Page 206

As a result of the complete crushing of the power of the Pequots their whole country was opened to peaceful settlement, and the extension of the frontier in that direction became rapid. Within about two years from the signing of the treaty with the savages, the foundations were laid of Guilford, New Haven, Milford, Stratford, Fairfield, Norwalk, and Stamford along the Sound, and of Southampton and Southold on the eastern end of Long Island, thus making a continuous line of English settlement up to the Dutch boundary, if not, indeed, within it.[1]

For its size, New Haven was undoubtedly the wealthiest colony in New England, its assessed valuation, the year after it was planted, having been L33,000, or the present equivalent of, perhaps, $700,000.[2] Its founders, under the leadership of the Reverend John Davenport, a Nonconformist London clergyman, and Theophilus Eaton, a schoolmate of his, had arrived in the early summer of 1637, just in time to take part in the Antinomian controversy and the taxes for the Pequot war. Mr. Davenport was requested to contribute to the former, and Mr. Eaton to the latter.[3] Their company was a distinguished one, including several other wealthy London merchants besides Eaton; five ministers; four school-teachers, among whom was the first president of Harvard; the father of Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale University; and Michael Wigglesworth, the "lurid morning star" of New England

[1. The Southampton settlers at first tried to plant well within it, but were forced out by the Dutch. Cf. N. Y. Col. Docts., vols. II, pp. 145 ff., and XIV, pp. 30 ff.; Adams, History of Southampton, pp. 48 ff.]

[2. Estimated from entry in Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven (Hartford, 1857), p. 25. Hereafter cited as New Haven Records.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 271 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 210, 225.]

Page 207

verse.[1] Both Davenport and Eaton had been, for some years, members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and that company’s colony made great efforts to retain the new body of settlers within its own bounds. While the leaders took under consideration the various offers made to them, they either found them unsatisfactory, or had already determined to establish an independent colony of their own.[2] After Eaton had examined the country around Quinnipiack, it was decided to plant there, and seven men were left to guard the site during the winter, the whole company following in the spring. Not only were the resources of the colonists unusually ample, but their preparations seem to have been exceptionally complete, and the little town soon contained the most stately dwellings in all New England. Some idea of their scale may be gained from the reputed presence in Davenport’s of thirteen fireplaces, and of nineteen in Eaton’s.[3] The intention, apparently, was not only to found a Puritan state, but to have it become the chief mercantile centre of the New World, which accounts for their having built, as one of their Massachusetts critics wrote, "as if trade and merchandize had been as inseparably annexed to them as the shadow is to the body, in the shining of the sun."[4] One disaster followed another in their business ventures, however, and the dreams of the merchantfounders were never realized.

Davenport and most of his company were not only Puritans, but of the strictest sect, and the Bible Commonwealth which they proceeded to form was of the most extreme type. Like the Connecticut and Rhode Island people, they were without a charter, and were mere squatters upon the soil; but in June, 1639, a meeting was held of the "free planters," to discuss a frame of government to replace a previously signed plantation covenant, now lost. We have no knowledge of what constituted a "free planter," but the term undoubtedly excluded

[1. T. C. H. Levermore, Republic of New Haven (J. H. U. S., 1886), p. 8; E. E. Atwater, History of Colony of New Haven (New Haven, 1881), pp. 112 ff.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 283; letter from Davenport and Eaton to Massachusetts, Bulletin New York Public Library, 1899, pp. 393 f.]

[3. Atwater, New Haven, pp. 393 f.]

[4. Hubbard, History of New England, p. 334.]

Page 208

a large number of males in the settlement. The proceedings took the form of queries put by Mr. Davenport, upon which those present voted by raising hands. As a result of unanimous votes at this meeting, the fundamental agreement provided that the franchise should be restricted to church members, and that the free planters should choose twelve men, to whom should be intrusted the sole right of selecting from among the rest of the colonists those who should become church members and freemen, and who were to have the power of appointing magistrates from among themselves, of making and repealing laws, and, in fact, of performing all public duties.[1] This was legalizing the most extreme claims of the Massachusetts oligarchy. Only one voice, apparently that of Eaton, was raised to protest "that free planters ought not to give this power out of their hands"; but he was, of course, overruled. Four months later, at the October court, it was further voted that "the worde of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in ordering the affayres of government in this plantation."[2] As had been the case in Connecticut, no mention had been made of allegiance to England; but in this additional step, the new colony swept away all obligation to observe the common and statute laws of the mother-country. The conflicting texts of the Bible, as arbitrarily chosen and interpreted by the small self-perpetuating group of rulers, became the only laws that might safeguard, or hazard, the rights of dwellers in New Haven and the affiliated church-towns which soon sprang up. The reactionary thought of the framers of these fundamental orders, however, was to be without appreciable influence upon the growth of colonial political theory as then developing; for New Haven was to have only a quarter of a century of independent but unimportant life before being absorbed by Connecticut, while a more and more democratic tendency was manifesting itself in all the colonies, even in Massachusetts.

The effects of the frontier life, and of the distance separating England from her colonies, were already beginning to

[1. New Haven Records, vol. I, pp. 11 ff.]

[2. Ibid., p. 21.]

Page 209

show themselves strongly. The semi-independent communities which had been established in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven were entirely without legal authority; and the two latter, in their "constitutions," had utterly ignored the existence of any power outside of themselves. The situation was not wholly overlooked in England, but as the crisis in public affairs there was rapidly drawing near, the authorities were helpless to interfere. A new demand for the return of the Massachusetts charter, when flatly refused by that colony in 1638,[1] could not be followed by any show of force; and during the next twenty-two years--which were those of the Civil War, the fall of the Stuart monarchy, and the reign of Cromwell--the New England colonies pursued their way almost wholly without reference to the power of England.

The influence of the frontier was being felt in their domestic concerns as well. Although the most aggressively radical of the inhabitants of Massachusetts had, perhaps, gone to the other colonies, there to establish themselves in greater freedom, the struggle of the citizens continued, nevertheless, against the arbitrary power of their government. From the first, the body of magistrates had acted in a judicial, as well as an executive, capacity. The only rule by which they were guided is indicated by a resolution in the General Court of 1636, which provided that they should "determine all causes according to the lawes nowe established, and where there is noe law, then as neere the lawe of God as they can."[2] As English law, in many cases, was not justly applicable, and as, in others, it was largely neglected, this really meant the comparatively few laws already enacted in the colony, and the same arbitrary selection and interpretation of Old Testament texts that we have just noted in New Haven. As the magistrates acted as both attorneys and judges, and as no appeals were permitted from their decisions, no accused person had any protection

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 324; Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. X, pp. 217, 227 f.; Hutchinson, History, vol. I, pp. 84 ff., 442 ff.; Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. I, pp. 432 f.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 175.]

Page 210

against them. Anyone, therefore, who might be obnoxious to the ruling powers on account of his views, could not hope for justice; and the so- called trials of Mrs. Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and other notable offenders, were, in reality, not trials at all, but "relentless inquisitions used by the government for the purpose of crushing opposition."[1] That condition was not, indeed, peculiar to Massachusetts, and was probably just as true of contemporary England. It was Hooker’s glory in Connecticut to have raised his voice, as the leader of that colony, to plead for a legal restraint upon this arbitrary exercise of the judicial power of government, and for the creation of a body of fundamental law. In 1639, a committee was appointed in that colony for the purpose of drawing up such a code. The same had been formally demanded in Massachusetts even earlier, but there the wishes of the people had been steadily opposed by their leaders.

While the Massachusetts trials of the type just noted were exceptional, and in general, when passions were not aroused, the ordinary course of justice was fairly equitable, nevertheless, the entire absence of any restraint upon the unbridled will of the magistrates was a source of apprehension to the more serious thinking and liberty-loving residents of Massachusetts, outside the ring of authority. Not only was any opposition to the course pursued by the government liable to result in banishment, with the complete uprooting of a man’s life, and perhaps the financial ruin of himself and his family, but in trivial matters all the inhabitants, and more particularly, of course, the four fifths who were not church members, were liable to constant interference by the authorities. Such a law, for example, as that declaring that whosoever should "spend his time idlely or unproffitably" should suffer such penalty "as the court shall thinke meete to inflicte"2 was typical, both in its utter lack of definition of the nature of the crime, and in its failure to specify the penalty to be incurred by the criminal.

[1. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, p, 189.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 109.]

Page 211

In spite of the demands of the people in Massachusetts, however, it was not until 1640 that a draft of a fundamental law seems to have really been considered. The clergy and most of the magistrates had been opposed to any limitation of arbitrary authority, and had fought the requests with what their modern defender has called the weapon of "a goodnatured procrastination," but which may have worn another aspect to some at the time.[1] Finally, in 1641, an Abstract of Laws, or Body of Liberties, was passed, which marked a distinct step forward, though by no means assuring full protection. One draft, which was not, however, accepted, was based entirely upon Bible texts, of which, characteristically, but two were drawn from the New Testament and forty-six from the Old.[2] Additional safeguards were required, and four years later, the whole discussion as to specific penalties for specific offenses was again reopened. The clergy and Winthrop still opposed any limitation upon judicial authority, the Governor, indeed, going so far as to say that God had made specific penalties only in certain cases, and as "judges are Gods upon earth," their power should not be more limited than his--which might be denominated strong doctrine.[3] In spite of all opposition, however, a new code, based in part upon the Body of Liberties, was finally secured and printed in 1648, twenty years after the first demand, and ten after Hooker’s famous sermon at Hartford.[4]

The antagonism to the power of the magistrates was manifested also by new episodes in the struggle between them and the more democratic deputies, which we noted as beginning at the time of the Connecticut emigration. A dispute over the ownership of a sow, between a poor widow and a rich man

[1. Palfrey, History, vol. II, p. 22. For earlier efforts to secure its passage, cf. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 174, 222, 279, 292; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 191, 240.]

[2. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series I, vol. V, pp. 171 ff. The Body as passed is in Ibid., Series III, vol. VIII, pp. 216 ff.]

[3. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 92 ff.; "Arbitrary Government Described," in R. C. Winthrop, J. Winthrop, vol. II, p. 448. Cf. also J. Winthrop, History, vols. I, pp. 388 ff., and II, pp. 67 ff.]

[4. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 61, 168, 262.]

Page 212

notorious for his unjust business dealings, was finally brought to the General Court for decision. The evidence was by no means convincing, and the Court was divided, with a majority of the magistrates in favor of a verdict for the rich Keaynes, and a majority of the deputies in favor of the poor widow. The point was thus raised again as to whether the small number of magistrates, by a negative vote, could block the will of the much larger body of deputies.[1] Winthrop wrote a treatise on the question, appealing to certain English precedents and the Old Testament, and stated that, if the magistrates were not allowed to veto the action of the deputies, the colony would be a democracy and "there was no such government in Israel."[2] So implacably did the grim shades of Moses and Aaron block the paths of Boston Common. The magistrates, in view of the strong opposition that developed, offered to leave the matter to the clergy, and to give way if the decision were adverse. They knew, of course, that it would not be so, and Winthrop records that it was "their only care to gain time," until the people could be brought to the heel of their clerical leaders as usual. As part of the plan, the members of the Court were asked to take advice before the next meeting; and it is interesting as showing the normal danger for the ordinary citizen in discussing public matters, that a special act should be thought necessary making it "no offence for any, either publicly or privately, to declare their opinion in the case, so it were modestly."[3] The following year, a compromise was effected, which, however, was distinctly in favor of the magistrates; and thereafter the deputies and the magistrates sat as two separate houses, each with a negative vote on the other.[4]

Another incident in the struggle, which soon occurred, involved both the question of the power of the local government over the colonists, and the relations of the colony to the home government in England. In 1644, it was suggested to the General Court that the condition of the large number of unrepresented

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vols. I, pp. 377 ff., and II, pp. 83 ff., 142 ff.]

[2. The essay is given in R. C. Winthrop, J. Winthrop, vol. II, pp. 427 ff.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 143.]

[4. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 58 f.]

Page 213

inhabitants be improved by increasing the civil privileges that a citizen might possess without being a church member, such privileges then being limited, apparently, to a small share in local town business.[1] Nothing, however, was done, and two years later, a petition signed by a Dr. Robert Child, Samuel Maverick, and five others was presented, reciting that there were many thousands in the colony who were debarred from all participation in government, although they paid taxes and were subject to military and other duties. Child was a newcomer, "a gentleman and a scholar," and a graduate of the University of Padua. Maverick was the richest of the "old planters," and the only freeman who was not a church member--a privilege which he owed to the circumstances connected with the first planting of the colony, as already related. Thomas Fowle, another of the signers, was a merchant; while yet another, David Yale, was a man of property, and both a stepson of Theophilus Eaton of New Haven and a brother-in-law of Governor Hopkins of Connecticut. At this very time, he was acting as attorney for the Earl of Warwick.[2] The motives of the signers may not have been wholly disinterested, but the effort to make out that they were persons of no importance in the colony has been overdone.[3]

The petitioners desired that "members of the church of England, not scandalous in their lives and conversations," be admitted to the churches, and that "civil liberty and freedom be forthwith granted to all truly English, equall to the rest of their countrymen, as in all plantations is accustomed to be done, and as all freeborne enjoy in our native country."[4] Other reforms were demanded, and although some of the charges were overdrawn, nevertheless, the main point was not fairly met in the lengthy reply prepared by Winthrop, Dudley,

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 193, 349.]

[2. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 327.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 320 n., 358. Cf. Winslow, "New England’s Salamander," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. II, pp. 117 ff.]

[4. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, pp. 216 ff.; New England’s Jonas cast up in London, Force Tracts, vol. IV, pp. 8 ff.]

Page 214

and others of the court.[1] That point was that in an English colony, and upon English soil, the great majority of the inhabitants were debarred from a share in the government because of beliefs which would not have so disfranchised them in the home country. No amount of legal casuistry expended upon the charter, and no amount of sophistry employed in explaining the relations between the colony and England, could alter that fact, nor the additional one that Massachusetts was a colony and not an independent nation. As the request of the petitioners was for such liberties only as they would have possessed at home, and not for general religious toleration, an appeal to England was natural, and was set on foot as soon as the reply of the magistrates was received. Winthrop, however, declared that he would not tolerate such an appeal, and the petitioners were heavily fined by the court, and two of them imprisoned.[2] Child, and some of the others insisting upon going to England, they were seized just before the ship sailed, their baggage and houses were searched, and they themselves imprisoned. As some of the magistrates had not agreed to the earlier proceedings, they were not consulted in the present one, which was distinctly of a Star-Chamber sort. Among the papers of Dand, another signer, was found one suggesting the appointment of a royal governor, for which he also was promptly put in jail. Vassall and Fowle finally reached England; but the political situation there by 1647 had become such as to preclude any consideration of colonial matters.

[1. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, pp. 223 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 348 ff. Prof. G. L. Kittredge has recently written an elaborate account of Dr. Child--"Doctor Robert Child the Remonstrant," reprinted from Publications, Col. Soc., Mass., 1919. It is a strong brief in defense of the action taken by the Massachusetts authorities, and contains the fullest and most accurate account of the Petition and the subsequent trials yet written. Prof. Kittredge is a firm supporter of the old theory that Child was plotting to overthrow the government in the interests of Presbyterianism. While this may be so, it seems not to cover the cases of the other remonstrants. The main interest of the affair for our present work, however, lies in the evidence afforded of discontent with the Puritan regime, and in that connection, Prof. Kittredge, after showing the extreme diversity of views held by the signers on most matters, speaks of "their discontent with the administration which was the sole binding element common to all the Remonstrants" (p. 29). He also states (p. 52), that "there was more or less public sentiment in favor of the defendants."]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 196, 199, 205, 241.]

Page 215

The tide of popular rights in the colonies was rising, however, and "all the troubles of New England" were "not at the Massachusetts," as Winslow wrote to Winthrop, nor were high-handed proceedings wholly limited to that commonwealth. In Plymouth, a written proposal, favored by many of the inhabitants and of the deputies, was presented to the General Court, "to allow and maintaine full and free tollerance of religion to all men that would preserve the civill peace and submit unto government." "You would have admired [wondered] to have seen," wrote Winslow, "how sweet this carrion relished to the pallate of most of the deputies." "Notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted," the Governor would not permit any vote to be taken; and the effort thus to extend to others the same freedom that the leading founders of the colony had availed themselves of for twelve years in Holland was summarily suppressed.[1]

During the decade we have been considering, the struggle of Englishmen at home for the preservation of their liberties against the incompetent and reactionary rule of the second Stuart, had left that ruler but little leisure to consider the American colonies. Except for occasional and ineffectual efforts to retain some control over them by the home government, they had been left free to work out their own theories, untrammeled by any higher power. By 1640, the scattered settlements in Maine, the towns in New Hampshire, the Bay Colony, Plymouth, the four separate towns in what is now Rhode Island, Saybrook, the affiliated towns of New Haven, and the river settlements of Connecticut, were pursuing their several ways virtually as independent states, preëmpting lands, erecting governments, treating with the natives, with each other, and with the French and Dutch, as if they were sovereign powers. Nor was there anything to prevent innumerable other petty states, each with its few square miles of territory, and ruling according to its own ideas, from arising over all New England, save as restrained by the jealousy of those already in existence. If this tendency had not been restrained,

[1. Letter of Winslow to Winthrop, in Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, p. 174.]

Page 216

New England might have come in time to be a checker-board of tiny republics, engaged in constant disputes over boundaries and other relations at home, and, should the shield of England cease to protect them, the prey of foreign foes abroad.

There were three possible methods of preventing this development of a Puritan Balkans. England might assert her rights legitimately, and endeavor to bring some sort of uniformity and order out of what might otherwise become an impossible situation; one or another of the colonies might, by force of greater strength, subdue its weaker neighbors, and thus create one or several greater states; or, finally, a confederation might be formed of all of them. Under the circumstances, the legal and logical method would have been some sort of imperial control by the mother- country, but that was out of the question unless the English government was strong and united enough to enforce her will, and wise and experienced enough to make it acceptable to the colonists. For the present, that solution was impossible. Of the other two, the first would naturally appeal to a strong and aggressive colony like Massachusetts, while a confederacy would be favored by her weaker but no less independent neighbors. Both the latter plans were tried, and the intercolonial relations of the next quarter of a century were largely the result of these two conflicting methods of unifying New England being pursued simultaneously.

Owing to the death of Mason, and the failure of Gorges’s plans for Maine, the settlements north of Massachusetts were without a settled government, and the inhabitants do not seem to have had the ability to create a stable one for themselves, which was so marked a characteristic of those in Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven. We have already seen how Massachusetts, by an unwarrantable construction of her charter, had begun to lay claim to all the land of New Hampshire and Maine lying eastward of the most northerly source of the Merrimack, although the whole course of the Crown and Council for New England at the time of the grant showed that such a claim was absolutely untenable.

Page 217

Nor, in the beginning, had the Massachusetts leaders dreamed of making it, [1] and it was, in fact, as Professor Osgood says, "more clearly an usurpation than was any later act of the crown which affected New England."[2] The decision, otherwise favorable to Massachusetts, of the English Chief Justices in 1677, declaring the interpretation claimed to be utterly without warrant, and reassigning the lands to the heirs of the two original patentees, seems entirely just.[3]

Early in 1641, a dispute between church factions in Dover, headed by two contending clergymen, gave Massachusetts a chance to intervene. Captain Underhill, who had been banished from that colony at the time of the Hutchinson controversy, was then on the Piscataqua, and, perhaps with an idea of once more ingratiating himself with the home authorities, sent a petition to the Massachusetts Court, asking aid for himself and his party. Massachusetts at once dispatched a magistrate and two clergymen, and the Underhill party were victorious, the clergyman heading the opposing faction having opportunely turned out to be a personally immoral character.[4] The Dover patentees, Warwick, Say, and the others, who had purchased the patent in the interests of Massachusetts some years before, now passed the grant, with slight reservations, to that colony, which at once annexed the town.[5] A temporary government was installed, and, two years later, it was agreed that the inhabitants should have the privilege of freemen to manage their local affairs, and to elect deputies, even though they were not church members.[6] Thus a right not yielded to four fifths of her own citizens was granted to

[1. Cf. letter of Emanuel Downing, already cited, asking for an extension of the charter limits northward, in 1633. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76, p. 74.]

[2. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, p. 377.]

[3. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, pp. 723 ff. Palfrey’s statement that the charter, "literally interpreted," endowed Massachusetts with the lands claimed is hardly borne out by the facts. History, vol. I, p. 587. Cf., however, Barrage, Colonial Maine, p. 364.]

[4. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 33 f.]

[5. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 332; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 50. Apparently Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth) was also annexed. Cf. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. I, p. 192.]

[6. Ibid., pp. 183 ff., 168.]

Page 218

those in her new possessions, and imperial ambition seems to have won the first victory over Israelitish polity. This provision not only disproved her former claim that civil order could not be maintained without forced religious conformity, but, combined with the further provision that the settlers in the newly annexed territory should be subject only to local, and not to general, taxation, it tended to show that she herself did not believe the claims she made as to the interpretation of the charter.[1] If she really considered that the territory now being seized under pretext of ownership was as indubitably hers as that south of the Merrimack, why did she thus deprive herself of the right of religious and fiscal control?

She next claimed and absorbed the town of Exeter, and her new claims, extending to Maine, there came into conflict with those of Gorges and the Pilgrims. The latter, indeed, had lately heard her state that she was entitled to a part of the town of Plymouth itself, and she did encroach upon the Plymouth territory.[2] A further enlargement of her power to the south, and one obviously outside her jurisdiction, was next made within the present limits of Rhode Island.

Samuel Gorton, from his heretical notions in religion, according to the Gospel of New England, and his somewhat explosive efforts to defend persons he thought oppressed by the colonial authorities, had led a troubled and troubling life in Massachusetts, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Providence. Indeed, in his wandering course through the Puritan heavens, he seems to have been as fatally followed by trouble as a comet by its luminous tail. As he punctuated his career by denominating the Massachusetts magistrates "a generation of vipers," the Governor of Plymouth, "Satan," and the justice of Portsmouth, "a just-ass," he can hardly be said to have had an ingratiating way with the authorities, although no crime could be laid at his door. The people of that day had an insatiable passion for ploughing in the theological field, which was always proving as full of unexploded shells as any

[1. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. I, pp. 182, 184.]

[2. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 367 ff.]

Page 219

on the modern battle-front of France, and Gorton seems to have had a fatal facility for turning these up. He had already been blown out of three colonies, when, after some experience with him, the men of Providence decided that he or they must leave. Finally banished, he made an Indian purchase, and settled some miles to the south.

This, however, was not far enough for his former neighbors, who, in 1641, asked assistance from Massachusetts in ridding them of Gorton. That colony refused to consider the request, unless Providence would place herself under her jurisdiction.[1] The matter became complicated by a dispute between Miantanomo and two other sachems, arising out of Gorton’s purchase, and the sachems also applied to Massachusetts. Both they and the Providence men were received under her jurisdiction, and the next move was to send a force of forty armed men to take Gorton and his party into custody.[2] Even those opposed to him in Providence suggested arbitration; but the Massachusetts clergy advised the magistrates that this was not an "honorable" course, as the Gorton party "were no state, but a few fugitives living without law or government," and "their blasphemous and reviling writings" could be "purged away only by repentence and public satisfaction."[3] The case was, therefore, prejudged without a hearing, and the more summary method was taken of trying to set fire to the log fort in which Gorton and his company had taken refuge.

It must be presumed that the ministers of Christ considered this as a more "honorable" course than arbitration with "a few fugitives" from their vindictiveness. The attack was made on a Sabbath morning, and even the heretical Gorton was naturally surprised.[4] In receiving the Indians under their jurisdiction, Massachusetts had required that the savages should not profane that day by doing any work upon it, and that they should not kill any man but upon just cause and

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 69 ff.; Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, vol. II, pp. 191 f.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 144 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 26 f., 40.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 168 f.]

[4. Gorton, Simplicities Defence; Force Tracts, vol. IV, pp. 58 ff.]

Page 220

authority.[1] The attempt, immediately following, on the part of that colony’s expedition, to burn their fellow white men alive during church hours, because they were too impatient to wait, may have struck their new savage subjects as a little incongruous. Nine of the Gortonists were captured, taken to Boston, and imprisoned. The clergy called for blood, and gave their written opinion that all nine of the prisoners "deserved death by the law of God." In this unjust and inhuman decision, all the magistrates but three concurred, and it was prevented from passing only by the people’s representatives among the deputies. Finally, the prisoners were condemned to be distributed among seven towns, there to be "kept to worke for their living, and wear irons upon one leg, and not to depart the limits of the town, nor by word or writing maintain any of their blasphemous or wicked errors upon pain of death."[2] The sentence was executed and the prisoners were kept in irons until the following year; when the growing popular disapproval of the clergy’s actions caused their victims to be suddenly released and banished.[3]

The Massachusetts authorities had thus utilized the request of one faction in a settlement wholly outside their own limits, to extend their jurisdiction. They had attempted, upon a charge of heresy directed against persons living in another colony, to murder the entire body of the opposing faction, after refusing the arbitration proposed by that faction’s own enemies. When the decree was finally softened to banishment, this was held to include exclusion of the prisoners from their former homes, now considered as part of the Bay Colony. They had seized and sold the cattle and goods of the unfortunate people, to pay the expenses of their so-called trial and illegal detention. In all this, there had not been even the fallacious plea, as in the case of Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson, that the civil peace of Massachusetts had been endangered.

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 147.]

[2. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 176 f.; Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 51 ff.; Gorton, Simplicities Defence, pp. 66 ff.]

[3. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 188 f.; Gorton, Simplicities Defence, p. 83.]

Page 221

The outcome showed, however, that the cruel and immoral power of the clergy and magistrates was coming to be opposed by a growing body of healthy and liberal opinion. The bloody sentence demanded by them had been refused by the people’s leaders, and public opinion had finally secured the reversal, within a year, of the milder one that had been executed. The confusion of Gorton’s own religious views, and his incoherence in expressing them, could in themselves have won him little popular support.[1] What the people were groping after was the right of the individual to think and act for himself, so long as the state was not endangered, as had been clearly expressed in the Plymouth petition. The road was to be long and bloodstained, but there was now no doubt that the people of Massachusetts intended to travel it, and that their feet were at last set in the right direction.

By 1640, although new arrivals had not been coming in so rapidly of late, the population of the New England settlements had grown to about eighteen thousand. Moreover, they had, on the whole, been prosperous. We have already seen how even Plymouth, with its slender resources, its poor soil, and its ill-chosen site, had yet achieved more than economic independence, and we have noted the financial resources of New Haven. The capital and numbers of Massachusetts were, of course, far larger than those of either of the others, and it was estimated that that colony had spent, in its first dozen years, nearly L200,000, or in our day, perhaps, five million dollars, in making its settlement.[2] Possessed of the unrestricted resources of a continent, and having suffered no losses from Indians or foreign foe, New England was apparently in a sound economic condition, when suddenly the crash came. "Merchants would sell no wares but for ready money," Winthrop wrote in 1640; "men could not pay their debts though they had enough, prices of lands and cattle fell soon to the one

[1. Most of Gorton’s writings are as incoherent as they are vituperative. Age, however, seemed to clear his mind and style, and his letter to Morton, in 1669, defending himself from the charges in the latter’s book, was clear and dignified. It is given in Hutchinson, History, vol. I, pp. 467 ff.]

[2. Jeremiah Dummer, A Defence of the New England Charters (London, 1721), p. 9.]

Page 222

half, yea to a third, and after one-fourth part."[1] The Massachusetts General Court was soon called upon to pass special legislation to assist debtors, as the suffering became general.

In spite of their enormous natural resources, the colonies, like all new countries, lacked capital in the form of money. They borrowed heavily from England and imported from her still more heavily in food, clothes, and manufactured goods, without as yet having developed sufficient export trade to enable them to meet their foreign bills.[2] The inherent unsoundness of the position had been concealed, temporarily, by the effects of the continued influx of new settlers on a large scale, which had created a demand for all the colonists’ surplus in the shape of everything required by a planter during his first years. Prices of both goods and lands advanced steadily, as a fire is blown into flame by a forced draught. Suddenly the tide of immigration stopped entirely; the exceptional demand, which had come to be regarded as normal, ceased; English merchants naturally required payment on overdue accounts; and all the familiar phenomena of an economic crisis became evident.

It is usually stated that emigration from England stopped because the prospect there had become so much brighter for the Puritans that there was no longer reason for leaving home.[3] This, however, by no means meets all the requirements of the case. We have already seen that the great majority of the people who had been coming to New England had not joined the churches there, although in the main of Puritan stock. Nor, at the time in question, did the Puritan leaders in England, in spite of altered conditions, by any means relax their efforts to plant Puritan colonies. In fact, such men as Say and Pym were more enthusiastic than ever in their plans. These efforts, however, were no longer directed toward New England, but in quite other directions.[4] By her religious persecutions

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 21; cf. also pp. 8, 29, 37.]

[2. A very complete list of imports could be made up from the bills of lading of the ships arriving in 1640, given in Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, p, 268.]

[3. This was Winthrop’s version: History, vol. II, p. 37.]

[4. Newton, Puritan Colonisation, pp. 287 ff.]

Page 223

and peculiar church-membership requirement for the franchise, Massachusetts had, little by little, antagonized all her old friends at home, from the Earl of Warwick down, who had been constantly calling the attention of her leaders to the fact that no more people, not even Puritans, would go to her if she did not discontinue her career of persecution. By that course she had already virtually excluded from her portion of the English Empire all Englishmen not acceptable to her clergy and a dozen of her leading laymen. This closed her ports to almost the entire stream of English emigration, which continued large, although somewhat changed in character, while the labor of her former friends was now expended in diverting what remained of the Puritan element itself in that stream away from, instead of toward, Massachusetts.

In this connection, Winthrop wrote bitterly to Lord Say, complaining of his efforts to induce settlers to go out from England to the Caribbean instead of to New England. To this, Say made a long reply, rebuking the authorities in the colony for their misuse of Scripture texts to further their own views, and ended with the admonition that "for what you say of the church not compatable with another frame of government, I pray putt away that error . . . the church beinge wholly spirritual, can subsist with any forme of outward government."[1]

Not only, however, did immigration to Massachusetts stop, but there threatened to be an emigration from that colony to the English leaders’ Caribbean settlement. John Humphrey, one of the most influential of the original planters, who had not prospered in the Bay, was made Governor of the West Indian Puritan settlements, and, in 1641, sailed thither with several hundred Massachusetts people.[2] Many others removed to other colonies, and Winthrop relates, with evident relish, the misfortunes which befell them as God’s judgment

[1. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series V, vol. I, p. 302; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 399 f.]

[2. Manchester Papers, p. 424, cited by Newton, Puritan Colonisation, p. 292; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 15. There was also some movement the other way: 1200 persons are said to have gone from Barbadoes to New England from 1643 to 1647. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1661-68, p. 529.]

Page 224

upon them for leaving.[1] That the influences checking the growth of Massachusetts were not wholly due to general conditions is indicated also by the fact that, while her population, in the next two decades, was considerably less than doubled, that of New Hampshire was nearly tripled, Rhode Island increased five-fold, and Connecticut four-fold.[2] The actual numbers are even more striking than the percentages. Massachusetts, starting the period with fourteen thousand, added less than ten thousand, while the other three, beginning with but three thousand, added nearly nine thousand. Connecticut’s growth, moreover, was made in spite of the fact that apparently Massachusetts made even greater efforts to divert emigrants from that colony than were being made in England to divert them from herself; so that Hooker, in complaining of the methods employed by her citizens, was forced to write to Winthrop, that "such impudent forgery is scant found in hell."[3]

In the absence of any attempt by England to unify these scattered settlements, the only tendency toward unification, as against the centrifugal forces at work, had been the process of annexation and attempted domination by Massachusetts. The growth of the frontier, however, with the resultant Pequot war, had fostered a sense of unity in the face of a common danger among those exposed to it. As Professor Turner points out, in speaking of the colonies in general, particularism was always strongest in those not so exposed, and the Indian frontier "stretched along the western border like a cord of union."[4] The extension, northward and westward, had also brought the English into immediate and hostile contact with both French and Dutch. Apparently as a result of the somewhat inefficient joint action in the Pequot war, a confederation between the colonies was informally discussed at Boston in 1637, and a draft prepared by Massachusetts the following

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 103 ff., 113, 156.]

[2. Century of Population, p. 9.]

[3. Letter in Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. I, pp. 4 ff.]

[4. Turner, Significance of the Frontier, p. 92.]

Page 225

year.[1] Connecticut objected to one of the terms, the ground of her dislike, Winthrop wrote, being her "shyness of coming under our government."[2] The smaller colony, however, had, within a few years, so far got over her shyness as to be ready to "entertain a firm combination for a defensive and offensive war, and all other mutual offices of love," as the records somewhat quaintly word it.[3] The decrease in immigration, and the business panic throughout the colonies, may have helped to bring then to a more realizing sense of their isolation from England, and of the need of mutual dependence, which was greatly increased by a threatened renewal of Indian hostilities in 1642. The latter is the sole reason given by Bradford for the remarkable effort now made to combine the colonies into a confederation, in regard to which all our contemporary authorities are singularly silent.[4]

The settlements, however, were well fitted to be thus joined in closer bonds, in spite of minor differences. The country in which they were planted formed a geographical unit, the natural boundaries of which were emphasized by the human elements of hostile French, Indians, and Dutch. The economic and social life, based upon the geographical, religious, and political factors, was, in the main, remarkably homogeneous. Their attitude toward English policy, and their trade-relations with the rest of the empire, were very similar. There was not only no such clashing of interests as divided them from the staple colonies of the West Indies, but not even the minor differences that would have made impossible such a combination between Pennsylvania and Virginia. United action in the Indian war, and the religious Synod of the same year, had been the first steps taken in the formation of the political machinery for consideration of joint affairs. The way was smoothly paved, therefore, for the establishment of a genuine union[.]

There was, however, one stumbling-block, which was the

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 283 f.]

[2. Ibid., p. 342; Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. X, p. 9.]

[3. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, p. 31.]

[4. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 416 f.]

Page 226

intense local feeling and exaggerated sense of importance of the separate settlements. The leaders in each of them must often have dreamed of what the future might have in store for the little colonies in which they had cast their lots, but it is impossible to say what those dreams may have been. They could not have included the actual development of the present British Empire or of the United States, the creation of each of which has been largely dependent upon economic forces and scientific inventions beyond the vision of any seventeenth-century mind. Whatever their dreams may have been, in practice the leaders adopted an opportunist policy, which, in general, may be described as the endeavor to keep from being entangled with England without losing the value of her protection. That any of them could seriously have thought that their individual colonies, as such, could ever become powerful nations, is unlikely. Added, therefore, to their policy regarding England was probably an opportunist policy regarding their neighbors. The extent and nature of the New England country had, by this time, become fairly well known, and the rate of growth could be more or less accurately forecast. With extending frontiers and but ill-defined territorial limits, disputes, already occurring, could also be foreseen as bound to become more frequent and more serious.

All of the colonies had shown the tendency toward expansion. Plymouth had started her trading posts on the rivers of Maine and Connecticut; settlements multiplied in Rhode Island; New Haven, from the meadows of Quinnipiack, was soon planting on Long Island, and nearing the Dutch boundaries on the Sound; while Connecticut, through her purchase of Saybrook from the disappointed patentees in 1644,[1] and her planting of towns westward even of New Haven’s expansion, was rapidly stretching east and west. Massachusetts had long adopted the definite policy of extending her claims and control as fast and as far as possible. In the race for land and power, her numbers, resources, and central position, all gave her immense advantages, to which was added the no mean

[1. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, pp. 266 ff.]

Page 227

one of an unscrupulous disregard for the prior rights of others. On the one hand, then, the weaker colonies might hope to gain from union some protection, not only from the Indian and the foreigner, but from the growing aggressiveness of Massachusetts. On the other, that colony might anticipate dominating the councils of the Confederacy, while free scope was still left for her own aggrandizement.

Although they were far inferior to her as military powers, the acknowledgment of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven as of equal political weight in the Union served largely to protect them against the Bay Colony; but there was no such protection for Maine or for the towns in Rhode Island, which were refused admission to the league. The inhabitants of the former were not received, Winthrop wrote, because the people of Agamenticus had recently "made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person, and very contentious, for their minister."[1] These somewhat surprising reasons for refusing representation to the few inhabitants of a territory equal in size to all the rest of New England combined may be dismissed as not the true ones. We are more likely to find the latter in that new interpretation of her charter by which Massachusetts laid claim to all this vast tract, which she formally annexed ten years later. To have allowed its inhabitants representation in the proposed confederacy would have been to acknowledge their right to be considered an independent colony, and so would have placed awkward moral obstacles in the way of the manifest destiny of God’s elect. In regard to the Rhode Island plantations, in spite of Winthrop’s affection for Williams, the Bay Colony had always exhibited a vindictive spite, the extreme virulence of which it is somewhat difficult to understand, even after making all allowances for the known facts. In 1640, under the administration of Dudley, the Massachusetts General Court had received a letter from the magistrates of Connecticut, New Haven, and Aquidneck, "wherein they declared their dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 121.]

Page 228

out," and their desire of "seeking to gain them by justice and kindness," although carefully watching them for any hostile intent. While the Massachusetts Court voted its assent, it also insisted that the answer should be addressed only to the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven, formally excluding any communication with those of Aquidneck "as men not to bee capitulated withall by us, either for themselves or the people of the iland where they inhabit."[1] Silly bigotry, as well as intercolonial discourtesy, could hardly go further than in this childish refusal even to discuss a humanitarian project of importance and of common interest. The real motive, however, may have been, as in the case of Maine, to leave the way open to annexation by refusing to acknowledge any separate government; and when, a year after the confederacy was formed, the Rhode Island towns applied for admission, the answer, undoubtedly dictated by Massachusetts, was an "utter refusall" unless they would "absolutely and without reservacon submitt" to either Plymouth or herself.[2]

At the time of the formation of the Confederacy, Massachusetts had just driven the entering wedge at Providence and absorbed New Hampshire, and was engaged in encroaching upon the northern bounds of Plymouth and Connecticut. The three smaller colonies, therefore, had everything to gain by having their existence recognized by being admitted as political equals in the league; while they were further protected by the third clause in the Articles, which guaranteed the independence of each of them, and even forbade the voluntary union of any colony with another without consent of the Confederation. On the other hand, Massachusetts, with the rich territories to the north and south--which she was already absorbing--left open to her, had also much to gain by having a body that could give some sort of legal approval to her illegal poachings; and her own power, in extreme circumstances, could be counted upon to nullify any adverse vote. These were probably the reasons which induced her to enter a Confederation in

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 24; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 305.]

[2. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 23.]

Page 229

which her two commissioners had only an equal voting power with those of each of the three smaller colonies in the governing board of eight.

Although the Articles of Confederation agreed that the four colonies should thereafter be known as the United Colonies of New England, the machinery set up was not that of a genuine federal state, but simply that of "a firme and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor."[1] Even the very moderate powers granted the board of commissioners, which constituted the only organ of the league, tended to decline, and it can hardly be considered as other than a joint committee to consider matters of mutual interest and to proffer advice to the general courts of the several colonies. According to the Articles, however, the commissioners, when they met at the regular annual meetings, were to be possessed of full authority from their home courts to determine all military matters, it being provided that no colony should engage in either offensive or defensive war without the consent of at least six of the eight commissioners. This was the majority required to decide all other questions, and in case six could not agree, the matter in dispute was to be referred back to the general courts.

The Confederation, which no more recognized the existence of England than the "constitutions" of Connecticut and New Haven had done, possessed no means of operating directly upon the people as individuals, or of enforcing its will upon a recalcitrant colony. It was a useful piece of machinery, but not a new government, and it failed to call forth affection or loyalty from its members. It is impossible to say what it might have developed into had the colonies remained permanently as independent of England as they were until the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. The various results of that event did away, in time, with the possibility, or the necessity, of such an organization. But, during the Union’s existence, it performed valuable service, not merely in accustoming

[1. The articles have been many times reprinted. The citations above are from Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 3 ff.]

Page 230

the colonies to act together, but also in concentrating their resources in military emergencies, and, negatively, in saving the smaller members from the encroachments of Massachusetts. As was inevitable, that colony largely dominated its councils, and the attitude that the commissioners adopted upon questions of civil and religious polity was, in the main, that of Massachusetts rather than that of Plymouth or Connecticut. In all that concerned the liberty of the individual, the weight of their authority was, as a rule, thrown upon the side of reaction, rather than of progress. The small extent of their real powers, however, is indicated by the fact that the history of New England under the Confederacy continued to be the history of Massachusetts and her neighbors, and not that of the "United Colonies of New England."

Page 231

FROM the formation of the Confederacy in 1643, until the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the colonies were practically free to make what use they could of an entire liberty of action, unhampered by any serious attempt on the part of the British government to interfere with them. The whole situation was favorable. The settlements had passed the experimental stage, and were well rooted. If the decline in immigration entailed certain disadvantages, on the other hand it relieved the existing order from the necessity of absorbing new elements. The more powerful colonies had signed articles of union, and no Indian war of any magnitude was to interrupt their peaceful development. The economic position slowly improved, and reached a sounder basis than before. Yet the pages which record the story of those seventeen years are among the least attractive in New England history. There is hardly an incident to stir the imagination or to fire a noble pride. Freed from all restraint, the best use that the colonies could make of their liberty was to quarrel among themselves over boundaries, annexations, and taxes; to contend, without honor, with the Dutch and French; to carry on inglorious controversies with the savages; and to indulge in the only example of bloody religious persecution that the United States has known. Looking at the history of those years, however, from the standpoint of the development of personal liberty, there were two movements that redeem its otherwise disheartening aspects. One was the bringing of order out of chaos in Rhode Island, where the settlers proved that democracy and a broad toleration could, after all, be combined with political stability. The other was the success of the people of Massachusetts in securing the fundamental body

Page 232

of laws already noted, and the unmistakable rejection of their theocratical leaders, lay and clerical.

On the return of Acadia to France by the treaty of St. Germain, one Claude de Razilly had been commissioned to rule the territory; and after his death, three years later, d’Aulnay and de la Tour, both of whom had possessed grants and trading posts within his jurisdiction, aspired to replace him in the supreme command.[1] After various encounters, in one of which d’Aulnay captured de la Tour, the latter, in 1643, arrived at Boston with one hundred and forty men, and asked for help against his rival. Winthrop, who was then governor, called together a few of the magistrates and deputies, who assured de la Tour that, although they could not grant him aid officially, he might have permission to hire ships and engage volunteers for his expedition.[2] "The rumour of these things soon spreading," however, they encountered so much adverse criticism that Winthrop consulted with additional members of the Court, and, of course, the clergy. The question was long debated, whether it was lawful for Christians to aid idolaters, and, somewhat more pertinently, whether it was expedient in this particular case, The debate is given at length by Winthrop, and affords an instructive example of Puritan casuistry. A matter of so much importance should, of course, have been referred to the General Court, and, also, under the terms of the new Confederacy, to the Commissioners of that body. The Boston merchants, however, seem to have brought powerful influences to bear, and the little job in dollar- diplomacy was rushed through, regardless of obligations or consequences. The question was not referred to the Court, Winthrop wrote, because if it "had been assembled, we knew they would not have given him aid without consent of the commissioners of the other colonies, and for a bare permission, we might do it without the court."[3] Saltonstall and others afterwards wrote,

[1. Cf. Parkman, The old Régime in Canada (Boston, 1911), pp. 1 ff.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 128, 130.]

[3. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 135, 138. The agreement is in Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. I, pp. 499 ff. Robert Keaynes, of the "sow case," was apparently interested in the venture.]

Page 233

strongly condemning the action, urging that the real rights of the case had not been known, that wars involving the subjects of another nation ought not to be undertaken without the knowledge of the home government; and brushed away the sophistical distinctions made by the Boston clique between private permission by the colony’s rulers and their official sanction. "D’Aulnay, nor France," they wrote, "are not so feeble in their intellectuals as to deeme it no act of state."[1]

The expedition, however, had been allowed to sail, carrying a somewhat fatuous letter from Winthrop to d’Aulnay, stating that the Massachusetts volunteers were, if possible, to effect a reconciliation, that they possessed no commission, and that, if they did anything "against the rules of justice and good-neighborhood," they should be held accountable.[2] In spite of this, some of the men attacked d’Aulnay’s plantation, burned his mill, killed his cattle, and plundered one of his vessels of beaver skins. The latter were brought back to Boston and sold at auction, and the proceeds were divided among the soldiers.[3] The enterprise had been neither successful, glorious, nor profitable; and when de la Tour again applied for help, in July of the following year, Endicott, who had opposed the original participation of the colony, had succeeded Winthrop as governor. The only result of de la Tour’s suit, therefore, was a proclamation of neutrality "till the next general court," and the dispatch of a letter to d’Aulnay offering satisfaction, and likewise requesting it for his own earlier depredations on the Penobscot.[4] In September, the Commissioners of the United Colonies met and passed a resolution forbidding, in future, such acts of volunteers as Massachusetts had connived at.[5]

The struggle between the two rivals had not been limited to fighting in America, but had been carried on at the French Court, where each had striven for recognition. In this d’Aulnay had been successful, and the ignominious end of the whole

[1. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, p, 131.

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 151.

3 Paper signed by Saltonstall and Hathorne. Ibid., vol. II, Appendix O, pp. 464 ff.]

[4. Ibid., p. 220.]

[5. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 22.]

Page 234

matter for the English was that Massachusetts finally had to abandon her claims against him, and to make him a gift as an acknowledgment of her own wrong in joining de la Tour’s expedition.[1] The affair, however, helped to strengthen the deputies against the body of ministers and magistrates, whose unwarranted action, as well as lack of statesmanship and even of common prudence, had been mainly instrumental in bringing unnecessary humiliation upon the colony without the consent of its representatives.

Nor did the Bay and other colonies derive much greater honor from their diplomacy with the Dutch, one of the main results of which, indeed, was to develop such a conflict of interests among themselves as threatened to break up the Confederation. As we have already seen, it was an open question whether England or Holland had the better title to the central portion at least, of the territory claimed by the latter. As to the title of the individual settlers, English and Dutch, on the Connecticut and the Delaware, it would appear that the Dutch, who were there by the authority of their home government, were in a much better legal position than the English, who were mere squatters in the wilderness, without any patent or charter rights. The New Englanders, however, outnumbered their neighbors twenty to one, and the land in dispute was good. The advice of the British Ambassador in the States General was, therefore, acted upon with the consciousness of overwhelming force. "Crowd on," he wrote, "crowding the Dutch out of those places they have, but without hostility or any act of violence."[2] Steadily the advancing flood of the English overwhelmed Dutch claims. It poured westward on Long Island and along the Sound, up the Connecticut,--encircling the little fort of Good Hope,--up the Housatonic, and stopped only a few miles from New Amsterdam itself. A trading company formed in New Haven, but including capitalists from Massachusetts, tried also to

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 318, 334 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. III, pp. 44, 74 ff.; Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 56 ff.]

[2. Letter from Sir William Boswell to Dr. Wright, 1642; Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, pp. 565 f.]

Page 235

plant on the Delaware in despite of both Dutch and Swedes.[1] The situation was bound to result in constant causes for disputes, grave or trifling. At the bottom of all was the desire of the English for the land, and the sense of injury and inferior numbers on the part of the Dutch. Governor Kieft touched the point, when, in reply to a letter of complaint from the United Colonies, concerning some alleged misdemeanors by the garrison of the little Dutch post at Good Hope, he wrote that "when we heare the inhabitants of Hartford complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esops wolfe complayninge of the lambe."[2]

The several attempts to plant forcibly on the Delaware were successfully repulsed by the two nations already in possession there; and in 1646, Kieft sent a protest to the New Haven magistrates against their settling on the Housatonic. To this they replied that they could not imagine what river the Dutch could mean, and unfairly offered to leave any dispute to the English Parliament as arbitrators; while at the New Haven court, "it was fully and satisfyeingly voted" that they would make good their titles "at the trading house, and leave the issue of things to God."[3]

Contentions, new and old, dragged along, embittering relations, and filling a very large portion of the United Colonies’ time and records. Finally, after Stuyvesant had been governor for three years, he went to Hartford to try to arrange an amicable settlement of all outstanding grievances between the colonies of the two nations. The negotiations were carried on in writing; and both then and in subsequent correspondence, it must be confessed that, in dignity and courtesy, the Dutch Governor shone by comparison with the English Commissioners. His tone throughout was statesmanlike and dignified,

[1. For relations with the latter, cf. A. Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware (Univ. of Pa., 1911), vols. I, pp. 380 ff., and II, p. 755; New Haven Records, vol I, pp. 56 f., 106 f.]

[2. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 77.]

[3. New Haven Records, vol. I, pp. 265 f. The Dutch spoke of the river as the Mauritius. In their reply, the New Haven people stated that they had built on the Paugusset "within our owne lymitts."]

Page 236

while that of the Puritans was frequently low, and, at times, insulting.

It was finally decided that each side should appoint two deputies to negotiate a treaty, and Stuyvesant nominated, as his, two Englishmen, then resident in the Dutch colony.[1] As a result of their deliberations, a treaty was signed, in September, 1650, which should have set the disputed matters finally at rest.[2] Most of the smaller questions were passed over, while that of the Delaware was referred to Europe. The explanation of the Dutch Governor as to a ship seized at New Haven, some years earlier, was accepted as final,[3] and a definite boundary line agreed upon, which gave to the English all territory, except Fort Good Hope, lying eastward of Oyster Bay on Long Island and of a line beginning four miles west of Greenwich on the mainland, and running north, provided it came nowhere within ten miles of the Hudson. Greenwich, also, was to remain to the Dutch, who were otherwise not to build within six miles of the new boundary, which was to be referred to England and Holland for ratification. Holland subsequently accepted it,[4] but England never acted, as to have done so would have been to recognize Dutch claims as valid, which she persistently refused to do.

Nor, from their later correspondence, can we conclude that all the English colonies themselves intended to accept the settlement as final, or that they really desired a friendly end to the controversies. Within a year after the signing of the treaty, New Haven attempted further encroachments upon the Delaware, and, when stopped by Stuyvesant, complained to the United Colonies, whose Commissioners wrote a bullying letter to the Dutch Governor.[5] The following year, in Europe, Cromwell forced war upon Holland, and New Haven and Connecticut felt that their chance had come to make an end of their neighbor, whose chief offense seems to have been the prior possession of lands the English coveted. They claimed,

[1. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 186 f.]

[2. Ibid., pp. 188 ff.]

[3. New Haven Records, vol. I, pp. 333, 508; Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 112, 146.]

[4. N. Y. Col. Docts., vol. II, pp. 258 f.]

[5. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 214 f.; New Haven[’]s complaint is on pp. 210 ff.]

Page 237

indeed, to have information that Stuyvesant was stirring up the Indians to attack them, and were, or pretended to be, in mortal terror; but there is no substantial evidence that any such plot existed, and when questioned about it, the sachems Mixim, Pesacus, and Ninigret denied it in the most positive terms.[1]

Three commissioners, whom the United Colonies sent to New Amsterdam to investigate the rumor, were met with fairness by Stuyvesant, who placed no obstacle in their way for taking any testimony they wished, asking only, which was reasonable enough, that the inquiries should be conducted jointly. This the English refused, but set down all the gossip they could gather, treated the Governor with great rudeness, and then left, refusing at the last moment to wait even a few hours to receive an answer Stuyvesant had prepared.[2] The fact may well have been that, in view of the overwhelming odds against them, the Dutch were counting upon using the Indians as auxiliaries in case they should have been attacked; but there was nothing to indicate, what would have been exceedingly unlikely, that they had been planning to assume the offensive, even by savage proxy.

War, however, was ardently desired by both Connecticut and New Haven, and Rhode Island, somewhat liberally interpreting orders from England, started privateering on her own account against Dutch ships.[3] Connecticut, on the strength of similar orders, hastily sequestrated the Dutch fort at Good Hope, which she never again relinquished.[4]

Massachusetts, however, had no interest in the quarrel. The lands she coveted did not lie in that direction, and she professed to be unable to go to war save in a just cause.[5] Her moral stand might be considered more sincere, were it not

[1. Acts United Colonies, vol. II, pp. 6 ff.]

[2. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 59, 65.]

[3. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 54, 90, 92; R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 261, 266, 271. During the course of the war, Cromwell sent Major Sedgwick and Captain Leverett to the "United Collonyes" to see what aid he could count upon in an attack upon New Amsterdam. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. II, pp. 230 ff.; New Haven Records, vol. II, pp. 100, 107, 112; Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, p. 259; Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 390.]

[4. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, pp. 254, 275.]

[5. Acts United Colonies, vol. II, pp. 56, 75, 80, 86.]

Page 238

for the quite contrary position she consistently assumed when her own interests were at stake. Her refusal, however, undoubtedly prevented an act of great injustice, although her action permanently weakened the Confederacy; for she claimed, in spite of the obvious intention of the Articles, that the Commissioners had no power to declare an offensive, but only a defensive, war. This unwarranted construction was bitterly opposed by the other three members, who properly claimed that, if any of the colonies had the right, on occasion, to alter the Articles to suit herself, then the league must necessarily "breake and bee dissolved." "Whether this violation proceed from some unwarrantable Scruple of Conscience or from some other engagement of sperit," they wrote, "the Massachusetts neither expresse, nor will the Commissioners determine."[1] In the wilderness, men come to know one another well; and her neighbors’ faith in the Bay Colony’s purity of motive had been too often sorely tried to permit them, perhaps, to do her entire justice. War was declared in September, seven of the eight Commissioners voting in favor of it, although Massachusetts refused to be bound.[2] Her interpretation of the Articles having been vehemently denied by the western colonies, she turned to Plymouth, but failed to overawe her little neighbor, who bluntly answered that the Articles "are so full and plaine that they occation not any such queries."[3]

Peace having been declared in Europe, however, the war was not prosecuted, and in the following year Massachusetts completely reversed her position, and agreed to be bound by the Articles of Union in their "literall sence and true meaning."[4] The real motive for her refusal to attack the Dutch may, perhaps, be found in that fear, on the part of the East, of any rapid extension of the western frontier, which we have already noted. Had the western colonies acquired the Hudson River and the sources of the rich fur- trade possessed by the Dutch, the supremacy of Massachusetts might readily

[1. Acts United Colonies, vol. II, p. 82.]

[2. Ibid., pp, 102, 108 f.]

[3. Ibid., pp. 111 f.]

[4. Ibid., p. 114.]

Page 239

have been lost to the younger colonies, which, on the other hand, could be counted upon to remain subordinate to herself in power and numbers if westward expansion were denied them. So long as the balance remained undisturbed, or was altered only in her favor, she could count upon the Confederacy to aid her own plans, nullifying any decision adverse to her interests by her greater strength, as she had just done. Having gained her point, it was, therefore, to her advantage to restore the fullest authority to the league; and the suggestion by her three colleagues, quoted above, that her action might have been dictated by "some other engagement of sperit" than conscientious scruples, would indicate that they perfectly recognized the situation.

During the decade and a half that we are now considering, there was continual uneasiness among the savages, but no serious outbreak. Their relations with the whites, however, were the subject of constant negotiations, which, with the entries concerning the Dutch, absorb almost the whole of the records of the Confederacy. The most striking incident was one which, unfortunately, redounded but little to the credit of the colonists.

In 1643, a quarrel broke out between Uncas and a sachem named Sequasson, and after the English had ineffectually attempted to preserve peace between them, Uncas attacked Sequasson, killing seven or eight of his men, and securing considerable booty.[1] The defeated sachem was an ally of the Narragansett chief Miantanomo, who requested permission from the English for liberty to revenge himself upon the Mohegan. This was granted, and Miantanomo, followed by a thousand warriors, fell upon Uncas, who was supported by less than one half that number.[2] The Mohegans, nevertheless were successful, and Miantanomo was taken prisoner, through treachery. It will be recalled that Samuel Gorton had bought his lands through the Narragansett chief from two of his sachems, who had subsequently repudiated the transaction,

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 155.]

[2. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 11.]

Page 240

and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. It will be remembered also that Miantanomo, in spite of recent suspicions, had consistently been a friend of the English, that he had sheltered Williams, when banished from Massachusetts, and that, through the influence of the latter, the Narragansetts had sided with the colonists in the Pequot war. Gorton now unwisely tried to save the savage’s life by writing a letter to Uncas, threatening him should he harm his prisoner.[1] Uncas, upon its receipt, hurried the captive to Hartford, to advise with the authorities as to what course he should take. At Miantanomo’s own request, he was placed in custody of the English.

There had been rumors of a general rising of the natives in the preceding year, and the Commissioners of the United Colonies, meeting at Boston, after serious consideration decided that it would not be safe to set the unexpected captive free; but they had no grounds upon which to kill him. As usual, they turned to the church for advice, and, as usual, that advice was for blood, "the most judicious elders," who had been consulted, unanimously agreeing "that he ought to be put to death." Of the four reasons for their decision as given by Winthrop, not one justified the sentence. One of them, that he was "of a turbulent and proud spirit," was hardly a capital offense even in Massachusetts, nor could the beating of one of his own subjects be thus construed. His alleged heading of an Indian conspiracy had not been proved, and if the authorities had really believed it, it is not likely that they would have granted him formal permission to take the warpath with a thousand warriors against another of their own allies. Opposed to the charges were to be set the facts that, in the past, he had performed inestimable service as a friend of the English, and that he was now in their hands at his own suggestion, trusting in the white man’s justice. He had not, however, reckoned on the church, and it is impossible not to agree with the often expressed surmise that the leaders of that institution condemned him, not as the enemy of the English,

[1. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 158.]

Page 241

but as the friend of the heretic Gorton and the tolerant Williams.[1]

There had been no pretense of trial, and neither the accused nor any witnesses had been summoned. Nor did the English execute the sentence, which duty they entrusted to Uncas, who was promised protection against the Narragansetts if he would perform it.[2] Uncas readily undertook the work, and Miantanomo, probably cursing his folly for having ever trusted a white man, was put to death. "That the Indians might know that the English did approve of it, they sent 12 or 14 musketeers home with Uncas to abide a time with him for his defence, if need should be"; which shows how little real credence was placed in the story of a general rising.[3] The savages could have made no complaint, had the English from the beginning preserved a strict neutrality; but they had not done so. They had given Miantanomo leave to take the war-path, and, when he was captured, they had assumed the responsibility of seeing that justice should be done. They had, nevertheless, observed none of its forms, and had merely handed the prisoner back to his savage captor with what amounted to orders for his death, without trial and without a hearing. Aside from the injustice of the course pursued, it is difficult to think of one more certain to turn the "proud and turbulent" spirits of the slain man’s thousand followers permanently against the English settlers.[4] Nevertheless, for the present, in spite of a threatened outbreak upon their part two years after the slaying of their chief, the Indian relations of the colonists for long consisted mainly in efforts to preserve the peace among rival native tribes and to collect tribute.[5]

The disputes of the colonies, however, were by no means limited to those with foreigners and savages. The union, which had been so seriously threatened by the Dutch war, had

[1. Cf., e.g., editor’s note in J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 158 f.]

[2. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 11; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 158.]

[3. Ibid., p. 162.]

[4. Cf. letter from the sachems to Massachusetts, 1644, in R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 136 ff.]

[5. For the causes of the Narragansett "war" of 1645, cf. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 50 ff. For the war with Ninigret, Ibid., vol. II, pp. 101 ff.]

Page 242

earlier suffered another severe strain in a controversy between Connecticut and Massachusetts over questions of taxation. When the fort at Saybrook was bought from Fenwick by the former colony, for the purpose of protecting and controlling the mouth of the river, the contract provided that he should receive, in part payment, certain tolls to be levied upon merchandise exported by all the River Towns.[1] A few months later, the General Court passed a law regulating the amounts of these duties and providing for their collection.[2] The boundary line between Connecticut and Massachusetts was still undetermined; but as the latter colony claimed Springfield, which was under its jurisdiction, that town objected to being taxed by Connecticut, and refused to pay the duties demanded.[3] The question was referred to the Commissioners of the United Colonies by Connecticut in 1647, though the fort had then been destroyed by fire. The objections of Massachusetts, presented in writing, were not well taken, and one was an absolutely false statement, Connecticut having no difficulty in showing that the Bay Colony’s contention that the question of a river-toll had delayed the formation of the Confederacy by ten years was palpably absurd and impossible.[4] Another contention, that the toll was not levied upon the Dutch at Good Hope, was also of no import, for the commerce of that tiny post was slight, and by taxing it, international questions would have been raised, to no advantage. Moreover, as the main value of the fort at Saybrook was to protect the river from the Dutch, its upkeep could hardly be considered as a charge of which that nation shared the advantages. The duties required were not discriminatory, and Connecticut was merely asking that the other permanent settlers up the river should share the same burden which she imposed upon herself.

Although the justice of her claim was upheld by the Commissioners of New Haven and Plymouth, Massachusetts refused to accept the decision as binding, and threatened retaliation,

[1. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, pp. 119 ff., 266 ff.]

[2. Ibid., pp. 169.]

[3. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 80; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. VI, p. 380.]

[4. Acts United Colonies, vol. X, pp. 89 ff.]

Page 243

which, in 1649, took the form of an import duty on all goods from the three colonies entering at Boston Harbor, which was then the main channel through which all business was conducted with Europe.[1] The wording of the act made it obvious that it was to punish the three smaller colonies for not having agreed with herself; and the Confederacy’s delegates resolved that "how fare the premisses agree with the lawe of love and with the tenure and import of the articles of Confederation, the Commissioners tender and recomend to the serius Concideration of the Generall Court of the Massachusits." Wearied with her continuous rejection of their valid rulings for five years, they also added that they "desire to bee spared in all further agitations Concerning sprinkfield."[2] Apparently, however, the pertinacity of Massachusetts won the struggle, to which bitterness was added by her persistent refusal, for seventy years, to acknowledge the real location of her southern boundary line, which she had extended slightly into Connecticut territory.[3] That "line" she had had surveyed, in 1642, by the somewhat odd method of having two "skillful artists," as she called them, locate a point three miles south of the Charles River, and then, in order to avoid the long walk across country, sail around by the Sound, and ascend the Connecticut River to a point which they agreed was in the same latitude as that from which they had started. A map, a pen, and a ruler completed this arduous bit of surveying work in the wilderness.[4] Unfortunately, it did not satisfy Connecticut.

There was always a certain latitude, not astronomical, in the Bay Colony’s treatment of boundaries, however; and, in spite of the reasonably strict definition of her own by her charter, the colony slowly expanded, like a balloon filling with gas. We have already seen how she had annexed New Hampshire, and, by her new interpretation of the charter, laid claim to Maine. The state of affairs in England, during the Civil War

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, p. 269. This had been anticipated by Connecticut; Mass. Hist. Sec. Coll., Series IV, vol. VI, p. 383.]

[2. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 158.]

[3. Ibid., vol. X, pp. 15 ff.]

[4. C. W. Bowen, The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut (Boston, 1882), pp. 19, 53 ff.]

Page 244

and Commonwealth, offered her the opportunity to make that claim a reality; and by 1658, the entire province had been annexed, bit by bit. In the midst of the civil commotions in the home country, the royalist Gorges had died, and his heirs had had no chance to answer their colonists’ letters or to look after their affairs in America. Godfrey was elected governor of the settlements about York, the inhabitants there, "with one free and universanimous consent," binding themselves into a body politic, [1] while farther east, the feud between Cleeve and Winter, the latter representing Trelawney’s interests, had been continued. Trelawney, a royalist like Gorges, was imprisoned in England by the Parliament, and soon after died. Cleeve went to England, procured the assistance of Alexander Rigby, who had bought the questionable Lygonia patent, and secured from him a confirmation and extension of his own holdings. This was three years before the election of Godfrey at York in 1649, and Josselyn, who was then representing the Gorges interests, disputed Cleeve’s claims, and both parties agreed to arbitration by Massachusetts. The jury failed to find a verdict, and the dispute continued.[2] The following year, the Commissioners of Plantations confirmed Rigby’s patent, even enlarging its interpretation, and so confined the Gorges territory to that south of Saco.[3] Cleeve established a government within the now legal, if not equitable, Lygonia grant, and the quarrel between him and Godfrey seems to have been settled. Affairs promised to assume a more ordered aspect, and in 1651 Godfrey sent a petition to Parliament, asking that the inhabitants of Maine be declared "Members of the Common Wealth of England," and confirmed in their rights.[4]

Massachusetts saw her opportunity slipping, and decided to act. In May of the following year, the General Court voted that the northern boundary of the colony was a line running from sea to sea and passing through a point three

[1. Farnham Papers, vol. I, p. 266.]

[2. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 314 f.]

[3. Ibid., p. 391.]

[4. Farnham Papers, vol. I, pp. 267 f. Williamson says it was carried to England by Cleeve; History of Maine, vol. I, p. 336.]

Page 245

miles north of the most northerly section of the Merrimack, sending out more "skilfull artists" to find the exact latitude.[1] Godfrey vigorously objected, recalling to Massachusetts the services he had rendered her in England when her charter had been questioned, and denying the validity of her new claim.[2] His protest, of course, was of no avail, and in May, 1653, Massachusetts sent a commission, headed by Bradstreet, forcibly to require the submission of the inhabitants at Kittery. After much debate among the settlers, they agreed to submit, provided their conditions were accepted. This, however, was "wholy denied by the comissioners, who told them they must first submitt to the government, and then they should be ready to affoord such liberties and imunities as they should think meete to graunt."[3] To this demand, as illegal as it was arrogant, the settlers were forced to yield an unconditional assent; and Godfrey returned to England, to add another, in the day of reckoning, to the enemies of Massachusetts. The country was organized as the County of York, and the towns incorporated with the same privileges as Dover.[4] Later in the same year, the commission continued its journey, and Wells, Cape Porpus, and Saco were likewise forced to submit.[5] Five years later, in spite of repeated protests from Cleeve, the whole of Maine and Lygonia were absorbed as far as Casco Bay, and the process of annexation was complete.[6] Of the principalities that Mason and Gorges had spent their fortunes to acquire, not a foot was left to their heirs.

By her policy of annexation, Massachusetts had added over forty thousand square miles to her territory; while by that of nullification, she had patently shown that the bonds uniting the New England Confederacy were but ropes of sand. Confederation was a failure and imperial control as yet impossible. The unification of New England was progressing rapidly, but

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 274, 288.]

[2. The answer of Massachusetts and Godfrey’s second letter are in Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. I, pp. 564 ff. Godfrey’s protest, stating that L35,000 had been spent in settling, and that Massachusetts had recognized the lawful jurisdiction of the settlers for the past 20 years, is in Baxter MSS., Doct. Hist. Maine, vol. IV, pp. 15 f.]

[3. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. I, p. 123.]

[4. Ibid., pp. 123-26.]

[5. Ibid., pp. 158 ff.]

[6. Ibid., pp. 175, 250, 312, 357, 360.]

Page 246

it was a mere process of absorption by Massachusetts. Had there been no hindrance offered by England to the movement, the fate of the other colonies was amply foreshadowed. A single state, with its capital at Boston, guided by the reactionary ideas of its leaders, would probably have arisen, and much of the work already accomplished for the enfranchisement of the individual by Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as the progress so far made by Massachusetts herself, might have been lost.

Although her policy had met with so little real resistance in the north, it received an unexpected check in the south, from the despised Rhode Islanders, while the restoration of the monarchy in England was permanently to save the independence of that colony and of Connecticut. In view of the circumstances, that event, and the assertion of imperial control which followed it, cannot be considered as so inimical to the interests of liberty and the colonies as writers whose attention and sympathy have been wholly devoted to Massachusetts have usually pictured it. In spite of the many fine qualities of the Bay Colony, and the services which she rendered in the settlement of New England, it was fortunate that her career of aggrandizement was halted, for the United States could ill afford to have lost the independent contributions made to her intellectual and political life by the smaller colonies. Indeed, it may even be questioned, if a single powerful, unscrupulous, and aggressive state had come to occupy the whole of New England, and possibly the Hudson Valley, whether the United States, as a federal nation in its present form, would have come into existence at all. When one considers the possibilities involved in a wholly different balance of power among the colonies in the following century, the early career of Massachusetts and the checks it encountered take on a larger interest.

The four settlements about Narragansett Bay, whose extreme individualism and disinclination to submit to any superior government have already been noted, would probably have been exceedingly slow to form a combination, had

Page 247

it not been for the danger to their existence, threatened by their neighbors. Massachusetts had already set up claims to a portion of the territory, and assumed jurisdiction over some of the natives at the time of the Gorton affair in 1643; and contemplated more aggressive action by attempting to secure a charter from the Commissioners of Plantations, in the same year. While never legally granted, this pretended patent was at first used by the colony to bolster its claims.[1] At the same time at which Massachusetts was trying to obtain that document, Williams, then in England for the purpose, was also endeavoring to secure a patent which would enable the settlements legally to resist encroachment. In this he was successful, and, after that, "the country about us was more friendly," he wrote, "and treated us as an authorized colony, only the difference of our consciences much obstructed."[2] The charter named the towns of Providence, Newport, and Portsmouth, and incorporated a vague territory bounded in part by Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the Pequot River, as the Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay in New England."[3] The settlers were given the right to erect any form of government which they might choose.

The Narragansett Indians, after the death of Miantanomo, had agreed to place themselves directly under the protection of the English crown; and Gorton, who, after his release from Massachusetts, had gone back to Warwick, was chosen by them to go to England and carry their submission to the King.[4] In 1644, Plymouth had renewed her claim to Warwick; but in the following year, twenty families from Braintree having petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for permission to settle on Gorton’s lands, the Court had granted them ten thousand acres there, and arranged for the organization of a towns.[5] Plymouth settler objected, however, when the party

[1. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series I, vol. V, pp. 398 ff.; Arnold, History of Rhode Island, vol. I, pp. 118 f.; Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, p. 354.]

[2. R. I. Records, vol. I, p. 458.]

[3. Ibid., pp. 143 ff.]

[4. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 326; R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 134 ff.]

[5. Cited by Arnold, Rhode Island, vol. I, p. 159; Massachusetts Records, vol. III, p. 49; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 308.]

Page 248

arrived, and the new planters dispersed to other places. At the same meeting of the court at which the Braintree men were granted their land, a letter was ordered sent to Williams, stating that Massachusetts had received a charter for Narragansett Bay, and ordering him to desist from exercising any authority.[1]

Nothing had been done by the Narragansett towns to combine under their patent, until May, 1647, when a meeting attended by freemen from all four, was held at Portsmouth, at which it was voted to give Warwick the same privileges as Providence.[2] The new government derived directly from the people, and not from the towns, those present also agreeing that it should be "democraticall, that is to say, a Government held by the free and voluntarie consent of all, or the greater parte of the free Inhabitants."[3] Legislation was, in the main, to be initiated by the people in town meeting, and not by the Assembly, which latter was to be a representative body, consisting of six delegates from each township. Such bills as might be initiated in the Assembly, or General Court, were required to be submitted to the four towns at their meetings, the whole legislative system thus being "a crude combination of initiative and referendum."[4]

Meanwhile, Gorton had obtained a letter from the Commissioners for Plantations, granting him safe conduct through Massachusetts, and allowing him to resettle upon his lands without molestation, until the disputed title should be decided.[5] To this, Massachusetts returned an answer defending her actions in the case and her refusal to allow of appeals to England; but Gorton was permitted to pass through her territory on his way to Warwick.[6] The settlers there, however, were much troubled by the Indians, whom Massachusetts claimed as under her jurisdiction; and after receiving two complaints from the Warwick people, the Commissioners of the United Colonies finally returned answer that they were

[1. Massachusetts Records, vol. III, p. 49; R. I. Records, vol. I, p. 133.]

[2. Ibid., pp. 147 ff.]

[3. Ibid., p. 156.]

[4. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, p. 358.]

[5. R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 367 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 333.]

[6. Massachusetts Records, vol. III, pp. 95 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 360 ff.]

Page 249

ready to undertake the settlement of the question as to "under what Colonie youer Plantation doth fall."[1] The following year, 1650, Massachusetts, by agreement with Plymouth, acquired all rights which that colony might possess about Warwick, but the Commissioners of the United Colonies refused to sanction the transfer.[2]

As before, however, there was a party at Patuxet working in the interests of the Bay Colony, and in 1651, certain settlers there appealed to her for protection against taxes levied upon them. Massachusetts, still claiming jurisdiction, wrote to Williams, requiring that the government refrain from taxing the residents of Warwick, and stating that in case it refused to comply, Massachusetts would seek satisfaction "in such manner as God shall put into theire hands."[3] There was no doubt what this meant.

There was, moreover, additional trouble in store for the distracted settlements. William Coddington, one of the original settlers at Aquidneck, had treacherously gone to England, and there procured a commission appointing him Governor of Rhode Island, his territory thus including the two towns of Portsmouth and Newport.[4] This would have disrupted the union, and have left the mainland towns a prey to Massachusetts. The four towns, being now at last closely united in aim by the common danger, sent Williams and Clarke to England, to protest against Coddington’s action; and, largely through the influence of Williams’s friendship with Vane, they were entirely successful. Coddington’s commission was withdrawn; Williams obtained a safe conduct through Massachusetts, and brought a letter from Vane urging the colonists to unite peaceably and to avoid tumult and disorder.[5] In

[1. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 150. The previous complaint, and the Commissioners’ mild rebuke to the Indians, are on p. 111.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. III, pp. 198 f.; Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 170 f.; Massachusetts Records, vol. III, p. 216.]

[3. Ibid., p. 228, and vol. IV, pt. i, p. 47.]

[4. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 354.]

[5. I. Backus, History of New England with particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists (1871), vol. I, pp. 223, 232; Hazard, Historical Collection, vol. I, p. 495.]

Page 250

1654, the towns reunited by formal action, and two years later, Coddington submitted to the authorities.[1] In 1658, Massachusetts at last resigned her pretensions,[2] while, to guard against any such troubles in future as had been brought about by that colony’s faction in Patuxet, Rhode Island passed a law, somewhat later, that, if any citizen should attempt to place his lands under the jurisdiction of another colony, they should be forfeited.[3]

The government, however, was by no means through with Massachusetts, nor with its other neighbor, Connecticut, both of whom were soon to lay claim to the soil in another direction. The Pawcatuck River, which is the present western boundary of the state, had also been the dividing line between the Narragansetts on the east and the Pequots on the west; and after the destruction of the latter, both Connecticut and Massachusetts had claimed the Pequot country by right of conquest. In spite of attempts to divide the spoil between them, the dispute dragged along, with clashings of interests and of jurisdiction.[4] Massachusetts, however, not content with claiming a large part of the country west of the Pawcatuck as a reward for her share in the war, was also constantly endeavoring to establish her claims to the rich tract lying between the east bank of that river and Narragansett Bay, known as the Narragansett country. In spite of her defeat in the Gorton episode, she continued her efforts, and in 1659, a year after Southertown, the present Stonington, had been declared by the Massachusetts Court to be a part of Suffolk County in that colony,[5] the Atherton Company was formed, mainly by Massachusetts land-speculators, to secure title to the Narragansett lands.[6] A grant was obtained by the

[1. R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 278 ff., 327.]

[2. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 333.]

[3. R. I. Records, vol. I, p. 401.]

[4. Acts United Colonies, vols. I, pp. 19, 79, 97, and II, pp. 209, 228; R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 451 ff., 457; Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, pp. 570 ff.; Bowen, Boundary Disputes of Connecticut, pp. 31 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vols. II, p. 160, and IV, pt. i, p. 315.]

[5. Ibid., vol. IV, pt. i, p. 353.]

[6. The members included Gov. Winthrop of Connecticut, and Richard Smith; R. I. Records, vol. I., p. 464.]

Page 251

company from one of the sachems, and, in the following year, four others, in order to meet a fine which had been imposed upon them by the United Colonies, executed a mortgage deed of the entire Narragansett country to the Atherton Company, except such parts as might have already been granted, the Indians having six months in which to redeem the pledged lands, which, of course, they failed to do.[1]

Massachusetts herself had no valid claim to any of the territory, to which, on the other hand, Rhode Island was justly entitled under her charter, which had named the "Pequot River and Country" as the western boundary.[2] In October, 1661, a clash occurred between Rhode Island citizens claiming lands at Stonington and the Massachusetts authorities, three Rhode Islanders being carried off to Boston, and imprisoned.[3] The Rhode Island government protested, and denied the pretensions of Massachusetts to the disputed territories, and herself claimed jurisdiction over the lands owned by the Atherton Company. Massachusetts, some months later, renewed the old fiction of her Narragansett patent, and asserted, what she must have known to be false, that under it she had a valid title to "all that tract of land, from Pequot River to Plymouth line," and ordered the Rhode Island authorities to desist from exercising any government within their limits.[4]

The troubles between Rhode Island and Massachusetts, between Massachusetts and Connecticut, and between Connecticut and Rhode Island, were thus rapidly approaching the point at which a general intercolonial war might easily have resulted in the annihilation of the smallest colony, and a possible quarrel over the spoils by the two victors, already bitterly quarreling over the spoils of a war of twenty years earlier. The disgraceful spectacle of two colonies, planted in the wilderness ostensibly for the glory of God, and still pretending to be guided by his laws, annihilating a weaker

[1. Acts United Colonies, vol. II, p. 248; R. I. Records, vol. I, pp. 465 f.]

[2. As we have already noted, the bounds were vaguely stated, but this western one was clear enough; Ibid., p. 144.]

[3. Ibid., pp. 455 f.]

[4. Ibid., pp. 469 ff., 461.]

Page 252

neighbor in order to annex her harbors and rich lands, was fortunately prevented by the reassertion of imperial control by England.

Meanwhile, the little Rhode Island commonwealth had established its internal affairs upon a firm and orderly basis, and in spite of the dire forebodings, and every possible impediment thrown in his way by Massachusetts, Williams had finally succeeded in his effort to prove that civil and religious liberty was not incompatible with a well-ordered state. Against all her enemies, without and within, the colony had won her way to intellectual freedom, and had advanced along the path in which it has been the glory of the nation to follow, while the restoration of the monarchy in England intervened to save her from further molestation from her powerful Puritan neighbors, and enabled her to pursue her chosen ways in peace.