192 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



L 



Furthermore, their plea at the General Court was so 

 hopeful that they expected to get the rights of a precinct 

 in spite of the mother town. The reluctance of the town 

 to allow the claim was partly for fear the distant settlers 

 might evade the church tax of the town, and then do 

 nothing towards maintaining the gospel in their own 

 community. 



The town's concern in this deep matter was further 

 shown in their stipulation that the minister must be an 

 orthodox one. Such was the Hingham minister, John 

 Norton, and such ministers were in the surrounding 

 towns. But there were in New England at that time 

 Baptists whom the old churches feared and Quakers 

 whom they vigorously detested and drove out. Some of 

 these latter had been in the town of Scituate, much to the 

 alarm of some church folk. 



Other irregular religionists were floating about, and the 

 stricter defenders of the faith were upon their guard. 

 The recent use of the word " Orthodox " in contrast with 

 Unitarian was not then known in Hingham, for the events 

 here depicted were one hundred years earlier than the 

 Unitarian movement. 



But there was evidently no need of apprehension as to 

 the orthodoxy of Cohasseters, for they showed not the least 

 signs of departure from the standards of their time, as 

 we soon shall see. 



Two months after Hingham's offer to remit the minis- 

 terial taxes another compromise was offered, this time 

 remitting also the school taxes, if only the complainers 

 would maintain their own minister. 



But the momentum towards the autonomy of a precinct 

 was getting stronger with the increase of inhabitants and 

 with the coming to age of boys born in Cohasset. 



In the next March, 1716, the town "voted to allow 

 seventeen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence out of 

 the town treasury towards the maintaining of the worship 



