the side of the authorities even by one who has no admiration for them
or sympathy with them. The Puritans had not come to New England for
liberty of thought, but for liberty of action. Having failed, as they
thought at the time, to secure the triumph of their views in the church
and state of England, they preferred to leave the struggle and come to
New England, where they could live under their own system without being
obliged to contend or suffer for their faith--a point upon which the
Quaker controversialists make some very sharp remarks.[46]
They considered the territory which they held to be their own
_peculium_, and claimed that by their charter they had acquired
absolute sovereignty in its limits, subject to no appeal to England;
and they realized that if appeal to England was granted, their absolute
authority was at an end. One of the leading colonists is reported to
have said: “If we admit appeal to the Parliament this year, next year
they will send to see how it is, and the third year the government
will be changed.” The settlement also had in their eyes a religious
character; it was founded, as they boasted, for religion and not for
trade, and they held that they had a right to dictate the religious
usages and practices therein, as was shown by their treatment of
Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheelwright, Roger Williams and Gorton, Child
and Maverick, not to mention Morton of Merry Mount. They believed
the Quakers to be a pernicious sect, confounding them with other
fanatical bodies which they resembled, and they feared that the natural
consequence of the claim which they made to immediate revelation would
be communistic attempts at the overthrow of the established order, such
as had been seen a hundred years before in Germany. From these premises
the conclusion was a natural one, that their duty was to nip the evil
in the bud, to crush the Quakers before they became strong enough
to be dangerous to the state. Their action in banishing the first
that arrived, before any overt acts were committed, was undoubtedly
technically illegal; but if the Quakers had been in reality what they
fancied them, no one would have blamed them for their prompt decision.
Besides, they had a law by which they were accustomed to banish
heretics, and the Quakers might very well come under that description.
As regards the compelling shipmasters to carry them back to the port
from which they had come, such a custom had prevailed from a very early
date in the case of undesirable immigrants. Winthrop, in his History
mentions the reshipping to England of a crazy pauper woman whom the
parish of Willesden had sent over to the colonists in Massachusetts.
The Quakers came in spite of banishment, and the more they were
imprisoned and beaten the more daring became their defiance, the more
violent their abuse. They spared neither priest nor magistrate, and the
floods of denunciation which they poured out were portentous. It is not
to be wondered at that a stern and severe people, living a hard and
cruel life of constant struggle with the elements, and in the constant
dread lest their privileges should be assailed, should have been cruel
in their treatment of these incorrigible offenders.
Judged by the common standard of the age, the cruelty of the treatment
of the Quakers is not so remarkable as to be singled out above all
other cruelties for reprobation. The Quakers themselves were cruel at
times. George Fox himself is said to have been a witch-finder; and a
son of the Samuel Shattuck who bore the king’s mandate to Endicott
appears in the Salem witchcraft trials as a prominent witness against
some of the unfortunates.[47] The folly and fatuity of the treatment
adopted is more of a point to notice. In the colonies where the Quakers
were let alone they caused no trouble. Palfrey’s sneer, that there
was no order to disturb in Rhode Island, may be justified perhaps as
regards that colony, but Connecticut certainly was a well-ordered
commonwealth. In Massachusetts, on the contrary, the same persons
kept coming again and again, and the severer the punishments the
madder became their actions. It should be remembered that the acts
usually mentioned as justifying the Puritans’ severity, such as the
performances of the naked women at Salem and Newbury, of the men who
broke bottles on the pulpit steps, and of the woman who smeared her
face with black and frightened the matrons in the Old South church,
were not committed until after the persecution had been carried on
for years, until scores of women had been stripped naked and flogged
by the authorities, until men had had their ears cut off, and until
three men and one woman had been put to death upon the gallows. The
persecution was a blunder, and the details of it made it a blunder
of the most atrocious description. Power was put into the hands of
local and irresponsible magistrates to sentence men and women to
these shameful and unusual punishments, and brutal constables and
jailers were entrusted with the enforcement of the law without any
due supervision. The most painful part of the whole history is the
attitude of the Puritan clergy, in Massachusetts especially. They were
bitter and bigoted, hounding on the magistrates to their cruel work,
and insulting the unfortunate wretches when they came to suffer. Quaker
instinct rightly, no doubt, fixed upon John Norton as the “Fountain
and Principal unto whom most of the cruelty and bloodshed is to be
imputed.”[48]
For the constancy of the Quakers themselves, their endurance and
their fortitude, one can feel nothing but admiration. One remembers
how, centuries before, men who like them were willing to die rather
than to deny their faith had been called the enemies of mankind, and
accused of a perverse and execrable superstition. It must be admitted,
however, that their behavior was often of a kind that would not be
allowed to-day any more than it was then, although it is to be hoped
that our modern statecraft would find milder and more efficient means
of repression than did our predecessors in New England; yet when one
remembers how the Mormons were treated in Illinois and Missouri, and
how the mob destroyed a Roman Catholic convent in Massachusetts, within
the memories of living men, we may think it perhaps prudent not to be
too sweeping in our condemnation.
The fundamental difficulty in the Puritans’ position was their illegal
and unconstitutional government. To maintain that, they were led to
deny to other Englishmen their rights, and to assert an independence of
the home authorities which was little short of actual separation.
The second evil principle in their government was the union of church
and state, or rather the subjection of the state to the church, a
church moreover in which the people had no rights except by favor
of the ministers, a church that was a close corporation and imbued
with the spirit of the law of Moses rather than that of the gospel of
Christ. In church, as well as in state, there was a consciousness
that their existence was illegal and illegitimate; that, in spite
of their protests to the contrary, they had separated from their
fellow-Christians in England and had formed a polity for themselves;
hence, just as they felt it necessary to manifest their political
authority by acts of severity upon any who questioned it, so they
deemed it necessary to maintain their orthodoxy by persecuting those
who differed from them in religion. They were ill at ease both
politically and religiously, and they sought to disguise the fact from
themselves, by making proof of all the power that they possessed.
Hence it was that the conflict arose which has stained with innocent
blood the early history of the land. It is not to be wondered that the
Quakers should see, in the horrible death of Endicott and the miserable
end of Norton,[49] the hand of an avenging Providence, or that they
should believe that for a distance of twenty miles from Boston the
ground was cursed so that no wheat could ripen because of a blood-red
blight that fastened upon it.[50] But we, who live at a time when we
can view the history of the struggle with calmness and impartiality,
may respect the grim determination of the severe magistrates who felt
it their duty, at whatever cost, to keep that which was committed
to their trust free from the poison of heresy and fanaticism, while
we sorrow at the blindness which hid from their eyes the folly and
the cruelty of their proceedings. We may sympathize with the tortured
Quakers, whom we now know to be harmless enthusiasts, yet without
approving or extenuating their mad actions, their abusive language, or
their grotesque indecencies; and we may hope that, though at enmity in
this life, yet, as Browning wrote of Strafford and Pym,
“in that world
Where great hearts led astray are turned again,”
both now are able to respect each other’s loyalty of purpose and
fidelity to their respective conceptions of truth.
NOTES.
[1] _Vide infra_, Note 6.
[2] George Fox, _Journal_. It is well to notice that of the ministers
mentioned by Fox by name or parish, Nath. Stevens, the rector of Fenny
Drayton, was a Presbyterian of some eminence, and was ejected for
non-conformity in 1662. So also was Matthew Cradock, the “priest of
Coventry,” who was a distinguished non-conformist divine. The priest
at Mansetter, who advised tobacco and psalm-singing, kept his living
during the whole period of the Commonwealth, and so may be presumed
not to have been a “Churchman” in the commonly received sense of the
term. “One Macham,” of whom Fox speaks, and who seems to have treated
him with more sympathetic kindness than any of the others, was a loyal
Churchman and was sequestered in 1645, as a penalty for his adherence
to the bishop and the king to whom he had sworn allegiance. It is
rather surprising to find historians in general, even those who should
be better informed, assuming that, because these men were filling the
parishes of the Church of England, they were, therefore, Church of
England clergymen.
[3] Bishop, George, _New England Judged_, London, 1661, pp. 14–25.
[4] Geo. E. Ellis, _Memorial History of Boston_, vol. i. p. 181.
[5] Hubbard’s _History of New England_, p. 553.
[6] _Massachusetts Records_, iv. (1), 276.
[7] Bishop, 5–13.
[8] Hazard, _Historical Collections_, ii. 349. _Rhode Island Records_,
i. 374.
[9] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 277.
[10] Bishop, 38, 39.
[11] Bishop, 40, 42.
[12] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 308. Bishop, 50.
[13] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 325.
[14] Bishop, 72, 73.
[15] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 345, 346.
[16] _Mass. Archives_, vol. x. p. 246.
[17] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 348. (In payment for this work Norton
received five hundred acres of land, a good price for a sermon.
_Ibid._, p. 397.)
[18] _The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present
Generation._ Printed by _Samuel Green_, _Cambridge in New England_,
1659. The arguments used in this declaration are so characteristic
of the spirit of the times that the following extract may be useful.
The author has been demonstrating that the Quakers were heretical on
various points of the faith, and that the Scriptures authorize the
punishment of false believers. He continues:
“But other Scriptures omitted, I shall here transcribe only two more,
both of which are eminently pregnant with this truth: wherein also are
cases put between the cause of God and our near relations, on purpose
to provide against obstructions in this great business of religion.
The first we have _Deut._ xiii. _per totum_.
Relating to all times succeeding that constitution; ‘_If thy brother,
the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of
thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not
known, thou, nor thy fathers; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor
hearken unto him; neither shalt thine eyes pity him, neither shalt
thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him._’ vers. 6, 8. The second
we have _Zech._ xiii. 1, 3. _Expressly relating unto the times of the
Gospel. In that day_, viz.: after the Coming of the Messiah in the time
of the Gospel _when the families of the tribes shall mourne Chapt._
xii. 11. _The familie of the house of David apart, & the familie of
the house of Nathan apart, etc. There shall be a fountain opened_, _i.
e._ the doctrine of Christ under Moses’ dispensation is compared to _a
fountain vailed_, 2 Cor. iii. 13, etc. Under the Gospel dispensation
to a _fountain opened_. The vail of the Temple & the ceremonial law
being taken away. _And it shall come to pass that when any shall yet
Prophecie, then his father & his mother that begat him, shall thrust
him through, when he prophecieth._ These words [thrust him through] may
be understood either of a Capital punishment judicially dispensed, or
of any other smart punishment piercing though not Capital.
* * * * *
“Wee through grace abhorre prejudicing the liberty of conscience the
least measure, and account such report of us to be a slander. And
through the same grace; Wee both dread, and beare witness against,
liberty of heresy, liberty to Blaspheme the Blessed Trinity, the Person
and Office of Christ, the holy-Scripture, the tabernacle of God,
and those that dwell in heaven. Howsoever fallaciously transformed
into, and misrepresented under the plausible vizard of liberty of
conscience falsely so called. We say Religion is to be perswaded
with Scripture-reasons, not Civil weapons: with Arguments, not with
punishments. But blasphemies immediate and heresies carried on with
an high hand, and persisted in are to be suppressed with weapons and
punishments; where reasons, and arguments cannot prevail.
We distinguish between Heresie (Quiet and alone, Turbulent, i. e.
incorrigible) accompanied with soliciting the people to apostacy
from the Faith of Christ to defection from the churches, to Sedition
in the Commonwealth. And that after due meanes of conviction, and
Authoritative prohibition.
We subject not any to Civil or Corporal punishment for heresie, if
_quiet and alone_. We do not inflict any Church-censure in case of
heresie, without doctrinal conviction on the Churche’s part, and
contumacy on the delinquent’s part foregoing.
In case of _Heresie incorrigible_, in conjunction with endeavours
to seduce others thereunto, and tending to the disturbing of
Publick-order, we acknowledge it to be the pious Wisdom of the
Magistrate to proceed gradually, and where gentler meanes may
rationally be looked at as effectual, there to abstain from the use of
any severer remedie.
And according to this method, hath been the gradual proceeding of the
Magistrate here, with those (hitherto incorrigible) _Quakers_, who
from England have unreasonably and insolently obtruded themselves upon
us. 1. Instructing them. 2. Restraining them untill an opportunity for
their returne. 3. Publishing a law to warne and prohibite both them and
all others of that sect, from Coming into this jurisdiction: otherwise
to expect the house of Correction. And in case they returned yet again,
then to loose one of their eares, etc.
At last upon experience of their bold contempt of these inferior
restraints, and that after their being sent away again and again, they
continue to return yet again and again; to the seducing of diverse,
the disturbance, vexation and hazard of the whole Colonie. The Court
finding the Law passed, to be an insufficient fence against these
persons, proceeded to a Sentence of Banishment.
Their restraint before the Law published, was but restraint in the
Prison, until an opportunity of shipping them away. They who after
the Law was published, would that notwithstanding, break in upon us
from England, or other forraign parts, by Rode-Island, after their
correction received, and discharging their dues, might return again to
the Island, if they pleased. The wolfe which ventures over the wild
Sea, out of a ravening desire to prey upon the sheep, when landed,
discovered and taken, hath no cause to complain, though for the
security of the flock, he be penned up, with the door opening unto the
fold fast shut; but having another door purposely left open, whereby
he may depart at his pleasure either returning from whence he came, or
otherwise quitting the place.
Their _Sentence of Banishment_ as Circumstanced, by an Impartial and
equal eye, may be looked upon as an Act which the court was forced unto
_se defendendo_, in defence of Religion, themselves, the Churches,
and this poore State and People from Ruine: which the principles of
confusion, daylie and studiously disseminated by them, threatened to
bring all unto, if not seasonably prevented. _Exile from a wilderness_,
from a place of exile; though voluntarie, from a place; confinement
whereunto would indeed justly be called exile, is an _easie exile_.”
(Pages 48, 49, 53, 54.)
[19] _Rhode Island Records_, i. 376–378. See also the letter of the
General Assembly, 378–380.
[20] Bishop, 95.
[21] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 383.
[22] _The Sufferings of the People called Quakers_, by Jos. Besse,
London, 1753, ii. p. 177.
[23] Bishop, 89–95, 109.
[24] Hubbard’s _History of New England_, p. 173. See also an _Address
to the King_ (Charles II.), Dec. 19, 1660, in which the colonial
authorities argue as follows: “Concerning the Quakers, open and
capitall blasphemers, open seducers from the glorious Trinity, the
Lord’s Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, etc. the blessed gospell,
and from the Holy Scriptures as the rule of life, open enemies to
government itself as established in the hands of any but men of their
oune principles, malignant and assiduous promoters of doctrines
directly tending to subvert both our churches and state, after
all other meanes for a long time used in vajne, wee were at last
constrejned, for our oune safety, to pass a sentence of banishment
against them, vpon pajne of death. Such was theire daingerous,
impetuous, & desperat turbulency, both to religion & the state civil
& ecclesiastical, as that how vnwillingly soever, could it have binn
avoyded, the magistrate at last, in conscience both to God and Man,
judged himself called for the defense of all, to keep the passage with
the point of the sword held towards them. This could do no harm to
him that would be warned thereby: theire wittingly rushing themselves
therevpon was theire oune act, & wee, w^{th} all humility, conceive a
cryme bringing theire blood on theire oune head. The Quakers died, not
because of theire other crymes, how capitall soever, but vpon theire
superadded presumptuous & incorrigible contempt of authority; breaking
in vpon vs notw^{th}standing theire sentence of banishment made knoune
to them. Had they not binn restreigned, so farr as appeared, there was
too much cause to feare that wee ourselves must quickly haue dyed, or
worse; and such was theire insolency, that they would not be restreined
but by death; nay, had they at last but promised to depart the
jurisdiction, and not to returne w^{th}out leaue from authority, wee
should haue binn glad of such an opportunity to haue sayd they should
not dye.” _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 450–453. Bishop, 113.
[25] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 419.
[26] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 366. Bishop, 90, 91.
[27] Bishop, 44–48, 52–54.
[28] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 391.
[29] Bishop, 111. _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 411.
[30] Bishop, Second Part, 14, 26, 30–35.
[31] _Mass. Records_, iv. (2), 2–4, May, 1661.
[32] Bishop, Second Part, 38, 39. The Declaration presented to the King
by the Quakers may be found in the Preface to Besse’s _Sufferings of
the People called Quakers_, I. xxx., xxxii.
[33] _Mass. Records_, iv. (2), 24.
[34] Bishop, Second Part, 52.
[35] _Ibid._, 58, 65.
[36] _Ibid._, 112.
[37] _Ibid._, 90–105.
[38] _Ibid._, 74.
[39] _Ibid._, 68, 69.
[40] Besse, ii. 259.
[41] Besse, ii. 260–264.
[42] Bishop, 154, 155.
[43] Bishop, Second Part, 105–108.
[44] Bishop, Second Part, 46, 120.
[45] Besse, ii. 387.
[46] “And you shewed your Spirit, who ran away from England, and could
not abide the sufferings of your purse, and a Prison, and when you
were got beyond Sea, then you could Hang, and Burn, and Whip, God’s
Creatures, and the true Subjects of _England_; yet you would have the
name of Christians who have cast away all Humanity and Christianity,
by your fury, rage, and _Nebuchadnezzar’s_ spirit; who are worse
than the very _Indians_, whose name stinks both among _Indians_ and
_Christians_, which is become a proverb and a common Cry, The bloody
Crimes of _New England_, a company of rotten Hypocrites which fled from
_Old England_ to save their purses and themselves from Imprisonment,
and then can Hang, and Burn, and Whip, and spoil the Goods of such
as come out of England to inhabit among them, only for being called
Quakers.... Are these the men that fled for Religion all people may
say, that now Hang, Burn, Imprison, Cut, Fine, and spoil the Goods, and
drink the blood of the innocent. God will give you a Cup of trembling,
that you shall be a by-word, and a hissing to all your neighbours.”
Bishop, Second Part, 146, 147.
[47] See Note 83, on the next Essay.
[48] Bishop, 67.
[49] Bishop, Second Part, 139. Besse, ii. 270.
[50] Hutchinson, _History of Massachusets-Bay_, i. 223.
II.
THE WITCHES.
The story of the witchcraft delusion in New England is a sequel and
companion-piece to the history of the conflict with the Quakers.
Both exhibit the least attractive side of our forefathers, and both
point the moral that the intermeddling by ecclesiastics in matters
of public policy is dangerous to the state. It is a strange tale of
superstition and of panic, painful to dwell upon, but necessary to a
proper comprehension of the characters of the leaders of New England,
and of the conditions under which the struggling colonies developed
their strong and distinct individuality. It should always be remembered
that belief in witchcraft was not a peculiarity of New England,
and that the reason the colonists there have been judged so hardly
for their panic is that men have felt that they had claimed to be
superior to the men of their generation, and thus should be measured
by a higher standard. Their claim had some justification. The leaders
of thought in New England had advanced in some directions far beyond
their contemporaries; in political insight and political adroitness
they have had few equals in any period; but they were hampered and
burdened by the very religion which to their fathers had been a gospel
of liberty and a source of inspiration. This had become a theology with
its dogmas and its rules; the devout and earnest ministers who had
contended for their faith in England, or had braved the perils of the
seas and the loneliness of the wilderness to be free to worship God as
they chose, had given place to the second generation, who had never
known suffering, and were therefore ignorant of mercy; men who were
enthusiastic indeed, but not so much enthusiastic for religion as for
their creed; not so zealous for Christ as for their own peculiar way of
worshipping him. The result had been a general lowering of spiritual
tone, which was recognized and freely acknowledged and deplored by the
best men of the period. It seems inevitable that this hardening and
narrowing should follow ages of contest and struggle. When the faith
becomes a war-cry, it necessarily loses much of its spirituality.
Beliefs for which one age has suffered become crystallized into
formulas for the next, and divines wonder at the hardness of men’s
hearts in refusing obedience to what once indeed had been a law of
life, but by being made a commandment has become a law unto death.