Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

GENEALOGICAL NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES. 105
utter severe things against the Governor and Mr. "Winslow. During
the trial Capt. Willett and Mr. Hinckley, associate justices,
sat quietly and took no offence. If the other gentlemen had done
the same, it would have been better for themselves and for the
people for whom they acted.
Mr. Winslow was an honorable man, and as soon as the irritation
of the moment had passed, his good sense resumed its
sway. Of those who had taken part in the proceedings against
the Quakers, he was among the foremost to condemn the decisions
of the Court and to restore those noble men who had been
disfranchised because they , resisted the intolerant spirit that
spread through the Colony in 1657 and 8.
Many charge the churches with being the authors of the intolerant
proceedings in Sandwich. Members of the churches as
individuals acted, but not under the authority of the churches or
as members. The Plymouth church does not appear to have
acted, the Barnstable, Yarmouth and Eastham, certainly did not,
and there is no recorded evidence that Mr. Leveridge's, at Sandwich,
did. The presumption, however, is that the latter church
did take action. There is evidence, however, that a portion of
the members were opposed to the persecutors, and the factious
spirit in his church compelled him to leave Sandwich.
That renegade Episcopal minister, the drunken and vile Barlow,
soon lost his influence over the members of the Sandwich
church, to which by pretended piety and zeal for its interests he
had surreptitiously obtained admittance. After Mr. Leveridge
left, the church, though divided into two factions, the
Bourne and the Tupper, discarded the intolerant policy for which
some of its members had become notorious. From one extreme
they perhaps ran into the other. After several had preached on
trial, Mr. John Smith of Barnstable, whose Catholic and tolerant
principles had rendered him obnoxious to the majority in 1658,
and who for the same cause in 1669 sold his estate in Barnstable
and removed to New York, returned in 1671 and was soon after
invited to become the pastor of the church in Sandwich, and was
ordained. Thus in a term of less than twenty years, a complete
revolution was effected in public opinion, and that town became
one of the most quiet and orderly in the Colony.
The history of Sandwich from 1657 to the settlement of Mr.
Smith is one of unsurpassed interest. Mr. Balies hardly refers to
the Quaker troubles there, and Mr. Freeman after giving a few
extracts from Bowden, a second hand authority, and not always
accurate, slurs over the whole matter with the stale remark, "We
weary by such recitals."*
*It would be difficult to decide which is the more objectionable, the bad grammar or
the bad taste of this remark.