. It was on board some of these ships, tradition says, that Oliver Cromwell and Hampden were when this arbitrary prohibition compelled them to remain in England, where a greater work awaited them. This squadron was, however, allowed to sail after all, on a petition to the crown from the owners and passengers. Whilst we are on the subject of emigration, it may be mentioned, as evidencing the discriminating and uncompromising spirit of liberty in the New World, that when in 1635 several puritan noblemen, especially the Earl of Warwick and the Lords Brooke and Say and Seal, were contemplating a removal thither, they endeavoured to induce the colonies to establish hereditary nobility, and to make the magistracy perpetual to certain privileged families. To this proposal Cotton, in the name of the court of Massachusetts, very pertinently replied: “When God blesseth any branch of a noble or generous family with gifts fit for government, it would be taking God’s name in vain to put such a talent under a bushel, and a sin against the honour of the magistracy to neglect such in our public elections. But if God should not delight to furnish such of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose them rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than exalt them to honour, if we should call them forth whom God does not to public authority.” By these conclusive arguments New England preserved itself from any privileged class, and the English nobility remained at home. But now to return to Massachusetts with the whole power of the English government arrayed against her. In 1638, the lords of the council wrote to Winthrop, demanding from him, by virtue of the writ already issued, the return of the patent, threatening that in case of refusal the king would immediately assume the government himself. Winthrop wrote back calmly, that the colony demanded a fair trial before condemnation. It was a cool, manly letter, and contained some remonstrance and some suggestions, but under all there was a tone of determined resistance.