His egotism was so interblended with his zeal that he could not separate one from the other, nor can the student of his character. A disservice to him was an affront to Almighty God. The very honesty of such a man is pernicious; a little duplicity might have softened the outward manifestations of his hard nature. Unhappily, there was not even indolence or self-indulgence to moderate his all but superhuman activity, which pushed his domination to its possibilities, and, with a vigilance aspiring to omniscience, penetrated to the minutest details in the administration of church and state. He even filed papers giving the elements of the debates on good works as an evidence of sanctification carried on between Hooker and Cotton in the cabin meeting-houses of New England. For the rest he presents the paradoxes one expects in so marked a character. While he had no taste for the credulous dogmatism of his time, he showed a certain relish for superstitions in recording dreams and omens, yet he had none of the timidity of superstition. He was, moreover, fearless in peril, and he faced unpopularity without flinching. Stubborn and inflexible with the clergy and the populace, obdurate and pitiless with those who had offended him or his king or his church, he was flexible and insinuating in his relations with those in power. His unworthy yielding to his early patron, the Earl of Devonshire, in a matter which concerned his ecclesiastical conscience, gave him a bitter and lifelong repentance. His complacence to Buckingham, and his servile devotion to Charles, seem a little despicable. He was even willing at the last to make terms with Parliament, when it became plain that Parliament was the new master. Though obsequious, he was the farthest possible from a coward, and he accepted death on the scaffold with the serene composure of a martyr. IV. [Sidenote: Political conditions promote emigration.] [Sidenote: Gorges's Briefe Narration.]