The Tories, for the most part, were no such “Hottentots.” It was natural in such a settlement as Cape Cod that there should be many conservatives: men descended from those who had never failed in loyalty to the English Government, were it Stuart or Roundhead, who had been taught to love England as the home of their fathers, and the source of law and light. As late as 1766 even Franklin was declaring before a parliamentary committee that “to be an Old England man was of itself a character of respect and gave a kind of rank among us,” and “they considered Parliament as the great bulwark and security of their liberties.” There were as a fact four parties: the ardent Whigs like Nathaniel Freeman, who were separatists at all costs; the irreconcilable Tories who, when war was imminent, fled behind the British lines in Boston or New York, or to Nova Scotia and Canada, or to England, and, in the case of Cape Cod, often to the islands southward where they could be in easy communication with British ships. And there were the moderates of both camps: Whigs whose sensibilities were offended by the extreme methods of the radicals; Tories, chiefly men of the older generation, who lacked pliancy and vision to respond to a newer order; and with the latter were ranged, at any rate at the beginning of the trouble, those who loved freedom, they could swear, yet loved better present securities and feared conflict with the might of Britain. As time went on the number of moderate Whigs steadily increased, especially in the Old Colony as befitted the sober temper of the Pilgrim inheritance; even Joseph Otis, of Barnstable, who had rivalled Doctor Nathaniel Freeman in fervor, was to join them, and the lukewarm, patriots or Tories, were ready to declare for the colonies. Even a Tory in exile could be secretly elated by the prowess of his countrymen; and one such in England confided to his diary that “these conceited islanders” may learn to their cost that “our continent can furnish brave soldiers and judicious expert commanders.” It speaks well for the Federalists that after the war was over and many extreme Tories who had left their homes petitioned to return, they were reinstated upon pledge of loyalty to the new State: whether restored as generously to the affection of their neighbors history does not record, but one may fancy children’s gibes to the third generation. In Sandwich there were many Tories who were brought to conform; but it is said there was still much disaffection, and when the Declaration of Independence was read out by the parson on a certain Sunday, a Tory who was much esteemed in the neighborhood “trooped scornfully and indignantly out of meeting.”