Independents,
and were elected respectively pastor and teacher. A confession of
faith and a church covenant were drawn up, and August 6 thirty persons
associated themselves in a church.[13]

Two of the gentlemen emigrants, John and Samuel Browne, presumed to
hold a separate service with a small company, using the Prayer Book.
Thereupon the hot-headed Endicott arrested them, put them on
shipboard, and sent them back to England. This conduct of Endicott's
was a flagrant aggression on vested rights, since the Brownes appear
in the charter as original promoters of the colony, and were sent to
Massachusetts by the company in the high capacity of assistants or
councillors to Endicott himself. The two brothers complained in
England, and in October, 1629, the company sent Endicott a warning
against "undigested counsels ... which may have any ill construction
with the state here and make us obnoxious to an adversary."[14]

In another particular Endicott showed the summary character which
distinguished him. When Morton arrived in London a prisoner, in 1628,
Isaac Allerton was trying to secure from the Council for New England a
new patent for Plymouth colony. In Morton he appears to have
recognized a convenient medium for reaching Sir Ferdinando Gorges; at
any rate, when Allerton returned to New England in the summer of 1629,
he brought Thomas Morton back with him, to the scandal of the Plymouth
community.[15] After a few weeks at Plymouth, Morton repaired to Merry
Mount and resumed the business of a fur-trader, but, as might have
been expected, he was soon brought into conflict with his neighbors.

Endicott, it appears, not long after Morton's return, in pursuance of
instructions from England, summoned all the settlers in Massachusetts
to a general court at Salem. At this meeting, according to Morton,
Endicott tendered to all present for signature articles binding them
"to follow the rule of God's word in all causes as well
ecclesiasticall as politicall." The alternative was banishment, but
Morton says that he declined to subscribe without the words in the
Massachusetts charter, "so as nothing be done contrary or repugnant to
the Lawes of the Kingdome of England." Endicott took fire at the
independent claims of Morton and sent a party to arrest him. They
found Morton gone, whereupon they broke into his house and
appropriated his corn and other property.[16]

Meanwhile, in England, an important determination had been reached