At first the deputies sat in the same chamber with the assistants, but at length in 1644 they were formed into a second chamber with increased powers, and the way in which this important constitutional change came about is worth remembering, as an illustration of the smallness of the state which so soon was to play a great part in history. As Winthrop puts it, "there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion." To a certain Captain Keayne, of Boston, a rich man deemed to be hard and overbearing toward the poor, there was brought a stray pig, whereof he gave due public notice through the town-crier, yet none came to claim it till after he had killed a pig of his own which he kept in the same stye with the stray. A year having passed by, a poor woman named Sherman came to see the stray and to decide if it were one that she had lost. Not recognizing it as hers, she forthwith laid claim to the slaughtered pig. The case was brought before the elders of the church of Boston, who decided that the woman was mistaken. Mrs. Sherman then accused the captain of theft, and brought the case before a jury, which exonerated the defendant with £3 costs. The captain then sued Mrs. Sherman for defamation of character and got a verdict for £40 damages, a round sum indeed to assess upon the poor woman. But long before this it had appeared that she had many partisans and supporters; it had become a political question, in which the popular protest against aristocracy was implicated. Not yet browbeaten, the warlike Mrs. Sherman appealed to the General Court. The length of the hearing shows the importance which was attached to the case. After seven days of discussion, the vote was taken. Seven assistants and eight deputies approved the former decisions, two assistants and fifteen deputies condemned them, while seven deputies refrained from voting. In other words, Captain Keayne has a decided majority among the more aristocratic assistants, while Mrs. Sherman seemed to prevail with the more democratic deputies. Regarding the result as the vote of a single body, the woman had a plurality of two; regarding it as the vote of a double body, her cause had prevailed in the lower house, but was lost by the veto of the upper. No decision was reached at the time, but after a year of discussion the legislature was permanently separated into two houses, each with a veto power upon the other; and this was felt to be a victory for the assistants. As for the ecclesiastical polity of the new colony, it had begun to take shape immediately upon the arrival of Endicott's party at Salem. The clergymen, Samuel Skelton and Francis Higginson, consecrated each other, and a church covenant and confession of faith were drawn up by Higginson. Thirty persons joining in this covenant constituted the first church in the colony; and several brethren appointed by this church proceeded formally to ordain the two ministers by the laying on of hands.