MASSACHUSETTS-BAY COLONY.
Whilst the Pilgrims were taking deep root and extending their borders,
various attempts were being made, under grants derived from the Great
Patent, to colonise the coast. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose name is
already familiar to our readers, a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and a
steadfast advocate of colonisation, obtained a grant of territory on the
north-west side of Massachusetts Bay, for his son Robert, who was sent
over by the English patentees as lieutenant of New England, accompanied
by an episcopalian clergyman as superintendent of ecclesiastical
affairs; but no success attended him; and instead of establishing a seat
of government, he was shortly compelled to retire to Weymouth, already
deserted by the “unruly company” of Weston’s men, which he in an equally
short time also abandoned. The same year Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John
Mason obtained a grant of the whole extent of country included between
the sea, the St. Lawrence, the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers, and
great mercantile settlements were projected on the banks of the
Piscataqua; but again these attempts failed of success. The soil of New
England was evidently not intended for the mere trader or adventurer. In
1628, Mason, alarmed at the progress already made by the Puritan
settlers, obtained a new patent for the country between the Merrimac and
the Piscataqua, which, without reference to any rights of the natives,
was ceded at once to him. This was the patent under which New Hampshire
was established. The town of Portsmouth was founded, but neither town
nor colony flourished greatly; several years afterwards the town
consisted but of about sixty families. In 1635 Mason died, and after his
death New Hampshire was left to take care of itself.
From the year 1606, when Martin Pring and Weymouth first discovered the
northern bays of New England, the ships of fishermen had visited their
coasts, and by degrees had settled upon them permanent stations. In
1616, Gorges sent to these northern shores a colonising party under
Richard Vines, who arrived in the country at the time when that
pestilence was raging among the natives which depopulated so great an
extent of territory, and which was regarded by the later pious settlers
as an interposition of God, who thus “made way for his people by
removing the heathen.” Vines and his company marched to the interior,
holding familiar intercourse with the dying natives without themselves
taking the infection, and finally settled at the mouth of the Saco
river, the place being called by them Winter Harbour. The colonists
pursued agriculture and fishing: the husbandmen taking up tracts of one
hundred acres on long leases from Thomas Vines. It is said that farms
are held to this day under these old leases, written in Latin, the
tenure being very light—five shillings a year, perhaps, a few days’ work
and a fat goose. Nevertheless colonisation was slow, spite of the
attractive and poetical accounts of the beauty and desirableness of the
country to emigrants, which were circulated in Old England. In 1636,
when the first duly organised court was held within the State of Maine,
the total number of inhabitants in the five different provinces,
including the islands, amounted to about 1,500.
The first settlement of Nova Scotia was about contemporaneous with that
of Maine. Gorges, who was jealous of the French becoming the ultimate
possessors of these northern regions, invited over a number of Scottish
emigrants, King James being favourable to the design, and these were
planted in Nova Scotia.
Having thus slightly reviewed the efforts made to colonise the northern
portion of New England, we will return to the colonies of Massachusetts
Bay, which, instinct with the element of life, advanced at once into
well-organised and flourishing states.
Persecution continuing in England, voluntary exiles for conscience-sake
still cast their eyes beyond the great waters for the land of refuge.
Among these was Roger Conant, who by the aid and advice of his friend, a
puritan minister of Dorchester, named White, left England with a small
company, and who, having endeavoured, but in vain, to establish
themselves on Cape Ann, after incredible sufferings removed to Salem, on
the Bay of Massachusetts. The scheme of this colony was in the meantime
still further perfecting itself in the mother-country. Down in the
south-west of England, and among the fens of Lincolnshire, the suffering
for conscience-sake not only discussed it among themselves, but
communicating together on the subject, determined to purchase from the
unscrupulous council for New England a grant of territory. This was soon
accommodated, and a portion of the land already conveyed to Gorges and
Mason was assigned to them; and John Endicott, whose name alone seems to
personify the stern spirit of puritanism, was, as “a fit instrument for
this wilderness-work,” chosen leader of a company which embraced within
its ranks some of the most distinguished men of the colony.
Endicott, with whom came his wife and family, settled down with his
company, as Conant had done, in the dreary wilderness around Salem.
Within a short time of their landing, three brothers of the name of
Sprague, and four others, penetrated the forest, to a place called by
the Indians Mishawum, where they found an Englishman, a smith, living,
and here they settled, calling the place Charlestown. Tidings having
reached England of the safe arrival of this company, “the men of Boston,
and others,” decided on following their example; and the next year,
“after much labour and great expense,” the patent of the council of
Plymouth was confirmed by the king, Charles I., and the powers of
government conveyed to them under the name of the Governor and Company
of Massachusetts Bay, in New England. It is a singular circumstance in
this charter, that the government, while invested with all necessary
powers of legislation, yet required no assent of the monarch to render
its acts valid. Charles regarded it merely as a trading company, whose
affairs were indifferent to the crown. Legislative and executive
authority resided with the corporation in London. The freemen of
Massachusetts, like the Virginians, were left without one valuable
franchise, at the mercy of a corporation beyond the seas. “The history
of Massachusetts,” says Bancroft, “is the counterpart to that of
Virginia; the latter obtained its greatest liberty by the abrogation of
the charter of its company. The former by a transfer of its charter, and
a daring construction of its powers by the successors of the original
patentees.”
Another remarkable fact in this patent was the strict injunction given
to Endicott, the governor, to treat with the natives for the equitable
purchase of their lands. “If any of the savages,” it is said, “pretend
right of inheritance, we pray you endeavour to purchase their title;
that no wrong or injury be done to the natives.”
This company of emigrants, amounting to about 300 persons, in five
ships, with good store of cattle, horses and all necessaries, were
accompanied by the excellent Francis Higginson, a nonconformist
preacher, whose account of the voyage and the country, immediately sent
over to England, excited a still greater enthusiasm for emigration. The
seal of the infant colony was an Indian erect, with an arrow in his
right hand, and the words, “Come over and help us!”
“Farewell, dear England!” said the minister, with his friends and
children standing round him, as they lost sight of their native land;
“farewell, the church of God in England, and all Christian friends
there! We go not to New England as separatists from the church of
England, but from her corruptions; we go to practise church reformation,
and to propagate the Gospel in America.”
At the end of June they reached Salem, where they found about eight or
ten mud cabins, with a larger one for the governor, and a few cultivated
fields. “There are in all,” says Higginson, “of old and new planters
about three hundred; two hundred of whom are settled at Salem, and the
rest have planted themselves at Charlestown. We at Salem make what haste
we can to build houses, so that shortly we shall have a fair town.”
This church of God in the wilderness, which had come hither to practise
reformation, soon found members within its bosom who clung to the old
forms and ceremonies; and the return of the ships which had brought them
out carried back the leaders of this faction—cast out by the church,
which would not allow them to remain within her borders, and by
Endicott, the governor, that there might not be “spies in the camp.”
The following winter brought with it many hardships. Before the next
spring nearly half the emigrants, the enthusiastic Higginson among the
rest, were removed by death. But not even these misfortunes, nor yet the
evil report of intolerance and persecution, which the expelled friends
of episcopacy carried back with them to England, could damp the ardour
for colonisation which filled the hearts of the English Puritans; to
them the Indian from the wilderness appealed, “Come over and help us;”
and the report of Higginson, though now dead, testified to them of a
land abundant as that of Canaan.
Emigration on a more comprehensive scale than had before been thought of
was decided upon. Men of influence and fortune embarked in it,
determining, however, to form “a peculiar government, and to colonise
only with the best.” To carry out their views fully, it was necessary to
obtain a transfer of the charter from the council in England to the
freemen now emigrating, and others inhabiting the colony. Bold as this
scheme was, it was accomplished. The patent and the government were
legally transferred to the emigrants themselves, and the excellent John
Winthrop was chosen governor before leaving England. The calm firmness
of Winthrop sustained many timid spirits who were alarmed at the
unexampled boldness of their undertaking; others again shrank back at
the last moment; there was a winnowing out among them, and literally
“the best” only went. Years afterwards it was said of this great and
good governor, that he was as a mother to the infant colony,
“parent-like, distributing his goods and gladly bearing the infirmities
of the weak, yet ever maintaining the figure and honour of his place
with the spirit of a true gentleman.” Of him Bancroft says, “his
character marks the transition of the Reformation into avowed
republicanism; when the sentiment of loyalty, still sacredly cherished,
was gradually yielding to the irresistible spirit of civil freedom.”
Eight hundred persons, all Puritans, inclining to the Calvinistic
doctrines, accompanied Winthrop. In the course of the year, seventeen
vessels brought over 1,500 persons. It was, however, no garden of Eden,
no land of Canaan to which they had come. “Arriving here in June and
July,” says Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, who, with
her family, was deeply concerned in this emigration, “we found the
colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being
dead the winter before, and many of those alive, sick and weak; all the
bread and corn among them hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight,
insomuch that nearly 200 servants whom we had sent over at great cost,
received their liberty, we being wholly unable to feed them.”
Salem, at which they had arrived, not wholly pleasing the new-comers,
some time was spent in searching the coast for localities more to their
mind, and finally some of them settled at Charlestown, others at a short
distance where was an excellent spring, and to which they gave the name
of BOSTON; some on the Mistic at Medford; others at Watertown and
Rocksbury; “others again upon the Saugus at Lynn, between Salem and
Charlestown, and the western men four miles south of Boston, at a place
they called Dorchester; several of these settlements being now suburbs
of Boston.”
This dispersion was a great grief to the company, but it was only as the
beginning of sorrows. “They who had health,” says Dudley, “fell to
building, wherein many were interrupted by sickness and death. Deaths
were for some time of almost daily occurrence. Dissatisfaction prevailed
in many minds, and when the ships returned to England, about a hundred
returned with them; thus was the company again winnowed of the faithless
and faint-hearted. The ships being gone,” continues Dudley, “victuals
wasting, and mortality increasing, we held divers fasts in our several
congregations. But the Lord would not be deprecated; and among many
other deaths, on the 30th of September died Mr. Johnson, the Lady
Arabella, his wife, being dead a month before. This gentleman was a
prince amongst us, zealous for religion, and the greatest furtherer of
this plantation.” The deaths of these two excellent people caused, say
some of their fellow-sufferers, “not only weeping eyes but fainting
hearts, fearing the fall of the present work.” Johnson was buried at the
upper end of his lot of land, in the faith of his rising in it. This
ground became the first burial-place in Boston, others desiring to be
laid round his grave. The Lady Arabella was daughter of the third Earl
of Lincoln; “she came,” says Hubbard, “from a paradise of plenty and
pleasure into a wilderness of wants;” “and,” adds Cotton Mather,
quaintly, “she took New England in her way to heaven.” One of the ships
who conveyed over this company of emigrants was called, in honour of
her, the Arabella. She was buried at Salem, the place of her interment
being still respected; and a girls’ grammar-school in Boston now bears
her name. Of those who came from England in April, 200, at least, had
died by December. Governor Winthrop, whose son was drowned the very day
of his landing, writing to his wife, says, “I have lost twelve of my
family; the Lord’s hand hath been heavy upon me;” yet he assures her, “I
would not have altered my course though I had foreseen all these
afflictions; I never had more content of mind.” They who survived were
not discouraged, but bearing God’s corrections with humility, and
trusting in his mercies, they bore in mind “how after a lower ebb God
had raised up their neighbours at Plymouth.” Through all their
afflictions and sufferings, these steadfast men and women, who saw the
hand of God in all things, never omitted the sacred duties of the
Sabbath, though they had to assemble in the open fields or beneath the
forest trees—God was ever present with them; and little children in the
hour of death became transfigured, as it were, and testifying of their
faith and their assurance of immortality, were a marvel to all.
In the midst of their sorrows and sufferings the purpose of their coming
hither to establish a pure church in the wilderness was not forgotten.
The first measure of the Court of Assistants was to provide for the
administration of the gospel. Within two years of their landing, seven
churches were firmly established and provided with devout ministers.
Their second object was the settlement of a government which was to
secure their beloved popular liberties. Their charter provided that laws
were to be enacted in the assembly of all the freemen of the colony, but
a fear soon crept in of this being susceptible of too wide an
interpretation; already above a hundred old planters and members of no
church “were freemen equally with themselves.” The stem, uncompromising
spirit of the religionist awoke. “Late in May, after the corn was set,”
a general court ordained that while the governor, deputy-governor, and
assistants, should be chosen by the freemen, none should be admitted to
the freedom of the body-politic but such as were members of some church
within the limits of the colony.
Thus was the door opened to bigotry and intolerance! A species of
theocratic government was established; God was the head of his people;
his people were they who constituted the elect, and whose names were
registered in the book of eternal life. “An aristocracy,” adds Bancroft,
“was founded, but not of wealth. A servant, a bondman, might be a member
of the church and therefore a freeman of the company. The Calvinists of
Massachusetts, scrupulously refusing to the clergy the least shadow of
political favour, established the reign of a visible church or
commonwealth of the chosen people in covenant with God.”
Sincerely religious themselves, this was nevertheless a dangerous
principle to introduce into their government, and one totally subversive
of the spirit of true religion and democratic liberty.
Among the early records, we will mention, that “the governor, in
consideration of the inconveniences which had grown in England by
drinking one to another, restrained it at his table, and wished others
to do the like.” And that the first baptisms registered in Boston Church
are those of “Joy and Recompense, daughters of brother John Miles; and
Pity, daughter of our brother William Balstone.”
Whilst a satisfactory form of government was being established, the
colony received friendly visits from the principal surrounding Indian
chiefs. The sagamore of the Mohegans from the banks of the Connecticut,
invited the English to settle in his country; the Nipmucks besought aid
against their enemies the Mohawks; the son of the old Canonicus sent
presents; Miantonomoh, the grand warrior of the Narragansetts, the
associate sachem with Canonicus, visited the governor, and attended with
him divine service; and lastly from the river of the Pequods came the
wily Uncas, who declared to the authorities that “his heart was not his
own but theirs.”
In the second year of the colony, Governor Winthrop and Wilson, the
minister of Boston, made a journey on foot to visit the brethren of the
older colony at New Plymouth. There is something apostolic in the
narrative of this visit. They arrived at Plymouth in the evening. “Mr.
William Bradford, the governor, a grave and discreet man, with Mr.
Brewster, the ruling elder, went forth to meet them outside the town,
and conducted them to the governor’s house, where they were well
entertained for several days. On Lord’s-day they partook of the
sacrament, and in the afternoon a question was propounded by Roger
Williams, which was spoken to by the pastor; then the preacher
prophesied, and after that the governor of Plymouth, who was skilled in
Hebrew and antiquities, spoke to the question, and after him the elder,
a learned man, and others. Then Governor Winthrop and Mr. Wilson were
asked to speak, which they did, and so the service of the Sabbath ended
to the edification of all. On the following Wednesday, before daybreak,
Governor Winthrop and his company left Plymouth, being accompanied by
the governor of Plymouth, the minister and divers others, near half a
mile out of the town in the dark.”
About the same time the colony of Virginia, now flourishing, sent a rich
cargo of corn to Boston, and trade was commenced with the Dutch on the
Hudson. The news of this increasing prosperity reached England, where
persecution remained unabated, and renewed emigration was the
consequence. The Griffin, after a long voyage, brought hither “a noble
freight, of two hundred, amongst whom were the fathers of Connecticut,
Hooker and Haynes, the latter a man of a heavenly mind, and the pious
and learned Cotton.” The congregation to whom Hooker had ministered in
England had already preceded him, and now thronged to meet and welcome
him. “Now I live,” exclaimed he, embracing them, “if ye stand fast in
the Lord.”
Spite of the growing prosperity of the colony, serious apprehensions
were caused regarding its safety in consequence of reports made to the
English government, by persons who at various times, for discordant
sentiments or misconduct, had been expelled. The colonists were
threatened by the privy council, strengthened by Laud, with the
revocation of their charter. They resolved to defend themselves by force
of arms if necessary, and fortifications were at once commenced in
Boston harbour, at Charlestown, and Dorchester. Thus early were they
prepared to assert their own independence.
In 1634, the settlement of Massachusetts having become much more
numerous, extending thirty miles from Boston, it was found inconvenient
for all the freemen to attend the general court; hence a change was made
which altered their form of government from simple democratic to
representative. The electors of each town chose two or three deputies to
confer on public business and attend the court, vested with the full
power of the freemen whom they represented. The mode of voting was also
changed from show of hands to ballot. The whole body of freemen were,
however, to elect the magistrates, and to these, and the deputies sent
by each town, the legislative power was confided. A law against
arbitrary taxation followed. “With the exception of the principle of
universal suffrage,” says Bancroft, “the representative democracy was as
perfect two centuries ago as at the present day.” The criminal code was
based on the Mosaic laws. The meeting-house at Boston was at this time
its house of representatives. Religion and government were kindred.
In 1635, no less than 3,000 persons suffering under the despotism of
Charles emigrated to Massachusetts. “Godly people in England,” we are
told, “beginning to apprehend a special hand of Providence in raising up
this plantation, their hearts were stirred to go over.” The wilderness
was planted with Christian churches; the forest rang with the sound of
their psalms; “the poorest of the children of God in the whole world
were resolved to excel in holiness.”
Among the new-comers of 1635 was Henry Vane the younger, a man of a pure
and noble mind, and an ardent friend of religious liberty. The year
after his arrival, so much had the youthful suavity and grace of his
manner, his religious attainments and his political sagacity, wrought
upon the people of Massachusetts, that he was elected governor in place
of the excellent and long-tried Winthrop, a preference which they
afterwards found cause to regret.