Puritans and Education--Provision for Public Schools--Puritan Sincerity
--Effect of Intolerance on the Community--Quakers Harshly Persecuted--The
Salem Witchcraft Tragedy--History of the Delusion--Rebecca Nourse and
Other Victims--The People Come to Their Senses--Cotton Mather Obdurate to
the Last--Puritan Morals--Comer's Diary--Rhode Island in Colonial Times.
It is to the credit of the Puritans that promptly upon their settlement
in Massachusetts they made provision for education. Many of the Puritans
were learned men, and some of them graduates of Cambridge in England, and
when a school was established at Newtown for the education of the
ministry, the name of the place was changed to Cambridge. When John
Harvard endowed the school in 1638 with his library and the gift of one
half his estate--about $4000, but equal to much more than that amount at
the present day--the school was erected into a college and named Harvard
College after the founder. The central aim and purpose of Puritan
education was religious. The schools were maintained so that the children
could learn to read the Bible, and also incidentally the printed
fulminations of the ministers and magistrates. The Massachusetts school
law of 1649 set forth in the preamble that, "it being one chief project
of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the
Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in
these later times persuading men from the use of tongues, so that at the
least a true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded with
false glossing of saint-seeming deceivers, and that learning may not be
buried in the grave of our fathers," therefore, etc. Every township was
required to maintain a school for reading and writing, and every town of
a hundred householders a grammar-school, with a teacher qualified to fit
youths for the university. This school law was enacted likewise in the
other Puritan colonies. While its object was to strengthen the hold of
religion, as expounded by the Puritan ministry, upon the people, its
general effect was to spread intelligence along with learning, and to
break down the barriers of intolerance. It is a significant fact,
however, and in accordance with the lessons of more recent history, that
the seat of the highest education was not always the seat of the highest
intelligence. The witchcraft delusion found a haven in Harvard when the
common sense of a common-school educated people rejected it by a decisive
majority.
The Puritan was stern and cruel because he was thoroughly in earnest. He
believed his religion to be true, and that the only path to salvation lay
through rigid compliance with Puritan doctrine. Believing as he did he
was logical; he was humane. The non-Puritan was, in his view, a
pestilence to be got rid of by the most heroic measures if necessary. In
acting on this principle he was kind, in his judgment, to the many whom
he saved from pollution and damnation by the sacrifice of the few. The
devil, to the Puritan, was terribly personal, and Cotton Mather's horror
of witchcraft was grounded in a sincere belief in that personality. The
forces of evil were always active, and the Puritan believed in combating
them in the most vigorous and trenchant fashion. The Scripture enjoined
upon him to pluck out his own eye if it offended, and it was natural that
he should not hesitate to sacrifice others when they offended. With all
his severity he took good care to let transgressors know what they had to
expect, and he felt the less compunction, therefore, in inflicting
penalties deliberately incurred. Life for the Puritan was a very serious
affair, and levity a crime only milder than non-orthodoxy. Gaming even
for amusement was rigidly prohibited. It was a criminal act to kiss a
woman in the street, even in the way of chaste and honest salute. The
heads of households were called to account if the daughters neglected the
spinning-wheel. The stocks and the whipping-post were seldom unoccupied
by minor offenders, while the hangman was kept busy with criminals of
deeper dye. It should be needless to say that there was a good deal of
hypocrisy, and that public repentance was often simply a means for
escaping from social ostracism and obtaining admission to the pastures of
the elect. Hubbard intimates as much in what he says about Captain John
Underhill.
The laws enacted were based on the Mosaic code, and of Mosaic severity in
dealing with offences against morality and religion. It is to be
remembered, however, that down to the second quarter of the present
century the code of England itself was Draconic, although immoralities
punished by death in Massachusetts were not regarded as crimes in the
older country.
* * *
The most painful event connected with the harsh religious system of the
Puritans was the execution in 1659 of two Quakers, Marmaduke Stephenson
and William Robinson, of England, who had come to Massachusetts to preach
their doctrines. The first two Quakers to arrive in Boston were Ann
Austin and Mary Fisher, who landed here in 1656. They were forthwith
arrested, and examined for witch-marks, but none being found and there
being no excuse therefore for putting them to death as agents of Satan,
they were kept in close imprisonment, and the jailer and citizens were
forbidden to give them any food, the object apparently being to starve
them to death. The windows of the jail were boarded up to prevent food
from being handed into them and also to prevent the prisoners from
exhorting passers-by. A citizen named Upshall, who gave money to the
jailer to buy nourishment for the captives, was fined $100, and ordered
to leave the colony within thirty days, and was sentenced to pay beside
$15 for every day he should be absent from public worship before his
departure--evidently that he might be compelled to listen to pulpit
denunciations of his wickedness in saving from starvation two
fellow-human beings who worshipped God in a different fashion from their
persecutors. The exile was denied an asylum in Plymouth, and followed the
example of Roger Williams by seeking a refuge among the Indians, who
treated him kindly. The two Quaker women were transported to Barbadoes,
and the captain of the vessel which had brought them to Boston was
required to bear the charges of their imprisonment. The religious books
which they had in their possession when arrested were burned by the
common hangman.
The Quakers continued to come in considerable numbers to America, being
welcomed in some of the colonies, and persecuted in others, but nowhere
so severely as in Massachusetts. When Stephenson and Robinson were hanged
at Boston, Mary Dyer, widow of William Dyer, late recorder of Providence
plantations, was taken to the scaffold with them, but reprieved on
condition that she should leave the colony in forty-eight hours. In the
following year Mary Dyer returned to Boston, and was at once arrested and
hanged. These proceedings excited general horror in the mother country,
and Charles II. sent a letter stating it to be his pleasure that the
Quakers should be sent to England for trial. The General Court of
Massachusetts thereupon suspended the laws against Quakers, and those in
prison were released and sent out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
* * *
Next to the persecution of the Quakers no feature of Puritan history is
so prominent as the Salem Witchcraft Tragedy, which, although it occurred
near the close of the seventeenth century, so strikingly illustrates the
intellectual and religious conditions of the Massachusetts colony that it
may properly be described here. Belief in witchcraft was not by any means
confined to Massachusetts. The statutes of England, as well as of the
American colonies, dealt with the imaginary crime. Among the intelligent
and educated classes, however, both in Europe and America, the subject
was generally considered of too doubtful a nature to be dealt with by the
infliction of the penalties which the law prescribed. In Massachusetts,
where everybody had some education, the majority of the people, although
deeply and almost fanatically religious, had their doubts about the
reality of the diabolical art, and the belief, strangely enough, seems to
have been most intense and aggressive in the highest intellectual
quarters, among ministers and men of superior education and commensurate
influence. It was this that gave the witchcraft delusion its awful power
for evil, and enabled a few vicious children afflicted with hysteria or
epilepsy to bring a score of mostly reputable persons to an ignominious
death, to ruin more than that number of homes and to spread consternation
throughout the commonwealth.
The Salem delusion began in the house of Mr. Parris, the minister at
Danvers. Parris had two slaves, an Indian and his wife, Tituba, the
latter half negro and half Indian. Tituba taught the children various
tricks. While practicing these tricks, some of them became hysterical and
acted in a peculiar manner. It was suggested that they were bewitched,
and they were asked who had bewitched them. They indicated a woman named
Sarah Goode, who was generally disliked. She was arrested and imprisoned.
This seems to have gratified the children, who soon after had convulsions
in the presence of another victim, one Giles Corey. Corey stood mute
under the accusation, and was tortured to death by pressing. The cases
attracted attention, and at the instance of Cotton Mather and others,
Governor Phipps designated a special court to try persons accused of
witchcraft. Malice, greed and craft promptly supplied more victims for
the court and the hangman. Doctors discovered what they called
witch-marks, such as moles or callosities of any kind, and after the
children or others alleged to have been bewitched had performed the usual
contortions, the accused were swiftly convicted. Francis Nourse and his
wife, Rebecca, had a controversy about the occupation of a farm with a
family named Endicott. The Endicott children went into hysterics and
charged that Rebecca Nourse had bewitched them. Although as good and pure
a woman as there was in the colour, Rebecca was convicted, hanged on
Witches' Hill, and her body cast into a pit designed for those who should
meet her fate. Mr. Parris, the minister, thought it necessary to preach a
sermon fortifying the belief in witchcraft, and when Sarah Cloyse, a
sister of Rebecca, got up and went out of the meeting-house, regarding
the sermon as an insult to the memory of her murdered sister, she was
also denounced and arrested. The Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather, one of the
lights of Puritanism, and son of Dr. Increase Mather, president of
Harvard University, was most active and violent in the prosecutions.
Among the victims was the Rev. Stephen Burroughs, a learned minister of
exemplary life, who was accused of possessing a witch's trumpet. Mather
witnessed the hanging of Burroughs, and when the latter on the scaffold
offered up a touching prayer, Mather cried out to the people that Satan
often transformed himself into an angel of light to deceive men's souls.
The Rev. Mr. Noyes, standing by at the execution of eight accused
persons, exclaimed: "What a sad thing it is to see eight fire-brands of
hell hanging there!" A committee was appointed to ferret out witches, and
children were readily found to court the notoriety and interest which a
share in the work attracted. When the accusers began to utter charges
against the wife of Governor Phipps and relatives of the Mathers, the
authorities took a different view of the monster which they had evolved
out of their superstitious imaginings. Public opinion, which had been
fettered by fear and amazement at the hideous proceedings, began to find
expression in protest against any further sacrifice. Many of the accusers
recanted their testimony, and said that they had given it in order to
save their own lives, dreading to be accused of witchcraft themselves.
The General Court of Massachusetts appointed a general fast and
supplication "that God would pardon all the errors of His servants and
people in a late tragedy raised among them by Satan and his instruments."
Judge Sewall, who had presided at a number of the trials, stood up in his
place in the church and begged the people to pray that the errors which
he had committed "might not be visited by the judgment of an avenging God
on his country, his family and himself." The Rev. Mr. Parris was
compelled to leave the country. Cotton Mather, however, adhered
steadfastly to his belief in witches. He said, among other things equally
astounding to the common sense even of that day, that the devil allowed
the victims of witchcraft to "read Quaker books, the Common Prayer and
popish books," but not the Bible. At the instance of Cotton Mather, and
that of his father, Increase Mather, the president of Harvard, a circular
was sent out signed by Increase Mather and a number of other ministers in
the name of Harvard College, inviting reports of "apparitions,
possessions, enchantments and all extraordinary things wherein the
existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly
demonstrated," to be used "as some fit assembly of ministers might
direct." But few replies to the circular were received. The people of
Massachusetts had muzzled the monster, and did not care to turn it loose
again. A monument was recently erected to Rebecca Nourse on the hill
where she perished, and her descendants have an organization which holds
annual meetings in commemoration of their hapless ancestor.
* * *
Notwithstanding harsh laws and their bitter enforcement, the habits of
the people were probably not much better than to-day in well-ordered
communities, and considerable depravity existed, especially in the
remoter settlements. Comer's Diary, which has never been published, but
which the writer of this work has examined in manuscript, shows a
condition of society far from exemplary, and it also shows that persons
whose position ought to have been respectable, sometimes took Indians
either as wives or in a less honorable relation. There is, perhaps, more
Indian blood in New England than is generally supposed, and the earlier
inhabitants of that section were probably less exclusive toward the
aborigines than is assumed in conventional history. Comer's Diary deals,
it is true, with the early part of the eighteenth century, but the
conditions it minutely and no doubt faithfully describes, must have
existed substantially in the seventeenth.[1]
[1] I was present at a meeting of the Rhode Island Historical
Society when President (then professor) Andrews, of Brown
University, reported in behalf of a committee, that it had been
judged inexpedient to publish Comer's Diary. I have since had the
privilege of examining the diary in the original, and can understand
the grounds of objection.--H. M.
* * *
The laws of Rhode Island were founded on the Mosaic system, like those of
Massachusetts, but entirely ignored the question of religion. The
penalties for immoral conduct were not so merciless as in the Puritan
colonies, and the Rhode Island colonial records indicate that the laws,
such as they were, were not rigidly enforced. The remnants of the Indian
tribes, having first been demoralized by unprincipled whites, became
themselves a demoralizing element, and Indian dances were, the records
show, a continual source of scandal and of vice, which the authorities
sought vainly to suppress. In connection with the principle of entire
separation of Church and State, on which Rhode Island was founded, it may
be of interest to mention here that I learned, in my examination of
Comer's Diary, that an attempt was made to establish a branch of the
Anglican Church in Providence, in the colonial period, and that a
minister was sent over under authority of the bishop of London. The
minister had to depart, and the church was closed on account of some
scandal. I wrote to the present bishop of London inquiring if there was
any record of the incident in the Episcopal archives, and he answered me
to the effect that nothing could be found relating to it.