and of the Common-weal; and therefore, upon good evidence given, she heartily desireth a Judgment and Execution." The title is sufficiently significant of the aim of the writer. The work, however, had been printed for the use of the parliament only, and when Leighton ascertained that it had been dissolved before his work was ready to be put into the hands of the members, he suppressed the copies he had procured to be printed in Holland. Notwithstanding this precaution, a copy found its way to some members of the government, who immediately instituted proceedings against him. On a warrant from the High Commission he was seized, loaded with irons, thrust into a loathsome dungeon in Newgate, and after confinement for fifteen weeks, arraigned in the Star Chamber, on the 4th of June, 1630. The charge against him, was for "framing, publishing, and scattering, a scandalous book against king, peers and prelates." The charge was true, because the statements made in the book were scandalously true. He wrote of the prelates and of the hierarchy as he and others had found them. His words were not courteous; but neither the prelates, nor the hierarchy had been over courteous towards those who had differed from them. His figures were not the most choice; but they were much less objectionable than the actions of those against whom his book was written.* And if his crime was heinous, in venturing to cry out against *He called the bishops, "men of blood;" the queen “a daughter of Heth;" and referring to the hierarchy he used a strong figure, "smite that Hazael under the fifth rib;"-which Heylin and Lawson, with the ingenuity of special pleaders, have interpreted literally as an incentive to assassination, and construed into a justification of all that was, without a figure, done to poor Leighton, the intolerable evils under which liberty and religion groaned, it must be admitted that his punishment was more than proportionably severe, as the following statement, furnished by a contemporary writer, will evince. "On the 26th of November, 1630," says Ludlow, "this censure was executed in a most cruel manner. His ears were cut, his nose slit, his face branded with burning irons;* he was tied to a post, and whipped with a treble cord to that cruel degree, that he, himself, writing the history thereof, ten years after, affirmed that every lash brought away the flesh, and that he should feel it to his dying day. He was lastly put in the pillory, and kept there nearly two hours. in frost and snow; and then after this most barbarous usage, not permitted to return to his quarters in the Fleet in a coach provided to carry him, but compelled in that sad condition and severe weather, to go by water. After this he was kept ten weeks in dirt and mire, not being sheltered from rain and snow. They shut him up most closely twenty-two months; and he remained a prisoner ten or eleven years, not suffered to breathe in the open air, until the parliament of 1640 most happily delivered him."+ In consequence of these severities-which became more general as the king became more arbitrary, until it grew into a kind of fashion among the bishops to * According to the sentence, he was to be "branded in the face with a double S.S., for a sower of sedition." + Ludlow's Letters (1812) p. 45. The same authority states, that when sentence-the sentence thus executed-was pronounced on Leighton, "Laud pulled off his cap, and, holding up his hands, gave thanks to God who had given him victory over his enemies." persecute-great numbers left the kingdom for other lands.* Some fled to Holland; but the greater number to New England, where great success had attended the persevering industry of the early settlers. Since the May-flower's first voyage with the pilgrims from Leyden and England, many had gone over in successive emigrations; and intelligence had been received from time to time of the prosperity and peace of the infant colonyt. On this account many were prepared to leave their native land, and embark their all in similar enterprizes. It so happened that in 1620, king James had signed a patent of incorporation in favour of the Duke of Lenox, the Marquisses of Buckingham and Hamilton, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, Sir Francis Gorges, with thirty-four others, and their successors, by which they were constituted "The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England in America." This patent became the civil basis of all the grants and patents by which New England was afterwards colonized; and * Respecting this state of things, Milton writes in 1641:-"Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets, and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes to states: I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation, (God turn the omen from us!) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to forsake their native country." Of Reformation, &c. In 1622, was published in London, a "Relation or Journall❞ of the beginnings of the "Plimouth" plantation; and in 1624, "Good Newes from New England," containing the after history. Other accounts were published in successive years, mentioning the names of the ships, and sometimes of the passengers that arrived there. The remainder of the Leyden church got safely over. the council retained and exercised the power thus vested in them by the crown, until 1635, when they resigned their charter. In 1628, the council sold to Sir Henry Roswell and five others, a large tract of land lying round Massachussets' Bay; and a company was formed for the purpose of colonizing that part of New England. The scheme was entered upon by parties anxious to escape persecution. No plans were laid down adapted to regulate the future proceedings of the colony, in reference to ecclesiastical matters. Probably it was thought prudent to conduct their movement as quietly as possible, lest they might be prevented from accomplishing their object; and as all the parties desiring to emigrate were such as suffered from intolerance at home, it would be thought needless to make any specific arrangements respecting the kind of church polity that should be ultimately adopted. They sought, therefore, in the first instance, a charter of incorporation from the crown, which was granted in 1629. Captain John Endicott had already gone over in the preceding June, with his family and a small body of emigrants.* In the following May, about three hundred and fifty sailed from the Isle of Wight, and conveyed instructions from the London company appointing Endicott governor, and twelve others members of the council. Two of the persons nominated as councillors were silenced ministers, one a Mr. Higginson of Leicester, and the other a Mr. Skelton of Lincolnshire. One of the first things attended to in the new colony related to their ecclesiastical polity, respecting which various accounts have been given. As this is a matter of some importance * Morse, p. 29. in relation to our history, we shall enter somewhat fully into particulars. According to Winterbotham, these colonists, and those who followed them soon after, were "episcopally inclined when they left England, though they could not conform to many ceremonies and customs, nor submit, to what they judged, different corruptions, imposed upon their consciences by the king and prelates."* According to Dr. Price, they "belonged to the more moderate class of nonconformists, who, without seceding from the communion of the hierarchy, acknowledged its corruptions, and earnestly sought its reform." Neal has little to say of them, except that they were "all puritans." It appears, however, most probable, that they were chiefly of the class termed "rigid puritans," or, Congregational Independents; since they not only followed the Congregational polity at Salem, as soon as they settled there; but followed it as involving principles they had long recognized as scriptural and good.|| According to the common account respecting them, they must be supposed to have been-all of them-won over to the principles of the New Plymouth Independents, so soon as they came into their neighbourhood. But this is not at all likely; and if we suppose it possible that Higginson and Skelton were capable of so easy a cơnversion from episcopalian or presbyterian principles to those of Congregational Independency, it is not probable that those who went over with them, and *Historical view of the United States, i. 28. † History of Nonconformity, i. 62. History of the Puritans, i. 543. || In these and the following remarks, we refer to the great majority: of course there were exceptions, as in all similar cases. |