Transcript:Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts/v10p266

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received ordination from the hands of one Bishop a Schoolmaster, and one Parker an Husbandman, and then master Hooke joyned in ordaining master Streate. One master Doughty, a Minister, opposed the gathering of the Church there, alleadging that according to the Covenant of Abraham, all mens children that were of baptized parents, and so Abrahams children, ought to be baptized; and spake so in publique, or to that effect, which was held a disturbance, and the Ministers spake to the Magistrate to order him: the Magistrate commanded the Constable, who dragged master Doughty out of the Assembly. He was forced to goe away from thence, with his wife and children. . . . And being a man of estate when he came [to] the country, is undone.¹

This is the incident which Mr. Brodhead represents thus: "Francis Doughty, a dissenting clergyman, while preaching at Cohasset,² was dragged out of the assembly for venturing to assert that' Abraham's children should have been baptized.' "³ This is inaccurate and hardly intelligible. However, Mrs. Lamb follows Brodhead almost verbatim.⁴ What Lechford means by saying

¹ Plain Dealing, J. H. Trumbull's edition (1867), pp. 90-82.
² Cohasset (Indian name Quonahassit or Conohasset), formerly part of Hingham, was incorporated into a district 26 April, 1770 (Manual of the General Court, 1905, p. 154).
³ History of the State of New York (1853), i. 333.
⁴ History of the City of New York (1877), i. 104, 105. Mr. B. F. Thompson, in the second edition of his History of Long Lsland (1843), seems to have started this "Cohasset" preacher, who has ever since been confusing the New Yorker and confounding the New Englander, in spite of the careful account of Mr. Doughty given by the learned and accurate Mr. Riker in his Annals of Newtown (1852), pp. 17-25. Mr. Thompson does not mention Mr. Doughty or the Mespat settlement in his first edition, but has acquired abundant misinformation for the second edition, a part of which is as follows:

Francis Doughty . . . came to Long Island in 1644, and was the first minister of Flushing, probably a baptist, but afterwards turned Quaker. . . . This was the same Francis Doughty who was at Cohasset in 1642, and mentioned by Leechfurcl in his " News from New England," as being dragged out of a public assembly, for asserting that Abraham's children should have been baptized (ii. 70 and note).

Brodhead follows in 1853, and the Rev. G. II. Mandeville in his Flushing, Past and Present (1860), has improved on Mr. Thompson thus:

Francis Doughty . . . seemes to have preached at Tannton, Mass., and " for declaring that Abraham ought to have been baptised," he was by order of the Magistrates dragged by the Constables out of the public assembly and soon after was compelled to leave with his children. He also preached at Linn, Mass., where he denied baptism to