Cundincus, also, the Chief of the powerful and much dreaded Narragansetts, sent his son with a friendly greeting to the new settlers of Boston; and, in the following year, his nephew and co-ruler, Miantonomo, came on a visit to the Governor.  He was for some days an inmate of Winthrop’s house; and it is recorded that he not only conducted himself with the greatest decorum, but that be also sat patiently to listen to a sermon of an hour and a half’s duration, of which, of course, he scarcely comprehended one word.

Governor Winthrop followed the good example that had already been set by both Carver and Bradford at New Plymouth, in regard to all dealings with the natives.  He always maintained their rights with the most strict and impartial justice; and if any Englishman committed an injury against the property of an Indian, he compelled him to replace it—­in some cases even to twice the value of the article in question.

The new settlers had always been on very friendly terms with the elder colony of Plymouth; and visits were frequently exchanged between the Governors and others of the inhabitants, which, though performed with much difficulty and even danger, were a source of mutual pleasure to the two bands of British emigrants.  If the men of Plymouth regarded with some feeling of jealous anxiety the growing power and greatness of their rival, it was but natural.  Nevertheless, no differences of any importance arose between the colonies on the subject of civil superiority.  It was on spiritual matters that they sometimes disagreed; and on these points the Plymouthers watched the newcomers with suspicious sensitiveness, and resolved to maintain their dearly-purchased based rights to religious freedom, against any pretensions that might be made by the church of Boston.

This latter community was frequently subject to divisions and disputes, on those points of faith and discipline that each party regarded as all-important, but on the carrying out of which they could not agree; and a certain spirit of intolerance had already begun to show itself among them, which, in later times, ripened into actual cruelty and persecution.

The first instance of any display of this unchristian spirit with which our narrative is concerned, was the treatment of a young clergyman, named Roger Williams, who came over to New England several years after the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers, when the renewed oppression of the Puritan ministers, by the English bishops, drove many of their number to seek a refuge in America.  In the same year also arrived John Elliott, a man whose name is deservedly remembered and respected in New England, as standing conspicuous for zeal and virtue.  So great and so successful were his labors among the native heathen, and so eminent were his piety and his self-denying charity, that he has been well named the ’Prince of Missionaries’ and ’the Great Apostle of the Indians.’