Palfrey terms this attempt a "Presbyterian cabal," and calls its
leaders "conspirators." They petitioned the General Court or Legislature
of Massachusetts Bay, and on the rejection of their petition they
proposed to appeal to the Parliament in England. They were persecuted
for both acts. It was pretended that they were punished, not for
petitioning the local Court, but for the expressions used in their
petition--the same as it had been said seventeen years before, that the
Messrs. Brown were banished, not because they were Episcopalians, but
because, when called before Endicot and his councillors, they used
offensive expressions in justification of their conduct in continuing to
worship as they had done in England. In their case, in 1629, the use and
worship of the Prayer Book was forbidden, and the promoters of it
banished, and their papers seized; in this case, in 1646, the
Presbyterian worship was forbidden, and the promoters of it were
imprisoned and fined, and their papers seized. In both cases the victims
of religious intolerance and civil tyranny were men of the highest
position and intelligence. The statements of the petitioners in 1646
(the truth of which could not be denied, though the petitioners were
punished for telling it) show the state of bondage and oppression to
which all who would not join the Congregational Churches--that is,
five-sixths of the population--were reduced under this system of Church
government--the Congregational Church members alone electors, alone
eligible to be elected, alone law-makers and law administrators, alone
imposing taxes, alone providing military stores and commanding the
soldiery; and then the victims of such a Government were pronounced and
punished as "conspirators" and "traitors" when they ventured to appeal
for redress to the Mother Country. The most exclusive and irresponsible
Government that ever existed in Canada in its earliest days never
approached such a despotism as this of Massachusetts Bay. I leave the
reader to decide, when he peruses what was petitioned for--first to the
Massachusetts Legislature, and then to the English Parliament--who were
the real "traitors" and who the "conspirators" against right and
liberty: the "Presbyterian cabal," as Mr. Palfrey terms the petitioners,
or those who imprisoned and fined them, and seized their papers. Mr.
Hutchinson, the best informed and most candid of the New England
historians, states the affair of the petitioners, th