"The Court, and great part of the country, were much offended at this

petition. A declaration was drawn up by order of the Court, in answer to

the petition, and in vindication of the Government--a proceeding which

at this day would not appear for the honour of the supreme authority.

The petitioners were required to attend the Court. They urged their

right of petitioning. They were told they were not accused of

petitioning, but of contemptuous and seditious expressions, and were

required to find sureties for their good behaviour, etc. A charge was

drawn up against them in form; notwithstanding which it was intimated to

them, that if they would ingenuously acknowledge their offence, they

should be forgiven; but they refused, and were fined, some in larger,

some in smaller sums, two or three of the magistrates dissenting, Mr.

Bellingham,[85] in particular, desiring his dissent might be entered.

The petitioners claimed an appeal to the Commissioners of Plantations

in England; but it was not allowed. Some of them resolved to go home

with a complaint. Their papers were seized, and among them was found a

petition to the Right Honourable the Earl of Warwick, etc.,

Commissioners, from about five and twenty non-freemen, for themselves

and many thousands more, in which they represent that from the

pulpits[86] they had been reproached and branded with the names of

destroyers of Churches and Commonwealths, called Hamans, Judases, sons

of Korah, and the Lord entreated to confound them, and the people and

magistrates stirred up against them by those who were too forward to

step out of their callings, so that they had been sent for to the Court,

and some of them committed for refusing to give two hundred pounds bond

to stand to the sentence of the Court, _when all the crime was a

petition to the Court_, and they had been publicly used as malefactors,

etc.

"Mr. Winslow, who had been chosen agent for the colony to answer to

Gorton's complaint, was now instructed to make defence against these

petitioners; and by his prudent management, and the credit and esteem he

was in with many members of the Parliament and principal persons then in

power, he prevented any prejudice to the colony from either of these

applications."[87]

Mr. (Edward) Winslow, above mentioned by Mr. Hutchinson, had been one

of the founders and Governors of the _Plymouth_ colony; but twenty-five

years afterwards he imbibed the persecuting spirit of the Massachusetts

Bay colony, became their agent and advocate in London, and by the

prestige which he had acquired as the first narrator and afterwards

Governor of the Plymouth colony, had much influence with the leading men

of the Long Parliament. He there joined himself to Cromwell, and was

appointed one of his three Commissioners to the West Indies, where he

died in 1655. Cromwell, as he said when he first obtained possession of

the King, had "the Parliament in his pocket;" he had abolished the

Prayer Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of

Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was

repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore

(who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr.

Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Massachusetts

Bay for liberty of worship in behalf of both Presbyterians and

Episcopalians.

But was ever a petition to a local Legislature more constitutional, or

more open and manly in the manner of its getting up, more Christian in

its sentiments and objects? Yet the petitioners were arraigned and

punished as "conspirators" and "disturbers of the public peace," by

order of that Legislature, for openly petitioning to it against some of

its own acts. Was ever appeal to the Imperial Parliament by British

subjects more justifiable than that of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, Mr. Vassal

(progenitor of British Peers), and others, from acts of a local

Government which deprived them of both religious rights of worship and

civil rights of franchise, of all things earthly most valued by

enlightened men, and without which the position of man is little better

than that of goods and chattels? Yet the respectable men who appealed to

the supreme power of the realm for the attainment of these attributes of

Christian and British citizenship were imprisoned and heavily fined,

and their private papers seized and sequestered!

In my own native country of Upper Canada, the Government for nearly half

a century was considered despotic, and held up by American writers

themselves as an unbearable tyranny. But one Church was alleged to be

established in the country, and the government was that of a Church

party; but never was the elective franchise there confined to the

members of the one Church; never were men and women denied, or hailed

before the legal tribunals and fined for exercising the privilege of

Baptism, the Lord's Supper, or public worship for themselves and

families according to the dictates of their own consciences; never was

the humblest inhabitant denied the right of petition to the local

Legislature on any subject, or against any governmental acts, or the

right of appeal to the Imperial Government or Parliament on the subject

of any alleged grievance. The very suspicion and allegation that the

Canadian Government did counteract, by influences and secret

representations, the statements of complaining parties to England,

roused public indignation as arbitrary and unconstitutional. Even the

insurrection which took place in both Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 and

1838 was professedly against alleged partiality and injustice by the

_local_ Government, as an obstruction to more liberal policy believed to

be desired by the Imperial Government.

But here, in Massachusetts, a colony chartered as a Company to

distribute and settle public lands and carry on trade, in less than

twenty years assumes the powers of a sovereign Commonwealth, denies to

five-sixths of the population the freedom of citizenship, and limits it

to the members of one Church, and denies Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and

worship to all who will not come to the one Church, punishes petitioners

to itself for civil and religious freedom from those who were deprived

of it, and punishes as "treason" their appeal for redress to the English

Parliament. Though, for the present, this unprecedented and unparalleled

local despotism was sustained by the ingenious representations of Mr.

Winslow and the power of Cromwell; yet in the course of four years the

surrender of its Charter was ordered by the regicide councillors of the

Commonwealth, as it had been ordered by the beheaded King Charles and

his Privy Council thirteen years before. In the meantime tragical

events in England diverted attention from the colonies. The King was

made prisoner, then put to death; the Monarchy was abolished, as well as

the House of Lords; and the Long Parliament became indeed Cromwell's

"pocket" instrument.

It was manifest that the government of Massachusetts Bay as a colony was

impossible, with the pretensions which it had set up, declaring all

appeals to England to be "treason," and punishing complainants as

"conspirators" and "traitors." The appointment by Parliament in 1643 of

a Governor-General and Commissioners had produced no effect in

Massachusetts Bay Colony; pretensions to supremacy and persecution were

as rife as ever there. Dr. Child and his friends were punished for even

asking for the administration that appointed the Governor-General and

those Commissioners; and whether the Government of England were a

monarchy or republic, it was clear that the pretensions to independence

of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay must be checked, and their local

tyranny restrained. For this purpose the Long Parliament adopted the

same policy in 1650 that King Charles had done in 1637; demanded the

surrender of the Charter; for that Parliament sent a summons to the

local Government ordering it to transmit the Charter to England, to

receive a new patent from the Parliament in all its acts and processes.

This order of Parliament to Massachusetts Bay Colony to surrender its

Charter was accompanied by a proclamation prohibiting trade with

Virginia, Barbadoes, Bermuda, and Antigua, because these colonies

continued to recognize royal authority, and to administer their laws in

the name of the King. This duplicate order from the Long Parliament was

a double blow to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and produced general

consternation; but the dexterity and diplomacy of the colony were equal

to the occasion. It showed its devotion to the cause of the Long

Parliament by passing an Act prohibiting trade with the loyal, but by

them termed rebel colonies;[88] and it avoided surrendering the Charter

by repeating its policy of delay and petition, which it had adopted on a

similar occasion in 1638 to King Charles; and its professions of

loyalty to Charles, and prayers for the Royal Family, and the success of

the Privy Council, it now repeated for the Long Parliament and its

leaders, supporting its petition by an appeal to its ten years' services

of prayers and of men to the cause of the Long Parliament against the

King. I will, in the first place, give in a note Mr. Bancroft's own

account of what was claimed and ordered by the Long Parliament, and the

pretensions and proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, and

then will give the principal parts of their petition to the Long

Parliament in their own words. The words and statements of Mr. Bancroft

involve several things worthy of notice and remembrance: 1. The

Congregational Church rulers of Massachusetts Bay denied being British

subjects, admitting no other allegiance to England than the Hanse Towns

of Northern Germany to the Empire of Austria, or the Normandy ducal

kings of England to the King of France; or, as Mr. Palfrey says, "the

relations which Burgundy and Flanders hold to France." 2. Mr. Bancroft

calls the petitioners "disturbers of the public security," and Mr.

Palfrey calls them "conspirators"--terms applied to the Armenian

remonstrants against the persecuting edicts of the Synod of Dort--terms

applied to all the complainants of the exclusive and persecuting policy

of the Tudor and Stuart kings of England--terms applied to even the

first Christians--terms now applied to pleaders of religious and civil

freedom by the advocates of a Massachusetts Government as intolerant and

persecuting as ever existed in Europe. The petition of these impugned

parties shows that all they asked for was equal religious and civil

liberty and protection with their Congregational oppressors. Opprobrious

names are not arguments; and imputations of motives and character are

not facts, and are usually resorted to for want of them. 3. Mr. Bancroft

designates as "usurpations of Parliament" the proceedings of the Long

Parliament in appointing a Governor-General and Commissioners for the

colonies, and in exercising its right to receive and decide upon appeals

from the colonies; and terms the support of the Parliament in the colony

"domestic treachery;" and the one member of the Legislature who had the

courage to maintain the supremacy of the Mother Country is called the

"faithless deputy," who was forthwith turned out of the House, which

then proceeded, "with closed doors," to discuss in secret conclave its

relations to England, and concluded by declaring "against any assertion

of paramount authority" on the part of the English Parliament. This was

substantially a "Declaration of Independence;" not, indeed, against an

arbitrary king, as was alleged sixteen years before, and a hundred and

thirty years afterwards, but against a Parliament which had dethroned

and beheaded their King, and abolished the House of Lords and the

Episcopal Church! All this Mr. Bancroft now treats as maintaining the

_Charter_, of which he himself had declared, in another place, as I have

quoted above: "The Charter on which the freemen of Massachusetts

succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty did

not secure to them a single privilege of self-government, but left them

as the Virginians had been left, without any valuable franchise, at the

mercy of the Corporation within the realm." Who then were the

"usurpers," and had been for twenty years, of power which had not been

conferred on them--the new Church and the persecuting Government of

Massachusetts Bay, or the supreme authority of England, both under a

King and under a professed republican commonwealth? 4. Mr. Bancroft

says: "Had the Long Parliament succeeded in revoking the patent of the

Massachusetts Bay,[90] the tenor of American history would have been

changed." I agree with him in this opinion, though probably not in his

application of it. I believe that the "tenor of American history" would

have led to as perfect an independence of the American States as they

now enjoy--as free, but a better system of government, and without their

ever having made war and bloodshed against Great Britain.

The facts thus referred to show that there were _Empire Loyalists_ in

America in the seventeenth, as there were afterwards in the eighteenth

century; they then embraced all the colonies of New England, except the

ruling party of Massachusetts Bay; they were all advocates of an equal

franchise, and equal religious and civil liberty for all classes--the

very reverse of the Massachusetts Government, which, while it denied any

subordination to England, denied religious and civil liberty to all

classes except members of the Congregational Churches.

It is a curious and significant fact, stated by Mr. Bancroft, that these

intolerant and persecuting proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay

Legislature were submitted to the Congregational ministers for their

approval and final endorsement. The Long Parliament in England checked

and ruled the Assembly of Westminster divines; but in Massachusetts the

divines, after a day's consideration, "approved the proceedings of the

General Court." No wonder that such divines, supported by taxes levied

by the State and rulers of the State, denounced all toleration of

dissent from their Church and authority.

Before leaving this subject, I must notice the remarks of Mr.

Palfrey,--the second, if not first in authority of the historians of New

England.

Mr. Palfrey ascribes what he calls "the Presbyterian Cabal" to Mr.

William Vassal, who was one of the founders and first Council of the

colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose brother Samuel had shared with

Hampden the honour of having refused to pay ship-money to Charles, and

who was now, with the Earl of Warwick,[91] one of the Parliamentary

Commissioners for the colonies. It appears that Mr. Vassal opposed from

the beginning the new system of Church and proscriptive civil government

set up at Massachusetts Bay, and therefore came under Mr. Bancroft's

category of "disturbers of the public security," and Mr. Palfrey's

designation of "conspirators;" but was in reality a liberal and a

loyalist, not to King Charles indeed, but to the Commonwealth of

England. I give Mr. Palfrey's statements, in his own words, in a

note.[92]

The spirit and sentiments of Mr. Palfrey are identical with those which

I have quoted of Mr. Bancroft; but while Mr. Bancroft speaks

contemptuously of the authors of the petition for equal civil and

religious rights, Mr. Palfrey traces the movement to Mr. William Vassal,

one of the founders and first Council of the Massachusetts Colony, and

progenitor of the famous Whig family of Holland House. Nor does Mr.

Palfrey venture to question the doctrine or one of the statements of the

petitioners, though he calls them "conspirators."

Mr. Palfrey--very unfairly, I think--imputes to the petitioners a design

to subvert the Congregational worship and establish the Presbyterian

worship in its place; and to give force to his imputations says that a

numerous party in the English Parliament "were bent on setting up

Presbytery as the established religion in England and _its

dependencies_." There is not the slightest ground for asserting that any

party in the Long Parliament, any more than in Massachusetts, designed

the setting up of Presbytery as _the_ established worship in the

"_dependencies_ of England." King Charles the First, on his first

sitting in judgment on complaints against the proceedings of the

Massachusetts Bay Council, declared to his Privy Council, in 1632, that

he had never intended to impose the Church ceremonies, objected to by

the Puritan clergy of the time, upon the colonists of Massachusetts.

Charles the Second, thirty years afterwards, declared the same, and

acted upon it during the quarter of a century of his reign. The Long

Parliament acted upon the same principle. There is not an instance,

during the whole sixty years of the first Massachusetts Charter, of any

attempt, on the part of either King or Commonwealth, to suppress or

interfere with the Congregational worship in New England; all that was

asked by the King, or any party in Massachusetts, was _toleration_ of

other forms of Protestant worship as well as that of the Congregational.

The very petition, whose promoters are represented as movers of

sedition, asked for no exclusive establishment of Presbyterianism, but

for the toleration of both the Episcopal and Presbyterian worship, and

the worship of other Protestant Churches existing in England; and their

petition was addressed to a Legislature of Congregationalists, elected

by Congregationalists alone; and it was only in the event of their

reasonable requests not being granted by the local Legislature that they

proposed to present their grievances to the Imperial Parliament. The

plea of fear for the safety of Congregational worship in Massachusetts

was a mere pretence to justify the proscription and persecution of all

dissent from the Congregational establishment. The spirit of the local

Government and of the clergy that controlled it was _intolerance_.

Toleration was denounced by them as the doctrine of devils; and the

dying lines of Governor Dudley are reported to have been--

"Let men of God, in Court and Church, watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch."[94]

There is one other of Mr. Palfrey's statements which is of special

importance; it is the admission that a majority of the population of

Massachusetts were excluded from all share in the Government, and were

actually opposed to it. Referring to the petition to the local

Legislature, he says: "The demand was enforced by considerations which

were not without plausibility, and were presented in a seductive form.

It was itself an appeal to the _discontent of the numerical majority not

invested with a share in the government_."[95]

It is thus admitted, and clear from indubitable facts, that professing

to be republicans, they denied to the great majority of the people any

share in the government. Professing hatred of the persecuting

intolerance of King Charles and Laud in denying liberty of worship to

all who differed from them, they now deny liberty of worship to all who

differ from themselves, and punish those by fine and imprisonment who

even petition for equal religious and civil liberty to all classes of

citizens. They justify even armed resistance against the King, and

actually decapitating as well as dethroning him, in order to obtain,

professedly, a government by the majority of the nation and liberty of

worship; and they now deny the same principle and right of civil and

religious liberty to the great majority of the people over whom they

claimed rule. They claim the right of resisting Parliament itself by

armed force if they had the power, and only desist from asserting it, to

the last, as the _salus populi_ did not require it, and for the sake of

their "godly friends in England," and to not afford a pretext for the

"rebellious course" of their fellow-colonists in Virginia and the West

Indies, who claimed the same independence of Parliament that the

Government of Massachusetts claimed, but upon the ground which was

abhorrent to the Congregational Puritans of Massachusetts--namely, that

of loyalty to the king.

I will now give in a note, in their own words, the principal parts of

their petition, entitled "General Court of Massachusetts Bay, New

England, in a Petition to Parliament in 1651,"[97] together with

extracts of two addresses to Cromwell, the one enclosing a copy of their

petition to Parliament, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the army, and

the other in 1654, after he had dismissed the Rump Parliament, and

become absolute--denying to the whole people of England the elective

franchise, as his admiring friends in Massachusetts denied it to the

great majority of the people within their jurisdiction. Chalmers says

they "outfawned and outwitted Cromwell." They gained his support by

their first address, and thanked him for it in their second. Having "the

Parliament in his pocket" until he threw even the rump of it aside

altogether, Cromwell caused Parliament to desist from executing its own

order.

It will be seen in the following chapter, that ten years after these

laudatory addresses to Parliament and Cromwell, the same General Court

of Massachusetts addressed Charles the Second in words truly loyal and

equally laudatory, and implored the continuance of their Charter upon

the ground, among other reasons, that they had never identified

themselves with the Parliament against his Royal father, but had been

"passive" during the whole of that contest. Their act against having any

commerce with the colonies who adhered to the King indicated their

neutrality; and the reader, by reading their addresses to the Parliament

and Cromwell, will see whether they did not thoroughly identify

themselves with the Parliament and Cromwell against Charles the First.

They praise Cromwell as raised up by the special hand of God, and crave

upon him the success of "the Captain of the Lord's hosts;" and they

claim the favourable consideration of Parliament to their request upon

the ground that they had identified themselves with its fortunes to rise

or fall with it; that they had aided it by their prayers and fastings,

and by men who had rendered it valuable service. The reader will be able

to judge of the agreement in their _professions_ and _statements_ in

their addresses to Parliament and Cromwell and to King Charles the

Second ten years afterwards. In their addresses to Parliament and

Cromwell they professed their readiness to _fall_ as well as rise with

the cause of the Parliament; but when that _fell_, they repudiated all

connection with it.

In the year 1651, and during the very Session of Parliament to which the

General Court addressed its petition and narrated its sacrifices and

doings in the cause of the Parliament, the latter passed the famous

Navigation Act, which was re-enacted and improved ten years afterwards,

under Charles the Second, and which became the primary pretext of the

American Revolution. The Commonwealth was at this time at war with the

Dutch republic, which had almost destroyed and absorbed the shipping

trade of England. Admiral Blake was just commencing that series of naval

victories which have immortalized his name, and placed England from that

time to this at the head of the naval powers of the world. Sir Henry

Vane, as the Minister of the Navy, devised and carried through

Parliament the famous Navigation Act--an Act which the colony of

Massachusetts, by the connivance of Cromwell (who now identified himself

with that colony), regularly evaded, at the expense of the American

colonies and the English revenue.[98] Mr. Palfrey says:

"The people of Massachusetts might well be satisfied with their

condition and prospects. Everything was prospering with them. They had

established comfortable homes, which they felt strong enough to defend

against any power but the power of the Mother Country; and that was

friendly. They had always the good-will of Cromwell. In relation _to

them_, he allowed the Navigation Law, _which pressed on the Southern

colonies, to became_ A DEAD LETTER, and they received the commodities of

all nations free of duty, and sent their ships to all the ports of

continental Europe."[99]

But that in which the ruling spirits of the Massachusetts General

Court--apart from their ceaseless endeavours to monopolise trade and

extend territory--seemed to revel most was in searching out and

punishing _dissent_ from the Congregational Establishment, and, at

times, with the individual liberty of citizens in sumptuary matters. No

Laud ever equalled them in this, or excelled them in enforcing

uniformity, not only of doctrine, but of opinions and practice in the

minutest particulars. When a stand against England was to be taken, in

worship, or inquisition into matters of religions dissent, and woman's

apparel, Endicot became Governor (according to the "advice of the

Elders" in such matters), and Winthrop was induced to be Deputy

Governor, although the latter was hardly second to the former in the

spirit and acts of religious persecution. He had been a wealthy man in

England, and was well educated and amiable; but after his arrival at

Massachusetts Bay he seems to have wanted firmness to resist the

intolerant spirit and narrow views of Endicot. He died in 1649. Mr.

Palfrey remarks: "Whether it was owing to solicitude as to the course of

affairs in England after the downfall of the Royal power, or to the

absence of the moderating influence of Winthrop, or to sentiments

engendered, on the one hand by the alarm from the Presbyterians in 1646,

and on the other by the confidence inspired by the [Congregational]

Synod in 1648, or to all these causes in their degree, the years 1650

and 1651 appear to have been some of more than common sensibility in

Massachusetts to danger from _Heretics_."[100]

In 1650, the General Court condemned, and ordered to be publicly burnt,

a book entitled "The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, Justification,

etc., Clearing of some Common Errors," written and published in England,

by Mr. Pynchion, "an ancient and venerable magistrate." This book was

deficient in orthodoxy, in the estimation of Mr. Endicot and his

colleagues, was condemned to be burnt, and the author was summoned to

answer for it at the bar of the inquisitorial court. His explanation was

unsatisfactory; and he was commanded to appear a second time, under a

penalty of one hundred pounds; but he returned to England, and left his

inquisitors without further remedy.

"About the same time," says Mr. Palfrey, "the General Court had a

difficulty with the Church of Malden. Mr. Marmaduke Matthews having

'given offence to magistrates, elders, and many brethren, in some unsafe

and unsound expressions in his public teaching,' and the Church of

Malden having proceeded to ordain him, in disregard of remonstrances

from 'both magistrates, ministers, and churches,' Matthews was fined ten

pounds for assuming the sacred office, and the Church was summoned to

make its defence" (Massachusetts Records, III., 237); which "failing to

do satisfactorily, it was punished by a fine of fifty pounds--Mr.

Hathorne, Mr. Leverett, and seven other Deputies recording their votes

against the sentence." (_Ibid._ 252; compare 276, 289.)

But these reputed fathers of civil and religious liberty not only held

inquisition over the religious writings and teachings of magistrates and

ministers, and the independence of their Congregational Churches, but

even over the property, the income, and the apparel of individuals; for

in this same year, 1651, they passed a Sumptuary Act. Mr. Holmes justly

remarks: "This sumptuary law, for the matter and style, is a curiosity."

The Court, lamenting the inefficacy of former "Declarations and Orders

against excess of apparel, both of men and women," proceed to observe:

"We cannot but to our grief take notice, that intolerable excess and

bravery hath crept in upon us, and especially among people of mean

condition, to the dishonour of God, the scandal of our profession, the

consumption of estates, and altogether unsuitable to our poverty. The

Court proceed to order, that no person whose visible estate should not

exceed the true and indifferent sum of £200, shall wear any gold or

silver lace, or gold and silver buttons, or have any lace above two

shillings per yard, or silk hoods or scarves, on the penalty of ten

shillings for every such offence." The select men of every town were

required to take notice of the apparel of any of the inhabitants, and to

assess such persons as "they shall judge to exceed their ranks and

abilities, in the costliness or fashion of their apparel in any respect,

especially in wearing of ribbands and great boots," at £200 estates,

according to the proportion which some men used to pay to whom such

apparel is suitable and allowed. An exception, however, is made in

favour of public officers and their families, and of those "whose

education and employment have been above the ordinary degree, or whose

estates have been considerable, though now decayed."[101]

It will be recollected by the reader that in 1644 the Massachusetts Bay

Court passed an act of banishment, etc., against Baptists; that in 1643

it put to "the rout" the Presbyterians, who made a move for the

toleration of their worship; that in 1646, when the Presbyterians and

some Episcopalians petitioned the local Court for liberty of worship,

and in the event of refusal expressed their determination to appeal to

the English Parliament, they were punished with fines and imprisonment,

and their papers were seized. The above acts of censorship over the

press, and private opinions in the case of Mr. Pinchion, and their

tyranny over the organization of new Churches and the ordinations of

ministers--fining both Church and ministers for exercising what is

universally acknowledged to be essential to _independent_ worship--are

but further illustrations of the same spirit of intolerance. It was the

intolerance of the Massachusetts Bay Government that caused the

settlement of Connecticut, of New Haven, as well as of Rhode Island. The

noble minds of the younger Winthrop, of Eaton, no more than that of

Roger Williams, could shrivel themselves into the nutshell littleness of

the Massachusetts Bay Government--so called, indeed, by courtesy, or by

way of accommodation, rather than as conveying a proper idea of a

Government, as it consisted solely of Congregationalists, who alone were

eligible to office and eligible as electors to office, and was therefore

more properly a Congregational Association than a civil government; yet

this association assumed the combined powers of legislation,

administration of government and law, and of the army--absolute

censorship of the press, of worship, of even private opinions--and

punished as criminals those who even expressed their griefs in

petitions; and when punished they had the additional aggravation of

being told that they were not punished for petitioning, but for what the

petitions contained, as if they could petition without using words, and

as if they could express their griefs and wishes without using words for

that purpose. Yet under such pretexts was a despotism established and

maintained for sixty years without a parallel in the annals of colonial

history, ancient or modern; under which five-sixths of the population

had no more freedom of worship, of opinion, or of franchise, than the

slaves of the Southern States before the recent civil war. It is not

surprising that a Government based on no British principle, based on the

above principle of a one Church membership, every franchise under which

was granted, or cancelled, or continued at the pleasure of Elders and

their Courts--such a Government, un-British in its foundation and

elements, could not be expected to be loyal to the Royal branch of the

constitution.

It is not surprising that even among the Puritan party themselves, who

were now warring against the King, and who were soon to bring him to the

block, such unmitigated despotism and persecutions in Massachusetts

should call forth, here and there, a voice of remonstrance,

notwithstanding the argus-eyed watchfulness and espionage exercised by

the Church government at Massachusetts Bay over all persons and papers

destined for England, and especially in regard to every suspected person

or paper. One of these is from Sir Henry Vane, who went to Massachusetts

in 1636, and was elected Governor; but he was in favour of toleration,

and resisted the persecution against Mrs. Anne Hutchinson and her

brother, Mr. Wheelwright. The persecuting party proved too strong for

him, and he resigned his office before the end of the year. He was

succeeded as Governor by Mr. Winthrop, who ordered him to quit

Massachusetts. He was, I think, the purest if not the best statesman of

his time;[102] he was too good a man to cherish resentment against

Winthrop or against the colony, but returned good for evil in regard to

both in after years. Sir Henry Vane wrote to Governor Winthrop, in

regard to these persecutions, as follows:

"Honoured Sir,--

"I received yours by your son, and was unwilling to let him return

without telling you as much. The exercise of troubles which God is

pleased to lay upon these kingdoms and the inhabitants in them, teaches

us patience and forbearance one with another in some measure, though

there be no difference in our opinions, which makes me hope, that from

the experience here, it may also be derived to yourselves, lest while

the Congregational way amongst you is in its freedom, and is backed with

power, it teach its oppugners here to extirpate it and roote it out, and

from its own principles and practice. I shall need say no more, knowing

your son can acquaint you particularly with our affairs.

"&c., &c.,

H. VANE.[103]

June 10, 1645."

Another and more elaborate remonstrance of the same kind was written by

Sir Richard Saltonstall, one of the original founders, and of the first

Council of the Company--one who had appeared before the King in Council

in 1632, in defence of Endicot and his Council, in answer to the charges

of Church innovation, of abolishing the worship of the Church of

England, and banishing the Browns on account of their adhering to the

worship which all the emigrants professed on their leaving England. Sir

R. Saltonstall and Mr. Cradock, the Governor of the Company, could

appeal to the address of Winthrop and his eleven ships of emigrants,

which they had delivered to their "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of

England" on their departure for America, as to their undying love and

oneness with the Church of England, and their taking Church of England

chaplains with them; they could appeal to the letter of Deputy Governor

Dudley to Lady Lincoln, denying that any innovations or changes whatever

had been introduced; they could appeal to the positive statements of the

Rev. John White, "the Patriarch of Dorchester," a Conformist clergyman,

and the first projector of the colony, declaring that the charges of

innovations, etc., were calumnies. Doubtless all these parties believed

what they said; they believed the denials and professions made to them;

and they repeated them to the King's Privy Council with such earnestness

as to have quite captivated the Judges, to have secured even the

sympathies of the King, who was far from being the enemy of the colony

represented by his enemies. Accordingly, an order was made in Council,

January 19, 1632, "declaring the fair appearances and great hopes which

there then were, that the country would prove beneficial to the kingdom,

as profitable to the particular persons concerned, and that the

_adventurers might be assured_ that if things should be carried as was

pretended when the patents were granted, and according as by the patent

is appointed, his Majesty would not only maintain the liberties and

privileges heretofore granted, but supply anything further which might

tend to the good government, prosperity, and comfort of the people

there." According to the statement of some of the Privy Council, the

King himself said "he would have severely punished who did abuse his

Governor and Plantation."

Mr. Palfrey well observes: "Saltonstall, Humphrey, and Cradock appeared

before a Committee of the Council on the Company's behalf, and had the

_address or good fortune_ to vindicate their clients."[104] It was

certainly owing to their "address or good fortune," and not to the

justice of their case, that they succeeded in deceiving the King and

Council. The complainants had unwisely mixed the charge of disloyal

speeches, etc., with Church innovations. It was to parry the former, by

assuming the statements to be _ex parte_, and at any rate uttered by

private individuals, who should be called to account for their conduct,

and for whose words the Company could not be justly held responsible. On

the main charge of Church innovations, or Church revolution, and

proscription of the worship of the Church of England, positive denials

were opposed--the profession of Winthrop with his company and chaplains

on leaving England, the positive statement of the "Patriarch of

Dorchester," and that of Deputy Governor Dudley, who went to

Massachusetts with Winthrop, and wrote to the Countess of Lincoln the

year after his arrival, denying that any innovations had been made. To

all this the complainants had only to oppose their own words--their

papers having been seized. They were overwhelmed by the mass of

authority arrayed against them. But though they were defeated for the

time, they were not silenced; and the following two years were

productive of such a mass of rumours and statements, all tending to

prove the Church revolutionary and Church proscriptive proceedings of

the Massachusetts Corporation, that the King and Council found it

necessary to prosecute those inquiries which they had deferred in 1632,

and to appoint a Royal Commission to proceed to Massachusetts Bay and

inquire into the disputed facts, and correct all abuses, if such should

be found, on the spot. This was what the Massachusetts Bay persecutors

most dreaded. As long as the inquiry should be conducted in London, they

could, by intercepting papers and intimidating witnesses, and with the

aid of powerful friends in England--one or two of whom managed to retain

their place in office and in the Privy Council, even when Charles ruled

without a Parliament--with such advantages they could laugh to scorn the

complaints of the persecuted, and continue their proscriptions and

oppressions with impunity. But with a Royal Commission sitting on the

spot, these acts of concealment and deception would be impossible. They

therefore changed their ground; they now denied the right of the King to

inquire into their proceedings; they invoked, as was their wont, the

counsel of their ministers, or "Elders," who preached warlike sermons

and gave warlike advice--"to resist if they were strong enough;" but if

not strong enough to fight, "to avoid and delay." For the former purpose

they forthwith raised £800 to erect a fort to protect the entrance of

their harbour, and organized and armed companies; and in pursuance of

the latter, they delayed a year even to acknowledge the receipt of the

Royal orders to answer the charges preferred against them, and then,

when a more imperative and threatening Royal demand was sent, they

pleaded for another year to prepare for their defence, and thus "avoided

and delayed" from time to time, until the King, getting so entangled

with his Scottish subjects and Parliament, became unable to pursue his

inquiries into the proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Plantation; and

the Congregational Church rulers there had, for more than twenty years,

the luxury of absolute rule and unrestricted persecution of all that

dissented from their newly set up Church polity and worship.

Sir Richard Saltonstall, as well as Sir Henry Vane, and doubtless many

others of the Puritan party in England, could not endure in silence the

outrageous perversions of the Charter, and high-handed persecutions by

the Congregational rulers of Massachusetts Bay.[105] Sir R. Saltonstall

therefore wrote to Cotton and Wilson, who, with Norton, were the ablest

preachers among the "Elders," and were the fiercest persecutors. The

letter is without date, but is stated by Mr. Hutchinson, in his

Collection of Massachusetts State Papers, to have been written "some

time between 1645 and 1653." Sir R. Saltonstall's indignant and noble

remonstrance is as follows:

"Reverend and deare friends, whom I unfaynedly love

and respect:

"It doth not a little grieve my spirit to heare what sadd things are

reported day by day of your tyranny and persecutions in New England as

that you fine, whip and imprison men for their consciences. First, you

compell such to come to your assemblys as you know will not joyne, and

when they show their dislike thereof or witness against it, then you

stirre up your magistrates to punish them for such (as you conseyve)

their publicke affronts. Truly, friends, this your practice of

compelling any in matters of worship to do that whereof they are not

fully persuaded, is to make them sin, for so the apostle (Rom. xiv. 23)

tells, and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward

man for feare of punishment. We pray for you and wish you prosperity

every way; we hoped the Lord would have given you so much light and love

there, that you might have been eyes to God's people here, and not to

practise those courses in the wilderness, which you went so far to

prevent. These rigid ways have laid you very lowe in the hearts of the

saints. I do assure you I have heard them pray in the public assemblies

that the Lord would give you meeke and humble spirits, not to strive so

much for uniformity as to keepe the unity of the spirit in the bond of

peace."

Addressed: "For my reverend and worthyly much esteemed friends, Mr.

Cotton and Mr. Wilson, preachers to the Church which is at Boston, in

New England."[106]

It is seen that Sir R. Saltonstall's letter was addressed to the two

principal Congregational ministers of Boston. It has been shown that the

preachers were the counsellors and prompters of all violent measures

against dissenting Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and

Quakers--a fact further illustrated and confirmed by Mr. Bancroft, who,

under the date of 1650 and 1651, says: "Nor can it be denied, nor should

it be concealed, that the Elders, especially Wilson and Norton,

instigated and sustained the Government in its worst cruelties."[107]

During this first thirty years of the Massachusetts Bay Government, it

evinced, in contrast with all the other British American colonies,

constant hostility to the authorities in England, seizing upon every

possible occasion for agitation and dispute; perverting and abusing the

provisions of the Royal Charter to suppress the worship of the Church of

England, and banishing its adherents; setting up a new Church and

persecuting, by whipping, banishment and death, those who refused to

conform to it; seeking its own interests at the expense of the

neighbouring colonies; sacrificing the first principles of civil and

religious liberty in their legislation and government; basing

eligibility to office, and even the elective franchise, upon the

condition of membership in a Congregational Church--a condition without

a precedent or a parallel in any Protestant country.

I cannot better conclude this review of the first three decades of the

Massachusetts Bay Puritan Government, than in the words of the

celebrated Edmund Burke, who, in his account of the European settlements

in America, after describing the form of government established at

Massachusetts Bay, remarks that: "From such a form as this, great

religious freedom might, one would have imagined, be well expected. But

the truth is, they had no idea at all of such freedom. The very

doctrine of any sort of toleration was so odious to the greater part,

that one of the first persecutions set up here was against a small party

which arose amongst themselves, who were hardy enough to maintain that

the civil magistrate had no lawful power to use compulsory measures in

affairs of religion. After harassing these people by all the vexatious

ways imaginable, they obliged them to fly out of their jurisdiction."

"If men, merely for the moderation of their sentiments, were exposed to

such severe treatment, it was not to be expected that others should

escape unpunished. The very first colony had hardly set its foot in

America, when, discovering that some amongst them were false brethren,

and ventured to make use of the Common Prayer, they found means to make

the country so uneasy to them, that they were glad to fly back to

England. As soon as they began to think of making laws, I find no less

than five about matters of religion; all contrived, and not only

contrived, but executed in some respects with a rigour that the

persecution which drove the Puritans out of England, might be considered

lenity and indulgence in the comparison. For, in the first of these

laws, they deprive every man who does not communicate with their

Established Church, of the right to his freedom, or a vote in the

election of their magistrates. In the second, they sentence to

banishment any who should oppose the fourth commandment, or deny the

validity of infant baptism, or the authority of the magistrates. In the

third, they condemn Quakers to banishment, and make it capital for them

to return; and not stopping at the offenders, they lay heavy fines upon

all who should bring them into the province, or even harbour them for an

hour. In the fourth, they provide banishment, and death in case of

return, for Jesuits and Popish priests of every denomination. In the

fifth, they decree death to any who shall worship images. After they had

provided such a complete code of persecution, they were not long without

opportunities of reading bloody lectures upon it." "In short, this

people, who in England could not bear to be chastised with rods, had no

sooner got free from their fetters than they scourged their

fellow-refugees with scorpions; though the absurdity as well as

injustice of such proceeding in them might stare them in the

face!"[108]

Mr. Palfrey observes, that "the death of the Protector is not so much as

referred to in the public records of Massachusetts." If this silence

even as to the fact of Cromwell's death was intended to disclaim having

had any connection or sympathy with the Protector, it was a deception;

if it was intended as preparatory to renouncing the worship of the

setting sun of Cromwell, and worshipping the rising sun of Charles the

Second, it was indeed characteristic of their siding with the stronger

party, if they could thereby advance their own interests. But I think

every candid man in this age will admit, that there was much more

dignity of sentiment and conduct of those loyal colonies who adhered to

their Sovereign in his adversity as well as in his prosperity, who

submitted to compulsory subjection to the Cromwell power without

acknowledging its legitimacy, and were the first to recognize and

proclaim the restored king.[109]

The reader will be better able to appreciate the professions of the

Massachusetts Bay Government, in regard to the restored king, after

reviewing its professions and relations to the Government of the Long

Parliament and of Cromwell.

It has been shown above, that when obstinate silence could not prevent

the inquiry by a Royal Commission into the oppressive and disloyal

proceedings complained of, and that resistance was fruitless, the

Massachusetts Bay Government, September 1638, transmitted to the Lords

Commissioners for the Colonies a petition in which it professed not to

question the authority of their Lordships' proceedings, but only to open

their griefs; that if they had offended in anything, they prostrated

themselves at the foot of authority. They begged for time to answer,

before condemnation, professed loyalty to the King and prayers for his

long life, and the happiness of his family, and for the success of the

Lords of his Council. Two years after, when the King's power began to

wane, the Massachusetts Bay Government sent home a Commission, headed by

the notorious Hugh Peters,[110] to conciliate the support of the leading

members of the Commons against the King's commission, and to aid the

opposition to the King. In 1644, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay

enacted, "that what person so ever shall draw a party to the King,

against the Parliament, shall be accounted a high offender against this

Commonwealth, and shall be punished capitally." (See this Act, quoted at

large in a previous page.) This proceeding was as decisive as possible

against the King and all who adhered to the monarchy.

Again, in the Massachusetts General Court's address to Parliament, in

1651, occur the following words:

"And for our carriage and demeanour to the honourable Parliament, for

these _ten years_, since the first beginning of your differences with

the late king, and the war that after ensued, _we have constantly

adhered to you_, not withdrawing ourselves in your weakest condition and

doubtfullest times, but by our fasting and prayers for your good

success, and our thanksgiving after the same was attained, in days of

solemnity set apart for that purpose, _as also by our over-useful men_

(others going voluntarily from us to help you), _who have been of good

use and done good acceptable service to the army, declaring to the

world hereby_ that such was the duty and love we bear unto the

Parliament that we were ready to rise and fall with them; for which we

have suffered the hatred and threats of other English colonies, now in

rebellion against you, as also the loss of divers of our ships and

goods, taken by the King's party that is dead, by others commissioned by

the King of Scots [Charles II.] and by the Portugalls."[111]

An address of the same General Court, in the same year, 1651, and on the

same occasion (against the order of Parliament to recall the old and

grant the new Charter), to Oliver Cromwell, concludes in the following

words:

"We humbly petition your Excellence to be pleased to show us what

favour God shall be pleased to direct you unto on our behalf, to the

most honourable Parliament, unto whom we have now presented a petition.

The copy of it, _verbatim_, we are bold to send herewith, that if God

please, we may not be hindered in our comfortable work of God here in

this wilderness. Wherein, as for other favours, we shall be bound to

pray, that the Captain of the host of Israel may be with you and your

whole army, in all your great enterprises, to the glory of God, the

subduing of his and your enemies, and your everlasting peace and comfort

in Jesus Christ."

Likewise, August 24th, 1654, after Cromwell had not only put the King to

death, but abolished the House of Lords, excluded by his soldiers 154

members of Parliament, then dismissed the remaining "rump" of the

Parliament itself and become sole despot, the General Court of

Massachusetts Bay concluded an address to him as follows:

"We shall ever pray the Lord, your protector in all your dangers, that

hath crowned you with honour after your long service, to lengthen your

days, that you may long continue Lord Protector of the three nations,

and the Churches of Christ Jesus."[112]

The documentary evidence which I have adduced, shows, I think, beyond

reasonable doubt, that the rulers of Massachusetts Bay Colony were

disaffected to the King from the beginning, and so displayed that

feeling on every occasion except one, in 1638, when they professed

humiliation and loyalty in order to avert the investigation which they

dreaded into their proceedings; that the King, whatever may have been

his misdoings towards his subjects in England, treated his subjects in

the colonies, and especially in Massachusetts Bay, with a kindness and

consideration which should have secured their gratitude; that the

moment, in the matters of dispute between the King and his Parliament

(and in which the colonies had no concern), the scale appeared to turn

in favour of the Parliament, the rulers of Massachusetts Bay renounced

their allegiance to the King, and identified themselves as thorough

partizans of the war against the King--that they suppressed, under the

severest penalties, every expression of loyalty to the King within their

jurisdiction--offered prayers for and furnished men in aid of the

Parliamentary army--denounced and proscribed all recognition, except as

enemies, the other American colonies who adhered to their oaths of

allegiance to the King; that when Cromwell had obliterated every

landmark of the British constitution and of British liberty--King,

Lords, and Commons, the freedom of election and the freedom of the

press, with the freedom of worship, and transformed the army itself to

his sole purpose--doing what no Tudor or Stuart king had ever presumed

to do--even then the General Court of Massachusetts Bay bowed in

reverence and praise before him as the called and chosen of the Lord of

hosts.[113]

But when Cromwell could no longer give them, in contempt to the law of

Parliament, a monopoly of trade against their fellow-colonists, and

sustain them in their persecutions; when he ceased to live, they would

not condescend to record his demise, but, after watching for a while the

chances of the future, they turned in adulation to the rising sun of the

restored Charles the Second.

The manner in which they adjusted their denials and professions to this

new state of things, until they prevailed upon the kind-hearted King not

to remember their past transgressions, and to perpetuate their Charter

on certain conditions; how they evaded those conditions of toleration

and administering the government, and resumed their old policy of

hostility to the Sovereign and of persecution of their Baptist and other

brethren who differed from them in worship, and in proscribing them from

the elective franchise itself, will be treated in the following

chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 73: Neal says: "Certainly never was country more obliged to a

man than New England to Archbishop Laud, who by his cruel and arbitrary

proceedings drove thousands of families out of the kingdom, and thereby

stocked the Plantations with inhabitants, in the compass of a very few

years, which otherwise could not have been done in an age." This was the

sense of some of the greatest men in Parliament in their speeches in

1641. Mr. Tienns (afterwards Lord Hollis) said that "a certain number of

ceremonies in the judgment of some men unlawful, and to be rejected of

all the churches; in the judgment of all other Churches, and in the

judgment of our own Church, but indifferent; yet what difference, yea,

what distraction have those indifferent ceremonies raised among us? What

has deprived us of so many thousands of Christians who desired, and in

all other respects deserved, to hold communion with us? I say what has

deprived us of them, and scattered them into I know not what places and

corners of the world, but these indifferent ceremonies."--(Several other

speeches to the same effect are quoted by Neal.)--History of New

England, Vol. I., pp. 210-212.]

[Footnote 74: "Veneris, 10 March, 1642:

"Whereas the plantations in New England have, by the blessing of the

Almighty, had good and prosperous success, without any public charge to

the State, and are now likely to prove very happy for the propagation of

the gospel in those parts, and very beneficial and commodious to this

nation. The Commons assembled in Parliament do, for the better

advancement of those plantations and the encouragement of the planters

to proceed in their undertaking, ordain that all merchandising goods,

that by any person or persons whatsoever, merchant or other, shall be

exported out of the kingdom of England into New England to be spent or

employed there, or being of the growth of that kingdom [colony], shall

be from thence imported thither, or shall be laden or put on board any

ship or vessel for necessaries in passing to and fro, and all and every

the owner or owners thereof shall be freed and discharged of and from

paying and yielding any custom, subsidy, taxation, or other duty for the

same, either inward or outward, either in this kingdom or New England,

or in any port, haven, creek or other place whatsoever, until the House

of Commons shall take further order therein to the contrary."--Hutchinson's

History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 114, 115.]

[Footnote 75: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p.

114.]

[Footnote 76: The following is the Act itself, passed in 1644: "Whereas

the civil wars and dissensions in our native country, through the

seditious words and carriages of many evil affected persons, cause

divisions in many places of government in America, some professing

themselves for the King, and others for the Parliament, not considering

that the Parliament themselves profess that they stand for the King and

Parliament against the malignant Papists and delinquents in that

kingdom. It is therefore ordered, that what person whatsoever shall by

word, writing, or action endeavour to disturb our peace, directly or

indirectly, by drawing a party under pretence that he is for the King of

England, and such as join with him against the Parliament, shall be

accounted as an offender of a high nature against this Commonwealth, and

to be proceeded with, either _capitally_ or _otherwise_, according to

the quality and degree of his offence." (Hutchinson's History of

Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 135, 136.)]

[Footnote 77: It was not until three years after this, and three years

after the facts of the banished Roger Williams' labours in Rhode Island

(see note V. below), that the _first_ mission among the Indians was

established by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay--seventeen years after

their settlement there; for Mr. Holmes says: "The General Court of

Massachusetts passed the _first_ Act (1646) to encouraging the carrying

of the Gospel to the Indians, and recommended it to the ministers to

consult on the best means of effecting the design. By their advice, it

is probable, the first Indian Mission was undertaken; for on the 28th of

October [1646] Mr. John Eliot, minister of Roxbury, commenced those

pious and indefatigable labours among the natives, which procured for

him the title of The Indian Apostle. His first visit was to the Indians

at Nonantum, whom he had apprised of his intention." (Annals of America,

Vol. I., p. 280.)]

[Footnote 78: Hazard, Vol. I., pp. 533, 534. The provisions of this

remarkable Act are as follows:

"Governours and Government of Islands in America.--November 2nd, 1643:

"I. That Robert Earl of Warwick be Governour and Lord High Admirall of

all the Islands and other Plantations inhabited, planted, or belonging

unto any of his Majestie's the King of England's subjects, or which

hereafter may be inhabited, planted, or belonging to them, within the

bounds and upon the coasts of America.

"II. That the Lords and others particularly named in the Ordinance shall

be Commissioners to joyne in aid and assistance of the said Earl, Chief

Governour and Admirall of the said Plantations, and shall have power

from Time to Time to provide for, order, and dispose of all things which

they shall think most fit and advantageous for the well governing,

securing, strengthening and preserving of the sayd Plantations, and

chiefly for the advancement of the true Protestant Religion amongst the

said Planters and Inhabitants, and the further enlarging and spreading

of the Gospel of Christ amongst those that yet remain there in great

Blindness and Ignorance.

"III. That the said Governour and Commissioners, upon all weighty and

important occasions which may concern the good and safety of the

Planters, Owners of Lands, or Inhabitants of the said Islands, shall

have power to send for, view, and make use of all Records, Books, and

Papers which may concern the said Plantations.

"IV. That the said Earl, Governour in Chief, and the said Commissioners,

shall have power to nominate, appoint, and constitute, as such

subordinate Commissioners, Councillors, Commanders, Officers, and

Agents, as they shall think most fit and serviceable for the said

Islands and Plantations: and upon death or other avoidance of the

aforesaid Chief Governour and Admirall, or other the Commissioners

before named, to appoint such other Chief Governour or Commissioners in

the roome and place of such as shall be void, as also to remove all such

subordinate Governours and Officers as they shall judge fit.

"V. That no subordinate Governours, Councillors, Commanders, Officers,

Agents, Planters, or Inhabitants, which now are resident in or upon the

said Islands or Plantations, shall admit or receive any new Governours,

Councillors, Commanders, Officers, or Agents whatsoever, but such as

shall be allowed and approved of under the hands and seals of the

aforesaid Chief Governour and High Admirall, together with the hands and

seals of the said Commissioners, or six of them, or under the hands of

such as they shall authorize thereunto.

"VI. That the Chief Governour and Commissioners before mentioned, or the

greater number of them, are authorized to assign, ratifie, and confirm

so much of their aforementioned authority and power, and in such manner,

to such persons as they shall judge fit, for the better governing and

preserving the said Plantations and Islands from open violence and

private distractions.

"VII. That whosoever shall, in obedience to this Ordinance, do or

execute any thing, shall by virtue hereof be saved harmless and

indemnified."]

[Footnote 79: In 1646 the Parliament passed another ordinance, exempting

the colonies for three years from all tollages, "except the excise,"

provided their productions should not be "exported but only in English

vessels." While this Act also asserted the parliamentary right of

taxation over the Colonial plantations, it formed a part of what was

extended and executed by the famous Act of Navigation, first passed by

the Puritan Parliament five years afterwards, in 1651, as will be seen

hereafter.]

[Footnote 80: Mr. Bancroft must have been aware of the existence of this

ordinance, for he makes two allusions to the Commission appointed by it.

In connection with one allusion to it, he states the following

interesting facts, illustrative of Massachusetts exclusiveness on the

one record, and on the other the instruments and progress of religious

liberty in New England. "The people of Rhode Island," says Mr. Bancroft,

"_excluded from the colonial union_, would never have maintained their

existence as a separate state, had they not sought the interference and

protection of the Mother Country; and the founder of the colony (Roger

Williams) was chosen to conduct the important mission. Embarking at

Manhattan [for he was not allowed to go to Boston], he arrived in

England not long after the death of Hampden. _The Parliament had placed

the affairs of the American Colonies under the Earl of Warwick, as

Governor-in-Chief, assisted by a Council of five peers and twelve

commoners_. Among these commoners was Henry Vane, a man who was ever

true in his affections as he was undeviating in his principles, and who

now welcomed the American envoy as an ancient friend. The favour of

Parliament was won by his [Roger Williams'] incomparable 'printed Indian

labours, the like whereof was not extant from any part of America;' and

his merits as a missionary induced both houses of Parliament to grant

unto him and friends with him a free and absolute charter[84] of civil

government for those parts of his abode.' Thus were the places of refuge

for 'soul-liberty' on the Narragansett Bay incorporated 'with full power

and authority to rule themselves.' To the Long Parliament, and

especially to Sir Harry Vane, Rhode Island owes its existence as a

political State."--History of the United States, Vol. I., pp. 460, 461.

The other allusion of Mr. Bancroft to the Parliamentary Act and

Commission of 1643 is in the following words: "_The Commissioners

appointed by Parliament, with unlimited authority over the Plantations_,

found no favour in Virginia. They promised indeed freedom from English

taxation, but this immunity was already enjoyed. They gave the colony

liberty to choose its own Governor, but it had no dislike to Berkeley;

and though there was a party for the Parliament, yet the King's

authority was maintained. The sovereignty of Charles had ever been

mildly exercised."--_Ib._, p. 222.]

[Footnote 84: Hazard, Vol. 1., p. 538; Massachusetts Records. The

working of this Act, and the punishments inflicted under it for more

than twenty years, will be seen hereafter.]

[Footnote 81: This is not quite accurate. The word 'absolute' does not

occur in the patent. The words of the Charter are: "A _free_ Charter of

civil incorporation and government; that they may order and govern their

Plantations in such a manner as to maintain justice and peace, both

among themselves, and towards all men with whom they shall have to

do"--"Provided nevertheless that the said laws, constitutions, and

punishments, for the civil government of said plantations, be

conformable to the laws of England, so far as the nature and

constitution of the place will admit. And always reserving to the said

Earl and Commissioners, and their successors, power and authority for to

dispose the general government of that, as it stands in relation to the

rest of the Plantations in America, as they shall conceive from time to

time most conducing to the general good of the said Plantations, the

honour of his Majesty, and the service of the State."--(Hazard, Vol. I.,

pp. 529-531, where the Charter is printed at length.)]

[Footnote 82: But Mr. Holmes makes explicit mention of the parliamentary

ordinance of 1643 in the following terms:--"The English Parliament

passed an ordinance appointing the Earl of Warwick Governor-in-Chief and

Lord High Admiral of the American Colonies, with a Council of five Peers

and twelve Commoners. It empowered him, in conjunction with his

associates, to examine the state of affairs; to send for papers and

persons, to remove Governors and officers, and appoints other in their

places; and to assign over to these such part of the powers that were

now granted, as he should think proper." (Annals of America, Vol. I., p.

273.)]

[Footnote 83: History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 117;

Massachusetts Laws, pp. 140-145.]

[Footnote 85: "Mr. Winthrop, who was then Deputy-Governor, was active in

the prosecution of the petitioners, but the party in favour of them had

so much interest as to obtain a vote to require him to answer in public

to the complaint against him. Dr. Mather says: 'He was most irregularly

called forth to an ignominious hearing before a vast assembly, to which,

"with a sagacious humility," he consented, although he showed he might

have refused it. The result of the hearing was that he was honourably

acquitted,' etc."]

[Footnote 86: This refers to a sermon preached by Mr. Cotton on a fast

day, an extract of which is published in the Magnalia, B. III., p. 29,

wherein he denounces the judgments of God upon such of his hearers as

were then going to England with evil intentions against the country.]

[Footnote 87: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp.

145-149.

Mr. Palfrey, under the head of "Presbyterian Cabal," states the

following facts as to the treatment of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, and others

who proposed to make their appeal to the English Parliament:

"Child and Dand, two of the remonstrants, were preparing to go to

England with a petition to the Parliament from a number of the

non-freemen. Informed of their intention, the magistrates ordered a

seizure of their papers. The searching officers found in their

possession certain memorials to the Commissioners for Plantations,

asking for 'settled Churches according to the (Presbyterian) Reformation

in England;' for the establishment in the colony of the laws of the

realm; for the appointment of 'a General Governor, or some honourable

Commissioner,' to reform the existing state of things. For this further

offence, such of the prominent conspirators as remained in the country

were punished by additional fines. Child and Dand were mulcted in the

sum of two hundred pounds; Mauerick, in that of a hundred and fifty

pounds; and two others of a hundred pounds each."--Palfrey's History of

New England [Abridged edition], Vol. I., pp. 327, 328.]

[Footnote 88: Mr. Bancroft, referring to the petition of Dr. Child and

others, quoted on page 94, says: "The document was written in the spirit

of wanton insult;" then refers to the case of Gorton, who had appealed

to the Earl of Warwick and the other Parliamentary Commissioners against

a judicial decision of the Massachusetts Bay Court in regard to land

claimed by him. From Mr. Bancroft's statement, it appears that the claim

of Gorton, friendless as he was, was so just as to commend itself to the

favourable judgment of an impartial and competent tribunal of the

Parliamentary Commissioners, whose authority his oppressors expressly

denied, and then, in their address to Parliament in reference to its

order, denied any authority of Parliament over their proceedings. Mr.

Bancroft's words are as follows:

"Gorton had carried his complaints to the Mother Country; and, though

unaided by personal influence or by powerful friends, had succeeded in

all his wishes. At this very juncture an order respecting his claims

arrived in Boston; and was couched in terms _which involved an assertion

of the right of Parliament to reverse the decisions and control the

Government of Massachusetts_. The danger was imminent; it struck at the

very life and foundation of the rising Commonwealth. _Had the Long

Parliament succeeded in revoking the patent of Massachusetts_, the

Stuarts, on their restoration, would have found not one chartered

government in the colonies; and the tenor of American history would have

been changed. The people[89] rallied with great unanimity in support of

their magistrates.

"At length the General Court assembled for the discussion of _the

usurpations of Parliament_ and the _dangers from domestic treachery_.

The elders [ministers] did not fail to attend in the gloomy season. One

faithless deputy was desired to withdraw; and then, _with closed doors_,

that the consultation might remain in the breast of the Court, the

_nature of the relation with England_ was made the subject of debate.

After much deliberation it was agreed that Massachusetts owed the same

allegiance to England as the free Hanse Towns had rendered to the

Empire; as Normandy, when its dukes were kings in England, had paid to

the monarchs of France. It was also resolved not to accept a new Charter

from Parliament, for that would imply a surrender of the old. Besides,

Parliament granted none but by way of ordinance, and always made for

itself an express preservation of a supreme power in all things. The

_elders_ (ministers), after a day's consultation, _confirmed the

decisions_.

"The colony proceeded to exercise the _independence_ which it claimed.

The General Court replied to the petition in a State paper, written with

great moderation; and the disturbers of the public security were

summoned into its presence. Robert Child and his companions appealed to

the Commissioners in England. _The appeal was not admitted._" "To the

Parliament of England the Legislature remonstrated with the noblest

frankness _against any assertion of permanent authority of that

body_."--Hist. U.S., Vol. I., pp. 475-477.]

[Footnote 89: By the "people" here Mr. Bancroft must mean the members of

the Congregational Churches (one-sixth of the whole population), for

they alone were _freemen_, and had all the united powers of the

franchise--the _sword_, the _legislation_--in a word, the whole civil,

judicial, ecclesiastical, and military government.]

[Footnote 90: But Mr. Bancroft seems to forget that in less than forty

years after this the Charter was revoked, and that very system of

government was established which the General Court of Massachusetts Bay

now deprecated, but under which Massachusetts itself was most prosperous

and peaceful for more than half a century, until the old spirit was

revived, which rendered friendly government with England impossible.]

[Footnote 91: Mr. Hutchinson says: "The Earl of Warwick had a patent for

Massachusetts Bay about 1623, but the bounds are not known." (History of

Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 7.)]

[Footnote 92: Mr. Palfrey says: "While in England the literary war

against Presbytery was in great part conducted by American combatants,

their attention was presently required at home. William Vassal, a man of

fortune, was one of the original assistants named in the Charter of the

Massachusetts Company. He came to Massachusetts with Winthrop's fleet in

the great emigration; but for some cause--_possibly from dissatisfaction

with the tendencies to Separatism which he witnessed_--he almost

immediately returned. He crossed the sea again five years after, but

then it was to the colony of Plymouth. Establishing his home at

Seituate, he there conducted himself so as to come under the reproach of

being 'a man of a busy, factious spirit, and always opposite to the

civil government of the country and the way of the Churches.'"

(Winthrop, II., p. 261.) His disaffection occasioned the more

uneasiness, because his brother Samuel, also formerly an assistant of

the Massachusetts Company, was now one of the Parliament's Commissioners

for the government of Foreign Plantations.

In the year when the early struggle between the Presbyterians and

Independents in England had disclosed the importance of the issues

depending upon it, and the obstinate determination with which it was to

be carried on, Vassal "practised with" a few persons in Massachusetts

"to take some course, first by petitioning the Courts of Massachusetts

and of Plymouth, _and if that succeeded not_, then to the Parliament of

England, that the distinctions which were maintained here, both in civil

and church state, might be done away, and that we might be wholly

governed by the laws of England." In [93] a "Remonstrance and Humble

Petition," addressed by them to the General Court [of Massachusetts],

they represented--1. That they could not discern in that colony "a

settled form of government according to the laws of England;" 2. That

"many thousands in the plantation of the English nation were debarred

from civil employments," and not permitted "so much as to have any vote

in choosing magistrates, captains, or other civil and military

officers;" and, 3. "That numerous members of the Church of England,...

not dissenting from the latest reformation in England, Scotland, etc.,

were detained from the seals of the covenant of free grace, as it was

supposed they will not take these Churches' covenants." They prayed for

relief from each of these grievances; and they gave notice that, if it

were denied, they should "be necessitated to apply their humble desires

to the honourable Houses of Parliament, who, they hoped, would take

their sad condition into their serious consideration."

After describing the social position of the representative petitioners,

Mr. Palfrey proceeds: "But however little importance the movement

derived from the character or position of the agitators, it was

essentially of a nature to create alarm. It proposed nothing less than

an abandonment of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, which the

settlers and owners of Massachusetts had set up, for reasons impressing

their own minds as of the greatest significance and cogency. The demand

was enforced by considerations which were not without plausibility, and

were presented in a seductive form. _It was itself an appeal to the

discontent of the numerical majority, not invested with a share in the

government._ And it frankly threatened an appeal to the English

Parliament--an authority always to be dreaded, for encroachment on

colonial rights, and especially to be dreaded at a moment when the more

numerous party among its members were bent on setting up a Presbytery as

the established religion of England and its dependencies, determined on

a severe suppression of dissent from it, and keenly exasperated against

that Independency which New England had raised up to torment them in

their own sphere, and which, for herself, New England cherished as her

life."

"It being understood that two of the remonstrants, Fowle and Smith, were

about to embark for England, to prosecute their business, the Court

stopped them with a summons to appear and 'answer _to the matter of the

petition_.' They replied 'to the Gentlemen Commissioners for

Plantations;' and the Court committed them to the custody of the Marshal

till they gave security to be responsible to the judgment of the Court.

The whole seven were next arraigned as authors of divers false and

scandalous statements in a certain paper ... against the Churches of

Christ and the civil government here established, derogating from the

honour and authority of the same, and tending to sedition. Refusing to

answer, and 'appealing from this government, they disclaimed the

jurisdiction thereof.' This was more than Presbyterian malcontents could

be indulged in at the present critical time in Massachusetts. The Court

found them all deeply blamable, and punished them by fines, which were

to be remitted on their making 'an ingenuous and public acknowledgment

of their misdemeanours;' a condition of indemnity which they all

refused, probably in expectation of obtaining both relief and applause

in England."--"Four deputies opposed the sentence; three

magistrates--Bellingham, Saltonstall, and Bradstreet--also

dissented."--Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 166-170.]

[Footnote 93: Winthrop, II., 261. "The movement in Plymouth was made at

a General Court in October, 1645, as appears from a letter of Winslow to

Winthrop (Hutchinson's Collection, 154); though the public record

contains nothing respecting it. I infer from Winslow's letter, that half

the assistants (namely, Standish, Hatherly, Brown, and Freeman) were in

favour of larger indulgence to the malcontents." (Note by Mr. Palfrey.)

(The majority of the General Court were clearly in favour of the

movement; and knowing this, the Governor, Prince (the only persecuting

Governor of the Plymouth Colony), refused to put the question to vote.)]

[Footnote 94: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., Chap.

v., p. 75.]

[Footnote 95: History of New England, Vol. II. p. 169. In another case

mentioned by Mr. Palfrey, it is clear the public feeling was not with

the local Government, which pretended to absolute independence of

Parliament, and called the entrance of a parliamentary war vessel into

its harbour, and action there, a "_foreign_ encroachment." A Captain

Stagg arrived at Boston from London, in a vessel carrying twenty-four

guns, and found there a merchant vessel from Bristol (which city was

then held for the King), which he seized. Governor Winthrop wrote to

Captain Stagg "to know _by what authority_ he had done it in _our_

harbour." Stagg produced his commission from the Earl of Warwick to

capture vessels from ports in the occupation of the King's party, as

well in harbours and creeks as on the high seas. Winthrop ordered him to

carry the paper to Salem, the place of the Governor's residence, there

to be considered at a meeting of the magistrates. _Of course the public

feeling was with the Parliament and its officers_; but it was not so

heedless as to forget its jealousy of _foreign encroachment_ from

whatever quarter. "Some of the elders, the last Lord's Day, had in their

sermons reproved this proceeding, and exhorted magistrates to maintain

the people's liberties, which were, they said, _violated by this act_,

and that a commission could not supersede a patent. And at this meeting

some of the magistrates and some of the elders were of the same opinion,

and that the captain should be forced to restore the ship." The

decision, however, was different; and the reasons for _declining to defy

the Parliament_, and allowing its officer to retain possession of his

prize, are recorded. The following are passages of this significant

manifesto: "This could be no precedent to bar us from opposing any

commission or other foreign power that might indeed tend to our hurt or

violate our liberty; for the Parliament had taught us that _salus

populi_ is _suprema lex_."[96] "If Parliament should hereafter be of a

malignant spirit, then, _if we have strength sufficient_, we may make

use of _salus populi_ to withstand any authority from thence to our

hurt." "If we who have so openly declared our affection to the cause of

Parliament by our prayers, fastings, etc., should now oppose their

authority, or do anything that would make such an appearance, it would

be laid hold on by those in Virginia and the West Indies to confirm them

in their rebellious course, and it would grieve all our godly friends in

England, or any other of the Parliament's friends."--Palfrey's History

of New England, Vol. II., pp. 161-163.

Note.--It is plain from these words, as well as from other words quoted

elsewhere, how entirely and avowedly the Massachusetts Court identified

themselves with the Parliament and Cromwell against the King, though

they denied having done so in their addresses to Charles the Second.]

[Footnote 96: This maxim, that _the safety of the people is the supreme

law_, might, by a similar perversion, be claimed by any mob or party

constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as

by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme

authority of the nation. They had no doubt of their own infallibility;

they had no fear that they "should hereafter be of a malignant spirit;"

but they thought it very possible that the Parliament might be so, and

then it would be for them to fight if they should have "strength

sufficient." But after the restoration they thought it not well to face

the armies and fleets of Charles the Second, and made as humble, as

loyal, and as laudatory professions to him--calling him "the best of

kings"--as they had made to Cromwell.]

[Footnote 97: They say: "Receiving information by Mr. Winslow, our

agent, that it is the Parliament's pleasure that we should take a new

patent from them, and keep our Courts and issue our warrants in their

names, which we have not used in the late King's time or since, not

being able to discern the need of such an injunction,--these things make

us doubt and fear what is intended towards us. Let it therefore please

you, most honourable, we humbly entreat, to take notice hereby what were

our orders, upon what conditions and with what authority we came hither,

and what we have done since our coming. We were the first movers and

undertakers of so great an attempt, being men able enough to live in

England with our neighbours, and being helpful to others, and not

needing the help of any for outward things. About three or four and

twenty years since, seeing just cause to fear the persecution of the

then Bishops and High Commissioners for not conforming to the ceremonies

then pressed upon the consciences of those under their power, we thought

it our safest course to get to this outside of the world, out of their

view and beyond their reach. Yet before we resolved upon so great an

undertaking, wherein should be hazarded not only all our estates, but

also the lives of ourselves and our posterity, both in the voyage at sea

(wherewith we were unacquainted), and in coming into a wilderness

uninhabited (unless in some few places by heathen, barbarous Indians),

we thought it necessary to procure a patent from the late King, who then

ruled all, to warrant our removal and prevent future inconveniences, and

so did. By which patent liberty and power was granted to us to live

under the government of a Governor, magistrates of our own choosing, and

under laws of our own making (not being repugnant to the laws of

England), according to which patent we have governed ourselves above

this twenty years, we coming hither at our proper charges, without the

help of the State, an acknowledgment of the freedom of our goods from

custom," etc. "And for our carriage and demeanour to the honourable

Parliament, for these ten years, since the first beginning of your

differences with the late King, and the war that after ensued, we have

constantly adhered to you, not withdrawing ourselves in your weakest

condition and doubtfullest times, but by our fasting and prayers for

your good success, and our thanksgiving after the same was attained, in

days of solemnity set apart for that purpose, as also by our sending

over useful men (others also going voluntarily from us to help you), who

have been of good use and done acceptable services to the army,

declaring to the world hereby that such was the duty and love we bear

unto the Parliament, that we were ready to rise and fall with them; for

which we have suffered the hatred and threats of other English colonies

now in rebellion against you, as also the loss of divers of our ships

and goods, taken by the King's party that is dead, by others

commissioned by the King of Scots [Charles II.], and by the Portugalls."

"We hope that this most honourable Parliament will not cast such as have

adhered to you and depended upon you, as we have done, into so deep

despair, from the fear of which we humbly desire to be speedily freed by

a just and gracious answer; which will freshly bind us to pray and use

all lawful endeavours for the blessing of God upon you and the present

Government." Appendix viii. to the first volume of Hutchinson's History

of Massachusetts Bay, pp. 516-518.

The "General Court" also sent a letter to Oliver Cromwell, enclosing a

copy of the petition to Parliament, to counteract representations which

might be made against them by their enemies, and intreat his interest in

their behalf. This letter concludes as follows:

"We humbly petition your Excellence to be pleased to shew us what favour

God shall be pleased to direct you unto on our behalf, to the most

honourable Parliament, unto whom we have now presented a petition. The

copy of it, _verbatim_, we are bold to send herewith, that, if God so

please, we be not hindered in our comfortable proceedings in the work of

God here in this wilderness. Wherein, as for other favours, we shall be

bound to pray, that the Captain of the Host of Israel may be with you

and your whole army, in all your great enterprises, to the glory of God,

the subduing of his and your enemies, and your everlasting peace and

comfort in Jesus Christ." (_Ib._, Appendix ix., p. 522.)

In August (24th), 1654, the General Court addressed another letter to

Oliver Cromwell, commencing as follows:

"It hath been no small comfort to us poor exiles, in these utmost ends

of the earth (who sometimes felt and often feared the frowns of the

mighty), to have had the experience of the good hand of God, in raising

up such, whose endeavours have not been wanting to our welfare: amongst

whom we have good cause to give your Highness the first place: who by a

continued series of favours, have oblidged us, not only while you moved

in a lower orb, but since the Lord hath called your Highness to supreme

authority, whereat we rejoice and shall pray for the continuance of your

happy government, that under your shadow not only ourselves, but all the

Churches, may find rest and peace." (_Ib._, Appendix x., p. 523.)]

[Footnote 98: "1651.--The Parliament of England passed the famous Act of

Navigation. It had been observed with concern, that the English

merchants for several years past had usually freighted the Hollanders'

shipping for bringing home their own merchandise, because their freight

was at a lower rate than that of the English ships. For the same reason

the Dutch ships were made use of even for importing American products

from the English colonies into England. The English ships meanwhile lay

rotting in the harbours, and the English mariners, for want of

employment, went into the service of the Hollanders. The Commonwealth

now turned its attention towards the most effectual mode of retaining

the colonies in dependence on the parent State, and of securing to it

the benefits of their increasing commerce. With these views the

Parliament enacted, 'That no merchandise, either of Asia, Africa, or

America, including the English Plantations there, should be imported

into England in any but English-built ships, and belonging either to

English or English Plantation subjects, navigated also by an English

commander, and three-fourths of the sailors to be Englishmen; excepting

such merchandise as should be imported directly from the original place

of their growth, manufactured in Europe solely: and that no fish should

thenceforward be imported into England or Ireland, nor exported thence

to foreign parts, nor even from one of their own ports, but what should

be caught by their own fishers only." (Holmes' Annals of America,

Anderson, ii., 415, 416; Robertson, B. 9, p. 303; Janes' edit. Vol. I.,

p. 294.) Mr. Holmes adds in a note: "This Act was evaded at first by New

England, which still traded to all parts, and enjoyed a privilege

peculiar to themselves of importing their goods into England free of

customs." (History Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 40.)]

[Footnote 99: Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. II., p. 393.]

[Footnote 100: Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. II., p. 397, in a

note.]

[Footnote 101: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p.

152; Holmes' Annuls, Vol. I., p. 294. Note xxxi., p. 579.

This law was passed in 1651, while Endicot was Governor. Two years

before, shortly after Governor Winthrop's death, Governor Endicot, with

several other magistrates, issued a declaration against men wearing long

hair, prefaced with the words, "Forasmuch as the wearing of long hair,

after the manner of the ruffians and barbarous Indians, has begun to

invade New England," and declaring "their dislike and detestation

against wearing of such long hair as a thing uncivil and unmanly,

whereby men do deform themselves, and offend sober and modest men, and

do corrupt good manners," etc.--_Ib._]

[Footnote 102: Such was the opinion of the late Mr. John Forster, in his

beautiful Life of Sir Henry Vane, in his Lives of the Puritan Statesmen

of the Commonwealth.]

[Footnote 103: Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers, etc.;

Publication of the Prince Society.

_Note_ by Mr. Hutchinson: "Mr. Winthrop had obliged Mr. Vane to leave

Massachusetts and return to England. The letter was written when Mr.

Vane's interest in Parliament was very great. It shows a good spirit,

and the reproof is decent as well as seasonable."]

[Footnote 104: History of New England, Vol. I., p. 364.]

[Footnote 105: Mr. Neal gives the following account of certain

Baptists--Clarke, Holmes and Crandall--who "were all apprehended upon

the 20th July this year, (1651), at the house of one William Witters, of

Lin. As they were worshipping God in their own way on a Lord's-day

morning, the constable took them into custody. Next morning they were

brought before the magistrate of the town, who sent them in custody to

Boston, where they remained in prison a fortnight, when they were

brought to trial, convicted and fined: John Clarke, twenty pounds or to

be well whipped; John Crandall, five pounds or to be whipped; Obadiah

Holmes, thirty pounds for several offences." Mr. Neal adds: "The

prisoners agreed not to pay their fines but to abide the corporal

punishment the Court had sentenced them to; but some of Mr. Clarke's

friends paid the fine without his consent; and Crandall was released

upon the promise to appear at the next Court; but Holmes received thirty

lashes at the whipping-post. Several of his friends were spectators of

his punishment; among the rest John Spear and John Hazell, who, as they

were attending the prisoner back to prison, took him by the hand in the

market-place, and, in the face of all the people, praised God for his

courage and constancy; for which they were summoned before the General

Court the next day, and were fined each of them forty shillings, or to

be whipped. The prisoners refused to pay the money, but some of their

friends paid it for them."

Mr. Neal adds the following just and impressive remarks: "_Thus the

Government of New England, for the sake of uniformity in divine worship,

broke in upon the natural rights of mankind, punishing men, not for

disturbing the State, but for their different sentiments in religion_,

as appears by the following Law:" [Then Mr. Neal quotes the law passed

against the Baptists seven years before, in 1644, and given on page 92.]

(Neal's History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 299, 300, 302, 303.)]

[Footnote 106: Hutchinson's Collection of State Papers, etc., pp. 401,

402.

Mr. Cotton wrote a long letter in reply to Sir R. Saltonstall, denying

that he or Mr. Wilson had instigated the complaints against the

Baptists, yet representing them as _profane_ because they did not attend

the established worship, though they worshipped God in their own way.

Cotton, assuming that the Baptist worship was no worship, and that the

only lawful worship was the Congregational, proceeds to defend

compulsory attendance at the established worship upon the ground of

preventing Sabbath profaneness (which was a perversion of Sir R.

Saltonstall's letter), the same as compulsory attendance at the

established worship was justified in the time of Elizabeth and James the

First, and against which the whole army of Puritan writers had

contended. Some of Cotton's words were as follows: "But (you say) it

doth make men hypocrites to compel men to conforme the outward men for

fear of punishment. If it did so, yet better be hypocrites than profane

persons. Hypocrites give God part of his due, the outward man; but the

profane person giveth God neither the outward or inward man."--"If the

magistrate connive at his absenting himself from the Sabbath duties, the

sin will be greater in the magistrate than can be the other's coming."

Mr. Hutchinson, referring to Sir R. Saltonstall's letter, says:--"It

discovers a good deal of that catholic spirit which too many of our

first settlers were destitute of, and confirms what I have said of Mr.

Dudley's zeal in the first volume of the Massachusetts History."]

[Footnote 107: History of the United States, Vol. I., p. 484.

"I believe," says Mr. Bancroft, "that the elder Winthrop had relented

before his death, and, it is said, became weary of banishing heretics.

The soul of the younger Winthrop was incapable of harbouring a thought

of intolerant cruelty; but the rugged Dudley was not mellowed by old

age." Cotton affirmed: "Better tolerate hypocrites and tares than thorns

and briers." "Religion," said Norton, from the pulpit, "admits of no

eccentric motions." (_Ib._, pp. 486, 487.)]

[Footnote 108: Burke, Vol. II., Second London Edition, 1758, pp.

148-152.]

[Footnote 109: "In October, 1650, the Commons passed a memorable

ordinance, prohibiting trade with Barbadoes, Virginia, Antigua, and the

Bermudas, because they had adhered to the fortunes of their late

Sovereign. It declared such persons 'notorious robbers and traitors;' it

forbade every one to confederate with them; it prohibited all foreign

vessels from sailing thither, and it empowered the Council of State to

compel all opponents to obey the authority of Parliament. Berkley's

defence of Virginia against the fortunate invaders gained him the

approbation of his prince and the applause of his countrymen. When he

could no longer fight, he delivered up the government, upon such

favourable terms as the English Commissioners were willing to grant. He

retired to a private station, to wait with patience for favourable

events. Virginia changed the various rulers which the revolutions of the

age imposed on England, with the reluctance that acknowledged usurpation

generally incites. But with the distractions that succeeded the death of

Cromwell, she seized the opportunity to free herself from the dominion

of her hated masters by recalling Berkley from his obscurity, and

proclaiming the exiled king; and she by this means acquired the

unrivalled honour of being the last dominion of the State which

submitted to that unjust exercise of government, and the first which

overturned it."--Chalmers' History of the Revolt of the American

Colonies, Vol. I., pp. 74, 75 (Boston Collection).]

[Footnote 110: It was proved on Hugh Peters' trial, twenty years

afterwards, that he had said his work, out of New England, was, "to

promote the interest of the Reformation, _by stirring up the war and

driving it on_." He was Cromwell's favourite chaplain, and preached

before the Court that tried King Charles I., urging the condemnation and

execution of the King.]

[Footnote 111: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I.,

Appendix viii., pp. 517, 518.

"The 'other English Colonies' with which Massachusetts, by her

attachment to the new Government, had been brought into unfriendly

relations, were 'Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermudas, and Antigua.' Their

persistent loyalty had been punished by an ordinance of Parliament

forbidding Englishmen to trade with them--a measure which the General

Court of Massachusetts seconded by a similar prohibition addressed to

masters of vessels belonging to that jurisdiction. The rule was to

remain in force 'until the compliance of the aforesaid places with the

Commonwealth of England, or the further order of this Court;' and the

penalty of disobedience was to be a confiscation of ship and cargo. In

respect to Virginia, it may be presumed that this step was not the less

willingly taken, on account of a grudge of some years' standing. At an

early period of the civil war, that colony had banished nonconformist

ministers who had gone thither from Massachusetts [1643]; and the

offence had been repeated five years afterwards."--Palfrey's History of

New England, Vol. II., pp. 402, 403.

But Mr. Palfrey omits to remark that the Act of the Virginia

Legislature, in forbidding the Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts

Bay from propagating their system in Virginia, was but a _retaliation_

upon the Government of Massachusetts Bay, which had not only forbidden

Episcopal worship, but denied citizenship to Episcopalians. The Virginia

Legislature, while it established the Episcopal Church, had never, like

the Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, disqualified all except the

members of one Church from either holding office or exercising the

elective franchise. The Massachusetts Bay Government, like that of the

Papacy, would tolerate only their own form of worship; would allow no

Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Baptist worship within their

jurisdiction; yet complain of and resent it as unjust and persecuting

when they are not permitted to propagate their system in other colonies

or countries.]

[Footnote 112: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I.,

Appendix ix., p. 522.

To these extraordinary addresses may be added a letter from the Rev.

John Cotton, a chief Congregational minister in Boston, to "Lord General

Cromwell," dated Boston, N.E., May 5th, 1651.

There are three things in this letter to be specially noticed.

The _first_ is, the terms in which Cromwell is addressed and

complimented.

The _second_ is, the indication here given of the manner in which the

Scotch prisoners taken at the battle of Dunbar (while fighting in their

own country and for their King) were disposed of by Cromwell, and with

what complacency Mr. Cotton speaks of the slavery into which they were

sold not being "perpetual servitude," but limited to "6 or 7, or 8

years."

The _third_ thing noteworthy in this letter, in which Mr. Cotton

compliments Cromwell for having cashiered from the army every one but

his own partizans, thus placing the army beneath his feet, to support

his absolutism in the State, having extinguished the Parliament itself,

and with it every form of liberty dear to the hearts of all true

Englishmen.

The chief passages of Mr. Cotton's letter are as follows:

"Right Honourable,--For so I must acknowledge you, not only for the

eminency of place and command to which the God of power and honour hath

called you; but also for that the Lord hath set you forth as a vessell

of honour to his name, in working many and great deliverances for his

people, and for his truth, by you; and yet helping you to reserve all

the honour to him, who is the God of salvation and the Lord of hosts,

mighty in battell."

"The Scots, whom God delivered into your hand at Dunbarre, and whereof

sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make

their yoke easy. Such as were sick of the scurvy or other diseases have

not wanted physick or chyrurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to

perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7, or 8 years, as we do our owne: and

he that bought the most of them (I heare) buildeth houses for them, for

every 4 an house, layeth some acres of ground thereto, which he giveth

them as their owne, requiring three dayes in the weeke to worke for him

(by turnes), and 4 dayes for themselves, and promiseth, as soon as they

can repay him the money he layed out for them, he will set them at

liberty."

"As for the aspersion of factious men, I hear, by Mr. Desborough's

letter [Cromwell's brother-in-law], last night, that you have well

vindicated yourselfe therefrom _by cashiering sundry corrupt spirits_

out of the army. And truly, Sir, better a few and faithfull, than many

and unsound. The army on Christ's side (which he maketh victorious) are

called chosen and faithfull, Rev. 17. 14--a verse worthy your Lordship's

frequent and deepe meditation. Go on, therefore (good Sir), to overcome

yourselfe (Prov. 16. 32), to overcome your army (Deut. 29. 9, with v.

14), and to vindicate your orthodox integrity to the world."

(Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers relative to the History of

Massachusetts Bay, pp. 233-235.)]

[Footnote 113: In view of the documents which I have quoted, it seems

extraordinary to see Mr. Hutchinson, usually so accurate, so far

influenced by his personal prejudices as to say that the government of

the Massachusetts Bay Colony "prudently acknowledged subjection to

Parliament, and afterwards to Cromwell, _so far as was necessary to keep

upon terms, and avoid exception, and no farther_. The addresses to the

Parliament and Cromwell show this to have been the case."--History of

Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 209.

The addresses to Parliament and to Cromwell prove the very

reverse--prove that the rulers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony avowedly

identified themselves with the Parliament and afterwards with Cromwell,

when he overthrew the Parliament, and even when he manipulated the army

to his purpose of absolutism.]

CHAPTER V.

GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY AND OTHER COLONIES, DURING TWENTY YEARS,

UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

The restoration of Charles the Second to the throne of his ancestors was

received in the several American colonies with very different feelings;

the loyal colonies, from the Bermudas to Plymouth, hailed and proclaimed

the restored King without hesitation; Virginia proclaimed him before he

was proclaimed in England;[114] the rulers of the Massachusetts Bay

Colony alone stood in suspense; hesitated, refused to proclaim him for a

year, until ordered to do so. When it was ascertained that the

restoration of the King, Lords, and Commons had been enthusiastically

ratified by the people of England, and was firmly established, the

General Court of Massachusetts Bay adopted a most loyal address to the

King, and another to the two Houses of Parliament, notwithstanding the

same Court had shortly before lauded the power which had abolished King,

Lords, and Commons. The Court also thought it needful to give practical

proof of the sincerity of their new-born loyalty to the monarchical

government by condemning a book published ten years before, and which

had been until now in high repute among them, written by the Rev. John

Eliot, the famous apostle to the Indians. This book was entitled "The

Christian Commonwealth," and argued that a purely republican government

was the only Christian government, and that all the monarchical

governments of Europe, especially that of England, was anti-Christian.

It appears that this book had been adduced by the complainants in

England against the Massachusetts Bay Government as a proof of their

hostility to the system of government now restored in England. To purge

themselves from this charge, the Governor and Council of Massachusetts

Bay, March 18, 1661, took this book into consideration, and declared

"they find it, on perusal, full of seditious principles and notions

relative to all established governments in the Christian world,

especially against the government established in their native country."

Upon consultation with the Elders, their censure was deferred until the

General Court met, "that Mr. Eliot might have the opportunity in the

meantime of public recantation." At the next sessions, in May, Mr. Eliot

gave into the Court the following acknowledgment under his hand:

"Understanding by an Act of the honoured Council, that there is offence

taken at a book published in England by others, the copy whereof was

sent over by myself about nine or ten years since, and that the further

consideration thereof is commended to this honoured Court now sitting in

Boston: Upon perusal thereof, I do judge myself to have offended, and in

way of satisfaction not only to the authority of this jurisdiction, but

also to any others that shall take notice thereof, I do hereby

acknowledge to this General Court, that such expressions as do too

manifestly scandalize the Government of England, by King, Lords and

Commons, as anti-christian, and justify the late innovators, I do

sincerely bear testimony against, and acknowledge it to be not only a

lawful but eminent form of government.

"2nd. All forms of civil government, deduced from Scripture, I

acknowledge to be of God, and to be subscribed to for conscience sake;

and whatsoever is in the whole epistle or book inconsistent herewith, I

do at once and most cordially disown.

"JOHN ELIOT."[115]

It must have been painful and humiliating to John Eliot to be brought to

account for and compelled to recant the sentiments of a book which had

been in circulation eight or nine years, and much applauded by those who

now arraigned and made a scapegoat of him, to avert from themselves the

consequence and suspicion of sentiments which they had held and avowed

as strongly as Eliot himself.

It has been said that the Government of Massachusetts Bay had desisted

from acknowledging and addressing Charles the Second as King, until they

found that their silence endangered their interests. Mr. Holmes, in his

Annals, speaking under the date of May, 1661 (a year after Charles had

entered London as King), says: "Charles II., had not yet been proclaimed

by the colony. The Governor (Endicot), on receiving intelligence of the

transactions that were taking place in England to the prejudice of the

colony, judged it inexpedient longer to delay that solemnity. Calling

the Court together, a form of proclamation was agreed to, and Charles

was acknowledged to be their sovereign Lord, and proclaimed to be the

lawful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, and all other

territories thereto belonging." An address to the King was agreed to,

and ordered to be sent to England.[116]

In this remarkable address (given in a note) the reader will be struck

with several things which appear hardly reconcilable with words of

sincerity and truth.

First, the reason professed for delaying nearly a year to recognise and

address the King after his restoration. Nearly thirty years before, they

had threatened the King's Royal father with resistance, since which time

they had greatly increased in wealth and population; but now they

represent themselves as "poor exiles," and excuse themselves for not

acknowledging the King because of their Mephiboseth lameness of

distance--as if they were more distant from England than the other

American colonies. Their "lameness" and "ineptness" and "impotence"

plainly arose from disinclination alone. It is amusing to hear them

speak of themselves as "exanimated outcasts," hoping to be animated by

the breath of Royal favour. Their "script" was no doubt "the transcript

of their loyal hearts" when they supplicated the continuance of the

Royal Charter, the first intentions and essential provisions of which

they had violated so many years.

Secondly. But what is most suspicious in this address is their denial of

having taken any part in the civil war in England--professing that their

lot had been the good old nonconformists',[117] "only to act a passive

_part_ throughout these late vicissitudes," and ascribed to the favour

of God their "exemption from the temptations of _either party_." Now,

just ten years before, in their address to the Long Parliament and to

Cromwell, they said:

"And for our carriage and demeanour to the honourable Parliament for

these ten years, since the first beginning of your differences with the

late King, and the war that after ensued, we have constantly adhered to

you, notwithstanding ourselves in your weakest condition and

doubtfullest times, but by our fasting and prayers for your good

success, and our thanksgiving after the same was attained, in days of

solemnity set apart for that purpose, as also by our sending over useful

men (others also going voluntarily from us to help you) who have been of

good use and have done good acceptable service to the army, declaring to

the world hereby that such was the duty and love we bear unto the

Parliament that we were ready to rise and fall with them: for which we

suffered the hatred and threats of other English colonies now in

rebellion against you," etc.[118]

Whether this address to Parliament (a copy of it being enclosed with an

address to Cromwell) had ever at that time been made public, or whether

King Charles the Second had then seen it, does not appear; but it is not

easy to conceive statements and words more opposite than those addressed

by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay to the Parliament in 1651, and

to the King, Charles the Second, in 1661.

On the contrasts of acts themselves, the reader will make his own

remarks and inferences. The King received and answered their address

very graciously.[119] They professed to receive it gratefully; but their

consciousness of past unfaithfulness and transgressions, and their

jealous suspicions, apprehended evil from the general terms of the

King's reply, his reference to his Royal predecessors and religious

liberty, which above all things they most dreaded, desiring religious

liberty for themselves alone, but not for any Episcopalian,

Presbyterian, Baptist, or Quaker. They seem, however, to have been

surprised at the kindness of the King's answer, considering their former

conduct towards him and his Royal father, and towards the colonies that

loyally adhered to their King; and professed to have been excited to an

ecstasy of inexpressible delight and gratitude at the gracious words of

the best of kings.[120] Their address presented a curious mixture of

professed self-abasement, weakness, isolation, and affliction, with

fulsome adulation not surpassed by anything that could have been indited

by the most devout loyalist. But this honeymoon of adulation to the

restored King was not of long duration; the order of the King, September

8, 1661, to cease persecuting the Quakers, was received and submitted to

with remonstrance; and obedience to it was refused as far as sending the

accused Quakers to England for trial, as that would bring the Government

of Massachusetts Bay before the English tribunals.[121]

But petitions and representations poured in upon the King and Council

from Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, etc., from Massachusetts

Bay, and their friends in England, complaining that they were denied

liberty of worship, the ordinance of Baptism and the Lord's Supper to

their families and themselves, that they were deprived of even the

elective franchise because of their not being members of the

Congregational Church, and praying for the redress of their

grievances.[122]

The leaders of the colony had, however, warm and influential advocates

in the Council of the King: the Earl of Manchester, formerly commander

of the Parliamentary army against Charles the First, until supplanted by

Cromwell; Lord Say, a chief founder of Connecticut; and Mr. Morrice,

Secretary--all Puritans.[123] Under these influences the King sent a

letter to the colony, which had been avowedly at war in connection with

Cromwell, against his royal father and himself (and by which they had

justly forfeited the Charter, apart from other violations of it),

pardoning the past and assuring them he would not cancel but restore and

establish their Charter, provided they would fulfil certain conditions

which were specified. They joyously accepted the pardon of the past, and

the promised continuance of the Charter as if unconditional, without

fulfilling the conditions of it, or even mentioning them; just as their

fathers had claimed the power given them in the Royal Charter by Charles

the First in 1628, to make laws and regulations for order and good

government of the Massachusetts Bay Plantation, concealing the Charter,

claiming absolute power under it, and wholly ignoring the restrictive

condition that such laws and regulations were not to be "contrary to the

laws of England"--not only concealing the Charter, but not allowing

their laws and regulations to be printed until after the fall of Charles

the First, and resisting all orders for the production of their

proceedings, and all Commissions of Inquiry to ascertain whether they

had not made laws or regulations and performed acts "contrary to the

laws of England." So now, a generation afterwards, they claimed and

contended that Charles the Second had restored their Charter, as if done

absolutely and unconditionally without their recognising one of the five

conditions included in the proviso of the King's letter. Nothing could

have been more kindly and generously conceived than the terms of the

King's letter, and nothing could be more reasonable than the conditions

contained in its proviso--conditions with which all the other British

colonies of America readily complied, and which every province of the

Dominion of Canada has assumed and acted upon as a duty and pleasure

from the first establishment of their respective Governments. Of all the

colonies of the British Empire for the last three centuries, that of

Massachusetts Bay is the only one that ever refused to acknowledge this

allegiance to the Government from which it derived its existence and

territory. The conditions which Charles the Second announced as the

proviso of his consenting to renew and continue the Charter granted by

his Royal father to the Company of Massachusetts Bay, were the

following:

"1. That upon a review, all such laws and ordinances that are now, or

have been during these late troubles, in practice there, and which are

contrary or derogatory to the King's authority and government, shall be

repealed.

"2. That the rules and prescriptions of the said Royal Charter for

administering and taking the oath of allegiance, be henceforth duly

observed.

"3. That the administration of justice be in the King's name.

"4. That since the principle and formation of that Charter was and is

the freedom of liberty of conscience, we do hereby charge and require

you that freedom of liberty be duly admitted and allowed, so that they

that desire to use the Book of Common Prayer and perform their devotion

in the manner that is established here, be not denied the exercise

thereof, or undergo any prejudice or disadvantage thereby, they using

the liberty peaceably, without any disturbance to others.

"5. That all persons of good and honest lives and conversations be

admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, according to the said

Book of Common Prayer, and their children to Baptism."[124]

Nothing could be more kind and assuring than the terms of the King's

letter, notwithstanding the former hostility of the Massachusetts Bay

rulers to him and his Royal father,[125] and nothing could be more

reasonable than the five conditions on which he assured them of the

oblivion of the past and the continuance of the Royal Charter; but with

not one of these conditions did they take a step to comply for several

months, under the pretext of affording time, after publishing it, that

"all persons might have opportunity to consider what was necessary to be

done," though the "all persons" referred to included only one-sixth of

the population: for the term "Freeman of Massachusetts" was at that

time, and for thirty years before and afterwards, synonymous with member

of one of the Congregational Churches. And it was against their

disloyalty and intolerance that the five conditions of the King's pardon

were chiefly directed. With some of these conditions they never

complied; with others only as they were compelled, and even complained

of them afterwards as an invasion of their chartered privileges,[126]

though, in their first order for public thanksgiving for the King's

letter, they spoke of it as assuring "the continuance of peace,

liberties and the gospel." Though the agent of Rhode Island met the

agents of Massachusetts Bay Colony before the King, and challenged them

to cite, in behalf of Massachusetts, one act of duty or loyalty to the

kings of England, in support of their present professions as loyal

subjects; yet the King was not disposed to punish them for the past, but

continue to them their privileges, as they desired and promised they

would act with loyalty and tolerance in the future.[127]

The King's promised oblivion of the past and recognition of the Charter

was hailed and assumed as _unconditional_, while the King's conditions

were ignored and remained a dead letter. The elective franchise and

eligibility for office were still, _as_ heretofore, the exclusive

prerogative of Congregational Church members; the government of the

colony was still in the hands alone of Congregational ministers and

magistrates, and which they cleaved to as for life; their persecutions

of those who did not worship as they did, continued without abatement;

they persisted in their theocratic independence, and pretended to do all

this under a Royal Charter which forbade their making laws or

regulations contrary to the laws of England, acting also in the face of

the King's conditions of pardoning their past offences, and perpetuating

their Charter privileges.