is action
brought forth a petition from the church of Boston in Wheelwright's
behalf, which the court declared "presumptious" and rejected.
Wheelwright himself was pronounced guilty, and thereupon a protest was
offered by Vane, and a second petition came from Boston, which, like
the first, went unheeded, and only served at a later day to involve
those who signed it.

Amid great excitement the legalists carried a resolution to hold the
May election at Newtown (Cambridge) instead of Boston, a partisan
move, for Newtown was more subject to their influence than Boston. At
this court in May the turbulence was so great that the parties came
near to blows. Threats resounded on all sides, and Wilson was so
carried away with excitement that he climbed a tree to harangue the
multitude. The Vane forces struggled hard, but were badly defeated,
and Winthrop was restored to his former office as governor, while the
stern Thomas Dudley was made deputy governor. Vane and his assistants,
Coddington and Dummer, were defeated and "quite left out," even from
the magistracy.[13]

Secure in the possession of power, the legalists now proceeded to
suppress the opposing party altogether. An order was passed commanding
that no one should harbor any new arrival for more than three weeks
without leave of the magistrates. This was to prevent any dangerous
irruption of sympathizers with Mrs. Hutchinson from England, and it
was applied against a brother of Mrs. Hutchinson and some others of
her friends who arrived not long after.

August 3, 1637, Vane sailed for England, and thenceforward the
Hutchinson faction, abandoned by their great leader, made little
resistance. In the latter part of the same month (August 30) a great
synod of the ministers was held at Newtown, which was the first thing
of the sort attempted in America, and included all the teaching elders
of the colony and some new-comers from England. This body set to work
to lay hold of the heresies which infected the atmosphere of the
colony, and formulated about "eighty opinions," some "blasphemous,"
but others merely "erroneous and unsafe." How many of them were really
entertained by Mrs. Hutchinson's followers and how many were merely
inferences drawn from their teachings by their opponents it is hard to
say.

When these heresies were all enumerated and compared with the opinions
of Cotton and Wheelwright, only five points of possible heterodoxy on
their part appeared. Over these th