[d] In 1660 the lay ordination of the Rev. Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook, Conn., was strongly opposed by a council of churches, but it was reluctantly yielded to the insistent church.--J. B. Felt, _Eccl. History_, ii, 207.
[e] "Whereas this Court [the General Court of Connecticut] in the calamitous times of '75 and '76 were moved to make some laws for the suppression of some provoaking evils which were feared to be growing up amongst us: viz.--prophanation of the Sabbath; neglect of catechizing children and servants and famaly prayer; young persons shaking off the government of parents or masters; boarders and inmates neglecting the worship of God in famalyes where they reside; tipling & drinkeing; uncleanness; oppression in workmen and traders; which laws have little prevailed. It is therefore ordered by this Court that the selectmen constables and grand-jury men in their several plantations shall have a special care in their respective places to promote the due and full attendance of these aforementioned orders of this Court."
[f] King Philip's War, 1675-76; the usurpation of Andros; King William's War, 1689-97, with its expedition against Quebec; Queen Anne's War, 1702-13.
[g] Governor Saltonstall "was more inclined to synods and formularies than any other minister of that day in the New England colonies." His influence over the clergy was almost absolute. "The Saybrook Platform was stamped with his seal and was for the most part an embodiment of his views."--Hollister, _Hist. of Conn._ vol. ii, p. 585.
The Saybrook Platform subdivides into a Confession of Faith, the Heads of Agreement, and the Fifteen Articles.
The Confession of Faith is merely a recommendation of the Savoy Confession as reaffirmed by the Synod of Boston or the Reforming Synod of 1680.
The Heads of Agreement are but a repetition of the articles that, under the same title, were passed in London, in 1691, by fourteen delegates from the Presbyterian and English Congregational churches. Both parties to the Agreement had hoped thereby to establish more firmly their churches and to give them the strength and dignity of a strongly united body. The Heads of Agreement were drafted by three men, Increase Mather, the Massachusetts colonial agent to England, Matthew Mead, a Congregationalist, and John Hone, a Presbyterian, who in his earlier years and by training was a Congregationalist. Naturally, between the influence of the framers and the necessity for including the two religious bodies, this platform inclined towards Congregationalism, but equal necessity led it away from the freedom of the Cambridge Platform, after which it was patterned.