It was in New England that the "Puritanism" of which Galloway wrote had the prevailing influence; and a very energetic and effective influence it was, working with other agencies in making the English civil government all the more odious because of the lordly prelates, who ruled not only in church, but in state. The inherited and traditionary spirit of New England had kept alive the memory of the ecclesiastical tyranny which had developed Puritanism in Old England, and of the trials and sacrifices by which deliverance had been secured. Those very New England colonies in which the rebellious spirit was most vigorous had been in but recent years, by help alike of sympathizers and opponents, conservatives of the old ways and reformers with the new, working their own way of relief from their theocratic basis of government, and securing freedom for themselves in belief and worship, with progress in the severance of church and state. They could not patiently contemplate the establishment of prelacy among them. Two occasions, operating as warnings, had freshened the old Puritan spirit of New England just previous to the opening of civil contention. One was the project, which had been zealously pressed, of sending English bishops into the colonies, whose functions the popular mind refused to distinguish between those which they exercised as lords, both spiritual and temporal, in England and those of ordination and confirmation, etc., which was all that was required of them as "superior clergy" here. An animated pamphlet controversy had been waging on this subject a decade before the outbreak of hostilities, in which appeared as a champion on one side the bold and able minister Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, and on the other, Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury.[674] No English prelate ever had functions or presence on our territory. The other reason, for a revival of the hostility here against the Established Church, was found in the coming hither into the old Congregational parishes, and the maintenance here by an English missionary society, of a number of Episcopal ministers. It was charged—not, however, justly—that the benevolent founders of that society had endowed it solely for the support of missionaries to neglected and forlorn persons,—fishermen and others in the colonies,—whereas it was used to promote division and disaffection in places well provided with a ministry. This charge was overstrained, for no missionary was sent to any place where there were not those, few or many, who were actual members of the English Church, or who stood out against the doctrine and discipline of Congregationalism. None the less did hostility to the English Church help largely to stimulate the spirit of rebellion.[675]