her comfort while she lived, and for her funeral charges. I do not remember to have found this last point arranged for, in such a form of expression, in any other instance. William Alford was an early settler. He was a member of the numerous and wealthy society, or guild, of Skinners, in the city of London, and probably came here with the view of establishing an extensive trade in furs. He received accordingly, in 1636, a grant of two hundred acres, including what was for some time called Alford's Hill, afterwards Long Hill, now known as Cherry Hill. It is owned and occupied by R.P. Waters, Esq. Alford sympathized in religious views with his neighbor Scruggs, and with him was subjected to censure, and disarmed by order of the General Court. He sold his lands to Henry Herrick, and left the jurisdiction. One of the most enlightened, and perhaps most accomplished, men among the first inhabitants of Salem Village, was Townsend Bishop. He was admitted a freeman in 1635. The next year, he appears on the list of members of the Salem Church. He was one[i.67] of the judges of the local court, and, almost without intermission from his first coming here, a deputy to the General Court. In 1645, as his attention had been led to the subject, he conceived doubts in reference to infant baptism; and it was noticed that he did not bring forward a child, recently born, to the rite. Although himself on the bench, and ever before the object of popular favor and public honors, he was at once brought up, and handed over for discipline. The next year, he sold his estates, and probably removed elsewhere. He appears no more in our annals. Where he went, I have not been able to learn. It is to be hoped that he found somewhere a more congenial and tolerant abode. It is evident that he could not breathe in an atmosphere of bigotry; and it was difficult to find one free from the miasma in those days. Five of the most valuable of the first settlers of the village—Weston, Waterman, Scruggs, Alford, and Bishop—were thus early driven into exile, or subdued to silence, by the stern policy on which the colony was founded. It is an error to characterize this as religious bigotry. It was not so much a theological as a political persecution. Its apparent form was in reference to tenets of faith, but the policy was deeper than this. Any attempt to make opposition to the existing administration was treated with equal severity, whatever might be the subject on which it ventured to display itself.