At length the boding storm began to break over his head. For all his supposed offences he was again summoned before the General Assembly at Boston; and, in fear and anxiety, Edith saw him depart. She knew full well that he would never renounce, or even soften down, his opinions, through any fear of man; and she did not, for a moment, desire that he should thus lower himself in her estimation and his own. But she also knew the bitterness of the enmity felt towards him by the authorities at Boston, and she could not repress her apprehensions of its consequences. As she anticipated, Roger refused to acknowledge himself guilty of an offence against the church or state; nor would he even yield one point of his religious or political opinions, during a long disputation with the celebrated pastor Hooker. He was, therefore, declared contumacious by the government: and, with the assent of all the assembled clergy, except his friend Elliot, he was banished from the territory of Massachusetts. Six weeks were allowed him by the General Assembly to make his preparations, and remove beyond the boundary of their dominions: but as this term would have brought the time of his banishment to the winter season, when such a journey would have been impracticable, he was afterwards permitted to remain at Salem until the spring. With great apparent unconcern he returned to his home, where his fond and admiring wife welcomed him with joy, and strengthened his spirit by the cheerful manner in which she received the news of their sentence of banishment. She had felt an undefined dread of something much more hard to bear--of something which might possibly separate her husband from her: but banishment _with him_ was only a change of home, and, let their lot be cast where it might, she could be happy. Indeed, she entertained a hope that. Roger would consent to remove to Plymouth, and take up his abode there, which would have, given her extreme satisfaction. But she soon found that this hope could not be accomplished; for her enthusiastic husband had formed a design of founding a church of his own, and of being entirely independent of all government in spiritual matters. In order to carry out this purpose, he daringly continued to hold the obnoxious assemblies in his own house, and to instill his opinions into the minds of the many young and zealous friends who gathered around him. These meetings were even more numerously attended after his return from Boston than they were before he was summoned to the bar of the General Assembly; for persecution and injustice naturally recoil on the perpetrators of it, and the victim of such harsh measures is sure to gain friends and supporters among the warm-hearted and the generous.