1664-6.]

PLYMOUTH'S CHURCH REGULATIONS.

499

congregations or in such as they might form. (This meant that Church of England people be received to the Congregational Churches, or be allowed to form parishes of their own.)

4. That any laws or legal phrases disrespectful to royalty be changed.

The General Court replied that the first and second points simply conformed to the Colony's "constant practice;" for men of differing judgments had always been chosen freemen, and to civil and military office. There were no legal enactments disrespectful to the King. The answer to the third section filled two thirds of the document, and was drawn with great skill. All of orthodox opinion were welcome to join the churches, according to the order of the Gospel; but if their views of church government forbade this, they could have liberty to establish worship by themselves, provided that they had "an able preaching ministry" and were in a place able to support two churches; until this was the case, all should join in maintaining the clergy already settled; the King's letter, promising to continue the liberties of the Colony, could not mean that the existing churches be rooted out, and there were other places in which people of other persuasions might live in societies of their own, a course which Plymouth's experience had shown most conducive to peace and charity.

Strange to say, this statement of the case was so satisfactory to these Church of England commissioners that on submitting their points to the Colony of Connecticut they dropped the original third item, and merely asked an indorsement of Plymouth's answer. This fact indicates that the visitors were much more reasonable men than Massachusetts writers have usually represented.

Two years later the King sent another pleasant letter to the rulers at Plymouth. Their "good reception" of his agents deserved his thanks; their "fidelity and affection" not only merited his praise, but it was "set off with more lustre by the contrary deportment of the Colony of Massachusetts," and they were strongly assured of the royal favor. The merry monarch's "trusty and well-beloved" of New Plymouth

were justified in now feeling that their long-sought charter was at hand; but alas! they were depending on the word of a Stuart.

Indian treachery and conspiracy caused Prence much annoyance in his later years, as also did a threatened war with the Dutch. The stern Calvinism which he cherished had long been losing its hold on the public mind, and the signs of the times were ominous to those conservative principles which he considered essential to a good government. It is probable that the weary Governor was quite ready to go when death summoned him from the government-house, April 8, 1673, at the age of seventy-three. Ten days later, with all the ceremony due to his office, he was laid on Burial Hill, in a grave now unknown.

CHAPTER LIX.

HATHERLY.-CUDWORTH.-ROBINSON.— HOWLAND.

ΤΙΜΟΤΙ

IMOTHY HATHERLY, a merchant, Adventurer, and next a London partner, came to Plymouth in 1632 for the third time, and settled at Scituate. As he was a man of wealth and ability as well as piety, he at once became a leader. For twenty-one successive years he was an assistant, for two years a Colonial commissioner, and for two the Colony's treasurer. In 1658, under Prence, Hatherly and his townsman, Cudworth, were dropped from the board of assistants because of their hostility to the proceedings against the Quakers. They were not opposed as favoring the opinions of the sectarics, but as "manifest encouragers." Such, too, was the position of their neighbor, ex-President Dunster, whom Morton describes as hotly opposing the errors of the Quakers, while Cudworth cites him as boldly testifying against the spirit of persecution.

Hatherly, though a pillar of orthodoxy, early showed a spirit of independence. In 1637 the Scituate Church excommunicated Christopher Winter for contracting himself to Widow Cooper (who is mentioned as "vain, light, proud, and much given to scoffing"), though he pretended not to have done so, and had said he would wait for the Church's consent; but when called to account, rather aspersed the Church than humbled himself. Pastor Lothrop records that Mr. Vassal and Goodman Rawlings did not consent, but purposely left the congregation during the proceedings; and while they

were "dealing" with Winter, Mr. Hatherly went out in discontent, to the grief of us." 1

As Hatherly was an active, public-spirited citizen, and had been a very hard-working magistrate, his eight years of private life would have been a boon to him, had the respite not been enforced. He died in 1666, leaving no children to inherit his honorable name."

GENERAL JAMES CUDWORTH,

who probably went to Scituate with Hatherly, was son of Ralph Cudworth, rector of Aller, as well as chaplain to James I., and who married Prince Henry's nurse. Another son was that eminent and liberal Churchman, Ralph Cudworth, D.D. Cudworth in 1639 went with Lothrop to found Barnstable, and was sent as deputy from the new town; but the same year

1 Perhaps the Church officers watched for an opportunity to avenge their wounded dignity. In 1638 Winter was fined 10s. for publishing himself to Jane Cooper, "contrary to order and custom;" the next year, on a charge of antenuptial intimacy, Winter was sentenced to be whipped at the post, at the Governor's discretion, and his wife to be whipped at the cart's tail through the street. Some aggravated misconduct must be inferred from this barbarity, but ecclesiastical revenge is also to be suspected. Yet on a charge of the same kind in 1648, Winter was fined £5. Was this a second marriage, or was it the commutation of the old sentence which Bradford and Hatherly had till then held in abeyance ?

Yet in 1658 Winter appeared as the champion of orthodoxy; for he was the man who filed charges of heretical opinions against the Quaker emissaries, Norton and Rouse. In 1660 he was constable of Marshfield; but in 1669 and at other times he was sharply examined on disgraceful charges which were merely "not proven."

2 Hatherly married Nathaniel Tilden's widow. In his retirement, the Colony still authorized him to conduct marriages and administer oaths. He was Chauncey's strong friend, and when Vassal emigrated (1648), Hatherly bought his house and offered it as a gift to Chauncey, Vassal's bitter enemy. On Chauncey's refusing it as a gift, Hatherly conveyed it to the church, which gave Chauncey its use during the remainder of his Scituate life. Afterward, the Church returned the house to Hatherly.

Like most enterprising people of their day, Hatherly and Cudworth indulged in a law-suit (1640); the issue was a land boundary, — a common cause of litigation, from the vagueness of the early grants, and mistakes as to lines when the land came to be fenced. Hatherly recovered £12. In 1639, on Hatherly's motion, Cudworth had been "presented" for selling wine unlicensed. In 1634 Francis Sprague (of the "Anne") was ordered to pay £20 for killing Hatherly's

mare.

1659.]

CUDWORTH'S LIBERALITY.

503 he returned to Scituate, from which place he was six times a deputy.1

Cudworth was assistant nine years, and commissioner five. He was filling both positions when in 1658 the Prence, or anti-Quaker, sentiment prevented his re-election to either. In 1659 Scituate showed proper spirit by electing him as deputy; but the illiberals were so strong that the Court would not receive him, Collier even declaring that he would not remain if Cudworth were admitted.

Six months later Cudworth wrote to James Brown (subsequently the Baptist magistrate from Swansea), who was then in London, and said that for two years he had opposed various restrictions and punishments, for which reason he and Hatherly had been left out of office, and himself cashiered as captain of the Scituate train-band; 2 John Alden had disappointed his best friends, who prayed God that his acts be not charged as oppressions of a high nature. The "New Plymouth saddle is on the Bay horse," said Cudworth; and he added that religious matters so occupied the Government that no time was left for civil business, and at the last session from sixty to eighty persons were indicted for absence from church. Brown seems to have been treacherous; for in a few months this letter was before the Plymouth Court, and

1 Hatherly came in the "Charles," 1632. Cudworth brought his wife and three sons. His daughter Mary, born 1637, was in 1661 “disorderly married" to Robert Whitcomb; that is, they were united by Henry Hobson, a non-resident Quaker, instead of by the authorized official, and the pair were fined £10. In 1662, they having been "orderly married, and following their callings industriously, and attending the worship of God diligently," £5 was remitted, and the treasurer was ordered to "be slow in demanding the remainder."

2 James Skiff, of Sandwich, for like reason was also refused his seat as deputy; and the Court was guilty of the high-handed act of filling these two scats with men of their own selection; namely, Lieutenant Torrey, of Scituate, and Thomas Tupper, the Sandwich missionary.

In 1655 the Court had rebuked the Scituate train-band for its levity in choosing "unmeet persons" as sergeants, and electing one man sergeant when he held the Court's commission as ensign. In 1666 the train-band again aroused magisterial ire by making Cudworth their captain, with the gallant Michael Peirce as lieutenant. The Court disallowed both, and ordered Sergeant Damon, the wind. miller, to take charge of the company. In the earlier days William Vassal, notwithstanding his ecclesiastical disfavor, was captain of this corps and was in the council of war with the liberal Standish.