It was most unfortunate that at this moment the places of these two men
should have been taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever drew breath.
For thirteen out of the fifteen years following Winthrop's death, the
governor of Massachusetts was John Endicott, a sturdy pioneer, whose
services to the colony had been great. He was honest and conscientious,
but passionate, domineering, and very deficient in tact. At the same
time Cotton's successor in position and influence was John Norton, a man
of pungent wit, unyielding temper, and melancholy mood. He was possessed
by a morbid fear of Satan, whose hirelings he thought were walking
up and down over the earth in the visible semblance of heretics and
schismatics. Under such leaders the bigotry latent in the Puritan
commonwealth might easily break out in acts of deadly persecution.
[Sidenote: Endicott and Norton take the lead] [Sidenote: The Quakers and
their views]
The occasion was not long in coming. Already the preaching of George Fox
had borne fruit, and the noble sect of Quakers was an object of scorn
and loathing to all such as had not gone so far as they toward learning
the true lesson of Protestantism. Of all Protestant sects the Quakers
went furthest in stripping off from Christianity its non-essential
features of doctrine and ceremonial.
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