ster Robert Ratcliffe as Rector.

Besides these, there was a small number of Quakers, now dwelling in
peace, so far as personal manifestations were concerned, being protected
by the King's mandate. These had even grown so bold of late, as to be
seeking permission to erect a meeting-house; which almost moved the
Puritan divines to prophesy famine, earthquakes and pestilence as the
results of such an ungodly toleration of heresy.

Then there were a number of Baptists, who also now dwelt in peace, under
the King's protection.

Adding to the foregoing the people without any religion to speak of, who
principally belonged to or were connected with the seafaring class, and
Master Raymond found that he had a pretty clear idea of the inhabitants
of Boston.

In relation to the Witchcraft prosecutions, the young Englishman
ascertained that the above classes seemed to favor the prosecutions just
in proportion to the extent of their Puritan orthodoxy. The great
majority of the Puritans believed devoutly in witches, and in the duty
of obeying the command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And
generally in proportion to a Puritan church-member's orthodoxy, was the
extent of his belief in witchcraft, and the fierceness of his
exterminating zeal.

The Episcopalians and the Baptists were either very lukewarm, or else
in decided opposition to the prosecutions looking upon them as simply
additional proofs of Puritan narrowness, intolerance and bigotry.

The Quakers held to the latter opinion even more firmly than the liberal
Episcopalians and Baptists: adding to it the belief that it was a
judgment allowed to come upon the Puritans, to punish them for their
cruelty to God's chosen messengers.

As for the seafaring class, they looked upon the whole affair as a piece
of madness, which could only overtake people whose contracted notions
were a result of perpetually living in one place, and that on the land.
And since the arrest of a man so well thought of, and of their own class
as Captain Alden, the vocabulary allowed by the law in Boston was
entirely too limited to embrace adequately a seaman's emphatic sense of
the iniquitous proceedings. As one of them forcibly expressed himself to
Master Raymond:--"He would be _condemned_, if he wouldn't like to see
the _condemned_ town of Boston, and all its _condemned_ preachers,
buried like Port Royal, ten _condemned_ fathoms deep, under the
_condemned_ soil upon which it was built!" He