Her commercial privileges alone were exclusive, and, provided he respected them, a British subject had the same right to dwell in Massachusetts as in any of the other dominions of the crown, or, indeed, in any borough which held its land by grant, like Plymouth. To subject Englishmen to restriction or punishment unknown to English law was as outrageous as the same act would have been had it been perpetrated by the city of London,--both corporations having a like power to preserve the peace by local ordinances, and both being controlled by the law of the land as administered by the courts. Such arguments as those advanced by Winthrop were only solemn quibbling to cloak an indefensible policy. To banish freemen for demanding liberty of conscience was a still more flagrant wrong. A precisely parallel case would have been presented had the directors of the East India Company declared the membership of a proprietor to be forfeited, and ordered his stock to be sold, because he disapproved of enforcing conformity in worship among inhabitants of the factories in Hindostan. Vane sailed early in August, and his departure cleared the last barrier from the way of vengeance. Proceedings were at once begun by a synod of all the ministers, which was held at Cambridge, for the purpose of restoring peace to the churches. “There were about eighty opinions, some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe, condemned by the whole assembly.... Some of the church of Boston ... were offended at the producing of so many errors, ... and called to have the persons named which held those errors.” To which the elders answered that all those opinions could be proved to be held by some, but it was not thought fit to name the parties. “Yet this would not satisfy some but they oft called for witnesses; and because some of the magistrates declared to them ... that if they would not forbear it would prove a civil disturbance ... they objected.... So as he” (probably meaning Winthrop) “was forced to tell one of them that if he would not forbear ... he might see it executed. Upon this some of Boston departed from the assembly and came no more.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 238.] Once freed from their repinings all went well, and their pastor, Mr. Wilson, soon had the satisfaction of sending their reputed heresies “to the devil of hell from whence they came.” [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 3, ch. ii. Section 13.] Cotton, seeing that all was lost, hastened to make his peace by a submission which the Rev. Mr. Hubbard of Ipswich describes with unconscious cynicism. “If he were not convinced, yet he was persuaded to an amicable compliance with the other ministers; ... for, although it was thought he did still retain his own sense and enjoy his own apprehension in all or most of the things then controverted (as is manifest by some expressions of his ... since that time published,”...) yet. “By that means did that reverend and worthy minister of the gospel