I am inclined to think that the offensive words were those which require "Mr. Parris to keep the ministry house in good repair," and that he "shall also have the use of the ministry pasture;" and this was not objectionable as involving any expense upon him, but solely because the language employed precluded the supposition that the parish had countenanced the idea of ever conveying the parsonage and parsonage lands[i.294] to him in his own right and absolutely. This was an object which he evidently had in view from the first, and to which he clung to the last. It is to be feared, that some of the members of the "Young-America" committee, in their heedless and inconsiderate eagerness to "effect" something, to settle Mr. Parris forthwith, and thereby prove how much more competent they were than "the aged men" to transact a weighty business, had encouraged Mr. Parris to think that his favorite object could be accomplished. Upon a little inquiry, however, they discovered that it could not be done; but that the house and land were secured by the original deeds of conveyance, and by irreversible agreements and conditions, to the use of the ministry, for the time being and for ever. So far as the committee or any of its members had favored this idea in their conference with Mr. Parris, they had taken a position from which they had to retreat. They had compromised themselves and the parish. For this reason, perhaps, they made no report; and no mention of their agency appears on the records. How far Deacon Ingersoll was misled by his younger associates on this occasion, I know not; but he was not a man to break a promise if he could keep it, no matter how much to his own loss. He recognized his responsibility as chairman of the unfortunate committee, and retrieved the mistake they had made, by giving to Mr. Parris, by deed, a lot of land adjoining the parsonage property, and in value equal to the whole of it. The date of that conveyance, immediately after Mr. Parris's ordination, corroborates[i.295] the conjecture that it was made to compensate Mr. Parris for the failure of his expectation to get possession of the ministry property. It ought to have been received by him as an equivalent, and have soothed his angry disappointment; but it did not. He had indulged the belief, that he had effected a bargain with the parish, at his settlement, which had made him the owner, in fee simple, of the parish property; and when he found that the record of the terms of his settlement, in the parish-book, absolutely precluded that idea, his exasperation was great, and no reparation Deacon Ingersoll or any one else could make was suffered to appease it. The following deposition, made in court some years afterwards, gives an account of a scene in the meeting-house after Parris's ordination:— "Ipswich Court, 1697.—Parris _versus_ Inhabitants of Salem Village.