Even if that were so, their position of unchangeable loyalty to their post and of good faith to their Company might be pleaded in justification of the strongest language on their part.

But such was not the fact; it was their _position_, and not their language or tempers.

Mr.Bancroft himself says, in the American edition of his History, that "the Browns were banished _because they were Churchmen.
Thus was Episcopacy professed in Massachusetts, and thus was it exiled.
The blessings of the promised land were to be kept for Puritan dissenters_."[37] This statement of Mr.Bancroft is confirmed and the conduct of Endicot more specifically stated by earlier New England historians.

In the "Ecclesiastical History of Massachusetts," reprinted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the whole affair is minutely related.

The following passages are sufficient for my purpose: "An opposition of some consequence arose from several persons of influence, who had been active in promoting the settlement of the place.
At the head of this were Mr.Samuel Brown and Mr.John Brown, the one a lawyer and the other a merchant, who were attached to the form and usage of the Church of England.