despatch at once all that may be required to be said about the meeting-houses of the village, it may be allowable here to mention, that the original building did not survive the century.  In 1700, partly because the growth of the society began to require it, but mainly, no doubt, to escape from the painful associations which had become connected with it, a new meeting-house was built on another site.  The old one was dismantled of all its removable parts, and the site reverted to Joseph Hutchinson.  It is supposed that he removed the frame to the other side of the road, and converted it into a barn; and that it was used as such until, in the memory of old persons now living, it mouldered, crumbled into powder-post, and sunk to the ground.  It stood, after being converted into a barn, on the south side of the road, nearly in front of Joseph Hutchinson’s homestead.  Hutchinson’s dwelling-house was probably some distance further down in the field, where the remains of an old cellar are still to be seen.  Nathaniel Ingersoll gave the land for the new meeting-house.  The records contain the vote, that it “shall stand upon Watch-House Hill, before Deacon Ingersoll’s door.”  The meeting-houses of the society have stood there ever since.  At that time, it was an elevated spot, probably covered with the original forest; for the work of clearing, levelling, and preparing it for occupancy was so considerable as to require a special provision.  The labor and expense of the operation were put on that portion of the congregation brought nearer to the meeting-house by the change of the site.

In urging their petition to be set off as an independent parish, distinct from the First Church in Salem, the people of the village declared, that, if they could not have a ministry established among them, they would soon “become worse than the heathen around them.”  Little did they foresee the immediate, long-continued, and terrible effects that were to follow the boon thus prayed for.  The establishment of the ministry among them was not merely an opening of Pandora’s box:  it was emptying and shaking it over their heads.  It led them to a condition of bitterness and violence, of confusion and convulsion, of horror and misery, of cruelty and outrage, worse than heathen ever experienced or savages inflicted.

James Bayley of Newbury, born Sept. 12, 1650, a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1669, was employed to preach at the village.  In October, 1671, he transferred his relations from the church in Newbury to the First Church in Salem.  It seems that several persons of considerable influence in the village were dissatisfied with the manner in which he had been brought forward, and became prejudiced against him.  The disaffection was not removed, but suffered to take deep root in their minds.  The parish soon became the scene of one of those violent and heated dissensions to which religious societies are sometimes liable.  The unhappy strife was aggravated from day to day,