All this, however, spite of its arbitrariness and injustice, tended in the end to the still further establishment of the liberties of New England. Two years after Gorton’s removal to England, one of his friends returned, bringing letters of safe conduct for himself, from the parliamentary commission, and an order that Gorton’s people should be allowed quiet possession of Shawomet. The government of Massachusetts perceived at once the dangerous position in which this order placed them. Independent of their disinclination to receive again the banished heretics, such an order implied that the parliament had a right to reverse their decisions; and to admit this was a blow at the very life of the commonwealth. A general court was summoned to deliberate, with closed doors, on the present critical emergency, and the decision was, that “allegiance was due to England, also a tenth part of all gold and silver ore,” but that the management of their own local affairs must be kept in their own hands. “If parliament be less inclinable to us,” was their final resolve, in which a threat was implied, “we must wait upon Providence for the preservation of our just liberties.” Winslow was sent over as agent from Massachusetts to the parliament, in which he and Massachusetts had many influential friends; and so well did he negotiate, that the end was an assurance from parliament to this effect: “We encourage no appeals from your justice. We leave you with all the freedom and latitude that may in any respect be duly claimed by you.” Thus did all things work together for the advantage and furtherance of Massachusetts. It is a curious fact that Massachusetts, thus nobly determined in the cause of her liberty and independence, was nevertheless, at this very time, so poor in money, that it was with difficulty that £100 was raised for Winslow’s outfit. In 1648, a synod was held at Cambridge, for the drawing up of a confession of faith, when a little circumstance occurred which is worth mentioning. A sermon opened the business of the assembly, during which “a snake came into the seat where many of the elders sat. Divers shifted from it, but Mr. Thompson of Braintree, a man of much faith, trod upon its head, and so held it with foot and staff till it was killed. ‘This being so remarkable,’ says Winthrop in his diary, ‘and nothing falling out but by Divine Providence, it is out of doubt the Lord discovered some of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil;’” a type, Winthrop probably thought, of the Rhode Island and Providence heresies, “‘the synod the representative of the churches of Christ in New England.’ The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and dissolution, but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and crushed his head.” The following year, Winthrop, who was then in his tenth term of office of governor, died, and Endicott succeeded him.