THE NEW ENGLAND UNION.
The establishment and progress of the New England states were watched
with deep interest in the mother-country, where the colonists themselves
had so many remaining ties, and where persecution still continuing
unabated, prepared thousands to fellow, and to become heroes and
adventurers for Christ’s sake. A letter from New England in those days,
we are told, was regarded “as a sacred script, or as the writing of some
holy prophet, and was carried many miles, when divers came to hear it,
and to such it became the prophecy of hope.” At the time that to
thousands of the nation at large these colonies were subjects of intense
interest, the government disregarded them as too feeble and
insignificant for notice, and by this disregard the salvation of the
liberties of the infant states was confirmed. By degrees, however, the
importance of the emigration which they occasioned, and the report of
dissatisfied persons, or those who for various causes “had been thrust
out” by the too exclusive and intolerant government of Massachusetts,
forced themselves upon the attention of the ruling party at home.
In vain did the friends of Massachusetts in England—and she had able and
powerful friends—obtain from the monarch an assurance that the people
should not be interfered with; the complainants ceased not to clamour,
and the high-church party was glad enough to listen. “Proofs were
produced of marriages celebrated by civil magistrates, of the
prohibition of the English liturgy, of a form of church discipline quite
at variance with the established law in England; nay, even that the
colony was about to disavow its allegiance to the English crown, and
assume itself the sovereign power.”
Alarm and dissatisfaction were excited, and it was determined to bring
the colony to obedience. In February, 1634, therefore, Archbishop Laud
was made the head of a commission vested with both civil and
ecclesiastical power over the American colonies, by which punishment
might be inflicted, and even any charter revoked which he might deem
derogatory to the royal prerogative. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was appointed
governor-general. We have already stated the spirit in which these
measures of the home government were viewed by Massachusetts. Poor as
the colony yet was, it resolved to maintain, at any cost, those
liberties which were dear to each individual as life; and £600 were
immediately raised for fortifications.
Restraints were now put upon emigration in England; a law was passed, in
1634, that no one above the rank of a serving-man should leave the
country without leave from the commission, and even those should first
be compelled to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. Besides the
jealousy of the supreme power in England, other causes were now
operating against the colony at home. The grand council of Plymouth
having long since made grants of all the lands included in their
charter, and that two or three times over in some cases, and unable any
longer to derive benefit from it, resigned their charter, and as a final
act divided the whole coast, “from Acadia to beyond the Hudson,” into
lots, which were distributed among the members of the defunct
corporation. To divide the land by lots on paper was easy; to gain
possession, was quite a different thing. A second strong power was,
however, by this means raised up in England against the American
colonies.
“Now was the season,” says Bancroft, “of greatest peril to the rising
liberties of New England. The king and council, fearing the unbridled
spirits of the Americans, the Court of King’s Bench issued a writ, in
Trinity term, 1635, against the Massachusetts Bay Company; and the
following term judgment was pronounced against such of the members as
residing in England made their appearance, and they and the rest of the
patentees were outlawed.” At this moment Mason, the proprietary of New
Hampshire, as we have mentioned, and one of the prime movers in these
unjust proceedings, suddenly died, and they went no further.
From 1635 to 1637 was an awful time of persecution in England. Fines,
imprisonments, the bloody cruelties of the lash and the shears, the
pillory, the red-hot firebrand and the gallows reigned triumphant; and
the suffering were impelled “by heaps to leave their native country.”
“Nothing,” says Milton, “but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of
America could hide and shelter them from the fury of the bishops.” But
even this last resource was attempted to be taken from them; and in 1637
the king again issued a proclamation against emigration, and the
following year a squadron of eight ships, about to embark for New
England, was forbidden to leave the Thames. It was on board some of
these ships, tradition says, that Oliver Cromwell and Hampden were when
this arbitrary prohibition compelled them to remain in England, where a
greater work awaited them. This squadron was, however, allowed to sail
after all, on a petition to the crown from the owners and passengers.
Whilst we are on the subject of emigration, it may be mentioned, as
evidencing the discriminating and uncompromising spirit of liberty in
the New World, that when in 1635 several puritan noblemen, especially
the Earl of Warwick and the Lords Brooke and Say and Seal, were
contemplating a removal thither, they endeavoured to induce the colonies
to establish hereditary nobility, and to make the magistracy perpetual
to certain privileged families. To this proposal Cotton, in the name of
the court of Massachusetts, very pertinently replied: “When God blesseth
any branch of a noble or generous family with gifts fit for government,
it would be taking God’s name in vain to put such a talent under a
bushel, and a sin against the honour of the magistracy to neglect such
in our public elections. But if God should not delight to furnish such
of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose them
rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than
exalt them to honour, if we should call them forth whom God does not to
public authority.” By these conclusive arguments New England preserved
itself from any privileged class, and the English nobility remained at
home.
But now to return to Massachusetts with the whole power of the English
government arrayed against her. In 1638, the lords of the council wrote
to Winthrop, demanding from him, by virtue of the writ already issued,
the return of the patent, threatening that in case of refusal the king
would immediately assume the government himself. Winthrop wrote back
calmly, that the colony demanded a fair trial before condemnation. It
was a cool, manly letter, and contained some remonstrance and some
suggestions, but under all there was a tone of determined resistance.
But before this letter reached England, the cruel Laud and his royal
master had more serious business in hand than the subjection of a
contumacious colony. The people of England, no doubt considerably
influenced by the spirit which pervaded America, had now risen in
opposition to the government; civil war raged; the Solemn League and
Covenant expressed the universal sentiment in Scotland. Liberty
overpowered despotism; public opinion was mightier than ecclesiastical
oppression; Laud in his turn was imprisoned, and a new era was at hand.
The monarch, whose throne was endangered, had now no thoughts to spare
for New England; nor if he had, need he any longer have prohibited
emigration. The tide was turned every way, and numbers—among the rest
Vane and Peters, the tragic deaths of whom are familiar to the reader of
English history, who had fled for refuge to America—now returned to
become actors in the great drama of events.
A change had taken place in the affairs of New England with the triumph
of puritanism in the mother-country. The Long Parliament, in which were
many members favourable to the New England settlements, “sought rather
to honour than humble them.” Yet so jealous were the colonists of their
precious liberties, that they refused any, even friendly interference in
their affairs; and when in 1642 the Westminster Assembly of Divines
invited over deputies in the persons of Hooker, Davenport, and Cotton,
they declined, Hooker in particular, who stated that he saw “no
sufficient excuse to leave their flocks in the wilderness.”
The states of New England, now freed from any anxiety from the home
government, resolved on forming a union or confederacy among themselves,
the reasons for which were, “the dispersed state of the colonies; the
dangers to be apprehended from the Dutch, the French and the Indians;
the commencement of civil discord in England; and the difficulty of
obtaining aid thence in any emergency.” This confederacy included
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven, Maine and Rhode
Island being rejected, the former because “its people ran a different
course both in religion and government, and the latter not only for the
same reason, but because it refused to become a portion of the
jurisdiction of Plymouth;” and under the name of the United Colonies
this league existed for upwards of forty years. The terms of this union
assured to each colony its separate existence, but each was bound to
contribute its proportion, both of men and money, for the common
defence. All matters relating to the common interests were to be decided
in an annual assembly, composed of two delegates from each colony; which
was to hold its meetings by rotation in each state, Massachusetts merely
having a double privilege. This measure of colonial legislation was in
fact an assumption of sovereign authority; it was the forerunner of
American independence.
The main object of the union was the security of the colonies against
the natives, who becoming now acquainted with some of the arts of
civilised life, were more and more formidable as antagonists. The
destruction of the Pequods had not secured peace to the colonies.
Unfortunately by this time, too, an idea was becoming prevalent in New
England that the Indians were of the accursed race of Ham, and fit only
to be rooted out; and hence a spirit of vengeance prevailed against
them. In vain the milder-tempered settlers of Connecticut and Rhode
Island combated such a doctrine; their pity for the heathen was only
regarded as of a piece with their heretical notions. In proportion as
the English became vindictive towards the Indian, his savage nature
became excited. To be the allies of the hated English drew down upon the
feebler tribes the vengeance of their Indian enemies. The bold
Miantonomoh hated the Mohegans for this cause. He had been taken to
Boston as a criminal on the accusation of Uncas, the Mohegan chief, and
now he thirsted for vengeance. Accordingly, at the head of 1000
warriors, and in defiance of a treaty with the English, he suddenly fell
upon the Mohegans. He was defeated and taken prisoner, and by the laws
of Indian warfare death was his doom. Samuel Gorton, however, and some
other heretical English settlers, on the lands of Miantonomoh,
interceded for him, and his life was spared. The unfortunate and haughty
chief, being conducted a prisoner to Hartford, his fate was referred to
the court of Boston, the cruel Uncas, who charged him with an attempt to
bewitch and assassinate him, being his accuser; the good services of the
forest chief to the colonists, and the aid he had given in the Pequod
war, were all forgotten. Murder was one of the crimes punished by death
among the Puritans, and as they themselves had on one occasion put to
death two of their own people for the murder of one Indian, Miantonomoh,
against whom it was easy to found such an accusation, to say nothing of
his having in spite of the league of amity commenced a bloody war, was
condemned to death as a murderer. He was again given up to his enemy
Uncas, the conditions simply being that he should be executed beyond the
English boundaries, and that no torture should accompany his death.
Uncas conveyed him back to the place whence he was taken, and then one
of his men marching behind him clove his head with a hatchet, and he
fell dead with the blow. Such was the hard fate of one of the noblest
chiefs of the wilderness, “the fast friend of the exiles of
Massachusetts, the fathers of Rhode Island.” Later and more enlightened
times have attempted in some measure to evince respect to this bold and
ill-used chief; Cooper has written of him, and a block of granite
inscribed with his name now marks the spot where he fell. It was about
this time, and in consequence of the unquiet state of the Indians, that
a law was passed, requiring all towns to be well provided with powder,
“and hence,” says Hildreth, “the origin of those powder-houses, perched
on some lonely hill, which formed in past years marked objects in the
New England landscape.”
Whilst the confederate colonies were thus strengthening themselves, the
people of Rhode Island resolved to obtain from the mother-country an
acknowledgment as a separate state. We have already mentioned that Roger
Williams succeeded in this important object, through his powerful friend
Henry Vane. But Williams, independent of any political partizanship, was
already favourably known in England from his printed work on the Indian
language, “the like whereof was not extant in any part of America.”
This, and his merits as a missionary, induced both houses of parliament
to grant to him and his friends, “a free and absolute charter of civil
government for those parts of his abode. The places of refuge for
soul-liberty on the Narragansett Bay were thus incorporated with full
power and authority to rule themselves.”
Williams returned triumphantly to New England, now landing in Boston,
whence he had not been allowed to sail, with letters from the
parliament, which demanded his safety and good reception. “As he
approached Seekonk the water was covered with boats; all the people of
Providence had come out to meet him. Receiving their successful
ambassador, the group of boats started for the opposite shore, and as
they paddled across the stream, Roger Williams, placed in the centre of
his grateful fellow-citizens and glowing with the purest joy, was
elevated and transported out of himself.” It is pleasant to record such
an incident in the life of a good and great man.
Again, in a moment of danger to the little state, Williams was sent to
London to negotiate for its safety, which he again did successfully.
And now came a trial of his virtue in a new form. The General Assembly,
grateful to Roger Williams for the services which he had ever rendered
the state of which he was the founder, desired that he should obtain
from England an appointment of governor of the colony. But “he refused
to sanction a measure which would have furnished a dangerous precedent,
and was content with the honour of doing good.” The government of Rhode
Island remained a pure democracy, ever anxious, to use the words of its
own records, “not to prove an anarchy, and so a common tyranny.” To the
orthodox states of New England, Rhode Island appeared as an anarchy, and
nothing but destruction was foretold for it; the towns, it was said,
“were full of Anabaptists, Antinomians and infidels, so that, if a man
chance to lose his religious creed, he may be sure of finding it again
in some village of Rhode Island.” But all went well in the end; “good
men, independent of creeds, were chosen to administer the government,
and the spirit of mercy, liberality, and wisdom was impressed on its
legislation.”
As the laws and customs of a people infallibly reflect its life,
character, and circumstances, we will here give a few examples from the
legislative books of New England. “A fundamental law of Massachusetts
enacted that all strangers professing the Christian religion and fleeing
thither should be supported at the public charge till other provision
could be made for them.” This law, however, did not apply to Jesuits or
popish priests, who were subjected to banishment, and death in case of
their return. Defensive war only was considered allowable; blasphemy,
idolatry and witchcraft, like murder, were capital offences; gaming was
prohibited; intemperance and all immorality was severely punished;
interest was forbidden on money lent, as well as the wearing of
expensive apparel; parents were commanded to instruct and catechise
their children and servants; and the Bible, wherever legal enactments
were insufficient, was made the ultimate tribunal of appeal. Regarding
themselves as similar in circumstances to the children of Israel who
journeyed in the wilderness, they governed themselves in many respects
by the Jewish law; as for instance, the Sabbath with them, as with the
Jews, commenced on the preceding evening, sunset being regarded as the
commencement of the day. From the same cause arose the prevalence of
Scriptural and significant names in baptism. We have already mentioned
such in the earliest recorded baptisms. Even to this day we believe that
the Christian virtues, as among their forefathers, furnish prevalent
names throughout New England. One unfortunate result of their adherence
to the Mosaic code must be mentioned from the important consequences to
which in some measure it led. It was provided by their law “that there
should be no bond-slavery, villanage, nor captivity among them,
excepting of lawful captives taken in war, and such strangers as
voluntarily sell themselves for service: none being exempted from
servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority.” Hence, Indian
captives and negroes might be held in perpetual slavery by the laws of
New England, and this before the statutes either of Virginia or Maryland
sanctioned the same. Again, the union of Church and State in
Massachusetts produced all the ill effects of such a union—bigotry and
intolerance. “Orthodoxy” and “piety,” so called, were the rocks upon
which the liberty and true greatness of Massachusetts suffered
shipwreck. We shall see more of this anon.
Having thus brought down the affairs of the New England States to the
sitting of the Long Parliament, we will hastily glance at their
condition. “The change,” say their writers, “which had been wrought
through their industry in the wilderness was the wonder of the world.”
Plenty prevailed everywhere. The wigwams and hovels, which furnished the
first shelter to the settlers, were replaced by substantial houses. The
number of persons who had already emigrated amounted to 21,200. “In
little more than ten years, fifty towns and villages had been planted;
between thirty and forty churches built; and strangers as they gazed
could not but acknowledge God’s blessing on the planters. Affluence was
already following in the train of industry; furs, timber, and fish were
exported; and grain carried to the West Indies.” Ship-building, in which
the Americans of the present day excel so greatly, was early commenced,
the great promoter of this branch of art being Hugh Peters, the
successor of Roger Williams in the church of Salem. Vessels of 400 tons
were built before 1640, which traded to Madeira, the Canaries, and
Spain, touching frequently, we regret to confess, on the African coast,
and bringing away cargoes of negroes, who were sold in the West Indies,
there being, it is said, but small demand for them at home.
In many respects the present New Englanders are the genuine and
praiseworthy descendants of the early colonists, and in none more so
than as regards education. It was ever the custom, and soon became the
law, of puritan New England, that “none of the brethren should suffer so
much barbarism in their families as not to teach their children and
apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the
English tongue.” That learning might not be hidden, as they said, in the
graves of their forefathers, it was ordered that as soon as any township
contained fifty householders, a person should be “appointed to teach all
the children to read and write, and that after the number amounted to
100, a grammar-school should be established, in which the youth should
be instructed so far as to be fitted for the university.” In 1636, a sum
equal to a year’s rate of the whole colony was voted for the erection of
a college at New Town, the name of which was changed to Cambridge, in
commemoration of the seat of learning where most of the Massachusetts
divines were educated; and two years later, John Harvard, a man of
wealth and learning, arriving in the country only to die, nobly
bequeathed one-half of his property and his library to the infant
institution. This college was hailed as welcome by all the states; the
rent of a ferry was devoted to it as an annual revenue by Massachusetts;
and Connecticut, Plymouth and other places, were not behindhand in its
support, whilst each individual family was rated twelvepence, or a peck
of corn, for the same purpose. “This college,” says Bancroft, “exerted a
powerful influence in forming the early character of the country. In the
laws requiring the establishment of common schools lies the secret of
the success and character of New England. Every child, as it was born
into the world, was lifted from the earth by the genius of its country,
and, in the statutes of the land, received as its birthright a pledge of
the public care for its morals and its mind.” And as it began, so has it
continued; and New England to this day is the seat of the intellectual
strength of the New World, and from New England proceed over all the
Union teachers, both men and women, of the highest character.
The first printing-press in Massachusetts arrived in 1638. It was
purchased in England by Jesse Glover, a worthy nonconformist minister,
who was about to emigrate with his family, but who unfortunately died on
the passage. The press was welcome in the colony, and was worked by
Stephen Daye, the printer whom Glover had engaged and taken out with
him. It began to work in January, 1639, and it is characteristic of the
colony that the first works which it produced, were the Freeman Oath and
a metrical version of the Psalms. The first newspaper was published
upwards of half a century later.
In 1641, the settlements of New Hampshire, on the banks of the
Merrimack, feeling themselves in a weak and insecure condition,
petitioned the now powerful Massachusetts to take them into its
jurisdiction. The general court granted their request, and they became
incorporated with that colony.
Although we do not hear of Massachusetts exploring beyond her own
immediate boundaries, yet this was not wholly the case with regard to
New Hampshire and Maine. In 1642, Darby Field, an Irishman, with two
Indian guides, penetrated as far as the White Mountains, the glistening
peaks of which had long been the landmark of the mariner. And Thomas
Gorges, the governor of Maine, the same year, with an exploring party,
paddled up the Saco, in birch-bark canoes, to the same remarkable
mountains, and ascending their summits, beheld the sources of the
Connecticut, the Andrascoggen, the Merrimack, and the Saco rivers.
The colony of Connecticut, which was not included in the Massachusetts
States Union, continued to increase. The town of Southampton, on Long
Island, acknowledged her jurisdiction, as did also Fort Saybrooke, which
had been an independent colony until 1643, when Fenwick, who purchased
the grant from the original patentees, returning to England, where he
entered the parliamentary army, sold his interest in it to Connecticut.
Massachusetts, with all her steadfast virtues and her sterling
qualities, had, as we have seen, many sins of oppression and intolerance
to answer for; Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were not the only
victims, even before her more wholesale persecution began. Samuel
Gorton, who seems to have been an early transcendentalist, was banished
from Plymouth, like the other two apostles of liberty, in the winter
season, in the midst of a snow-storm, with his wife and sick child. Like
all other heretics, he took refuge at Providence, whence, after much
trouble, he and his adherents, having purchased a tract of land called
Shawomet from Miantonomoh, commenced a settlement. Whether really
Miantonomoh sold land which was not his, or whatever the cause might be,
two sachems appeared at Boston complaining that they were wrongfully
dispossessed of their land. Massachusetts took the matter up warmly; the
sachems submitted themselves and their territory to her power, and
promised obedience to the ten commandments. The disputed land having
thus come into the possession of Massachusetts, Gorton was summoned to
Boston to answer to the charge brought against him by the sachems; he
refused to obey, and an armed force was then sent to compel him. In
terror the women and children fled to the woods, and Gorton and his men
prepared to resist force by force. The people of Providence mediated,
and in the end, Gorton and his friends agreed to go to Boston, provided
they were treated “as free men and neighbours.” But though the promise
was given, it was not kept; as prisoners of war they were marched
between soldiers to the governor. By him they were treated as criminals,
and condemned to the common prison, great rejoicing being held in Boston
that “the Lord had delivered them into their hands.” After a month’s
imprisonment, they were tried on the charge of blasphemy and as enemies
of civil and religious government, and Gorton and seven others were
found guilty. Many advocated putting Gorton to death, but finally the
seven culprits were banished to seven different towns, there to be kept
to hard labour, in irons, under pain of death if they attempted to
broach “their abominable and blasphemous heresies.” Their cattle were
seized to pay expenses. Spite of the threat of death, it was soon found
that they made many converts, and they were then banished, on pain of
death, from Massachusetts or Shawomet. Gorton now sailed from Manhattan
to London, where the “mystic eloquence” of his preaching won for him
many friends among the Independents, and his complaints obtained a
hearing.
All this, however, spite of its arbitrariness and injustice, tended in
the end to the still further establishment of the liberties of New
England. Two years after Gorton’s removal to England, one of his friends
returned, bringing letters of safe conduct for himself, from the
parliamentary commission, and an order that Gorton’s people should be
allowed quiet possession of Shawomet. The government of Massachusetts
perceived at once the dangerous position in which this order placed
them. Independent of their disinclination to receive again the banished
heretics, such an order implied that the parliament had a right to
reverse their decisions; and to admit this was a blow at the very life
of the commonwealth. A general court was summoned to deliberate, with
closed doors, on the present critical emergency, and the decision was,
that “allegiance was due to England, also a tenth part of all gold and
silver ore,” but that the management of their own local affairs must be
kept in their own hands. “If parliament be less inclinable to us,” was
their final resolve, in which a threat was implied, “we must wait upon
Providence for the preservation of our just liberties.” Winslow was sent
over as agent from Massachusetts to the parliament, in which he and
Massachusetts had many influential friends; and so well did he
negotiate, that the end was an assurance from parliament to this effect:
“We encourage no appeals from your justice. We leave you with all the
freedom and latitude that may in any respect be duly claimed by you.”
Thus did all things work together for the advantage and furtherance of
Massachusetts. It is a curious fact that Massachusetts, thus nobly
determined in the cause of her liberty and independence, was
nevertheless, at this very time, so poor in money, that it was with
difficulty that £100 was raised for Winslow’s outfit.
In 1648, a synod was held at Cambridge, for the drawing up of a
confession of faith, when a little circumstance occurred which is worth
mentioning. A sermon opened the business of the assembly, during which
“a snake came into the seat where many of the elders sat. Divers shifted
from it, but Mr. Thompson of Braintree, a man of much faith, trod upon
its head, and so held it with foot and staff till it was killed. ‘This
being so remarkable,’ says Winthrop in his diary, ‘and nothing falling
out but by Divine Providence, it is out of doubt the Lord discovered
some of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil;’” a type, Winthrop
probably thought, of the Rhode Island and Providence heresies, “‘the
synod the representative of the churches of Christ in New England.’ The
devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and
dissolution, but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and
crushed his head.” The following year, Winthrop, who was then in his
tenth term of office of governor, died, and Endicott succeeded him.
In 1651, Cromwell, after his successes in Ireland, wishing to show his
good will and regard for New England, offered any of its people who
chose to emigrate, estates and settlements in the conquered island. But
his offers were declined, “for the emigrants already loved their land of
refuge, where their own courage and toils had established the liberties
of the gospel, and created the peaceful abundance of thriving
republics.” When, also, four years later, he conquered Jamaica, he
offered it as a free gift to his favourites, the people of New England.
The war between England and Holland hardly disturbed the tranquillity of
the colonies. The western settlements, who would have suffered extreme
misery from a combined attack of the Dutch and Indians, wished to reduce
New Amsterdam; but Massachusetts, which could deliberate more coolly and
wisely, answered, that “the wars of Europe ought not to destroy the
happiness of America;” and peaceful intercourse was still preserved with
Manhattan.
“The European republics had composed their strife before the fleet which
was destined to take possession of the Dutch settlements reached
America; and though peace then prevailed between England and France, the
English forces, apparently unwilling to return without conquest in one
quarter or another, turned northward and took possession of Acadia—an
acquisition which no remonstrance or complaint would induce Cromwell to
restore, perhaps because he knew that New England would be benefited by
its possession.”
We have seen the intolerance of Massachusetts in various cases of
unorthodox opinions. Neither sincerity nor purity of life could save the
heretical believer from the merciless cruelty of her bigotry. In 1657,
Clark, a “pure and tolerant baptist of Rhode Island, was fined, with his
companion Holmes, for preaching in Lynn; and Holmes, refusing to pay his
fine, was unmercifully whipped. The persecution from which the Pilgrims
had fled in England was no whit behind that which now commenced in
Massachusetts. Blasphemy was the highest crime in their calendar, and
doubt of their faith was blasphemy. To deny that any single book of the
Old or New Testament was the infallible word of God, subjected to fines
and stripes, and in case of obstinacy, exile or death. Absence from the
ministry of the word was punishable by fine.” With reference to this
strict observance of the Sabbath, we may give an extract from Winthrop’s
journal, on an occasion when a French deputation from Acadia arrived at
Boston. “The Lord’s-day they were here,” says Winthrop, “the governor
acquainted them with our manner, that all men either come to our public
worship or keep themselves quiet in their houses; and finding the place
where they were not convenient for them, invited them to his own house,
where they continued private until sunset, and made use of such Latin
and French books as they had, with the liberty of a private walk in his
garden, and so gave no offence.” As we are on the subject of this French
embassy, which was of considerable interest to the people of Boston, we
may as well mention that Winthrop sent back by them, as a present to M.
D’Aulney, governor of Acadia, a sedan chair, which had been given to him
a few months before by a munificent freebooter, one Captain Cromwell,
who having been, the former year, driven by stress of weather into
Plymouth, came the next to Boston; “he and all his men having much money
and great store of plate and jewels of great value.” We may suppose that
buccaneering was not offensive to the consciences of the good people of
Boston, for we find that, having taken up his lodging in a poor thatched
house, he was offered the best in the town, which he refused, alleging
that “in his mean state that poor man entertained him when others would
not, and therefore he would not desert him now, when he might do him
good.” On leaving the place, however, he presented Winthrop with the
sedan chair we have mentioned, which had been originally designed as a
present from the viceroy of Mexico to his sister.
But to return to the persecutions of Massachusetts. “The union of church
and state,” says Bancroft justly, “was fast corrupting both; it mingled
base ambition with the former; it gave a false direction to the
legislation of the latter. The creation of a national, uncompromising
church led the congregationalists of Massachusetts to the indulgence of
the passions which had disgraced their English persecutors. Laud was
justified by the men whom he had wronged.”
If Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, whose views and opinions were
comparatively calm and conventional, called forth the vehemence of
reprobation from the churches of Massachusetts, what mercy or
forbearance could be expected for the fanatical, early Quakers, whose
zeal almost approached to insanity? None.
In July, 1656, two quaker preachers, whose names, to use their own
phraseology, “according to the flesh,” were Mary Fisher and Ann Austin,
arrived at Boston. No law as yet existed against the Quakers; but under
the statutes of heresy their trunks were searched, and “though no token
could be found on them, but of innocence,” their books were burned by
the hangman and their persons examined for signs of witchcraft. After
five weeks’ close imprisonment, they were thrust out of the colony;
together with eight others who arrived during the year. Mary Fisher,
nothing daunted by her reception among the Christians, turned her views
toward the Turks, and proceeded alone to Adrianople, where she delivered
to the grand Sultan the message which she believed entrusted to her by
heaven. The Turks, more Christian than the New England Christians,
deemed her insane, and she went through their army “without hurt or
scoff.”
A law was now passed forbidding the entrance of Quakers into the colony;
but such a law rather invited than deterred men and women who, believing
themselves the especial messengers of God, feared neither the power nor
the wrath of the arm of flesh. The Quakers came, and the horrors of
persecution began in earnest. One woman, who had come to London
purposely to warn the magistrates against persecution, was whipped with
twenty stripes. Some who had been banished, returned only to be
imprisoned, fined, whipped and sent away under penalty of severe
punishment if they returned; a fine of forty shillings was imposed for
every hour’s entertainment of any “of the accursed sect,” and a Quaker,
if a man, after the first conviction was to lose one ear, after the
second the other, and after the third, his tongue was to be bored with a
red-hot iron. If a woman, she was to be whipped with stripes
proportioned to the repetition of the offence. Plymouth, Connecticut,
and New Haven adopted similar laws. The colony, however, was soon
ashamed of the statute of mutilation, and it was repealed; but, as was
sure to be the case, New England was soon all the more actively visited
by Quakers. The following year, therefore, by the advice of the
commissioners of the united colonies, the younger Winthrop alone
dissenting, a law was passed banishing them on pain of death. In the
province of Rhode Island alone were the Quakers safe, favoured by the
great principle of toleration. Again and again the united colonies
remonstrated on the privileges which they here enjoyed, and in reply to
one of their remonstrances, the more sensible Rhode Islanders said, “in
those places where these people are most of all suffered to declare
themselves freely, and are openly opposed by argument in discourse, they
least desire to come, so that they begin to loathe this place for that
they are not opposed by the civil authority, but with all patience and
meekness are suffered to say over their pretended revelations.” But
Massachusetts could neither see nor understand the policy of
forbearance; the very fines imposed on those who attended their meetings
acted only as a whet to curiosity; and spite of finings, whippings,
brandings and cropping of ears, the Quakers came and came again, and
Boston of all places, the laws there being the severest, was the most
attractive to them.
In October, 1659, under the law which made it a capital offence for a
Quaker to return to the colony, Marmaduke Stevenson of Yorkshire, who
related of himself that, while he was at plough at Skipton, a voice
called to him saying, “I have ordained thee to be a prophet to the
nations;” William Robinson of London, who had already been whipped, and
Mary Dyer, the widow of the late recorder of Providence, and a friend of
Anne Hutchinson, were all found guilty of “rebellion, sedition, and
presumptuously obtruding themselves into the colony after banishment on
pain of death.” Mary Dyer was carried to the gallows with the rope round
her neck, where she witnessed the execution of her friends, after which
she was reprieved; but the reprieve was hardly welcome; “Let me suffer
as my brethren,” said she, “unless you will annul your wicked law!” The
government of Massachusetts, in excuse for these extreme measures,
asserted, that “they sought not the death but the absence of the
Quakers;” and when, some months later, Mary Dyer, “impelled,” as she
said, “by the Spirit,” returned to testify against “the bloody town of
Boston,” they thought it necessary to vindicate their authority by
hanging her as they had done the others.
Vain were all these barbarities to put down quakerism, or to keep “the
accursed sect” out of the puritan borders; for as Wendlock
Christopherson, who having returned in defiance of the sentence of
death, now standing face to face with his stern and pitiless judges,
said: “for the last man that was put to death there are five come in his
room; and if you have power to take my life from me, God can raise up
the same principle of life in ten of his servants, and send them among
you in my room, that you may have torment upon torment.” Whether it was
the fear of this Hydra-headed quakerism, or whether God prevented them
from taking his life, he too was reprieved after sentence of death, and
finally set at liberty. Little mercy, however, prevailed generally; the
prisons were full of Quakers, men, women, and even children, as in the
case of Patience Scott, a girl of eleven, and the hangman’s whip seemed
never to have done its work. At length the compassion of the people
generally was so much excited, that night and day such crowds gathered
round the prison to condole with and to hear the Quakers, who preached
through the bars, that a guard was placed round its walls to keep the
people off.
The last Quaker that suffered death was William Ledra; he too had
returned after sentence of banishment; and being again offered his life,
on condition of his leaving the country, replied that he was willing to
die; and, accordingly, in March 1660, he was executed. Imprisonment went
on, and whipping at the cart’s-tail began, but the poor Quakers were as
determined as ever; and in proportion as the magistrates were more
cruel, they became more infatuated. Strange that the rulers did not see
that the one excess was the result of the other! They entered the
congregations during the time of worship, and denounced the preaching to
be an abomination to the Lord. They went through the streets crying out
that the day of the Lord’s vengeance was at hand; and one woman even,
otherwise decorous, forgot the natural modesty and self-respect of her
sex so far as to appear naked in the streets. To what extent this mad
zeal might have gone on the one hand, and the bigotry of punishment and
persecution on the other, there is no saying. But the one died gradually
and naturally away, when the other ceased, in consequence of an order
from Charles II. in 1661, the report of these atrocities having reached
England, when it was ordered that a stop should be put to all capital or
corporeal punishment of the people called “Quakers.”
While persecution was thus outraging the spirit of Christianity, a noble
apostle of Christ was labouring in the divine spirit of his Great
Master, and to him we will now turn, glad to leave so hideous an aspect
of religion for another beautiful in the love of Christ. We refer to
John Eliot, the missionary of the Indians.
The first colonists hoped to have incorporated the Indians into their
own commonwealth, and their charters provided for assignments of land to
any such Indians as might become civilised. The pilgrims entertained the
wish to Christianise the natives. “Alas!” said the good Robinson, when
he heard of the first slaughter of the Indians, “that you had not
converted some before you killed any!” Unfortunately, however, the
Puritans, as we have said, regarding themselves as typified by the
chosen Israelites, soon began to regard the natives as equally typified
by the native tribes of Canaan; and a spirit of pride taking place of
the former spirit of love, it was suggested “that the Indians might be,
naturally as well as figuratively, the children of the devil,” and by
degrees, they were treated as such with contempt and abhorrence. Before,
however, this evil fruit loaded a once goodly tree, John Eliot, the
minister of Roxbury, distinguished himself by his Christian labours
among these children of the wilderness. Eliot began to preach to the
Indians in 1646, when he was about forty years of age. “His
benevolence,” says Bancroft, “almost amounted to genius. An Indian
grammar was a pledge of his earnestness; the pledge was redeemed by his
preparing and publishing a translation of the whole Bible into the
Massachusetts dialect. His actions, his thoughts, his desires, all wore
the hues of disinterested love.
[Illustration: JOHN ELIOT PREACHING TO THE INDIANS.]
“Eliot mixed with the Indians; he spoke to them of God, and of the soul,
and explained the virtues of self-denial. He became their lawgiver. He
taught the women to spin, the men to dig the ground. He established for
them simple forms of government; and in spite of menaces from their
priests and chieftains, he successfully imparted to them his own
religious faith. Groups of Indians used to gather round him as a father;
and now that their minds were awakened to reflection, often perplexed
him with questions similar to those which have perplexed the profoundest
intellects of the world, and which none are profound enough to solve,
nor was the good missionary ever tired with the importunity of their
inquiring minds.”
The fame of Eliot’s pious and unremitting labours reached England, where
a society was formed for aiding and supporting them. Funds by this means
were sent over, which enabled him to educate his five sons at college,
all of whom, with the exception of one, who died young, became preachers
among the Indians; as well as to support various Indian youths at
college, one of whom took a bachelor’s degree; and to allow small
salaries to Indian preachers.
Turning again to Bancroft, whose page seems to glow whenever it
chronicles a great or noble action, he tells us that “the spirit of
humanity sustained Eliot to the last; his zeal was not wearied by the
hereditary idleness of the race; and his simplicity of life and manners
and evangelical sweetness of temper, won for him all hearts, whether in
the villages of the emigrants or the smoky cells of the natives.
“Nor was Eliot alone. In the islands round Massachusetts, and within the
limits of the Plymouth patent, missionary zeal and charity were active;
and that New England scholar, the young Mayhew, forgetting the pride of
learning, endeavoured to win the natives to a new religion. At a later
day he took passage to England, but the ship in which he sailed was
never more heard of. Such, however, had been the force of his example,
that his father, though bowed down by the weight of seventy years,
assumed the office of the son whom he had lost, and until beyond the age
of fourscore and twelve continued to instruct the natives of the isles
with the happiest results. The Indians within his influence, though
twenty times more numerous than the whites in their neighbourhood,
preserved an immutable friendship with Massachusetts.
“Villages of ‘praying Indians,’ as the converted natives were called,
were established. Christianity, however, scarcely spread beyond the
Indians on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the seven
villages round Boston. The powerful Narragansetts, situate between
Connecticut and Plymouth, retained their old belief; and Philip of
Pokanoket, the fierce son of old Massasoit, the early friend of the
Pilgrims, maintained with pride the faith of his fathers.”