when
they left England; it is not insinuated that they opposed in any way or
differed from Endicot in regard to his management of the general affairs
of the Company; on the contrary, it is manifest by the statement of all
parties that the sole ground and question of dispute between Endicot and
the Browns was the refusal of the latter to abandon the Episcopal and
adopt the Congregational form of worship set up by Endicot and thirty
others, by joining of hands and subscribing to a covenant and confession
of faith around the well-pump of Naumkeag, then christened Salem.

The whole dispute, then, narrowed to this one question, let us inquire
in what manner the Browns and their friends declined acting with Endicot
in establishing a new form of worship instead of that of the Church of
England?

It does not appear that Endicot even consulted his local Council, much
less the Directors of the Company in England, as to his setting up a new
Church and new form of worship in the new Plantation at Salem. Having
with the new accession of emigrants received the appointment of
Governor, he appears to have regarded himself as an independent ruler.
Suddenly raised from being a manager and captain to being a Governor, he
assumed more despotic power than did King Charles in England, and among
the new emigrants placed under his control, and whom he seems to have
regarded as his subjects--himself their absolute sovereign, in both
Church and State. In his conferences with Fuller, the Congregational
doctor from New Plymouth, he found the Congregational worship to answer
to his aspirations as in it he could on the one hand gratify his hatred
of King and Church, and on the other hand become the founder of the new
Church in a new Plantation. He paused not to consider whether the
manager of a trading Company of adventurers had any authority to abolish
the worship professed by the Company under whose authority he was
acting; how far fidelity required him to give effect to the worship of
his employers in carrying out their instructions in regard to the
religious instruction of their servants and the natives; but he
forthwith resolved to adopt a new confession of faith and to set up a
new form of worship. On the arrival of the first three chaplains of the
Company, in June of 1629, several months after his own arrival, Endicot
seems to have imparted his views to them, and two of them, Higginson and
Skelton, fell in with his scheme; but Mr. Bright adh