man’s clothes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other’s stead.’ ‘Amen,’ says one, and so say many more. And this had liked to have proved their final sentence; but that one, with a ravenous voice, begun to croak and bellow for revenge, and put by that conclusive motion, alleging such deceits might be a means hereafter to exasperate the minds of the complaining salvages, and that by his death the salvages should see their zeal to justice; and therefore he should die. This was concluded;” and they “hanged him up hard by.” This story of the unscrupulous Morton furnished Butler with the materials out of which he constructed the following fable in his Hudibras, part. ii. canto ii. line 409. “Our brethren of New England use Choice malefactors to excuse, And hang the guiltless in their stead, Of whom the churches have less need; As lately happened. In a town, There lived a cobbler and but one, That out of doctrine could cut use, And mend men’s lives as well as shoes. This precious brother having slain, In times of peace, an Indian, (Not out of malice, but mere zeal, Because he was an infidel,) The mighty Tottipotymoy Sent to our elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league, held forth, by brother Patch, Against the articles in force Between both churches, his and ours; For which he craved the saints to render Into his hands, or hang the offender. But they, maturely having weighed, They had no more but him of the trade, A man that served them in a double Capacity, to teach and cobble, Resolved to spare him; yet to do The Indian Hoghgan Moghgan, too, Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old weaver, that was bed-rid.” It will be observed that Morton mentions this substitution merely as the suggestion of an individual, which was rejected by the company. Even had it been adopted by them, and carried into execution, it would not have implicated the Plymouth people at all, nor cast the least slur on their characters or principles. For Weston’s colony was entirely distinct from theirs, and composed of a very different set of men. Their character, as portrayed by Weston himself, and by Cushman and Pierce, before they came over, may be seen in note [35] on page 77, to which the reader is particularly requested to refer. Morton himself calls “many of them lazy persons, that would use no endeavour to take the benefit of the country.” As Belknap says, “they were a set of needy adventurers, intent only on gaining a subsistence.” They did not come over from any religious scruples, or with any religious purpose. There is no evidence that they had any church at all; they certainly were not Puritans. Neal says, in his Hist. of New England, i. 102, that Weston obtained a patent under pretence of propagating the discipline of the Church of England in America.