Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/341

 Intolerance in JVezv Hampshire.

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��science was expressl}' to be allowed to all Protestants, — " yt such espe- cially as shall be conformable to ye rites of ye Church of P^iig'd shall be paiticularly countenanced and encour- aged."

IG80 the provincial governor, Cran- field, issued an order for the adminis- tration of the sacrament in the prov- ince according to the mode of the Church of P^ngland, and one dissen- ter, at least, Rev. Joshua Moody, was imprisoned some time at Great Island for violating this order. Rev. Seaborn Cotton, owing to Cranfield's threat to come and do at Hampton what he had done with Moody at Portsmouth, was frightened away from that town to Boston. But these oppressive orders had little effect on the stern Puritan settlers, and other sects than their own had a poor chance. Each town governing itself could generally liave its own way in church matters, and on the whole the sentiment was more liberal than in Massachusetts. Until 1G86, when Gov. Dudlev gave the authority, no minister had the power to marry per- sons, since marriage was deemed wholly a civil contract.

At least as early as 1714, while New Hampshire was still a colony, a law was passed by the General Court that the freeholders of any town could make choice of a minister for that town, and name the salary to be al- lowed him. The selectmen were re- quired to make out rates and assess- ments upon the inhabitants of the town, and these assessments were to be collected like any tax. A meeting- house and the minister's dwelling- house were to be paid for in the same way. It was, however, specifically

��stated that this must not interfere with liberty of conscience, nor was any person, under pretence of being of another persuasion, to be excused from paying the settled minister. Yet such as conscientiously and con- stantly attended worship according to their own persuasion, and they only, were to be excused from paying for the support of the minister of the town. Each town was considered to be under moral obligation to provide for insti'uetion in religion and morali- ty. Five years later than the first enactment the same law, substantially, was confirmed. This seems to have been the general condition of things through the decades to the Revolu- tionary war, when the royal governor, Wentworth, having fled, the people in 1776 organized a provisional gov- ernment, when no reference in their records is made to religious matters. In 178-4 the bill of rights was adopted, after two or three failures, on submit- ting a plan to the people. That bill recognized the natural rights of con- science and the worship of God, and empowered the legislature to author- ize towns, parishes, bodies corporate^ or religious societies, to make provi- sion for the maintenance of public Protestant service of piety, religion, and morality. It provided that these bodies named should have the exclu- sive right of electing their own pub- lic teachers and providing for their maintenance ; and no person of any particular sect or denomination should ever be compelled to pay toward the supi)ort of the ministry of another sect or denomination. In the form of government instituted at that same time, no one was made eligible to the oflfice of governor, state senator, or

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