Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

258 GENEALOGICAL NOTES OF BAKNSTABLE FAMILIES.
colony and were amenable at the bar of public opinion for their
acts.*
The Puritans have suffered more from over zealous friends,
than from open and avowed enemies. A community is an aggregation
of individuals—one rule of act applies to both, and he
that attempts to conceal or paliate wrong, does an injury to him
whom he thus essays to defend. The Plymouth Colony existed
seventy-one years. During sixty-seven, with the exception of a
short period during the usurpation of Andros, the people enjoyed
a mild, a liberal, and a paternal government. Shall we cease to
honor the institutions they established because, during four
years, a bigoted majority were false to the principles of the
fathers ?
George Barlow was the type of a class who, in 1657, inaugurated
a system of terrorism in the Old Colony, and it may be
truthfully said that he made more converts to the doctrines of the
Quakers than all their preachers. The spirit of persecution which
he was largely instrumental in introducing, raised up opponents
who at first sympathized with the sufferers then with their doctrines
which they at last embraced. In the towns where the
Quaker preachers were not opposed and persecuted, they made
no proselytes, but where they were persecuted, there they made
many converts.
In a former article I have spoken of George Barlow, not In
terms of commendation. The Puritans and Quakers, though
opposed to each other, agreed in this, that George Barlow was a
bad man. No one speaks well of him. Of his early history I
know nothing. He was of Boston or vicinity in 1637, perhaps
earlier. In the records of the Quarter Court held at Boston and
Newtown 19th Sept. 1637, is the following entry: "George
Barlow, for idleness, is censured to be whipped." From Boston
he went to the eastern country, and was at Exeter in 1639, and
at Saco in 1652. . At these places and elsewhere, says Mr.
Savage, he exercised his gifts as a pi-eacher. On the 5th of July,
1653, at a court held at Wells, by Richard Bellingham and others,
commissioners of the Massachusetts Colony, George Badow and
fifteen others, inhabitants of Saco, acknowledged themselves to be
subject to the government of that Colony, and took the freemans'
* He that supposes that Gov. Hinckley, and those who acted with him, had neither law
nor reason on their side, is mistaken. They had both. The lands in the several towns
were granted on the express condition that an Orthodox church should he gathered, of at
least forty families, and that a learned minister should be supported out of the products ol
those lands. These were legal conditions, and the grantees were bound by them. Gov.
Hinckley was the best read lawyer in the Colony, and he examined the question only in its
legal aspect. On that ground he was right. Whether his course was judicious is another
and entirely different question. The Puritans were equally severe against men who
attempted to disregard the conditions on which the lauds were gi-anted. Rev. Joseph Hull,
whose learning and Orthodoxy, for making such an attempt, was excommunicated and
forbidden to preach. Mr. Cudworth considered the rights of conscience as paramount to
the legal obligation. Gov. Hinckley thought otherwise, and that was the point at issue
between them.