HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



turbance, on which he had kept a tight rein, and which 

 others had repressed through respect for him, might find 

 development. So a message was sent to Alexander to 

 come to Plymouth, and talk over affairs. He ignored the 

 invitation. As the Court had broached the subject, they 

 felt that the general safety required that their summons 

 should not be disregarded in that way; so they sent an 

 armed party, under Majors Winslow and Bradford, to find 

 and bring him. They found him not far off, at Monponset 

 (in Halifax), and then, "freely and readily, without the 

 least hesitancy," * he went with them. He told them that 

 he had intended to come when first invited, but wanted 

 to delay long enough to consult Mr. Willett, in whom he 

 had confidence. Hubbard's story f is, that when he had 

 been dismissed on the promise to send his son as a hos- 

 tage, he was so enraged at the indignities put upon him, 

 that he fell into a fever, of which he died before he got 

 half-way home. And out of this statement has grown 

 the general representation, that his ill-treatment at the 

 hands of the English was the means of his death, and 

 was laid up as one prominent cause of the war, twelve 

 years later. But the letter of Rev. John Cotton to In- 

 crease Mather, — which Judge Davis prints in the appen- 

 dix of the Memorial, and which has every element of 

 trustworthiness, — from the chelation of Major Bradford, 



Davis's Morton's Memorial, 426. 



t Narrative, 9. 



