Page 146

IN an earlier chapter, in discussing the problems which confronted Elizabeth, we spoke of an established church as a necessity in her day from all three standpoints--of religion, morals, and politics. We also touched upon the simplicity of problems as they appear to those in opposition, as contrasted with their aspect to those who bear the responsibility of power. In England, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, in spite of the example of Holland, the doctrine of the necessity of a state church, to which all men must conform, in their capacity of citizens as well as of Christians, was still held, although the influence of the "dissidence of dissent," as the logical outcome of individual interpretation of the Bible, was beginning to be felt. Voices were being raised in many quarters denouncing the intolerance of the various sects, both Anglican and Puritan; and, although the Protestants might consider that the religious glacier which held all men in its embrace was as rigidly frozen as ever, the ice was, in truth, rapidly melting beneath the surface. To Englishmen in tolerant Leyden, John Robinson was preaching that "magistrates are kings and lords over men properly and directly, as they are their subjects, and not as they are Christ’s," and that by "compulsion many become atheists, hypocrites, and Familists, and being at first constrained to practise against conscience, lose all conscience afterwards."[1] In England, Chillingworth, through the doctrine of the innocence of error, was elevating toleration into a principle of justice and a practicable rule of government.[2] In the New World, Roger

[1. Robinson, Works, vol. II, p. 41.]

[2. Cited by A. A. Seaton, The Theory of Toleration under the later Stuarts (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1911), p. 56.]

Page 147

Williams was soon to begin his life-long struggle against what he vehemently denounced as "that body-killing, soule-killing, and State- killing doctrine" of religious persecution by the arm of the civil power.[1]

We cannot, perhaps, blame men for not being in advance of their age, or even for being behind it. The founders of the Bay Colony were but little qualified, by reason of the narrowness of their views and the intensity with which they were held, to lead men to any higher ground than that which they had been accustomed to tread. Moreover, having changed their place from members of an opposition to members of a government, their new responsibilities would tend to foster even more strongly that fear of innovation which is nearly always characteristic of the middle-class man in power. The exercise of authority is apt to prove an intoxicating draught, even to the best-intentioned men who have been unaccustomed to it; and, of the tiny group who now claimed absolute sway over two thousand subjects, rapidly increasing to sixteen thousand, none had held any position of administrative importance in the old country. Some of them had, indeed, occupied offices, but they were rather of a nature to encourage that intolerance of contradiction, and tendency to arbitrary action upon a small stage, which are apt, in time, to become characteristic of the petty judge, the schoolmaster and the clergyman. Of Endicott’s whole career in England, for example, we know only that his rector spoke of him as "a man well knowne to divers persons of good note, "2 which, in reference to a parishioner in a small country town, more probably referred to his moral character than to any administrative experience. Winthrop had held an unimportant position in a law court. Dudley had managed the estate of a nobleman. Cotton was the rector of a large provincial parish. The work which they and the other leaders did was done honestly; and although the course they pursued, in regard both to the religious qualification for the franchise, and to the later persecutions for

[1. Mr. Cotton’s Letter examined; Narr. Club Pub., vol. I p. 44.]

[2. White, Planters Plea, p. 43.]

Page 148

religious beliefs, was, in the long run, to hamper the growth of the colony and to be partly responsible for the eventual loss of the charter, they should not be too severely condemned, perhaps, for the illegal and unjust, as well as politically unwise, course, upon which they now entered. It must be said, however, that, when the great opportunity was offered them of advancing the cause of religious liberty, they turned aside. To the new voices being raised on behalf of justice and humanity, the Massachusetts leaders were as deaf as Laud and the Anglican hierarchy. Equally, and for the same reason, each party solidly and consciously blocked the path to toleration in so far as lay in its power.

The problems of government in the new country soon came thick upon the little group from the opposition in the old. The notorious Morton, for example, was once more singing and trading in "his old nest in the Massachusetts," in the autumn of the year in which Winthrop landed. There were valid reasons, notably his selling fire-arms to the Indians, which might have served adequately as warrant for his arrest by the authorities; but when that action was decided upon, the alleged grounds bore a curiously trumped-up appearance. In the official order for his apprehension, no crime was mentioned; and in his sentence the only matters cited were the "many wrongs he hath done" the Indians, and the theft of a canoe from them.[1] Whatever the moral nature of his intercourse with the natives, it was not likely that, from their standpoint, there had been any very serious crime committed against them by a man living almost isolated in their midst, and whose sole business was trading with them. The convenient, but apparently unfounded, suspicions of a murder committed by him in England, and a warrant procured from the Chief Justice for his shipment thither, could not have served as a basis for any sentence inflicted in Massachusetts.[2] The probable truth is that the Puritans either wanted to teach the discontented "old planters" a lesson, for which purpose Morton offered himself as an easy victim, or they suspected, what was

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 74 f.]

[2. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 253.]

Page 149

indeed the fact, that he was in communication with Gorges.[1] Obviously, neither of these could be openly alleged as a cause for the punishment they inflicted, which was extraordinarily severe. He was put in the stocks and deported to England; his entire property was confiscated, and his house burned to the ground. Set at liberty in England with little delay, he got into communication with Gorges, and was soon joined by two other victims of colonial methods.

Gorges, though a stanch supporter of the Church of England, was in close relations with the Puritan peers. He and Warwick were having constant dealings, as both were active in the Council for New England, and his son John was a brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, in whose house, as we have seen, the Massachusetts project took shape. There is nothing to indicate any hostility upon his part to the Massachusetts colony until 1632; and the several emissaries whom he secretly sent there were probably dispatched for the sole purpose of seeing whether or not the settlers were encroaching upon the lands claimed by himself and his son Robert, whose rights, it will be recalled, he specifically reserved when he consented to the granting of the Massachusetts charter. The grantees of that instrument, however, denied that the Gorges rights had any legal validity, and claimed and occupied the disputed land as their own. A quarrel was, therefore, inevitable, and as the Puritans, it must be confessed, had little respect for legality themselves, they could, when need required, be counted upon to take such steps as they might see fit to oppose any action of Gorges.

Winthrop had been scarcely a month on the shores of the Bay, when another newcomer arrived in the shape of one of the most picturesque and mysterious characters who were ever to stroll on Boston Common. Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight of the Sepulchre (somewhat whited), suddenly appeared, with no ostensible business, but with that unexpected

[1. C. F. Adams, New English Canaan of Thomas Morton (Prince Soc., Boston, 1883), p. 41. For a fair and full account, cf. the same author’s Three Episodes, vol. I, pp. 240-50. Morton’s own account is in his New English Canaan, pp. 108 ff.]

Page 150

phenomenon in the Puritan colony, a pretty young mistress. To be sure, he called her cousin, but it was soon suspected, as Bradford somewhat quaintly wrote, that "she (after the Italian manner) was his concubine."[1] In spite of the fact that a late defender has claimed that "he was unfitted for the quiet pleasures of domestic life,"2 he seems to have made some efforts in that direction; for the authorities soon received word from London to the effect that he had two wives there, who were then in conference, and of whom one was calling loudly for his conversion, and the other for his destruction.[3] On the first of March, 1631, it was ordered by the Massachusetts court that he and seven others should be sent prisoners to England by the good ship Lyon;4 but the knight, getting word of what was proposed, fled to the Indians.[5] Some weeks later he was taken into custody by the Plymouth people, who asserted that they had found on his person evidence that he was a Roman Catholic.[6] While he was lodged in jail in Boston, letters addressed to him by Gorges, as well as one to the absent Morton, came into the hands of Winthrop, who opened them, and decided that they indicated a design on the part of Gorges to regain possession of his land--an ambition not wholly unnatural.[7] Whether or not the authorities decided that it was wiser that Gardiner should not appear in England to add his testimony to that of Morton, nothing further seems to have been done to carry into effect the order for his deportation, and he was soon set at liberty.

Meanwhile a lonely settler from Maine had appeared in Boston, and had looked with favor upon Gardiner’s fair companion. He decided to marry the lady and to take her back to the Eveless Eden of the Androscoggin. Gardiner himself accompanied them, and the curiously assorted trio spent the winter together at Brunswick, from which season there was an

[1. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 294.]

[2. P. Oliver, The Puritan Commonwealth (Boston, 1856), p. 35.]

[3. Dudley’s Letter, in Young, Chron. Mass., p. 333.]

[4. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 83.]

[5. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 65.]

[6. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 295.]

[7. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I p. 68.]

Page 151

odd echo in the Maine law courts nine years later, when Gardiner’s host, and not himself, was properly sued for a warming-pan stolen by the knight during his chilly stay. In the summer of 1632, Gardiner landed in England just in time to add his witness to that of Morton and Ratcliffe in Gorges’s attack upon the Massachusetts charter.[1]

Ratcliffe, who was a mentally unbalanced servant of Cradock, had apparently talked loosely about the government and the Salem church. For these "mallitious and scandulous speeches," as the crime was designated in his sentence by the court, he was whipped, had both his ears cut off, was fined the impossible sum of L40, and banished from the colony.[2] He was not long in joining Morton and Gardiner in England, and becoming one more arrow in Gorges’s quiver.

These cases, moreover, though they proved more important individually, in their reaction upon the colony, by no means stood alone. A certain Thomas Gray, for an unspecified crime, was banished, his house was pulled down, and all Englishmen were enjoined from giving him shelter, "under such penalty as the Court shall thinke meete to inflicte." Thomas Dexter, for saying, "This captious government will bring all to naught," adding that "the best of them was but an atturney, &c.," was put in the stocks, fined L40, and disfranchised. Henry Lynn, "for writeing into England falsely and mallitiously against the government and execuccion of justice here," was ordered whipped and banished; while Thomas Knower was put in the stocks for saying that, if punished, he would have the legality of his sentence tried in England.[3]

The course of justice, if no worse than in contemporary England, was evidently but little improved by its passage overseas, or by being administered by those who had been so loud in their denunciations of the summary methods of Laud and the High Commission. It seemed to many, as to the "old planter" Blackstone, that the tyranny of the "Lord-Bishops"

[1. C. F. Adams, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series I, vol. XX, p. 80.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 88; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 6].]

[3. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 77, 101, 103, 104, 102.]

Page 152

had merely been exchanged for that of the "Lord-Brethren"; and it was evident also that the fixed policy of the leaders was to allow no appeals from their decisions to the home courts of England. All the colonists, therefore, who would not, on the one hand, wholly refrain from criticizing the policy and acts of the leaders, and, on the other, prove themselves acceptable to the clergy, and so secure the franchise by being elected freemen, were wholly without representation, without voice in the making of their laws, and without recourse to the courts and king at home.

As the charter was that of a trading corporation, the levying of taxes was a mere development of the right to assess shareholders, and, therefore, extended only to freemen. But no such legal restriction was observed, and from the beginning, the authorities taxed the non-freemen equally with themselves, though denying them the political rights which they themselves possessed.[1] Indeed, not only their property was thus subject to enactments in which they had no voice, but their time and the work of their hands as well; for the General Court passed a law that all except members of the court, and officers of the church and commonwealth, were liable to be impressed for manual labor on all public works.[2] The town meeting, indeed, seems to have been the only place in which the great majority of the colonists could legally make their voice heard at all, and there only upon questions concerning the most trivial local matters.

The New England town, already noted as one of the three typical institutions in the development and influence of that section, may be considered in its origin as "the politically active congregation," bound together, in addition to its church ties, by a peculiar agrarian policy.[3] Originating at Plymouth,

[1. H. L. Osgood, "New England Colonial Finance in the 17th Century"; Political Science Quarterly, vol. XIX p. 82.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 124.]

[3. M. Eggleston, The Land System of the New England Colonies, Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, Baltimore, 1886. Cf. also C. M. Andrews, The River Towns of Conn., J. H. U. S., 1889; W. E. Foster, Town Government in Rhode Island, J. H. U. S., 1886; A. B. Maclear, Early New England Towns, Columbia Univ. Studies, 1908; H. L. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, pp. 424 ff.; and for English towns on Long Island, J. T. Adams, History of the Town of Southampton (Bridgehampton, 1918), pp. 94-103.]

Page 153

it became universal throughout the Puritan colonies on the mainland, and was reproduced with extraordinary fidelity of detail wherever New Englanders migrated. The New England colonies, for the most part, neither sold nor rented their land, but granted it freely in fee to actual settlers, in rough proportion to their present ability to use it.[1] In general most of it was granted primarily to towns, which owned it in their corporate capacity; and by them it was allotted to individuals in the form of home-lots or arable land and meadow. The remainder formed the "common," for the use of all, under certain restrictions. The whole land-system, as well as the methods of cultivation, exhibited many striking resemblances to those of our early Teutonic ancestors; and, some years ago, these coincidences were largely insisted upon as cases of genuine survival.[2] It is more probable that a return to favorable wilderness conditions merely strengthened those primitive elements still remaining in the manorial system, with which the settlers were familiar in England. As we have already pointed out, the geographical environment in New England, as contrasted with that of the other colonies, tended strongly to develop the type of compact settlement. This was further reinforced by the form of emigration, which was distinctly of neighborhood groups, and by the type of church government.

The exigencies of the situation, when the settlers first landed, had necessitated their dispersal in various communities, whose members at once found it needful to manage their local affairs to some extent by meeting together among themselves. The charter made no provision for any but a general government; nor, under it, did the company have any legal right to incorporate other bodies. These more or less informal local governments were, therefore, extra-legal both before and after the passage of a township act by which it was attempted specifically

[1. The occasional few and unimportant exceptions do not affect the general statement.

[2. Cf. H. B. Adams, The Germanic Origin of New England Towns, J. H. U. S., 1882; Id., Village Communities of Cape Anne and Salem, J. H. U. S., 1883; G. E. Howard, Local Constitutional History of the U. S., J. H. U. S., 1889. Too enthusiastic believers should read "The Survival of Archaic Communities," in F. W. Maitland, Collected Papers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1911), vol. II, pp. 313 ff.]

Page 154

to give them certain rights of local administration. At the town meetings, which at first were spontaneous, and afterward regulated, all the inhabitants had the right to be present and to take part in the discussion of public affairs, although only the freemen were entitled to vote, except upon a few questions of minor importance. The distinction was somewhat similar to that in the churches, which all could attend, but in the management of which only church members had a voice. The town meeting, therefore, was a completely democratic institution in only one of its aspects, although it came to have great influence upon both political theory and practice.

A further development brought these local communities into working relations with the General Court. Owing to the distance of the scattered settlements from Boston, and the danger of all the freemen being absent at once from their homes, it was enacted, in 1634, that every town should elect two or three deputies, who should have the power of the whole, and who should act as their representatives in the General Court.[1] As the charter provided that seven of the eighteen Assistants must be present in the Court in order to constitute a quorum, that body was now composed of a small number of Assistants and a steadily growing number of Deputies. As the Virginia House of Burgesses had been established in 1619, and the Bermuda Assembly in 1620, the representative government provided for in Massachusetts was the third in the colonies.[2]

Owing to the close alliance maintained between the clergy and the Magistrates, as the Assistants soon came to be called, the body of deputies grew to be considered the more popular element in the Court. It was clear that real grievances and the democratic influences at work in the town meeting were likely to develop into attacks upon the arbitrary power of the very limited body of freemen. The form that the struggle assumed was that of a contest, lasting twenty years, between the deputies and the magistrates, with the influence of the

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 118.]

[2. Cf. J. H. Lefroy, On the Constitutional History of the Bermudas (Westminster, 1881), p. 6.]

Page 155

clergy constantly on the side of the latter. The freemen themselves were, indeed, not all in favor of the arbitrary exercise of power by the small oligarchical group which for so long remained in control. As early as 1631, the people of Watertown, when taxed for fortifying Newtown, declared that "it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage."[1] Although legally in the right, they accepted Winthrop’s interpretation of the charter, which is interesting as showing how completely the unjustified transformation from a company into a commonwealth had already been effected in the minds of the leaders.

Although the people, until well into the eighteenth century, probably had little thought of becoming independent of England, it seems clear from all the acts of the leaders, especially the transfer of the charter itself, that it was their intention, even before leaving England, to govern in as complete independence of that country as future circumstances might permit. They wished, it is true, to found a state for the glory of God and the establishment of true religion, but in which, nevertheless, they themselves should constitute the supreme power. Every encroachment upon it, from any direction, was grudgingly yielded to; and it is not unlikely that, even then, some of them dreamed of an actual political independence. "We are not a free state," wrote Pyncheon to Winthrop, in 1646, evidently with this in mind; "neither do I think it our wisdom to be a free state; though we had our liberty, we cannot as yet subsist without England."[2]

The political history of Massachusetts under the charter was thus made up of two separate elements. The first was the resistance of the governing group to any effort of England, legal or illegal, to assert her rights, even justly, over her colony; and the second was the struggle of a part of the colonists themselves, for toleration and liberty, against the governing class. Even had the colony never separated from England, we should, in all probability, have come to possess the same

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 84.]

[2. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. VI p. 383. The italics are mine.]

Page 156

measure of civil liberty and religious toleration that the English have to- day; but that separation having taken place, had the Puritan oligarchy retained and extended their power, we should have but little of either. It is, therefore, the second conflict which, although less dramatic, is the more vital in the history of human freedom. We must now turn to consider the earliest important attacks from both of the quarters indicated.

Of those from across the water, the first was launched, as could well have been for seen, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and was brought upon the colony directly through the policy pursued by its leaders. The untiring interest of Gorges in the affairs of New England, and his hope of yet creating a profitable settlement there for himself, were both well known to the Puritans. The old knight had spent vastly greater sums in the effort to plant the wilderness than had been contributed by any individual among themselves. He had attempted the colonization of Maine at a time when the men who were now engaged in banishing his agents were hardly more than children.[1] He had made no effort to disturb the Pilgrims during their ten-years’ stay at Plymouth, and would probably have left the Massachusetts settlers also in peace, had it not been for their denial of the rights he claimed in a part of the soil they had preempted, and for their treatment of his emissaries. The Massachusetts authorities, by throwing down the gauntlet, had created a powerful enemy who was not slow in picking it up.

In 1632, Gorges and Mason, with the assistance of Gardiner, Morton, and Ratcliffe, prepared a petition, which was presented to the Privy Council in December.[2] Winthrop stated that among many false accusations and "some truths misrepeated," it accused the colony of separating from the Church of England, and of threatening to cast off its political allegiance.[3] Supporters of the company in England hastily put

[1. Winthrop was a lad of 19 in 1607, and Endicott but 16.]

[2. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, p. 183.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 122.]

Page 157

into motion those unseen agencies that were most efficacious in doing business at the court of Charles; and, in spite of what seemed overwhelming odds against them, in courtly influence, won an unexpected victory, even gaining a word of commendation from the King.[1] Their success is involved in a mystery, which, however, we suspect might be unlocked by that same "golden key" which the Pilgrims were using contemporaneously at another of the royal doors. Meanwhile, the Council for New England had requested that the Company’s charter be presented for examination, and Humphrey had been forced to confess that it was in New England, stating that, though he had often written for it, he had been unable to obtain it.[2]

The demand, however, was repeated from a more powerful source two years later. In 1633, Laud had become Archbishop of Canterbury, and had declared war upon the Puritans. Colonial affairs, which had heretofore been considered, when considered at all, by the Privy Council, were now put into the hands of a body styled "the Lords Commissioners for Plantations in General," which was headed by the Archbishop, and given almost royal powers in both civil and ecclesiastical matters, including that of revoking all charters and patents unduly obtained.[3] Gorges utilized this new opportunity, and at once began to work upon the Archbishop’s hatred of Puritanism, in order to recover his own legal claims. On February 21, 1634, the Board, having taken into consideration the great numbers of persons "known to be ill-affected and discontented, as well with the Civil as Ecclesiastical government," who were daily resorting to New England, ordered that Cradock produce the Massachusetts charter.[4] Upon receipt of Cradock’s first letter requesting its return, the authorities at Boston decided to return an evasive answer, ignoring

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 123 n.]

[2. Records Council for New England; American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 1866, p. 107.]

[3. C. M. Andrews, British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622-1675, J. H. U. S., 1908, pp. 16 f.]

[4. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, p. 199. The order is given in Hubbard, History, p. 153.]

Page 158

the Council’s demand. After the first communication had been followed by an official copy of the order itself, word was returned by Winslow, who was acting as agent for both Plymouth and Massachusetts, that the charter could not be sent except by a vote of the General Court, which body would not meet until September.[1]

Meanwhile, Gorges was plying the English authorities with letters advising that a governor, "neither papistically nor scizmatically affected," be appointed for New England, modestly suggesting that he himself was an eminently proper person for the office, and urging that the Massachusetts charter be repealed.[2] His wish was gratified as to the first two points, and it looked as if he was at last to see the shores of that land which had been the chief object of his thoughts for thirty years. Winslow, whose suit, at first, had seemingly prospered, was suddenly and dramatically confronted, in the presence of Laud, with his old enemy Morton of Merry Mount, and, as a result of the latter’s accusations, was temporarily committed to prison.[3]

The grandiose scheme that Gorges had conceived contemplated the division of all New England among certain members of the old Council, and the validating of the individual assignments by legal sanctions. It was also arranged that the charter should then be resigned by that body, which had only too truly become, as the declaration read, "a Carcass in a manner breathless."[4] This was done in April, and in the following month a writ of Quo Warranto was entered, to deprive the Massachusetts company of its own charter, as the final step in the transformation of New England. Aside from the play of conflicting influences involved, the leaders, by their handling of affairs, had, without question, violated the terms of that instrument, and so had given their adversaries a reputable cause to plead. The verdict was adverse to the Company, judgment was entered against such of the patentees as appeared,

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 161, 163.]

[2. Baxter, Gorges, vol. III, pp. 261-75.]

[3. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 330.]

[4. Hazard, Hist. Coll., vol. I, p. 391.]

Page 159

and the remainder were outlawed. The patentees, however, refused to acknowledge the action of the courts, and the charter was not returned, though again demanded two years later.[1] Meanwhile, Gorges’s new-risen hopes had been wholly dashed. Though he had been appointed governor, the King had provided him with no funds from the empty treasury, and Gorges’s own resources were always inadequate for his undertakings. Mason, who was aiding him, suddenly died. The ship which was to have carried the knight to his new province broke as it was being launched, and delay followed delay, while the aspect of public affairs was rapidly changing.

This favorable turn, however, was not foreseen in the colony, and immediately upon receipt of the news of the appointment of the new Commission for Plantations, the Massachusetts government prepared for armed resistance. A sentry was posted on a hill near Boston, to give notice of the arrival of any hostile ships; L600 was raised for the completion of the fortifications on Castle Island; a military committee was appointed; and, a few weeks later, the clergy were consulted as to what should be done if a general governor were sent out from England. Their unanimous answer was that "We ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions (if we are able), otherwise to avoid or protract."[2] It must be recalled that the Massachusetts settlers were as yet Englishmen, and not independent Americans; and the home government, whose subjects they were, could hardly regard these acts and utterances otherwise than as rank rebellion, however different an aspect they might come to wear in the eyes of ourselves as heirs of a subsequent and successful revolution. Political events in England soon developed in such a way as to prevent any very serious consideration of colonial affairs for another

[1. Hutchinson, History, vol. I, p. 85; Hutchinson, Papers (Prince Soc., Albany, 1865), vol. I, p. 119.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 136-39; J. Winthrop, History, vol. X, pp. 170, 183. They were also asked whether it was lawful to retain the cross in the royal ensign, Endicott having chosen this inopportune moment to give an example of his blundering fanaticism, by cutting it out. Massachusers Records, vol. I, pp. 136, 147; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 175, 183, 199.]

Page 160

quarter of a century, and the policy of "avoid or protract," seemed temporarily to serve all purposes.

The colonial government, which had thus assumed what was practically a position of avowed independence of the king and courts of England, next decided to take up a stronger line in regard to its own subjects in the colony itself, for the spirit of the Watertown freemen against taxation had evidently spread. Just prior to the meeting of the General Court in the spring of 1634, every town deputed two men to consider such matters as might come up; and after consultation, a demand was made upon the governor to allow them to inspect the charter. Having found upon examination that the General Court was the only legal body entitled to legislate, they apparently inquired why that power had been usurped by the magistrates. Winthrop replied that it was because the General Court had become unwieldy in size; and he made the suggestion that, for the present, "they might, at the general court, make an order, that, once in the year, a certain number should be appointed, (upon summons from the governor) to revise all laws, etc., and to reform what they found amiss therein; but not to make any new laws, but prefer their grievances to the court of assistants; and that no assessments should be laid upon the country without the consent of such a committee, nor any lands disposed of."[1] It is difficult to conceive of a more complete abrogation of the rights of even the very limited body of freemen; and, though Winthrop does not tell us how this astonishing offer was received, the records leave us in no doubt. At the meeting of the General Court, it was immediately voted that there should be no trial for life or banishment except by a jury summoned by themselves; that there should be four such courts a year, not to be dissolved without their own consent; that none but the General Court had power to make laws or to elect and remove officials; and that none but the General Court had power to dispose of lands or to raise money by taxation.[2]

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 153.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 117 ff.]

Page 161

Another incident, of less importance, but interesting as showing the feeling abroad and the means by which it might, for a time, be suppressed, occurred at a meeting of the inhabitants of Boston later in the year, to choose some men to divide additional town-land. The voting was by secret ballot, for the first time, and Winthrop, Coddington, and the other leaders failed of election. The first stated in his account of the affair, that the electors chose mostly men of "the inferior sort," fearing that the richer men would give the poor an unfairly small proportion of land, the policy, he added, having been to leave a large amount undivided for newcomers and commons.[1] The argument, which was sound, might perhaps have been considered sounder by the discontented, had the governor himself, for example, not acquired by that time above eighteen hundred acres, Saltonstall sixteen hundred, and Dudley seventeen hundred.[2] After Winthrop had made a speech, and the Reverend Mr. Cotton had "showed them that it was the Lord’s order among the Israelites to have all such businesses committed to the elders," a new vote was ordered and the magistrates were elected.[3]

It was evident that, if the little group of leaders, lay and ecclesiastic, were to retain power permanently, in view of the spirit evinced by the people, and the extremely rapid growth of the population, it could be only by securing a firmer hold upon the body of magistrates and the election of freemen. A few months previously, Cotton had preached a sermon arguing that the magistrates, who were annually elected under the charter, were entitled to be perpetually reëlected, except for "just cause"; and he compared their rights to office with those of a man in his freehold estate.[4] This suggestion seems to have borne fruit something more than a year afterward, when, it having been shown "from the word of God, etc., that the principal magistrates ought to be for life," it was voted that a council should be created, to have such powers as the

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 181.]

[2. Adams, Three Episodes, vol. I, p. 365.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 181.]

[4. Ibid, vol. I, p. 157.]

Page 162

General Court should grant them, and not to be subject to removal except for crimes or "other weighty cause." This, of course, was again a violation of the charter, and, like so much of the reactionary legislation, was due to the direct influence of the clergy.[1] Though Winthrop, Dudley, and Endicott were elected to the new offices, the council was never granted any powers, and the plan failed.[2]

Of somewhat more practical service, in view of the fact that church membership was an indispensable qualification for the franchise, was the law, passed at the same court, that no new churches could be organized without the approbation of the magistrates and a majority of the elders of the preëxisting churches, and that no man could become a freeman who was not a member of a church so approved of. By this means a degree of control, at least, could be maintained over the great numbers of newcomers now arriving.

We do not wish to convey the impression that the leaders of the colony were animated by mere love of power or a vulgar ambition, strong though the former was in most of them. But the danger to the liberties of their subjects was no less great because Winthrop and Cotton were wholly convinced of the divine nature of their mission. It is too frequently assumed that despotic acts are necessarily those of a self-conscious despot; whereas, in most cases, they are merely the readiest means employed for reaching ends which authority may think itself rightly privileged, or morally bound, to attain. Charles and Laud were no less certain than the rulers of Church and State in Massachusetts, that their mandate was a heavenly one. Liberty cannot mean one thing in old England and another in New, nor can intolerance be condoned in the one and condemned in the other. The King and the Archbishop were no more closely allied, nor more bent upon forcing their own will upon that of the people, than were the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the little American commonwealth, however

[1. R. C. Winthrop, J. Winthrop, vol. II, p. 271.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 220; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 167, 174, 195, 264.]

Page 163

worthy or unworthy the motives of each may have been. Pride in the valiant work that the Massachusetts leaders did in subduing the wilderness, and in the sacrifices that they made for their religious beliefs, has tended to make their descendants, in the words of the old English saw, "to their faults a little blind, and to their virtues very kind"; but if the nations of the world are to grow in mutual understanding and brotherly feeling, their histories must be written from the standpoint of justice to all, and not from that of a mistaken national piety.

We now come to the case of the first, and perhaps the most conspicuous, individual who was to fall under the discipline of both Church and State in New England. Roger Williams had arrived in Boston as early as 1631. Added to a most winning nature and a personality that ever exerted a charm over friends and enemies alike, he brought with him a reputation for being a godly minister, and within a few months after his arrival, was invited by the church at Salem to become their teacher. He had also, apparently, within only a few weeks of his landing, been chosen to the same office by the Boston congregation, but had refused to join with them because they would not acknowledge themselves to be separated from the Church of England.[1] He had also, thus early, declared his doctrine that the power of the magistrates should be limited to civil matters, and that they had no authority to punish the breach of the Sabbath or other religious offenses.[2] For these reasons, the General Court wrote a letter to Endicott, expostulating with the Salem church for accepting Williams, which that church apparently ignored.[3] He did not, however, remain long, but removed to Plymouth, where he stayed preaching until again called to Salem in 1634.[4]

Meanwhile, he had not only so extended his doctrine of the separation of church and state as to deny that a magistrate

[1. Letter to John Cotton, Jr., 1671 (Narr. Club Pub., vol. VI, p. 356).]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 63.]

[3. The evidence is somewhat conflicting. Cf. citations of authorities in H. M. Dexter, As to Roger Williams (Boston, 1876), p. 5.]

[4. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 310.]

Page 164

had power to require an oath, but had added a new and, it is needless to say, fundamentally dangerous doctrine for the legal foundation of the colony, in his declaration that, the Indians being the true owners of the soil, the King had had no right to grant a charter, and the colony should repent of having received it. The authorities might, perhaps, fear the expression of such opinions, and his subsequent banishment, the motives for which have always been the subject of heated dispute from his own day to this, may have been caused by his denial of the legal basis of the colony, as much as by his theory of religious toleration. It was without doubt the latter, however, which brought down upon him the special hostility of the clergy. Winthrop, who like Bradford and Winslow, had an affectionate regard for the young clergyman, specifically stated that the ministers rendered their judgment "that he who should obstinately maintain such opinions, whereby a church might run into heresy, apostacy, or tyranny, and yet the civil magistrate could not intermeddle," should be removed.[1]

The civil power was at once brought into play. Williams was cited to appear, and the town of Salem was denied title to certain lands which it claimed as its own, until it should discard its teacher.[2] Williams then endeavored to have the Salem church separate from all the others, and the congregation addressed a sharp letter of reproof to the magistrates. The final triumph was, of course, on the side of the established authorities. Williams, after what seems to have been a fair trial, was ordered to be banished,[3] the decree being subsequently revised to take effect in the spring, provided Williams would refrain from attempting to spread his opinions, which, apparently, he was unable to do. The authorities, having heard that he was planning to lead a colony to Narragansett, and fearing that the "infection" would spread from there throughout the churches, undertook to ship him back to England; but he escaped in the middle of January, making

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 194.]

[2. Ibid., vol. I, p. 195.]

[3. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 161.]

Page 165

his way through the snow-filled forests to the safe confines and hospitable savages of Rhode Island.[1]

His subsequent prominence as the founder of that state, and his written advocacy of the principle of toleration, have tended to overemphasize the contemporary importance of the proceedings just described.[2] The authorities had a fair basis for their action, on civil grounds alone; and although the religious aspect undoubtedly entered largely into the case, it marked, in that respect, no new departure in policy.[3] It merely showed somewhat more clearly, perhaps, that, in any case which threatened to weaken the established relations of church and state or to question the right of the latter to require the most rigid conformity to the doctrines and practices of the former, the magistrates and clergy could be counted upon to act rigorously together. Although personally popular, Williams had acquired few adherents who were willing to follow him beyond a certain point in his struggle, and the victory of the court created but a slight disturbance. The colony, however, in order to avoid even the possibility of strife, had lost what it could ill afford to spare--a mind of wider vision than its own.

If Williams’s expulsion had caused no tumult, that was not to be true of another case with which the authorities soon had to deal. Ann Hutchinson, who had been a parishioner of John Cotton in England, had come to Massachusetts with her husband, later followed by her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, and had been in Boston about two years at the time of Williams’s banishment. She had acquired a considerable influence among the women, due more, perhaps, to her kindly

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I p. 209.]

[2. Besides his works already referred to, his doctrine of religious liberty found expression in The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 1644, and The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody, 1652, reprinted as vols. III and IV of the Narr. Club Pub.]

[3. Cf., however, besides the standard histories, J. L. Diman, Preface to Narragansett Club Publications, vol. II, pp. 1-8; and Dexter, As to Roger Williams. The latter is strongly biased against Williams, and contains some untenable views as to the founders’ attitude toward the charter, but is useful as citing almost all known references to the case. It was critically reviewed by H. S. Barrage, American Historical Association Report, 1899, vol. I, pp. 10-12.]

Page 166

spirit and helpfulness in sickness, than to her brilliant mind, which seems to have impressed itself upon many of the ablest men in the colony. The New England of that day, as for long after, offered almost no opportunity for the play of such a restless intellect as hers except upon religious questions, and Mrs. Hutchinson was, in addition, a sincerely religious woman. After some time, during which we hear nothing of her, she appeared as holding Thursday meetings in her house for those women who had been unable to attend church on the preceding Sunday, and to whom she rehearsed the sermons preached. She soon passed on to comparing those of various clergymen, and gradually evolved the doctrine that, while Mr. Cotton and her brother-in-law preached a "Covenant of Grace," all of the others preached a "Covenant of Works"--a theological distinction which has often been considered so baffling as to elude understanding. Even at the time, Winthrop wrote that "no man could tell (except some few, who knew the bottom of the matter) where any difference was."[1] It may be inferred, however, that by a "Covenant of Grace" she meant a religion based upon a direct revelation in the individual soul of God’s grace and love, while by a "Covenant of Works" was intended a religion founded upon a covenant between God as judge and man as fallen, which men had merely to obey unquestioningly, as they obeyed the civil law, and of which the minister was the official interpreter.[2]

It is needless to point out that the latter accorded with the whole doctrine and polity of the Massachusetts church and state, while the former would have undermined both as constituted. To many, the preaching of a religion of love, as contrasted with the harsh tenets of the established doctrine of law and judgment, brought a joy and peace they had sought in vain in the latter, and Mrs. Hutchinson’s followers grew

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 255.]

[2. The modern literature regarding the Antinomian controversy is large. Cf. C. F. Adams, Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay; Prince Society, Boston, 1894; also his Three Episodes, vols. I, pp. 363, and II, 533-81. A very lucid account is given by R. N. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (London, 1911), pp. 4-25.]

Page 167

rapidly in number. Among them were included Mr. Cotton himself,--who, however, drew back in the succeeding turmoil,--and the new young Governor of the colony, Sir Harry Vane.

Vane, as yet but twenty-three years old, high-born and brilliant, but immature, had arrived in the autumn of 1635 in the ship that brought the Reverend Hugh Peter and John Winthrop, Jr. He had come over, as had the younger Winthrop, in connection with the plantation project of Lords Say, Brook, and others; but he remained in Boston, and was soon admitted a member of Cotton’s church. During the preceding years there had been from time to time various disagreements between Winthrop and Dudley, both of whom had occupied the office of governor, the troubles arising largely from Dudley’s touchy and overbearing nature. Reconciliations had been effected by the kindly and patient Winthrop, and the petty quarrels are of practically no historical importance, save in that the people had taken sides to a certain extent. Vane and Peter had been but a few months in the colony, when, for reasons best known to themselves, they undertook to arrange a meeting between Governor Haynes, the two ex-governors, the three clergymen, Cotton, Hooker, and Wilson, and themselves. The discussion finally centred upon whether the mildness of Winthrop or the severity of the fanatical Dudley was the wiser in governing the colony. The question, as usual, was referred to the ministers for their opinion, who gave it in favor of "strict discipline" for the honor and safety of the gospel. Whereupon, Winthrop acknowledged that he had been too lenient, and promised a stricter course thereafter, and Massachusetts took one more step backward.[1] The following spring Vane was elected governor.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hutchinson had won over practically all the Boston church, except Wilson, Winthrop, and a few others, who, however, were strong enough to defeat the proposal to install Wheelwright as teacher.[2] The strife was gradually spreading, and Vane, who had allied himself with the Hutchinson party, made a flimsy excuse to resign the governorship.

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 211 ff.]

[2. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 241 ff.]

Page 168

The Boston church and the Court both refused to consider his reasons valid, and the resignation was withdrawn. A conference of the ministers, called by the Court, was held in December, to try to compose the differences, but accomplished nothing except to increase the bitter feeling between the parties. A day of fasting was proclaimed, and although Wheelwright had removed to Mt. Wollaston, he attended the Boston church on that occasion, and preached his famous "fast-day sermon."[1] For expressions contained in it, as falsely interpreted by the authorities, he was declared by the Court to have been guilty of contempt and sedition, the same body condemning Stephen Greensmith to a fine of L40 for saying that all the ministers, except Cotton, Wheelwright, and, possibly, Hooker, taught a covenant of works.[2]

Wheelwright having next been summoned to appear before the General Court, a petition was presented, signed by nearly all the members of the Boston church, asking that the hearings should be open to freemen, and that cases of conscience might be first dealt with by the churches.[3] This was declared to be "a groundless and presumptuous act." Wheelwright’s examination was begun in private, and the authorities stated that it would proceed ex officio. This raised loud complaints among the people, who avowed that it was but one of those High Commission proceedings which they had left England to escape. Wheelwright refused to answer the questions put, and the hearings were finally allowed to be open. The clergy were then asked by the Court whether they did teach a covenant of works. All but Cotton replied in the affirmative, and the verdict was thus foreshadowed. Nevertheless, it took two days of further struggling, again behind closed doors, before the sentence of sedition and contempt could be agreed to, and the party of the priests and magistrates secure their victory.[4] A petition, denying that any of Wheelwright’s utterances had

[1. It is reprinted by C. H. Bell, John Wheelwright (Prince Society, Boston, 1876), pp. 153 ff.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 189.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 256.]

[4. Adams, Three Episodes, vol. I, pp. 444 f.]

Page 169

been seditious, was presented to the Court, signed by sixty members of the Boston church, for which they were rebuked by Winthrop.[1]

The majority of the Court, however, evidently feared the next election, and secured the passage of a resolution requiring that the elections should be held at Newtown, and not, as had always been customary, at Boston.[2] At the election, in May, Vane and Winthrop were the opposing leaders, and although the former attempted some ill-judged political mano=euvres, the ecclesiastical party was wholly successful. Winthrop was elected governor, Dudley deputy-governor, and Endicott, apparently as a reward for his share in the proceedings, was made a member of the unconstitutional life council, while all the Boston Antinomians were defeated for the magistracy. When, in answer to this, that town next day returned Vane, Coddington, and Hoffe as deputies, the Court "found a means to send them home again," claiming that two of the Boston freemen had not been notified of the election. The next morning, Boston held a new election, and returned the same deputies, and "the court not finding how they might reject them, they were admitted."[3]

The victory over Boston, however, was evidently not considered sufficient, and the Court proceeded to pass an immigration law, to the effect that no town could receive any person for a longer time than three weeks without permission of one of the council or two of the magistrates. In other words, no Englishman could settle in Massachusetts without personal permission from Winthrop, Dudley, or Endicott, or two of their eight associates. The law had evidently been framed to prevent any accession to the ranks of the Hutchinson party, and was promptly put into execution on the arrival of a considerable body of newcomers, including a brother of Mrs. Hutchinson, who were forced to leave the colony after having reached its shores.[4] Feeling naturally ran high, and

[1. Adams, Antinomianism, pp. 133 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 183 f.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 191.]

[3. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 195 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 261 ff.]

[4. Ibid., p. 278.]

Page 170

Winthrop defended, while Vane attacked, the validity and justice of such an enactment.[1] With the law already alluded to, placing the whole control of the franchise in the hands of the magistrates and the clergy, and with this new law, which gave the right of admission to the colony wholly to the former, the control of the oligarchy would seem to have been fairly complete.

The Court, however, even as constituted as a result of the May election, did not move rapidly enough in the prosecution of Wheelwright, and was summarily dissolved in September. Sixteen members were dropped, and the new Court, comprising forty-two members, contained twenty-two new names.[2] Even this purge was not enough, and two deputies were expelled, one for declaring that the Boston petition was lawful, and the other for declaring that he believed Wheelwright was innocent and was being persecuted for the truth.

Meanwhile, Vane had returned to England, and a synod of all the clergy had met and declared that there were eighty-two erroneous or blasphemous opinions involved in the controversy.[3] Mr. Cotton, who had no taste for that banishment which he claimed was no hardship, now went over to what was evidently to be the winning side. With a broader mind and wider vision than any of the other clergy of the colony, he had not the courage to stand alone, beyond a certain point, against their unanimity in intolerance. The higher promptings of his nature were crushed by the united voice of the priesthood, as Winthrop’s had been so short a time before, and the noblest of the colony’s leaders, lay and clerical, from that time tended to sink to the lower level of their fellows.

Events now moved more swiftly. At the November Court, Wheelwright was sentenced to be disfranchised and banished, and was refused the privilege of an appeal to England.[4] He was given fourteen days in which to settle his affairs, and at

[1. The documents are given in the Hutchinson Papers, vol. I, pp. 79-114.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 204, 205.]

[3. They are given in full by Adams, Antinomianism, pp. 95-124; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp, 284 ff., gives an account of the meeting, but mentions only 80.]

[4. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 207; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 294.]

Page 171

the beginning of winter was on his way to New Hampshire. One of the expelled deputies was disfranchised and threatened with banishment should he "speake anything to disturbe the publike peace." Another was also disfranchised and banished. Two weeks later, seven of the signers of the petition were disfranchised, and ten more, who acknowledged their "sin" in having signed, were pardoned. The following week, seventyfive men, in the towns of Boston, Salem, Newbury, Roxbury, Ipswich, and Charlestown, were condemned to have all their arms and ammunition taken from them unless they would likewise acknowledge their "sin." A law was passed that any one who should "defame" any Magistrate or Court, or any of their acts or proceedings, should be fined, imprisoned, disfranchised, or banished.[1]

In the meantime, Mrs. Hutchinson had been brought to trial. When, at its beginning, she asked what law had been broken, the Court answered, "the fifth commandment," which enjoined her to honor father and mother, whereas she had brought reproach upon the "fathers of the commonwealth."[2] When the trial was over, and the sentence given that she should be "banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society," she said, "I desire to know wherefore I am banished." "Say no more," answered the Governor; "the Court knows wherefore and is satisfied."

It was evident now that no voice could be raised in criticism of any acts of the civil or ecclesiastical authorities, and that the minds and lives of the ten thousand or more inhabitants of Massachusetts had come wholly under the control of their rulers. One man, who with a group of people undertook to organize a church without having secured the permission of the magistrates and clergy, was fined L20 and imprisoned "during the pleasure of Court." Hugh Buet, being found guilty of "heresy," was condemned to leave the colony within three weeks or be hanged. Two others were imprisoned for criticizing

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 207-13.]

[2. Adams, Antinomianism, pp. 165, 237. Two reports of the trial are given in that volume, pp. 157-284.]

Page 172

the government and clergy; and, for the same offense, Katherine Finch was ordered to be whipped.[1] In 1635, a law had been passed making church attendance compulsory for all inhabitants, under pain of fine and imprisonment. Three years later, it was enacted that every resident, whether a freeman and church member or not, should be taxed for the support of the ministers. In the Old World, the churches had been satisfied with excommunication, but in Massachusetts, a law was now passed that, if any person was excommunicated by the church, he must endeavor to have himself restored within six months, under penalty of "fine, imprisonment, banishment, or further."[2] That ominous "further" was evidently intended to mean death, and it is difficult to conceive of a measure more conducive to the rearing of a race of conforming hypocrites.

The policy so ruthlessly followed by the leaders can hardly be excused by attributing it to the spirit of the age or to the necessity of maintaining civil order. They were all familiar with the example of religious toleration in Holland; and in neither Plymouth, Rhode Island, nor Connecticut was church membership a legal requisite for the franchise. Moreover, Massachusetts, only a few years later, in annexing the northern settlements, permitted their inhabitants to vote without being church members, although denying that privilege to her own citizens.

Criticism of the leaders’ actions was severe and constant, even from their best friends in England. The real father of the colony, the Reverend John White, wrote to Winthrop in alarm, saying that he desired him "to have an eye to one thinge, that you fall not into that evill abroad, which you labored to avoyd at home, to binde all men to the same tenets and practise." Stansby, in a letter to the Reverend Mr. Wilson, complained that, on account of their strictness, over one half of the people were not admitted to church membership, and that this would do them much harm. Stephen Winthrop, temporarily in London, sent home word to his brother John, that

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 252, 312, 262, 269, 234.]

[2. Ibid., pp. 140, 240, 242.]

Page 173

"here is great complaint against us for our severity against Anabaptists. It doth discourage any people from coming to us for fear they should be banished if they dissent from us in opinion." Sir George Downing, a cousin of the younger Winthrop, in a letter retailing English opinion of the colony, speaks of that "law of banishing for conscience, which makes us stinke everywhere."[1]

Nor must the standpoint of the English citizen be neglected. England’s American possessions, in spite of monopolies and charters, were coming more and more to be looked upon as the heritage of the English people, as the land of opportunity for those who fell by the wayside in life’s race at home, as well as for religious exiles. Yet here was one of the best parts of the whole continent being monopolized by a band of people who rejected, oppressed, and banished others, or at the least deprived them of all political rights, not because they were undesirable citizens, not because they were immoral, but because they refused to conform to the peculiar church polity and doctrine, neither Church of England nor English Puritan, which the first settlers had evolved in the American wilderness.

Winthrop, in his controversy with Vane over the immigration law, and apologist historians since, have made much of the possible technical rights under the charter possessed by the company members, and their successors in perpetuity, to choose their fellow citizens according to any standard, however fanatical, however unjust, of which they might approve. These rights were questionable, and the controversy has usually ignored those of the potential English colonist at home. But our interest does not lie in legal technicalities: it is concerned with the influences that moulded New England; and from that standpoint, we can only point to the results of the policy of the first leaders and to its baneful effects. As we noted above, Winthrop’s finer impulses had been permanently checked, while Cotton, who might have made a noble leader, was now content to follow natures lower than his own.

[1. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series V, vol. I, p. 252; Series IV, vol. VII, p. 11; Series V, vol. VIII, p. 200; Series IV, vol. VI, p. 537.]

Page 174

The voices that had pleaded for religious toleration, for civil liberty, and for a religion of love, were silenced. The intellectual life of the colony ceased to be troubled and entered into peace, but it was the peace of death. The struggle for civil freedom did, indeed, go on, and in that alone lay the sole contribution of the colony to the cause of human progress; for the almost complete suppression of free speech and free inquiry surrendered the intellectual life of Massachusetts to the more and more benumbing influence of a steadily narrowing theology.[1] For two centuries, from the day that Winthrop pronounced that verdict, "the Court knows wherefore and is satisfied," the social and religious life of New England as a whole conformed to the rigid lines of Calvinism in its harshest and least attractive aspects. In England, Puritanism had been grafted upon a national stock of abundant sturdiness and health. In the forests of America, uncultured and ungrafted, the wild fruit grew steadily more gnarled and bitter.

[1. Cf. C. F. Adams, Massachusetts, its Historians and its History; Boston, 1898.]

Page 175

IN the first chapter we called attention to the importance of the Appalachian barrier in long confining the process of colonizing within bounds, and preventing that wide dispersion which rendered so precarious the hold of France upon its far larger American empire. The relation of area to barrier, in that section chosen by the English, was, indeed, almost ideal for the formation of colonies, and, subsequently, of a nation through their union. While the mountains kept the original settlements within bounds until their population and institutions had both had opportunity to develop and take strong root, the extent of the continental mass behind, simple in its physiographic features, was sufficient for the growth of almost unlimited numbers and a unified state, and, so, for the effective influence upon the world of whatever form of culture might there arise. The West Indian colonies, on the other hand, in spite of their rapid growth, could not fail, eventually, to become politically unimportant, merely from their limited area and resulting limited population. Barbadoes, for example, comprised only one hundred and sixty- six square miles, the equivalent of one seventh of the land-surface of Rhode Island, or one fiftieth of that of Massachusetts. Within a century from its settlement, it contained no ungranted or uncultivated land--a condition which must have been approximated long before.[1] The possibility of growth, beyond a certain point, was, therefore, lacking in the islands, and, from the same cause, their development was to a great extent uninfluenced by another factor, which was of marked importance in the continental colonies and the nation for two centuries and a half.

[1. Worsley to Board of Trade, cited by Pitman, Development of British W. I. p. 70.]

Page 176

This factor was the constantly advancing frontier, with it: radical reactions upon the thought and institutions of the also constantly expanding older settlements.

American political thought has been moulded, to a very great extent, by the two ideals, of unrestricted competition in exploiting the resources of the continent, and of a democracy fostered by the semi-isolated and self- reliant life of the frontier, with its comparative equality of opportunity and of economic status. Both these ideals, until a recent period, were developed by the presence of free land, in which they had largely had their origin.[1] As we have already pointed out, land in New England, in the earliest period, was to be obtained without either purchase price or rent, to which fact, perhaps, had been due the large non-Puritan immigration that mingled with the religious stream from 1630 to 1640.

It is also to the influence of the frontier that the American intellect owes some of its most marked characteristics: its restlessness, its preoccupation with the practical, its lack of interest in the æsthetic and philosophical, its desire for ends and neglect of means, its preference of cleverness to training, its self-confidence, its individualism, and its extreme provinciality. The influence, moreover, has been a continuing one, for almost every decade in American history, until 1890, witnessed the creation of a new frontier, which lay just a little beyond the settled regions, and reacted upon them.[2]

In describing the first expansion of the New England frontier, therefore, we are concerned with the earliest manifestation of one of the most potent forces in American history. The fringe of little settlements along the coast had been, indeed, the frontier of Europe; but with the planting of settlements farther inland, an American frontier came into existence, to react upon what, with the rapid movement of time characteristic of a new country, soon became the conservative, older

[1. Cf. F. J. Turner, "Social Forces in American History"; Magazine of History, vol. XIII, p. 117.]

[2. Cf. the very suggestive article by F. J. Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," Proceedings of State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1894, pp. 79-112.]

Page 177

East. That frontier has always been the refuge of the restless and the discontented, of those who have desired a freer, if not greater, economic opportunity, as well as of those who have been unable to adjust themselves to the prosaic life of a settled community, with its penalties of one sort or another for such as will not yield at least lip-service to its social, religious, or political beliefs. In Massachusetts there was no more room-- if, indeed, there were as much--for those who disagreed with the authorities in any particular, than there had been at home; and those who came to that colony in the hope of enjoying any larger degree of religious toleration or civil liberty than in England were promptly disillusioned. About the time of the last events described in the preceding chapter, the prospects for freedom of thought or action must have looked as dark to the dwellers in Massachusetts not wholly in sympathy with the rulers’ policy, as it had looked to those same rulers in the old country, when they met at the Earl of Lincoln’s, and decided to remove to the wilderness. The opposition having become the government, it was now forcing a new opposition to follow the same course, involuntarily by banishment or voluntarily by free migration. Before continuing the story of that movement, however, we must allude briefly to that portion of the European frontier which lay northward of the Puritan settlements, and which, like them, had been formed by immigration from the Old World.

During the period we are now discussing, the history of Maine was the story of confused grants of territory and of the planting of small isolated farming, fishing, and trading communities. The existence led by the inhabitants, in their solitary shacks or little villages, was that of a rough border life in which the monotony of the hard, bitter winters, and the routine of planting, fishing, or bargaining for furs, was punctuated by an occasional murder among themselves, and by quarrels, sometimes bloody, with the Indians and the French.

In 1629, the Province of Maine, as granted to Mason and Gorges seven years previously, was divided between them, Mason accepting as his share that portion lying between the

Page 178

Merrimac and the Piscataqua,--which received the name of New Hampshire,-- while Gorges retained the balance, extending from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec.[1] Mention has previously been made of the small beginnings at Pemaquid, Sheepscot, and Monhegan to the eastward, and of Portsmouth and Dover in what now became Mason’s particular province. The settlements next planted, at Richmond’s Island, Pejebscot, around Casco Bay, and elsewhere, were the work of servants for English merchants or of individual emigrants, and were hampered by the conflicting claims arising from the carelessly drawn patents.[2] Gorges himself became interested in a new attempt to colonize, and his nephew, William, was sent over as governor of a little colony planted at York, which later was to become the subject of one of those grandiose schemes of government to which the old knight was so uncontrollably addicted.[3] All of these early plantings, however, were of slight historical importance.

Although settlement was proceeding slowly and painfully, the vast forests and many rivers of the province offered a rich field for the exploitation of the fur trade, which was the main object of the French in the north, and one of the principal resources of the English settlements as well. The traffic, indeed, had been the means by which the Plymouth Pilgrims had bought their freedom from their merchant partners, and we have already noted that colony’s activities on the Kennebec. A tragic incident that occurred at their little post on that stream, located at what is now Augusta, is of interest mainly as revealing the aggressive attitude which was later to become the settled policy of the Massachusetts colony in relation to its neighbors. Early in 1634, one Hocking, a fellow

[1. Farnham Papers (Maine Historical Society, Portland, 1901), vol. I, pp. 96 ff. For the numerous grants of this period, cf. H. S. Barrage, Colonial Maine, pp. 197-226.]

[2. The patents may be found in the Farnham Papers, passim. The most accurate narrative account is that of Barrage, Colonial Maine. The Trelawney and Cammack patents, and an extremely valuable correspondence relating to conditions at this time, are in the Trelawney Papers; Maine Historical Society, 1884. Cf. also, J. P. Baxter, George Cleeve of Casco Bay (Gorges Society, Portland, 1885), pp. 27 ff.]

[3. Farnham Papers, vol. I, p. 159; Gorges, Briefe Narration, p. 79; Burrage, Colonial Maine, pp. 216 ff.]

Page 179

employed in an enterprise of Lords Say, Brook, and others, on the Piscataqua, tried to poach upon the Pilgrims’ patented lands, and even to pass the trading station, in order to intercept the Indians carrying their furs. The Pilgrims’ agents acted with restraint; but in the course of the dispute, Hocking wantonly killed one of their men; whereupon a companion of the slain man, "that loved him well," as Bradford records, shot Hocking dead.[1]

Although the Plymouth men had been entirely in the right, a garbled version of the affair was sent to England and also to Massachusetts. Needless to point out, that colony had absolutely no jurisdiction whatever in the quarrel, which had occurred far outside its bounds, and not even in the unclaimed wilderness, but within the legal limits of its older neighbor. Nevertheless, the authorities at Boston arrested John Alden, one of the Plymouth magistrates, who happened to be there at the moment, and who had been at the Kennebec when the affray occurred.[2] This was naturally resented, even by the peace-loving Pilgrims, and letters requesting Alden’s release were dispatched by the Plymouth government to Dudley. One of these, at least, that governor tried to suppress, but "Captaine Standish requiring an answer thereof publickly in the course," he was forced to produce it.[3] Alden was released, but Standish, who had been the bearer of the letter, was bound over to appear at the next Massachusetts court, to testify to the Pilgrims’ patent. Finally, after Winslow and Bradford themselves had gone to Boston and conferred with Winthrop, the matter was adjusted, and Dudley and Winthrop wrote to the Lords in England the true version of the murder; but it was not likely that the other settlements would soon forget the high-handed proceedings of the Bay Colony in an affair so obviously beyond its jurisdiction.[4]

But the trading post on the Kennebec was not the sole concern of the Pilgrims in Maine, nor was that province the scene

[1. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 317.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 156; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 119.]

[3. Dudley’s reply, in Bradford, Plymouth, p. 320.]

[4. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 162, 174.]

Page 180

merely of contentions arising from conflicting English land-grants, or from rival colonial jurisdictions. It had been the stage on which the curtain had first risen in the struggle for empire between England and France, and was now to witness new episodes in that long drama. Still farther north the contest had recently become acute. Sir William Alexander, by virtue of an English grant, had claimed a large portion of French America, and Sir William Kirk had seized Port Royal and Quebec. By the treaty of St. Germain, however, in 1632, England agreed to restore "all places occupied in New France, Acadia, and Canada by the subjects of the King of Great Britain," although the boundaries of those vaguely localized regions were not specified, and remained matters for contention, which meant raiding and Indian warfare, for over a century to come.[1]

Meanwhile, several more places had been occupied by the Pilgrims and those associated with the Plymouth colony. In 1630, a "very profane young man," Edward Ashley by name, had started a trading post on the Penobscot, which the Pilgrims feared might injure their fur business on the Kennebec.[2] In spite of scruples, therefore, they joined with Ashley, and that person having been drowned at sea, after being released from the Fleet prison in London, they came into sole possession.[3] They did not long enjoy it in peace, however, for the following year the French descended upon them and carried away all their goods, valued at nearly L500, leaving word with the agents that "some of the Isle of Rey gentlemen had been there." Allerton, who had broken with the Pilgrims, had also begun to trade, at Machias; and, a couple of years later, suffered in like manner from the French, who killed two of his men, and carried off all the others, as well as the whole stock of goods, which, as Bradford says "was the end of that projecte."[4]

In spite of their own heavy loss, the Pilgrims had clung

[1. The section of the treaty relating to America is in the Farnham Papers, vol. I, p. 176.]

[2. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 258 f.]

[3. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, p. 172; Bradford, Plymouth, p. 275.]

[4. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 293 f.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 139, 184.]

Page 181

to the Penobscot until, in 1635, d’Aulnay, acting under orders from the French King to clear the coast of the English as far as Pemaquid, seized the post, and shipped the local agents back to Plymouth. The Pilgrims hired a vessel, and dispatched an armed force to try to regain possession; but, owing to the conduct of the man whom they had engaged to effect the enterprise, it failed miserably, and they merely entailed upon themselves a heavy additional loss. Massachusetts, when called upon for help, though she realized the danger to herself from the increasing aggressiveness of the French, refused aid unless the infinitely poorer Plymouth colony would bear the entire expense. That colony was, therefore, obliged to desist, and Bradford bitterly complained that not only did the Bay people thus do nothing to defend the common frontier, but that, owing to their cupidity, they even sold food and ammunition to the French, and so increased the menace both from them and their Indian allies.[1]

In Mason’s province of New Hampshire, settlement, though more peaceful, was also proceeding but slowly beyond the Dover and Portsmouth plantations already noted. As the settlers of those two places were Episcopalians, and as an opportunity was offered to buy out the Hilton interest in the former, the Massachusetts leaders urged some of their friends in England to acquire it, with the result that Lords Say and Brook, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and others came into possession, and sent out additional colonists.[2] This pouring of new wine into the old Dover bottle produced a series of explosions, which subsequently prepared the way for annexation by Massachusetts. Mason died in 1635, and bequeathed his province to his family. Two years later occurred the Antinomian controversy in Massachusetts, and the expulsion of Wheelwright, whom, when discussing that episode, we left on

[1. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 332 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 198, 200, 246; Mass. Hiss. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. VIII, p. 192; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 160 f.]

[2. New Hampshire Provincial Papers (Concord, 1867), vol. I, p. 157.]

[3. C. W. Tuttle, Captain John Mason; Prince Society, Boston, 1887. The will and notes are on pp. 391-408.]

Page 182

his way to New Hampshire. He succeeded in making the winter trip to the settlements on the Piscataqua, and the following spring, with a few associates and the help of his new hosts, he founded the town of Exeter, the inhabitants entering into a written compact for their self- government.[1] That the Massachusetts authorities would have preferred that he should die alone in the winter’s snow is hardly a charitable supposition; but just what they did wish for is uncertain; for they wrote a letter of remonstrance to the New Hampshire people, saying that they "looked at it as an unneighborly part" that they should help any one expelled by themselves.[2]

One of these northern towns, from its first settlement, had been considered by Massachusetts as under its own jurisdiction. In March, 1637, the General Court had ordered that a plantation should be started at Wenicunnett,--the name being later changed to Hampton,--a little more than three miles north of the Merrimac.[3] It was thus slightly outside of the bounds of the patent, if that were construed, as it had been construed to that time, to include only such land north of the river as lay within three miles of it.[4] The project may mark, however, the first tentative step toward the colony’s later, and wholly unwarranted, interpretation of that instrument, so as to include all the territory lying south of a line drawn due east from a point three miles north of the most northerly part of that stream, to the ocean, thus including practically all of New Hampshire and a large part of Maine. About a year and a half after the "bound house" was built, a group of colonists went to take possession of the new site. The Exeter men at once objected to this encroachment of Massachusetts on their neighborhood; but the General Court

[1. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. I, pp. 131 f. The Indian deed, formerly thought to have been obtained by Wheelwright for the land, is now generally considered spurious. Ibid., pp. 136 f. Cf., however, Bell (John Wheelwright, pp. 79 ff.), who contends that it was genuine.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 350.]

[3. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 167, 271; J. Dow, History of Town of Hampton (Salem, 1893), vol. I, pp. 7 f.]

[4. It is noteworthy that in 1633, in a letter to Secretary Coke, Emanuel Downing asked that the charter limits be extended a little to the north, where were the best firs and timber. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76, p. 74.]

Page 183

replied that the new settlement was within their patent, and that they looked upon the protest as "against good neighborhood, religion and common honesty." They did, however, quietly send out a surveying party, and having found that the part above Pennacook was north of the line of 43½ degrees, they phrased a new answer to Exeter’s renewed protest, saying that, while they relinquished none of their rights, nevertheless, as the Exeter men did not profess to claim anything which might fall within the Massachusetts patent, the matter would be allowed to rest. The way was thus left open for future aggression, and the Court immediately proceeded to erect the new settlement into a legal town.[1]

The frontier north of Massachusetts had thus, for the most part, come into being without any action on her part, except in the two settlements last noted. Owing to the location between the French and English, and the uncompromising geographic factors of soil and climate, the vast forested area, comprising over two thirds of all New England, increased but little in population throughout the century; and by 1700 New Hampshire had but six thousand souls, or less than that of the Bay Colony at the time that Wheelwright left it. The northern provinces, unhappily for themselves, were destined to play the part of buffer states between the French, with their savage allies, and the more safely located colonies in the south.

In tracing the foundations of the latter, we find the influence of Massachusetts far more potent, for they were being laid mainly by men who found scant room in that increasingly reactionary commonwealth. The founders of Rhode Island and Connecticut alike condemned the religious and political policy that the Bay Colony had now definitely made its own; and the more democratic and tolerant forms of government, which developed in the two former, "represented more nearly the principles which underlie the government of the United States to-day than any other of the British colonies."[2] The seeds of both political and religious liberty had been brought

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 349, 365; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 259.]

[2. C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period (New York, 1912), p. 28.]

Page 184

to America by the Massachusetts colonists; but the leaders, partly from a dread of losing their own influence, and partly from a genuine fear of noxious weeds, had done their best to interfere with their growth. The founders of Rhode Island and Connecticut, with less desire for personal power, and greater courage as to tares in the wheat, watered and nursed the seeds of liberty, which bore an abundant harvest. In Rhode Island, indeed, the weeds flourished riotously; but the faith of the founders was justified in both colonies, and their commonwealths marched with Holland at the head of those struggling for human freedom, while England and Massachusetts yet lagged and nagged.

The lands around Narrangansett Bay had been known for some time to be attractive as sites for colonizing, when Williams made his way thither after his banishment, in the winter of 1636. In spite of frequent trading with the Indians, however, only one settler had as yet located there permanently. William Blackstone, who had left England because he disliked the tyranny of the Lord-bishops, and who had, as we have seen, an equal aversion for that of the Lord-brethren, had quietly left his plantation in Massachusetts, and betaken himself to the wilderness north of Providence.[1] A lover at once of peace, of books, and of freedom, there is something singularly attractive in his little known personality. He called his new home "Study Hill"; and there in his orchard grew the first "yellow sweetings" ever known, which, later, when he occasionally preached to the newcomers, he handed around, "to encourage his younger hearers."

Thus, while, owing to the great services Williams was to render the colony, he is entitled to the name of its founder, he was not its first settler, nor was the little band that planted Providence with him in 1636 the only one to lay the foundations of the future commonwealth. Nor had he himself, apparently, any intention of doing so. "It pleased the most

[1. Lechford, Plain Dealing, p. 97. Cf. Adams, Three Episodes, vol. I, p. 328 n. Some time before Blackstone settled, Winter, Trelawney’s agent in Maine, thought of settling about Narragansett, and claimed that he had Warwick’s permission to plant a colony. Trelawney Papers, vol. I, p. 20.]

Page 185

high," he wrote, many years afterward, "to direct my steps into this Bay, by the loving private advice of that very honored soul Mr. John Winthrop the Grandfather, who, though he was carried with the stream for my banishment, yet he personally and tenderly loved me to his last breath. It is not true, that I was imployed by any, made covenant with any, was supplied by any, or desired any to come with me into these parts."[1] The others came, however, and the leading idea of the settlement was reiterated four years later in the proposals for a form of government, when the "arbitrators" noted that they agreed "as formerly hath bin the liberties of the town, so still, to hould forth liberty of conscience."[2]

In 1638, another group, of eighteen persons, including William Coddington, settled the town of Portsmouth; and in the following year, that little hamlet planted an offshoot at Newport, while a few individuals from both Providence and Portsmouth organized Warwick.[3] These four towns were absolutely independent of each other, and of any superior government of any sort, except England. Although Newport and Portsmouth partially combined in 1640, it was not until seven years later, when the charter of 1644 finally went into effect, that there was any colony of Rhode Island, or a united government over the several settlements.[4] It thus offered a great contrast to the Massachusetts colony, in which the towns were the creatures of the General Court; and it was this extreme looseness of organization, combined with religious toleration, which formed the leading characteristic of the Rhode Island political experiment. Although the settlers at Providence had signed an agreement to unite for purposes of government, there were no town officers, and practically no organization, until four years later. The agreement was merely to yield obedience to such orders "as shall be made for public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of the present

[1. Williams’s answer to the charges of Harris, in Rider, Rhode Island Tracts, No. 14 (Providence, 1888), p. 53. But Williams’s statements are often contradictory.]

[2. R. I. Records (Providence, 1856), vol. I, pp. 14, 28.]

[3. Ibid., pp. 45 ff., 87, 129.]

[4. Ibid., pp. 100 ff. Cf. Foster, Town Government in Rhode Island, pp. 10 ff.]

Page 186

inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things." These masters of families met once a fortnight, discussed their common affairs, and decided them by majority vote.[1] The government was thus almost a pure democracy, only women, minors, and bachelors being excluded. Even when the towns were united, and a more elaborate governmental machinery was set up, the extremely democratic trend of thought was evidenced in the remarkable provision that the General Assembly could not initiate legislation, but that laws were first to be considered in each town, and that only after all four had considered them, were they to be sent to be acted upon by the Assembly, all legislative initiative thus being retained in the hands of the people.[2]

With such looseness of organization, and extreme individuality of thought and action, another characteristic was bound to be lack of harmony, with frequent bickerings and disputes. These were soon in evidence, and it was found also that a pure democracy and absence of restraint were not compatible with orderly living. As the commonwealth grew, the difficulties were met in the spirit of men who, believing in liberty and toleration, were yet forced to make concessions to human nature; while, on the other hand, the Massachusetts authorities met their difficulties in the spirit of men who honestly disbelieved in democracy and toleration, and whose concessions were forced by a growing demand for things in which they had no faith. In Connecticut, also, the leaders were, happily, on the side of that part of the people, important in all the colonies, who were struggling upward toward a larger liberty, and who, even in Massachusetts, were slowly bringing it into being.

Knowledge of the existence of the Connecticut River, and of the advantages of its rich bottoms as sites both for trading and for planting, seems to have been first acquired by the English through information given to the Pilgrims by the

[1. R. I. Records, vol. I, p. 14; Letter from Williams to Winthrop; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. VI, pp. 186 f.]

[2. Foster, Town Government, p. 19.]

Page 187

Dutch. Friendly intercourse between Plymouth and New Amsterdam had been opened by the latter as early as 1626; and the Dutch not only taught the Pilgrims the value of wampum in the Indian trade, but, seeing how barren a site they had chosen for their settlement, told them of the Connecticut, and "wished them to make use of it." However, "their hands being full otherwise, they let it pass" until, having been solicited by Indians who had been driven from their homes there by invading Pequots from the West, they dispatched several exploring and trading expeditions in 1633.[1] The same Indians had also earlier requested the Massachusetts people to make a settlement, but they had declined.[2] The Pilgrims, having made up their minds to erect a permanent trading post on the river, also asked the Bay people to join them; and when the latter refused, alleging their poverty, they even offered to provide the capital for both if Massachusetts would assume half the responsibility. This, likewise, being refused, the Pilgrims went on with the project alone, after telling the Bay authorities that they could have no cause to complain, as they had now had ample opportunity to join; to which they assented.[3] This was in the middle of July, and although the Massachusetts leaders had done their best to discourage the Pilgrims, by telling them the place was "not fit for plantation," and by picking other flaws in the project, nevertheless, four weeks later, they had themselves dispatched a bark to Connecticut to trade, and John Oldham, going overland, had also spied out the resources of the place, and trafficked with the Indians there.[4] In view of all their actions, then and subsequently, it would seem difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Massachusetts authorities,

[1. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 222, 233, 311.]

[2. In 1631. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 62.]

[3. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 312 f.; J. Winthrop (History, vol. I, p. 125) gives as reasons for refusal that the place was not fit for habitation on account of the Indians, the bar across the river, and the closing of navigation in winter. Even his admiring editor, Savage, was "constrained to remark" that these "look to me more like pretexts, than real motives," and that the Pilgrims’ subsequent complaints of their treatment by Massachusetts "appear very natural, if not unanswerable" (p. 125 n.).]

[4. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 132. Doyle (Puritan Colonies, vol. I, p. 151), by a slip, wrongly dates the negotiations in 1634, making it appear that they followed the Massachusetts expeditions instead of preceding them.]

Page 188

having been offered by their neighbors a chance to share in a profitable opportunity, deliberately tried, by fraud and force, not only to obtain all the profits for themselves, but to prevent the very people whose enterprise it was from retaining any share in it. Not possessing the interpretative advantages of a New England ancestry, one is, perhaps, limited to remarking that the business dealings of ultra-religious people are often peculiar.

The Dutch, meanwhile, seem to have repented of their former hospitality, probably because of the warnings that the English had early sent them of their encroachment upon English territory, and of the rapid growth of the eastern colonies, which might threaten even their occupation of the Hudson.[1] Hearing of the projected settlement by Plymouth, a party was sent from New Amsterdam in January to buy land from the Indians,[2] and some of the Dutch were already ensconced in a little fort, on the present site of Hartford, when the English arrived in the late summer. In spite of Dutch protests, however, the Pilgrims, in their "great new barke," sailed past the fort, and, passing north of the bounds of the Hollanders’ Indian purchase, settled at what is now Windsor, buying the soil from its savage occupants. A later attempt by the Dutch to dislodge them by threatened violence proved unavailing.[3]

[1. Bradford, Letter-book, pp. 51 ff. The Dutch territorial claims were noted (supra Chap. III). The English grant of this territory preceded Dutch discovery by three years, but the question was one of time between discovery and settlement, and of extension of territory from points discovered. There was no established international law by which this particular dispute could be settled. Individual opinion may differ as to the ethics of the case. To me, with no desire to make out a case either way, the legal points seem to be impossible of dogmatic answer.]

[2. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 313; Acts of the United Colonies, vol. II, p. 65 (Plymouth Records, x). These Acts, vols. I and II, form vols. IX and X of the Plymouth Records, and are hereafter cited as Acts United Colonies. J. R. Brodhead, History State of New York, vol. I, p. 204, gives the month as June; but the Records say January. Various Dutch documents, all of a later period, state that a settlement was contemplated, and possession taken, in 1623. Cf. Documentary History State of New York, vol. III, p. 50; N. Y. Colonial Docts., vols. I, pp. 286, 360, and II, p. 133. There is, however, no contemporary documentary evidence of it; and it is certain, at least, that there was no settlement actually made until that designed to forestall the English in 1633.]

[3. Bradford, Plymouth, pp, 313 f. The Dutch side of the case is given in Acts United Colonies., ubi supra.]

Page 189

Meanwhile, on the same day on which Winthrop recorded in his Journal the results of the Massachusetts expedition to Connecticut, he also entered the arrival of the ship Griffin, eight weeks from England, with John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and John Haynes among her passengers. Cotton, as we have seen, remained in Boston, but the others immediately went on to Newtown, where a body of Hooker’s English congregation had preceded him by a year.[1] Of this transplanted body, Hooker and Stone now became pastor and teacher. It is not likely that Hooker, with the political views he possessed, could have found the Massachusetts atmosphere congenial; and a year later, he and his congregation applied to the General Court for permission to remove to Connecticut. The reasons they gave were the lack of land for expansion at Newtown, the fear that otherwise Connecticut might fall into the hands of other English or the Dutch, and, lastly, "the strong bent of their spirits to remove thither." The Court, however, refused the petition, alleging many reasons, which, in the main, came to the fear that such a defection would weaken the colony, and tend to draw away future emigrants from it.[2] In the debates on the subject, a majority of the deputies were in favor of allowing Hooker and his party to leave if they wished, while a majority of the magistrates opposed it. This raised the question whether the magistrates could veto a vote of the more numerous body of deputies, which was the more popular and democratic of the two. As the result of a sermon preached by Cotton the contest, which had promised to become bitter, was postponed, and the Newtown settlers were granted additional land in their present neighborhood.[3] The incident is interesting, not only as marking the beginning of the political struggle between the two elements in the legislature, which we shall have occasion to follow later, but also as an early example of that fear which the East has always had of the growth of its western frontier and its desire to check it. Owing to continued pressure, however, the legislature with

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 104.]

[2. Ibid., vol. I, p. 167.]

[3. Ibid., vol. I, p. 168; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 129.]

Page 190

drew its opposition the following year, and in 1635 permission was granted the towns of Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester to move anywhere, provided that they would continue subordinate to the Massachusetts government--a condition which that government had no legal right to impose. A few months later it went further, indeed, and passed a law that no one could leave the colony without permission of a majority of the magistrates.[1] As, under a previous law, no one could settle in Massachusetts without the consent of the half-dozen or more men mainly in control, so now no one, however uncongenial his surroundings or urgent his need, could leave without permission from the same little group.

Parties from Dorchester at once availed themselves of the Court’s consent to leave, and by July were arriving daily on the Connecticut. On that river no spot would suit them except that already bought and occupied by the Pilgrims, from which the Massachusetts people now tried to oust them. In reply to a protest from Governor Bradford, the Dorchester men had the effrontery to answer that, as to the land settled by the Pilgrims, God "in a faire way of providence tendered it to us." Upon this bit of fraud and hypocritical cant, Bradford caustically commented that they should "abuse not Gods providence in such allegations." Massachusetts, however, was strong, and the Plymouth people were weak; and although the latter did finally wring a reluctant acknowledgment that the right was on their side, nevertheless they were forced to yield fifteen sixteenths of their land, and were allowed only one sixteenth and a little money, in an enterprise which was wholly theirs, in which they had courteously tendered Massachusetts a half interest, and which was located entirely outside any territory to which that colony had any legal title. There was good reason for Bradford’s note in his diary, that the controversy was ended, "but the unkindness not so soone forgotten."

The winter was very severe, and many of the new settlers were obliged to return to Boston; but in the spring, Hooker, with most of his congregation, emigrated to the river, traveling

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 146, 148, 167.]

Page 191

overland, with their herds of cattle, the precursors of an endless western stream. These newcomers, Bradford carefully notes, as we also are glad to do, treated the Pilgrims more fairly. By the end of 1636, there may have been eight hundred people in Connecticut, settled mainly at Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, while the little settlement of Springfield, within the legal limits of Massachusetts, had also been planted.[1]

These settlements, at first, were merely plantations and not organized towns. They apparently had no officers, except constables,--who, Massachusetts tried to require, should be sworn by one of her own magistrates,--and the body politic consisted of the inhabitants, who met together, as we have found them doing in Rhode Island, to decide upon their common interests. The territory, however, in which they were located, was also claimed at the time by a group of patentees, including Lords Say, Brook, and others, who had been granted the lands by the Earl of Warwick in 1632, but who had made no attempt to enter upon them until three years later, when they sent John Winthrop, Jr., to act as governor, and took other action looking toward settlement. Winthrop, who had come to Boston in the ship with young Vane, was there at the time that the emigration from Massachusetts took place, and Hooker and the other emigrants consulted him concerning such rights as his principals might claim. As a result, an agreement, to last one year, was entered into between Winthrop, acting for Say, Brook, and their associates, and Hooker and his, which provided that a court of eight magistrates should be created, with power to summon a General Court, until further advices could be received from England. This agreement, for purposes of record, was ratified in the Massachusetts General Court, but was not a "commission" from that colony, as often stated.[2]

[1. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 341 f.: J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 216, 223; B. Trumbull, History of Connecticut (New Haven, 1818), vol. I, p. 68.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 170 f. Cf. W. DeL. Love, The Colonial History of Hartford (Hartford, 1914), pp. 70 ff. The earliest records of the three Connecticut towns are lost, but by using those of Springfield, Mr. Love has thrown much light upon the disputed points as to the origin of the Connecticut "constitution."]

Page 192

On May 31, 1638, when a new form of government was under consideration, Hooker preached his famous sermon, in which he laid down the doctrines that "the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by Gods own allowance," and that "they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them," because "the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people."[1] Neither to Hooker, nor to his fellow colonists of Connecticut, was this last principle new, either in theory or in practice. He was arguing, not for a democratic government, which they already possessed, but for a fixed code of laws to rule the magistrates in their actions. The following year, the constitution of the new government was adopted by the residents of the plantations of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor.[2] That constitution provided for a General Court, in which each of the three original plantations should be represented by four deputies, and which should pave the authority to incorporate towns. It was only subsequent to the creation of this general government by the inhabitants of the commonwealth, that the towns, as political entities, came into being. Freemen were merely required to pe passed upon by the General Court, no religious qualification being attached to the franchise. It is noteworthy that the governor was not allowed to serve for two successive terms, And that no reference was made to any external authority, rot even to that of the king.

While the descent of the "Fundamental Orders" of Conrecticut can be traced in every step from the earliest charters of the trading companies, the transition was now complete. From such as we saw Tudor monarchs granting to merchants in the fifteenth century, past all those which we have noted as milestones by the way, the progress had been as steady as it

[1. The text of the sermon has not survived. The notes, by same hearer, which are a I we have, are in G. L. Walker, Thomas Hooker (New York, 1891), p. 125, and elsewhere.]

[2. Public Records of Colony of Connecticut (Hartford, 1850), vol. I, pp. 20 ff. (Hereafter cited as Conn. Col. Records.)

Page 193

was unperceived, from the privileges possessed by a few expatriated English traders and their clerks, dwelling among foreigners, to the self- governed commonwealth of a people in a land which they had made their own. While the charters, however, served as the framework of their government, the foundation of their political philosophy was found in the church covenant, which the Separatists had used in Europe for forty years before the Mayflower sailed; and the constitution of Connecticut was thus equally descended from religious theory and from the practice of trade.

Although there was little in the Fundamental Orders, as settled in 1639, which cannot be found in previous custom or legislation in Massachusetts or Plymouth, nevertheless, only those elements which were of a democratic tendency were put into the new constitution, and there was distinctly a more democratic attitude on the part of the leaders and people than in the Bay Colony. Such provisions as that making the governor ineligible for immediate reelection, and the franchise independent of religious qualification, probably show a reaction from the rule of Massachusetts.

The contrasted influences which the new colony and its parent were bringing to bear upon the development of American thought at this time may best be illustrated by the theories of their several leaders. Perhaps the two most influential men in New England in 1640, and the two who most deserved the positions assigned them, were John Winthrop, the leader in Massachusetts, and Thomas Hooker, the leader in Connecticut. Winthrop’s opinion of democracy as "the worst of all forms of government," we have already noted, and may contrast with Hooker’s belief that the complete control of their rulers "belongs unto the people by Gods own allowance." In the important question whether judges should render arbitrary decisions wholly according to their personal views, or be limited by a fundamental body of laws, the two leaders were equally far apart. "Whatsoever sentence the magistrate gives," wrote Winthrop, who opposed any such limitation, "the judgment is the Lord’s, though he do it not by any

Page 194

rule prescribed by civil authority."[1] "That in the matter which is referred to the judge," asserted Hooker, on the other hand, "the sentence should lie in his breast, or be left to his discretion, according to which he should go, I am afraid it is a course which wants both safety and warrant. I must confess, I ever looked at it as a way which leads directly to tyranny, and so to confusion, and must plainly profess, if it was in my liberty, I should choose neither to live nor leave my posterity under such a government."[2]

The aristocratic and oligarchical tendencies at work in Massachusetts there received enormous additional strength from the fact that the clergy were almost a unit in their support of reactionary ideas. This was a defect which was, to a certain extent, inherent in the Calvinistic ministry; and the failure of the contemporary Puritan colony in the Caribbean was, in considerable measure, due to the outrageous claims of the Puritan ministers there upon the civil power.[3] The influence of the Puritan clergyman upon his more devout followers could be equaled only by that of the Catholics, and it is difficult for the modern layman to realize its full extent. It came about in part from the Puritan doctrine already noted, that nothing in life was untinged with a religious aspect. If no one dreams now of any necessity of consulting the clergy, as such, with reference to the fashion in clothes or the economic and social policy of the nation, it is partly because those matters are no longer considered as religious, but purely temporal. The opinion of a clergyman, therefore, is of no more value than that of the well-informed layman, with his broader practical experience of life, if, indeed, of as much. One does, however, have recourse to a specialist, and a banker’s opinion is sought on finance, and a doctor’s on health. As, according to Puritan theory, there was no act which was not of a religious or moral character, the clergyman was, so say, a specialist on

[1. Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. I, p. 17.

[2. Letter to Winthrop, Ibid., p. 11.]

[3. Newton, Puritan Colonisation, pp. 160 ff. Cf. similar conditions in Bermuda, where the ministers went to such lengths as to "make a man quite out of love with the government of the clergy." Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 323.]

Page 195

one aspect of everything, and from that standpoint his advice must be sought in every detail of life, and his influence was correspondingly great.

The individuals who emigrated to Rhode Island and Connecticut were mainly those who were dissatisfied with the restrictions imposed by Massachusetts. That process of secondary selection had now begun which was to continue to winnow out from every new community the most adventurous and independent, and to plant them again to the westward in still newer settlements, where, in turn, the process would again be repeated. In the colonies now forming, therefore, there was a freer opportunity for the seeds of liberty to grow than in the old Bay. The new commonwealths had, in addition, the great advantage that in them, at least at their beginning, the influence of the clergy was wholly upon the side of freedom; and in estimating the results of priestly power in New England, it is only just to recall that Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker were clergymen, as well as the narrower divines of Boston and her sister towns.

The westward movement of New England was to continue until her sons and her institutions were to be found in a continuous chain of communities from Portland on the Atlantic to Portland on the Pacific, and the influence of New England thought upon the life of the nation cannot be overestimated. In so far as the origins of that thought can be traced back to any definite leaders, or individual colonies, it was evidently the ideas of Williams and Hooker, rather than those of Winthrop, with all his high qualities, which were to dominate the American people, and to be absorbed into their very being.

At the same time that these new communities and influences were coming into existence, there was the possibility of another experiment being tried, in colonial matters, of a radically different sort.

The group of Puritan leaders, Warwick, Say, Brook, and others, whom we noted earlier as being interested in promoting Puritan colonization both in New England and in the Carribean, had continued to be actively engaged in colonizing the

Page 196

latter; while by their acquisition of the Hilton patent in New Hampshire, and the grant in Connecticut, they were still in possession of large tracts in the former. Since the emigration of Winthrop in 1630, affairs in England had not improved politically, though they had distinctly done so economically. About 1634 or 1635, nearly all of the group of leaders with whom we are particularly concerned suffered in one way and another from the influence of the Court party. Warwick, who had been forced out of the Council for New England three years earlier, was attacked under the forest laws, and also made to divide his lord-lieutenancy of Essex. Pym was sued by the Attorney-General, and Barrington, Say, and Brook suffered in their estates.[1] In July, Humphrey, the Earl of Lincoln’s brother-in-law, arrived in Massachusetts with "propositions from some persons of great quality and estate," who were thinking of emigrating if satisfactory arrangements could be made.[2] In October, the younger Winthrop went to England, returning a year later with his commission as governor of a projected colony at the mouth of the Connecticut.[3] At the end of November, 1635, twenty men arrived there, and under the direction of Lyon Gardiner, a fort was erected at Saybrook. Saltonstall, one of the patentees, had also, a few months earlier, attempted to plant some men higher up the river; but they had been driven out by the same lawless Dorchester party that had fallen on the Pilgrims, causing Saltonstall a loss of L1000.[4]

Among the proposals made by Say, Brook, and the others to Massachusetts, as conditions of their emigrating to New England, it was stipulated that there should be two ranks in the commonwealth--gentlemen and freeholders; that the power of making and repealing laws should belong to both ranks, but that the governor should always be chosen from the higher. To these and-the other proposals the authorities in

[1. Newton, Puritan Colonization, p. 175.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 160.]

[3. The commission and agreement are in Trumbull, Connecticut, vol. II pp. 497 ff. The Warwick patent is given in vol. I, pp. 495 f. Cf. C. J. Hoadly, The Warwick Patent (Acorn Club, Hartford, 1902), pp. 7 ff.]

[4. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series IV, vol. VI, pp. 579 f.]

Page 197

the colony wholly agreed, but with the proviso that the church-membership qualification for the franchise must be retained.[1] The theocracy of Massachusetts, under the guidance of its ministers, had drifted far from the current of English life. Englishmen have always had a thoroughly healthy hatred of ecclesiastical rule in civil affairs, and, whatever country squires, noblemen’s factors, or tradesmen and mechanics, might be willing to do, it could not be possible that such men as Warwick, Say, Brook, and Pym could place their political rights and careers wholly in the hands of the narrow-minded ministers and congregations of the little Massachusetts town churches. On that account, and because of the turn of affairs in England, the project was given up, and when, three years later, Warwick, Brook, Say, and Darley announced definitely that they were going to emigrate, it was not to New England but to their island in the Caribbean. Although they were not permitted to do so, the fact marks the distinct breach which had now taken place between the rulers of Massachusetts and the leaders of the Puritan party in England. The mistaken policy of the colony, which earlier had brought alarmed protests from her less powerful friends at home, had now definitely alienated her most influential ones. The selfish attitude toward her neighbors, already shown upon the Penobscot, the Piscataqua, and the Connecticut, and which, unfortunately, was to become more aggressive and unscrupulous, also lost her the friendship of her sister colonies. The result was that, when the real struggle came with the English government, a generation later, Massachusetts, although, thanks to her geographical position and aggressive acquisitiveness, she had become the most powerful of the New England group, found herself with hardly a friend in the old country or the new.

The work of extending the frontier was not a mere matter of discussions or of peaceful penetration into an untenanted wilderness. Owing to the great plague, which had so nearly annihilated the natives in the regions where the settlers had first planted, the Indian danger had never been a serious one,

[1. The proposals and Cotton’s answer are in Hutchinson, History, vol. I, pp. 433 ff.]

Page 198

and no such massacre as almost wiped out the Virginia colony need have been apprehended. The savage, however, had been an important element in the life of the settlements. As friend or spying enemy, he was as constantly in and out of the little villages as he is of the pages of the early records. Although there was, unluckily, little that the white man could teach him that was of any service, he, on the contrary, taught the colonists many a useful lesson. He showed them how and where to plant, trapped their game and gathered in their stock of furs, guided them through the almost trackless forests, and, in a multitude of ways, gave them knowledge of the land which they had entered and of the products it might yield. In the background, nevertheless, always lurked the danger that the natives might grow tired of being slowly dispossessed, that they might decide to make an end of a situation which the more far-sighted among them could not fail to see would inevitably more and more narrow the free range for their savage life. In the fifteen years since Bradford and his little band had landed in an almost deserted spot, the white population had grown alarmingly. Moreover, their increasing numbers and desire for expansion would naturally lead the settlers to adopt a more aggressive attitude toward the natives in any dispute occurring between them. There was more and more probability of trouble, arising from individual outrage on the part of an unscrupulous or ruffianly white, or of some aggrieved or drunken Indian, of which the organized power of the former would but too likely take full advantage. The Old Testament texts on dealing with those outside the pale of God’s chosen people offered little comfort to the Indian, should the Puritan divines ever start on the war-path.

At the beginning of 1633 word was received in Boston that a certain Captain Stone had been murdered by the Pequots, or Indians allied to them, after having landed at the mouth of the Connecticut. The exact truth of what occurred is not known. Stone, who was a trader from Virginia, was a drunken, dissolute, and thoroughly worthless character, and very likely provoked the natives by some act. On the other hand,

Page 199

their stories of what happened did not agree, and were not above suspicion.[1] The Massachusetts authorities reported the matter to Virginia, and no further action was taken until the following year, when an embassy from the Pequots arrived at Boston. That tribe had become embroiled in a quarrel with the Narragansetts on the east, and the Dutch on the west, and were, therefore, anxious to smooth their relations with the English. They agreed to deliver up the two men who had killed Stone, to surrender their rights to Connecticut, and to pay damages in furs and wampum. A few days later a number of Narragansetts appeared, who had come to waylay the Pequots on their way home; but the Massachusetts authorities purchased the safety of the savages and promise of peace between the two tribes, by offering the Narragansetts some of the Pequot wampum. Although the Bay Colony had thus bought the Pequot title to Connecticut with the blood of the slain Virginian, the natives had no idea, apparently, of observing the terms of the bargain, nor did the English take further steps in the matter until two years later, when the younger Winthrop, then at Saybrook, wa