CHAPTER IV.

THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.

The Puritan exodus to New England, which came to an end about 1640, was

purely and exclusively English. There was nothing in it that came from

the continent of Europe, nothing that was either Irish or Scotch, very

little that was Welsh. As Palfrey says, the population of 26,000 that

had been planted in New England by 1640 "thenceforward continued to

multiply on its own soil for a century and a half, in remarkable

seclusion from other communities." During the whole of this period New

England received but few immigrants; and it was not until after the

Revolutionary War that its people had fairly started on their westward

march into the state of New York and beyond, until now, after yet

another century, we find some of their descendants dwelling in a

homelike Salem and a Portland of charming beauty on the Pacific coast.

Three times between the meeting of the Long Parliament and the meeting

of the Continental Congress did the New England colonies receive a

slight infusion of non-English blood. In 1652, after his victories at

Dunbar and Worcester, Cromwell sent 270 of his Scottish prisoners to

Boston, where the descendants of some of them still dwell. After the

revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, 150 families of Huguenots

came to Massachusetts. And finally in 1719, 120 Presbyterian families

came over from the north of Ireland, and settled at Londonderry in New

Hampshire, and elsewhere. In view of these facts it may be said that

there is not a county in England of which the population is more purely

English than the population of New England at the end of the eighteenth

century. From long and careful research, Mr. Savage, the highest

authority on this subject, concludes that more than 98 in 100 of the New

England people at that time could trace their origin to England in

the narrowest sense, excluding even Wales. As already observed, every

English shire contributed something to the emigration, but there was

a marked preponderance of people from the East Anglian counties.

[Sidenote: The exodus was purely English]

The population of New England was nearly as homogeneous in social

condition as it was in blood. The emigration was preeminent for its

respectability. Like the best part of the emigration to Virginia, it

consisted largely of country squires and yeomen. The men who followed

Winthrop were thrifty and prosperous in their old homes from which their

devotion to an idea made them voluntary exiles. They attached so much

importance to regular industry and decorous behaviour that for a long

time the needy and shiftless people who usually make trouble in new

colonies were not tolerated among them. Hence the early history of New

England is remarkably free from those scenes of violence and disorder

which have so often made hideous the first years of new communities.

Of negro slaves there were very few, and these were employed wholly in

domestic service; there were not enough of them to affect the industrial

life of New England or to be worth mentioning as a class. Neither were

there many of the wretched people, kidnapped from the jails and slums

of English sea-ports, such as in those early days when negro labour was

scarce, were sent by ship-loads to Virginia, to become the progenitors

of the "white trash." There were a few indented white servants, usually

of the class known as "redemptioners," or immigrants who voluntarily

bound themselves to service for a stated time in order to defray the

cost of their voyage from Europe. At a later time there were many of

these "redemptioners" in the middle colonies, but in New England they

were very few; and as no stigma of servitude was attached to manual

labour, they were apt at the end of their terms of service to become

independent farmers; thus they ceased to be recognizable as a distinct

class of society. Nevertheless the common statement that no traces of

the "mean white" are to be found in New England is perhaps somewhat

too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain

villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon

little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is

sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or

"Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate

offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong

points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a

recognizable strain of the English race; and one cannot help suspecting

that while the New England colonies made every effort to keep out such

riff raff, it may nevertheless have now and then crept in. However this

may be, it cannot be said that this element ever formed a noticeable

feature in the life of colonial New England. As regards their social

derivation, the settlers of New England were homogeneous in character to

a remarkable degree, and they were drawn from the sturdiest part of

the English stock. In all history there has been no other instance of

colonization so exclusively effected by picked and chosen men. The

colonists knew this, and were proud of it, as well they might be. It was

the simple truth that was spoken by William Stoughton when he said, in

his election sermon of 1688: "God sifted a whole nation, that He might

send choice grain into the wilderness." [Sidenote: Respectable character

of the emigration]

This matter comes to have more than a local interest, when we reflect

that the 26,000 New Englanders of 1640 have in two hundred and fifty

years increased to something like 15,000,000. From these men have come

at least one-fourth of the present population of the United States.

Striking as this fact may seem, it is perhaps less striking than the

fact of the original migration when duly considered. In these times,

when great steamers sail every day from European ports, bringing

immigrants to a country not less advanced in material civilization

than the country which they leave, the daily arrival of a thousand new

citizens has come to be a commonplace event. But in the seventeenth

century the transfer of more than twenty thousand well-to-do people

within twenty years from their comfortable homes in England to the

American wilderness was by no means a commonplace event. It reminds one

of the migrations of ancient peoples, and in the quaint thought of

our forefathers it was aptly likened to the exodus of Israel from the

Egyptian house of bondage.

In this migration a principle of selection was at work which insured an

extraordinary uniformity of character and of purpose among the settlers.

To this uniformity of purpose, combined with complete homogeneity of

race, is due the preponderance early acquired by New England in the

history of the American people. In view of this, it is worth while to

inquire what were the real aims of the settlers of New England. What was

the common purpose which brought these men together in their resolve to

create for themselves new homes in the wilderness?

This is a point concerning which there has been a great deal of popular

misapprehension, and there has been no end of nonsense talked about it.

It has been customary first to assume that the Puritan migration was

undertaken in the interests of religious liberty, and then to upbraid

the Puritans for forgetting all about religious liberty as soon as

people came among them who disagreed with their opinions. But this view

of the case is not supported by history. It is quite true that the

Puritans were chargeable with gross intolerance; but it is not true that

in this they were guilty of inconsistency. The notion that they came to

New England for the purpose of establishing religious liberty, in

any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely

incorrect. It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend. If

we mean by the phrase "religious liberty" a state of things in which

opposite or contradictory opinions on questions of religion shall exist

side by side in the same community, and in which everybody shall

decide for himself how far he will conform to the customary religious

observances, nothing could have been further from their thoughts. There

is nothing they would have regarded with more genuine abhorrence. If

they could have been forewarned by a prophetic voice of the general

freedom--or, as they would have termed it, license--of thought and

behaviour which prevails in this country to-day, they would very likely

have abandoned their enterprise in despair. [12] The philosophic student

of history often has occasion to see how God is wiser than man. In other

words, he is often brought to realize how fortunate it is that the

leaders in great historic events cannot foresee the remote results of

the labours to which they have zealously consecrated their lives. It is

part of the irony of human destiny that the end we really accomplish by

striving with might and main is apt to be something quite different from

the end we dreamed of as we started on our arduous labour. So it was

with the Puritan settlers of New England. The religious liberty that

we enjoy to-day is largely the consequence of their work; but it is a

consequence that was unforeseen, while the direct and conscious aim of

their labours was something that has never been realized, and probably

never will be. [Sidenote: The migration was not intended to promote what

we call religious liberty]

The aim of Winthrop and his friends in coming to Massachusetts was the

construction of a theocratic state which should be to Christians, under

the New Testament dispensation, all that the theocracy of Moses and

Joshua and Samuel had been to the Jews in Old Testament days. They

should be to all intents and purposes freed from the jurisdiction of

the Stuart king, and so far as possible the text of the Holy Scriptures

should be their guide both in weighty matters of general legislation and

in the shaping of the smallest details of daily life. In such a scheme

there was no room for religious liberty as we understand it. No doubt

the text of the Scriptures may be interpreted in many ways, but among

these men there was a substantial agreement as to the important points,

and nothing could have been further from their thoughts than to found

a colony which should afford a field for new experiments in the art of

right living. The state they were to found was to consist of a united

body of believers; citizenship itself was to be co-extensive with

church-membership; and in such a state there was apparently no more room

for heretics than there was in Rome or Madrid. This was the idea which

drew Winthrop and his followers from England at a time when--as events

were soon to show--they might have stayed there and defied persecution

with less trouble than it cost them to cross the ocean and found a new

state. [Sidenote: Theocratic ideal of the Puritans]

Such an ideal as this, considered by itself and apart from the concrete

acts in which it was historically manifested, may seem like the merest

fanaticism. But we cannot dismiss in this summary way a movement which

has been at the source of so much that is great in American history:

mere fanaticism has never produced such substantial results. Mere

fanaticism is sure to aim at changing the constitution of human society

in some essential point, to undo the work of evolution, and offer in

some indistinctly apprehended fashion to remodel human life. But in

these respects the Puritans were intensely conservative. The impulse by

which they were animated was a profoundly ethical impulse--the desire

to lead godly lives, and to drive out sin from the community--the same

ethical impulse which animates the glowing pages of Hebrew poets and

prophets, and which has given to the history and literature of Israel

their commanding influence in the world. The Greek, says Matthew Arnold,

held that the perfection of happiness was to have one's thoughts hit the

mark; but the Hebrew held that it was to serve the Lord day and night.

It was a touch of this inspiration that the Puritan caught from his

earnest and reverent study of the sacred text, and that served to

justify and intensify his yearning for a better life, and to give it

the character of a grand and holy ideal. Yet with all this religious

enthusiasm, the Puritan was in every fibre a practical Englishman with

his full share of plain common-sense. He avoided the error of

mediaeval anchorites and mystics in setting an exaggerated value upon

otherworldliness. In his desire to win a crown of glory hereafter he did

not forget that the present life has its simple duties, in the exact

performance of which the welfare of society mainly consists. He likewise

avoided the error of modern radicals who would remodel the fundamental

institutions of property and of the family, and thus disturb the very

groundwork of our ethical ideals. The Puritan's ethical conception of

society was simply that which has grown up in the natural course of

historical evolution, and which in its essential points is therefore

intelligible to all men, and approved by the common-sense of men,

however various may be the terminology--whether theological or

scientific--in which it is expounded. For these reasons there was

nothing essentially fanatical or impracticable in the Puritan scheme: in

substance it was something that great bodies of men could at once put

into practice, while its quaint and peculiar form was something that

could be easily and naturally outgrown and set aside. [Sidenote: The

impulse which sought to realize itself in the Puritan ideal was an

ethical impulse]

Yet another point in which the Puritan scheme of a theocratic society

was rational and not fanatical was its method of interpreting the

Scriptures. That method was essentially rationalistic in two ways.

First, the Puritan laid no claim to the possession of any peculiar

inspiration or divine light whereby he might be aided in ascertaining

the meaning of the sacred text; but he used his reason just as he would

in any matter of business, and he sought to convince, and expected to

be convinced, by rational argument, and by nothing else. Secondly, it

followed from this denial of any peculiar inspiration that there was no

room in the Puritan commonwealth for anything like a priestly class, and

that every individual must hold his own opinions at his own personal

risk. The consequences of this rationalistic spirit have been very

far-reaching. In the conviction that religious opinion must be consonant

with reason, and that religious truth must be brought home to each

individual by rational argument, we may find one of the chief causes of

that peculiarly conservative yet flexible intelligence which has enabled

the Puritan countries to take the lead in the civilized world of

today. Free discussion of theological questions, when conducted with

earnestness and reverence, and within certain generally acknowledged

limits, was never discountenanced in New England. On the contrary, there

has never been a society in the world in which theological problems have

been so seriously and persistently discussed as in New England in the

colonial period. The long sermons of the clergymen were usually learned

and elaborate arguments of doctrinal points, bristling with quotations

from the Bible, or from famous books of controversial divinity, and in

the long winter evenings the questions thus raised afforded the occasion

for lively debate in every household. The clergy were, as a rule, men

of learning, able to read both Old and New Testaments in the original

languages, and familiar with the best that had been talked and written,

among Protestants at least, on theological subjects. They were also, for

the most part, men of lofty character, and they were held in high social

esteem on account of their character and scholarship, as well as on

account of their clerical position. But in spite of the reverence in

which they were commonly held, it would have been a thing quite unheard

of for one of these pastors to urge an opinion from the pulpit on the

sole ground of his personal authority or his superior knowledge of

Scriptural exegesis. The hearers, too, were quick to detect novelties

or variations in doctrine; and while there was perhaps no more than the

ordinary human unwillingness to listen to a new thought merely because

of its newness, it was above all things needful that the orthodox

soundness of every new suggestion should be thoroughly and severely

tested. This intense interest in doctrinal theology was part and parcel

of the whole theory of New England life; because, as I have said, it was

taken for granted that each individual must hold his own opinions at

his own personal risk in the world to come. Such perpetual discussion,

conducted, under such a stimulus, afforded in itself no mean school

of intellectual training. Viewed in relation to the subsequent mental

activity of New England, it may be said to have occupied a position

somewhat similar to that which the polemics of the medieval schoolmen

occupied in relation to the European thought of the Renaissance, and of

the age of Hobbes and Descartes. At the same time the Puritan theory of

life lay at the bottom of the whole system of popular education in New

England. According to that theory, it was absolutely essential that

every one should be taught from early childhood how to read and

understand the Bible. So much instruction as this was assumed to be a

sacred duty which the community owed to every child born within its

jurisdiction. In ignorance, the Puritans maintained, lay the principal

strength of popery in religion as well as of despotism in politics; and

so, to the best of their lights, they cultivated knowledge with might

and main. But in this energetic diffusion of knowledge they were

unwittingly preparing the complete and irreparable destruction of the

theocratic ideal of society which they had sought to realize by crossing

the ocean and settling in New England. This universal education, and

this perpetual discussion of theological questions, were no more

compatible with rigid adherence to the Calvinistic system than with

submission to the absolute rule of Rome. The inevitable result was the

liberal and enlightened Protestantism which is characteristic of the

best American society at the present day, and which is continually

growing more liberal as it grows more enlightened--a Protestantism

which, in the natural course of development, is coming to realize the

noble ideal of Roger Williams, but from the very thought of which such

men as Winthrop and Cotton and Endicott would have shrunk with dismay.

[Sidenote: In interpreting Scripture, the Puritan appealed to his

reason] [Sidenote: Value of theological discussion]

In this connection it is interesting to note the similarity between the

experience of the Puritans in New England and in Scotland with respect

to the influence of their religious theory of life upon general

education. Nowhere has Puritanism, with its keen intelligence and its

iron tenacity of purpose, played a greater part than it has played in

the history of Scotland. And one need not fear contradiction in saying

that no other people in modern times, in proportion to their numbers,

have achieved so much in all departments of human activity as the people

of Scotland have achieved. It would be superfluous to mention the

preeminence of Scotland in the industrial arts since the days of James

Watt, or to recount the glorious names in philosophy, in history, in

poetry and romance, and in every department of science, which since the

middle of the eighteenth century have made the country of Burns and

Scott, of Hume and Adam Smith, of Black and Hunter and Hutton and

Lyell, illustrious for all future time. Now this period of magnificent

intellectual fruition in Scotland was preceded by a period of

Calvinistic orthodoxy quite as rigorous as that of New England. The

ministers of the Scotch Kirk in the seventeenth century cherished a

theocratic ideal of society not unlike that which the colonists of New

England aimed at realizing. There was the same austerity, the same

intolerance, the same narrowness of interests, in Scotland that there

was in New England. Mr. Buckle, in the book which thirty years ago

seemed so great and stimulating, gave us a graphic picture of this state

of society, and the only thing which he could find to say about it, as

the result of his elaborate survey, was that the spirit of the Scotch

Kirk was as thoroughly hostile to human progress as the spirit of the

Spanish Inquisition! If this were really so, it would be difficult

indeed to account for the period of brilliant mental activity which

immediately followed. But in reality the Puritan theory of life led

to general education in Scotland as it did in New England, and for

precisely the same reasons, while the effects of theological discussion

in breaking down the old Calvinistic exclusiveness have been illustrated

in the history of Edinburgh as well as in the history of Boston.

[Sidenote: Comparison with the case of Scotland]

It is well for us to bear in mind the foregoing considerations as we

deal with the history of the short-lived New England Confederacy. The

story is full of instances of an intolerant and domineering spirit,

especially on the part of Massachusetts, and now and then this spirit

breaks forth in ugly acts of persecution. In considering these facts, it

is well to remember that we are observing the workings of a system

which contained within itself a curative principle; and it is further

interesting to observe how political circumstances contributed to

modify the Puritan ideal, gradually breaking down the old theocratic

exclusiveness and strengthening the spirit of religious liberty.

Scarcely had the first New England colonies been established when it was

found desirable to unite them into some kind of a confederation. It is

worthy of note that the separate existence of so many colonies was at

the outset largely the result of religious differences. The uniformity

of purpose, great as it was, fell far short of completeness. [Sidenote:

Existence of so many colonies due to slight religious differences]

Could all have agreed, or had there been religious toleration in the

modern sense, there was still room enough for all in Massachusetts;

and a compact settlement would have been in much less danger from the

Indians. But in the founding of Connecticut the theocratic idea had less

weight, and in the founding of New Haven it had more weight, than

in Massachusetts. The existence of Rhode Island was based upon that

principle of full toleration which the three colonies just mentioned

alike abhorred, and its first settlers were people banished from

Massachusetts. With regard to toleration Plymouth occupied a middle

ground; without admitting the principles of Williams, the people of that

colony were still fairly tolerant in practice. Of the four towns of New

Hampshire, two had been founded by Antinomians driven from Boston, and

two by Episcopal friends of Mason and Gorges. It was impossible that

neighbouring communities, characterized by such differences of opinion,

but otherwise homogeneous in race and in social condition, should fail

to react upon one another and to liberalize one another. Still more was

this true when they attempted to enter into a political union. When, for

example, Massachusetts in 1641-43 annexed the New Hampshire townships,

she was of necessity obliged to relax in their case her policy of

insisting upon religious conformity as a test of citizenship. So in

forming the New England Confederacy, there were some matters of dispute

that had to be passed over by mutual consent or connivance. [Sidenote:

It led to a notable attempt at federation]

The same causes which had spread the English settlements over so wide a

territory now led, as an indirect result, to their partial union into a

confederacy. The immediate consequence of the westward movement had been

an Indian war. Several savage tribes were now interspersed between the

settlements, so that it became desirable that the military force should

be brought, as far as possible, under one management. The colony of

New Netherlands, moreover, had begun to assume importance, and the

settlements west of the Connecticut river had already occasioned hard

words between Dutch and English, which might at any moment be followed

by blows. In the French colonies at the north, with their extensive

Indian alliances under Jesuit guidance, the Puritans saw a rival power

which was likely in course of time to prove troublesome. With a view to

more efficient self-defence, therefore, in 1643 the four colonies of

Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed themselves

into a league, under the style of "The United Colonies of New England."

These four little states now contained thirty-nine towns, with an

aggregate population of 24,000. To the northeast of Massachusetts,

which now extended to the Piscataqua, a small colony had at length been

constituted under a proprietary charter somewhat similar to that held by

the Calverts in Maryland. Of this new province or palatinate of Maine

the aged Sir Ferdinando Gorges was Lord Proprietary, and he had

undertaken not only to establish the Church of England there, but also

to introduce usages of feudal jurisdiction like those remaining in the

old country. Such a community was not likely to join the Confederacy;

apart from other reasons, its proprietary constitution and the feud

between the Puritans and Gorges would have been sufficient obstacles.

As for Rhode Island, on the other hand, it was regarded with strong

dislike by the other colonies. It was a curious and noteworthy

consequence of the circumstances under which this little state was

founded that for a long time it became the refuge of all the fanatical

and turbulent people who could not submit to the strict and orderly

governments of Connecticut or Massachusetts. All extremes met on

Narragansett bay. There were not only sensible advocates of religious

liberty, but theocrats as well who saw flaws in the theocracy of

other Puritans. The English world was then in a state of theological

fermentation. People who fancied themselves favoured with direct

revelations from Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh

day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who

cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of

Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people

who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such

eccentric characters as are apt to come to the surface in periods of

religious excitement found in Rhode Island a favoured spot where they

could prophesy without let or hindrance. But the immediate practical

result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of

founding a strong and well-ordered government. The early history of

Rhode Island was marked by enough of turbulence to suggest the question

whether, after all, at the bottom of the Puritan's refusal to recognize

the doctrine of private inspiration, or to tolerate indiscriminately all

sorts of opinions, there may not have been a grain of shrewd political

sense not ill adapted to the social condition of the seventeenth

century. In 1644 and again in 1648 the Narragansett settlers asked leave

to join the Confederacy; but the request was refused on the ground

that they had no stable government of their own. They were offered

the alternative of voluntary annexation either to Massachusetts or to

Plymouth, or of staying out in the cold; and they chose the latter

course. Early in 1643 they had sent Roger Williams over to England to

obtain a charter for Rhode Island. In that year Parliament created a

Board of Commissioners, with the Earl of Warwick at its head, for the

superintendence of colonial affairs; and nothing could better illustrate

the loose and reckless manner in which American questions were treated

in England than the first proceedings of this board. It gave an early

instance of British carelessness in matters of American geography. In

December, 1643, it granted to Massachusetts all the territory on the

mainland of Narragansett bay; and in the following March it incorporated

the townships of Newport and Portsmouth, which stood on the island,

together with Providence, which stood on the mainland, into an

independent colony empowered to frame a government and make laws for

itself. With this second document Williams returned to Providence in the

autumn of 1644. Just how far it was intended to cancel the first one,

nobody could tell, but it plainly afforded an occasion for a conflict of

claims. [Sidenote: Turbulence of dissent in Rhode Island] [Sidenote: The

Earl of Warwick and his Board of Commissioners]

The league of the four colonies is interesting as the first American

experiment in federation. By the articles it was agreed that each colony

should retain full independence so far as concerned the management of

its internal affairs, but that the confederate government should have

entire control over all dealings with the Indians or with foreign

powers. The administration of the league was put into the hands of

a board of eight Federal Commissioners, two from each colony. The

commissioners were required to be church-members in good standing. They

could choose for themselves a president or chairman out of their own

number, but such a president was to have no more power than the other

members of the Board. If any measure were to come up concerning

which the commissioners could not agree, it was to be referred for

consideration to the legislatures or general courts of the four

colonies. Expenses for war were to be charged to each colony in

proportion to the number of males in each between sixteen years of

age and sixty. A meeting of the Board might be summoned by any two

magistrates whenever the public safety might seem to require it; but a

regular meeting was to be held once every year.

In this scheme of confederacy all power of taxation was expressly left

to the several colonies. The scheme provided for a mere league, not for

a federal union. The government of the Commissioners acted only upon the

local governments, not upon individuals. The Board had thus but little

executive power, and was hardly more than a consulting body. Another

source of weakness in the confederacy was the overwhelming preponderance

of Massachusetts. Of the 24,000 people in the confederation, 15,000

belonged to Massachusetts, while the other three colonies had only about

3,000 each. Massachusetts accordingly had to carry the heaviest burden,

both in the furnishing of soldiers and in the payment of war expenses,

while in the direction of affairs she had no more authority than one of

the small colonies. As a natural consequence, Massachusetts tried

to exert more authority than she was entitled to by the articles of

confederation; and such conduct was not unnaturally resented by the

small colonies, as betokening an unfair and domineering spirit. In

spite of these drawbacks, however, the league was of great value to

New England. On many occasions it worked well as a high court of

jurisdiction, and it made the military strength of the colonies more

available than it would otherwise have been. But for the interference

of the British government, which brought it to an untimely end, the

Confederacy might have been gradually amended so as to become enduring.

After its downfall it was pleasantly remembered by the people of New

England; in times of trouble their thoughts reverted to it; and the

historian must in fairness assign it some share in preparing men's minds

for the greater work of federation which was achieved before the end of

the following century. [Sidenote: It was only a league, not a federal

union]

The formation of such a confederacy certainly involved something very

like a tacit assumption of sovereignty on the part of the four colonies.

It is worthy of note that they did not take the trouble to ask the

permission of the home government in advance. They did as they pleased,

and then defended their action afterward. In England the act of

confederation was regarded with jealousy and distrust. But Edward

Winslow, who was sent over to London to defend the colonies, pithily

said: "If we in America should forbear to unite for offence and defence

against a common enemy till we have leave from England, our throats

might be all cut before the messenger would be half seas through."

Whether such considerations would have had weight with Charles I. or not

was now of little consequence. His power of making mischief soon came

to an end, and from the liberal and sagacious policy of Cromwell the

Confederacy had not much to fear. Nevertheless the fall of Charles I.

brought up for the first time that question which a century later was

to acquire surpassing interest,--the question as to the supremacy of

Parliament over the colonies.

Down to this time the supreme control over colonial affairs had been in

the hands of the king and his privy council, and the Parliament had

not disputed it. In 1624 they had grumbled at James I.'s high-handed

suppression of the Virginia Company, but they had not gone so far as

to call in question the king's supreme authority over the colonies. In

1628, in a petition to Charles I. relating to the Bermudas, they had

fully admitted this royal authority. But the fall of Charles I. for the

moment changed all this. Among the royal powers devolved upon Parliament

was the prerogative of superintending the affairs of the colonies. Such,

at least, was the theory held in England, and it is not easy to see how

any other theory could logically have been held; but the Americans never

formally admitted it, and in practice they continued to behave toward

Parliament very much as they had behaved toward the crown, yielding

just as little obedience as possible. When the Earl of Warwick's

commissioners in 1644 seized upon a royalist vessel in Boston harbour,

the legislature of Massachusetts debated the question whether it was

compatible with the dignity of the colony to permit such an act of

sovereignty on the part of Parliament. It was decided to wink at the

proceeding, on account of the strong sympathy between Massachusetts and

the Parliament which was overthrowing the king. At the same time the

legislature sent over to London a skilfully worded protest against

any like exercise of power in future. In 1651 Parliament ordered

Massachusetts to surrender the charter obtained from Charles I. and take

out a new one from Parliament, in which the relations of the colony to

the home government should be made the subject of fresh and more precise

definition. To this request the colony for more than a year vouchsafed

no answer; and finally, when it became necessary to do something,

instead of sending back the charter, the legislature sent back a

memorial, setting forth that the people of Massachusetts were quite

contented with their form of government, and hoped that no change would

be made in it. War between England and Holland, and the difficult

political problems which beset the brief rule of Cromwell, prevented

the question from coming to an issue, and Massachusetts was enabled to

preserve her independent and somewhat haughty attitude. [Sidenote: Fall

of Charles I. brings up the question as to supremacy of Parliament over

the colonies]

During the whole period of the Confederacy, however, disputes kept

coming up which through endless crooked ramifications were apt to end

in an appeal to the home government, and thus raise again and again the

question as to the extent of its imperial supremacy. For our present

purpose, it is enough to mention three of these cases: 1, the adventures

of Samuel Gorton; 2, the Presbyterian cabal; 3, the persecution of the

Quakers. Other cases in point are those of John Clarke and the Baptists,

and the relations of Massachusetts to the northeastern settlements; but

as it is not my purpose here to make a complete outline of New England

history, the three cases enumerated will suffice.

The first case shows, in a curious and instructive way, how religious

dissensions were apt to be complicated with threats of an Indian war on

the one hand and peril from Great Britain on the other; and as we come

to realize the triple danger, we can perhaps make some allowances for

the high-handed measures with which the Puritan governments sometimes

sought to avert it. [Genesis of the persecuting spirit]

As I have elsewhere tried to show, the genesis of the persecuting spirit

is to be found in the conditions of primitive society, where "above

all things the prime social and political necessity is social cohesion

within the tribal limits, for unless such social cohesion be maintained,

the very existence of the tribe is likely to be extinguished in

bloodshed." The persecuting spirit "began to pass away after men

had become organized into great nations, covering a vast extent of

territory, and secured by their concentrated military strength against

the gravest dangers of barbaric attack." [13]

Now as regards these considerations, the Puritan communities in the

New England wilderness were to some slight extent influenced by such

conditions as used to prevail in primitive society; and this will help

us to understand the treatment of the Antinomians and such cases as that

with which we have now to deal.

Among the supporters of Mrs. Hutchinson, after her arrival at Aquedneck,

was a sincere and courageous, but incoherent and crotchetty man named

Samuel Gorton. [Sidenote: Samuel Gorton]

In the denunciatory language of that day he was called a "proud and

pestilent seducer," or, as the modern newspaper would say, a "crank." It

is well to make due allowances for the prejudice so conspicuous in the

accounts given by his enemies, who felt obliged to justify their harsh

treatment of him. But we have also his own writings from which to form

an opinion as to his character and views. Lucidity, indeed, was not one

of his strong points as a writer, and the drift of his argument is not

always easy to decipher; but he seems to have had some points of contact

with the Familists, a sect established in the sixteenth century in

Holland. The Familists held that the essence of religion consists not

in adherence to any particular creed or ritual, but in cherishing the

spirit of divine love. The general adoption of this point of view was to

inaugurate a third dispensation, superior to those of Moses and Christ,

the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. The value of the Bible lay not so

much in the literal truth of its texts as in their spiritual import;

and by the union of believers with Christ they came to share in the

ineffable perfection of the Godhead. There is much that is modern and

enlightened in such views, which Gorton seems to some extent to have

shared. He certainly set little store by ritual observances and

maintained the equal right of laymen with clergymen to preach the

gospel. Himself a London clothier, and thanking God that he had not been

brought up in "the schools of human learning," he set up as a preacher

without ordination, and styled himself "professor of the mysteries of

Christ." He seems to have cherished that doctrine of private inspiration

which the Puritans especially abhorred. It is not likely that he had any

distinct comprehension of his own views, for distinctness was just what

they lacked. [14] But they were such as in the seventeenth century could

not fail to arouse fierce antagonism, and if it was true that wherever

there was a government Gorton was against it, perhaps that only shows

that wherever there was a government it was sure to be against him.

In the case of such men as Gorton, however,--and the type is by no

means an uncommon one,--their temperament usually has much more to do

with getting them into trouble than their opinions. Gorton's temperament

was such as to keep him always in an atmosphere of strife. Other

heresiarchs suffered persecution in Massachusetts, but Gorton was in hot

water everywhere. His arrival in any community was the signal for an

immediate disturbance of the peace. His troubles began in Plymouth,

where the wife of the pastor preferred his teachings to those of her

husband. In 1638 he fled to Aquedneck, where his first achievement was a

schism among Mrs. Hutchinson's followers, which ended in some staying to

found the town of Portsmouth while others went away to found Newport.

Presently Portsmouth found him intolerable, flogged and banished him,

and after his departure was able to make up its quarrel with Newport.

He next made his way with a few followers to Pawtuxet, within the

jurisdiction of Providence, and now it is the broad-minded and gentle

Roger Williams who complains of his "bewitching and madding poor

Providence." The question is here suggested what could it have been

in Gorton's teaching that enabled him thus to "bewitch" these little

communities? We may be sure that it could not have been the element of

modern liberalism suggested in the Familistic doctrines above cited.

That was the feature then least likely to appeal to the minds of common

people, and most likely to appeal to Williams. More probably such

success as Gorton had in winning followers was due to some of the

mystical rubbish which abounds in his pages and finds in a modern mind

no doorway through which to enter. [Sidenote: He flees to Aquedneck and

is banished thence]

Williams disapproved of Gorton, but was true to his principles of

toleration and would not take part in any attempt to silence him. But in

1641 we find thirteen leading citizens of Providence, headed by William

Arnold, [15] sending a memorial to Boston, asking for assistance and

counsel in regard to this disturber of the peace. How was Massachusetts

to treat such an appeal? She could not presume to meddle with the affair

unless she could have permanent jurisdiction over Pawtuxet; otherwise

she was a mere intruder. How strong a side-light does this little

incident throw upon the history of the Roman republic, and of all

relatively strong communities when confronted with the problem of

preserving order in neighbouring states that are too weak to preserve it

for themselves! Arnold's argument, in his appeal to Massachusetts, was

precisely the same as that by which the latter colony excused herself

for banishing the Antinomians. He simply says that Gorton and his

company "are not fit persons to be received, and made members of a body

in so weak a state as our town is in at present;" and he adds, "There is

no state but in the first place will seek to preserve its own safety and

peace." Whatever might be the abstract merits of Gorton's opinions, his

conduct was politically dangerous; and accordingly the jurisdiction over

Pawtuxet was formally conceded to Massachusetts. Thereupon that colony,

assuming jurisdiction, summoned Gorton and his men to Boston, to prove

their title to the lands they occupied. They of course regarded the

summons as a flagrant usurpation of authority, and instead of obeying

it they withdrew to Shawomet, on the western shore of Narragansett bay,

where they bought a tract of land from the principal sachem of the

Narragansetts, Miantonomo. The immediate rule over this land belonged to

two inferior chiefs, who ratified the sale at the time, but six months

afterward disavowed the ratification, on the ground that it had been

given under duress from their overlord Miantonomo. Here was a state

of things which might easily bring on an Indian war. The two chiefs

appealed to Massachusetts for protection, and were accordingly summoned,

along with Miantonomo, to a hearing at Boston. Here we see how a kind of

English protectorate over the native tribes had begun to grow up so soon

after the destruction of the Pequots. Such a result was inevitable.

After hearing the arguments, the legislature decided to defend the two

chiefs, provided they would put themselves under the jurisdiction of

Massachusetts. This was done, while further complaints against Gorton

came from the citizens of Providence. Gorton and his men were now

peremptorily summoned to Boston to show cause why they should not

surrender their land at Shawomet and to answer the charges against them.

On receiving from Gorton a defiant reply, couched in terms which some

thought blasphemous, the government of Massachusetts prepared to use

force. [Sidenote: Providence protests against him] [Sidenote: He flees

to Shawomet, where he buys land of the Indians]

Meanwhile the unfortunate Miantonomo had rushed upon his doom. The

annihilation of the Pequots had left the Mohegans and Narragansetts

contending for the foremost place among the native tribes. Between the

rival sachems, Uncas and Miantonomo, the hatred was deep and deadly.

As soon as the Mohegan perceived that trouble was brewing between

Miantonomo and the government at Boston, he improved the occasion by

gathering a few Narragansett scalps. Miantonomo now took the war-path

and was totally defeated by Uncas in a battle on the Great Plain in the

present township of Norwich. Encumbered with a coat of mail which his

friend Gorton had given him, Miantonomo was overtaken and captured. By

ordinary Indian usage he would have been put to death with fiendish

torments, as soon as due preparations could be made and a fit company

assembled to gloat over his agony; but Gorton sent a messenger to Uncas,

threatening dire vengeance if harm were done to his ally. This message

puzzled the Mohegan chief. The appearance of a schism in the English

counsels was more than he could quite fathom. When the affair had

somewhat more fully developed itself, some of the Indians spoke of

the white men as divided into two rival tribes, the Gortonoges and

Wattaconoges. [16] Roger Williams tells us that the latter term, applied

to the men of Boston, meant coat-wearers. Whether it is to be inferred

that the Gortonoges went about in what in modern parlance would be

called their "shirt-sleeves," the reader must decide. [Sidenote:

Miantonomo and Uncas]

In his perplexity Uncas took his prisoner to Hartford, and afterward,

upon the advice of the governor and council, sent him to Boston, that

his fate might be determined by the Federal Commissioners who were

there holding their first regular meeting. It was now the turn of the

commissioners to be perplexed. According to English law there was no

good reason for putting Miantonomo to death. The question was whether

they should interfere with the Indian custom by which his life was

already forfeit to his captor. The magistrates already suspected the

Narragansetts of cherishing hostile designs. To set their sachem at

liberty, especially while the Gorton affair remained unsettled, might be

dangerous; and it would be likely to alienate Uncas from the English. In

their embarrassment the commissioners sought spiritual guidance. A synod

of forty or fifty clergymen, from all parts of New England, was in

session at Boston, and the question was referred to a committee of five

of their number. The decision was prompt that Miantonomo must die. He

was sent back to Hartford to be slain by Uncas, but two messengers

accompanied him, to see that no tortures were inflicted. A select band

of Mohegan warriors journeyed through the forest with the prisoner and

the two Englishmen, until they came to the plain where the battle had

been fought. Then at a signal from Uncas, the warrior walking behind

Miantonomo silently lifted his tomahawk and sank it into the brain of

the victim who fell dead without a groan. Uncas cut a warm slice from

the shoulder and greedily devoured it, declaring that the flesh of

his enemy was the sweetest of meat and gave strength to his heart.

Miantonomo was buried there on the scene of his defeat, which has ever

since been known as the Sachem's Plain. This was in September, 1643, and

for years afterward, in that month, parties of Narragansetts used to

visit the spot and with frantic gestures and hideous yells lament their

fallen leader. A heap of stones was raised over the grave, and no

Narragansett came near it without adding to the pile. After many a

summer had passed and the red men had disappeared from the land, a

Yankee farmer, with whom thrift prevailed over sentiment, cleared away

the mound and used the stones for the foundation of his new barn. [17]

[Sidenote: Death of Miantonomo]

One cannot regard this affair as altogether creditable to the Federal

Commissioners and their clerical advisers. One of the clearest-headed

and most impartial students of our history observes that "if the English

were to meddle in the matter at all, it was their clear duty to enforce

as far as might be the principles recognized by civilized men. When they

accepted the appeal made by Uncas they shifted the responsibility from

the Mohegan chief to themselves." [18] The decision was doubtless based

purely upon grounds of policy. Miantonomo was put out of the way because

he was believed to be dangerous. In the thirst for revenge that was

aroused among the Narragansetts there was an alternative source of

danger, to which I shall hereafter refer. [19] It is difficult now to

decide, as a mere question of safe policy, what the English ought to

have done. The chance of being dragged into an Indian war, through the

feud between Narragansetts and Mohegans, was always imminent. The policy

which condemned Miantonomo was one of timidity, and fear is merciless.

The Federal Commissioners heartily approved the conduct of Massachusetts

toward Gorton, and adopted it in the name of the United Colonies. After

a formal warning, which passed unheeded, a company of forty men, under

Edward Johnson of Woburn and two other officers, was sent to Shawomet.

Some worthy citizens of Providence essayed to play the part of

mediators, and after some parley the Gortonites offered to submit to

arbitration. The proposal was conveyed to Boston, and the clergy were

again consulted. They declared it beneath the dignity of Massachusetts

to negotiate "with a few fugitives living without law or government,"

and they would no more compound with Gorton's "blasphemous revilings"

than they would bargain with the Evil One. The community must be

"purged" of such wickedness, either by repentance or by punishment. The

ministers felt that God would hold the community responsible for Gorton

and visit calamities upon them unless he were silenced. [20] The

arbitration was refused, Gorton's blockhouse was besieged and captured,

and the agitator was carried with nine of his followers to Boston, where

they were speedily convicted of heresy and sedition. Before passing

judgment the General Court as usual consulted with the clergy who

recommended a sentence of death. Their advice was adopted by the

assistants, but the deputies were more merciful, and the heretics

were sentenced to imprisonment at the pleasure of the court. In this

difference between the assistants and the deputies, we observe an early

symptom of that popular revolt against the ascendancy of the clergy

which was by and by to become so much more conspicuous and effective

in the affair of the Quakers. Another symptom might be seen in the

circumstance that so much sympathy was expressed for the Gortonites,

especially by women, that after some months of imprisonment and abuse

the heretics were banished under penalty of death. [Sidenote: Trial and

sentence of the heretics]

Gorton now went to England and laid his tale of woe before the

parliamentary Board of Commissioners. The Earl of Warwick behaved with

moderation. He declined to commit himself to an opinion as to the

merits of the quarrel, but Gorton's title to Shawomet was confirmed. He

returned to Boston with an order to the government to allow him to pass

unmolested through Massachusetts, and hereafter to protect him in

the possession of Shawomet. If this little commonwealth of 15,000

inhabitants had been a nation as powerful as France, she could not have

treated the message more haughtily. By a majority of one vote it was

decided not to refuse so trifling a favour as a passage through the

country for just this once; but as for protecting the new town of

Warwick which the Gortonites proceeded to found at Shawomet, although it

was several times threatened by the Indians, and the settlers appealed

to the parliamentary order, that order Massachusetts flatly and doggedly

refused to obey. [21] [Sidenote: Gorton appeals to Parliament]

In the discussions of which these years were so full, "King Winthrop,"

as his enemy Morton called him, used some very significant language. By

a curious legal fiction of the Massachusetts charter the colonists were

supposed to hold their land as in the manor of East Greenwich near

London, and it was argued that they were represented in Parliament by

the members of the county or borough which contained that manor, and

were accordingly subject to the jurisdiction of Parliament. It was

further argued that since the king had no absolute sovereignty

independent of Parliament he could not by charter impart any such

independent sovereignty to others. Winthrop did not dispute these

points, but observed that the safety of the commonwealth was the supreme

law, and if in the interests of that safety it should be found necessary

to renounce the authority of Parliament, the colonists would be

justified in doing so. [Sidenote: Winthrop's prophetic opinion] [22]

This was essentially the same doctrine as was set forth ninety-nine

years later by young Samuel Adams in his Commencement Oration at

Harvard.

The case of the Presbyterian cabal admits of briefer treatment than that

of Gorton. There had now come to be many persons in Massachusetts who

disapproved of the provision which restricted the suffrage to members of

the Independent or Congregational churches of New England, and in 1646

the views of these people were presented in a petition to the General

Court. The petitioners asked "that their civil disabilities might be

removed, and that all members of the churches of England and Scotland

might be admitted to communion with the New England churches. If this

could not be granted they prayed to be released from all civil burdens.

Should the court refuse to entertain their complaint, they would be

obliged to bring their case before Parliament." [23] The leading signers

of this menacing petition were William Vassall, Samuel Maverick, and The

Presbyterian cabal. Dr. Robert Child. Maverick we have already met. From

the day when the ships of the first Puritan settlers had sailed past

his log fortress on Noddle's Island, he had been their enemy; "a man of

loving and curteous behaviour," says Johnson, "very ready to entertaine

strangers, yet an enemy to the reformation in hand, being strong for the

lordly prelatical power." Vassall was not a denizen of Massachusetts,

but lived in Scituate, in the colony of Plymouth, where there were no

such restrictions upon the suffrage. Child was a learned physician who

after a good deal of roaming about the world had lately taken it into

his head to come and see what sort of a place Massachusetts was.

Although these names were therefore not such as to lend weight to such a

petition, their request would seem at first sight reasonable enough.

At a superficial glance it seems conceived in a modern spirit of

liberalism. In reality it was nothing of the sort. In England it was

just the critical moment of the struggle between Presbyterians and

Independents which had come in to complicate the issues of the great

civil war. Vassall, Child, and Maverick seem to have been the leading

spirits in a cabal for the establishment of Presbyterianism in New

England, and in their petition they simply took advantage of the

discontent of the disfranchised citizens in Massachusetts in order

to put in an entering wedge. This was thoroughly understood by the

legislature of Massachusetts, and accordingly the petition was dismissed

and the petitioners were roundly fined. Just as Child was about to start

for England with his grievances, the magistrates overhauled his papers

and discovered a petition to the parliamentary Board of Commissioners,

suggesting that Presbyterianism should be established in New England,

and that a viceroy or governor-general should be appointed to rule

there. To the men of Massachusetts this last suggestion was a crowning

horror. It seemed scarcely less than treason. The signers of this

petition were the same who had signed the petition to the General Court.

They were now fined still more heavily and imprisoned for six months.

By and by they found their way, one after another, to London, while the

colonists sent Edward Winslow, of Plymouth, as an advocate to thwart

their schemes. Winslow was assailed by Child's brother in a spicy

pamphlet entitled "New England's Jonas cast up at London," and replied

after the same sort, entitling his pamphlet "New England's Salamander

discovered." The cabal accomplished nothing because of the decisive

defeat of Presbyterianism in England. "Pride's Purge" settled all that.

The petition of Vassall and his friends was the occasion for the

meeting of a synod of churches at Cambridge, in order to complete the

organization of Congregationalism. In 1648 the work of the synod was

embodied in the famous Cambridge Platform, which adopted the Westminster

Confession as its creed, carefully defined the powers of the clergy, and

declared it to be the duty of magistrates to suppress heresy. In 1649

the General Court laid this platform before the congregations; in

1651 it was adopted; and this event may be regarded as completing the

theocratic organization of the Puritan commonwealth in Massachusetts.

[Sidenote: The Cambridge Platform; deaths of Winthrop and Cotton]

It was immediately preceded and followed by the deaths of the two

foremost men in that commonwealth. John Winthrop died in 1649 and John

Cotton in 1652. Both were men of extraordinary power. Of Winthrop it is

enough to say that under his skilful guidance Massachusetts had been

able to pursue the daring policy which had characterized the first

twenty years of her history, and which in weaker hands would almost

surely have ended in disaster. Of Cotton it may be said that he was the

most eminent among a group of clergymen who for learning and dialectical

skill have seldom been surpassed. Neither Winthrop nor Cotton approved

of toleration upon principle. Cotton, in his elaborate controversy

with Roger Williams, frankly asserted that persecution is not wrong in

itself; it is wicked for falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the

sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood. This was the theologian's

view. Winthrop's was that of a man of affairs. They had come to New

England, he said, in order to make a society after their own model;

all who agreed with them might come and join that society; those who

disagreed with them might go elsewhere; there was room enough on the

American continent. But while neither Winthrop nor Cotton understood the

principle of religious liberty, at the same time neither of them had the

temperament which persecutes. Both were men of genial disposition, sound

common-sense, and exquisite tact. Under their guidance no such

tragedy would have been possible as that which was about to leave its

ineffaceable stain upon the annals of Massachusetts.

It was most unfortunate that at this moment the places of these two men

should have been taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever drew breath.

For thirteen out of the fifteen years following Winthrop's death, the

governor of Massachusetts was John Endicott, a sturdy pioneer, whose

services to the colony had been great. He was honest and conscientious,

but passionate, domineering, and very deficient in tact. At the same

time Cotton's successor in position and influence was John Norton, a man

of pungent wit, unyielding temper, and melancholy mood. He was possessed

by a morbid fear of Satan, whose hirelings he thought were walking

up and down over the earth in the visible semblance of heretics and

schismatics. Under such leaders the bigotry latent in the Puritan

commonwealth might easily break out in acts of deadly persecution.

[Sidenote: Endicott and Norton take the lead] [Sidenote: The Quakers and

their views]

The occasion was not long in coming. Already the preaching of George Fox

had borne fruit, and the noble sect of Quakers was an object of scorn

and loathing to all such as had not gone so far as they toward learning

the true lesson of Protestantism. Of all Protestant sects the Quakers

went furthest in stripping off from Christianity its non-essential

features of doctrine and ceremonial. Their ideal was not a theocracy

but a separation between church and state. They would abolish all

distinction between clergy and laity, and could not be coaxed or bullied

into paying tithes. They also refused to render military service, or

to take the oath of allegiance. In these ways they came at once into

antagonism both with church and with state. In doctrine their chief

peculiarity was the assertion of an "Inward Light" by which every

individual is to be guided in his conduct of life. They did not believe

that men ceased to be divinely inspired when the apostolic ages came

to an end, but held that at all times and places the human soul may be

enlightened by direct communion with its Heavenly Father. Such views

involved the most absolute assertion of the right of private judgment;

and when it is added that in the exercise of this right many Quakers

were found to reject the dogmas of original sin and the resurrection of

the body, to doubt the efficacy of baptism, and to call in question the

propriety of Christians turning the Lord's Day into a Jewish Sabbath, we

see that they had in some respects gone far on the road toward modern

rationalism. It was not to be expected that such opinions should

be treated by the Puritans in any other spirit than one of extreme

abhorrence and dread. The doctrine of the "Inward Light," or of private

inspiration, was something especially hateful to the Puritan. To the

modern rationalist, looking at things in the dry light of history,

it may seem that this doctrine was only the Puritan's own appeal to

individual judgment, stated in different form; but the Puritan could not

so regard it. To such a fanatic as Norton this inward light was but

a reflection from the glare of the bottomless pit, this private

inspiration was the beguiling voice of the Devil. As it led the Quakers

to strange and novel conclusions, this inward light seemed to array

itself in hostility to that final court of appeal for all good

Protestants, the sacred text of the Bible. The Quakers were accordingly

regarded as infidels who sought to deprive Protestantism of its only

firm support. They were wrongly accused of blasphemy in their treatment

of the Scriptures. Cotton Mather says that the Quakers were in the habit

of alluding to the Bible as the Word of the Devil. Such charges, from

passionate and uncritical enemies, are worthless except as they serve to

explain the bitter prejudice with which the Quakers were regarded. They

remind one of the silly accusation brought against Wyclif two centuries

earlier, that he taught his disciples that God ought to obey the Devil;

[24] and they are not altogether unlike the assumptions of some modern

theologians who take it for granted that any writer who accepts the

Darwinian theory must be a materialist. [Sidenote: Endicott and Norton

take the lead] [Sidenote: The Quakers and their views]

But worthless as Mather's statements are, in describing the views of

the Quakers, they are valuable as indicating the temper in which these

disturbers of the Puritan theocracy were regarded. In accusing them of

rejecting the Bible and making a law unto themselves, Mather simply put

on record a general belief which he shared. Nor can it be doubted that

the demeanour of the Quaker enthusiasts was sometimes such as to seem

to warrant the belief that their anarchical doctrines entailed, as a

natural consequence, disorderly and disreputable conduct. In those

days all manifestations of dissent were apt to be violent, and the

persecution which they encountered was likely to call forth strange and

unseemly vagaries. When we remember how the Quakers, in their scorn of

earthly magistrates and princes, would hoot at the governor as he

walked up the street; how they used to rush into church on Sundays and

interrupt the sermon with untimely remarks; how Thomas Newhouse once

came into the Old South Meeting-House with a glass bottle in each hand,

and, holding them up before the astonished congregation, knocked them

together and smashed them, with the remark, "Thus will the Lord break

you all in pieces"; how Lydia Wardwell and Deborah Wilson ran about the

streets in the primitive costume of Eve before the fall, and called

their conduct "testifying before the Lord"; we can hardly wonder that

people should have been reminded of the wretched scenes enacted at

Munster by the Anabaptists of the preceding century. [Sidenote: Violent

manifestations of dissent]

Such incidents, however, do not afford the slightest excuse for the

cruel treatment which the Quakers received in Boston, nor do they go

far toward explaining it. Persecution began immediately, before the

new-comers had a chance to behave themselves well or ill. Their mere

coming to Boston was taken as an act of invasion. It was indeed an

attack upon the Puritan theocratic idea. Of all the sectaries of that

age of sects, the Quakers were the most aggressive. There were at one

time more than four thousand of them in English jails; yet when any of

them left England, it was less to escape persecution than to preach

their doctrines far and wide over the earth. Their missionaries found

their way to Paris, to Vienna; even to Rome, where they testified under

the very roof of the Vatican. In this dauntless spirit they came to New

England to convert its inhabitants, or at any rate to establish the

principle that in whatever community it might please them to stay, there

they would stay in spite of judge or hangman. At first they came to

Barbadoes, whence two of their number, Anne Austin and Mary Fisher,

sailed for Boston. When they landed, on a May morning in 1656, Endicott

happened to be away from Boston, but the deputy-governor, Richard

Bellingham, was equal to the occasion. He arrested the two women and

locked them up in jail, where, for fear they might proclaim their

heresies to the crowd gathered outside, the windows were boarded up.

There was no law as yet enacted against Quakers, but a council summoned

for the occasion pronounced their doctrines blasphemous and devilish.

The books which the poor women had with them were seized and publicly

burned, and the women themselves were kept in prison half-starved for

five weeks until the ship they had come in was ready to return to

Barbadoes. Soon after their departure Endicott came home. He found fault

with Bellingham's conduct as too gentle; if he had been there he would

have had the hussies flogged. [Sidenote: Anne Austin and Mary Fisher]

Five years afterward Mary Fisher went to Adrianople and tried to convert

the Grand Turk, who treated her with grave courtesy and allowed her to

prophesy unmolested. This is one of the numerous incidents that, on a

superficial view of history, might be cited in support of the opinion

that there has been on the whole more tolerance in the Mussulman than in

the Christian world. Rightly interpreted, however, the fact has no such

implication. In Massachusetts the preaching of Quaker doctrines might

(and did) lead to a revolution; in Turkey it was as harmless as the

barking of dogs. Governor Endicott was afraid of Mary Fisher; Mahomet

III. was not.

No sooner had the two women been shipped from Boston than eight other

Quakers arrived from London. They were at once arrested. While they were

lying in jail the Federal Commissioners, then in session at Plymouth,

recommended that laws be forthwith enacted to keep these dreaded

heretics out of the land. Next year they stooped so far as to seek the

aid of Rhode Island, the colony which they had refused to admit into

their confederacy. "They sent a letter to the authorities of that

colony, signing themselves their loving friends and neighbours, and

beseeching them to preserve the whole body of colonies against 'such a

pest' by banishing and excluding all Quakers, a measure to which 'the

rule of charity did oblige them.'" Roger Williams was then president of

Rhode Island, and in full accord with his noble spirit was the reply of

the assembly. "We have no law amongst us whereby to punish any for only

declaring by words their minds and understandings concerning the things

and ways of God as to salvation and our eternal condition." As for these

Quakers we find that where they are "most of all suffered to declare

themselves freely and only opposed by arguments in discourse, there

they least of all desire to come." Any breach of the civil law shall be

punished, but the "freedom of different consciences shall be respected."

This reply enraged the confederated colonies, and Massachusetts, as the

strongest and most overbearing, threatened to cut off the trade of

Rhode Island, which forthwith appealed to Cromwell for protection. The

language of the appeal is as touching as its broad Christian spirit is

grand. It recognizes that by stopping trade the men of Massachusetts

will injure themselves, yet, it goes on to say, "for the safeguard of

their religion they may seem to neglect themselves in that respect; for

what will not men do for their God?" But whatever fortune may befall,

"let us not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men's

consciences." [25] [Sidenote: Noble conduct of Rhode Island]

There could never, of course, be a doubt as to who drew up this state

paper. During his last visit to England, three years before, Roger

Williams had spent several weeks at Sir Harry Vane's country house in

Lincolnshire, and he had also been intimately associated with Cromwell

and Milton. The views of these great men were the most advanced of

that age. They were coming to understand the true principle upon which

toleration should be based. (See my Excursions of an Evolutionist, pp.

247, 289-293.) Vane had said in Parliament, "Why should the labours of

any be suppressed, if sober, though never so different? We now profess

to seek God, we desire to see light!" [Sidenote: Roger Williams appeals

to Cromwell]

This Williams called a "heavenly speech." The sentiment it expressed was

in accordance with the practical policy of Cromwell, and in the appeal

of the president of Rhode Island to the Lord Protector one hears the

tone with which friend speaks to friend.

In thus protecting the Quakers, Williams never for a moment concealed

his antipathy to their doctrines. The author of "George Fox digged out

of his Burrowes," the sturdy controversialist who in his seventy-third

year rowed himself in a boat the whole length of Narragansett bay to

engage in a theological tournament against three Quaker champions, was

animated by nothing less than the broadest liberalism in his bold reply

to the Federal Commissioners in 1657. The event showed that under his

guidance the policy of Rhode Island was not only honourable but wise.

The four confederated colonies all proceeded to pass laws banishing

Quakers and making it a penal offence for shipmasters to bring them to

New England. These laws differed in severity. Those of Connecticut, in

which we may trace the influence of the younger John Winthrop, were the

mildest; those of Massachusetts were the most severe, and as Quakers

kept coming all the more in spite of them, they grew harsher and

harsher. At first the Quaker who persisted in returning was to be

flogged and imprisoned at hard labour, next his ears were to be cut off,

and for a third offence his tongue was to be bored with a hot iron.

At length in 1658, the Federal Commissioners, sitting at Boston with

Endicott as chairman, recommended capital punishment. It must be borne

in mind that the general reluctance toward prescribing or inflicting the

death penalty was much weaker then than now. On the statute-books there

were not less than fifteen capital crimes, including such offences as

idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, marriage within the Levitical degrees,

"presumptuous sabbath-breaking," and cursing or smiting one's parents.

[26] The infliction of the penalty, however, lay practically very much

within the discretion of the court, and was generally avoided except in

cases of murder or other heinous felony. In some of these ecclesiastical

offences the statute seems to have served the purpose of a threat, and

was therefore perhaps the more easily enacted. Yet none of the colonies

except Massachusetts now adopted the suggestion of the Federal

Commissioners and threatened the Quakers with death. [Sidenote: Laws

passed against the Quakers]

In Massachusetts the opposition was very strong indeed, and its

character shows how wide the divergence in sentiment had already become

between the upper stratum of society and the people in general. This

divergence was one result of the excessive weight given to the clergy by

the restriction of the suffrage to church members. One might almost say

that it was not the people of Massachusetts, after all, that shed

the blood of the Quakers; it was Endicott and the clergy. The bill

establishing death as the penalty for returning after banishment was

passed in the upper house without serious difficulty; but in the lower

house it was at first defeated. Of the twenty-six deputies fifteen were

opposed to it, but one of these fell sick and two were intimidated,

so that finally the infamous measure was passed by a vote of thirteen

against twelve. Probably it would not have passed but for a hopeful

feeling that an occasion for putting it into execution would not

be likely to arise. It was hoped that the mere threat would prove

effective. Endicott begged the Quakers to keep away, saying earnestly

that he did not desire their death; but the more resolute spirits

were not deterred by fear of the gallows. In September, 1659, William

Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and Mary Dyer, who had come to Boston

expressly to defy the cruel law, were banished. Mrs. Dyer was a lady

of good family, wife of the secretary of Rhode Island. She had been an

intimate friend of Mrs. Hutchinson. While she went home to her husband,

Stevenson and Robinson went only to Salem and then faced about and came

back to Boston. Mrs. Dyer also returned. All three felt themselves

under divine command to resist and defy the persecutors. On the 27th of

October they were led to the gallows on Boston Common, under escort of

a hundred soldiers. Many people had begun to cry shame on such

proceedings, and it was thought necessary to take precautions against a

tumult. The victims tried to address the crowd, but their voices were

drowned by the beating of drums. While the Rev. John Wilson railed and

scoffed at them from the foot of the gallows the two brave men were

hanged. The halter had been placed upon Mrs. Dyer when her son, who

had come in all haste from Rhode Island, obtained her reprieve on

his promise to take her away. The bodies of the two men were denied

Christian burial and thrown uncovered into a pit. All the efforts of

husband and son were unable to keep Mrs. Dyer at home. In the following

spring she returned to Boston and on the first day of June was again

taken to the gallows. At the last moment she was offered freedom if she

would only promise to go away and stay, but she refused. "In obedience

to the will of the Lord I came," said she, "and in his will I abide

faithful unto death." And so she died. [Sidenote: Executions on Boston

Common] [Sidenote: Wenlock Christison's defiance and victory]

Public sentiment in Boston was now turning so strongly against the

magistrates that they began to weaken in their purpose. But there

was one more victim. In November, 1660, William Leddra returned from

banishment. The case was clear enough, but he was kept in prison four

months and every effort was made to induce him to promise to leave the

colony, but in vain. In the following March he too was put to death. A

few days before the execution, as Leddra was being questioned in court,

a memorable scene occurred. Wenlock Christison was one of those who had

been banished under penalty of death. On his return he made straight for

the town-house, strode into the court-room, and with uplifted finger

addressed the judges in words of authority. "I am come here to warn

you," said he, "that ye shed no more innocent blood." He was instantly

seized and dragged off to jail. After three months he was brought to

trial before the Court of Assistants. The magistrates debated for more

than a fortnight as to what should be done. The air was thick with

mutterings of insurrection, and they had lost all heart for their

dreadful work. Not so the savage old man who presided, frowning gloomily

under his black skull cap. Losing his patience at last, Endicott smote

the table with fury, upbraided the judges for their weakness, and

declared himself so disgusted that he was ready to go back to England.

[27] "You that will not consent, record it," he shouted, as the question

was again put to vote, "I thank God I am not afraid to give judgment."

Christison was condemned to death, but the sentence was never executed.

In the interval the legislature assembled, and the law was modified. The

martyrs had not died in vain. Their cause was victorious. A revolution

had been effected. The Puritan ideal of a commonwealth composed of a

united body of believers was broken down, never again to be restored.

The principle had been admitted that the heretic might come to

Massachusetts and stay there.

It was not in a moment, however, that these results were fully realized.

For some years longer Quakers were fined, imprisoned, and now and then

tied to the cart's tail and whipped from one town to another. But these

acts of persecution came to be more and more discountenanced by public

opinion until at length they ceased.

It was on the 25th of May, 1660, just one week before the martyrdom of

Mary Dyer, that Charles II. returned to England to occupy his father's

throne. One of the first papers laid before him was a memorial in behalf

of the oppressed Quakers in New England. In the course of the following

year he sent a letter to Endicott and the other New England governors,

ordering them to suspend proceedings against the Quakers, and if any

were then in prison, to send them to England for trial. Christison's

victory had already been won, but the "King's Missive" was now partially

obeyed by the release of all prisoners. As for sending anybody to

England for trial, that was something that no New England government

could ever be made to allow.

Charles's defence of the Quakers was due, neither to liberality

of disposition nor to any sympathy with them, but rather to his

inclinations toward Romanism. Unlike in other respects, Quakers and

Catholics were alike in this, that they were the only sects which the

Protestant world in general agreed in excluding from toleration. Charles

wished to secure toleration for Catholics, and he could not prudently

take steps toward this end without pursuing a policy broad enough to

diminish persecution in other directions, and from these circumstances

the Quakers profited. At times there was something almost like a

political alliance between Quaker and Catholic, as instanced in the

relations between William Penn and Charles's brother, the Duke of York.

[Sidenote: The "King's Missive"] [Sidenote: Why Charles II. interfered

to protect the Quakers]

Besides all this, Charles had good reason to feel that the governments

of New England were assuming too many airs of sovereignty. There were

plenty of people at hand to work upon his mind. The friends of Gorton

and Child and Vassall were loud with their complaints. Samuel Maverick

swore that the people of New England were all rebels, and he could prove

it. The king was assured that the Confederacy was "a war combination,

made by the four colonies when they had a design to throw off their

dependence on England, and for that purpose." The enemies of the New

England people, while dilating upon the rebellious disposition of

Massachusetts, could also remind the king that for several years that

colony had been coining and circulating shillings and sixpences with the

name "Massachusetts" and a tree on one side, and the name "New England"

with the date on the other. There was no recognition of England upon

this coinage, which was begun in 1652 and kept up for more than thirty

years. Such pieces of money used to be called "pine-tree shillings";

but, so far as looks go, the tree might be anything, and an adroit

friend of New England once gravely assured the king that it was meant

for the royal oak in which his majesty hid himself after the battle of

Worcester!

Against the colony of New Haven the king had a special grudge. Two of

the regicide judges, who had sat in the tribunal which condemned his

father, escaped to New England in 1660 and were well received there.

They were gentlemen of high position. Edward Whalley was a cousin of

Cromwell and Hampden. He had distinguished himself at Naseby and Dunbar,

and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. He had commanded at

the capture of Worcester, where it is interesting to observe that the

royalist commander who surrendered to him was Sir Henry Washington, own

cousin to the grandfather of George Washington. The other regicide,

William Goffe, as a major-general in Cromwell's army, had won such

distinction that there were some who pointed to him as the proper person

to succeed the Lord Protector on the death of the latter. He had married

Whalley's daughter. Soon after the arrival of these gentlemen, a royal

order for their arrest was sent to Boston. If they had been arrested and

sent back to England, their severed heads would soon have been placed

over Temple Bar. The king's detectives hotly pursued them through the

woodland paths of New England, and they would soon have been taken but

for the aid they got from the people. Many are the stories of their

hairbreadth escapes. Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain

near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars; and once, being

hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden bridge, while their pursuers

on horseback galloped by overhead. After lurking about New Haven and

Milford for two or three years, on hearing of the expected arrival

of Colonel Nichols and his commission, they sought a more secluded

hiding-place near Hadley, a village lately settled far up the

Connecticut river, within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Here the

avengers lost the trail, the pursuit was abandoned, and the weary

regicides were presently forgotten. The people of New Haven had been

especially zealous in shielding the fugitives. Mr. Davenport had not

only harboured them in his own house, but on the Sabbath before their

expected arrival he had preached a very bold sermon, openly advising

his people to aid and comfort them as far as possible. [28] The colony,

moreover, did not officially recognize the restoration of Charles II. to

the throne until that event had been commonly known in New England for

more than a year. For these reasons the wrath of the king was specially

roused against New Haven, when circumstances combined to enable him at

once to punish this disloyal colony and deal a blow at the Confederacy.

We have seen that in restricting the suffrage to church members New

Haven had followed the example of Massachusetts, but Connecticut had

not; and at this time there was warm controversy between the two younger

colonies as to the wisdom Of such a policy. As yet none of the colonies

save Massachusetts had obtained a charter, and Connecticut was naturally

anxious to obtain one. Whether through a complaisant spirit connected

with this desire, or through mere accident, Connecticut had been prompt

in acknowledging the restoration of Charles II.; and in August, 1661,

she dispatched the younger Winthrop to England to apply for a charter.

Winthrop was a man of winning address and of wide culture. His

scientific tastes were a passport to the favour of the king at a time

when the Royal Society was being founded, of which Winthrop himself was

soon chosen a fellow. In every way the occasion was an auspicious one.

The king looked upon the rise of the New England Confederacy with

unfriendly eyes. Massachusetts was as yet the only member of the league

that was really troublesome; and there seemed to be no easier way to

weaken her than to raise up a rival power by her side, and extend to it

such privileges as might awaken her jealousy. All the more would such

a policy be likely to succeed if accompanied by measures of which

Massachusetts must necessarily disapprove, and the suppression of

New Haven would be such a measure. [Sidenote: New Haven annexed to

Connecticut]

In accordance with these views, a charter of great liberality was at

once granted to Connecticut, and by the same instrument the colony of

New Haven was deprived of its separate existence and annexed to its

stronger neighbour. As if to emphasize the motives which had led to this

display of royal favour toward Connecticut, an equally liberal charter

was granted to Rhode Island. In the summer of 1664 Charles II. sent a

couple of ships-of-war to Boston harbour, with 400 troops under command

of Colonel Richard Nichols, who had been appointed, along with Samuel

Maverick and two others as royal commissioners, to look after the

affairs of the New World. Colonel Nichols took his ships to New

Amsterdam, and captured that important town. After his return the

commissioners held meetings at Boston, and for a time the Massachusetts

charter seemed in danger. But the Puritan magistrates were shrewd, and

months were frittered away to no purpose. Presently the Dutch made war

upon England, and the king felt it to be unwise to irritate the people

of Massachusetts beyond endurance. The turbulent state of English

politics which followed still further absorbed his attention, and New

England had another respite of several years. [Sidenote: Founding of

Newark]

In New Haven a party had grown up which was dissatisfied with its

extreme theocratic policy and approved of the union with Connecticut.

Davenport and his followers, the founders of the colony, were beyond

measure disgusted. They spurned "the Christless rule" of the sister

colony. Many of them took advantage of the recent conquest of New

Netherland, and a strong party, led by the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of

Branford, migrated to the banks of the Passaic in June, 1667, and laid

the foundations of Newark. For some years to come the theocratic idea

that had given birth to New Haven continued to live on in New Jersey. As

for Mr. Davenport, he went to Boston and ended his days there. Cotton

Mather, writing at a later date, when the theocratic scheme of the early

settlers had been manifestly outgrown and superseded, says of Davenport:

"Yet, after all, the Lord gave him to see that in this world a

Church-State was impossible, whereinto there enters nothing which

defiles."

The theocratic policy, alike in New Haven and in Massachusetts, broke

down largely through its inherent weakness. It divided the community,

and created among the people a party adverse to its arrogance and

exclusiveness. This state of things facilitated the suppression of

New Haven by royal edict, and it made possible the victory of Wenlock

Christison in Massachusetts. We can now see the fundamental explanation

of the deadly hostility with which Endicott and his party regarded the

Quakers. The latter aimed a fatal blow at the very root of the idea

which had brought the Puritans to New England. Once admit these heretics

as citizens, or even as tolerated sojourners, and there was an end of

the theocratic state consisting of a united body of believers. It was a

life-and-death struggle, in which no quarter was given; and the Quakers,

aided by popular discontent with the theocracy, even more than by the

intervention of the crown, won a decisive victory.

As the work of planting New England took place chiefly in the eleven

years 1629-1640, during which Charles I. contrived to reign without a

parliament, so the prosperous period of the New England Confederacy,

1643-1664, covers the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and

just laps on to the reign of Charles II. By the summary extinction of

the separate existence of one of its members for the benefit of another,

its vigour was sadly impaired. But its constitution was revised so as

to make it a league of three states instead of four; and the Federal

Commissioners kept on holding their meetings, though less frequently,

until the revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1684. During

this period a great Indian war occurred, in the course of which this

concentration of the military strength of New England, imperfect as it

was, proved itself very useful. In the history of New England, from the

restoration of the Stuarts until their final expulsion, the two most

important facts are the military struggle of the newly founded states

with the Indians, and their constitutional struggle against the British

government. The troubles and dangers of 1636 were renewed on a much more

formidable scale, but the strength of the people had waxed greatly in

the mean time, and the new perils were boldly overcome or skilfully

warded off; not, however, until the constitution of Massachusetts had

been violently wrenched out of shape in the struggle, and seeds of

conflict sown which in the following century were to bear fruit in the

American Revolution. [Sidenote: Breaking down of the theocratic policy]

[Sidenote: Weakening of the Confederacy]