130 THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 
refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the national 
church, withdrew from its attendance and set up a sepa- 
rate worship in conventicles of their own. The conform- 
ists and non-conformists united in opposition to this class 
as tendino- to disorder and faction. The lecturer said, in 
describing the non-conformists, that they detested the 
forms and ceremonies of the established church as adopted 
from the Roman church, and to the bishops' courts and 
the court of high commission through which their obser- 
vance was empowered. They claimed that these forms 
and ceremonies were not authorized by scripture — that 
they were the inventions of men, and that to observe them 
was idolatry ; Imt this did not affect their regard for a loy- 
alty to the church itself. They were members of it. They 
subscribed fully to its doctrines and to the ecclesiastical 
unity upon which it was based. In all essentials they were 
sincere churchmen, and they did not love the church itself 
less because of obnoxious forms and ceremonies imposed 
upon it. They lived in an age when it was the general 
belief that it was impossible for different sects to exist in 
the same community without such conflicts as would en- 
danger the peace not only of the churches but of society. 
The day of toleration had not dawned. To them tolera- 
tion was not only mischievous but sinful. 
The lecturer gave an interesting account of the settle- 
ment of Cape Ann made by a company from Dorchester, 
England, who for some years had been engaged in fishing 
on the New England coast. The fishing experiment not 
proving successful, and the land at Cape Ann not being 
suitable for planting, Conant in the fall of 162G removed 
to Salem, "a pleasant and fruitful neck of land," under 
encouragement of Rev. John White of Dorchester, Eng- 
land, who took great interest in the enterprise. Endicott 
came over from England in 1628 with a company and took 
