Another incident in the struggle, which soon occurred, involved both the question of the power of the local government over the colonists, and the relations of the colony to the home government in England. In 1644, it was suggested to the General Court that the condition of the large number of unrepresented inhabitants be improved by increasing the civil privileges that a citizen might possess without being a church member, such privileges then being limited, apparently, to a small share in local town business.[515] Nothing, however, was done, and two years later, a petition signed by a Dr. Robert Child, Samuel Maverick, and five others was presented, reciting that there were many thousands in the colony who were debarred from all participation in government, although they paid taxes and were subject to military and other duties. Child was a newcomer, “a gentleman and a scholar,” and a graduate of the University of Padua. Maverick was the richest of the “old planters,” and the only freeman who was not a church member—a privilege which he owed to the circumstances connected with the first planting of the colony, as already related. Thomas Fowle, another of the signers, was a merchant; while yet another, David Yale, was a man of property, and both a stepson of Theophilus Eaton of New Haven and a brother-in-law of Governor Hopkins of Connecticut. At this very time, he was acting as attorney for the Earl of Warwick.[516] The motives of the signers may not have been wholly disinterested, but the effort to make out that they were persons of no importance in the colony has been overdone.[517] Footnote 515: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 193, 349. Footnote 516: _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660_, p. 327. Footnote 517: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 320 _n._, 358. _Cf._ Winslow, “New England's Salamander,” in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series III, vol. II, pp. 117 _ff._