e, it is plain there were a large
number of loyalists even among the Congregationalists, as they alone
were eligible to be members of, or to elect to the Court, and that the
asserters of independence were greatly perplexed and agitated.]

[Footnote 153: Danforth Papers, Collections of Massachusetts Historical
Society, Vol. VIII., pp. 99, 100, 108, 109.]

[Footnote 154: "There had been a press for printing at Cambridge for
near twenty years. The Court appointed two persons (Captain Daniel
Guekins and Mr. Jonathan Mitchell, the minister of Cambridge), in
October, 1662, licensers of the press, and prohibited the publishing of
any books or papers which should not be supervised by them;" and in
1668, the supervisors having allowed the printing "Thomas a Kempis, de
Imitatione Christi," the Court interposed (it being wrote by a popish
minister, and containing some things less safe to be infused among the
people), and therefore they commended to the licensers a more full
revisal, and ordered the press to stop in the meantime. (Hutchinson's
History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 257, 258.)]

[Footnote 155: Even during the Commonwealth in England, the
Congregational Government of Massachusetts Bay was one of unmitigated
persecution. Mr. Hutchinson, under date of 1655, remarks:

"The persecution of Episcopalians by the prevailing powers in England
was evidently from revenge for the persecution they had suffered
themselves, and from political considerations and the prevalence of
party, seeing all other opinions and professions, however absurd, were
tolerated; but in New England it must be confessed that bigotry and
cruel zeal prevailed, and to that degree that no opinion but their own
could be tolerated. They were sincere but mistaken in their principles;
and absurd as it is, it is too evident, they believed it to be to the
glory of God to take away the lives of his creatures for maintaining
tenets contrary to what they professed themselves. This occasioned
complaints against the colony to the Parliament and Cromwell, but
without success." (History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 189.)]

[Footnote 156: "Proceedings and sentence of the County Court held at
Cambridge, on adjournment, April 17, 1666, against Thomas Goold, Thomas
Osburne, and John George [157] (being Baptists):

"Thomas Goold, Thomas Osburne, and John George, being presented by the
Grand Jury of this county (Cambridge), for absenting themselves from the
pub