Captain Partridge had fought for the Parliament, and reached Boston at the beginning of the winter of 1645. He was arrested and examined as a heretic. The magistrates referred the case to Cotton, who reported that “he found him corrupt in judgment,” but “had good hope to reclaim him.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 251.] An instant recantation was demanded; it was of course refused, and, in spite of all remonstrance, the family was banished in the snow. Winthrop’s sad words were: “But sure, the rule of hospitality to strangers, and of seeking to pluck out of the fire such as there may be hope of, ... do seem to require more moderation and indulgence of human infirmity where there appears not obstinacy against the clear truth.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 251.] But in the savage and bloody struggle that was now at hand there was no place for leaders capable of pity or remorse, and the theocracy found supremely gifted chieftains in John Norton and John Endicott. Norton approaches the ideal of the sterner orders of the priesthood. A gentleman by birth and breeding, a ripe scholar, with a keen though polished wit, his sombre temper was deeply tinged with fanaticism. Unlike so many of his brethren, temporal concerns were to him of but little moment, for every passion of his gloomy soul was intensely concentrated on the warfare he believed himself waging with the fiend. Doubt or compassion was impossible, for he was commissioned by the Lord. He was Christ’s elected minister, and misbelievers were children of the devil whom it was his sacred duty to destroy. He knew by the Word of God that all save the orthodox were lost, and that heretics not only perished, but were the hirelings of Satan, who tempted the innocent to their doom; he therefore hated and feared them more than robbers or murderers. Words seemed to fail him when he tried to express his horror: “The face of death, the King of Terrours, the living man by instinct turneth his face from. An unusual shape, a satanical phantasm, a ghost, or apparition, affrights the disciples. But the face of heresie is of a more horrid aspect than all ... put together, as arguing some signal inlargement of the power of darkness as being diabolical, prodigeous, portentous.” [Footnote: _Heart of New Eng. Rent_, p. 46.] By nature, moreover, he had in their fullest measure the three attributes of a preacher of a persecution,--eloquence, resolution, and a heart callous to human suffering. To this formidable churchman was joined a no less formidable magistrate. No figure in our early history looms out of the past like Endicott’s. The harsh face still looks down from under the black skull-cap, the gray moustache and pointed beard shading the determined mouth, but throwing into relief the lines of the massive jaw. He is almost heroic in his ferocious bigotry and daring,--a perfect champion of the church.