mprudent, and one of his
first acts quickened the popular resentment. The gloomy and jealous
state of men's minds had gained some degree of credit for a story that
he had furnished the hostile natives with ammunition for the destruction
of the force under his command. An Indian declared, in the hearing of
some inhabitants of Sudbury, that he knew this to be true. Two of the
townsmen took the babbler to Boston, ostensibly to be punished for his
license of speech. The Governor treated the informers with great
harshness, put them under heavy bonds, and sent one of them to jail. The
comment of the time was not unnatural nor uncandid:--"Although no man
does accuse Sir Edmund merely upon Indian testimony, yet let it be duly
weighed whether it might not create suspicion and an astonishment in the
people of New England, in that he did not punish the Indians who thus
charged him, but the English who complained of them for it."

The nine-days' wonder of this transaction was not over, when tidings of
far more serious import claimed the public ear. On the fourth day of
April, a young man named John Winslow arrived at Boston from the Island
of Nevis, bringing a copy of the Declarations issued by the Prince of
Orange on his landing in England. Winslow's story is best told in the
words of an affidavit made by him some months after.

"Being at Nevis," he says, "there came in a ship from some part of
England with the Prince of Orange's Declarations, and brought news also
of his happy proceedings in England, with his entrance there, which was
very welcome news to me, and I knew it would be so to the rest of the
people in New England; and I, being bound thither, and very willing to
convey such good news with me, gave four shillings sixpence for the said
Declarations, on purpose to let the people in New England understand
what a speedy deliverance they might expect from arbitrary power. We
arrived at Boston harbor the fourth day of April following; and as soon
as I came home to my house, Sir Edmund Andros, understanding I brought
the Prince's Declarations with me, sent the Sheriff to me. So I went
along with him to the Governor's house, and, as soon as I came in, he
asked me why I did not come and tell him the news. I told him I thought
it not my duty, neither was it customary for any passenger to go to the
Governor, when the master of the ship had been with him before, and told
him the news. He asked me where the Declarations I brought wi