We find frequent references in the writings and newspapers of the
times to this truly Puritanical dread of bishops. To the descendants
of the Pilgrims the very name smacked of incense, stole, and monkish
jargon. A writer, signing himself "America," gives in the _Boston
Evening Post_, of October 14, 1771, a communication thoroughly
characteristic of the spirit of the community against the
establishment of bishops, the persistent determination to "beate
down every sprout of episcopacie."