"The people of Massachusetts might well be satisfied with their condition and prospects. Everything was prospering with them. They had established comfortable homes, which they felt strong enough to defend against any power but the power of the Mother Country; and that was friendly. They had always the good-will of Cromwell. In relation _to them_, he allowed the Navigation Law, _which pressed on the Southern colonies, to became_ A DEAD LETTER, and they received the commodities of all nations free of duty, and sent their ships to all the ports of continental Europe."[99]
But that in which the ruling spirits of the Massachusetts General Court--apart from their ceaseless endeavours to monopolise trade and extend territory--seemed to revel most was in searching out and punishing _dissent_ from the Congregational Establishment, and, at times, with the individual liberty of citizens in sumptuary matters. No Laud ever equalled them in this, or excelled them in enforcing uniformity, not only of doctrine, but of opinions and practice in the minutest particulars. When a stand against England was to be taken, in worship, or inquisition into matters of religions dissent, and woman's apparel, Endicot became Governor (according to the "advice of the Elders" in such matters), and Winthrop was induced to be Deputy Governor, although the latter was hardly second to the former in the spirit and acts of religious persecution. He had been a wealthy man in England, and was well educated and amiable; but after his arrival at Massachusetts Bay he seems to have wanted firmness to resist the intolerant spirit and narrow views of Endicot. He died in 1649. Mr. Palfrey remarks: "Whether it was owing to solicitude as to the course of affairs in England after the downfall of the Royal power, or to the absence of the moderating influence of Winthrop, or to sentiments engendered, on the one hand by the alarm from the Presbyterians in 1646, and on the other by the confidence inspired by the [Congregational] Synod in 1648, or to all these causes in their degree, the years 1650 and 1651 appear to have been some of more than common sensibility in Massachusetts to danger from _Heretics_."[100]
In 1650, the General Court condemned, and ordered to be publicly burnt, a book entitled "The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, Justification, etc., Clearing of some Common Errors," written and published in England, by Mr. Pynchion, "an ancient and venerable magistrate." This book was deficient in orthodoxy, in the estimation of Mr. Endicot and his colleagues, was condemned to be burnt, and the author was summoned to answer for it at the bar of the inquisitorial court. His explanation was unsatisfactory; and he was commanded to appear a second time, under a penalty of one hundred pounds; but he returned to England, and left his inquisitors without further remedy.