To a Bill for disbursements for ye Gallows.  Burning and boiling ye Rebels, executed p. order L116 4s. 8d.  Paid Mr. Mayers att ye Beare, for so much hee pd. for setting up of a post with ye quarters of ye Rebells att ye town end as p. his Bill 1s. 6-1/2d.

These entries bear evidence of this horrible butchery; but the Dorcestrians seem to have been accustomed to sights of this kind, as there had been horrible persecutions of the Roman Catholics there in the time of Queen Elizabeth—­sequel perhaps to those of the Protestants in the time of Queen Mary—­one man named Pritchard was hanged, drawn, and quartered in 1583, and in 1584 four others were executed.

Dorchester, like other places, could boast of local celebrities.  Among these was John White, who in 1606 was appointed rector of Dorchester and held that office until the day of his death in 1648.  He was the son of one of the early Puritans, and was himself a famous Puritan divine.  At the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in 1643 he was said to have prayed before the House of Commons in St. Margaret’s for an hour and a half, in the hope that they might be induced to subscribe to the “Covenant” to resist the encroachments of Charles I on religious liberty.

He was a pioneer in the New England movement, and was virtually the founder of Massachusetts, in America.  From the first he took a most active part in encouraging emigration and in creating what at that time was known as New England, and he was also the founder of the New England Company.  It was in 1620 that the good ship Mayflower arrived at Plymouth with Robinson’s first batch of pilgrims from Holland on their way across the Atlantic.  It is not certain that White crossed the ocean himself; but his was the master-mind that organised and directed the expeditions to that far-distant land, and he was ably seconded by Bishop Lake, his friend and brother Wykehamist.

[Illustration:  JOHN ENDICOTT, FIRST GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS.]

He also influenced John Endicott, “a man well known to divers persons of note” and a native of Dorchester, where he was born in 1588, to take an active part in developing the new Colonies, and mainly through the influence of White a patent was obtained from the Council on March 19th, 1628, by which the Crown “bargained and sold unto some Knights and Gentlemen about Dorchester, whose names included that of John Endicott, that part of New England lying between the Merrimac River and the Charles River on Massachusetts Bay.”

At the time this “bargain” was made very little was known about America, which was looked upon as a kind of desert or wilderness, nor had the Council any idea of the extent of territory lying between the two rivers.  This ultimately became of immense value, as it included the site on which the great town of Boston, U.S.A., now stands—­a town that was founded by pilgrims from Boston in Lincolnshire with whom John White was in close contact.