The general grounds of contention, ecclesiastical and political,—questions of land tenure and fishing rights, the division and government of parishes,—remained for the children and grandchildren of the first settlers. It was not that they were a quarrelsome people, but, rather, that they had a healthy, vivid, proprietary interest in the civic and religious development of their common life. Every man in a town had his criticism for each act of the General Court, for the management of his neighbor, and the religious slant of his minister; every man expressed his personal view of the general comity in no uncertain words, with a result that sometimes presented a picture of confusion when it was in reality no more than the process of boiling down to a good residuum. Nor has this early spirit died. The strongly protestant temper of the Pilgrim Fathers has survived in their descendants; even to-day if one alien to the community penetrates beneath the tranquil surface of things commotion may be discovered. And from time to time, one may venture to suppose, a spirit of joyful wrangling has swung through this town or that when the pugnacious Briton has cropped out in men finer tuned by a more stimulating atmosphere, who waged the combat not always for righteousness’ sake, but for pure pleasure of pitching into the other fellow. In the early days, at any rate, there was some scope for the talent of an arbiter, and in the Reverend Thomas Walley who, after a stormy interval of ten years, followed Mr. Lothrop in the pastorate of Barnstable, his people had cause for gratitude as “the Lord was pleased to make him a blessed peacemaker and improve him in the work of his house.” In 1669 Mr. Walley carried his peacemaking farther afield, and preached before the General Court a sermon entitled “Balm of Gilead to Heal Zion’s Wounds.” Among other wounds were listed the “burning fever or fires of contention in towns and churches.” Occasionally outside powers took a hand in these difficulties and the Boston clergy were called into council. And shortly after the incumbency of Walley, when one Mr. Bowles seems to have officiated at Barnstable for a time, John Cotton wrote thus to Governor Hinckley at Plymouth: “This last week came such uncomfortable tidings from Barnstable hither, that I knew not how to satisfy myself without troubling you with a few lines.... It does indeed appear strange with men wiser than myself that such discouragements should attend Mr. Bowles.... I need tell you, worthy sir, that it is a dying time with preachers ... and there is great likelihood of scarcity of ministers.” And so on, in favor of Mr. Bowles.