power and purpose of voters in the majority untrained in self-government and the exigencies of practical politics. But behind any public concern stood the fear of loss of office, with its dignity and honor, on the part of the magistrates themselves.

Forthwith a meeting of the Company was held, and a rule was adopted which delegated to the Assistants alone the choice of Governor and Deputy Governor, and from their own number, in lieu of such election by the whole body of members (voters); and it also transferred to the same officers the power of making laws, and of choosing officials to execute them; thus leaving to the freemen only a voice in the yearly election of the Assistants themselves; and in this way these men, to make permanent their tenure of office and maintain their magisterial control, defied the unwritten law of public opinion, that resistless force which bides its time and moulds all human destiny, even under its most recent political definition. In the few months which intervened between this action and the session of the first General Court, the attempt of the magistrates to limit the method of election aroused bitter opposition in the minds of some

of the most influential voters. At the Court in May, 1631, the one hundred and eighteen persons who had given notice were chosen members of the Company and took the freemen's oath.

Immediately the freemen, among whom were some of the early planters, jealous of the concentration of power in the magistrates, rescinded the previous vote, and took again into their own hands the election of the Company officers; and, to secure their right of representation, they also ordered the choice "of two of every plantation to confer with the court about raising a public stock," the initiative of the regular election of deputies, the second legislative house, with a voice in all public affairs, save that every freeman had his vote in the election of officers.

And again, these men, who had expatriated themselves for the sake of civil and religious liberty, at that time wrote another page of history without a parallel. They "ordered and agreed, that, for the time to come, no man should be admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as were members of some of the churches within the limits of the same."

Thus was an aristocracy created, not of birth or culture, of wealth, achievement, or distinction, but one of persons whose sole test of quality was church membership,—a religious commonwealth. On this definition of citizenship, came Cotton, preaching the crusade of ecclesiastical domination in both spiritual and temporal affairs, abetted by the intemperate advocacy of his doctrines by his brethren; setting up a separate clerico-magisterial estate, defined in spirit and purpose in Cotton's postulate: "A magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause, and to be publicly convict, no more than the magistrates may not turn a private man out of his freedom without like public trial."

Count all the causes that inspired the breaking away from the Bay Colony, including the superficial ones set down in the public records, which ripened first into the removal to Connecticut, and the most potent one centres in the intolerance, and arrogance and narrowness of the ministerial dignitaries, and the church-membership test of citizenship. Adams, in The Emancipation of Massachusetts, defines the precise situation :

Though communicants were not necessarily voters, no one could be a voter who was not a communicant : therefore the town meeting was nothing but the church meeting, possibly somewhat attenuated, and called by a different name. By this insidious statute the clergy seized the temporal power, which they held till the charter fell. The minister stood at the head of the congregation, and moulded it to suit his purposes and to do his will. Common men could not have kept this hold upon the inhabitants of New England; but the clergy were learned, resolute, and able, and their strong but narrow minds burned with fanaticism and love of power."

CHAPTER V.

Ludlow's Attitude as an Assistant-Change of Views-His Defeat for the Governorship-Election of Haynes-Winthrop's Explanation - Ludlow's Objection-Overslaughed -Resolutions to Remove to Connecticut-The Removal-Its Real Cause-Ludlow, Hooker, Cotton, Stone—Ministerial Interference-Magisterial Arrogance-Court and Commons.

In the outset of the struggle between the magistrates and the commons, Ludlow, as one of the Assistants, stood with his associates in magnifying and undertaking to perpetuate the magisterial office; so carrying out his protest, and guarding, as he thought, against encroachments on the functions and honors of the Court. But when the freemen set aside previous corporate votes, demanded a sight of the charter, appointed advisers to the magistrates - deputies and made imperative their demands for recognition, Ludlow changed both his tactics and opinions, with other leaders, and made himself popular with the voters, as they elected him Deputy Governor in 1634,