"The Court, and great part of the country, were much offended at this petition. A declaration was drawn up by order of the Court, in answer to the petition, and in vindication of the Government--a proceeding which at this day would not appear for the honour of the supreme authority. The petitioners were required to attend the Court. They urged their right of petitioning. They were told they were not accused of petitioning, but of contemptuous and seditious expressions, and were required to find sureties for their good behaviour, etc. A charge was drawn up against them in form; notwithstanding which it was intimated to them, that if they would ingenuously acknowledge their offence, they should be forgiven; but they refused, and were fined, some in larger, some in smaller sums, two or three of the magistrates dissenting, Mr. Bellingham,[85] in particular, desiring his dissent might be entered. The petitioners claimed an appeal to the Commissioners of Plantations in England; but it was not allowed. Some of them resolved to go home with a complaint. Their papers were seized, and among them was found a petition to the Right Honourable the Earl of Warwick, etc., Commissioners, from about five and twenty non-freemen, for themselves and many thousands more, in which they represent that from the pulpits[86] they had been reproached and branded with the names of destroyers of Churches and Commonwealths, called Hamans, Judases, sons of Korah, and the Lord entreated to confound them, and the people and magistrates stirred up against them by those who were too forward to step out of their callings, so that they had been sent for to the Court, and some of them committed for refusing to give two hundred pounds bond to stand to the sentence of the Court, _when all the crime was a petition to the Court_, and they had been publicly used as malefactors, etc.
"Mr. Winslow, who had been chosen agent for the colony to answer to Gorton's complaint, was now instructed to make defence against these petitioners; and by his prudent management, and the credit and esteem he was in with many members of the Parliament and principal persons then in power, he prevented any prejudice to the colony from either of these applications."[87]