theirs after they were acquitted. This, however, was nothing when compared to the municipal code of the Westonians. A Mr. Weston having sent out a company of new colonists, they planted themselves in a part of Massachussets, where they soon contrived to make the neighbouring Indians their deadly foes. "These beginners," says Dr. Mather,* "being half refreshed at Plimouth, travelled more northward into a place known by the name of Weymouth; where these Westonians, who were church of England-men, did not approve themselves like the Plimoutheans, a pious, honest, and industrious people, but followed such bad courses as had like to have brought ruin upon their neighbours as well as themselves. Having by their idleness brought themselves to penury, they stole corn from the Indians, and many other ways provoked them, although the governor of Plimouth writ them his very sharp disapprobation of their proceedings. To satisfie the exasperated salvages, divers of the thieves were stockt and whipt, and one of them at last put to death by this miserable company; which did no other service than to afford an occasion for a fable to the roguish Hudibras."† It is not, however, quite so clear that the story

*Mather's Magnalia, book i. ch. 3.

+"Though nice and dark the point appear,
(Quoth Ralph) it may hold up and clear.
That sinners may supply the place
Of suffering saints, is a plain case.

alluded to was a fable.

"Certain it is," writes

Mr. Hubbard, in his History of New England,

Justice gives sentence many times
On one man for another's crimes.
Our brethren of New England use
Choice malefactors to excuse,

And hang the guiltless in their stead,
Of whom the churches have less need:
As lately happened. In a town
There lived a cobbler, and but one,
That out of doctrine could cut use,
And mend men's lives as well as shoes :
This precious brother having slain,
In time of peace, an Indian,

(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an Infidel,)
The mighty Tottipottimoy
Sent to our elders an envoy,
Complaining sorely of the breach
Of league, held forth by brother Patch,
Against the articles in force

Between both churches, his and ours;

For which he craved the Saints to render
Into his hands, or hang the offender.
But they maturely having weighed,
They had no more but him o' the trade,
(A man that served them in a double
Capacity, to teach and cobble,)
Resolved to spare him: yet, to do
The Indian Hoghan-Moghan too
Impartial justice-in his stead did
Hang an old weaver that was bed-rid."

Hudibras. Part II. canto 2.

"that the Indians were so provoked with their filching and stealing, that they threatened them, as the Philistines did Sampson's father-in-law after the loss of their corn; insomuch that Weston's company, as some report, pretended in way of satisfaction to punish him that did the theft; but in his stead hanged a poor decrepit old man, that was unserviceable to the company, and burthensome to keep alive, which was the ground of the story with which the merry gentleman that wrote the poem called Hudibras did, in his poetical fancy, make so much sport. Yet the inhabitants of Plimouth tell the story much otherwise, as if the person hanged was really guilty of stealing, as may be were many of the rest; and if they were driven by necessity to content the Indians at that time, to do justice, there being some of Mr. Weston's company then living, it is possible it might be executed, not on him who most deserved, but on him that could be best spared, or who was not like to live long if he had been let alone."*

* Hubbard's General History of New England, ch. 13.

NEW England, after the termination of her hostilities with the Pequots and Narragansets, remained for many years at peace; but at length "those coals of discention which had a long time layn hid under the ashes of a secret envy, contracted by the heathen against the English and Christian natives of that countrey, brake out in June 1675."* It was then that the sanguinary contest, commonly known by the name of King Philip's War, began. This renowned chieftain, whose Indian name was Metacom, generally had his head-quarters at a spot called Mount Hope, now within the state of Rhode Island. Philip was a son of the celebrated Massasoit, and succeeded to the command after the death of his elder brother Wamsutta, from whom he inherited a secret and deep-rooted enmity against the English colonists. This heathen sovereign

* News from New England, being a true and last Account of the present bloody Wars with the Infidels. London, 1676.

When Massasoit's two sons, Wamsutta and Metacom,

seldom paid much attention to the treaties entered into with his Christian neighbours: he smoked the pipe of peace when he thought fit, and raised the hatchet when it suited his convenience. Philip of Mount Hope, like his royal brother of Macedon, appears to have been a politic but troublesome prince; and perhaps he has found in the Reverend Mr. Hubbard as stern a composer of Philippics, as did the Macedonian monarch in the celebrated orator of Athens: "The devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, had so filled the heart of this salvage miscreant with envy and malice against the English, that he was ready to break out into open war against the inhabitants of Plimouth, pretending some petite injuries done to him in planting land," &c. And again: "Yet did this treacherous and perfidious caitiff still harbour the same, or more mischievous thoughts against them than ever before; and hath been, since that time, plotting with all the Indians round about, to make a general insurrection against the English.'

Dr. Dwight, in his Travels through New England, has presented us with a more favourable view of the character of this Indian sovereign. He states that Philip was sagacious and politic, pos

were at Plymouth, the governor gave them the names of Alexander and Philip.-Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusset's Bay, p. 276.

* Hubbard's Narrative, pp. 11 and 13.