to it I dismissed as improbable an entry in Prince’s Annals to the
effect that, in 1624, there came “some addition to the few inhabitants
of Wessagusset, from Weymouth, England,” having with them the Rev. Mr.
Barnard, their first non-conformist minister. Mr. Nash, in his paper
entitled “Weymouth in its First Twenty Years,” has taken a different
view, setting forth in much detail his reasons for believing the fact
stated. Very possibly I was wrong, and he is right; and certainly it
is corroborative evidence of his rightness that Samuel Maverick fixes
that year, 1624, as the time of his coming to New England, and Boston
bay. Possibly he was one of Mr. Barnard’s company; and he certainly
afterwards sympathized in Mr. Barnard’s religious views.
Into these questions it is unnecessary to enter. Nor would it be
profitable so to do; for the salient facts are indisputably established
that (1), the first Gorges contingent came out and set themselves down
at Old Spain in September, 1623; that (2), the settlement there has
been continuous from that day to this; (3), some of those thus sent
out under the auspices of Gorges had families and left descendants;
and finally, (4) that, starting from Wessagusset, these first planters
established themselves at points favorable for commercial dealings in
pelts and supplies on the north, as well as the south, side of Boston
bay. That William Blackstone, the earliest occupant of the historic
peninsula on which Boston rose, was one of the Gorges company admits of
no question at all; that he came over as one of the companions of Capt.
Robert Gorges and the Rev. William Morell scarcely admits of question.
Beyond this, while all is matter of surmise, that “all” is merely a
question of more or less.
But, whether the infant community was a puny bantling or a vigorous
brat, I now find myself compelled to admit that its significance, and
the secret of its later history down to the time when, in 1644,--a full
score of years after the first settlement,--it was swallowed up, and
its individuality forever lost, in an all absorbing environment,--the
significance, I say, of this later history wholly escaped my
observation when I prepared the address of 1874. As I have said, Mr.
Nash has, to a certain extent, since made good my deficiencies; I
suspect, however, that even yet the riddle is but partially read. To be
adequately treated, its treatment should be patient and microscopic. It
should be studied in close connection with the course both of foreign
events and of events in that subsequent agitation which, rending in
twain the nascent commonwealth, permanently influenced the character
of Massachusetts. By so doing it also went far towards shaping its
destiny. I can now do no more than throw out a few suggestions,--mere
hints, perhaps, or possibly surmises,--which it must be for others,
members of your Society, to consider, giving them such weight as may
properly be their due.
To appreciate fully what now here occurred during that formative
period between 1630 and 1644, we must revert to the initial fact that
Weymouth, or Wessagusset, as it was still called, was the New World
centre from which the Gorges movement had gone forth; or, as the
founder of Massachusetts would more probably have expressed it, it
was the plague spot from which disease might spread. In the parlance
now much in vogue among the less scientific, that disease had to be
stamped out; and the magistrates of the colony of Massachusetts Bay
proceeded to stamp it out. They did, also, a very thorough piece of
stamping-out work; but, however thoroughly it may be done, stamping-out
is at best a rough and even brutal method of reaching results; and, as
a rule, it is the recourse of men of intense and narrow minds,--those
who never for an instant doubt that they are right. Whether priest
and inquisitor, or minister and magistrate,--fulfilling their mission
on Jews in Spain, or Huguenots in France, or Lutherans in Holland,
or non-conformists in England, or churchmen in Massachusetts,--they
know perfectly that they are engaged in the Lord’s work; and, being
engaged in it, they will not hold their hands. Why should they? Are
they not God’s chosen implement? Now it is an indisputable fact that
every person on the Massachusetts shore connected with that earlier
settlement, the old Gorges “planters,” so-called, was soon or late
either harried out of the country, or made so uncomfortable in it that
he voluntarily withdrew,--in other words, went into exile. Morton of
Mount Wollaston, he of May-pole fame, was the first victim. Of Morton
it must be admitted little that is good can be said. He was an ungodly
roysterer. His trading-post was a public menace as well as a nuisance;
and, as such, was very properly abated. But there is no sort of reason
to suppose that there was in the beginning any connection between
Morton and Gorges.
Morton came out originally in June, 1622, and apparently as a companion
of Thomas Weston’s brother Andrew, on the ship Charity. He then
remained at Wessagusset some three or four months, while the vessel
which brought him out continued on to Virginia, thence returning to
Wessagusset. In early October he again embarked, going back to England.
He thus made acquaintance with the vicinity of Weymouth Fore-river, and
the region about Boston bay, during the summer months, their period of
alluring aspect. So enamored was he of the country that he the next
year piloted others back to it; one more band of pure adventurers,
they came intent on exploiting the land, getting from it whatever of
immediate value it might contain. But this second company, no more than
the first, came out under the auspices of Gorges; nor did he look on
it with favor. It must at least be said in favor of those sent out by
him that they were uniformly men of education and substance; and they
came to New England in good faith, here to establish themselves. Of
this class were William Blackstone, Samuel Maverick, David Thompson and
Thomas Walford.
Thomas Morton, and that strange, mysterious enigma who called himself
“Sir Christopher Gardiner,” were of an altogether different stamp;
but, though in the beginning Morton at least had no connection with
Gorges, subsequently he entered into close relations with him, and the
inference is at least reasonable that he was arrested, forced to leave
the country, and saw his house burned and his plantation across the
Fore-river, on Mount Wollaston, desolated, quite as much because of the
jealousy the new comers entertained towards the old Gorges “planters”
as from any disapproval of himself, or because of the misdeeds of
his crew. On the other hand, Sir Christopher Gardiner already, when
Winthrop came, was dwelling mysteriously with his female companion on
the cedar-clad hummock overlooking the mouth of the Neponset. Gardiner
was unquestionably an emissary of Gorges, probably his agent, here to
watch over his interests. He was arrested and his establishment, such
as it was, broken up. Personally held under surveillance for months,
he at length went voluntarily away. But, while in Boston, during the
summer of 1631, he seems to have been treated with courtesy, and even
with a degree of consideration. Finally, in 1632, he went back to
England of his own choice.
Next was William Blackstone, the hermit of Shawmut, the original
planter from Wessagusset, who when Winthrop and his company landed at
Charlestown in June, 1630, already had a house, with a young orchard
about it, on the west side of Beacon hill, looking up the Charles
towards Cambridge and Brighton. A recluse and a scholar, a missionary
among the Indians, with whom he lived in peaceful and even friendly
relations, this man, in every respect estimable, was, as Cotton Mather
tells us, “of a particular humor, and he would never join himself to
any of our churches, giving his reason for it, ‘I came from England
because I did not like the lord-bishops; but I can’t join with you,
because I would not be under the lord-brethren.’” These words, I fancy,
furnish a key-note to the Gorges settlement. To those composing it, the
new environment was unsympathetic; and, as early as 1633, Blackstone
turned his face to the wilderness.
David Thompson, also one of the Gorges contingent, never was at
Wessagusset. According to Thomas Morton, a Scottish gentleman, both a
traveller and a scholar, quite observant of the habits of the Indians,
he seems to have moved down from Portsmouth to Massachusetts bay about
the year 1626, accompanied by his wife, and bringing with him several
servants. A friend of Samuel Maverick’s, he established himself at
the mouth of the Neponset, on the island which still bears his name,
and he may, possibly, have been a fellow-occupant, with Maverick, of
Winnisimmet. He died in 1628, two years before the coming of Winthrop.
Like the other Gorges “planters,” he was a man of character, substance
and education. As such, he also throws his ray of light on the
Wessagusset company.
But Samuel Maverick, the first resident of East Boston, was perhaps,
most typical of all the Gorges following. A man of gentle birth and
fair education, later noted for his good fellowship and hospitality,
he was active in social and business life, altogether a useful and
public-spirited citizen. Distinctly of the Gorges connection and a
churchman, he was “strong for the Lordly prelaticall power,” as the
Puritanic speech went. So, always conscious of the hostile feeling
entertained towards him, at last, but not until 1648,--when for a
quarter of a century he had been resident at Noddle’s Island, as
East Boston was called,--he was arrested, fined and imprisoned, and,
subsequently, forced into exile. His crime was non-conformity.
Unlike the others, Thomas Walford, who I take it began his American
experiences here at Wessagusset in 1623, was not an educated man or
of the better class, so-called, in England; a smith by trade, he was
one of John Winthrop’s “common people,” those who became two centuries
later, Abraham Lincoln’s “plain people.” But, though a man of the
anvil, he was also a churchman, an Episcopalian, and he sturdily stood
by his creed. He had before 1630 made a home for himself and his
family in Charlestown, where he dwelt in rude but secure independence.
Accustomed to his wilderness liberty, and liking not the ways of the
new comers, he would not submit to their severe rule, especially
exercised in the matter of Sabbath observances. The old pioneer’s
Sunday had, probably up to that time, partaken more of the continental
and Catholic than of Puritan characteristics. So he soon was in
trouble. He was arrested, fined and banished. At Portsmouth he found a
refuge and a welcome. In due time becoming a selectman of the town and
a warden of the church there, he died in 1660, much esteemed in the
place of his exile.
So much for those followers and adherents of Sir Ferdinando Gorges who
had gone forth from the mother community here at Wessagusset, or had,
coming from elsewhere, set themselves down at her side. Unless, like
David Thompson, they died betimes, one and all, soon or late, they were
either exiled point-blank, or harried out of the land. Not character,
nor occupancy of the soil, nor obedience to the law, were of avail;
they were not of the Lord’s people! So much for the out-dwellers.
We now come back to the original settlement,--the plague centre! After
1625, and the return to England of the Rev. William Morell,--that first
clergyman of Weymouth and the potential bishop _in partibus_ of New
England,--those who came in his company, and as the companions of Capt.
Robert Gorges, separated in search of more favored sites for trade and
plantation. Of the savages, they seem to have felt no apprehension;
with them they lived in perfect amity. This alone is significant of
their character. As for trade, even then, before the advent of Winthrop
and his company, Boston bay was well known to the fishermen who
annually frequented the coast--“lone sails off headlands drear”--and
they periodically looked into Boston bay for barter and refreshment.
The Indians of the interior could communicate with the coast only by
trail or by the water routes; and of these last there were but four,
the Monatiquot, emptying into Boston bay by the Weymouth Fore-river,
the Neponset, the Charles and the Mystic. Of these, so far as the back
country was concerned, the Monatiquot was least considerable. So,
naturally, those of the first comers who had means and servants, and
who did not fear solitude, sought more favorable sites, establishing
themselves at the mouth of the Neponset, or on the shores of the
Charles or the Mystic. After this dispersion, the Wessagusset
community seems to have settled down into the slow monotony of a
pioneer existence. William Jeffreys and John Burslam appear to have
been the leading men, and their names only, from among those there
remaining, have come down to us. Ten years later it was described by
one who visited it as “a small village; very pleasant and healthful,
very good ground, well-timbered, and with good store of hay ground.”
But not until 1635, five years after the occupation of Boston, and
when Wessagusset had been twelve years in existence, did the place
receive any considerable, or, at least, certain accretion. Then, the
Rev. Joseph Hull, with twenty-one families from England, was allowed
by the Massachusetts-bay magistrates here to establish themselves;
and Weymouth was at last incorporated by that name it has ever since
borne. But it was still referred to as “a very small town;” though it
has been computed that it then numbered from 350 to 600 souls. Now it
was that trouble began. As the new Weymouth wine fermented in that old
Wessagusset bottle, the scriptural adage received new illustration.
But the story of what occurred is known only in part,--from hints and
fragments scattered hither and yon, and which have painfully to be
pieced together. What is known is, however, full of suggestion. With
the new life came turmoil; and, in those times, the turmoil was sure to
be theological in character.
It is safe to surmise that the departure of the Rev. William Morell
to England, in 1624, and the withdrawal of Blackstone somewhat later,
wearing doubtless the “old canonical gown” in which Winthrop six
years later found him clad, did not, as things then went, deprive
the little Wessagusset settlement of all spiritual nutriment. Those
there remaining doubtless had, not a meeting-house, for they were
Episcopalians, but a church, such as it was, in which religious
services were duly conducted on each Lord’s day, the Prayer-book and
ritual being in use. This had continued through a dozen years, when at
last a veritable irruption set in. Of what ensued, nothing is clear; we
have to grope our way in the gray glimmer of that early dawn. The Rev.
Mr. Hull, we are told, made his advent in the interests of Episcopacy;
but, if he did, he either brought with him, or encountered, a body of
dissentients. That the old settlers eyed the new-comers askance is more
than likely; but the enigma still awaits solution. All we know is that
the little settlement, presumably at the foot of Great hill, and in
and about Old Spain, was rent, not in twain, but in quarters; and soon
their occupants were vociferously holding forth from no less than four
rival pulpits. At last, so loud became the tumult of tongues, and so
grievous was the state of spiritual affairs, that a delegation from the
church of Boston made its appearance,--Heaven save the mark!--in the
role of peacemakers.
Now, in 1638, the church of Boston, after an interlude of direst stress
and storm, was at peace within itself; but the peace was that of a
sternly enforced conformity,--a peace somewhat akin, in fact, to that
order commonly associated with the name of Warsaw. The great Antinomian
controversy had shortly before been brought to a close. Silenced and
overborne were the wise, tolerant and forbearing councils of Winthrop
and Cotton; a policy of “thorough” had been decided on, and proclaimed.
The conventional priesthood having at last secured full sway, neither
liberty of thought nor freedom of speech was to be tolerated in
Massachusetts. This revised order of things, a new gospel dispensation,
the 1638 delegation of the Boston church doubtless came to propagate in
Weymouth. It was the spiritual, perhaps the inquisitorial, precursor of
the civil arm. A few weeks only before, the Boston congregation had
silently witnessed some very high-handed proceedings in the case of
Mistress Anne Hutchinson; and at “the Mount,” as what is now Quincy was
then designated, the Rev. John Wheelwright had been made to realize the
power of the magistrate. The Rev. William Hubbard gives the following
account of what next occurred at Weymouth; and, though the Rev. William
Hubbard’s General History of New England is not now looked upon as a
peculiarly veracious or reliable record, yet in this case it may be
accepted as the most intelligible and consecutive narrative that has
come down to us, in any degree contemporary with what took place:--
“The people of this town of Weymouth had invited one Mr. Lenthal, to
come to them, with intention to call him to be their minister. This
man, though of good report in England, coming hither was found to
have drunk in some of Mrs. Hutchinson’s opinions, as of justification
before faith, etc., and opposed the custom of gathering of churches in
such a way of mutual restipulation, as was then practised. From the
former, he was soon taken off by conference with Mr. Cotton, but he
stuck close to the other, that only baptism was the door of entrance
into the visible church, etc., so as the common sort of people did
eagerly embrace his opinion; and some laboured to get such a church on
foot, as all baptized ones might communicate in, without any further
trial of them, etc. For this end they procured many hands in Weymouth,
to a blank, intending to have Mr. Lenthal’s advice to the form of
their call; and he likewise was very forward, to become a minister to
them in such a way, and did openly maintain the cause.
“But the magistrates hearing of this disturbance and combination,
thought it needful to stop it betimes, and therefore they called
Mr. Lenthal and the chief of the faction to the next general court,
in March; where Mr. Lenthal, having before conferred with some of
the magistrates and ministers, and being convinced of his errour in
judgment, and his sin in practice, to the disturbance of their peace,
etc., did openly and freely retract, with expression of much grief of
heart for his offence, and did deliver his retractation in writing
under his hand in open court; whereupon he was enjoined to appear at
the next court, and in the meantime to make and deliver the like
recantation in some publick assembly at Weymouth. So the court forbore
any further censure by fine or otherwise, though it was much urged by
some. At the same court, some of the principal abettors were censured;
as one Smith, and one Silvester, and one Britten, who had spoken
reproachfully of the answer which was sent to Mr. Bernard’s book
against their church covenant, and of some of the ministers there, for
which he was severely punished; but not taking warning he fell into
grosser evil, whereby he brought capital punishment upon himself, not
long after.”
To make this intelligible, so far as Weymouth is concerned, we must
keep in mind a few dates connected with the great course of world
occurrences. The events referred to in this extract from Hubbard’s
history, took place during the summer of 1638. A church tumult in
Edinburgh on Sunday, July 23, 1637, a year previous, had brought
matters in England to a crisis; and from that day Sir Ferdinando
Gorges was wholly impotent, shorn of all influence. Thenceforth, he
ceased to be in any degree an active factor in Massachusetts affairs;
and his people in New England, no longer looking to him, must, as
they best could, take care of themselves. Already, six months before
the Edinburgh tumult, on the 29th of January, 1637, the Rev. John
Wheelwright, the favorite divine of Mistress Hutchinson, had, on a day
of special fast, preached in Boston that occasional discourse which was
later made the pretext for a sweeping political proscription. On the
27th of May, 1637, the Massachusetts charter election, the equivalent
of our annual State election, had been held at Cambridge, as the
result of which young Sir Harry Vane had been superseded as governor
by Winthrop, with the harsh and uncompromising Dudley as deputy. It
was a political as well as a church upheaval; for Vane was, socially,
the friend of Maverick, and, while in doctrine he sympathized with
Wheelwright, he was the cynosure of the Hutchinsonian cult.
The conservative, or clerical, party thus found itself in complete
political control; a control cemented and confirmed by the triumphant
conclusion of the Pequot war, and the return of young Vane to England,
both which events occurred in August. Every condition now pointed to
the adoption of a policy of “thorough”--the stamping-out process was
to begin. It did begin; and it was carried out. John Wheelwright, the
first minister of those inhabiting part of the region two years later
incorporated as Braintree, but which a century and a half later became
Quincy, was the initial victim. He was banished, and his supporters
made to see light,--real orthodox light! Next came Mistress Hutchinson.
Her story has been told, by myself among others, in all possible
detail.[104] I need only allude to it here. She, and all those who
stood by her, were “sent away,”--in other words, driven into exile.
This had occurred in March, 1638. And now, the stamping-out process
being completed in Boston, the party in political control turned its
attention to the out-lying districts. Weymouth was the traditional
plague centre of prelatical poison,--we designate it Episcopacy,--the
seat of the Gorges settlement, the abiding place of Morell, the spot
whence Blackstone and Walford had emerged. No mercy was to be shown it.
The last vestige of the ritual was to disappear from within the limits
of the colony of Massachusetts-bay. Thus, with Weymouth, in 1638, it
was much as with some French city in the days of The Terror, when a
committee of the Convention of ’93 there put in an appearance. So far
as dissent and the suspects were concerned, it meant the end.
It is needless to revert to colonial records, and again to tell the
story of what was then done. Mr. Lenthal appears to have been a worthy
man and a devout minister of God’s word, as he read it; but he did
differ from the powers that then were on certain abstract doctrines
of baptism, re-ordination and justification by faith, whatever those
terms may have signified. They have small meaning to us; but then,
they implied heresy: and for heretics there was in 1638, and the years
ensuing, no place in Massachusetts. He and his followers were summarily
dealt with. Wise in his day and generation, Mr. Lenthal made haste to
see the light, and to express a realizing sense of the error of his
ways. He then took refuge in Rhode Island. His followers were sternly
disciplined, reprimanded, threatened, fined, disfranchised, and “openly
whipt.” The insubordination was crushed out; so also were freedom of
speech and religious liberty. But order reigned in Weymouth; conformity
was thenceforth there complete.