Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

26 GENEALOGICAL NOTES OF BAEN8TABLB FAMILIES.
warrant was issued for the arrest of Mr. Hull for the crime of
"preaching at Yarmouth, he being an excommunicated person."
However strenuously he might deny the authority of the church, and
however ardently he might oppose the policy of the law, yet as a
good citizen he felt bound not to resist the power of the civil magistrate—he
submitted, and soon after removed to Dover.
His settlement at that place gave great offence to Gov. Winthrop
and the other delegates of the United Colonies of New England,
who held their first meeting at Boston in May, 1643. Because
the little town of Dover elected a mechanic to be its mayor, and
called Mr. Hull to be its minister, the colony of Sir Fernando
Gorges, embracing the territory now included in the stales of New
Hampshire and Maine, and then called Georgiana, was denied the
right, and was excluded from membership, as one of the United
Colonies.
Surprising and incredible as this may appear, the fact is clearly
and distinctly stated in the passage which I have quoted from Winthrop's
History. If the delegates of Sir Fernando had been admitted,
perhaps different counsels might have prevailed, perhaps some
of the long, bloody and cruel wars, between the English on the one
side, and the French and the Indians on the other, might have been
avoided.
When on the first day of May, 1641, the church in Barnstable
excommunicated Mr. Hull, for neglecting to commune with them,
the members could hardly have imagined that they were committing
an act which would be remembered in all coming time. They had
a perfect right to dismiss Mr. Hull, and that was probably all they
intended by the vote, for when Mr. Hull on the 10th of August,
1643, acknowledged he had done wrong in breaking off communion
with the church, they received him again into fellowship. If he had
been an immoral man, or even "a contentious man," they would not
have welcomed him again into their fellowship. This act of the
church in Barnstable is a complete vindication of the moral character
of Mr. Hull.
The vote of the church passed in May 1641, had been communicated
to the Plymouth Colony Court, and they had thereupon
ordered a warrant to be issued for the apprehension of Mr. Hull if
he continued to preach in Yarmouth. Gov. Winthrop of Massachusetts
had been informed of these proceedings ; but that the church
had recinded its vote of excommunication, and that the constable had
never had an occasion to serve the warrant, are facts that probably
never came to his knowledge. If they had, it is not probable that
he would have allowed his record to have remained uncorrected, and
the stigma of being a "contentious man" to have rested on Mr.
Hull's character. Fortunately thro' the efforts of Rev. Hiram
Carleton, of West Barnstable, the records of Mr. Lothrop have beeu
rescued from the oblivion in which they have slept nearly two cen-