Crandall, who had figured but little in the proceedings, was released on bail; while, without his knowledge, some unknown well-wisher paid Clark's fine. Holmes, however, refused to pay his fine or allow others to pay it for him, and insisted upon the sentence being executed in its full barbarity. Thirty strokes, with a three-corded whip, were laid upon his bare back. Two bystanders who, moved by pity, had the temerity to take the prisoner by the hand as he left the whipping-post, were themselves arrested and sentenced to pay forty shillings or be whipped.[658] To one of them, who affirmed to Endicott that he believed Holmes was a godly man and “carried himself as did become a Christian,” the Governor threatened that “we will deal with you as we have dealt with him.” “I am in the hands of God,” the prisoner replied. Footnote 658: The Court that passed the sentences was composed of the magistrates only. The following year, Clark went to England with Williams in regard to the Coddington matter in Rhode Island, and, while there, published his account of the treatment the Baptists had met with in Massachusetts.[659] As so often before, the intolerance of the new country was severely criticized by its friends in the old.[660] “It doth not a little grieve my spirit,” wrote Saltonstall to Cotton and Wilson, “what sadd things are reported dayly of your tyranny and persecution in New England.... These rigid wayse have layd you very lowe in the hearts of the saynts. I doe assure I have heard them pray in the publique assemblies that the Lord would give you meeke and humble spirits, not to stryve soe much for uniformity as to keepe the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” He warns them “not to practice those courses in a wilderness, which you went so farre to prevent”; and adds, “I hope you doe not assume to yourselves infallibillities of judgment, when the most learned of the Apostles confesseth he knew but in parte.”[661] Footnote 659: Palfrey's far-fetched theory, that the whole affair was engineered by Clark in order to acquire a grievance to be used in England later, has no foundation whatever in any contemporary conjecture, and in any case would not alter in the slightest the facts so far as Massachusetts is concerned. It is of interest only as showing to what lengths that colony's clerical historians have gone in their efforts to defend in New England everything which they condemn in old England, and to treat the Massachusetts settlers as saints instead of very human Englishmen of the seventeenth century. Palfrey, _History_, vol. II, pp. 350, 354. Footnote 660: _Cf._ Chap. VII, _supra_. Footnote 661: Hutchinson, _Papers_, vol. II, pp. 127 _ff._; Backus, _Baptists_, vol. I, pp. 198 _f._