I • Master John Cotton • Priest
The most authoritative representative in New England of the ideal of
priestly stewardship was the excellent John Cotton, first teacher to
the church at Boston. While pastor of the church of St. Botolph, in
old Boston, he had dreamed of a Utopia of the Saints, unharassed by
tyrannous prelates; and while sweetening his mouth with a morsel of
Calvin, as he was fond of doing, no doubt he turned over in his mind
the plans and specifications of that Utopia. “When God wrappes us in
his ordinances,” he said in his sermon to Winthrop’s company on the eve
of its departure from England, “and warmes us with the life and power
of them as with wings, there is the land of Promise.” Left behind by
the departing brethren, he lingered for a while in an England that was
every day becoming colder for such as dreamed of other Canaans than
Laud’s, until urged by many invitations, at the age of forty-six he
followed overseas to devote his remaining life to the great work being
done there. For more than a score of years he labored faithfully, and
the New England which the emigrant generation bequeathed to its sons
bore upon it the marks of John Cotton’s shaping hand more clearly than
those of any other minister.
It is not easy today to judge fairly the life and work of John Cotton.
No adequate biography has been written, and his dreams and aspirations
lie forgotten in the grave of lost causes and forsaken faiths. But
to the Boston freemen of his own day, Master John Cotton was a very
great man. Of excellent family and sound university training, he was
both a notable theologian and a courteous gentleman. “Twelve hours in
a day he commonly studied, and would call that a _scholar’s_ day,”
his grandson reported of him. From the hour when he entered Trinity
College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen, to his death in 1652,
he was a bookman, and in sheer bulk of acquisition probably no man
of his time outdid him. In Cotton Mather’s judgment he was “a most
_universal scholar_, and a _living system_ of the liberal arts, and a
_walking library_.” His intellectual equipment was so highly regarded
that many excellent persons “believed that God would not suffer Mr.
Cotton to err”; and that “if ever there be any considerable blow given
to the Devil’s kingdom,” Master Cotton was the man for the business.
No other New England champion was so renowned for “beating out the
truth in controversie”; and when he turned to the work of answering
Roger Williams, the latter exclaimed: “I rejoice it hath pleased [God]
to appoint so able, and excellent, and conscionable an Instrument to
bolt the Truth to the bran.” But though he was bred in Elizabethan
days and entered college in the year when Shakespeare’s _Henry IV_
and Jonson’s _Every Man in his Humour_ first appeared on the stage,
there is no touch of Renaissance splendor in his crabbed style and
ascetic reasoning. That was early washed out of him by the rising
tide of Hebraism which was slowly submerging the England of poets and
playwrights.
But however much he loved cloistered scholarship, the immediate source
of his great influence was the spoken rather than the written word.
By the universal testimony of his generation he was “a soul-melting
preacher,” whose reasoned eloquence swayed congregations trained to
solid argumentative discourse. When he ascended the pulpit on Sundays
and lecture days, he spoke as a prophet in Israel; and on occasions
of public ceremonial, or when dissensions arose touching the polity
of church or state, he was summoned by the magistrates to convince
with his logic and persuade with his eloquence. The strong-minded Anne
Hutchinson was but one of many who chose exile in New England rather
than lose the edification of Mr. Cotton’s preaching. Good men were
drawn to him by his sweetness of temper, and evil men were overawed
by his venerable aspect. He seems to have been an altogether lovable
person, with white hair framing a face that must have been nobly
chiseled, gentle-voiced, courteous, tactful, by nature “a tolerant man”
who placidly bore with a dissentient and gladly discovered a friend in
an antagonist. If his quiet yielding before opposition suggests that he
may have been given to opportunism, or his fondness for intellectual
subtleties drew from his grandson the comment “a most excellent
casuist,” we must not too hastily conclude that he served the cause of
truth less devotedly than the cause of party.
For a score of years before his coming over, his position in the
rising Puritan party had been honorable. Few among the dissenting
ministers were better known, none more esteemed. He had shone as an
intellectual light at the university, he had long been pastor of one of
the loveliest churches in England, he counted among his friends some of
the ablest contemporary Englishmen. To Cromwell he was one “whom I love
and honour in the Lord”; to Lord Say and Sele, to the Earl of Warwick,
the Earl of Lincoln, and a notable company of Puritan gentlemen, he
was a trusted friend and lieutenant; to thousands of the substantial
burgesses who were drawing together to form the new Puritan-Whig party,
he was “a fixed and conscionable light.” That such a leader should
have been received with thanksgiving by the Boston congregation was to
be expected; that he should have taken high place at once among the
members of the Massachusetts oligarchy was equally to be expected.
Thenceforth his busy career was no more than a reflection of the
ambitions of the theocracy.
Unfortunately his daily contact with narrow-minded and intolerant men
gave an unhappy bias to his later career. Cotton seems to have been
something of a Puritan intellectual, with an open-minded curiosity that
made him receptive to new ideas and tempted him to play with doctrines
that were intolerable to his bigoted associates. It was possibly this
native sympathy with free speculation that drew him into the camp of
Mistress Hutchinson with her doctrine of the inner light. When the
schism became serious, dividing the commonwealth into warring camps,
Cotton seems to have become frightened and broke with the Boston
Antinomians. In this matter he came near to being a shuffler. The
Hutchinson trial with its resulting banishments was the turning point
of his career in America as it was a crisis in the history of early
New England. He was not a man to persecute and harry, nor was he one
to stand in isolated opposition to associates whom he respected, and
he allowed himself to be coerced by narrower-minded men like Endicott
and Dudley. After 1637 the better nature of John Cotton was submerged
by the rising intolerance, and “the most tolerant, as he was the ablest
of the Massachusetts divines,” was brought so low as to defend the
meanest and crudest acts of the oligarchy. He descended to disgraceful
casuistry in defense of the first whippings of the Quakers, and he
urged the death penalty upon King Philip’s son and the enslavement of
the remnant of Philip’s tribe, against the plea of John Eliot that “to
sell soules for mony seemeth to me a dangerous merchandize.” The sins
of the oligarchy rest in large measure on the head of John Cotton, and
the judgment of the most recent historian of New England must stand:
With a broader mind and wider vision than any of the other clergy
of the colony, he had not the courage to stand alone, beyond a
certain point, against their unanimity in intolerance. The higher
promptings of his nature were crushed by the united voice of the
priesthood, as Winthrop’s had been so short a time before, and the
noblest of the colony’s leaders, lay and clerical, from that time
tended to sink to the lower level of their fellows.[7]
An apologist--and whoever has felt the charm of John Cotton’s
personality easily becomes an apologist--will perhaps find some grounds
of excuse for his later conduct. He was in an unhappy position. He
was ill at ease in his mind, and his frequent tacking in the face of
adverse winds was characteristic of the intellectual who sees all
sides of a question. He heartily approved of the theocratic ends that
his associates were seeking, and his influential position made him
the defender of acts which his better nature must have disapproved.
The historian, however, will seek a more adequate explanation in the
roots of his environment. The idealism of John Cotton was the fruit of
his training, and his theocratic dreams were conditioned by the facts
that he was both a Calvinist and a Carolinian gentleman. The fusion
of these two influences resulted in the unique political theory of an
ethical aristocracy, consecrated to moral stewardship in the state. A
lifelong student of Calvin’s _Institutes_, he found there a system of
social organization that responded to every demand of the theologian
and the aristocrat. The very texture and pattern of Cotton’s political
philosophy is exemplified in such a passage as this, over which he must
have brooded much:
When these three forms of government of which philosophers treat,
are considered in themselves, I, for my part, am far from denying
that the form which greatly surpasses the other is aristocracy,
either pure or modified by popular government; not indeed in
itself, but because it very rarely happens that kings so rule
themselves as never to dissent from what is just and right, or
are possessed of so much acuteness and prudence as always to see
correctly. Owing therefore to the vices or defects of men, it is
safer and more tolerable when several bear rule, that they may thus
mutually assist, instruct, and admonish each other, and should
any he disposed to go too far, the others are censors and masters
to curb his excess. This has already been proved by experience,
and confirmed also by the authority of the Lord himself, when he
established an aristocracy bordering on popular government among
the Israelites, keeping them under that as the best form, until He
exhibited an image of the Messiah in David.[8]
As a Carolinian gentleman, this was as far as Cotton would go on
the path of liberalism. The elders were responsible to God for the
spiritual well-being of the people, and the state must aid and not
hinder them in their leadership. The doctrine of unlimited popular
sovereignty was for him no other than a thistle in the garden of the
Lord. The desire for liberty he regarded as the sinful prompting of
the natural man, a denial of the righteous authority of God’s chosen
rulers. If democracy were indeed the best form of government, was it
not strange that divine wisdom should have failed to discover the
fact? In the history of the chosen people nowhere does God approve
the democratic as the best form, but the theocratic; was He now to be
set right by sinful men who courted popularity by appealing to the
selfishness of depraved hearts? To the scripturist the logic of his
argument was convincing:
It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting
forth of God’s house, which is his church: than to accommodate the
church frame to the civill state. Democracy, I do not conceyve
that ever God did ordeyne as a fit government eyther for church or
commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?
As for monarchy, and aristocracy, they are both of them clearely
approoved, and directed in scripture, yet so as referreth the
soveraigntie to himselfe, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as the
best forme of government in the commonwealth, as well as in the
church.[9]
If John Cotton, like other Carolinian gentlemen, was a confirmed
aristocrat, he was at the same time a social revolutionary, who would
substitute an aristocracy of the Saints for the landed aristocracy, and
refashion society upon ethical rather than economic lines. At what time
the ideal of a Presbyterian Bible commonwealth took shape in his mind,
it is impossible to determine; but it was a natural outcome of his most
cherished beliefs. A devout scripturist, he accepted the Bible as a
rule of universal application, perfect and final. The sufficiency of
the Scriptures to all social needs was axiomatic with him; “the more
any law smells of man the more unprofitable,” he asserted in his draft
of laws offered for acceptance by the commonwealth; and at another
time he exclaimed, “_Scripturae plenitudinem adoro._” He chose exile
rather than yield to what he regarded as the unscriptural practices of
Laud, and now that he was come to a new land where a fresh beginning
was to be made, was it not his Christian duty to “endeavour after
a _theocracy_, as near as might be, to that which was the glory of
Israel, the ‘peculiar people’”? The old Common Law must be superseded
by the Mosaic dispensation; the citizen of the commonwealth must become
the subject of Jehovah; the sovereignty of temporal authorities must
serve the higher sovereignty of God.
Holding to such views the duty devolving upon him was plain: to assist
the magistrates in checking the dangerous drift towards a democratic
organization of church and state, which the new environment encouraged;
and to defend the theocratic ideal against all critics. The first he
sought to accomplish by creating a more perfect theocratic machinery.
As we catch glimpses of him moving tactfully back and forth through
the brisk little scenes, he seems always to have a finger in some
magisterial affair. Three months after his arrival in Boston he
preached a sermon, the purport of which Winthrop noted in his _Journal_:
After much deliberation and serious advice the Lord directed the
teacher Mr. Cotton, to make clear by the scripture, that the
minister’s maintenance, as well as all other charges of the church,
should be defrayed out of a stock, or treasury, which was to be
raised out of the weekly contribution: which accordingly was agreed
upon.[10]
In his first election sermon, preached in the May following, he joined
issue with the democratic spirit of the deputies, by supporting a
principle which was flagrantly oligarchical:
That a magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a
private man without just cause, & to be publicly convict, no more
than the magistrates may turn a private man out of his freehold,
etc., without like public trial, etc.[11]
Unrebuffed by the rejection of this curious doctrine of the freehold
tenure of magistrates, Cotton made a more ambitious attempt to
theocratize the state, when at the October court of 1636, in response
to the persistent pressure for a fundamental law, he presented his code
for adoption by the commonwealth, the scriptural origin of which is
revealed in the title, “Model of Moses his Judicials.” Cotton Mather
tells of this venture in constitution making, in the following glowing
but inaccurate words:
On Mr. Cotton’s arrival he found the whole country in a perplexed
& a divided state, as to their _civill constitution_.... It was
then requested of Mr. _Cotton_ that he would, from the laws
wherewith God governed his ancient people, form an _abstract_ of
such as were of a moral and a lasting equity; which he performed
as acceptably as judiciously. But inasmuch as very much of an
_Athenian democracy_ was in the mould of the government, by the
royal charter.... Mr. Cotton effectually recommended it unto them
that none should be _electors_, nor _elected_ therein, except such
as were _visible subjects_ of our Lord Jesus Christ, personally
_confederated_ in our churches. In these, and many other ways, he
propounded unto them an endeavour after a theocracy, as near as
might be, to that which was the glory of Israel, the “peculiar
people.”[12]
Cotton’s code was rejected in favor of one, somewhat less Hebraic,
prepared by Nathaniel Ward, but he continued to be the chief guide
and mentor to the magistrates in political as well as theological
matters, and his theocratic philosophy determined in large measure the
policy of the oligarchy. To found an Hebraic state in which political
rights should be subordinate to religious conformity, in which the
magistrates should be chosen from a narrow group, with authority beyond
the reach of the popular will, and with the ministers serving as court
of last resort to interpret the divine law to the citizen-subjects of
Jehovah--this was the great ambition of John Cotton; and the untiring
zeal and learned scriptural authority which he dedicated to that
ambition justify us in regarding him as the greatest of the New England
theocrats. In the categories of the Puritan philosophy of ethical
stewardship there was no recognition of the profane doctrine of natural
rights. Freedom was the prerogative of righteousness; the well-being of
society required that the sinner should remain subject to the Saint.
Nowhere does he lay down this principle more unmistakably than in an
important state paper:
Now if it be a divine truth, that none are to be trusted with
public permanent authority but godly men, who are fit materials
for church membership, then from the same grounds it will appear,
that none are so fit to be trusted with the liberties of the
commonwealth as church members. For, the liberties of this
commonwealth are such, as require men of faithful integrity to God
and the state, to preserve the same.... Now ... these liberties are
such as carry along much power with them, either to establish or
subvert the commonwealth, and therewith the church, which power, if
it be committed to men according to their godliness ... then, in
case worldly men should prove the major part, as soon they might
do, they would readily set over us magistrates like themselves,
such as might ... turn the edge of all authority and laws against
the church and the members thereof, the maintenance of whose
peace is the chief end which God aimed at in the institution of
magistracy.[13]
This, quite evidently, is the negation of democracy, and it has been
freely charged against his reputation by later critics. But in fairness
it must be added, that it is equally the negation of the principle of
hereditary aristocracy; and to reject the latter was a severer test of
his integrity than to deny the former. He wanted neither a democracy
nor an aristocracy to control the church-state. “Hereditary honors
both nature and scripture doth acknowledge,” he argued cautiously in
reply to “Certain Proposals made by Lord Say, Lord Brooke, and other
Persons of quality, as conditions of their removing to New-England.”
“Two distinct ranks we willingly acknowledge ... the one of them called
Princes, or Nobles, or Elders (amongst whom gentlemen have their
place), the other the people.” To the former he willingly accorded the
right of rulership so long as they were of approved godliness, faithful
to their stewardship. But “if God should not delight to furnish some 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 honor, if we should call them forth, when God doth not,
to public authority.” It must be set down in John Cotton’s accounts
that he discouraged the transplanting of English aristocracy to the
soil of Massachusetts.
There remains to consider how he conducted himself in another weighty
matter that was laid upon his shoulders--the defense of the New England
polity against old-world critics. Congregationalism had been somewhat
caustically handled by the English Presbyterians, as smacking both of
democracy and Separatism; and John Cotton was called to justify to them
the apparent innovations. His most notable work in this field was his
celebrated volume, _The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared_,
a treatise crammed, in the language of a contemporary admirer, with
“most practical Soul-searching, Soul-saving, and Soul-solacing
Divinitie”; “not Magisterially laid down, but friendly debated by
Scripture, and argumentatively disputed out to the utmost inch of
Ground.” Into the subtleties of this learned work we need not enter;
its main thesis alone need detain us, and that thesis was an implied
denial of the democratic tendencies of the “New England way.” Cotton
was greatly concerned over the charge of Joseph Baillie, a vigorous
Scotch Presbyterian, that Congregationalism was only a different form
of lower-class Brownism, “a native branch of Anabaptism”; and that
in resting ecclesiastical sovereignty upon “the particular, visible
Church of the Congregation,” it was Separatist in principle as well as
in practice. The charge was true, but John Cotton was too thoroughly
a Jacobean gentleman to concede it; dishonor would come upon the New
England churches, he believed, if it were conceded. So he was driven
to casuistry: “No marvall, if Independents take it ill to bee called
Brownists.... He separated from Churches and Saints: we, onely from
the world, and that which is of the world”; and then to a categorical
denial, “for New England there is no such church of the Separation at
all that I know of.”[14] From this it was a natural step to a downright
rejection of the democratic principle of Congregationalism:
Neither is it the Scope of my whole Book, to give the people a
share in the Government of the Church.... Nay, further, there be
that blame the Book for the other Extreme, That it placeth the
Government of the Church not at all in the hands of the People, but
of the Presbyterie.[15]
The same note of disingenuous casuistry runs through his well-known
controversy with Roger Williams over the question of toleration. In
seeking to parry the thrust that the Saints, after quitting England
to escape persecution, had themselves turned persecutors, he argued:
“There is a vast difference between men’s inventions and God’s
institutions; we fled from men’s inventions, to which we else should
have been compelled; we compel none to men’s inventions.” From which
it followed, that “if the worship be lawful in itself, the magistrate
compelling him to come to it, compelleth him not to sin, but the
sin is in his own will that needs to be compelled to a Christian
duty.”[16] The brethren of Massachusetts were not singular in believing
that they were very near to God and privy to His will; nor were the
dissenters to their policy singular in their skepticism concerning
such infallibility; and when skepticism blows its cold breath upon it,
the logic of John Cotton turns to ashes. Not freedom to follow the
ways of sin, but freedom to follow the law of God as he expounded that
law--such was Cotton’s restriction upon the “natural liberties” of the
subject of Jehovah. Let there be freedom of conscience if it be under
no error, but not otherwise; for if freedom be permitted to sinful
error, how shall the will of God and John Cotton prevail upon earth?
After the battle has been fought and lost it is easy to see the
strategic mistakes; but it is not so easy to keep one’s head in the
thick of the struggle. As John Cotton looked overseas at the social
revolution then threatening to submerge, not only Presbyterianism, but
the very social order in which he had been nurtured; as he considered
the logical implications of the strange, heretical doctrines that
were bandied about in pamphlet and sermon, he was put almost in a
panic. The solid foundations of church and state were threatened by
mischievous men, not only in England but in the new Canaan which had
cost so much in prayer and sacrifice; should he keep silent while, in
the name of toleration, the gunpowder was being put in place for the
work of destruction? Even today we can feel the anxious concern of John
Cotton’s mind in such a vibrant passage as this:
I confesse we ... have cause to admire, and adore the wisdome, and
dreadfull Justice of God herein, That seeing Mr. _Williams_ hath
been now as a branch cut off from the Church of _Salem_ these many
yeares, he should bring forth no spirituall good fruit: and that
in such a season, when the Spirit of Error is let loose to deceive
so many thousand soules of our English Nation: So that now their
hearts are become as Tinder, ready to catch and kindle at every
sparke of false light. Even so, O Father, because thy good pleasure
is such, to let loose this Spirit of Error in the mouth of this
Backslider, in the very houre and power of darknesse: for these are
the dayes of vengeance: when the Antinomians deny the whole law;
the Anti-sabbatarians deny the Morality of the fourth Commandement;
the Papists deny the Negative part of the second Commandement.
It is a wofull opportunitie that God hath left Mr. _Williams_
to, now to step in.... For, take away (as Mr. _Williams_ doth)
all instituted worship of God, as Churches, Pastors, Teachers,
Elders, Deacons, Members, Publick Ministery of the Word, Covenant,
Seales of the Covenant (Baptisme, and the Lords Supper), the
Censures of the Church, and the like, what is then left of all the
institutions, and Ordinances of God, which the Lord established
in the second Commandement, against the Institutions, Images and
Inventions of men in his worship.[17]
How easy it is for good men, in presence of the new and strange, to
draw back in timid reaction; and failing to understand, or fearing for
their prestige, to charge upon the new and strange a host of evils
that exist only in their panic imaginations! In this great matter of
toleration of conscience, it is quite clear today that the eyes of the
troubled theocrat, “so _piercing_ and _heavenly_ (in other and precious
Truths of God)”--as Roger Williams acknowledged--were for the moment
sadly “over-clouded and bloud-shotten.” For this the age was more to
blame than the man. It was no fault of John Cotton’s that he was the
child of a generation reared under the shadow of absolutism, fearful
of underling aggression, unable to comprehend the excellence inhering
in the democratic faith. He reasoned according to his light; and if
he rather too easily persuaded himself that the light which shined to
him was the single divine light, he proved himself thereby an orthodox
Puritan if not a catholic thinker. It is a pity that the priest in his
later years overcame the intellectual, nevertheless the epitaph carved
on his headstone does no violence to truth:
JOHANNES COTTONUS
_Cujus Ultima Laus est,
Quod fuerit inter Nov-Anglos Primus._
To have been accounted by his fellows first among the notable company
of Puritan emigrants was no slight testimony to the sterling qualities
of Master John Cotton.
II • John Winthrop • Magistrate
If John Cotton embodied the ideal and polity of the theocratic
ministry, John Winthrop represented the ideal and polity of the
theocratic magistracy. Rulership in the new church-state, while
nominally the function of lay officers, in reality was quite as much
ecclesiastical as political. The civil authorities were chosen by a
narrow body of orthodox electors with a single view to theocratic ends.
To the traditional conception of magistracy, in which the gentlemen
of the Migration had been reared, was now added a special function,
the care of the church, “the maintenance of whose peace,” John Cotton
asserted, “is the chief end which God aimed at in the institution
of magistracy.” The career of John Winthrop in Massachusetts must
be judged, therefore, from this twofold point of view. He was not
exclusively, or chiefly, a civil governor, but a magistrate-elder; and
his political conduct was determined by this dual character of his
office. Unless one keeps in mind the theocratic framework of the early
Massachusetts commonwealth, one cannot understand the limitations of
his authority, or judge his conduct intelligently.
John Winthrop was a skillful executive upon whose shoulders largely
rested the success or failure of the undertaking during the difficult
early years. But he was very much more than that; he was a Puritan
steward of temporal affairs, who accepted his stewardship as a
sacred duty lying upon his conscience. A cultivated gentleman,
“browghte Up amonge boockes & learned men,” with a tender and
sympathetic nature--inclining overmuch to mildness, as he confessed
apologetically--by every right he belongs with that notable group
of Puritans, with Eliot and Vane and Hutchinson and Milton, in whom
the moral earnestness of Hebraism was tempered to humaner issues by
a generous culture. There was in him not a little fruitful sap of
Elizabethan poetry to quicken his thought, lifting him out of the
petty world of Jacobean lawyer and landed gentleman, and opening his
eyes to a vision of the future significance of the great venture to
which he dedicated his later years. Grave and dignified, he looks
out at us from his portrait with a certain stoic calm not untouched
with sadness, as if this life had proved a serious business, filled
with responsibilities and weighty matters, and darkened by sorrow and
disappointment. The pagan _joie de vivre_ of Elizabethan times is gone,
and in its stead is a serious intelligence that must grapple with
realities and shape them to its will.
He had lived amply in England before his removal, with much that was
feudal lingering in the habits of his patriarchal household; and in
the little village of Boston he kept twenty male servants, some of
them heads of families. A decay of fortune had come upon him during
his last years on the family estate, and the hope of recouping his
losses may have been an additional reason for venturing to remove to
the new world. In his _Considerations for J. W._ he explains that “he
cannot live in the same place and calling (as before) and so, if he
should refuse this opportunity, _that talent which God hath bestowed
upon him for publick service were like to be buried_.” Something to the
same purpose is suggested in another passage, which touches upon the
economic disturbances of the time, with the attendant extravagance and
ostentation of the new rich:
This Land growes weary of her Inhabitants.... We are growne to
that height of Intemperance in all excesse of Riott, as noe man’s
estate allmost will suffice to keepe saile with his æqualls.... The
fountains of Learning & Religion are soe corrupted as--men straine
at knatts & swallowe camells, use all severity for mainetaynance of
cappes & other accomplyments, but suffer all ruffianlike fashions &
disorder to passe uncontrolled.[18]
Writing to his wife Margaret in 1629, he gave expression to
apprehensions that were very likely quickened by his own failure to
keep pace with his neighbors:
My dear wife, I am veryly persuaded, God will bringe some heavye
Affliction upon this lande & that speedylye.... The Lorde hath
admonished, threatened, corrected, & astonished us, yet we growe
worse & worse, so as his Spirit will not always strive with us, we
must needs give way to his furye at last.[19]
But material considerations alone scarcely suffice to explain the
motives of one who wrote: “It were happy for many if their parents
had left them only such a legacy as our modern spirit of poetry
makes his motto, _Ut nec habeant, nec careant, nec curent._” Such
consolation--that the Christian should possess nothing, desire nothing,
trouble about nothing--may have been only the refuge of the stoic
from the impending loss of material possessions; but the conscious
discipline in ascetic Hebraism which was to change the Jacobean
gentleman into a militant Puritan had already created a temper to
which such stoic abnegation must appeal. Winthrop’s diary, running
from his fourteenth to his thirty-second year, is a homely record
in self-discipline, not unlike Bunyan’s _Grace Abounding_. It is
introspective and tediously moralizing, but it reveals how long and
arduous was the training before he felt confident that he was “improved
in all the points of experimental Godliness.”
But Winthrop was the child of a great age before he was born into
the fellowship of the Saints; and when we come upon the natural man
beneath the theological wrappings, we discover a many-sided, rich and
sympathetic human nature. He had gone to school to the English Bible,
and the noble Hebrew poetry stirred the poetic imagination that was
his Elizabethan birthright. Like so many of his fellow Puritans he
delighted in the Book of Canticles, and the rich oriental imagery
flowed easily from his pen. In one of his last letters before he
quitted the old home, he took leave of a friend in these words:
It is time to conclude, but I know not how to leave you, yet since
I must, I will put my beloved into his arms, who loves him best, &
is a faithful keeper of all that is committed to him. Now, Thou,
the hope of Israel, and the sure help of all that come to thee,
knit the hearts of thy servants to thyself in faith and purity.
Draw us with the sweetness of thine odours, that we may run after
thee--Allure us, and speak kindly to thy servants, that thou mayest
possess us as thine own, in the kindness of youth, and the love
of marriage--Seal us up, by that holy spirit of promise, that we
may not fear to trust in thee--Carry us into thy garden, that we
may eat and be filled with those pleasures, which the world knows
not--Let us hear that sweet voice of thine, my love, my dove, my
undefiled--Spread thy skirt over us, and cover our deformity--Make
us sick with thy love--Let us sleep in thine arms, and awake in thy
kingdom--The souls of thy servants, thus united to thee, make us
one in the bonds of brotherly affection--let not distance weaken
it, nor time waste it, nor changes dissolve it, nor self-love
eat it out; but when all means of other communion shall fail,
let us delight to pray for each other: and so let thy unworthy
servant prosper in the love of his friends, as he truly loves thy
good servants ... and wishes true happiness to them and to all
theirs--Amen.[20]
When his heart was touched Winthrop’s tenderness flowed out in a wealth
of affectionate sympathy, that lends a rich and lovely cadence to his
English prose. To a sister who had suffered the loss of her husband, he
wrote:
Go on cheerfully (my good sister), let experience add more
confidence still to your patience. Peace shall come. There will
be a bed to rest in, large and easy enough for you both. It is
preparing in the lodging appointed for you in your Father’s house.
He that vouchsafed to wipe the sweat from his disciple’s feet,
will not disdain to wipe the tears from those tender affectionate
eyes. Because you have been one of his mourners in the house of
tribulation, you shall drink of the cup of joy, and be clothed with
the garment of gladness, in the kingdom of his glory. The former
things, and evil, will soon be passed; but the good to come shall
neither end nor change.[21]
At another time, writing to his son of the death of his father, Adam
Winthrop, he said:
He hath finished his course; and is gathered to his people in
peace, as the ripe corn into the barn. He thought long for the day
of his dissolution and welcomed it most gladly. Thus is he gone
before; and we must go after in our time: This advantage he hath
of us--he shall not see the evil which we may meet with ere we go
hence. Happy those who stand in good terms with God and their own
conscience: they shall not fear evil tidings; and in all changes
they shall be the same.[22]
A lovable man was John Winthrop, richly endowed and admirably
disciplined, gracious in manner, persuasive in speech, generous in
action--in all England there could scarcely have been found a leader
better equipped for the work in hand, when at the age of forty-three
he became head of the emigrant church-state, which by reason of its
charter and the removal of the corporation to New England, was become
effectively an independent commonwealth, free to shape its domestic
polity as seemed best. During the score of years that remained to him,
he was the guiding spirit of the Massachusetts settlements, impressing
his will upon others by sheer force of character. It was inevitable
that in so strange and unprecedented an experiment, undertaken in
an environment so unfamiliar, serious and often bitter divisions
would arise touching the fundamental principles of government. In
the frequent discussions Winthrop bore a leading part; he marshaled
his arguments with the skill of a lawyer; he separated the broad
principle from the special circumstance; and in the end he usually
carried the assent of his fellow counselors to his proposals. His
social and political philosophy, in consequence, greatly influenced
the development of Massachusetts Bay during the early years when its
institutions and polity were taking shape, and throws much light on the
spirit and purpose of that development.
Winthrop’s political bias was unconsciously shaped by his experience,
of which the determining fact was the principle and practice of
Jacobean magistracy. As an English squire he had long served as
magistrate, and this experience he brought to New England as a legacy
from an autocratic past. In that old world the magistrate exercised
a patriarchal police power well-nigh absolute, sanctioned by ancient
custom, upheld by the church, and acquiesced in by subjects well
trained in subordination. Transported to New England and adapted to
theocratic ends, the principle of magistracy was both augmented in
power and ennobled in conception. To the police power over things
temporal was added a police power over things spiritual. In the
Bible commonwealth the legislative function was regarded as of minor
importance. The law being already set down in the Scriptures, the chief
authority in the commonwealth naturally rested with the magistrates who
were responsible for its strict fulfillment. As stewards intrusted with
a divine stewardship, they exercised absolute legislative and judicial
powers; in their councils the ministers were summoned to participate,
but no others. It was the duty of the magistrates to debate and
determine, and the duty of the people to obey.
To a modern this is no other than sheer absolutism, but it was deeply
embedded in Calvinistic theory and practice, and was justified by the
Puritan principle of special talents. God calls to the post of duty
those best fitted to serve. As a devout follower of Calvin, Winthrop
must have often pondered upon the passages in the _Institutes_ which
set forth the nature of magistracy and the duties of the magistrate,
and in particular this: “If they remember that they are the vicegerents
of God, it behooves them to watch with all care, diligence, and
industry, that they may exhibit a kind of image of the Divine
Providence, guardianship, goodness, benevolence, and justice.”[23]
To a devout Jacobean like Winthrop, this patriarchal conception of
stewardship would appear as a noble ideal, worthy of a Christian. The
potential absolutism implied would scarcely trouble one who had grown
up in a society where absolute authority was interwoven with everyday
life. The Christian magistrate was still a magistrate, but with the
great difference that his hands must be kept clean and his conscience
clear. This nobler spirit of Calvinistic stewardship is revealed in
Winthrop’s _Modell of Christian Charity_, written on shipboard during
the voyage out. A sense of profound responsibility devolving upon the
leaders imparts dignity to the thought: they must bear and forbear,
knitting themselves together in a common purpose, and seeing that “the
care of the public” should “oversway all private interests.” And this
“care of the public,” remained in theory if not always in practice, the
guiding principle of Winthrop’s official activities.
The bearing of this doctrine of magistracy upon the early movement of
democracy in Massachusetts is not far to seek. If magistracy was a duty
laid upon those of fit talents, they would serve God ill who should
turn a willing ear to popular protests against magisterial policy. On
this point Winthrop was adamant. He would have no meddling on the part
of those who had not been called. When it was attempted to bring him
to account before the congregation for an unpopular judicial decision,
he denied the competency of the congregation in such matters, and then
as he often did in cases of doubt, he made a “little book” in which he
elaborated the thesis, “That a Church hath not Power to call any Civill
Magistrate to give Account of his Juditiall proceedings in any Court
of Civill Justice: and what the Church may doe in such Causes.”[24]
The shoemaker should stick to his last, Winthrop believed, and he
would suffer no interference by the congregation with his duties as
magistrate. On another occasion when difficulties had arisen in certain
negotiations with the Connecticut settlements, he noted in his journal:
These and the like miscarriages in point of correspondency were
conceived to arise from these two errors in their government: 1.
They chose divers _scores_ men, who had no learning nor judgment
which might fit them for those affairs, though otherwise men holy
and religious. 2. By occasion hereof, the main burden for managing
of state business fell upon one or other of their ministers, (as
the phrase and style of these letters will clearly discover),
who, though they were men of singular wisdom and godliness, yet
stepping out of their course, their actions wanted that blessing
which otherwise might have been expected.[25]
The political philosophy which underlay Winthrop’s theory and practice
of magistracy, was a Puritan modification of the commonly accepted
English theory of a “mixt aristocratie.” He had been trained in the
law but was little given to speculative thought. There is evidence
that he read somewhat in the fast accumulating political literature
of the times, but little indication that his reading modified his
theory or influenced his conduct. He was an administrator rather than
a philosopher, and from the fragmentary records that have survived
it is difficult to piece together a consistent political theory. As
a magistrate under the dominance of the English Common Law, he seems
to have accepted the constitutional theory of Coke, who sought to
interpose the customary and ancient law of the land between the growing
absolutism of the Crown, and the increasing importunity of the Commons,
with sovereignty inhering in the judiciary. As a Puritan, however, he
superimposed the law of Moses on the law of the land, and by ignoring
the King on the one hand, and denying power to the representatives of
the people on the other, he created the framework of a magisterial
theocracy.
The two chief sources to which we must turn for his political views,
in addition to his letters and journals, are: _A Replye to the Answ:
Made to the Discourse about the Neg: Vote_, and _Arbitrary Governmt
Described: & the Governmt of the Massachusetts Vindicated from
that Aspersion_, both of which have been preserved in the form of
heads of argument.[26] The principle that underlies these skeleton
arguments is the theory of a state held static by exact constitutional
arrangements. King and people represent the great supplementary
functions of constitutional government, sovereignty and liberty; both
are necessary in a well ordered society, and neither may encroach
upon the other. This Winthrop regarded as the vital principle of the
English constitution, which had been embodied in the government of
Massachusetts.
The Government of the Massachusetts consists of Magistrates &
Freemen: in the one is placed the Auth’ye, in the other the Lib’tye
of the Com: W: either hath power to Acte, both alone, & both
togither, yet by a distinct power, the one of Lib’tye, the other of
Auth’ye: the Freemen Acte alone in all occurrences out of Court: &
both Acte togither in the Gen’ll Court: yet all limited by certaine
Rules, bothe in the greater & smaller affaires: so as the Governm’t
is Regular in a mixt Aristocratie, & no wayes Arbitrary.[27]
In settled times and places this nice balance between sovereignty and
liberty is maintained by use and wont; but in periods of disturbance,
such as then existed in England, and in new experiments, such as marked
the setting up of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, there was certain
to be much pulling and straining between these antagonistic principles;
and his refusal to accept this fact, and his stubborn insistence on
transferring to New England the old English static order, brought on
Winthrop’s head many of the difficulties that greatly troubled his
administration. Both in the old world and the new, the principle of
liberty was encroaching on feudal authority. With the rise of the
middle class, many Englishmen, and particularly the colonial New
Englanders, were fast outgrowing the old paternalisms, and coming to
regard them as no other than tyranny. The freemen of the Massachusetts
towns were restive under the strict rule of the magistrate-elders, and
a growing party of democratic deputies was eager to try its hand at
government. All such democratic pretensions Winthrop held in contempt,
although he was at pains to deny the arbitrary nature of magisterial
rule.
Some of the deputies had seriously conceived, that the magistrates
affected an arbitrary government.... For prevention whereof they
judged it not unlawful to use even _extrema remedia_, as if _salus
populi_ had been now the transcendent rule to walk by, and that
magistracy must be no other, in effect, than a ministerial office,
and all authority, both legislative, consultative, and judicial,
must be exercised by the people in their body representative.[28]
If government were regular it could not be arbitrary--this was
Winthrop’s brief reply to the deputies. In his arguments he
deliberately avoided the difficult question of sovereignty; in part,
no doubt, because of the delicate situation resulting from fear of
royal interference, but chiefly because he was unwilling to bring into
jeopardy the unlimited powers of magistracy. That he denied sovereignty
to the people is abundantly clear from his actions, as well as from
specific comment. By the law of the corporation, namely, the written
terms of the charter, authority was vested in a limited body of
freemen; and he saw no reason in expediency or otherwise to extend that
authority. Thus he argued, “it is well proved & concluded by a late
Juditious writer, in a booke newly come over, intituled an Answ: to Dr
Ferne, that thoughe all Lawes, that are sup’structive, may be altered
by the representative bodye of the Com:w: yet they have not power to
alter anythinge w’ch is fundamental.”[29] What delimitations were to be
drawn between “superstructive” and “fundamental,” he was not careful
to make clear; but it is certain that he regarded as fundamental not
only the charter terms and the British constitution but the will of
God. Doubtful as this last may seem to students of political science,
and difficult to determine, it was neither doubtful nor difficult to
Winthrop and his fellow magistrates and ministers. The Mosaic law was
specific. Back of the citizen-legislator was the subject of Jehovah,
and he was politically free only to do the will of God. There must be
divine sanction for all human law; lacking such sanction all majority
votes and legislative enactments were null and void. Sovereignty
inheres finally in God, and it is by his fundamental law that all
superstructive laws and institutions must be judged.
In theocratic philosophy, therefore, the magistrate became no other
than God’s vicegerent, with authority beyond popular limitation or
control. No English squire presumed to exercise the magisterial
powers which Winthrop and his associates quietly usurped. Among
other innovations they early claimed the right of veto on the acts
of the deputies, and in reply to the dissatisfaction voiced at such
arbitrary encroachment, Winthrop argued that the magisterial veto was
no infringement on the liberties of the people, but was a means to
“preserve them, if by any occasion they should be in danger: I cannot
liken it better to anythinge than the brake of a windmill: w’ch hathe
no power, to move the runninge worke: but it is of speciall use, to
stoppe any violent motion, w’ch in some extraordinary tempest might
endanger the wholl fabricke.”[30] The convenient weapon of divine
sanction Winthrop did not scruple to use at need. Thus when a petition
was presented for the repeal of a law which arbitrarily decreased the
number of deputies, he denied the lawfulness of the procedure:
When the people have chosen men to be their rulers, now to combine
together ... in a public petition to have an order repealed ...
savors of resisting an ordinance of God. For the people, having
deputed others, have no right to make or alter laws themselves, but
are to be subject.[31]
The old English right of petition, in short, was not a right in
theocratic Massachusetts, and any unauthorized joining together of
citizens for political purposes was a conspiracy against the will of
God. The practical result of this doctrine of magisterial vicegerency
was that a small group of freemen set up an unlimited oligarchy over
some four or five thousand of their fellow Englishmen, even going so
far as to advance the novel doctrine of a freehold tenure of power.
Winthrop’s extreme jealousy of popular power cannot be explained
away by the doctrine of stewardship. Hooker of Hartford had no such
distrust of the people, but he was not a gentleman, like Winthrop,
and had not grown up with an aristocratic contempt for democracy.
The preposterousness of democratic aspiration was a stock jest among
English gentlemen, and in seeking to refute the arguments of the
deputies for greater popular power Winthrop did little more than give a
Hebraic twist to his aristocratic prejudices:
Where the chief Ordinary power & administration thereof is in
the people, there is a Democratie ... the Deputies are the
Democraticall p’te of o’r Governm’t. Now if we should change
from a mixt Aristocratie to a meere Democratie: first we should
have no warr’nt in scripture for it: there was no such Governm’t
in Israell. 2: we should heerby voluntaryly abase o’rselves, &
deprive o’rselves of that dignitye, w’ch the providence of God
hath putt upon us: w’ch is a manifest breach of the 5th Com’t: for
a Democratie is, among most Civill nations accounted the meanest
& worst of all formes of Governm’t: & therefore in writers, it is
branded w’th Reproachfull Epithets as Bellua multorū capitū, a
monster, &c: & Historyes doe recorde, that it hath been allwayes of
least continuance & fullest of trouble.[32]
In an often quoted letter to Thomas Hooker, then engaged in erecting
a democratic commonwealth in Connecticut, Winthrop diplomatically
moderated his terms and put the aristocratic doctrine in more
attractive form. “I expostulated about the unwarrantableness &
unsafeness of referring all matter of counsel or judicature to the body
of the people, _quia_ the best is always the least, & of that best part
the wiser part is always the lesser.”[33] But he must have agreed
heartily with another English gentleman, who writing to Winthrop under
date of July 9, 1640, remarked pithily:
I say agayne noe wise man shoud be soe folish as to live whear
every man is master, & masters must not correct theyr servants:
Where wise men propound & fooles determine, as it was sayde of the
citties of Greece.[34]
As the responsible steward of God’s plan for New England, Winthrop
would not flatter the people by pretending to the doctrine of _vox
populi, vox dei_. The multitude he regarded as factious, overswayed
by expediency and self-interest, incapable of governing wisely. Law,
by its nature, was ethical, the expression of God’s absolute and just
will; and this law, the magistrates were called of God to enforce.
From this conception of the absolute nature of law, came the famous
discussion of liberty and authority, known as the “little speech,”
which is the most highly praised of Winthrop’s utterances. In a certain
police-court matter that had loosed the class prejudices of all
parties, he had held against the popular feeling, and was impeached
before the general court. Upon his acquittal he rose and addressed the
court in words which he afterwards set down in his journal. No other
episode in his varied career reveals so well the admirable poise of the
man--the dignity, the self-control, the fair-mindedness, despite an
attack that hurt him to the quick.
For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake
in the country about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I
mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first
is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as
he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he
lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is
incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure
the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and
maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time
to be worse than brute beasts: _omnes sumus licentia deteriores_.
This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which
all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue
it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; and it may
also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and
man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions
amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object
of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty
to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are
to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of
your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this, is not authority,
but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised
in a subjection to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free.... On the other side, ye know
who they are that complain of this yoke and say, let us break their
bands, etc., we will not have this man to rule over us. Even so,
brethren, it will be between you and your magistrates. If you stand
for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in
your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority,
but will murmur, and oppose, and be always striving to shake off
that yoke; and if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and
lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly
and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you, in
all the administrations of it, for your good. Wherein, if we fail
at any time, we hope we shall be willing (by God’s assistance) to
hearken to good advice from any of you, or in any other way of God;
so shall your liberties be preserved, in upholding the honor and
power of authority amongst you.[35]
The doctrine of aristocratic stewardship has never been more skillfully
presented. It is John Cotton’s reply to Roger Williams, translated into
political terms; the philosophy of natural rights whittled down to a
covenant between God and man. It rests on the assumption of an absolute
law, superior to expediency. But may not honest men disagree as to what
constitutes the good, just, and honest? and may not godly authority
imperceptibly slide over into plain tyranny? Although the Saints may
have professed themselves satisfied with Winthrop’s doctrine, the pages
of early Massachusetts history bear ample record of the dissatisfaction
of the sinners. Most of the difficulties experienced by Winthrop in his
administration of the commonwealth had their root in this assumption
of arbitrary power, the immediate outcome of which was a spontaneous
development of incipient democracy. How far such an assumption of
divine custodianship may lead a generous man from the path of justice,
appears in his summing up of the case against Mistress Anne Hutchinson,
who because she insisted upon her own interpretation of the good, just,
and honest, was adjudged “A woman not only difficult in her opinions,
but also of an intemperate spirit.” “The ground work of her revelations
is the immediate revelation of the spirit, and not by the ministry of
the Lord ... and this hath been the ground of all these tumults and
troubles; and I would that those were all cut off that trouble us.” The
kernel of the offense for which Mistress Hutchinson was banished, is
then laid bare: “We see not that any should have authority to set up
any other exercise beside what authority hath already set up.”[36]
In this arbitrary judgment of Winthrop’s--the natural fruit of the tree
of theocratic stewardship--the “little speech” discovers its suitable
commentary. Urged on by his bigoted associates, the kind-hearted
governor descended to their level, and began the unhappy business of
playing the tyrant under pretense of scourging God’s enemies. The
lords-brethren served notice upon all dissenters that henceforth there
must be no dissent in New England. The admirable courage of Mistress
Hutchinson availed no more against the magisterial interpretation
of the good, just, and honest, than the boldness of Roger Williams
before her; or later, the zeal of the Baptists who were sent away by
Endicott; or later still, the piety of the Quakers, who were whipped
at the cart-tail and hanged, men and women both. The policy of the
political stewardship of the best and wisest never had fuller trial,
with abler or more conscientious agents, than in Massachusetts Bay; and
its failure was complete. Such progress as Massachusetts made towards
freedom and tolerance was gained in the teeth of theocratic opposition;
New England democracy owes no debt to her godly magistrates.
Bred up in a half-feudal world, the leaders of the Migration remained
patriarchal in their social philosophy, unable to adapt old prejudices
to new conditions. Human motives are curiously mixed, human actions
rarely consistent; and if the shortcomings of John Winthrop show
blacker by contrast with the excellence of the ideal which he
professed, the fault must be charged against his time and associates
and not against his manly, generous nature. Most English gentlemen of
his day were steeped in a sodden Toryism, yet he earnestly desired to
be a faithful steward of church and state. If as a gentleman he held
firmly to the privilege of rulership, as a Christian he endeavored
to rule honorably and in the fear of the Lord. If he followed the
beaten path and tried to shape the great experiment by the traditional
principles of his class; if his zeal at times led him into indisputable
tyrannies; it was because he was led away from the light, not because
he sought selfish ends. Godliness has its own special temptations, and
it would be ungenerous to bear ill-will against so lovable a man.
Footnotes
[7] James Truslow Adams, _The Founding of New England_, p. 170.
[8] _Institutes_, Book IV, Chapter XX, Paragraph 8.
[9] “Letter to Lord Say and Sele,” in Hutchinson, _History of
Massachusetts Bay Colony_, Vol. I, p. 497.
[10] Vol. I, p. 116.
[11] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 125.
[12] _Magnalia_, Vol. I, p. 265. Compare with this Cotton’s own words:
“The law, which your Lordship instanceth (in that none shall be chosen
to magistracy amongst us, but a church member) was made and enacted
before I came into the country; but I have hitherto wanted sufficient
light to plead against it” (Hutchinson, _History of Massachusetts Bay
Colony_, Vol. I, p. 498).
[13] Hutchinson, _History of Massachusetts Bay Colony_, Vol. I,
Appendix 2.
[14] See _Narragansett Club Publications_, Vol. II, p. 203.
[15] _Ibid._, Part II, p. 15.
[16] See Hutchinson, _Papers_, Vol. II, pp. 131 ff.; quoted in Adams,
_Founding of New England_, p. 261.
[17] “Master John Cottons Answer to Master Roger Williams,” in
_Narragansett Club Publications_, Vol. II, pp. 22-23.
[18] _Life and Letters of John Winthrop_, Vol. I, p. 310.
[19] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 296.
[20] _Life and Letters_, Vol. I, pp. 397-398.
[21] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 288.
[22] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 179.
[23] Book IV, Chapter XX, Paragraph 6.
[24] The heads of argument are given in _Life and Letters_, Vol. II,
pp. 211-214.
[25] _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 236.
[26] Both are given in the appendix to Vol. II of the _Life and
Letters_.
[27] _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 454.
[28] _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 240.
[29] _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 438.
[30] _Discourse about the Neg: Vote, Life and Letters_, Vol. II, p. 434.
[31] _Journal._
[32] _Life and Letters_, Vol. II, p. 430.
[33] _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 237.
[34] _Letter of Lord Say and Sele_, in _ibid._, Vol. II, p. 426.
[35] _History of New England_, Vol. II, pp. 279-282.
[36] Hutchinson, _History of Massachusetts Bay Colony_, Vol. II, pp.
482-520.