The first settlers in New Hampshire, as early as 1633, ten years after commencing their improvements, attempted at Dover to organize a church, but with poor success. Bad or incompetent ministers, a sharp rivalry between the Puritan and Episcopal members of the community, tended to impair the success of the attempts. Finally, in 1638, a church was organized, a house of worship located and built three or four miles from the present city of Dover. The hostility between the two opposing elements became so sharp that it is said an appeal was made to arms. In 1638, at Hampton, also, a few months earlier than at Dover, Rev. Stephen Bachiler founded a church, and at Exeter one was established the same year by an ecclesiastical fugitive from Boston. Fifty acres of land at Portsmouth in 1640 were granted to support an Episcopal church.

Continual disagreements seem to have made the course of religious life very checkered: ministers were found unworthy, the sharp opposition by Puritan people to others bore its fruit, and many obstacles incident to a new country were in the way. In some instances, other than that gift at Portsmouth, land was set aside for the support of the ministry. In 1641, when the New Hampshire settlements were, for the time being, included in Massachusetts, the intolerant laws of the latter were set in motion, some Quakers and witches harried, but no great injury was done them. Three Quaker women, in 1662, were com

manded by the constables of the town to be made fast to the tail of a cart, drawn through the streets, whipped not to exceed ten stripes on the bare back in each town, and so taken out of the colony. This sentence was carried out, at least in Dover.

In

Some concessions seem to have been granted New Hampshire, for the decree of the General Court of Massachusetts in 1642 was that each town of New Hampshire should send a deputy to that body, though they might not be church members. 1659 a law was passed by the General Court against the festival of Christmas and kindred ones, superstitiously kept, it said. The next year a law passed that a suicide must be buried in the highway, the privilege being denied of burial in a churchyard, and that a heap of stones be piled above his grave as a brand of infamy. This law was copied from old English ones. People absent from church, in 1662, were fined five shillings for each absence, and one woman was put into the stocks an hour on her husband's refusing to pay her fine for such absence. One man was fined forty shillings for entertaining some Quakers four hours in one day.

In 1680 Charles Second issued a commission constituting a council to govern New Hampshire. In this document he is careful to insist that virtue and good living be encouraged, "that by such example ye infidle may be invited and desire to partake of ye Christian Religion." Liberty of con

science was expressly to be allowed to all Protestants,-"yt such especially as shall be conformable to ye rites of ye Church of Eng'd shall be particularly countenanced and encouraged."

1683 the provincial governor, Cranfield, issued an order for the administration of the sacrament in the province according to the mode of the Church of England, and one dissenter, at least, Rev. Joshua Moody, was imprisoned some time at Great Island for violating this order. Rev. Seaborn Cotton, owing to Cranfield's threat to come and do at Hampton what he had done with Moody at Portsmouth, was frightened away from that town to Boston. But these oppressive orders had little effect on the stern Puritan settlers, and other sects than their own had a poor chance. Each town governing itself could generally have its own way in church matters, and on the whole the sentiment was more liberal than in Massachusetts. Until 1686, when Gov. Dudley gave the authority, no minister had the power to marry persons. since marriage was deemed wholly a civil contract.

At least as early as 1714, while New Hampshire was still a colony, a law was passed by the General Court that the freeholders of any town could make choice of a minister for that town, and name the salary to be allowed him. The selectmen were required to make out rates and assessments upon the inhabitants of the town, and these assessments were to be collected like any tax. A meetinghouse and the minister's dwellinghouse were to be paid for in the same way. It was, however, specifically

stated that this must not interfere with liberty of conscience, nor was any person, under pretence of being of another persuasion, to be excused from paying the settled minister. Yet such as conscientiously and constantly attended worship according to their own persuasion, and they only, were to be excused from paying for the support of the minister of the town. Each town was considered to be under moral obligation to provide for instruction in religion and morality. Five years later than the first enactment the same law, substantially, was confirmed. This seems to have been the general condition of things through the decades to the Revolutionary war, when the royal governor, Wentworth, having fled, the people in 1776 organized a provisional government, when no reference in their records is made to religious matters. In 1784 the bill of rights was adopted, after two or three failures, on submitting a plan to the people. That bill recognized the natural rights of conscience and the worship of God, and empowered the legislature to authorize towns, parishes, bodies corporate, or religious societies, to make provision for the maintenance of public Protestant service of piety, religion, and morality. It provided that these bodies named should have the exclusive right of electing their own public teachers and providing for their maintenance; and no person of any particular sect or denomination should ever be compelled to pay toward the support of the ministry of another sect or denomination. In the form of government instituted at that same time, no one was made eligible to the office of governor, state senator, or

representative, who was not of the Protestant religion. While this was treated most of the time as a dead letter, with a failure or two of attempted repeal, it was finally expunged from the constitution in 1877. This clause against Romanists, in the constitutions of 1779 and of 1792, was equalled also by another as positive against French infidelity and deism. They seemed to think that a clearer sense of duty and nobler principles of patriotism would inhere in a character for public service that was distinctly Christian.

These provisions, save the one restricting voting and election to the offices named, seem fair and equitable. But constitution and law make one thing; their application in practice and construction by the courts frequently mean an utter distortion. This was the case in New Hampshire progress. These laws were so construed by practice, by public opinion, and by the juries, that much distress followed. As early as 1760 the First Baptist Society of Newton was sued to collect taxes for the standing order.

The whole machinery of town and state government being in the bands of the standing order, they seem to have impeded greatly the incoming of other churches than the Congregational. This done, and it was plain they could consider everybody in a town as coming under the provisions of the law, that all who did not conscientiously and constantly attend any particular sect or denomination, recognized by custom, courts, or juries, was surely taxable to maintain the settled minister. The most rigid Calvinism was preached, the air was full of irrepressible

controversy, and there was much dissent from the doctrines and practices of the standing order. Men under such religious teaching grew morally morbid, and were ripe for "new lights," as most other sects were called. It is no wonder, under such influences, legal and religious, that many grew intolerant. With that intolerance grew a deep-seated determination on the part of many that things should be different. Naturally men did not want to pay taxes to support a sect some of whose tenets they did not believe, whose church government was repugnant, and whose spirit was oppressive. So there was much protesting by those people belonging to sects which were not recognized by the laws as sects, and from many who did not belong to any sect at all. These "new lights" or interloping sects were ready to join with those not belonging to any persuasion in demanding that an end be made to such false assumptions. There was a broadening vision of religious liberty, and naturally it came first to those oppressed. A Baptist minister is said to have suffered imprisonment rather than pay those unjust assessments.

In a case in the Hillsborough court, May, 1803, Smith, C. J., by which John Muzzy brought action against Samuel Wilkins and others who acted as assessors for the parish of Amherst, in 1795, and by whom Muzzy was imprisoned because he would not pay his tax of seventy-five cents toward the settled minister's salary, it was decided that Muzzy, being a Presbyterian, was exempt from the tax, since Presbyterians were a different sect under the constitution and