Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/373

 arose. Endecott and his puritan council viewed with no favourable eye the raising tobacco, ‘believing such a production, except for medicinal purposes, injurious both to health and morals,’ while they insisted on abolishing the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The wise enactments of the company's court in London did much towards allaying these and similar disputes (cf. Cradock's letter to Endecott, dated 16 Feb. 1628–9, in Chronicles of Massachusetts, pp. 128–37). To protect themselves against the Indians a military company was organised by the settlers and Endecott placed in command. His attention was next called to the illegal trading and dissolute ways of the settlers at Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount, now Quincy. He personally conducted an expedition thither, ‘rebuked the inhabitants for their profaneness, and admonished them to look to it that they walked better’ (, New England, ed. Savage, 1823, i. 34). ‘In the purifying spirit of authority’ he then cut down the maypole on which Thomas Morton, their leader, had been wont to publish his satires on the puritans, while his followers made merry around it in the carousals for which the sale of arms and ammunition to the Indians furnished the supplies. He also changed the name of the settlement to Mount Dagon. Endecott continued to exercise the chief authority until 12 June 1630, when John Winthrop, the first regularly elected governor, arrived with the charter by which the government of the colony was entirely transferred to New England. Endecott, who had been chosen one of his council of assistants, gave a cordial welcome to Winthrop, and a friendship began which lasted without a cloud while the latter lived (ib. i. 26). On 3 July 1632 the court of assistants, to mark their sense of his services, granted him three hundred acres of land situate between two and three miles in a northerly direction from the main settlement at Salem, afterwards known as his ‘orchard farm’ (, Annals of Salem, 2nd edit. i. 178). In 1634 he was nominated one of the seven military commissioners for the colony. In September of this year a rumour reached the colony that the king had demanded their charter with the intention of compelling obedience to the ceremonies of the church as interpreted and enforced by Laud. Endecott, ‘a puritan of puritans,’ was strangely moved at the news. Inflamed by the fiery eloquence of Roger Williams he publicly cut out with his sword the red cross of St. George from the banner used by the train band of Salem for the reason, as he alleged, that the cross savoured of popery. The colony dared not refrain from taking cognisance of an act with which most of its principal men, including Winthrop himself, secretly sympathised. The matter was accordingly brought before the general court, and after due investigation ‘they adjudged him worthy admonition, and to be disabled for one year from bearing any public office; declining any heavier sentence, because they were persuaded he did it out of tenderness of conscience and not of any evil intent’ (, i. 155–6, 158). For protesting against the harsh treatment of Roger Williams he was shortly afterwards committed, when, finding it useless to resist, he made the apology demanded, and was released the same day (ib. i. 166).

From this period Endecott seems to have acted in greater harmony with the other leaders of the colony. In 1636 he was reappointed an assistant, and was also sent, along with Captain John Underhill, on an expedition against the Block Island and Pequot Indians. Little save bloodshed was effected. During this same year his views concerning the hateful cross triumphed. Many of the militia refused to serve under a flag which bore what they regarded as an idolatrous emblem; and after solemn consultation the military commissioners ordered the cross to be left out. In 1641 Endecott was chosen deputy-governor, and was continued in office for the two succeeding years. In 1642 he was appointed one of the corporation of Harvard College. His increasing influence insured his election as governor in 1644. The following year, when he was succeeded in the governorship by Joseph Dudley, he was constituted sergeant major-general of Massachusetts, the highest military office in the colony. He was also elected an assistant, and one of the united commissioners for the province. Upon the death of Winthrop, 26 March 1649, Endecott was again chosen governor, to which office he was annually elected until his death, with the exception of 1650 and 1654, when he held that of deputy-governor. Under his administration, especially from 1655 to 1660, the colony made rapid progress. His faults were those of an age which regarded religious toleration as a crime. As the head of the commonwealth, responsible for its spiritual as well as temporal welfare, he felt it his duty to scourge, banish, and even hang the unorthodox. Especially obnoxious to him were the quakers, of which sect two men were executed in 1659 and a woman in 1660. Long before this he had issued a formal proclamation against wearing long hair ‘after the manner of ruffians and barbarous Indians,