_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings_, Series IV, vol. VI, pp. 579 _f._ Among the proposals made by Say, Brook, and the others to Massachusetts, as conditions of their emigrating to New England, it was stipulated that there should be two ranks in the commonwealth—gentlemen and freeholders; that the power of making and repealing laws should belong to both ranks, but that the governor should always be chosen from the higher. To these and the other proposals the authorities in the colony wholly agreed, but with the proviso that the church-membership qualification for the franchise must be retained.[475] The theocracy of Massachusetts, under the guidance of its ministers, had drifted far from the current of English life. Englishmen have always had a thoroughly healthy hatred of ecclesiastical rule in civil affairs, and, whatever country squires, noblemen's factors, or tradesmen and mechanics, might be willing to do, it could not be possible that such men as Warwick, Say, Brook, and Pym could place their political rights and careers wholly in the hands of the narrow-minded ministers and congregations of the little Massachusetts town churches. On that account, and because of the turn of affairs in England, the project was given up, and when, three years later, Warwick, Brook, Say, and Darley announced definitely that they were going to emigrate, it was not to New England but to their island in the Caribbean. Although they were not permitted to do so, the fact marks the distinct breach which had now taken place between the rulers of Massachusetts and the leaders of the Puritan party in England. The mistaken policy of the colony, which earlier had brought alarmed protests from her less powerful friends at home, had now definitely alienated her most influential ones. The selfish attitude toward her neighbors, already shown upon the Penobscot, the Piscataqua, and the Connecticut, and which, unfortunately, was to become more aggressive and unscrupulous, also lost her the friendship of her sister colonies. The result was that, when the real struggle came with the English government, a generation later, Massachusetts, although, thanks to her geographical position and aggressive acquisitiveness, she had become the most powerful of the New England group, found herself with hardly a friend in the old country or the new. Footnote 475: The proposals and Cotton's answer are in Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, pp. 433 _ff._