Originally, the American colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were separate entities. Plymouth, first colonized by the Brownist and Anglican Pilgrims, was the southeastern corner of what is now Massachusetts. The two colonies merged in 1691.
In a document dated this day in 1649 the Court of Massachusetts Bay wrote to the colony of Plymouth:
“Honored and beloved Brethren:
We have heretofore heard diverse Anabaptists, arisen up in your jurisdiction, and connived at (tolerated); but being few, we will hoped that it might have pleased God, by the endeavors of yourselves and faithful elders with you, to have reduced such erring men again into the right way. But now, to our great grief, we are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men has produce another effect, namely, the multiplying and increasing of the same errors, and we fear of other errors also, if timely care be not taken to suppress the same. Particularly we understand that within a few weeks there have been in Sea thirteen or fourteen persons rebaptized (a swift progress in one town; yet we hear not of any effectual restriction is intended thereabouts). Let it not, we pray you, seem presumption in us to remind you hereof, nor that we earnestly intreat you to take care as well of the suppressing of error, as the maintenance of the truth, God equally requiring the performance of both at the hands of Christian magistrates, but rather that you will consider our interest is concerned therein. The infection of such diseases, being so near us, one likely to spread into our jurisdiction …. We are united by confederacy, by faith, by neighborhood, by fellowship in our sufferings as exiles, and by other Christian bonds, and we hope that neither Satan nor any of his instruments shall, by these or any other errors, disunite us of our so near conjunction with you, but that we shall both equally and zealously uphold all the truths of God revealed, that we may render a comfortable account to Him that hath set us in our places, and betrusted us with the keeping of both tables, of which will hoping, we cease you further trouble, and rest.
Your very loving Friends and Brethren.”
Despite all the references to love, God and His will, these men hated much of God’s truth and certainly hated God’s people – the Baptists.