Willing, however, to evince their loyalty, they sent provisions to the English fleet in the West Indies, and a cargo of masts as a present to the English navy; “a blessing,” says Pepys, in his diary, “mighty unexpected, and but for which we must have failed the next year.” Massachusetts thus in part made her peace with the mother-country; besides which, England was not just then in a state to compel obedience; the war with Holland was pressing heavily on the country; and the great fire and the plague which had just ravaged and depopulated London brought subjects of serious thought much nearer home, which threw Massachusetts for several years completely into the background. In the meantime she prospered. In 1670, Sir Joshua Child, in his discourse on trade, reported of Massachusetts, that it is “the most prejudicial plantation of Great Britain; the frugality, industry and temperance of its people, and the happiness of their laws and institutions, promise them long life and a wonderful increase of people, riches, and power.” And the promise was fulfilled. The navigation act, which pressed so heavily on Virginia, and which was intended to be enforced with equal severity in Massachusetts, was disregarded; not a single custom-house was established; on the contrary, Massachusetts enjoyed all the advantages of free-trade, “acting as carrier to most of the colonies, sending her ships to various parts of the world, while ships from Spain, Italy, France and Holland, might all be seen in Boston harbour. Villages extended; prosperity was universal; beggary was unknown; theft was rare.” Such was the condition of Massachusetts in 1670. One internal trouble, however, she still had, and that was, the growth of schismatics within her borders. The Baptists, spite of all opposition, were not only numerous, but had built themselves a meeting-house in Boston; and the “abominable Quakers” still came, spite of flogging from town to town out of the colony. Half a century had now passed since the pilgrim fathers first landed in the New World, and many of the “old worthies” had departed on a still further pilgrimage. “Wilson, the sincere though persecuting minister, who had mounted into a tree in his zeal to preach against Anne Hutchinson; the mild John Davenport, the founder of New Haven; Willoughby, the advocate of toleration; Bellingham, and many other patriarchs, were no more; having closed their lives but with one regret—that they had not been permitted to witness the fulness of New England’s glory.”