England at this interesting juncture. There are, however, two letters
addressed to him by the company, and one by Cradock, appointed in the
charter to be its first governor. With various directions as to the
details of his administration, they speak of the "propagation of the
Gospel" as "the thing they do profess above all to be their aim in
settling this plantation." They enjoin the keeping of "a diligent eye
over their own people, and they live unblamable and without reproof."
They forbid the planting of tobacco, except under severe restrictions.
They order satisfaction to be given to the "old planters" by the offer
of incorporation into the company and of a share in the lands. They
speak of unsuccessful negotiations with Oldham, who asserted a claim
under the patent of Robert Gorges, and give orders for anticipating him
in taking possession of Massachusetts Bay. They direct that persons who
may prove "not conformable to their government," or otherwise
disagreeable, shall not be suffered "to remain within the limits of
their grant," but be shipped to England. They prescribe a distribution
of the servants among families, with a view to domestic order and
Christian instruction and discipline. They enjoin a just settlement with
the natives for lands. And they transmit a form of oaths to be taken by
the governor and members of the council.
After the organization under the charter, no time was lost in
despatching a reënforcement of colonists. Six vessels were prepared, and
license was obtained from the lord treasurer for the embarkation of
"eighty women and maids, twenty-six children, and three hundred men,
with victuals, arms, and tools, and necessary apparel," and with "one
hundred forty head of cattle, and forty goats." A committee of the
company were careful "to make plentiful provision of godly ministers."
Mr. Skelton, Mr. Higginson, and Mr. Bright, members of the Council, with
Mr. Smith, another minister, sailed in the first three vessels, which
reached Salem about the same time, and were soon followed by the residue
of the fleet. Mr. Graves, another of the counsellors, was employed by
the associates as an engineer. Immediately on arriving, he proceeded
with "some of the company's servants under his care, and some others,"
to Mishawum, where he laid out a town. Bright, who was one of his party,
returned to England in the following summer, dissatisfied, probably,
with the ecclesiastical proceedings which had taken place. Smith went
for the present to the fishing-station at Nantasket.
Higginson wrote home: "When we came first to Naumkeag we found about
half-score houses, and a fair house newly built for the Governor. We
found also abundance of corn planted by them, very good and well-liking.
And we brought with us about two hundred passengers and planters more,
which, by common consent of the old planters, were all combined together
into one body politic, under the same Governor. There are in all of us,
both old and new planters, about three hundred, whereof two hundred of
them are settled at Naumkeag, now called Salem, and the rest have
planted themselves at Masathuset's Bay, beginning to build a town there,
which we do call Charleston, or Charlestown. But that which is our
greatest comfort and means of defence above all other is, that we have
here the true religion and holy ordinances of Almighty God taught among
us. Thanks be to God, we have here plenty of preaching and diligent
catechizing, with strict and careful exercise and good commendable
orders to bring our people into a Christian conversation with whom we
have to do withal. And thus we doubt not but God will be with us; and if
God be with us, who can be against us?"
Meanwhile, a movement of the utmost importance, probably meditated long
before, was hastened by external pressure. The state of public affairs
in England in the spring and summer of this year had brought numbers to
the decision which had been heretofore approached with sorrowful
reluctance, and several persons of character and condition resolved to
emigrate at once to the New World. It was necessary to their purpose to
secure self-government as far as it could be exercised by British
subjects.
Possibly events might permit and require it to be vindicated even beyond
that line. At any rate, to be ruled in America by a commercial
corporation in England, was a condition in no sort accordant with their
aim. At a general court of the company, Cradock, the Governor, "read
certain propositions conceived by himself, viz., that for the
advancement of the plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of
worth and quality to transplant themselves and families thither, and for
other weighty reasons therein contained (it is expedient) to transfer
the government of the plantation to those that shall inhabit there, and
not to continue the same in subordination to the company here, as now it
is."
The corporation entertained the proposal, and, in view of "the many
great and considerable consequences thereupon depending," reserved it
for deliberation. Two days before its next meeting, twelve gentlemen,
assembled at Cambridge, pledged themselves to each other to embark for
New England with their families for a permanent residence, provided an
arrangement should be made for the charter and the administration under
it to be transferred to that country. Legal advice was obtained in favor
of the authority to make the transfer; and on full consideration it was
determined, "by the general consent of the company, that the government
patent should be settled in New England." The old officers resigned, and
their places were filled with persons of whom most or all were expecting
to emigrate. John Winthrop was chosen governor, with John Humphrey for
deputy-governor, and eighteen others for assistants. Humphrey's
departure was delayed, and on the eve of embarkation his place was
supplied by Thomas Dudley.
Winthrop, then forty-two years old, was descended from a family of good
condition, long seated at Groton, in Suffolk, where he had a property of
six or seven hundred pounds a year, the equivalent of at least two
thousand pounds at the present day. His father was a lawyer and
magistrate. Commanding uncommon respect and confidence from an early
age, he had moved in the circles where the highest matters of English
policy were discussed, by men who had been associates of Whitgift,
Bacon, Essex, and Cecil. Humphrey was "a gentleman of special parts, of
learning and activity, and a godly man"; in the home of his
father-in-law, Thomas, third earl of Lincoln, the head in that day of
the now ducal house of Newcastle, he had been the familiar companion of
the patriotic nobles.
Of the assistants, Isaac Johnson, esteemed the richest of the
emigrants, was another son-in-law of Lord Lincoln, and a land-holder in
three counties. Sir Richard Saltonstall of Halifax, in Yorkshire, was
rich enough to be a bountiful contributor to the company's operations.
Thomas Dudley, with a company of volunteers which he had raised, had
served, thirty years before, under Henry IV of France; since which time
he had managed the estates of the Earl of Lincoln. He was old enough to
have lent a shrill voice to the huzzas at the defeat of the armada, and
his military services had indoctrinated him in the lore of civil and
religious freedom. Theophilus Eaton, an eminent London merchant, was
used to courts and had been minister of Charles I in Denmark. Simon
Bradstreet, the son of a Non-conformist minister in Lincolnshire, and a
grandson of "a Suffolk gentleman of a fine estate," had studied at
Emanuel College, Cambridge. William Vassall was an opulent West-India
proprietor. "The principal planters of Massachusetts," says the
prejudiced Chalmers, "were English country gentlemen of no
inconsiderable fortunes; of enlarged understandings, improved by liberal
education; of extensive ambition, concealed under the appearance of
religious humility."
But it is not alone from what we know of the position, character, and
objects of those few members of the Massachusetts Company who were
proposing to emigrate at the early period now under our notice, that we
are to estimate the power and the purposes of that important
corporation. It had been rapidly brought into the form which it now
bore, by the political exigencies of the age. Its members had no less in
hand than a wide religious and political reform--whether to be carried
out in New England, or in Old England, or in both, it was for
circumstances, as they should unfold themselves, to determine. The
leading emigrants to Massachusetts were of that brotherhood of men who,
by force of social consideration as well as of the intelligence and
resolute patriotism, moulded the public opinion and action of England in
the first half of the seventeenth century. While the larger part stayed
at home to found, as it proved, the short-lived English republic, and to
introduce elements into the English Constitution which had to wait
another half-century for their secure reception, another part devoted
themselves at once to the erection of free institutions in this distant
wilderness.
In an important sense the associates of the Massachusetts Company were
builders of the British, as well as of the New England, commonwealth.
Some ten or twelve of them, including Cradock, the Governor, served in
the Long Parliament. Of the four commoners of that Parliament
distinguished by Lord Clarendon as first in influence, Vane had been
governor of the company, and Hampden, Pym, and Fiennes--all patentees of
Connecticut--if not members, were constantly consulted upon its affairs.
The latter statement is also true of the Earl of Warwick, the
Parliament's admiral, and of those excellent persons, Lord Say and Sele
and Lord Brooke, both of whom at one time proposed to emigrate. The
company's meetings placed Winthrop and his colleagues in relations with
numerous persons destined to act busy parts in the stirring times that
were approaching--with Brereton and Hewson, afterward two of the
Parliamentary major-generals; with Philip Nye, who helped Sir Henry Vane
to "cozen" the Scottish Presbyterian Commissioners in the phraseology of
the Solemn League and Covenant; with Samuel Vassall, whose name shares
with those of Hampden and Lord Say and Sele the renown of the refusal to
pay ship-money, and of courting the suit which might ruin them or
emancipate England; with John Venn, who, at the head of six thousand
citizens, beset the House of Lords during the trial of Lord Strafford,
and whom, with three other Londoners, King Charles, after the battle of
Edgehill, excluded from his offer of pardon; with Owen Rowe, the
"firebrand of the city"; with Thomas Andrews, the lord mayor, who
proclaimed the abolition of royalty.
Sir John Young, named second in the original grant from the Council for
New England, as well as in the charter from King Charles, sat in
Cromwell's second and third Parliaments. Others of the company, as Vane
and Adams, incurred the Protector's displeasure by too uncomplying
principles. Six or seven were members of the high court of justice for
the King's trial, on which occasion they gave a divided vote. Four were
members of the committee of religion, the most important committee of
Parliament; and one, the counsellor, John White, was its chairman.
A question had been raised, whether the company had a right, and was
legally competent, to convey the charter across the ocean, and execute
on a foreign soil the powers conferred by it. Certain it is that no such
proceeding is forbidden by the letter of the instrument; and a not
disingenuous casuistry might inquire, If the business of the company may
be lawfully transacted in a western harbor of Great Britain, why not
under the King's flag in a ship at sea or on the opposite shore? It
cannot be maintained that such a disposition of a colonial charter would
be contrary to the permanent policy of England; for other colonial
charters, earlier and later, were granted--Sir William Alexander's,
William Penn's, Lord Baltimore's, and those of Rhode Island and
Connecticut--to be kept and executed without the realm.
As to the purpose of the grantor, those were not times for such men as
the Massachusetts patentees to ask what the King wished or expected, but
rather how much of freedom could be maintained against him by the letter
of the law or by other righteous means; and no principle of
jurisprudence is better settled than that a grant is to be interpreted
favorably to the grantees, inasmuch as the grantor, being able to
protect himself, is to be presumed to have done so to the extent of his
purpose. The eminent Puritan counsellor, John White, the legal adviser
of the company in all stages of this important proceeding, instructed
them that they could legally use the charter in this manner. Very
probably it had been drawn by his own hand, in the form in which it
passed the seals, with a care to have it free from any phraseology which
might interfere with this disposition of it. Certainly Winthrop and his
coadjutors may be pardoned for believing that it was legally subject to
the use to which they put it, since such was the opinion of the crown
lawyers themselves, when, in the second following generation, the
question became important. In the very heat of the persecution which at
length broke down the charter, the Chief Justices, Rainsford and North,
spoke of it as "making the adventurers a corporation upon the place,"
and Sawyer, attorney-general in the next reign, expressed the same
opinion--"The patent having created the grantees and their assigns a
body corporate, they might transfer their charter and act in New
England."
He who well weighs the facts which have been presented in connection
with the principal emigration to Massachusetts, and other related facts
which will offer themselves to notice as we proceed, may find himself
conducted to the conclusion that when Winthrop and his associates
prepared to convey across the water a charter from the King which, they
hoped, would in their beginnings afford them some protection both from
himself and through him from the powers of Continental Europe, they had
conceived a project no less important than that of laying, on this side
of the Atlantic, the foundations of a nation of Puritan Englishmen,
foundations to be built upon as future circumstances should decide or
allow. It would not perhaps be pressing the point too far to say that in
view of the thick clouds that were gathering over their home, they
contemplated the possibility that the time was near at hand when all
that was best of what they left behind would follow them to these
shores; when a renovated England, secure in freedom and pure in
religion, would rise in North America; when a transatlantic English
empire would fulfil, in its beneficent order, the dreams of English
patriots and sages of earlier times.
If such were the aims of the members of the Massachusetts Company, it
follows that commercial operations were a merely incidental object of
their association. And, in fact, it does not appear that, as a
corporation, they ever held for distribution any property except their
land; or that they ever intended to make sales of their land in order to
a division of the profits among the individual freemen; or that a
freeman, by virtue of the franchise, could obtain a parcel of land even
for his own occupation; or that any money was ever paid for admission
into the company, as would necessarily have been done if any pecuniary
benefit was attached to membership. Several freemen of the
company--among others the three who were first named in the charter as
well as in the patent from the Council for New England--appear to have
never so much as attended a meeting. They were men of property and
public spirit, who, without intending themselves to leave their homes,
gave their influence and their money to encourage such as were disposed
to go out and establish religion and freedom in a new country.
The company had no stock, in the sense in which that word is used in
speaking of money corporations. What money was needed to procure the
charter, to conduct the business under it, and carry out the scheme of
colonization was obtained neither by the sale of negotiable securities
nor by assessment, but by voluntary contributions from individuals of
the company, and possibly from others, in such sums as suited the
contributors respectively.
These contributions made up what is called in the records the joint
stock, designed to be used in providing vessels and stores for the
transportation of settlers. It is true that these contributors, called
Adventurers, had more or less expectation of being remunerated for their
outlay; and for this purpose two hundred acres of land within the limits
of the patent were pledged to them for every fifty pounds subscribed, in
addition to a proportional share of the trade which the government of
the company was expecting to carry on. But a share of the profits of
trade, as of the land, was to be theirs, not because they were freemen,
but because they were contributors, which many of the freemen were not,
and perhaps others besides freemen were.
When the transfer of the charter and of the government to America had
been resolved upon, it was agreed that at the end of seven years a
division of the profits of a proposed trade in fish, furs, and other
articles should be made among the Adventurers agreeably to these
principles; and the management of the business was committed to a board
consisting of five persons who expected to emigrate, and five who were
to remain in England. But this part of the engagement appears to have
been lost sight of; at least never to have been executed. It is likely
that the commercial speculation was soon perceived to be unpromising;
and the outlay had been distributed in such proportions that the loss
was not burdensome in any quarter. The richer partners submitted to it
silently, from public spirit; the poorer, as a less evil than that of a
further expense and risk of time and money.
From the ship Arbella, lying in the port of Yarmouth, the Governor and
several of his companions took leave of their native country by an
address, which they entitled "The Humble Request of his Majesty's Loyal
Subjects, the Governor and the Company late gone for New England, to the
Rest of their Brethren in and of the Church of England." They asked a
favorable construction of their enterprise, and good wishes and prayers
for its success. With a tenacious affection which the hour of parting
made more tender, they said: "We esteem it our honor to call the Church
of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from
our native country where she specially resideth, without much sadness of
heart, and many tears in our eyes. Wishing our heads and hearts may be
as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in
our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of
supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which
may not altogether unexpectedly nor, we hope, unprofitably, befall us,
and so commending you to the grace of God in Christ, we shall ever rest
your assured friends and brethren." The address is said to have been
drawn up by Mr. White, of Dorchester.
The incidents of the voyage are minutely related in a journal begun by
the Governor on shipboard off the Isle of Wight. Preaching and
catechizing, fasting and thanksgiving, were duly observed. A record of
the writer's meditations on the great design which occupied his mind
while he passed into a new world and a new order of human affairs, would
have been a document of the profoundest interest for posterity. But the
diary contains nothing of that description. On the voyage Winthrop
composed a little treatise, which he called _A Model Christian Charity_.
It breathes the noblest spirit of philanthropy. The reader's mind
kindles as it enters into the train of thought in which the author
referred to "the work we have in hand. It is," he said, "by a mutual
consent, through a special overruling Providence, and a more than an
ordinary approbation of the churches of Christ, to seek out a place of
cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government both civil
and ecclesiastical." The forms and institutions under which liberty,
civil and religious, is consolidated and assured, were floating vaguely
in the musings of that hour.
The Arbella arrived at Salem after a passage of nine weeks, and was
joined in a few days by three vessels which had sailed in her company.
The assistants, Ludlow and Rossiter, with a party from the west country,
had landed at Nantasket a fortnight before, and some of the Leyden
people, on their way to Plymouth, had reached Salem a little earlier
yet. Seven vessels from Southampton made their voyage three or four
weeks later. Seventeen in the whole came before winter, bringing about a
thousand passengers.
It is desirable to understand how this population, destined to be the
germ of a state, was constituted. Of members of the Massachusetts
Company, it cannot be ascertained that so many as twenty had come over.
That company, as has been explained, was one formed mainly for the
furtherance, not of any private interests, but of a great public object.
As a corporation, it had obtained the ownership of a large American
territory, on which it designed to place a colony which should be a
refuge for civil and religious freedom. By combined counsels, it had
arranged the method of ordering a settlement, and the liberality of its
members had provided the means of transporting those who should compose
it. This done, the greater portion were content to remain and await the
course of events at home, while a few of their number embarked to attend
to the providing of the asylum which very soon might be needed by them
all.
It may be safely concluded that most of the persons who accompanied the
emigrant members of the company to New England sympathized with them in
their object. It may be inferred from the common expenditures which were
soon incurred, that considerable sums of money were brought over. And
almost all the settlers may be presumed to have belonged to one or
another of the four following classes: (1) Those who paid for their
passage and who were accordingly entitled on their arrival to a grant of
as much land as if they had subscribed fifty pounds to the "common
stock" of the company; (2) those who, for their exercise of some
profession, art, or trade, were to receive specified remuneration from
the company in money or land; (3) those who paid a portion of their
expenses, and after making up the rest by labor at the rate of three
shillings a day, were to receive fifty acres of land; (4) indented
servants, for whose conveyance their masters were to be remunerated at
the rate of fifty acres of land for each. All Englishmen were eligible
to the franchise of the Massachusetts Company; but until elected by a
vote of the existing freemen no one had any share in the government of
the plantation or in the selection of its governors.
The reception of the new-comers was discouraging. More than a quarter
part of their predecessors at Salem had died during the previous winter,
and many of the survivors were ill or feeble. The faithful Higginson was
wasting with a hectic fever, which soon proved fatal. There was a
scarcity of all sorts of provisions, and not corn enough for a
fortnight's supply after the arrival of the fleet. "The remainder of a
hundred eighty servants," who, in the two preceding years, had been
conveyed over at heavy cost, were discharged from their indentures, to
escape the expense of their maintenance. Sickness soon began to spread,
and before the close of autumn had proved fatal to two hundred of this
year's emigration. Death aimed at the "shining mark" he is said to love.
Lady Arbella Johnson, coming "from a paradise of plenty and pleasure,
which she enjoyed in the family of a noble earldom, into a wilderness of
wants," survived her arrival only a month; and her husband, singularly
esteemed and beloved by the colonists, died of grief a few weeks after.
He was a holy man and wise and died in sweet peace.