interfered by commanding Endicott to send those under
arrest to England for trial. Hitherto John Norton had been preeminent, but
in that same December he was appointed on a mission to London, and as he
died soon after his return, his direct influence on affairs then probably
ceased. He had been chiefly responsible for the hangings of 1659 and 1660,
but under no circumstances could they have been continued, for after four
heretics had perished, it was found impossible to execute Wenlock
Christison, who had been condemned, because of popular indignation.
Nevertheless, the respite was brief. In June, 1662, the king, in a letter
confirming the charter, excluded the Quakers from the general toleration
which he demanded for other sects, and the old legislation was forthwith
revived; only as it was found impossible to kill the schismatics openly,
the inference, from what occurred subsequently, is unavoidable, that the
elders sought to attain their purpose by what their reverend historians
call "a humaner policy," [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 134.]
or, in plain English, by murdering them by flogging and starvation. Nor
was the device new, for the same stratagem had already been resorted to by
the East India Company, in Hindostan, before they were granted full
criminal jurisdiction. [Footnote: Mill's _British India_, i.
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