Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/84

 and evil conditioned." Endicott was reprimanded by the Company for this stretch of authority, but the complaints of the Brownes were unheeded. "This transaction," as Mr. Bartlett remarks, in his "Pilgrim Fathers," "not merely illustrates the character of Endicott, but exposes the secret principle upon which the new commonwealth was founded, the open avowal of which would have certainly prevented the concession of a royal charter. It was, while nominally subject to the authority of the Church of England, to establish a totally different system, in which all that was really vital to that system, such as its Episcopal government and appointed formularies, should be entirely set aside and no toleration granted to any other form of worship but that agreed upon by themselves. The expulsion of the Brownes was only the first of that series of oppressive actions which ended in the judicial murder of the quakers." A plan to transfer the charter and the Company from England to the colony itself was next formed, which led to a very important increase in the number and distinction of the emigrants. The principal of these were, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Isaac Johnson, (brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln,) Thomas Dudley, and John Winthrop. Winthrop was chosen governor, and, by his admirable conduct, fully justified the general confidence. He was indeed a noble specimen of the English gentleman—loyal, yet no less firmly bent upon the assertion of public liberty, and, by old association, attached to the Church, which he nevertheless desired to see reformed upon what the Puritans deemed the pure basis of Scripture. The emigrants included many persons of high character, wealth, and learning. Their attachment to the mother country was manifested in a protestation against certain calumnious reports which had gone forth against them, wherein they declare their undying attachment, both to the Church that had nursed them in her bosom, and to the land, from which they were now voluntarily expatriating themselves. The expedition was by far the most important that had ever left the shores of England for the wilds of America, consisting of fifteen ships conveying about a thousand emigrants, among whom were four