The lecture and the sermon were the events of the week,--they supplied the place of the theatre, the novel and the newspaper,--they were listened to and discussed and commented upon by old and young,--and, so far as my investigations have enabled me to judge, the stiffest of orthodoxy was ever preached from the Weymouth pulpit. In the early days, however, the clergy of New England were an aristocracy,--almost a caste. Not, of course, an aristocracy of wealth, but of education, tradition and faith,--a veritable priesthood in fact. The tie between the pastor and his people partook almost of the nature of the wedding bond; there was a sanctity about it; it was well-nigh indissoluble. But in its earliest period Weymouth was not fortunate in these relations. Prior to 1635 the plantation was too poor and too small in numbers to maintain a church, but that year one was gathered, being the eleventh of the colony.[84] Of Mr. Hull, the first authentic pastor, it can only be said that he preached in Weymouth for several years, and then his connection with the church was dissolved. There seems indeed at this time to have been a serious schism in the infant settlement, for, while Mr. Hull arrived in 1635 and preached his farewell sermon in May, 1639, yet as early as January, 1638, the elders of Boston had come to Weymouth, and had there demonstrated the efficacy of prayer by effecting a reconciliation between one Mr. Jenner and his people. The reconciliation seems to have been but temporary, for, after representing the town as deputy in the General Court in 1640, in 1641 Mr. Jenner removed to Saco. Meanwhile, in 1637, the Rev. Mr. Lenthall also appears upon the Weymouth stage, bringing with him the pestilential doctrines of Mrs. Hutchinson in regard to justification before faith and other equally incomprehensible theses, which came so near working the destruction of the infant colony. A movement was started inviting Mr. Lenthall to settle and organize a new church. It was apparently making rapid headway when the magistrates of the colony energetically interfered to put a stop to it. In March, 1638, Mr. Lenthall accordingly, with some of his leading supporters, was summoned to appear before the General Court, and made to see good reason why, with expressions of deep contrition, he should make a retraction of his heresies in writing and in open court. Upon this, he was, with some opposition, dismissed without a fine, but only on condition that he was to make a similar public recantation in Weymouth, and should also be on hand when the next General Court assembled. His followers did not escape so easily; one of them was heavily fined, another was disfranchised, a third, having no means wherewith to pay a fine, was publicly whipped, and a fourth, “because of his novel disposition,” received a significant intimation to the effect that the General Court “were weary of him, unless he reform.” Shortly after this miscarriage,