in marriage.  He was required to keep a record of all his doings.  If the parties agreed to that effect, he was authorized to hear and determine cases of every kind and degree, without the intervention of a jury.  The towns north of the Merrimac, and all beyond now within the limits of New Hampshire, constituted the County of Norfolk; and Thomas Bradbury, for a long series of years, was one of its commissioners and associate judges.  From the first, he was conspicuous in military matters; having been commissioned by the General Court, in 1648, Ensign of the trainband in Salisbury.  He rose to its command; and, in the latter portion of his life, was universally spoken of as “Captain Bradbury.”  All along, the records of the General Court, for half a century, demonstrate the estimation in which he was held; various important trusts and special services requiring integrity and ability being from time to time committed to him.  His family was influentially connected.  His son William married the widow of Samuel Maverick, Jr., who was the son of one of the King’s Commissioners in 1664:  she was the daughter of the Rev. John Wheelwright, a man of great note, intimately related to the celebrated Anne Hutchinson, and united with her by sympathy in sentiment and participation in exile.

Robert Pike, born in 1616, was a magistrate in 1644.  He was deputy from Salisbury in 1648, and many times after; Associate Justice for Norfolk in 1650; and Assistant in 1682, holding that high station, by annual elections, to the close of the first charter, and during the whole period of the intervening and insurgent government.  He was named as one of the council that succeeded to the House of Assistants, when, under the new charter, Massachusetts became a royal province.  He was always at the head of military affairs, having been commissioned, by the General Court, Lieutenant of the Salisbury trainband in 1648; and, in the later years of his life, he held the rank and title of major.  John Pike, probably his son, resided in Hampton in 1691, and was minister of Dover at his death in 1710.

Surely, the attestations of such men as the Pikes, father and son, and the Rev. James Allin, to the Christian excellence of Mary Bradbury, must be allowed to corroborate fully the declarations of her neighbors, her husband, and herself.

The motives and influences that led to her arrest and condemnation in 1692 demand an explanation.  The question arises, Why should the attention of the accusing girls have been led to this aged and most respectable woman, living at such a distance, beyond the Merrimac?  A critical scrutiny of the papers in the case affords a clew leading to the true answer.

The wife of Sergeant Thomas Putnam, as has been stated (vol. i. p. 253), was Ann Carr of Salisbury.  Her father, George Carr, was an early settler in that place, and appears to have been an enterprising and prosperous person.  The ferry for the main travel of the country across the Merrimac was from points of land owned by him, and always under his charge.  He was engaged in ship-building,—­employing, and having in his family, young men; among them a son of Zerubabel Endicott, bearing the same name.