Mr.Holmes justly remarks: "This sumptuary law, for the matter and style, is a curiosity." The Court, lamenting the inefficacy of former "Declarations and Orders against excess of apparel, both of men and women," proceed to observe: "We cannot but to our grief take notice, that intolerable excess and bravery hath crept in upon us, and especially among people of mean condition, to the dishonour of God, the scandal of our profession, the consumption of estates, and altogether unsuitable to our poverty.

The Court proceed to order, that no person whose visible estate should not exceed the true and indifferent sum of L200, shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold and silver buttons, or have any lace above two shillings per yard, or silk hoods or scarves, on the penalty of ten shillings for every such offence." The select men of every town were required to take notice of the apparel of any of the inhabitants, and to assess such persons as "they shall judge to exceed their ranks and abilities, in the costliness or fashion of their apparel in any respect, especially in wearing of ribbands and great boots," at L200 estates, according to the proportion which some men used to pay to whom such apparel is suitable and allowed.

An exception, however, is made in favour of public officers and their families, and of those "whose education and employment have been above the ordinary degree, or whose estates have been considerable, though now decayed."[101] It will be recollected by the reader that in 1644 the Massachusetts Bay Court passed an act of banishment, etc., against Baptists; that in 1643 it put to "the rout" the Presbyterians, who made a move for the toleration of their worship; that in 1646, when the Presbyterians and some Episcopalians petitioned the local Court for liberty of worship, and in the event of refusal expressed their determination to appeal to the English Parliament, they were punished with fines and imprisonment, and their papers were seized.

The above acts of censorship over the press, and private opinions in the case of Mr.Pinchion, and their tyranny over the organization of new Churches and the ordinations of ministers--fining both Church and ministers for exercising what is universally acknowledged to be essential to _independent_ worship--are but further illustrations of the same spirit of intolerance.

It was the intolerance of the Massachusetts Bay Government that caused the settlement of Connecticut, of New Haven, as well as of Rhode Island.