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that is to say, a government according to the Word of God as expounded and enforced by the clergy.
The experiment was doomed to ultimate failure, for it ran counter to some of the noblest instincts of human nature.
But its administration was in the hands of able men. The power of the clergy was well-nigh absolute.
The political organization of the township depended upon the ecclesiastical organization as long as the right to vote was confined to church members.
How sacrosanct and awful was the position of the clergyman may be perceived from Hawthorne's The Minister's black Veil and The Scarlet letter.
Yet it must be said that men like Hooker and Cotton, Shepard and Norton, had every instinct and capacity for leadership.
With the notable exception of Hooker, such men were aristocrats, holding John Winthrop's opinion that “Democracy is, among most civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst form of government.”
They were fiercely intolerant.
The precise reason for the Hooker migration from Cambridge to Hartford in 1636-the very year of the founding of Harvard -was prudently withheld, but it is now thought to be the instinct of escape from the clerical architects of the Cambridge Platform.
Yet no one
New Haven. Yale University. Press. 1921.
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