which may have any ill construction with the state here and make us obnoxious to an adversary."[14] In another particular Endicott showed the summary character which distinguished him.

When Morton arrived in London a prisoner, in 1628, Isaac Allerton was trying to secure from the Council for New England a new patent for Plymouth colony.

In Morton he appears to have recognized a convenient medium for reaching Sir Ferdinando Gorges; at any rate, when Allerton returned to New England in the summer of 1629, he brought Thomas Morton back with him, to the scandal of the Plymouth community.[15] After a few weeks at Plymouth, Morton repaired to Merry Mount and resumed the business of a fur-trader, but, as might have been expected, he was soon brought into conflict with his neighbors.
Endicott, it appears, not long after Morton's return, in pursuance of instructions from England, summoned all the settlers in Massachusetts to a general court at Salem.

At this meeting, according to Morton, Endicott tendered to all present for signature articles binding them "to follow the rule of God's word in all causes as well ecclesiasticall as politicall." The alternative was banishment, but Morton says that he declined to subscribe without the words in the Massachusetts charter, "so as nothing be done contrary or repugnant to the Lawes of the Kingdome of England." Endicott took fire at the independent claims of Morton and sent a party to arrest him.

They found Morton gone, whereupon they broke into his house and appropriated his corn and other property.[16] Meanwhile, in England, an important determination had been reached by the leaders of the Massachusetts Company.