EARLY NEW ENGLAND LIFE
(1624-1652)
During the civil war in England the sympathies of Massachusetts, of
course, were with Parliament. New England ministers were invited to
attend the Westminster assembly of divines held in September, 1642,
and several of them returned to England. The most prominent was Rev.
Hugh Peter, who was instrumental in procuring the decapitation of
Charles I., and paid for the offence, on the restoration of Charles
II., with his own life. In 1643 Parliament passed an act[1] freeing
all commodities carried between England and New England from the
payment of "any custom, subsidy, taxation, imposition, or other duty."
The transfer of the supreme authority to the Parliament, though hailed
with enthusiasm in New England, increased, if anything, her
confidence. In the summer of 1644 a ship bearing a commission from the
Parliament attacked and captured in the harbor of Boston another ship
friendly to the king; Massachusetts showed her displeasure by
addressing a strong protest to Parliament. Not long after another
vessel of Parliament attacked a ship belonging to persons from
Dartmouth in sympathy with the king. This time Winthrop turned the
guns of the battery upon the parliamentary captain and made him pay a
barrel of powder for his insolence.[2]
The same summary action was adopted in regard to the growing demand
for a freer suffrage. In May, 1646, an able and respectful petition
was presented to the general court for the removal of the civil
disabilities of all members of the churches of England and Scotland,
signed by William Vassall, Samuel Maverick, Dr. Robert Child, and four
other prominent Presbyterians. The petition was pronounced seditious
and scandalous, and the petitioners were roundly fined. When Child set
out for England with his grievances, he was arrested and his baggage
searched. Then, to the horror of the rulers of Massachusetts, there
was discovered a petition addressed to Parliament, suggesting that
Presbyterianism should be established in New England and that a
general governor should be sent over. The signers, brought before the
court, were fined more heavily than before and imprisoned for six
months. At length Vassall and his friends contrived to reach England,
expecting to receive the aid of the Presbyterian party in Parliament;
but misfortune overtook them there as in Massachusetts, for the
Independents were now in control and no help could be obtained from
them.[3]
The agitation in England in favor of Presbyterianism, and the petition
of Vassall and his friends in Massachusetts, induced the general court
in May, 1646, to invite the clergy to meet at Cambridge, "there to
discuss, dispute, and clear up, by the word of God, such questions of
church government and discipline as they should think needful and
meet," until "one form of government and discipline" should be
determined upon. The "synod" met September 1, 1646, and after
remaining in session fourteen days they adjourned. In August, 1648,
after the downfall of Presbyterianism in England, another meeting was
held, and a plan of church government was agreed upon, by which order
and unity were introduced among members theoretically independent.[4]
By a unanimous vote the synod adopted "a platform" approving the
confession of faith of the Westminster divines, except as to those
parts which favored the Presbyterian discipline. The bond of union was
found in the right of excluding an offending church from fellowship
and of calling in the civil power for the suppression of idolatry,
blasphemy, heresy, etc. The platform recognized the prerogative of
occasional synods to give advice and admonition to churches in their
collective capacity, but general officers and permanent assemblies,
like those of the Presbyterian and Anglican churches, armed with
coercive power to act upon individuals, were disclaimed.[5]
Nevertheless, by the organization thus effected, the benumbing
influence of the Calvinistic faith upon the intellectual life of New
England was fully established, and the deaths of John Winthrop and
John Cotton, which happened not long after, were the forerunners of
what Charles Francis Adams styles the "glacial period of
Massachusetts."[6] Both Winthrop and Cotton were believers in
aristocracy in state and church, but the bigotry of Winthrop was
relieved by his splendid business capacity and that of Cotton by his
comparative gentleness and tenderness of heart.
"Their places were taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever
breathed"[7]--John Endicott, who was governor for thirteen out of
fifteen years following Winthrop's death, and John Norton, an able and
upright but narrow and intolerant clergyman. The persecuting spirit
which had never been absent in Massachusetts reached, under these
leaders, its climax in the wholesale hanging of Quakers and witches.
In the year of Cotton's death (1652), which was the year that Virginia
surrendered to the Parliamentary commissioners and the authority of
the English Parliament was recognized throughout English America, the
population of New England could not have been far short of fifty
thousand. For the settlements along the sea the usual mode of
communication was by water, but there was a road along the whole coast
of Massachusetts. In the interior of the colony, as Johnson boasted,
"the wild and uncouth woods were filled with frequented ways, and the
large rivers were overlaid with bridges, passable both for horse and
foot."[8]
All the conditions of New England tended to compress population into
small areas and to force the energies of the people into trade.
Ship-building was an early industry, and New England ships vied with
the ships of Holland and England in visiting distant countries for
commerce.[9] Manufacturing found early encouragement, and in 1639 a
number of clothiers from Yorkshire set up a fulling-mill at
Rowley.[10] A glass factory was established at Salem in 1641,[11] and
iron works at Lynn in 1643,[12] under the management of Joseph Jenks.
The keenness of the New-Englander in bargains and business became
famous.
In Massachusetts the town was the unit of representation and taxation,
and in local matters it governed itself. The first town government
appears to have been that of Dorchester, where the inhabitants agreed,
October 8, 1633, to hold a weekly meeting "to settle and sett down
such orders as may tend to the general good."[13] Not long after a
similar meeting was held in Watertown, and the system speedily spread
to the other towns. The plan of appointing a body of "townsmen," or
selectmen, to sit between meetings of the towns began in February,
1635, in Charlestown.[14]
The town-meeting had a great variety of business. It elected the town
officers and the deputies to the general court and made ordinances
regarding the common fields and pastures, the management of the
village herds, roadways, boundary-lines, fences, and many other
things. Qualified to share in the deliberations were all freemen and
"admitted inhabitants of honest and good conversation" rated at £20
(equivalent to about $500 to-day).[15]
In the prevalence of the town system popular education was rendered
possible, and a great epoch in the history of social progress was
reached when Massachusetts recognized the support of education as a
proper function of government. Boston had a school with some sort of
public encouragement in 1635,[16] and in 1642, before schools were
required by law, it was enjoined upon the selectmen to "take account
from time to time of parents and masters of the ability of the
children to read and understand the principles of religion and the
capital lawes of the country."[17] In November, 1647, a general
educational law required every town having fifty householders or more
to appoint some one to teach children how to read and write, and every
town having one hundred householders or more to establish a "grammar
(Latin) school" to instruct youth "so far as may be fitted for the
university."[18]
In 1636 the Massachusetts assembly agreed to give £400 towards "a
schoole or Colledge,"[19] to be built at Newtown (Cambridge). In 1638
John Harvard died within a year after his arrival, and left his
library and "one-half his estate, it being in all about £700, for the
erecting of the College." In recognition of this kindly act the
general court fitly gave his name to the institution,[20] the first
founded in the United States.
In 1650 Connecticut copied the Massachusetts law of 1647, and a clause
declared that the grammar-schools were to prepare boys for college.
The results, however, in practice did not come up to the excellence of
the laws, and while in some towns in both Massachusetts and
Connecticut a public rate was levied for education, more generally the
parents had to pay the teachers, and they were hard to secure. When
obtained they taught but two or three months during the year.[21] Bad
spelling and wretched writing were features of the age from which New
England was not exempt. Real learning was confined, after all, to the
ministers and the richer classes in the New England colonies, pretty
much as in the mother-country. In Plymouth and Rhode Island, where the
hard conditions of life rendered any legal system of education
impracticable, illiteracy was frequent. The class of ignorant people
most often met with in New England were fishermen and the small
farmers of the inland townships.
Scarcity of money was felt in New England as in Virginia, and resort
was had to the use of wampum as a substitute,[22] and corn, cattle,
and other commodities were made legal tenders in payment of debts.[23]
In 1652 a mint was established at Boston, and a law was passed
providing for the coinage of all bullion, plate, and Spanish coin into
"twelve-penny, sixpenny, and threepenny pieces." The master of the
mint was John Hull, and the shillings coined by him were called
"Pine-Tree Shillings," because they bore on one side the legend
"Massachusetts" encircling a tree.[24]
Marriage was a mere civil contract, and the burials took place without
funeral service or sermon. Stern laws were made against card-playing,
long hair, drinking healths, and wearing certain articles, such as
gold and silver girdles, hat-bands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats.
There were no Christmas festivals and no saints' days nor recognized
saints, though special feasts and thanksgiving days were frequent.[25]
The penal legislation of New England was harsh and severe, and in
Massachusetts and Connecticut there were fifteen crimes punishable
with death, while the law took hold also of innumerable petty
offences. In addition the magistrates had a discretionary authority,
and they often punished persons on mere suspicion.
There can be no doubt that the ideal of the educated Puritan was lofty
and high, and that society in New England was remarkably free from the
ordinary frivolities and immoralities of mankind; but it would seem
that human nature exacted a severe retaliation for the undue
suppression of its weaknesses. There are in the works of Bradford and
Winthrop, as well as in the records of the colonies, evidence which
shows that the streams of wickedness in New England were "dammed" and
not dried up. At intervals the impure waters broke over the obstacles
in their way, till the record of crime caused the good Bradford "to
fear and tremble at the consideration of our corrupt natures."[26]
The conveniences of town life gave opportunities for literature not
enjoyed by the Virginians, and, though his religion cut the Puritan
almost entirely off from the finer fields of poetry and arts, New
England in the period of which we have been considering was strong in
history and theology. Thus the works of Bradford and Winthrop and of
Hooker and Cotton compare favorably with the best productions of their
contemporaries in England, and contrast with the later writers of
Cotton Mather's "glacial period," when, under the influence of the
theocracy, "a lawless and merciless fury for the odd, the disorderly,
the grotesque, the violent, strained analogies, unexpected images,
pedantics, indelicacies, freaks of allusion, and monstrosities of
phrase" were the traits of New England literature.[27]
[Footnote 1: N.H. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, I., 323-326.]
[Footnote 2: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 222-224, 228, 238-240.]
[Footnote 3: _New England's Jonas Cast Up at London_ (Force, _Tracts_,
IV., No. iii.); Winthrop, _New England_, II., 319, 340, 358, 391.]
[Footnote 4: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 329, 330, 402.]
[Footnote 5: Mather, _Magnalia_, book V.]
[Footnote 6: Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_,
59.]
[Footnote 7: Fiske, _Beginnings of New England_, 179.]
[Footnote 8: Johnson, _Wonder Working Providence,_ book III., chap.
i.]
[Footnote 9: Weeden, _Econ. and Soc. Hist. of New England,_ I., 143.]
[Footnote 10: Palfrey, _New England,_ II., 53.]
[Footnote 11: _Mass. Col. Records,_ I., 344.]
[Footnote 12: Weeden, _Econ. and Soc. Hist. of New England,_ I., 174.]
[Footnote 13: Clapp, _Dorchester,_ 32.]
[Footnote 14: Frothingham, _Charlestown,_ 51.]
[Footnote 15: Howard, _Local Constitutional History,_ I., 66.]
[Footnote 16: Palfrey, _New England,_ II., 47.]
[Footnote 17: _Mass. Col. Records,_ II., 9.]
[Footnote 18: Ibid., 203.]
[Footnote 19: Ibid., I., 183.]
[Footnote 20: Ibid., 253.]
[Footnote 21: Weeden, _Econ. and Soc. Hist., of New England_, I., 282,
II., 861.]
[Footnote 22: Weeden, _Indian Money as a Factor in New England
Colonization_ (_Johns Hopkins University Studies_, II., Nos. viii.,
ix.).]
[Footnote 23: _Mass. Col. Records_, 110; _Conn. Col. Records_, I., 8.]
[Footnote 24: _Mass. Col. Records_, IV., pt. i., 84, 118.]
[Footnote 25: Howe, _Puritan Republic,_ 102, 110, 111.]
[Footnote 26: Bradford, _Plimoth Plantation,_ 459.]
[Footnote 27: Tyler, _American Literature,_ II., 87.]