The General Assembly sent a similar reply, some months later, in which they stated that freedom of conscience was the principal ground of their charter, “which freedom we still prize as the greatest hapiness that men can possess in this world”; and added that Quakers were “suffered to live in England; yea even in the heart of the nation.”[677] Apparently the only answer the United Colonies could make to the worldly wisdom and nobility of their little neighbor, was to threaten to cut off her trade and to deprive her of the necessities of life.[678] Nor has the letter, which is one of the landmarks in the struggle for religious liberty in America, fared better at the hands of New England's clerical historians. Palfrey, who devotes thirty-five pages to an extenuating account of the Massachusetts persecution, conceals Rhode Island's stand in a footnote; and Dr. Ellis speaks of that colony's protest as “a quaint letter,” in which, incredibly, he finds only “naïveté and humor.”[679] Footnote 677: _Ibid._, I, pp. 378 _ff._ Footnote 678: _Ibid._, pp. 396 _ff._ Footnote 679: Palfrey, _History_, vol. II, p. 472 _n._; Ellis, _Puritan Age_, pp. xvii, 457. Meanwhile, the other four colonies proceeded to pass more stringent laws themselves, though those of Plymouth and Connecticut were less severe than those of New Haven, where the penalties rose to branding the letter H on the hands of male Quakers, and boring the tongues of Quakeresses with a red-hot iron.[680] This latter punishment, as well as the cutting off of ears, was likewise added to the Massachusetts laws.[681] In 1658, the Commissioners of the United Colonies “seriously comended” to the several colonies that they pass legislation declaring that, if any Quaker, once banished, returned, the offender should suffer death.[682] Massachusetts, however, which was clearly behind the suggestion, was the only colony that did so. Connecticut, which was lenient in its treatment, had but little trouble, and Governor Winthrop of that colony told the Massachusetts magistrates that he would go down on his bare knees to beg that they would not execute the death-penalty. Plymouth was more influenced by its powerful neighbor, and one of the magistrates, deposed for his toleration of the sect, wrote of the persecution in Massachusetts, “we expect that we must do the like, we must dance after their Pipe; now Plymouth-Saddle is upon the Bay-Horse.”[683] Footnote 680: _Plymouth Col. Records_, vol. XI, pp. 100, 101, 125, and _passim_ _Conn. Col. Records_, vol. I, pp. 283 _f._, 303, 308; _New Haven Records_, vol. II, pp. 217, 238 _ff._; Bishop, _New England Judged_, pp. 160 _ff._, 203 _ff._, 226 _ff._ Footnote 681: _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 308 _f._ Footnote 682: _Acts United Colonies_, vol. II, p. 212. John Winthrop, of Connecticut, signed with the notation: “looking att the last as a query and not as an Act; I subscribe.” Footnote 683: