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Chapter 9:
The extended colonization of New England
The council of Plymouth for
New England, having
obtained of King James the boundless territory and the immense monopoly which they had desired, had no further obstacles to encounter but the laws of nature and the remonstrances of parliament.
No tributaries tenanted their countless millions of uncul tivated acres; and exactions upon the vessels of English fishermen were the only means of acquiring an immediate revenue from
America.
But the spirit of the commons indignantly opposed the extravagant pretensions of the favored company, and demanded for every subject of the
English king the free liberty of engaging in a pursuit which was the chief source of wealth to the merchants of the west.
‘Shall the
English,’ said
Sir Edwin Sandys, the statesman so well entitled to the enduring gratitude of
Virginia, ‘be debarred from the freedom of the fisheries, a privilege which the
French and
Dutch enjoy?
It costs the kingdom nothing but labor; employs shipping; and furnishes the means of a lucrative commerce with
Spain.’—‘The fishermen hinder the plantations,’ replied
Calvert; ‘they choke the harbors with their ballast, and waste the forests by improvident use. America is not annexed to the realm, nor within the jurisdiction of parliament; you have therefore no right
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to interfere.’—‘We may make laws for
Virginia,’
rejoined another member, intent on opposing the flagrant benevolence of the king, and wholly unconscious of asserting, in the earliest debate on American affairs, the claim of parliament to that absolute sovereignty which the colonies never acknowledged, and which led to the war of the revolution; ‘a bill passed by the commons and the lords, if it receive the king's assent, will control the patent.’
The charter, argued
Sir Edward Coke, with ample reference to early statutes, was granted without regard to previously-existing rights, and is therefore void by the established laws of
England.
So the friends of the liberty of fishing triumphed over the advocates of the royal prerogative, though the parliament was dissolved before a bill could be carried through all the forms of legislation.
Yet enough had been done to infuse vigor into mercantile enterprise; in the second year after the
settlement of
Plymouth, five-and-thirty sail of vessels went to fish on the coasts of
New England, and made good voyages.
The monopolists appealed to King James; and the monarch, preferring to assert his own extended prerogative, rather than to regard the spirit of the house of commons, issued a proclamation,
which forbade any to approach the northern coast of
America, except with the special leave of the company of
Plymouth, or of the privy council.
It was monstrous thus to attempt to seal up a large portion of an immense continent; it was impossible to carry the ordinance into effect; and here, as so often, despotism caused its own fall.
By desiring strictly to enforce its will, it provoked a conflict in which it was sure of being defeated.
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But the monopolists endeavored to establish their
claims.
One
Francis West was despatched with a commission as admiral of
New England, for the purpose of excluding from the
American seas such fishermen as came without a license.
But his feeble authority was derided; the ocean was a wide place over which to keep sentry.
The mariners refused to pay the tax which he imposed; and his ineffectual authority was soon resigned.
In
England, the at tempt occasioned the severest remonstrances, which did not fail to make an impression on the ensuing
parliament.
The patentees, alike prodigal of charters and tenacious of their monopoly, having given to Robert
Gorges, the son of Sir Ferdinand, a patent for a tract extending ten miles on
Massachusetts Bay, and thirty miles into the interior, now appointed him lieutenant-
general of
New England, with power ‘to restrain interlopers,’ not less than to regulate the affairs of the corporation.
His patent was never permanently used; though the colony at
Weymouth was renewed, to meet once more with ill fortune.
He was attended by
Morrell, an Episcopal clergyman, who was provided with a commission for the superintendence of ecclesiastical affairs.
Instead of establishing a hierarchy,
Morrell, remaining in
New England about a year, wrote a description of the country in verse; while the civil dignity of
Robert Gorges ended in a short-lived dispute with
Weston.
They came to plant a hierarchy and a general government, and they produced only a fruitless quarrel and a dull poem.
But when parliament was again convened, the con-
troversy against the charter was once more renewed, and the rights of liberty found an inflexible champion
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in the aged
Sir Edward Coke, who now expiated the
sins of his early ambition by devotion to the interests of the people.
It was in vain that the patentees relinquished a part of their pretensions; the commons
resolved that English fishermen shall have fishing pith al. its incidents.
‘Your patents’—thus
Gorges was addressed by
Coke from the speaker's chair— ‘contains many particulars contrary to the laws and privileges of the subject; it is a monopoly, and the ends of private gain are concealed under color of planting a colony.’
‘Shall none,’ observed the veteran lawyer in debate, ‘shall none visit the seacoast for fishing?
This is to make a monopoly upon the seas, which wont to be free.
If you alone are to pack and dry fish, you attempt a monopoly of the wind and the sun.’
It was in vain for
Sir George Calvert to resist.
The bill passed without amendment, though it never received the royal assent.
1
The determined opposition of the house, though it could not move the king to overthrow the corporation, paralyzed its enterprise; many of the patentees abandoned their interest; so that the Plymouth company now did little except issue grants of domains; and the cottages, which, within a few years, were sprinkled along the coast from
Cape Cod to the
Bay of Fundy, were the consequence of private adventure.
The territory between the
River of Salem and the
Kennebec became, in a great measure, the property of two enterprising individuals.
We have seen that
Martin Pring was the discoverer of
New Hampshire,
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and that
John Smith of
Virginia had examined and
extolled the deep waters of the Piscataqud.
Sir Ferdinand Gorges, the most energetic member of the council of Plymouth, always ready to encounter risks in the cause of colonizing America, had not allowed repeated ill success to chill his confidence and decision; and now he found in
John Mason, ‘who had been governor of a plantation in
Newfoundland, a man of action,’ like himself.
It was not difficult for
Mason,
who had been elected an associate and secretary of the council, to obtain a grant of the lands between
Salem River and the farthest head of the
Merrimac; but he did no more with his vast estate than give it a name.
The passion for land increased; and
Gorges and
Mason next took a patent for
Laconia, the whole country between the sea, the
St. Lawrence, the
Merrimac, and the
Kennebec; a company of English merchants was formed; and under its auspices permanent plantations were established on the banks of
the
Piscataqua.
2 Portsmouth and
Dover are among the oldest towns in
New England.
Splendid as were the anticipations of the proprietaries, and lavish as was their enthusiasm in liberal expenditures, the immediate progress of the plantations was inconsiderable, and, even as fishing stations, they do not seem to have prospered.
When the country on
Massachusetts Bay was
granted to a company, of which the zeal and success were soon to overshadow all the efforts of proprietaries merchants, it became expedient for
Mason to
procure a new patent; and he now received a fresh
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3to the territory between the
Merrimac and
Piscataqua, in terms which, in some degree, interfered with the pretensions of his neighbors on the south.
This was the patent for
New Hampshire, and was pregnant with nothing so signally as suits at law. The country had been devastated by the mutual wars of the tribes, and the same wasting pestilence which left New Plymouth a desert; no notice seems to have been taken of the rights of the natives; nor did they now issue any deed of their lands;
4 but the soil in the
immediate vicinity of
Dover, and afterwards of
Portsmouth, was conveyed to the planters themselves, or to
those at whose expense the settlement had been made.
5 A favorable impulse was thus given to the little colonies; and houses now began to be built on the Strawberry Bank of the
Piscataqua.
But the progress of the town was slow;
Josselyn6 described the whole coast as a mere wilderness, with here and there a few huts scattered by the sea-side; and
thirty years after its settlement,
Portsmouth made
only the moderate boast of containing ‘between fifty and sixty families.’
7
When the grand charter, which had established the
council of Plymouth, was about to be revoked,
Mason extended his pretensions to the
Salem River, the southern boundary of his first territory, and obtained of the expiring corporation a corresponding patent.
There is room to believe, that the king would, without scruple, have confirmed the grant,
8 and conferred upon him the powers of government, as absolute lord and proprietary; but the death of Mason cut off all the
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hopes which his family might have cherished of territo-
rial aggrandizement and feudal supremacy.
His widow in vain attempted to manage the colonial domains; the costs exceeded the revenue; the servants were ordered to provide for their own welfare; the property of the great landed proprietor was divided among them for the payment of arrears; and
Mason's American estate was completely ruined.
Neither king nor proprietary troubled the few inhabitants of
New Hampshire; they were left to take care of themselves—the best dependence for states, as well as for individuals.
The enterprise of
Sir Ferdinand Gorges, though sustained by stronger expressions of royal favor, and continued with indefatigable perseverance, was not followed by much greater success.
We have seen a colony established, though but for a single winter, on
the shores which Pring had discovered, and
Weymouth had been the first to explore.
After the bays of
New England had been more carefully examined by the
same daring adventurer who sketched the first map of the
Chesapeake, the coast was regularly visited by fishermen and traders.
A special account of the country was one of the fruits of
Hakluyt's inquiries, and was published in the collections of
Purchas.
At
Winter Harbor, near the mouth of
Saco River, Englishmen, under Richard Vines, again encountered the severities of the inclement season; and not long after-
wards, the mutineers of the crew of Rocraft lived from autumn till spring on
Monhegan Island, where the
colony of
Popham had anchored, and the ships of John
Smith had made their station during his visit to New
England. The earliest settlers, intent only on their immediate objects, hardly aspired after glory; from the
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few memorials which they have left, it is not, perhaps,
possible to ascertain the precise time, when the rude shelters of the fishermen on the sea-coast began to be tenanted by permanent inmates, and the fishing stages of a summer to be transformed into regular establishments of trade.
9 The first settlement was probably
made ‘on the
Maine,’ but a few miles from
Monhegan, at the mouth of the
Pemaquid.
The first observers could not but admire the noble rivers and secure bays, which invited commerce, and gave the promise of future opulence; but if hamlets were soon planted near the mouths of the streams; if forts were erected to protect the merchant and the mariner,— agriculture received no encouragement; and so many causes combined to check the growth of the country, that, notwithstanding its natural advantages, nearly two centuries glided away, before the scattered settlements along the sea-side rose into a succession of busy marts, sustained and enriched by the thriving villages of a fertile interior.
The settlement at
Piscataqua could not quiet the ambition of
Gorges.
As a Protestant and an Englishman, he was almost a bigot, both in patriotism and in religion.
Unwilling to behold the
Roman Catholic church and the
French monarch obtain possession of the eastern coast of
North America, his first act with reference to the territory of the present
state of Maine was, to invite the Scottish nation to become the
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guardians of its frontier.
Sir William Alexander, the
ambitious writer of turgid rhyming tragedies, a man of influence with King James, and already filled with the desire of engaging in colonial adventure, seconded a design, which promised to establish his personal dignity and interest; and he obtained, without difficulty, a patent for all the territory east of the
River St. Croix, and south of the
St. Lawrence.
10 The whole region, which had already been included in the
French provinces of
Acadia and New France, was designated in English geography by the name of
Nova Scotia.
Thus were the seeds of future wars scattered broadcast by the unreasonable pretensions of
England; for James now gave away lands, which, already and with a better title on the ground of dis-
covery, had been granted by Henry IV.
of
France, and which had been immediately occupied by his subjects; nor could it be supposed, that the reigning French monarch would esteem his rights to his rising colonies invalidated by a parchment under the Scottish seal, or prove himself so forgetful of honor, as to discontinue the protection of the emigrants who had planted themselves in
America on the faith of the crown.
11
Yet immediate attempts were made to effect a Scottish settlement.
One ship, despatched for the
purpose, did but come in sight of the shore, and then, declining the perilous glory of colonization, returned to the permanent fishing station on
Newfoundland.
The next spring, a second ship arrived; but the two
vessels in company hardly possessed courage to sail to and fro along the coast, and make a partial survey of
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tile harbors and the adjacent lands.
The formation
of a colony was postponed; and a brilliant eulogy of the soil, climate, and productions of
Nova Scotia, was the only compensation for the delay.
12
The marriage of Charles I. with
Henrietta Maria promised between the rival claimants of the wilds of
Acadia such friendly relations as would lead to a peaceful adjustment of jarring pretensions.
Yet, even at that period, the claims of
France were not recognized by
England; and a new patent confirmed to
Sir William Alexander all the prerogatives with which he had been lavishly invested,
13 with the right of creating an order of baronets.
The sale of titles proved to the poet a lucrative traffic, and the project of a colony was abandoned.
The citizens of a republic are so accustomed to see the legislation and the destinies of their country controlled only by public opinion, as formed and expressed in masses, that they can hardly believe the extent in which the fortunes of
European nations have, at least for a short season, been moulded by the caprices of individuals: how often the wounded vanity of a courtier, or an unsuccessful passion of a powerful minister, has changed the foreign relations of a kingdom!
The feeble monarch of
England, having twice abruptly dissolved parliament, and having vainly resorted to illegal modes of taxation, had forfeited the confidence of his people, and, while engaged in a war with
Spain, was destitute of money and of credit.
It was at such a moment, that the precipitate gallantry of the favorite
Buckingham, eager to thwart the jealous
Richelieu, to whom he was as far inferior in the qualities of a
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statesman, as he was superior in youth, manners, and
personal beauty, hurried
England into an unnecessary and disastrous conflict with
France.
The siege of
Rochelle invited the presence of an English fleet; but the expedition was fatal to the honor and the objects of
Buckingham.
Hostilities were no where successfully attempted, except in
America.
Port Royal fell easily into the
hands of the
English; the conquest was no more than the acquisition of a small trading station.
It was a bolder design to attempt the reduction of
Canada.
Sir David Kirk and his two brothers, Louis and
Thomas, were commissioned to ascend the
St. Lawrence, and
Quebec received a summons to surrender.
The garrison, destitute alike of provisions and of military stores, had no hope but in the character of
Champlain, its commander: his answer of proud defiance concealed his weakness; and the intimidated assailants withdrew.
But
Richelieu sent no season-
able supplies; the garrison was reduced to extreme suffering and the verge of famine; and when the squadron of
Kirk reappeared before the town, the
English were welcomed as deliverers.
Favorable terms were demanded and promised; and
Quebec capitulated.
Thus did
England, one hundred and thirty years before the enterprise of
Wolfe, make the conquest of the capital of New France; that is to say, she gained possession of a barren rock and a few wretched hovels, tenanted by a hundred miserable men, who were now but beggars for bread of their vanquishers.
Yet the event might fairly be deemed of importance, as pregnant with consequences; and the
English admiral could not but admire the position of the fortress.
Not a port in
North America remained
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to the
French; from
Long Island to the Pole,
England was without a rival.
14
But before the conquest of
Canada was achieved, peace had been proclaimed between the contending states; and an article in the treaty promised the restitution of all acquisitions, made subsequent to April 14, 1629.
15 The possession of New France would have been too dearly purchased by the vileness of falsehood; and it was readily agreed to restore
Quebec.
16 Perhaps an indifference to the issue prevailed in
France; but the pride of honor and of religion seconded the claims to territory; and the genius of
Richelieu succeeded in obtaining the restitution,
not of
Canada only, but of Cape Breton and undefined
Acadia.
17 The event has been frequently deplored; but misery ensued, because neither the boundaries of the rival nations were distinctly marked, nor the spirit of the compact honestly respected.
While the eastern provinces of
America were thus recovered by the firmness and ability of the
French minister, very different causes delayed the colonization of
Maine.
Hardly had the little settlement, which claimed the distinction of being the oldest plantation
on that coast, gained a permanent existence, before a succession of patents distributed the whole territory from the
Piscataqua to the
Penobscot among various proprietors.
The grants were couched in vague
language, and were made in hasty succession, without deliberation on the part of the council of Plymouth, and without any firm purpose of establishing colonies
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on the part of those for whose benefit they were
issued.
The consequences were obvious.
As the neighborhood of the indefinite possessions of
France foreboded the border feuds of a controverted jurisdiction, so the domestic disputes about land-titles and boundaries threatened perpetual lawsuits.
At the same time, enterprise was wasted by its diffusion over too wide a surface.
Every harbor along the sea was accessible; groups of cabins were scattered at wide intervals, without any common point of attraction; and the agents of such proprietaries as aimed at securing a revenue from colonial rents, were often, perhaps, faithless, were always unsuccessful.
How feeble were the attempts at planting towns, is evident from the nature of the tenure by which the lands near the
Saco were held; the condition of the grant was the introduction of fifty settlers within seven years! Agriculture was hardly attempted.
A district of forty miles square, named Lygonia, and stretching from Harpswell to the Kennebunk, was set apart for the
first colony of farmers; but when a vessel of sixty tons brought over the emigrants who were to introduce the plough into the regions on
Casco Bay, the earlier resident adventurers treated their scheme with derision.
The musket and the hook and line were more productive than the implements of husbandry; the few members of the unsuccessful company remained but a single year in a neighborhood where the culture of the soil was so little esteemed, and, embarking once more, sought a home among the rising settlements of
Massachusetts.
Except for the wealth to be derived from the forest and the sea, the coast of
Maine would not at that time have been tenanted by Englishmen; and this again was fatal to the
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expectations of the proprietaries; since furs might be
gathered and fish taken without the payment of quitrents or the purchase of lands.
18
Yet a pride of character sustained in
Gorges an
unbending hope; and he clung to the project of territorial aggrandizement.
When
Mason limited himself to the country west of the
Piscataqua, and while
Sir William Alexander obtained of the Plymouth company a patent for the eastern extremity of the
United States,
Gorges, alike undismayed by previous losses, and by the encroaching claims of the
French, who had already advanced their actual boundary to the
Penobscot, succeeded in soliciting the whole district that lies between the
Kennebec and the boundary of
New Hampshire.
The earnestness of his designs is apparent from his appointment as governor-general of
New England.
If an unforeseen accident prevented his embarkation for
America, and relieved
Massachusetts of its apprehensions, he at least sent his nephew,
William Gorges, to govern his territory.
That officer repaired to the province without delay.
Saco may have contained one hundred and fifty inhabitants, when the first court ever duly organized on the soil of
Maine was held within its limits.
19 Before that time, there may have been some voluntary combinations among the settlers themselves; but there had existed on the
Kennebec no jurisdiction of sufficient power to prevent or to punish bloodshed among the traders.
20 William Gorges remained in the country less than two years; the six Puritans of
Massachusetts and Con-
necticut, who received a commission to act as his
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successors, declined the trust,
21 and the infant settle-
ments then called New Somersetshire were abandoned to anarchy, or to so imperfect a government, that of the events of two years no records can be found.
Meantime a royal charter now constituted
Gorges,
his old age, the lord proprietary of the country; and his ambition immediately soared to the honor of establishing boroughs, framing schemes of colonial government, and enacting a code of laws.
The veteran royalist, clearly convinced of the necessity of a vigorous executive, had but dim conceptions of popular liberty and rights; and he busied himself in making such arrangements as might have been expected from an old soldier, who was never remarkable for sagacity, had never seen America, and who, now in his dotage, began to act as a lawgiver for a rising state in another hemisphere.
22
Such was the condition of the settlements at the north at a time when the region which lies but a little nearer the sun, was already converted, by the energy of religious zeal, into a busy, well-organized, and even opulent state.
The early history of
Massachusetts is the history of a class of men as remarkable for their qualities and their influence on public happiness, as any by which the human race has ever been diversified.
The settlement near
Weymouth was revived; a
new plantation was begun near
Mount Wollaston,
within the present limits of
Quincy; and the merchants of the
West continued their voyages to the islands of
New England.
But these things were of
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feeble influence compared with the consequences of
the attempt at a permanent establishment near
Cape Ann; for
White, a minister of
Dorchester, a Puritan, but not a separatist, breathed into the enterprise a higher principle than that of the desire of gain.
Roger Conant, having already left New Plymouth for
Nantasket, through a brother in
England, who was a friend of
White, obtained the agency of the adventure.
A year's experience proved to the company, that their speculation must change its form, or it would produce no results; the merchants, therefore, paid with honest liberality all the persons whom they had employed, and abandoned the unprofitable scheme.
But
Conant, a man of extraordinary vigor, ‘inspired as it were by some superior instinct,’ and confiding in the active friendship of
White, succeeded in breathing a portion
of his sublime courage into his three companions; and, making choice of
Salem, as opening a convenient place of refuge for the exiles for religion, they resolved to remain as the sentinels of Puritanism on the
Bay of
Massachusetts.
23
The design of a plantation was now ripening in the mind of
White and his associates in the south-west of
England.
About the same time, some friends in
Lincolnshire fell into discourse about
New England; im-
agination swelled with the thought of planting the pure gospel among the quiet shades of
America; it seemed better to depend on the benevolence of uncultivated nature and the care of
Providence, than to endure the constraints of the
English laws and the severities of the
English hierarchy.
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‘The business came afresh to agitation’ in Lon-
don; the project of planting by the help of fishing voyages was given up; and from
London,
Lincolnshire, and the west country, men of fortune and religious zeal, merchants and country gentlemen, the discreeter sort among the many who desired a reformation in church government, ‘offered the help of their purses’ to advance ‘the glory of God,’ by planting a colony of the best of their countrymen, on the shores of
New England.
To facilitate the grant of a charter from the crown, they sought the concurrence of the Council of Plymouth for
New England; they were befriended in their application by the
Earl of
Warwick, and obtained the approbation of
Sir Ferdinando Gorges; and on the nineteenth of March, 1628, that body, which had proved itself incapable of colonizing its domain, and could derive revenue only from sales of territory, disregarding a former grant of a large district on the
Charles River, conveyed to
Sir Henry Roswell,
Sir John Young,
Thomas Southcoat,
John Humphrey,
John Endicott, and
Simon Whetcomb, a belt of land extending three miles south of the
River Charles and the
Massachusetts Bay, and three miles north of every part of the
River Merrimac, from the
Atlantic to the
Pacific ocean.
The grantees associated to themselves
Sir Richard Saltonstall,
Isaac Johnson,
Matthew Cradock, Increase
Nowell,
Richard Bellingham,
Theophilus Eaton,
William Pynchon and others; of whom nearly all united religious zeal with a capacity for vigorous action.
Endicott—who, ‘ever since the
Lord in mercy had revealed himself unto him,’ had maintained the straitest judgment against the outward form of God's worship, as prescribed by
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English statutes; a man of dauntless courage, and that
cheerfulness which accompanies courage benevolent, though austere; firm, though choleric; of a rugged nature, which his stern principles of non-conformity had not served to mellow—was selected as a ‘fit instrument to begin this wilderness work.’
Before June came to an end he was sent over as governor, assisted by a few men, having his wife and family for the companions of his voyage, the hostages of his irrevocable attachment to the New World.
Arriving in safety in September, he united his own party and those who were formerly planted there, into one body, which counted in all not much above fifty or sixty persons.
With these he founded the oldest town in the colony, soon to be called
Salem; and extended some supervision over the waters of
Boston harbor, then called
Massachusetts Bay.
At
Charlestown an Englishman, one
Thomas Walford, a blacksmith, dwelt in a thatched and palisaded cabin.
William Blackstone, an Episcopal clergyman, a courteous recluse, gifted with the impatience of restraint which belongs to the pioneer, had planted himself on the opposite peninsula; the island now known as
East Boston was occupied by
Samuel Maverick, son of a pious nonconformist minister of the
West of
England, himself a prelatist.
At
Nantasket and further south, stragglers lingered near the sea side, attracted by the gains of a fishing station and a petty trade in beaver.
The Puritan ruler visited in person the remains of
Morton's unruly company in what is now
Quincy, rebuked them for their profane revels, and admonished them, ‘to look there should be better walking.’
After the departure of the emigrant ship from
England, the company, counselled by
White, an eminent
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lawyer, and supported by the time-serving cour-
tier, Lord Dorchester, better known as
Sir Dudley Carleton, who, in December, became
Secretary of State, obtained from the king a confirmation of their grant.
It was obviously the only way to secure the country as a part of his dominions; for the
Dutch were already trading in the
Connecticut river; the
French claimed
New England, as within the limits of New France; and the prelatical party, which had endeavored again and again to colonize the coast, had tried only to fail.
Before the news reached
London of
Endicott's safe arrival, the number of adventurers was much enlarged; on the second of March, 1629,
an offer of ‘
Boston men,’ that promised good to the plantation, was accepted; and on the fourth of the same month, a few days only before Charles I., in a public state paper, avowed his purpose of reigning without a parliament, the broad seal of
England was put to the letters patent for
Massachusetts.
The charter, which was cherished for more than half a century as the most precious boon, constituted a body politic by the name of the
Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in
New England.
The administration of its affairs was intrusted to a governor, deputy, and eighteen assistants, who were annually, on the last
Wednesday of
Easter term, to be elected by the freemen or members of the corporation, and to meet once a month or oftener ‘for despatching such businesses as concerned the company or plantation.’
Four times a year the governor, assistants, and all the freemen were to be summoned to ‘one great, general, and solemn assembly,’ and these ‘great and general courts’ were invested with full powers to choose and admit into the company so many as they
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should think fit, to elect and constitute all requisite
subordinate officers, and to make laws and ordinances for the welfare of the company and for the government of the lands and the inhabitants of the plantation, ‘so as such laws and ordinances be not contrary and repugnant to the laws and statutes of the realm of
England.’
‘The principle and foundation of the charter of
Massachusetts,’ wrote Charles the Second at a time when he had
Clarendon for his adviser, ‘was the freedom of liberty of conscience.’
The governor, or his deputy, or two of the assistants, was empowered, but not required, to administer the oaths of supremacy and allegiance to every person who should go to inhabit the granted lands; and as the statutes, establishing the common prayer and spiritual courts, did not reach beyond the realm, the silence of the charter respecting them released the colony from their binding power.
The English government did not foresee how wide a departure from English usages would grow out of the emigration of Puritans to
America; but as conformity was not required of the new commonwealth, the character of the times was a guaranty, that the immense majority of emigrants would be fugitives who scrupled compliance with the common prayer.
The prelatical party had no motive to emigrate; it was Puritanism, almost alone, that would pass over; and freedom of
Puritan worship was necessarily the purpose and the result of the colony.
The proceedings of the company, moreover, did not fall under the immediate supervision of the king, and did not require his assent to render them valid; so that self-direction in ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs, passed to the patentees, subject only to conflicts
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with the undefined prerogative of the king, and the
rising claim to paramount legislative authority by Parliament.
The company was authorized to transport to its American territory any persons, whether English or foreigners, who would go willingly, would become lieges of the
English king, and were not restrained ‘by especial name;’ and they were encouraged to do so by a promise of favor to the commerce of the colony with foreign parts, and a total or partial exemption from duties for seven and for twenty-one years. If the pretension to a right of imposing duties after that limited time was not renounced, it was at least declared, that the emigrants and their posterity should ever be considered as natural born subjects, entitled to all English liberties and immunities.
The political rights of the colonists were deemed by King Charles no further worthy of his consideration; the corporate body alone was to decide what liberties they should enjoy.
All ordinances published under its seal were to be implicitly obeyed.
Full legislative and executive authority was conferred, not on the future inhabitants of
New England, but on the company, of which the emigrants could not be active members so long as its meetings were held in
England.
Yet, as if by design, the place for holding its courts was not specially appointed.
What if the corporation should admit the emigrants to be freemen, and call a meeting beyond the
Atlantic?
What if the
Governor, deputy, assistants, and freemen, should transfer themselves and their patent to
Massachusetts, and after thus breaking down the distinction between the colony and the corporation, by a daring construction of their powers under the charter erect an independent representative government?
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The charter had been granted in March; in April,
the new embarkation was far advanced.
The local government temporarily established for
Massachusetts was to consist of a governor and counsellors, of whom eight out of thirteen were appointed by the corporation in
England; three were to be named by these eight; and to complete the number, the old planters who intended to remain, were ‘to choose two of the discreetest men among themselves.’
As the propagating the gospel was, by the free profession of the company, their aim in settling the plantation, they were careful to make plentiful provision of godly ministers; all ‘of one judgment, and fully agreed on the manner how to exercise their ministry.’
One of them was
Samuel Skelton, of Clare Hall,
Cambridge, from whose faithful preachings
Endicott formerly received much good; a friend to the utmost equality of privileges in church and state; another was the able, reverend, and grave
Francis Higginson, of Jesus College,
Cambridge, commended for his worth by
Isaac Johnson, the friend of
Hampden.
Deprived of his parish in
Leicester for nonconformity, he received the invitation to conduct the emigrants as a call from Heaven.
Two other ministers were added, that there might be enough, not only to build up those of the
English nation, but also to ‘wynne the natives to the
Christian faith.’
‘If any of the salvages’—such were the instructions to
Endicott, uniformly followed under the succeeding changes of government—‘pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, endeavor to purchase their tytle, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion.’
‘Particularly publish that no wrong or injury be offered to
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the natives.’
In pious sincerity the company desired
to redeem these wrecks of human nature; the colony seal was an Indian erect, with an arrow in his right hand, and the motto, ‘Come over and help us’—a device of which the appropriateness has been lost by the modern substitution of the line of
Algernon Sydney.
The party who took passage for
Salem included six shipwrights, and an experienced surveyor, who was to give advice on the proper site for a fortified town, and with
Samuel Sharpe, master gunner of ordnance, was to muster all such as lived under the government, both planters and servants, and at appointed times to exercise them in the use of arms.
A great store of cattle, horses, and goats was put on shipboard.
Before sailing, servants of ill life were discharged.
‘No idle drone may live amongst us,’ was the spirit as well as the law of the dauntless community.
As
Higginson and his companions were receding from the
Land's end, he called his children and others around him to look for the last time on their native country, not as the scene of sufferings from intolerance, but as the home of their fathers, and the dwelling place of their friends.
They did not say, ‘Farewell,
Babylon!
farewell,
Rome!’
but ‘Farewell, dear
England!’
On the voyage they ‘constantly served God, morning and evening, by reading and expounding a chapter in the bible, singing and prayer.’
On ‘the sabbath they added preaching twice, and catechising;’ and twice they ‘faithfully’ kept ‘solemn fasts.’
The passage was ‘pious and christian like,’ for even ‘the shipmaster and his religious company set their eight and twelve o'clock watches with singing a psalm and with prayer that was not read out of a book.’
In the last days of June, the little band of two
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hundred arrived at
Salem, where conscience was no
more to be wounded by the ‘corruptions of the English church.’
They found eight or ten pitiful hovels, one larger tenement for the governor, and a few corn-fields as the only proofs that they had been preceded by their countrymen.
The old and new planters, without counting women and children, formed a body of about three hundred, of whom the larger part were ‘godly Christians, helped hither by
Isaac Johnson and other members of the company, to be employed in their work for a while, and then to live of themselves.’
To anticipate the intrusion of
John Oldham, who was minded to settle himself on
Boston Bay, pretending a title to much land there by a grant from
Robert Gorges,
Endicott with all speed sent a large party, accompanied by a minister, to occupy
Charlestown.
On the neck of land, which was full of stately timber, with the leave of
Sagamore John, the petty chief who claimed dominion over it,
Graves, the surveyor, employed some of the servants of the company in building a ‘great house,’ and modelled and laid out the form of the town with streets about the hill.
To the
European world, the few tenants of the huts and cabins at
Salem were too insignificant to merit notice; to themselves, they were chosen emissaries of God; outcasts from
England, yet favorites with Heaven; destitute of security, of convenient food, and of shelter, and yet blessed as instruments selected to light in the wilderness the beacon of pure religion.
The emigrants were not so much a body politic, as a church in the wilderness; seeking, under a visible covenant, to have fellowship with God, as a family of adopted sons.
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The governor was moved to set apart the twenti-
eth of July to be a solemn day of humiliation, for the choyce of a pastor and teacher at
Salem.‘After prayer and preaching,’ the persons thought on, ‘presenting no claim founded on their ordination in
England, acknowledged a twofold calling; the inward, which is of God, who moves the heart and bestows fit gifts; the outward, which is from a company of believers joined in covenant, and allowing to every member a free voice in the election of its officers.
The vote was then taken by each one's writing in a note the name of his choice.
Such is the origin of the use of the ballot on this continent; in this manner
Skelton was chosen pastor and
Higginson teacher.
Three or four of the gravest members of the church then laid their hands on
Skelton with prayer, and in like manner on
Higginson; so that these two blessed servants of the
Lord came in at the door and not at the window;’ by the act of the congregation and not by the authority of a prelate.
A day in August was appointed for the election of ruling elders and deacons.
Thus the church, like that of
Plymouth, was self-constituted, on the principle of the independence of each religious community.
It did not ask the assent of the king, or recognize him as its head; its officers were set apart and ordained among themselves; it used no liturgy; it rejected unnecessary ceremonies, and reduced the simplicity of
Calvin to a still plainer standard.
The motives which controlled its decisions were so deeply seated, that its practices were repeated spontaneously by Puritan
New England.
There were a few at
Salem by whom the new system was disapproved; and in John and
Samuel Browne they found able leaders.
Both were members
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of the colonial council; both were reputed
‘sincere in their affection for the good of the plantation;’ they had been specially recommended to
Endicott by the corporation in
England; and one of them, an experienced lawyer, had been a member of the board of assistants.
They refused to unite with the public assembly, and gathered a company, in which ‘the common prayer worship’ was upheld.
But should the emigrants—thus the colonists reasoned—give up the purpose for which they had crossed the
Atlantic?
Should the hierarchy intrude on the forests of
Massachusetts with the ceremonies which their consciences scrupled?
Should the success of the colony be endangered by a breach of its unity; and the authority of its government overthrown by the confusion of an ever recurring conflict?
They deemed the coexistence of their liberty and of prelacy impossible: anticipating invasions of their rights, they feared the adherents of the Establishment, as spies in the camp; and the form of religion from which they had suffered, was repelled, not as a sect, but as a tyranny.
‘You are Separatists,’ said the Brownes, in self-defence, ‘and you will shortly be Anabaptists.’
‘We separate,’ answered the ministers, ‘not from the church of England, but from its corruptions.
We came away from the common prayer and ceremonies, in our native land, where we suffered much for nonconformity; in this place of liberty, we cannot, we will not, use them.
Their imposition would be a sinful violation of the worship of God.’
The supporters of the liturgy were in their turn rebuked as separatists; their plea was reproved as sedition, their worship forbidden as a mutiny; and the Brownes were sent back to
England,
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as men ‘factious and evil conditioned,’ who could
not be suffered to remain within the limits of the grant, because they would not be conformable to its government.
Thus was Episcopacy professed in
Massachusetts, and thus was it exiled.
The
Brownes, on their arrival in
England, raised rumors of scandalous and intemperate speeches, uttered by the ministers in their public sermons and prayers, and of rash innovations begun and practised in the civil and ecclesiastical government.
The returning ships also carried with them ‘letters which were venerated as sacred scripts, or as the writing of holy prophets.’
So deeply was the
English people touched with sympathy for the young colony, that within a few months three editions were published of the glowing description of
New England by
Higginson.
For the concession of the
Massachusetts charter seemed to the Puritans like a summons from Heaven, inviting them to
America.
There they might profess the gospel in its spotless simplicity, and the solitudes of nature would protect their devotions.
England, by her persecutions, proved herself weary of her inhabitants, who were now esteemed more vile than the earth on which they trod.
Habits of expense degraded men of moderate fortune; and the schools, which should be fountains of living waters, had become corrupt.
The New World shared in the providence of God; it had claims, therefore, to the benevolence and exertions of man. What nobler work than to abandon the comforts of
England, and plant a church without a blemish where it might spread over a continent?
But was it right, a scrupulous conscience demanded, to fly from persecutions?
Yes, they answered, for
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persecutions might lead their posterity to abjure the
truth.
The certain misery of their wives and children was the most gloomy of their forebodings; but a stern sense of duty hushed the alarms of affection, and set aside all consideration of physical evils as the fears of too carnal minds.
Respect for the rights of the natives offered an impediment more easily removed; much of their land had been desolated by the plague, and their good leave might be purchased.
The ill success of other plantations could not chill the rising enthusiasm; former enterprises had aimed at profit; the present object was purity of religion; the earlier settlements had been filled with a lawless multitude; it was now proposed to form a ‘peculiar government,’ and to colonize ‘the best.’
Such were the ‘Conclusions’ which were privately circulated among the Puritans of
England.
At a general court, held on the twenty-eighth of July, 1629,
Matthew Cradock, governor of the company, who had engaged himself beyond all expectation in the business, following out what seems to have been the early design, proposed ‘the transfer of the government of the plantation to those that should inhabit there.’
At the offer of freedom from subordination to the company in
England, several ‘persons of worth and quality,’ wealthy commoners, zealous Puritans, were confirmed in the desire of founding a new and a better commonwealth beyond the
Atlantic, even though it might require the sale of their hereditary estates, and hazard the inheritance of their children.
To his father, who was the most earnest of them all, the younger
Winthrop, then about four and twenty, wrote cheeringly: ‘I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God, and enjoy the
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presence of my dearest friends.
Therefore herein I
submit myself to God's will and yours, and dedicate myself to God and the company, with the whole endeavors, both of body and mind.
The Conclusions which you sent down are unanswerable; and it cannot but be a prosperous action which is so well allowed by the judgments of God's prophets, undertaken by so religious and wise worthies in
Israel, and indented to God's glory in so special a service.’
On the twenty-sixth of August, at
Cambridge, in England, twelve men, of large fortunes and liberal culture, among whom were
John Winthrop,
Isaac Johnson,
Thomas Dudley,
Richard Saltonstall, bearing in mind that the adventure could grow only upon confidence in each other's fidelity and resolution, bound themselves in the presence of God, by the word of a Christian, that if, before the end of September, an order, of the court should legally transfer the whole government, together with the patent, they would themselves pass the seas to inhabit and continue in
New England. Two days after this covenant had been executed, the subject was again brought before the court; a serious and long continued debate ensued, and on the twenty-ninth of August a general consent appeared, by the erection of hands, that ‘the government and patent should be settled in
New England.’
This vote, by which the commercial corporation became the germ of an independent commonwealth, was simply a decision of the question, where the future meetings of the company should be held; it was sanctioned by the best legal advice; its lawfulness was at the time not questioned by the privy council, at a later day, was expressly affirmed by
Sawyer, the
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attorney-general; and, in 1677, the
chief-justices Rainsford and North still described the ‘charter as making the adventurers a corporation upon the place.’
Similar patents were granted by the Long Parliament and Charles II., to be executed in
Rhode Island and
Connecticut; and
Baltimore and
Penn had an undisputed right to reside on their domains.
The removal of the place of holding the courts from
London to the
Bay of
Massachusetts, changed nothing in the relations of the company to the crown, and it conferred no franchise or authority on emigrants who were not members of the company; it would give them a present government, but the corporate body and their successors, wherever they were to meet, retained the chartered right of making their own selection of the persons whom they would admit to the freedom of the company.
The conditions on which the privilege should be granted would control the political character of
Massachusetts.
At a very full general court, convened on the twentieth of October for the choice of new officers out of those who were to join the plantation,
John Winthrop, of
Groton in
Suffolk, of whom ‘extraordinary great commendations had been received both for his integrity and sufficiency, as being one altogether well fitted and accomplished for the place of governor,’ was by erection of hands elected to that office for one year from that day; and with him were joined a deputy and assistants, of whom nearly all proposed to go over.
The greatness of the business brought a necessity for a supply of money.
It was resolved, that the business should be proceeded in with its first intention, which was chiefly the glory of God, and to that purpose its meetings were sancby
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the prayers and guided by the advice of
Archer and
Nye, two faithful ministers in
London.
Of the old stock of the company, two thirds had been lost; the remainder, taken at its true value, with fresh sums adventured by those that pleased, formed a new stock, which was to be managed by ten undertakers, five chosen out of adventurers remaining in
England, and five out of the planters.
The undertakers, receiving privileges in the fur trade and in transportation, assumed all engagements and charges, and after seven years, were to divide the stock and profits; but their privileges were not asserted, and nine tenths of the capital were sunk in the expenses of the first year.
There was nothing to show for the adventure, but the commonwealth which it helped to found.
Of ships for transporting passengers
Cradock furnished two.
The large ship, the
Eagle, purchased by members of the company, took the name of
Arbella, from a sister of the
Earl of
Lincoln, wife to
Isaac Johnson, who was to go in it to the untried sorrows of the wilderness.
The corporation which had not many more than one hundred and ten members, could not meet the continual outlays for colonization; another common stock was, therefore, raised from such as bore good affection to the plantation, to defray public charges, such as maintenance of ministers, transportation of poor families, building of churches and fortifications.
To the various classes of contributors and emigrants, frugal grants of land promised some indemnity.
In this manner, by the enterprise of the ten undertakers, and other members of the company, especially of those who were ship-owners, by the contributions of Puritans in
England, but mainly by the resources of the emigrants themselves, there were employed during the season of 1630, seventeen vessels,
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which brought over not far from a thousand souls,
beside horses, kine, goats, and all that was most necessary for planting, fishing and shipbuilding.
As the hour of departure drew near, the hearts of some, even of the strong, began to fail.
On the eighteenth of March, it became necessary at
Southampton to elect three substitutes among the assistants; and of these three, one never came over.
Even after they had embarked, a court was held on board the
Arbella, and
Thomas Dudley was chosen deputy governor in the place of
Humphrey, who staid behind.
It was principally the calm decision of
Winthrop which sustained the courage of his companions.
In him a yielding gentleness of temper, and a never failing desire for unity and harmony, were secured against weakness by deep but tranquil enthusiasm.
His nature was touched by the sweetest sympathies of affection for wife, children, and associates; cheerful in serving others and suffering with them, liberal without repining, helpful without reproaching, in him God so exercised his grace, that he discerned his own image and resemblance in his fellow-man; and cared for his neighbor like himself.
He was of a sociable nature; so that ‘to love and be beloved was his soul's paradise,’ and works of mercy were the habit of his life.
Parting from affluence in
England, he unrepiningly went to meet impoverishment and premature age for the welfare of
Massachusetts.
His lenient benevolence tempered the bigotry of his companions, without impairing their resoluteness.
An honest royalist, averse to pure democracy, yet firm in his regard for existing popular liberties; in his native parish a conformist, yet wishing for ‘gospel purity;’ in
America mildly aristocratic, advocating a government of ‘the least part,’ yet desiring that part to be
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‘the wiser of the best;’ disinterested, brave, and con-
scientious—his character marks the transition of the reformation into virtual republicanism; when the sentiment of loyalty, which it was still intended to cherish, gradually yielded to the irresistible spirit of civil freedom.
England rung from side to side with the ‘general rumor of this solemn enterprise.’
On leaving the
Isle of Wight,
Winthrop and the chief of his fellow passengers on board the
Arbella, including the ministers, bade an affectionate farewell to the church and the land of their nativity.
‘
Reverend Fathers and Brethren,’ such was their address to all from whom they parted,
Howsoever your charitie may have met with discouragement through the misreport of our intentions, or the indiscretion of some amongst us, yet we desire you would be pleased to take notice, that the principals and body of our company esteem it our honour to call the church of England, from whence wee rise, our deare mother, and cannot part from our native countrie, where she specially resideth, without much sadnes of heart and many tears in our eyes; blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, and while we have breath, we shall syncerely indeavour the continuance and abundance of her welfare.
Be pleased, therefore, Reverend Fathers and Brethren, to helpe forward this worke now in hand; which, if it prosper, you shall bee the more glorious.
It is a usuall exercise of your charity, to recommend to the prayers of your congregations the straights of your neighbours: do theike for a church springing out of your owne bowels; pray without ceasing for us, who are a weake colony from yourselves.
What we intreat of you that are ministers of
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God, that we crave at the hands of all the rest of our brethren, that they would at no time forget us in their private solicitations at the Throne of Grace.
If any, through want of cleare intelligence of our course, or tenderness of affection towards us, cannot conceive so well of our way as we could desire, we would intreat such not to desert us in their prayers and to express their compassion towards us.
What goodness you shall extend to us, wee, your brethren in Christ Jesus, shall labour to repay; wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when wee shall be in our poore cottages in the wildernesse, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may not altogether unexpectedly, nor, we hope, unprofitably befall us.
About seven hundred persons, or more—most of them Puritans, inclining to the principles of the Independents; not conformists, but not separatists; many of them men of high endowments and large fortune; scholars, well versed in the learning of the times; clergymen who ranked among the best educated and most pious in the realm—embarked with
Winthrop in eleven ships, bearing with them the charter which was to be the warrant of their liberties.
The land was to be planted with a noble vine, wholly of the right seed.
The principal emigrants were a community of believers, professing themselves to be fellow-members of
Christ; not a school of philosophers proclaiming universal toleration and inviting associates without regard to creed.
They desired to be bound together in a most intimate and equal intercourse, for one and the same great end. They knew that they would be as a city set upon a hill, and that the eyes of all people were upon them.
Reverence for their
[
2]
faith led them to pass over the vast seas to the good
land of which they had purchased the exclusive possession, with a charter of which they had acquired the entire control, for the sake of reducing to practice the system of religion and the forms of civil liberty, which they cherished more than life itself.
They constituted a corporation to which they themselves might establish the terms of admission.
They kept firmly in their own hands the key to their asylum, and were resolved on closing its doors against the enemies of its unity, its safety, and its peace.
‘The worke wee have in hand’—these are
Winthrop's words on board the
Arbella during the Passage—‘is by a mutuall consent, through a speciall overruling
Providence, and a more than ordinary approbation of the churches of
Christ, to seeke out a place of cohabitation and consorteshipp under a due forme of government, both civill and ecclesiastical.
For this wee are entered into covenant with God; for this wee must be knitt together as one man, allways having before our eyes our commission as members of the same body.
Soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace.
The
Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his owne people; wee shall see much more of his wisdome, power, goodness, and truthe, than formerly wee have been acquainted with; Hee shall make us a prayse and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the
Lord make it likely that of
New England.”
’
After sixty one days at sea the
Arbella came in sight of
Mount Desert; on the tenth of June the
White Hills were descried afar off; near the
Isle of Shoals and
Cape Ann, the sea was enlivened by the shallops of fishermen; and on the twelfth, as the ship came to anchor outside of
Salem harbor, it was visited
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by
William Pierce, of the
Lyon, whose frequent voy-
ages had given him experience as a pilot on the coast.
Winthrop and his companions came full of hope; they found the colony in an ‘unexpected condition’ of distress.
Above eighty had died the winter before.
Higginson himself was wasting under a hectic fever; many others were weak and sick; all the corn and bread among them was hardly a fit supply for a fortnight.
The survivors of one hundred and eighty servants who had been sent over in the two years before at a great expense, instead of having prepared a welcome, thronged to the new comers to be fed; and were set free from all engagements, for their labor, great as was the demand for it, was worth less than their support.
Famine threatened to seize the emigrants as they stepped on shore; and it soon appeared necessary for them, even at a ruinous expense, to send the
Lyon to
Bristol for food.
To seek out a place for their plantation, since
Salem pleased them not,
Winthrop, on the seventeenth of June, sailed into
Boston harbor.
The
West countrymen, who, before leaving
England had organized their church with
Maverick and
Warham for ministers, and who in a few years were to take part in calling into being the commonwealth of
Connecticut, were found at
Nantasket, where they had landed just before the end of May.
Winthrop ascended the
Mystic a few miles, and on the nineteenth took back to
Salem a favorable report of the land on its banks.
Dudley and others who followed, preferred the country on the
Charles river at
Watertown.
By common consent, early in the next month the removal was made, with much cost and labor, from
Salem to
Charlestown.
But while drooping with toil and sorrow, fevers consequent on the long voyage and the,
[
2]
want of proper food and shelter, twelve ships having
arrived, the colonists kept the eighth of July as a day of thanksgiving.
The emigrants had intended to dwell together, but in their distress they planted where each was inclined.
A few remained at
Salem; others halted at the
Saugus, and founded
Lynn.
The governor was for the time at
Charlestown, where the poor ‘lay up and down in tents and booths round the
Hill.’
On the other side of the river, the little peninsula, scarce two miles long by one broad, marked by three hills, and blessed with sweet and pleasant springs, safe pastures and land that promised ‘rich cornfields and fruitful gardens,’ attracted among others
William Coddington of
Boston in
England, who, in friendly relations with
William Blackstone, built the fist good house there, even before it took the name which was to grow famous throughout the world.
Some planted on the
Mystic, in what is now
Malden.
Others, with
Sir Richard Saltonstall and
George Phillips, ‘a godly minister specially gifted, and very peaceful in his place,’ made their abode at
Watertown;
Pynchon and a few began
Roxbury;
Ludlow and
Rossiter, two of the assistants, with the men from the west of
England, after wavering in their choice, took possession of Dorchester Neck, now
South Boston.
The dispersion of the company was esteemed a grievance; but it was no time for crimination or debate, and those who had health made haste to build.
Winthrop himself ‘givinge good example to all the planters, wore plaine apparell, drank ordinarily water, and when he was not conversant about matters of justice, put his hand to labour with his servants.’
The enjoyment of the gospel as the dearest covenant that can be made between God and man was the chief object of the emigrants.
On Friday, the thirtieth
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of July, a fast was held at
Charlestown, and after
prayers and preaching,
Winthrop,
Dudley,
Isaac Johnson and
Wilson, united themselves by covenant into one ‘congregation,’ as a part of the visible church militant.
On the next
Lord's day others were received; and the members of this body could alone partake of the
Lord's Supper, or present their children for baptism.
They were all brothers and equals; they revered, each in himself, the dignity of God's image, and nursed a generous reverence for one another; bound to a healing superintendence over each other's lives, they exercised no discipline to remove evil out of the inmost soul, except the censure of the assembly of the faithful whom it would have been held grievous to offend.
This church, the seminal centre of the ecclesiastical system of
Massachusetts, was gathered while
Higginson was yet alive; on the sixth of August he gave up the ghost with joy, for the future greatness of
New England, and the coming glories of its many churches floated in cheerful visions before his eyes.
When on the twenty-third of August the first court of assistants on this side the water was held at
Charlestown, how the ministers should be maintained took precedence of all other business; and it was ordered that houses should be built for them, and support provided at the common charge.
Four days later the men ‘of the congregation’ kept a fast, and after their own free choice of
John Wilson for their pastor, they themselves set him apart to his office by the imposition of hands, yet without his renouncing his ministry received in
England.
In like manner the ruling elder and deacons were chosen and installed.
Thus was constituted the body, which, crossing the
Charles River, became known as the first church of
Boston.
It embodied
[
2]
the three great principles of congregationalism; a
right faith attended by a true religious experience as the requisite qualifications for membership; the equality of all believers, including the officers of the church; the equality of the several churches, free from the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical court or bishop, free from the jurisdiction of one church over another, free from the collective authority of them all.
Meantime the civil government was exercised with mildness and impartiality, yet with determined vigor.
Justices of the peace were commissioned with the powers of those in
England.
On the seventh of Sep. tember, names were given to
Dorchester,
Watertown, and
Boston, which thus began their career as towns under sanction of law. Quotas were settled and money levied.
The interloper who dared to ‘confront’ the public authority was sent to
England; or enjoined to depart out of the limits of the patent.
As the year for which
Winthrop and the assistants had been chosen was coming to an end, on the nineteenth of October, a general court, the first in
America, was held at
Boston.
Of members of the company, less than twenty had come over.
One hundred and eight inhabitants, some of whom were old planters, were now, at their desire, admitted to be freemen.
The former officers of government were continued: as a rule for the future, ‘it was propounded to the people, and assented unto by the erection of hands, that the freemen should have power to choose assistants, when any were to be chosen; the assistants to choose from among themselves the governor and his deputy.’
The rule implied a strong reluctance to leave out of the board any person once elected magistrate; and perhaps also revealed a natural anxiety respecting the effect of the large creation of
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freemen which had just been made, and by which
the old members of the company had abdicated their controlling power in the court; but as it was in conflict with the charter, it could have no permanence.
During these events, sickness delayed the progress of the settlements, and death often withdrew the laborer from the fruit of his exertions.
Every hardship was encountered.
The emigrants, miserably lodged, beheld their friends ‘weekly, yea, almost daily, drop away before their eyes;’ in a country abounding in secret fountains they had pined for the want of good water.
Many of them had been accustomed to plenty and ease, the refinements and the conveniencies of luxury.
Woman was there to struggle against unforeseen hardships, unwonted sorrows; the men, who defied trials for themselves, were miserable at beholding those whom they cherished dismayed by the horrors which encompassed them.
The virtues of the
lady Arbella Johnson could not break through the gloom; and as she had been ill before her arrival, grief hurried her to the grave.
Her husband, a wise and holy man, in life ‘the greatest furtherer of the plantation,’ and by his bequests a large benefactor of the infant state, sank under disease and afflictions; but ‘he died willingly and in sweet peace,’ making a ‘most godly end.’
Winthrop lost a son, who left a widow and children in
England.
A hundred or more, some of them of the board of assistants, men who had been trusted as the inseparable companions of the common misery or the common success, disheartened by the scenes of woe, and dreading famine and death, deserted
Massachusetts, and sailed for
England; while
Winthrop remained, ‘parent-like, to distribute his goods to brethren and neighbors.’
Before December, two hundred, at the least, had died.
Yet, as the
[
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brightest lightnings are kindled in the darkest clouds,
the general distress did but augment the piety and confirm the fortitude of the colonists.
Their earnestness was softened by the mildest sympathy; while trust in
Providence kept guard against weakness and despair.
Not a trace of repining appears in their records; the congregations always assembled at the stated times, whether in the open fields or under the shade of an ancient oak; in the midst of want they abounded in hope; in the solitudes of the wilderness they believed themselves watched over by an Omnipresent Father.
Honor is due not less to those who perished than to those who survived: to the martyrs the hour of death was an hour of triumph; such as is never witnessed in more tranquil seasons.
For that placid resignation, which diffuses grace round the bed of sickness, and makes death too serene for sorrow and too beautiful for fear, no one was more remarkable than the daughter of
Thomas Sharpe, whose youth, and sex, and unequalled virtues, won the eulogies of the austere
Dudley.
Even children caught the spirit of the place; awaited the impending change in the tranquil confidence of faith, and went to the grave full of immortality.
The survivors bore all things meekly, ‘remembering the end of their coming hither.’
‘We here enjoy God and
Jesus Christ,’ wrote
Winthrop to his wife, whom pregnancy had detained in
England, ‘and is not this enough?
I thank God I like so well to be here, as I do not repent my coming.
I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions.
I never had more content of mind.’
Such were the scenes in the infant settlements of
Massachusetts. The supply of bread was nearly exhausted, when on the fifth of February, after a long
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and stormy passage, the timely arrival of the
Lyon from
Bristol laden with provisions, caused public thanksgiving through all the plantations.
Yet the ship brought but twenty passengers; and quenched all hope of immediate accessions.
In 1631 ninety only came over, fewer than had gone back the preceding year; in 1632 no more than two hundred and fifty arrived.
Men waited to learn the success of the early adventurers.
Those who had deserted excused their cowardice by defaming the country; and, moreover, illwillers to
New England, were already railing against its people as separatists from the established church, and traitors to the king.
The little colony, now counting not many more than one thousand souls, while it developed its principles with unflinching courage, desired to avoid giving scandal to the civil and ecclesiastical government in
England.
Wilson was on the point of returning to bring over his wife; his church stood in special need of a teacher in his absence, and a young minister ‘lovely in his carriage,’ ‘godly and zealous, having precious gifts,’ opportunely arrived in the
Lyon.
It was
Roger Williams.
‘From his childhood the
Father of lights and mercies touched his soul with a love to Himself, to his only-begotten.
Son, the true Lord Jesus, and his holy Scriptures.’
In the forming period of his life he had been employed by
Sir Edward Coke, and his natural inclination to study and activity was spurred on by the instruction and encouragement of the statesman, who was then ‘in his intrepid and patriotic old age, the strenuous asserter of liberty on the principles of ancient laws,’ and by his writings, speeches and example, lighted the zealous enthusiast on his way. Through the affection of the great lawyer, who called him endearingly
[
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his son, ‘the youth,’ in whom all saw good hope,
was sent to the
Charter House in 1621, and passed with honor from that school to Pembroke College, in
Cambridge, where he took a degree; but his clear mind went far beyond his patron in his persuasions against bishops, ceremonies, and the national church; and he was pursued by
Laud out of his native land.
He was not much more than thirty years of age; but his mind had already matured a doctrine which secures him an immortality of fame, as its application has given religious peace to the
American world.
A fugitive from English persecution, he had revolved the nature of intolerance, and had arrived at its only effectual remedy, the sanctity of conscience.
In soul matters he would have no weapons but soul weapons.
The
civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate inward freedom.
The doctrine contained within itself an entire reformation of theological jurisprudence: it would blot from the statute-book the felony of non-conformity; would quench the fires that persecution had so long kept burning; would repeal every law compelling attendance on public worship; would abolish tithes and all forced contributions to the maintenance of religion; would give an equal protection to every form of religious faith; and never suffer the force of the government to be employed against the dissenters' meeting-house, the Jewish synagogue, or the
Roman cathedral.
In the unwavering assertion of his views he never changed his position; the sanctity of conscience was the great tenet, which, with all its consequences, he defended, as he first trod the shores of
New England; and in his extreme old age it was the last pulsation of his heart.
The doctrine was a logical consequence of either of the two
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great distinguishing principles of the reformation, as
well of justification by faith alone, as of the equality of all believers; and it was sure to be one day ac-1631.
cepted by the whole Protestant world.
But it placed the young emigrant in direct opposition to the system of the founders of
Massachusetts, who were bent on making the state a united body of believers.
On landing in
Boston,
Roger Williams found himself unable to join its church.
He had separated from the establishment in
England, which wronged conscience by disregarding its scruples; they were ‘an unseparated people,’ who refused to renounce communion with their persecutors; he would not suffer the magistrate to assume jurisdiction over the soul by punishing what was no more than a breach of the first table, an error of conscience or belief; they were willing to put the whole decalogue under the guardianship of the civil authority.
The thought of employing him as a minister was therefore abandoned, and the church of
Boston was, in
Wilson's absence, commended to ‘the exercise of prophecy.’
The death of
Higginson had left
Salem in want of a teacher; and in April it called
Williams to that office.
Winthrop and the assistants ‘marvelled’ at the precipitate choice; and by a letter to
Endicott, they desired the church to forbear.
The warning was heeded, and
Roger Williams quietly withdrew to
Plymouth.
The government was still more careful to protect the privileges of the colony against ‘episcopal and malignant practices,’ of which a warning had been received from
England.
For that purpose, at the general court convened in May, after ‘the corn was set,’ an oath of fidelity was offered to the freemen, binding them “to be obedient and conformable to the
[
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laws and constitutions of this commonwealth, to ad-
vance its peace, and not to suffer any attempt at making any change or alteration of the government contrary to its laws.”
One hundred and eighteen of ‘the commonalty’ took this oath; the few who refused were never ‘betrusted with any public charge or command.’
The old officers were again continued in office without change, but ‘the commons’ asserted their right of annually adding or removing members from the bench of magistrates.
And a law of still greater moment, pregnant with evil and with good, at the same time narrowed the elective franchise: ‘To the end this body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and agreed, that, for the time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same.’
Thus the polity became a theocracy; God himself was to govern his people; and the ‘saints by calling,’ whose names an immutable decree had registered from eternity as the objects of divine love, whose election had been visibly manifested by their conscious experience of religion in the heart, whose union was confirmed by the most solemn compact formed with Heaven and one another around the memorials of a crucified Redeemer, were, by the fundamental law of the colony, constituted the oracle of the divine will.
An aristocracy was founded—not of wealth, but of those who had been ransomed at too high a price to be ruled by polluting passions, and had received the seal of divinity in proof of their fitness to do ‘the noblest and godliest deeds.’
The servant, the bondman, might be a member of the church, and therefore a freeman of the company.
Other states have limited the possession of political rights to the opulent, to freeholders, to the firstborn;
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the Calvinists of
Massachusetts, scrupulously re-
fusing to the clergy the least shadow of political power, established the reign of the visible church—a commonwealth of the chosen people in covenant with God.
The dangers apprehended from
England seemed to require a union consecrated by the holiest rites.
The public mind of the colony was in other respects ripening for democratic liberty.
It could not rest satisfied with leaving the assistants in possession of all authority, and of an almost independent existence; and the magistrates, with the exception of the passionate
Ludlow, were willing to yield.
It was therefore agreed, at the next general court, that the governor and assist-
ants should be annually chosen.
The people, satisfied with the recognition of their right, reelected their former magistrates with silence and modesty.
The germ of a representative government was already visible; each town was ordered to choose two men, to appear at the next court of assistants, and concert a plan for a public treasury.
The measure had become necessary; for a levy, made by the assistants alone, had already awakened alarm and opposition.
While a happy destiny was thus preparing for
Massachusetts a representative government, relations of friendship were established with the natives.
From the banks of the
Connecticut came the sagamore of
the Mohegans, to extol the fertility of his country, and solicit an English plantation as a bulwark against the Pequods; the nearer
Nipmucks invoked the aid of the emigrants against the tyranny of the Mohawks; the
son of the aged
Canonicus exchanged presents with
the governor; and
Miantonomoh himself, the great warrior of the Narragansetts, the youthful colleague
of
Canonicus, became a guest at the board of
Winthrop, and was present with the congregation at a
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sermon from
Wilson.
At last a Pequod sachem, with
great store of wampumpeag, and bundles of sticks in promise of so many beaver and otter skins, also came to solicit the
English alliance and mediation.
Intercourse was also cherished with the earlier
European settlements.
To perfect friendship with the pilgrims, the governor of
Massachusetts, with
Wilson, pastor of
Boston, repaired to
Plymouth.
From the south shore of
Boston harbor, it was a day's journey, for they travelled on foot.
In honor of the great event,
Bradford and
Brewster, the governor and elder of the Old Colony, came forth to meet them, and conduct them to the town, where they were kindly entertained and feasted.
‘On the
Lord's day, they did
partake of the sacrament;’ in the afternoon, a question was propounded for discussion; the pastor spoke briefly; the teacher prophesied; the governor of
Plymouth, the elder, and others of the congregation, took part in the debate, which, by express desire, was closed by the guests from
Boston.
Thus was fellowship confirmed with
Plymouth.
From the
Chesapeake a rich freight of corn had already been received, and trade was begun with the
Dutch at Hudson's River.
These better auspices, and the invitations of Win throp, won new emigrants from
Europe.
During the
long summer voyage of the two hundred passengers, who freighted the
Griffin, three sermons a day beguiled their weariness.
Among them was
Haynes, a man of very large estate, and larger affections; of a ‘heavenly’ mind, and a spotless life; of rare sagacity, and accurate but unassuming judgment; by nature tolerant, ever a friend to freedom, ever conciliating peace; an able legislator; dear to the people by his benevolent virtues and his disinterested conduct.
Then also came the most revered spiritual teachers of two commonwealths—the
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acute and subtile Cotton, the son of a
Puritan lawyer; eminent at
Cambridge as a scholar; quick in the nice perception of distinctions, and pliant in dialectics; in manner persuasive rather than commanding; skilled in the fathers and the schoolmen, but finding all their wisdom compactly stored in
Calvin; deeply devout by nature as well as habit from childhood; hating heresy and still precipitately eager to prevent evil actions by suppressing ill opinions, yet verging towards a progress in truth and in religious freedom; an avowed enemy to democracy, which he feared as the blind despotism of animal instincts in the multitude, yet opposing hereditary power in all its forms; desiring a government of moral opinion, according to the laws of universal equity, and claiming ‘the ultimate resolution for the whole body of the people:’—and
Hooker, of vast endowments, a strong will, and an energetic mind; ingenuous in his temper, and open in his professions; trained to benevolence by the discipline of affliction; versed in tolerance by his refuge in
Holland; choleric, yet gentle in his affections; firm in his faith, yet readily yielding to the power of reason; the peer of the reformers, without their harshness; the devoted apostle to the humble and the poor, severe towards the proud, mild in his soothings of a wounded spirit, glowing with the raptures of devotion, and kindling with the messages of redeeming love; his eye, voice, gesture, and whole frame animate with the living vigor of heart-felt religion; pulicspirited and lavishly charitable; and, ‘though persecu tions and banishments had awaited him as one wave follows another,’ ever serenely blessed with ‘a glorious peace of soul;’ fixed in his trust in
Providence, and in his adhesion to that cause of advancing civilization, which he cherished always, even while it remained to
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him a mystery.
This was he, whom, for his abilities
and services, his contemporaries placed ‘in the first rank’ of men; praising him as ‘the one rich pearl, with which
Europe more than repaid America for the treasures from her coast.’
The people to whom
Hooker ministered had preceded him; as he landed, they crowded about him with their welcome.
‘Now I live’
—exclaimed he, as with open arms he embraced then —‘now
I live, if ye stand fast in the
Lord.’
Thus recruited, the little band in
Massachusetts grew more jealous of its liberties.
‘The prophets in exile see the true forms of the house.’
By a common impulse, the freemen of the towns chose deputies to consider in advance the duties of the general court.
The charter plainly gave legislative power to the whole body of the freemen; if it allowed representatives, thought
Winthrop, it was only by inference; and as the whole people could not always assemble, the chief power, it was argued, lay necessarily with the assistants.
Far different was the reasoning of the people.
To check the democratic tendency, Cotton, on the election
day, preached to the assembled freemen against rotation in office.
The right of an honest magistrate to his place was like that of a proprietor to his freehold.
But the electors, now between three and four hundred in number, were bent on exercising ‘their absolute power,’ and, reversing the decision of the pulpit, chose a new governor and deputy.
The mode of taking the votes was at the same time reformed; and instead of the erection of hands, the ballot-box was introduced Thus ‘the people established a reformation of such things as they judged to be amiss in the government.’
It was further decreed, that the whole body of the freemen should be convened only for the election of the magistrates; to these, with deputies to be chosen by
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the several towns, the powers of legislation and ap-
pointment were henceforward intrusted.
The trading corporation was unconsciously become a representative democracy.
The law against arbitrary taxation followed.
None but the immediate representatives of the people might dispose of lands or raise money.
Thus early did
Massachusetts echo the voice of
Virginia; like the mountain replying to the thunder, or like deep calling unto deep.
The state was filled with the hum of village politicians; ‘the freemen of every town in the
Bay were busy in inquiring into their liberties and privileges.’
With the exception of the principle of universal suffrage, now so happily established, the representative democracy was as perfect two centuries ago as it is to-day.
Even the magistrates, who acted as judges, held their office by the annual popular choice.
‘Elections cannot be safe there long,’ said the lawyer
Lechford.
The same prediction has been made these two hundred years. The public mind, ever in perpetual agitation, is still easily shaken, even by slight and transient impulses; but after all its vibrations, it follows the laws of the moral world, and safely recovers its balance.
To limit the discretion of the executive, the people next demanded a written constitution; and a commis-
sion was appointed ‘to frame a body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a
magna charta,’ to serve as a
bill of rights.
The ministers, as well as the general court, were to pass judgment on the work; and, with partial success, Cotton urged that God's people should be governed by the laws from God to
Moses.
The relative powers of the assistants and the depu-
ties remained for nearly ten ears the subject of discussion and contest.
Both were elected by the people; the former by the whole colony, the latter by the several
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towns.
The two bodies acted together in conven-
tion; but the assistants claimed and exercised the further right of a separate negative vote on all joint proceedings.
The popular branch resisted; yet the authority of the patricians was long maintained sometimes by wise delay, sometimes by ‘a judicious sermon;’ till, at last, a compromise divided the court into two branches,
and gave to each a negative on the other.
The controversy had required the arbitrament of the elders; for the rock on which the state rested was religion; a common faith had gathered, and still bound the people together.
They were exclusive, for they had come to the outside of the world for the privilege of living by themselves.
Fugitives from persecution, they shrank from contradiction as from the approach of peril.
And why should they open their asylum to their oppressors?
Religious union was made the bulwark of the exiles against expected attacks from the hierarchy of
England.
The wide continent of
America invited colonization; they claimed their own narrow domains for ‘the brethren.’
Their religion was then life; they welcomed none but its adherents; they could not tolerate the scoffer, the infidel, or the dissenter; and the whole people met together in their congregations.
Such was the system, cherished as the strong-hold of their freedom and their happiness.
‘The order of the churches and the commonwealth,’ wrote Cotton to friends in
Holland, ‘is now so settled in
New England by common consent, that it brings to mind the new heaven and new earth wherein dwells righteousness.’
While the state was thus connecting by the closes: bonds the energy of its faith with its form of govern
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ment,
Roger Williams, after remain two years or a
little more in
Plymouth, accepted a second invitation to
Salem.
The ministers in the
Bay and of
Lynn used to meet once a fortnight at each other's houses, to debate some question of moment; at this, in November, 1633,
Skelton and
Williams took some exception, for fear the custom might grow into a presbytery or a superintendency, to the prejudice of the church's liberties; but such a purpose was disclaimed, and all were clear that no church or person can have power over another church.
Not long afterwards, in January, 1634, complaints were made against Wil-
liams for a paper which he had written at
Plymouth, to prove that a grant of land in
New England from an English king, could not be perfect, except the grantees ‘compounded with the natives.’
The opinion sounded like treason against the charter of the colony;
Williams was willing that the offensive manuscript should be burned; and so explained its purport, that the court applauded his temper, and declared ‘that the matters were not so evil as at first they seemed.’
Yet his gentleness and forbearance did not allay a jealousy, which rested on his radical opposition to the established system of theocracy, which he condemned, because it plucked up the roots of civil society and brought all the strifes of the state into the garden and paradise of the church.
The government avoided an explicit rupture with the church of England;
Williams would hold no communion with it on account of its intolerance; ‘for,’ said he, “the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of
Christ Jesus.
The magistrates insisted on the presence of every man at public worship;
Williams reprobated the law; the worst statute in the
English code was that which did but enforce attendance upon the parish church.
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To compel men to unite with those of a different
creed, he regarded as an open violation of their natural rights; to drag to public worship the irreligiots and the unwilling, seemed only like requiring hypocrisy.
‘An unbelieving soul is dead in sin’—such was his argument;–and to force the indifferent from one worship to another, ‘was like shifting a dead man into several changes of apparell.’
‘No one should be bound to worship, or,’ he added, ‘to maintain a worship, against his own consent.’
‘What!’
exclaimed his antagonists, amazed at his tenets; ‘is not the laborer worthy of his hire?’
‘Yes,’ replied he from them that hire him.”
The magistrates were selected exclusively from the members of the church; with equal propriety, reasoned
Williams, might ‘a doctor of physick or a pilot’ be selected according to his skill in theology and his standing in the church.
It was objected to him, that his principles subverted all good government.
The commander of the vessel of state, replied
Williams, may maintain order on board the ship, and see that it pursues its course steadily, even though the dissenters of the crew are not compelled to attend the public prayers of their companions.
But the controversy finally turned on the question of the rights and duty of magistrates to guard the minds of the people against corruption, and to punish what would seem to them error and heresy.
Magistrates,
Williams protested are but the agents of the people, or its trustees, on whom no spiritual power in matters of worship can ever be conferred; since conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic; and with admirable dialectics
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clothing the great truth in its boldest and most general
terms, he asserted that ‘the civil magistrate may not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostacy and heresy,’ ‘that his power extends only to the bodies and goods and outward estate of men.’
24 With corresponding distinctness he foresaw the influence of his principles on society.
The removal of the yoke of soul-oppression, ‘—to use the words in which, at a later ay, he confirmed his early view,’—‘as it will prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so it is of binding force to engage the whole and every interest and conscience to preserve the common liberty and peace.’
25
The same magistrates who punished
Eliot, the
apostle of the
Indian race, for censuring their measures, could not brook the independence of
Williams; and the circumstances of the times seemed to them to justify their apprehensions.
An intense jealousy was excited in
England against
Massachusetts; ‘members
of the
Generall Court received intelligence of some episcopal and malignant practises against the country;’ and the magistrates on the one hand were scrupulously careful to avoid all unnecessary offence to the
English government, on the other were sternly consolidating their own institutions, and even preparing for resistance.
It was in this view that the
Freeman's Oath was appointed; by which every freeman was obliged to pledge his allegiance, not to King Charles, but to
Massachusetts.
There was room for scruples on
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the subject; and an English lawyer would have ques-
tioned the legality of the measure.
The liberty of conscience for which
Williams contended denied the right of a compulsory imposition of an oath:
26 when he
was summoned before the court, he could not renounce his belief; and his influence was such that the government was forced to desist from that proceeding.
To the magistrates he seemed the a ly of a civil faction; to himself he appeared only to make a frank avowal of the truth.
In all his intercourse with the tribunals, he spoke with the distinctness of settled convictions.
He was fond of discussion; but he was never betrayed into angry remonstrance.
If he was charged with pride, it was only for the novelty of his opinions.
The scholar who is accustomed to the pursuits of abstract philosophy, lives in a region of thought far different from that by which he is surrounded.
The range of his understanding is remote from the paths of common minds, and he is often the victim of the contrast.
It is not unusual for the world to reject the voice of truth, because its tones are strange; to declare doctrines unsound, only because they are new; and even to charge obliquity or derangement on the man who brings forward principles which the selfish repudiate.
Such has ever been the way of the world; and
Socrates, and
St. Paul, and Luther, and others of the most acute dialecticians, have been ridiculed as drivellers and madmen.
The extraordinary development of one faculty may sometimes injure the balance of the mind; just as the constant exercise of one member of the body injures the beauty of its proportions;
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or as the exclusive devotedness to one pursuit,
politics for instance, or money, brushes away from conduct and character the agreeable varieties of light and shade.
It is a very ancient remark, that folly has its corner in the brain of every wise man; and certain It is, that not the poets only, like
Tasso, but the clearest minds,
Sir Isaac Newton, Pascal,
Spinoza, have been deeply tinged with insanity.
Perhaps
Williams pursued his sublime principles with too scrupulous minuteness; it was at least natural for
Bradford and his contemporaries, while they acknowledged his power as a preacher, to esteem him ‘unsettled in judgment.’
The court at
Boston remained as yet undecided; when the church of
Salem,—those who were best acquainted with
Williams,—taking no notice of the recent investigations, elected him to the office of their teacher.
Immediately the evils inseparable on a religious establishment began to be displayed.
The ministers got together and declared any one worthy of banishment, who should obstinately assert, that ‘the
civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy;’ the magistrates delayed action, only that a committee of divines might have time to repair to
Salem and deal with him and with
the church in a church way. Meantime, the people of
Salem were blamed for their choice of a religious guide; and a tract of land, to which they had a claim, was withheld from them as a punishment.
The breach was therefore widened.
To the
ministers Williams frankly, but temperately, explained his doctrines; and he was armed at all points for their defence.
As his townsmen had lost their lands in consequence of their attachment to him, it would have been cowardice on his part to have abandoned them;
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and the instinct of liberty led him again to the sugges-
tion of a proper remedy.
In conjunction with the church, he wrote ‘letters of admonition unto all the churches whereof any of the magistrates were members, that they might admonish the magistrates of their injustice.’
The church members alone were freemnen;
Williams, in modern language, appealed to the people, and invited them to instruct their representatives to do Justice to the citizens of
Salem.
This last act seemed flagrant treason;
27 and at the next general court,
Salem was disfranchised till an ample apology for the letter should be made.
The town acquiesced in its wrongs, and submitted; not an individual remained willing to justify the letter of remonstrance; the church of
Williams would not avow his great principle of the sanctity of conscience; even his wife, under a delusive idea of duty, was for a season influenced to disturb the tranquillity of his home by her reproaches.
28 Williams was left alone, absolutely alone.
Anticipating the censures of the colonial churches, he declared himself no longer subjected to their spiritual jurisdiction.
‘My own voluntary withdrawing from all these churches, resolved to continue in persecuting the witnesses of the
Lord, presenting light unto them, I confess it was mine own voluntary act; yea, I hope the act of the
Lord Jesus, sounding forth in me the blast, which shall in his own holy season cast down the strength and confidence of those inventions of men.’
29 When summoned to ap-
pear before the general court, he avowed his conviction in the presence of the representatives of the state.
‘maintained the rocky strength of his grounds,’ and
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declared himself ‘ready to be bound and banished and
even to die in
New England,’ rather than renounce the opinions which had dawned upon his mind in the clearness of light.
At a time when
Germany was the battle-field for all
Europe in the implacable wars of religion; when even
Holland was bleeding with the anger of vengeful factions; when
France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry; when
England was gasping under the despotism of intolerance almost half a century before
William Penn became an American proprietary; and two years before
Descartes founded modern philosophy on the method of free reflection,—
Roger Williams asserted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty.
It became his glory to found a state upon that principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising institutions, in characters so deep that the impress has remained to the present day, and, can never be erased without the total destruction of the work.
The principles which he first sustained amidst the bickerings of a colonial parish, next asserted in the general court of
Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds on
Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to the world, and to defend as the
basis of the religious freedom of mankind; so that, borrowing the rhetoric employed by his antagonist in derision, we may compare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peaceful summer, that, ‘affecting to soar aloft, springs upward from the ground, takes his rise from pale to tree,’ and at last, surmounting the highest hills, utters his clear carols through the skies of morning
30 He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of
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conscience, the equality of opinions before the law
and in its defence he was the harbinger of
Milton, the precursor and the superior of
Jeremy Taylor.
For taylor Limited his toleration to a few Christian sects; the philanthropy of
Williams compassed the earth:
Taylor favored partial reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a special plea in behalf of each tolerable sect;
Williams would permit persecution of no opinion, of no religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes.
Taylor still clung to the necessity of positive regulations enforcing religion and eradicating error; he resembled the poets, who, in their folly, first declare their hero to be invulnerable, and then clothe him in earthly armor:
Williams was willing to leave Truth alone, in her own panoply of light,
31 believing that if, in the ancient feud between Truth and Error, the employment of force could be entirely abrogated, Truth would have much the best of the bargain.
It is the custom of mankind to award high honors to the successful inquirer into the laws of nature, to those who advance the bounds of human knowledge.
We praise the man who first analyzed the air, or resolved water into its elements, or drew the lightning from the clouds; even though the discoveries may have been as much the fruits of time as of genius.
A moral principle has a much wider and nearer influence on human happiness; nor can any discovery of truth be of more direct benefit to society, than that which establishes a perpetual religious peace, and spreads tranquillity through every community and every bosom.
If Copernicus is held in perpetual reverence, because, on his death-bed, he published to the world that the
[
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sun is the centre of our system; if the name of
Kepler is preserved in the annals of human excellence for his sagacity in detecting the laws ofthe planetary motion; if the genius of
Newton has been almost adored for dissecting a ray of light, and weighing heavenly bodies as in a balance,—let there be for the name of
Roger Williams at least some humble place among those who have advanced moral science, and made themselves the benefactors of mankind.
But if the opinion of posterity is no longer divided,
the members of the general court of that day pronounced against him the sentence of exile;
32 yet not by a very numerous majority.
Some, who consented to his banishment, would never have yielded but for the persuasions of Cotton; and the judgment was vindicated, not as a punishment for opinion, or as a restraint on freedom of conscience, but because the application of the new doctrine to the construction of the patent, to the discipline of the churches, and to the ‘oaths for making tryall of the fidelity of the people,’ seemed about ‘to subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.’
Winter was at hand;
Williams succeeded in obtaining permission to remain till spring; intending then to begin a plantation in
Narragansett Bay.
But the affections of the people of
Salem revived, and could not be restrained; they thronged to his house to hear him whom they were so soon to lose forever; it began to be rumored, that he could not safely be allowed to found a new state in the vicinity; ‘many of tile people were much taken with the apprehension of his godliness;’ his opinions were contagious; the
[
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infection spread widely.
It was therefore resolved to
remove him to
England in a ship that was just ready to set sail.
A warrant was accordingly sent to him to come to
Boston and embark.
For the first time, he declined the summons of the court.
A pinnace was sent for him; the officers repaired to his house; he was no longer there.
Three days before, he had left
Salem, in winter snow and inclement weather, of which he remembered the severity even in his late old age. ‘For fourteen weeks, he was sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.’
33 Often in the stormy night he had neither fire, nor food, nor company; often he wandered with.
out a guide, and had no house but a hollow tree.
34 But he was not without friends.
The same scrupulous respect for the rights of others, which had led him to defend the freedom of conscience, had made him also the champion of the Indians.
He had already been zealous to acquire their language, and knew it so well that he could debate with them in their own dialect During his residence at
Plymouth, he had often been the guest of the neighboring sachems; and now, when he came in winter to the cabin of the chief of Pokanoket, he was welcomed by
Massasoit; and ‘the barbarous heart of
Canonicus, the chief of the Narragansetts, loved him as his son to the last gasp.’
‘The ravens,’ he relates with gratitude, ‘fed me in the wilderness.’
And in requital for their hospitality, he was ever through his long life their friend and benefactor; the apostle of Christianity to them without hire, without weariness, and without impatience at their idolatry; the guardian of their rights; the pacificator,
[
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when their rude passions were inflamed; and
their unflinching advocate and protector, whenever Europeans attempted an invasion of their soil.
He first pitched and began to build and plant at
Seekonk.
But
Seekonk was found to be within the patent of
Plymouth; on the other side of the water, the country opened in its unappropriated beauty and there he might hope to establish a community as free as the other colonies.
‘That ever-honored
Governor Winthrop,’ says
Williams, ‘privately wrote to me to steer my course to the
Narragansett Bay, encouraging me from the freeness of the place from English claims or patents.
I took his prudent motion as a voice from God.’
It was in June that the lawgiver of
Rhode Island, with five companions, embarked on the stream; a frail Indian canoe contained the founder of an independent state and its earliest citizens.
Tradition has marked the spring near which they landed; it is the parent spot, the first inhabited nook of
Rhode Island.
To express his unbroken confidence in the mercies of God,
Williams called the place
Providence.
‘I desired,’ said he, ‘it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience.’
35
In his new abode,
Williams could have less leisure for contemplation and study.
‘My time,’ he observes of himself,—and it is a sufficient apology for the roughness of his style, as a writer on morals,—‘was not spent altogether in spiritual labors; but, day and night, at home and abroad, on the land and water, at the hoe, at the oar, for bread.’
36 In the course of two
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years, he was joined by others, who fled to his asylum.
The land which was now occupied by
Williams, was within the territory of the
Narragansett Indians; it was not long before an Indian deed from
Canonicus and
Miantonomoh37 made him the undisputed possessor of an extensive domain.
Nothing displays more clearly the character of
Roger Williams than the use which he made of his acquisition, of territory.
The soil he could claim as his ‘own, as truly as any man's coat upon his back;’
38 and he ‘reserved to himself not one foot of land, not one title of political power, more than he granted to servants and strangers.’
‘He gave away his lands and other estate to them that he thought were most in want, until he gave away all.’
39 He chose to found a commonwealth in the unmixed forms of a pure democracy; where the will of the majority should govern the state; yet ‘only in civil things;’ God alone was respected as the Ruler of conscience.
To their more aristocratic neighbors, it seemed as if these fugitives ‘would have no magistrates’
40 for every thing was as yet decided in convention of the people.
This first system has had its influence on the whole political history of
Rhode Island; in no state in the world, not even in the agricultural
state of Vermont, has the magistracy so little power, or the representatives of the freemen so much.
The annals of
Rhode Island, if written in the spirit of philosophy, would exhibit the forms of society under a peculiar aspect: had the territory of the state corresponded to the importance and singularity of the principles of its early existence, the world would have
[
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been filled with wonder at the phenomena of its
history.
The most touching trait in the founder of
Rhode Island was his conduct towards his persecutors.
Though keenly sensitive to the hardships which he had endured, he was far from harboring feelings of revenge towards those who banished him, and only regretted their delusion.
‘I did ever, from my soul, honor and love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me.’
41 In all his writings on the subject, he attacked the spirit of intolerance, the doctrine of persecution, and never his persecutors or the colony of
Massachusetts.
Indeed, we shall presently behold him requite their severity by exposing his life at their request and for their benefit.
It is not strange, then, if ‘many hearts were touched with relentings.
That great and pious soul,
Mr. Winslow, melted, and kindly visited me,’ says the exile, ‘and put a piece of gold into the hands of my wife, for our supply;’
42 the founder, the legislator, the proprietor of
Rhode Island, owed a shelter to the hospitality of an Indian chief, and his wife the means of sustenance to the charity of a stranger.
The half-wise Cotton
Mather concedes, that many judicious persons confessed him to have had the root of the matter in him; and his nearer friends, the immediate witnesses of his actions, declared him, from ‘the whole course and tenor of his life and conduct, to have been one of the most disinterested men that ever lived, a most pious and heavenly-minded soul.’
43
Thus was
Rhode Island the offspring of
Massachusetts; but her political connections were long influenced by the circumstance of her origin.
The loss of the
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few emigrants who resorted to the new state, was
not sensibly felt in the parent colony; for the
Bay of
Massachusetts was already thronged with squadrons.
The emigrants had from the first been watched in the mother country with intense interest; a letter from
New England was venerated ‘as a sacred script, or as the writing of some holy prophets, and was carried many miles, where divers came to hear it.’
44 When the first difficulties had been surmounted, the stream of emigration flowed with a full current; ‘Godly people in
England began to apprehend a special hand of
Providence in raising this plantation, and their hearts
were generally stirred to come over.’
New settlements were, therefore, formed.
A little band, toiling
through thickets of ragged bushes, and clambering over crossed trees, made its way along Indian paths to the green meadows of
Concord.
The suffering settlers burrowed for their first shelter under a hill-side.
Tearing up roots and bushes from the ground, they subdued the stubborn soil with the hoe, glad to gain even a lean crop from the wearisome and imperfect culture.
The cattle sickened on the wild fodder: sheep and swine were destroyed by wolves; there was no flesh but game.
The long rains poured through the insufficient roofs of their smoky cottages, and troubled even the time for sleep.
Yet the men labored willingly, for they had their wives and little ones about them.
The forest rung with their psalms; and ‘the poorest of the people of God in the whole world,’ they were resolved ‘to excel in holiness.’
Such was the infancy of a
New England village.
45 Would that village one day engage the attention of the world?
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Meantime the fame of the liberties of
Massachusetts extended widely: the good-natured earl of
Warwick, a friend to advancement in civil liberty, though not a republican, offered his congratulations on its prosperity; and in a single year three thousand new settlers were added to the
Puritan colony.
Among these was the fiery
Hugh Peters, who had been pastor of a church of English exiles in
Rotterdam; a repub lican of an enlarged spirit, great energy, and popular eloquence, not always tempering active enterprise with solidity of judgment.
At the same time came
Henry Vane, the younger, a man of the purest mind; a statesman of spotless integrity; whose name the progress of intelligence and liberty will erase from the rubric of fanatics and traitors, and insert high among the aspirants after truth and the martyrs for liberty.
He had valued the ‘obedience of the gospel’ more than the successful career of English diplomacy, and cheerfully ‘forsook the preferments of the court of Charles for the ordinances of religion in their purity in
New England.’
He was happy in the possession of an admirable genius, though naturally more inclined to contemplative excellence than to action: he was happy in the eulogist of his virtues; for
Milton, ever so parsimonious of praise, reserving the majesty of his verse to celebrate the glories and vindicate the providence of God, was lavish of his encomiums on the youthful friend of religious liberty.
But
Vane was still more happy in attaining early in life a firmlyset-tled theory of morals, and in possessing an energetic will, which made all his conduct to the very last conform to the doctrines he had espoused, turning his dying hour into a seal of the witness, which his life had ever borne with noble consistency to the freedom
[
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of conscience and the people.
‘If he were not su-
perior to
Hampden,’ says
Clarendon, ‘he was inferior to no other man;’ ‘his whole life made good the imagination, that there was in him something extraordinary.’
46
The freemen of
Massachusetts, pleased that a young man of such elevated rank and distinguished ability should have adopted their creed, and joined them in their exile, elected him their governor.
The choice
was unwise; for neither the age nor the experience of
Vane entitled him to the distinction.
He came but as a sojourner, and not as a permanent resident; neither was he imbued with the colonial prejudices, the genius of the place; and his clear mind, unbiased by previous discussions, and fresh from the public business of
England, saw distinctly what the colonists did not wish to see, the really wide difference between their practice under their charter and the meaning of that instrument on the principles of English jurisprudence.
47
These latent causes of discontent could not but be eventually displayed; at first the arrival of
Vane was considered an auspicious pledge for the emigration of men of the highest rank in
England.
Several of the
English peers, especially Lord Say and Seal, a Presbyterian, a friend to the Puritans, yet with but dim perceptions of the true nature of civil liberty, and Lord Brooke, a man of charity and meekness, an early friend to tolerance, had begun to inquire into the character of the rising institutions, and to negotiate for such changes as would offer them Inducements for removing to
America.
They demanded a division
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of the general court into two branches, that of as-
sistants and of representatives,—a change which was acceptable to the people, and which, from domestic reasons, was ultimately adopted; but they further required an acknowledgment of their own hereditary right to a seat in the upper house.
The fathers of
Massachusetts were disposed to conciliate these powerful friends: they promised them the honors of magistracy, would have readily conferred it on some of them for life, and actually began to make appointments on that tenure; but as for the establishment of hereditary dignity, they answered by the hand of Cotton, ‘Where God blesseth any branch of any noble or generous family with a spirit and gifts fit for government, it would be a taking of God's name in vain to put such a talent under a bushel, and a sin against the honor of magistracy to neglect such in our public elections.
But if God should not delight to furnish some of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should ex-Dose them rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than exalt them to honor, if we should call them forth, when God doth not, to public authority.’
And thus the proposition for establishing hereditary nobility was defeated.
The people, moreover, were uneasy at the permanent concession of office;
Saltonstall, ‘that much-honored and upright-hearted servant of
Christ,’ loudly reproved ‘the sinful innovation,’ and advocated its reform; nor would the freemen be quieted, till it was made a law, that those who were appointed magistrates for
life, should yet not be magistrates except in those years in which they might be regularly chosen at the annual election
The institutions of
Massachusetts, which were thus
endangered by the influence of men of rank in
England,
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386]
were likewise in jeopardy from the effects of re-
ligious divisions.
The minds of the colonists were excited to intense activity on questions which the nicest subtlety only could have devised, and which none but those experienced in the shades of theological opinions could long comprehend.
For it goes with these opinions as with colors; of which the artist who works in mosaic, easily and regularly discriminates many thousand varieties, where the common eye can discern a difference only on the closest comparison.
Boston and its environs were now employed in theological controversy; and the transports of enthusiasm sustained the toil of abstruse speculations.
The most profound questions which can relate to the mysteries of human existence and the laws of the moral world, questions which the mind, in the serenity of unclouded reflection, may hardly aspire to solve, were discussed with passionate zeal; eternity was summoned to reveal its secrets; human tribunals pretended to establish for the
Infinite Mind the laws on which the destinies of the soul depend; the
Holy Spirit was claimed as the inward companion of man; while many persons, in their zeal to distinguish between abstract truth and the outward forms under which truth is conveyed, between unchanging principles and changing institutions, were in perpetual danger of making shipwreck of all religious faith, and hardly paused to sound their way, as they proceeded through the ‘dim and perilous’ paths of speculative science.
Amidst the arrogance of spiritual pride, the vagaries of undisciplined imaginations, and the extravagances to which the intellectual power may be led in its pursuit of ultimate principles, the formation of two distinct parties may be perceived.
The first consisted
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of the original settlers, the framers of the civil govern-
ment, and their adherents; they who were intent on the foundation and preservation of a commonwealth, and were satisfied with the established order of society.
They had founded their government on the basis of the church, and church membership could be obtained only by the favor of the clergy and an exemplary life.
They dreaded unlimited freedom of opinion as the parent of ruinous divisions.
‘The cracks and flaws in the new building of the reformation,’ thought they, ‘portend a fall;’
48 they desired patriotism, union, and a common heart; they were earnest to confirm and build up the state, the child of their cares and their sorrows.
They were reproached with being ‘priestridden magistrates,’
49 ‘under a covenant of works.’
The other party was composed of individuals who had arrived after the civil government and religious discipline of the colony had been established.
They came fresh from the study of the tenets of
Geneva; and their pride consisted in following the principles of the reformation with logical precision to all their consequences.
Their eyes were not primarily directed to the institutions of
Massachusetts, but to the doctrines of their religious system.
They had come to the wilderness for freedom of religious opinion; and they resisted every form of despotism over the mind.
To them the clergy of
Massachusetts were ‘the ushers of persecution,’
50 ‘popish factors,’
51 who had not imbibed the true doctrines of Christian reform; and they applied to the influence of the
Puritan ministers the principle which Luther and Calvin had employed against the observances and pretensions of the
Roman
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church.
52 Every political opinion, every philosophica
tenet, assumed in those days a theological form: with the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they derided the formality of the established religion; and by asserting that the
Holy Spirit dwells in every believer, that the revelation of the Spirit is superior ‘to the ministry of the word,’
53 they sustained with intense fanaticism the paramount authority of private judgment.
The founder of this party was
Anne Hutchinson, a woman of such admirable, understanding ‘and profitable and sober carriage,’
54 that her enemies could never speak of her without acknowledging her eloquence and her ability.
55 She was encouraged by
John Wheelwright, a silenced minister, who had married her husband's sister, and by
Henry Vane, the governor of the colony; while a majority of the people of
Boston sustained her in her rebellion against the clergy.
Scholars and men of learning, members of the magistracy and the general court adopted her opinions.
56 The public mind seemed hastening towards an insurrection against spiritual authority; and she was denounced as ‘weakening the hands and hearts of the people towards the ministers,’
57 as being ‘like
Roger Williams or worse.’
58
The subject possessed the highest political importance.
Nearly all the clergy, except Cotton, in whose house
Vane was an inmate,
59 clustered together
60 in defence of their influence, and in opposition to
Vane; and
Wheelwright, who, in a fast-day's sermon, had
strenuously maintained the truth of his opinions, and
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<*>ad never been confuted,
61 in spite of the remonstrance
of the governor, was censured by the general court for sedition.
62 At the ensuing choice of magistrates, the religious divisions controlled the elections.
The friends of
Wheelwright had threatened an appeal to
England; but in the colony it was accounted perjury and treason to speak of appeals to the king.
63 The contest appeared, therefore, to the people, not as the struggle for intellectual freedom against the authority of the clergy, but as a contest for the liberties of
Massachusetts against the power of the
English government.
Could it be doubted who would obtain the confidence of the people?
In the midst of such high excitement, that even the pious
Wilson climbed into a tree to harangue the people on election day,
Winthrop and his friends, the fathers and founders of the colony, recovered the entire management of the government.
64 But the dispute infused its spirit into every thing; it interfered with the levy of troops for the
Pequod war;
65 it influenced the respect shown to the magistrates; the distribution of town-lots; the assessment of rates; and at last the continued existence of the two opposing May
parties was considered inconsistent with the public peace.
To prevent the increase of a faction esteemed to be so dangerous, a law, somewhat analogous to the alien law in
England, and to the
European policy of passports, was enacted by the party in power; none should be received within the jurisdiction, but such as should be allowed by some of the magistrates.
The dangers which were simultaneously menaced from the
Episcopal party in the mother
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country, gave to the measure an air of magnanimous
defiance; it was almost a proclamation of independence.
As an act of intolerance, it found in
Vane an inflexible opponent, and, using the language of the times, he left a memorial of his dissent.
‘Scribes and Pharisees, and such as are confirmed in any way of error,’—these are the remarkable words of the man, who soon embarked for
England, where he afterwards pleaded in parliament for the liberties of
Catholics and Dissenters,—‘all such are not to be denyed cohabitation, but are to be pitied and reformed.
Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren.’
The friends of
Wheelwright could not brook the censure of their leader; but they justified their indignant remonstrances by the language of fanaticism.
‘A new rule of practice by immediate revelations,’ was now to be the guide of their conduct; not that they expected a revelation ‘
66 in the way of a miracle;’ such an idea
Anne Hutchinson rejected ‘as a delusion;’
67 they only slighted the censures of the ministers and the court, and avowed their determination to follow the impulses of conscience.
But individual conscience is often the dupe of interest, and often but a more honorable name for self-will.
The government feared, or pretended to fear, a disturbance of the
public peace, a wild insurrection of lawless fanatics.
A synod of the ministers of
New England was therefore assembled, to accomplish the difficult task of settling the true faith.
Numerous opinions were harmoniously condemned; and vagueness of language, so often the parent of furious controversy, performed the office of a peace-maker.
Now that
Vane had returned
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to
England, it was hardly possible to find any grounds
of difference between the flexible Cotton and his equally orthodox opponents.
The
general peace of the colony being thus assured, the triumph of the clergy was complete; and the civil magistrates proceeded to pass sentence on the more resolute offenders.
Wheelwright,
Anne Hutchinson, and
Aspinwall, were exiled from the
territory of Massachusetts, as ‘unfit for the society’ of its citizens; and their adherents, who, it was feared, ‘might, upon some revelation, make a sudden insurrection,’ and who were ready to seek protection by an appeal from the authority of the colonial government, were, like the tories during the war for independence, required to deliver up their arms.
So ended the Antinomian strife in
Massachusetts.
68 The principles of
Anne Hutchinson were a natural consequence of the progress of the reformation.
She had imbibed them in
Europe; and it is a singular fact, though easy of explanation, that, in the very year
in which she was arraigned at
Boston,
Descartes, like herself a refugee from his country, like herself a prophetic harbinger of the spirit of the coming age, established philosophic liberty on the method of free reflection.
Both asserted that the conscious judgment of the mind is the highest authority to itself.
Descartes did but promulgate, under the philosophic form of free reflection, the same truth which
Anne Hutchinson, with the fanaticism of impassioned conviction, avowed under the form of inward revelations.
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The true tendency of the principles of Anne Hutch-
inson is best established by examining the institutions which were founded by her followers.
We shall hereafter trace the career of
Henry Vane.
Wheelwright and his immediate friends removed to the banks of the
Piscataqua; and, at the head of tide waters on that stream, they founded the town of
Exeter; one more little republic in the wilderness, organized on the principles of natural justice by the voluntary combination of the inhabitants.
69
The larger number of the friends of
Anne Hutchinson, led by
John Clarke and
William Coddington, proceeded to the south, designing to make a plantation on
Long Island, or near
Delaware Bay.
But
Roger Williams welcomed them to his vicinity; and his own
influence, and the powerful name of
Henry Vane, prevailed with
Miantonomoh, the chief of the Narragansetts, to obtain for them a gift of the beautiful island of
Rhode Island.
The spirit of the institutions established by this band of voluntary exiles, on the soil which they owed to the benevolence of the natives, was derived from natural justice: a social compact, signed after the manner of the precedent at New Plymouth, so often imitated in
America, founded the government upon the basis of the universal consent of
every inhabitant: the forms of the administration were borrowed from the examples of the Jews.
Coddington was elected judge in the new
Israel; and
three elders were soon chosen as his assistants.
The colony rested on the principle of intellectual liberty: philosophy itself could not have placed the right on a broader basis.
The settlement prospered; and it be-
came necessary to establish a constitution.
It was
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therefore ordered by the whole body of freemen, and
‘unanimously agreed upon, that the government, which this body politic doth attend unto in this island, and the jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our
Prince, is a Democracie, or popular government; that is to say it is in the power of the body of freemen orderly assembled, or major part of them, to make or constitute just Lawes, by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man.’
70 ‘It was farther ordered, that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine;’ the law for ‘liberty of conscience was perpetuated.’
The little community was held together by the bonds of affection and freedom of opinion: benevolence was their rule: they trusted in the power of love to win the victory; and ‘the signet for the state’ was ordered to be ‘a sheafe of arrows,’ with ‘the motto Amor Vincet Omnia.’
A patent from
England seemed necessary
for their protection; and to whom could they direct their letters but to the now powerful
Henry Vane?
71
Such were the institutions which sprung from the party of
Anne Hutchinson.
But she did not long enjoy their protection.
Recovering from a transient dejection of mind, she had gloried in her sufferings, as her greatest happiness;
72 and, making her way through the forest, she travelled by land
73 to the settlement of
Roger Williams, and from thence joined her friends on the island, sharing with them the hardships of early
[
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emigrants.
74 Her powerful mind still continued its ac-
tivity; young men from the colonies became converts to her opinions; and she excited such admiration, that to the leaders in
Massachusetts it ‘gave cause of suspicion of witchcraft.’
75 She was in a few years
left a widow, but was blessed with affectionate children.
A tinge of fanaticism pervaded her family.
one of her sons, and
Collins her son-in-law, had ventured to expostulate with the people of
Boston on the
wrongs of their mother.
But would the
Puritan magistrates of that day tolerate an attack on their government?
76 Severe imprisonment for many months was the punishment inflicted on the young men for their boldness.
Rhode Island itself seemed no longer a safe place of refuge; and the whole family removed beyond New Haven into the territory of the
Dutch.
The violent
Kieft had provoked an insurrection among
the Indians; the house of
Anne Hutchinson was attacked and set on fire; herself, her son-in-law, and all their family, save one child, perished by the rude weapons of the savages, or were consumed by the flames.
77
Thus was personal suffering mingled with the peace ful and happy results of the watchfulness or the intolerance of
Massachusetts.
The legislation of that colony may be reproved for its jealousy, yet not for its cruelty, and
Williams, and
Wheelwright, and
Aspinwall, suffered not much more from their banishment than some of the best men of the colony encountered from choice.
For rumor had spread not wholly extravagant accounts of the fertility of the alluvial land along the borders
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of the
Connecticut; and the banks of that river were
already adorned with the villages of the Puritans, planted just in season to anticipate the rival designs of the
Dutch.
The
valley of the Connecticut had early become an
object of desire and of competition.
The earl of
Warwick was the first proprietary of the soil, under a grant from the council for
New England; and it was next held by Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke, John
Hampden, and others, as his assigns.
78 Before any colony could be established with their sanction, the people of New Plymouth had built a trading house at Wind-
sor, and conducted with the natives a profitable commerce in furs.
‘
Dutch intruders’ from
Manhattan,
ascending the river, had also raised at
Hartford the house ‘of
Good Hope,’ and struggled to secure the
territory to themselves.
The younger
Winthrop, the future benefactor of
Connecticut, one of those men in whom the elements of human excellence are mingled in the happiest union, returned from
England with a commission from the proprietaries of that region, to erect a fort at the mouth of the stream—a
purpose which was accomplished.
Yet, before his arrival in
Massachusetts Bay, settlements had been commenced, by emigrants from the environs of
Boston, at
Hartford, and
Windsor, and
Wethersfield; and in the last days of the pleasantest of the autumnal months, a
company of sixty pilgrims, women and children being of the number, began their march to the west.
Never before had the forests of
America witnessed such a scene.
But the journey was begun too late in the season: the winter was so unusually early and severe,
that provisions could not arrive by way of the river;
Trumbull's
Connecticut, i. App.
No. i
[
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imperfect shelter had been provided; cattle perished
in great numbers; and the men suffered such privations, that many of them, in the depth of winter, abandoned their newly-chosen homes, and waded through the snows to the sea-board.
Yet, in the opening of the next year, a government
was organized, and civil order established; and the budding of the trees and the springing of the grass were signals for a greater emigration to the
Connecticut.
Some smaller parties had already made their way to the new
Hesperia of Puritanism.
In June, the principal caravan began its march, led by
Thomas Hooker, ‘the light of the
Western Churches.’
There were of the company about one hundred souls; many of them persons accustomed to affluence and the ease of
European life.
They drove before them numerous herds of cattle; and thus they traversed on foot the pathless forests of
Massachusetts; advancing hardly ten miles a day through the tangled woods, across the swamps and numerous streams, and over the highlands that separated the several intervening valleys; subsisting, as they slowly wandered along, on the milk of the kine, which browsed on the fresh leaves and early shoots; having no guide, through the nearly un-trodden
wilderness, but the compass, and no pillow for their nightly rest but heaps of stones.
How did the hills echo with the unwonted lowing of the herds!
How were the forests enlivened by the loud and fervent piety of
Hooker!
79 Never again was there such a pilgrimage from the sea-side ‘to the delightful banks’ of the
Connecticut.
The emigrants had been gathered from among the most valued citizens, the earliest settlers, and the oldest churches of the
Bay.
John
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397]
Haynes had for one year been the governor of Massa-
chusetts; and
Hooker had no rival in public estimation but Cotton, whom he surpassed in force of character, in boldness of spirit, and in honorable clemency.
Historians, investigating the causes of events, have endeavored to find the motives of this settlement in the jealous ambition of the minister of
Hartford.
Such ingenuity is gratuitous.
The
Connecticut was at that time supposed to be the best channel for a great internal traffic in furs; and its meadows, already proverbial for the richness of their soil, had accquired the same celebrity as in a later day the banks of the
Genesee, or the bottom lands of the
Miami.
The new settlement, that seemed so far towards the west, was environed by perils.
The
Dutch still indulged a hope of dispossessing the
English, and the natives of the country beheld the approach of Europeans with malignant hatred.
No part of
New England was more thickly covered with aborignal inhabitants than
Connecticut.
The
Pequods, who were settled round the
Thames, could muster at least seven hundred warriors; the whole number of the effective men of the emigrants was much less than two hundred.
The danger was incessant; and while the settlers, with hardly a plough or a yoke of oxen, turned the wild fertility of nature into productiveness, they were at the same time exposed to the incursions of a savage enemy, whose delight was carnage.
For the Pequods had already shown a hostile spirit.
Several years had elapsed since they had murdered the clew of a small trading vessel in
Connecticut River.
W th some appearance of justice they pleaded the necessity of self-defence, and sent messengers to
Boston to desire the alliance of the white men. The government
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of
Massachusetts accepted the excuse, and im-
mediately conferred the benefit which was due from civilization to the ignorant and passionate tribes; it reconciled the Pequods with their hereditary enemies, the Narragansetts.
No longer at variance with a powerful neighbor, the Pequods again displayed their bit-
ter and imboldened hostility to the
English by murdering
Oldham, near
Block Island.
The outrage was punished by a sanguinary but ineffectual expedition.
The warlike tribe was not overawed, but rather courted the alliance of its neighbors, the Narragansetts and the Mohegans, that a union and a general rising of the natives might sweep the hated intruders from the ancient hunting-grounds of the
Indian race.
The design could be frustrated by none but
Roger Williams; and the exile, who had been the first to communicate to the governor of
Massachusetts the news of the impending conspiracy, encountered the extremity of peril with magnanimous heroism.
Having received letters from
Vane and the council of
Massachusetts, requesting his utmost and speediest endeavors to prevent the league, neither storms of wind nor high seas could detain the adventurous envoy.
Shipping himself alone in a poor canoe, every moment at the hazard of his life, he hastened to the house of the sachem of the Narragansetts.
The Pequod ambassadors, reeking with blood, were already there; and for three days and nights the business compelled him to lodge and mix with them; having cause every night to expect their knives at his throat.
The
Narragansetts were wavering; but
Roger Williams succeeded in dissolving the formidable conspiracy.
It was the most intrepid and most successful achievement in the whole Pequod war—an action as perilous in its execution
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as it was fortunate in its issue.
When the Pequods
were left to contend single-handed against the
English, it was their ignorance only which could still inspire confidence in their courage.
Continued injuries and murders roused
Connecticut to action; and the court of its three infant towns
decreed immediate war.
Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, Mwas their ally.
To
John Mason the staff of command was delivered at
Hartford by the venerated
Hooker; and after nearly a whole night spent, at the request of the soldiers, in importunate prayer by the very learned and godly
Stone, about sixty men, one
third of the whole colony, aided by
John Underhill and twenty gallant recruits, whom the forethought of
Vane had sent from the
Bay State, sailed past the
Thames,
and, designing to reach the
Pequod fort unobserved entered a harbor near Wickford, in the bay of the
Narragansetts. The next day was the
Lord's, sacred to religion and rest.
Early in the week, the captains
of the expedition, with the pomp of a military escort, repaired to the court of
Canonicus, the patriarch and ruler of the tribe; and the younger and more fiery
Miantonomoh, surrounded by two hundred of his bravest warriors, received them in council.
‘Your design,’ said he, ‘is good; but your numbers are too weak to brave the Pequods, who have mighty chieftains, and are skilful in battle;’ and after doubtful friendship, he deserted the desperate enterprise.
Nor did the unhappy clans on Mistic River distrust their strength.
To their hundreds of brave men their bows and arrows still seemed formidable weapons; ignorant of
European fortresses, they viewed their rush work palisades with complacency; and as the English boats sailed by the places where the
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rude works of the natives frowned defiance, it was ru-
mored through the tribe, that its enemies had vanished through fear.
Exultation followed; and hundreds of the Pequods spent much of the last night of their lives in revelry, at a time when the sentinels of the
English were within hearing of their songs.
Two hours be-
fore day, the soldiers of
Connecticut put themselves in motion towards the enemy; and, as the light of morning began to dawn, they made their attack on the principal fort, which stood in a strong position at the summit of a hill.
80 The colonists felt that they were fighting for the security of their homes; that, if defeated, the war-whoop would immediately resound near their cottages, and their wives and children be abandoned to the scalping-knife and the tomahawk.
They ascend to the attack; a watch-dog bays an alarm at their approach; the Indians awake, rally, and resist, as well as bows and arrows can resist weapons of steel.
The superiority of number was with them; and fighting closely, hand to hand, though the massa cre spread from wigwam to wigwam, victory was tardy.
‘We must burn them!’
shouted
Mason, and cast a firebrand to the windward among the light mats of the
Indian cabins.
Hardly could the
English withdraw to encompass the place, before the whole encampment was in a blaze.
Did the helpless natives climb the palisades, the flames assisted the marksmen to take good aim at the unprotected men; did they attempt a sally, they were cut down by the
English broadswords.
The carnage was complete: about six hundred
Indians, men, women, and children, perished; most of them in the hideous conflagration.
In about
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401]
an hour, the whole work of destruction was finished,
and two only of the
English had fallen in the battle.
The sun, as it rose serenely in the a withess of the victory.
With the light of morning, three hundred or more Pequod warriors were descried, as they proudly appreached from their second fort.
They had anticipated success; what was their horror as they beheld the smoking ruins, strewn with the half-consumed flesh of so many hundreds of their race!
They stamped on the ground, and tore their hair; but it was in vain to attempt revenge; then and always, to the close of the war, the feeble manner of the natives hardly deserved, says
Mason, the name of fighting; their defeat was certain, and unattended with much loss to the
English.
The aborigines were never formidable in battle, till they became supplied with the weapons of
European invention.
A portion of the troops hastened homewards to protect the settlements from any sudden attack; while
Mason, with about twenty men, marched across the country from the vicinity of New London to the
English fort at
Saybrook.
He reached the river at sunset; but
Gardner, who commanded the fort, observed his approach; and never did the heart of a Roman consul, returning in triumph, swell more than the pride of
Mason and his friends, when they found themselves received as victors, and ‘nobly entertained with many great guns.’
In a few days, the troops from
Massachusetts arrived, attended by
Wilson; for the ministers always shared every hardship and every danger.
The remnants of the Pequods were pursued into their hiding-places; every wigwam was burned, every settlement was
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402]
broken up, every cornfield laid waste.
Sassacus, their
sachem, was murdered by the Mohawks, to whom he had fled for protection.
The few that survived, about two hundred, surrendering in despair, were enslaved by the
English, or incorporated among the Mohegans and the Narragansetts.
There remained not a sannup nor squaw, not a warrior nor child, of the
Pequod name.
A nation had disappeared from the family of man.
The vigor and courage displayed by the settlers on
the
Connecticut, in this first Indian war in
New England, struck terror into the savages, and secured a long succession of years of peace.
The infant was safe in its cradle, the laborer in the fields, the solitary traveller during the night-watches in the forest; the houses needed no bolts, the settlements no palisades.
Under the benignant auspices of peace, the citizens of the western colony resolved to perfect its political institutions, and to form a body politic by a voluntary
association.
The constitution which was thus framed was of unexampled liberality.
The elective franchise belonged to all the members of the towns who had taken te oath of allegiance to the commonwealth; the magistrates and legislature were chosen annually by ballot; and the representatives were apportioned among the towns according to population.
More than two centuries have elapsed; the world has been made wiser by the most various experience; political institutions have become the theme on which the most powerful and cultivated minds have been employed; and so many constitutions have been framed or reformed, stifled or subverted, that memory may despair of a complete catalogue;—but the people of
Connecticut have found no reason to deviate essentially from the frame of government established by their fathers.
No jurisdiction of the
English monarch was recognized.
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403]
the laws of honest justice were the basis of their com-
monwealth; and therefore its foundations were lasting.
These humble emigrants invented an admirable system; for they were near to Nature, listened willingly to her voice, and easily copied her forms.
No ancient usages, no hereditary differences of rank, no established Interests, impeded the application of the principles of justice.
Freedom springs spontaneously into life; the artificial distinctions of society require centuries to ripen.
History has ever celebrated the heroes who have won laurels in scenes of carnage.
Has it no place for the founders of states; the wise legislators, who struck the rock in the wilderness, so that the waters of liberty gushed forth in copious and perennial fountains?
They who judge of men by their services to the human race, will never cease to honor the memory of
Hooker and of
Haynes.
In equal independence, a Puritan colony sprang up
at New Haven, under the guidance of
John Davenport as its pastor, and of the excellent
Theophilus Eaton, who was annually elected its governor for twenty years, till his death.
Its forms were austere, unmixed Calvinism; but the spirit of humanity had sheltered itself under the rough exterior.
The colonists held their
first gathering under a branching oak. It was a season of gloom.
Spring had not yet revived the verdure of nature; under the leafless tree the little flock were taught by
Davenport, that, like the Son of man, they were led into the wilderness to be tempted.
After a day of fasting and prayer, they rested their first frame of government on a simple plantation covenant, that ‘all of them would be ordered by the rules which the Scriptures held forth to them.’
A title to lands was obtained by a treaty with the natives, whom they protected against the Mohawks.
When, after more than a year,
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the free planters of the colony desired a more perfect
form of government, the followers of Him who was laid in a manger held their constituent assembly in a barn.
There, by the influence of
Davenport, it was solemnly resolved, that the Scriptures are the perfect rule of a commonwealth; that the purity and peace of the ordinances to themselves and their posterity, were the great end of civil order; and that church members only should be free burgesses.
A committee of twelve was selected to choose seven men, qualified for the foundation work of organizing the government.
Eaton,
Davenport, and five others, were ‘the seven Pillars’ for the new House of Wisdom, in the wilderness.
In August,
1639, the seven pillars assembled, possessing for the time absolute power.
Having abrogated every previous executive trust, they admitted to the court all church members; the character of civil magistrates was next expounded ‘from the sacred oracles;’ and the election followed.
Then
Davenport, in the words of
Moses to Israel in the wilderness, gave a charge to the governor, to judge righteously; ‘the cause that is too hard for you,’—such was part of the minister's text,— ‘bring it unto me, and I will hear it.’
Annual elections were ordered; and God's word established as the only rule in public affairs.
Thus New Haven made the
Bible its statute-book, and the elect its freemen.
As neighboring towns were planted, each was likewise a house of wisdom, resting on its seven pillars, and aspiring to be illumined by the
Eternal Light.
The colonists prepared for the second coming of
Christ, which they confidently expected.
Meantime their pleasant villages spread along the
Sound, and on the opposite shore of
Long Island, and for years they nursed the hope of
‘speedily planting
Delaware.’
