United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
May 11, 1629, sailed from London five ships carrying about four
hundred settlers, most of whom were servants, and one hundred and
forty head of cattle and forty goats. They arrived at Salem, June 27,
and about four weeks later the ecclesiastical organization of the
colony was effected by John Endicott, who had already written to
Bradford that the worship at Plymouth was "no other than is warranted
by the evidence of the truth." He set apart July 20 for the work, and,
after a portion of the morning spent in prayer, Samuel Skelton and
Francis Higginson, two of the four ministers who accompanied the last
arrivals, avowed their belief in the doctrines of the Independents,
and were elected respectively pastor and teacher. A confession of
faith and a church covenant were drawn up, and August 6 thirty persons
associated themselves in a church.[13]
Two of the gentlemen emigrants, John and Samuel Browne, presumed to
hold a separate service with a small company, using the Prayer Book.
Thereupon the hot-headed Endicott arrested them, put them on
shipboard, and sent them back to England. This conduct of Endicott's
was a flagrant aggression on vested rights, since the Brownes appear
in the charter as original promoters of the colony, and were sent to
Massachusetts by the company in the high capacity of assistants or
councillors to Endicott himself. The two brothers complained in
England, and in October, 1629, the company sent Endicott a warning
against "undigested counsels ... which may have any ill construction
with the state here and make us obnoxious to an adversary."[14]
In another particular Endicott showed the summary character which
distinguished him. When Morton arrived in London a prisoner, in 1628,
Isaac Allerton was trying to secure from the Council for New England a
new patent for Plymouth colony. In Morton he appears to have
recognized a convenient medium for reaching Sir Ferdinando Gorges; at
any rate, when Allerton returned to New England in the summer of 1629,
he brought Thomas Morton back with him, to the scandal of the Plymouth
community.[15] After a few weeks at Plymouth, Morton repaired to Merry
Mount and resumed the business of a fur-trader, but, as might have
been expected, he was soon brought into conflict with his neighbors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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