The work from which this extract is taken was published in 1632; in 1663, thirty-one years later, appeared the second part of the famous English satire, Hudibras. Butler, its author, had come across the New English Canaan, and the very original idea of vicarious atonement suggested in it entertained him hugely. He appropriated and improved it, adapting the facts to his own fancy, until at last the story appeared in its new guise, in what was the most popular English book of the day: Our Brethren of New-England use Choice malefactors to excuse, And hang the Guiltless in their stead, Of whom the Churches have less need; As lately ’t happen’d: In a town There liv’d a Cobler, and but one, That out of Doctrine could cut Use, And mend men’s lives as well as shoes. This precious Brother having slain, In times of peace, an Indian, Not out of malice, but mere zeal, (Because he was an Infidel), The mighty Tottipottymoy Sent to our Elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league held forth by Brother Patch, Against the articles in force Between both churches, his and ours, For which he craved the Saints to render Into his hands, or hang, th’ offender; But they maturely having weigh’d They had no more but him o’ th’ trade, (A man that served them in a double Capacity, to teach and cobble), Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do The Indian Hogan Moghan too Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid.[19] The really amusing part of this episode, however, yet remains to be told. When it was rescued from oblivion, through the wit of Butler, in 1663, the reaction against Puritanism was at its height, and everything which tended to render the sect, so recently all-powerful, either odious or ridiculous, was eagerly sought for and implicitly believed. New England, and especially the province of Massachusetts Bay, was out of favor. So striking an exemplification of Puritan justice was not to be disregarded. The whole absurd fiction of Morton and Butler was, therefore, not only accepted as historical truth, but the bastard tradition was solemnly deposited at the door of the good people of Boston and Plymouth:--and so the Weymouth hanging passed into history hand in hand with the famous Blue-Laws of Connecticut. There is, however, something irresistibly ludicrous in picturing to oneself the horror and dismay with which the severe elders of the Plymouth church would have contemplated the saddling of their fame before posterity, on the ribald authority of the New English Canaan and of Hudibras, with the apocryphal misdeeds of Weston’s vagabonds. But so it happened, and nearly a century and a half later the absurd fiction was gravely recorded in his history by Governor Hutchinson, as a part of the early annals of New England.[20]