But sometimes events of ruder and less joyous significance came to stir a ripple on the placid sea of frontier life. Even among these Pilgrims there were laws to be enforced and bad men to be curbed. Thomas Morton was one. This irrepressible torment was once more engaged at “Merry-Mount” in selling guns and “fire-water” to the Indians; nor did he hesitate to “shoot hail-shot into them,” because they refused to bring him a canoe in which to cross the river. He was apprehended on their complaint, and because he “discredited the whites.” His den was burned in the presence of the natives whom he had maltreated; and he himself, after being for a while “set in the bilboes,” was sent once more a prisoner to England.[734] This occurred at Boston. At Plymouth a still more emphatic and sombre scene was enacted. John Billington, always a pest, of whom Bradford had said, “He is a knave, and so will live and die,”[735] was convicted of wilful murder. Conference was held with the most judicious men of Massachusetts Bay as to the disposition to be made of him. Winthrop and the rest favored his execution, basing the right to inflict that penalty, not so much on the English common law as on the code of Moses: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”[736] Under this decision Billington was hung; and this was the first capital punishment ever inflicted in New England. These magisterial rigors did not suffice to quell the evil-doers; for shortly afterwards Philip Radcliff ventured to revile the “powers that be;” nor did he scruple to asperse the colonial churches. For this misdemeanor he was condemned to lose his ears. This did not subdue him; so he was whipped and banished. All which processes did not serve to increase his affection for the Pilgrims. Landing in England, he did them what mischief he could.[737] Then came another rogue. This was Sir Christopher Gardiner, “one of those mysterious visitors whose appearance in remote settlements so easily stimulates the imaginations of men of more staid habits and better mutual acquaintance.”[738] It was not known who he was, nor whence he came, nor why. It has been conjectured that he was a spy of Sir Ferdinand Gorges and other foes of Puritanism in England.[739] Bradford says, “He came into these parts on pretence of forsaking the world, and to live a private life in a godly course. He had been a great traveller, was a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and a relative of that Gardiner who was so bitter a persecutor under “Bloody Mary.” Now he avowed himself penitent for his past ill life, offered to join the churches here, and said he was willing to apply himself to any employment.”[740]