" [Footnote: Lechford, _Plain Dealing_, pp. 6, 7.]
Those who were thus disfranchised, Lechford, who knew what he was talking
about, goes on to say, soon began to complain that they were "ruled like
slaves;" and there can be no doubt that they had to submit to very
substantial grievances. The administration of justice especially seems to
have been defective. "Now the most of the persons at New England are not
admitted of their church, and therefore are not freemen, and when they
come to be tryed there, be it for life or limb, name or estate, or
whatsoever, they must bee tryed and judged too by those of the church, who
are in a sort their adversaries: how equall that hath been, or may be,
some by experience doe know, others may judge." [Footnote: _Plain
Dealing_, p. 23.]
The government was in fact in the hands of a small oligarchy of saints,
[Footnote: "Three parts of the people of the country remaine out of the
church." _Plain Dealing_, p. 73. A. D. 1642.] who were, in their turn,
ruled by their priests, and as the repression of thought inevitable under
such a system had roused the Antinomians, who were voters, to demand a
larger intellectual freedom, so the denial of ordinary political rights
to the majority led to discontent.
Since under the theocracy there was no department of human affairs in
which the clergy did not meddle, they undertook as a matter of course to
interfere with the militia, and the following curious letter written to
the magistrates by the ministers of Rowley shows how far they carried
their supervision even so late as 1689.
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