Not yet, however, were the harassed Gortonists to be secure in their possessions. Pomham and Soccononocco were induced by the enemies of Gorton to repudiate their signatures to the deed of Miantonomi. They made their submission to the government of Massachusetts and begged its aid to expel the Gortonists from Shawomet.[29] There are some reasons to believe that this action was not altogether disconnected from a possibly more remunerative offer made them by the Atherton Company, an 39organization which had been formed by the astute Commissioners of the New England Confederation, for the purchase and sale of Indian lands.[30]

Gorton and his companions were summoned to Boston to make answer to Pomham’s claim.[31] Denying the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, in a spicy correspondence, Gorton refused to obey the summons. Increase Nowell, Secretary of the Colony, and the Boston Elders, discovered no less than twenty-six instances of blasphemy, “or thereabouts,” in the terms of Gorton’s epistle. The Gortonists were warned that if they continued contumacious they would be regarded as “fitted for the slaughter,”[32] 40and would be peremptorily dealt with by force of arms. A company of twenty white men and an equal number of Indians, under the command of Captain Cook, was dispatched to seize them and bring them to Boston for trial. On their approach, the Gortonists sent their women and children across the bay, retired to their block-house on Conimicut Point, and awaited the invading force of the enemy. A company of peace-makers from Providence[33] demanded a parley, and proposed the arbitration of the matters in dispute, to prevent the shedding of blood. The Gortonists appealed to the King and were willing to arbitrate, but the proposition was sternly rejected 41by Gov. Winthrop. “You may do well to take notice,” he said, “that besides the title to land between the English and the Indians there, there are twelve of the English that have subscribed their names to horrible and detestable blasphemies, who are rather to be judged as blasphemous than they should delude us by winning time under pretence of arbitration.”

The Gortonists stood siege for a day and a night,[34] and repelled the attempt of the men of Massachusetts and their savage allies to set fire to the block-house; then, to save bloodshed, under promise that they would be treated as neighbors, and that their claims would be submitted to fair judgment in Massachusetts, they surrendered to superior 42force, and were taken to Boston for trial.[35] They speedily found, however, that they were regarded as prisoners and not as “friends and neighbors” seeking a just and amicable settlement of civil disagreements. The soldiers, Gorton says, were ordered to knock down any one who should utter a word of insolence, and to run any one through who might step aside from the line of advance. When they arrived in Boston, “the chaplain (of their captors) went to prayers in the open streets, that the people might take notice that what they had done was done in a holy manner, and in the name of the Lord.”[36]

43There was no pretence of a judicial consideration of their rights as settlers at Shawomet. They were regarded as criminal offenders, and were examined and convicted on the charge of blasphemy. Gorton was placed on trial for his life before the General Court and Convocation of Elders. Four queries, referring to statements in his vigorous rejoinder to the summons of the Massachusetts authorities, were propounded, and upon his replies the decision of the Court was to be rendered:[37]

“1. Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and saved only by the blood which hee shed, and the death which hee suffered after his incarnation?

44“2. Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ on the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obediences, in the time of his life here, after hee was born of the Virgin Mary?

“3. Who was the God whom hee thinks wee serve?

“4. What hee means when hee saith, wee worship the starre of our God Remphan, Chion, Moloch?”

The latter question may well have piqued the curiosity of the elders. The others were evidently framed to secure conviction. His replies were as wise and conciliatory as perfect sincerity would admit, but it was foreordained that they should be unsatisfactory to his judges. All but three of the elders voted for the penalty of death. The representatives of the people, however, 45to the honor of Massachusetts, refused to assent to this verdict[38]. Gorton suffered imprisonment in Charlestown, with a ball and chain attached to his ankle; the other accused persons were incarcerated in irons in other towns of the Colony. The next General Court, some months later, set them at liberty,[39] but banished them from all places within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts—the intention being to include the disputed territory at Shawomet, which Massachusetts claimed under the deed of Pomham.

As they went forth from their prison houses, the Gortonists recited their wrongs in the public streets in Boston and elsewhere to crowds of willing 46listeners and ready sympathizers. Palfrey admits that a majority of the people in Massachusetts were to be counted in this category.[40] The sufferings of these martyrs were the seeds of a new Commonwealth, from which the persecuting spirit was at last eliminated. The Indians, also, even in the vicinity of Boston, received them gladly. Cutshamekin, the chief sachem of the neighborhood, to whose wigwam the liberated men accidentally strayed, when asked by Gorton whether Capt. Cook, the commander of their captors, was a good captain, replied, “I can not tell; but the Indians regard those as good captains when a few stand out against many.”

Their chief grievance during imprisonment seems to have been that they were compelled to attend the Sunday services 47in the churches, and be “preached at” by the Puritan ministers. “They brought us forth unto their congregations to hear their ministers,” says Gorton, with a grim humor, illuminated by some knowledge of natural history, “which was meat to be digested, but only by the hearte or stomacke of an ostrich.”[41] Pastor Ward, of Ipswich, who visited one of them—Richard Carder, an old neighbor of his in England—while in prison, and urged him to recant his heresies, said by way of encouragement, “it shall be no disparagement to you, for here is our revered elder, Mr. Cotton, who ordinarily preacheth that publickely one yeare, that the next yeare hee publickely repents of, and shows him selfe to bee very sorrowful to the congregation.”[42] 48As his sly dig at Mr. Cotton would indicate, Pastor Ward was entirely sound in his own theology. This appears also in his “Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” where, with a spicy use of capitals, and vigorous if not elegant English, he denounces the brains of those who advocate “Libertie of Conscience in matters of Religion,” as “parboiled in impious ignorance.”