THE BAY COLONY
While the Pilgrims were thus establishing themselves as the first
occupants of the soil of New England, other men of various sorts and
motives were trying their fortunes within its borders and were testing
the opportunities which it offered for fishing and trade with the
Indians. They came as individuals and companies, men of wandering
disposition, romantic characters many of them, resembling the rovers and
adventurers in the Caribbean or representing some of the many activities
prevalent in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thomas
Weston, former ally of the Pilgrims, settled with a motley crew of rude
fellows at Wessagusset (Quincy) and there established a trading post in
1622. Of this settlement, which came to an untimely end after causing
the Pilgrims a great deal of trouble, only a blockhouse and stockade
remained. Another irregular trader, Captain Wollaston, with some thirty
or forty people, chiefly servants, established himself in 1625 two miles
north of Wessagusset, calling the place Mount Wollaston. With him came
that wit, versifier, and prince of roysterers, Thomas Morton, who, after
Wollaston had moved on to Virginia, became "lord of misrule." Dubbing
his seat Merrymount, drinking, carousing, and corrupting the Indians,
affronting the decorous Separatists at Plymouth, Morton later became a
serious menace to the peace of Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrims felt that
the coming of such adventurers and scoffers, who were none too
scrupulous in their dealings with either white man or Indian and were
given to practices which the Puritans heartily abhorred, was a calamity
showing that even in the wilds of America they could not escape the
world from which they were anxious to withdraw.
The settlements formed by these squatters and stragglers were quite
unauthorized by the New England Council, which owned the title to the
soil. As this Council had accomplished very little under its patent, Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, its most active member, persisted in his efforts to
found a colony, brought about a general distribution of the territory
among its members, and obtained for himself and his son Robert, the
section around and immediately north of Massachusetts Bay. An expedition
was at once launched. In September, 1623, Robert Gorges with six
gentlemen and a well-equipped and well-organized body of settlers
reached Plymouth,--the forerunners, it was hoped, of a large number to
come. This company of settlers was composed of families, the heads of
which were mechanics and farmers, and with them were two clergymen,
Morrell and Blackstone, the whole constituting the greatest enterprise
set on foot in America by the Council. Robert Gorges, bearing a
commission constituting him Governor-General over all New England, made
his settlement at Weston's old place at Wessagusset. Here he built
houses and stored his goods and began the founding of Weymouth, the
second permanent habitation in New England and the first on
Massachusetts Bay. Unfortunately, famine, that arch-enemy of all the
early settlers, fell upon his company, his father's resources in England
proved inadequate, and he and others were obliged to return. Of those
that remained a few stayed at Wessagusset; one of the clergymen, William
Blackstone, with his wife went to Shawmut (Boston); Samuel Maverick and
his wife, to Winnissimmet (Chelsea); and the Walfords, to Mishawum
(Charlestown). Probably all these people were Anglicans; some later
became freemen of the Massachusetts colony; others who refused to
conform returned to England; but Blackstone remained in his little
cottage on the south slope of Beacon Hill, unwilling to join any of the
churches, because, as he said, he came from England to escape the "Lord
Bishops," and he did not propose in America to be under the "Lord
Brethren."
The colony of Massachusetts Bay began as a fishing venture with profit
as its object. It so happened that the Pilgrims wished to secure a right
to fish off Cape Ann, and through one of their number they applied to
Lord Sheffield, a member of the Council who had shared in the
distribution of 1623. Sheffield caused a patent to be drawn, which the
Plymouth people conveyed to a Dorchester company desiring to establish a
fishing colony in New England. The chief promoter of the Dorchester
venture was the Reverend John White, a conforming Puritan clergyman, in
whose congregation was one John Endecott. The company thus organized
remained in England but sent some fourteen settlers to Cape Ann in the
winter of 1623-1624. Fishing and planting, however, did not go well
together, the venture failed, and the settlers removed southward to
Naumkeag (Salem). Though many of the English company desired to abandon
the undertaking, there were others, among whom were a few Puritans or
Nonconformists, who favored its continuance. These men consulted with
others of like mind in London, and through the help of the Earl of
Warwick, a nobleman friendly to the Puritan cause, a patent was issued
by the Council to Endecott and five associates, for land extending from
above the Merrimac to below the Charles. This patent, it will be
noticed, included the territory already granted to Gorges and his son
Robert, and was obtained apparently with the consent of Gorges, who
thought that his own and his son's rights would be safely protected.
Under this patent, the partners sent over Endecott as governor with
sixty others to begin a colony at Salem, where the "old planters" from
Cape Ann had already established themselves. Salem was thus a plantation
from September, 1628, to the summer of 1630, on land granted to the
associates in England; and the relations of these two were much the same
as those of Jamestown with the London Company.
Endecott and his associates soon made it evident, however, that they
were planning larger things for themselves and had no intention, if they
could help it, of recognizing the claims of Gorges and his son. They
wanted complete control of their territory in New England, and to this
end they applied to the Crown for a confirmation of their land-patent
and for a charter of incorporation as a company with full powers of
government. As this application was a deliberate defiance of Gorges and
the New England Council, it has always been a matter of surprise that
the associates were able to gain the support of the Crown in this effort
to oust Gorges and his son from lands that were legally theirs. No
satisfactory explanation has ever been advanced, but it is worthy of
note that at this juncture Gorges was in France in the service of the
King, whereas on the side of the associates and their friends was the
Earl of Warwick, himself deeply interested in colonizing projects and
one of the most powerful men in England. The charter was obtained March
4, 1629--how, we do not know. It created a corporation of twenty-six
members, Anglicans and Nonconformists, known as the Massachusetts Bay
Company.
But if the original purpose of this company was to engage in a business
enterprise for the sake of profit, it soon underwent a noteworthy
transformation. In 1629, control passed into the hands of those members
of the company in whom a religious motive was uppermost. How far the
charter was planned at first as a Puritan contrivance to be used in case
of need will never be known. It is equally uncertain whether the
particular form of charter, with the place of the company's residence
omitted, was selected to facilitate a possible removal of the company
from England to America; but it is likely that removal was early in the
minds of the Puritan members of the company. At this time a great many
people felt as did the Reverend John White, who expressed the hope that
God's people should turn with eyes of longing to the free and open
spaces of the New World, whither they might flee to be at peace. But,
when the charter was granted, the Puritans were not in control of the
company, which remained in England for a year after it was incorporated,
superintending the management of its colony just as other trading
companies had done.
But events were moving rapidly in England. Between March, 1629, and
March, 1630, Parliament was dissolved under circumstances of great
excitement, parliamentary privileges were set aside, parliamentary
leaders were sent to the Tower, and the period of royal rule without
Parliament began. The heavy hand of an autocratic government fell on all
those within reach who upheld the Puritan cause, among whom was John
Winthrop, a country squire, forty-one years of age, who was deprived of
his office as attorney in the Court of Wards. Disillusioned as to life
in England because of financial losses and family bereavements, and now
barred from his customary employment by act of the Government, he turned
his thoughts toward America. Acting with the approval of the Earl of
Warwick and in conjunction with a group of Puritan friends--Thomas
Dudley, Isaac Johnson, Richard Saltonstall, and John Humphrey,--he
decided in the summer of 1629 to leave England forever, and in September
he joined the Massachusetts Bay Company. Almost immediately he showed
his capacity for leadership, was soon elected governor, and was able
during the following winter to obtain such a control of affairs as to
secure a vote in favor of the transfer of charter and company to New
England. The official organization was remodeled so that only those
desiring to remove should be in control, and on March 29, 1630, the
company with its charter, accompanied by a considerable number of
prospective colonists, set sail from Cowes near the Isle of Wight in
four vessels, the _Arabella_, the _Talbot_, the _Ambrose_, and the
_Jewel_, the remaining passengers following in seven other vessels a
week or two later. The voyages of the vessels were long, none less than
nine weeks, by way of the Azores and the Maine coast, and the distressed
Puritans, seven hundred altogether, scurvy-stricken and reduced in
numbers by many deaths, did not reach Salem until June and July. Hence
they moved on to Charlestown, set up their tents on the slope of the
hill, and on the 23rd of August, held the first official meeting of the
company on American soil; but finding no running water in the place and
still pursued by sickness and death, they again removed, this time to
Boston, where they built houses against the winter. With the founding of
this colony--the colony of Massachusetts Bay--a new era for New England
began.
This grant of territory to the Massachusetts Bay Company and of the
charter confirming the title and conveying powers of government put a
complete stop to Gorges's plans for a final proprietorship in New
England. Gorges had acquiesced in the first grant by the New England
Council because he thought it a sub-grant, like that to Plymouth, in no
way injuring his own control. But when in 1632, he learned the true
inwardness of the Massachusetts title and discovered that Warwick and
the Puritans had outwitted him by obtaining royal confirmation of a
grant that extinguished his own proprietary rights, he turned on
Warwick, declared that the charter had been surreptitiously obtained,
and demanded that it be brought to the Council board. Learning that it
had gone to New England, he forced the withdrawal of Warwick from the
Council, and from that time forward for five years bent all his efforts
to overthrow the Puritan colony by obtaining the annulment of its
privileges.
In this attempt, he was aided by Captain John Mason, an able, energetic
promoter of colonizing movements who had already been concerned with
settlements in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and who was zealous to
begin a plantation in the province of Maine. Mason had received grants
from the Council, both individually and in partnership with Gorges, and
had visited New England in the interest of his claims. Through the
influence of Gorges, he was now made a member of the Council and joined
in the movement to break the hold of the Puritans upon New England. He
and Gorges found useful allies in three men who had been driven out of
Massachusetts by the Puritan leaders soon after their arrival at
Boston--Thomas Morton of Merrymount, Sir Christopher Gardiner, a
picturesque, somewhat mysterious personage thought to have been an agent
of Gorges in New England, with methods and morals that gave offense to
Massachusetts, and Philip Ratcliffe, a much less worthy character given
to scandal and invective, who had been deprived of his ears by the
Puritan authorities. These men were bitter in their denunciation of the
Puritan government.
The situation was perilous for the new colony, which was hardly yet
firmly established. In direct violation of the royal commands, hundreds
of men and women were leaving England--not merely adventurers or humble
Separatists, but sober people of the better classes, of mature years and
substantial characters. When, therefore, Gorges and the others meeting
at Gorges's house at Plymouth brought their complaints to the attention
of the Privy Council, they were listened to with attention, and
instructions were sent at once to stop the Puritan ships and to bring
the charter of the Massachusetts Company to the Council board. To check
the Puritan migration and to institute further inquiry into the facts of
the case a commission was appointed in 1634, with Archbishop Laud at its
head, for the special purpose, among others, of revoking charters
"surreptitiously and unduly obtained." Gorges and Morton appealed to
Laud against the Puritans, and Morton wrote his _New England Canaan_,
which he dedicated to Laud, in the hope of exposing the motives of the
colony and of arousing the Archbishop to action. Warwick threw his
influence on the side of Massachusetts, being always forward, as
Winthrop said, "to do good to our colony"; and the colony itself,
fearing attack, began to fortify Castle Island in the harbor and to
prepare for defense. Endecott, in wrath, defaced the royal ensign at
Salem, and so intense was the excitement and so determined the attitude
of the Puritans that, had the Crown attempted to send over a
Governor-General or to seize the charter by force, the colony would have
resisted to the full extent of its power.
Gorges, believing that he could work better through the King and the
Archbishop than through the New England Council, brought about the
dissolution of that body in 1635, thus making it possible for the King
to deal directly with the New England situation. Before its dissolution
the Council had authorized Morton, acting as its lawyer, to bring the
case to the attention of the Attorney-General of England, who filed in
the Court of King's Bench a complaint against Massachusetts, as a result
of which a writ of _quo warranto_ was issued against the Company.
The outlook was ominous for Puritanism, not only in New England but in
old England as well. That year saw the flight of the greatest number of
emigrants across the sea, for the persecution in England was at its
height, the Puritan aristocracy was suffering in its estates, and
Puritan divines were everywhere silenced or dismissed. Even Warwick was
shorn of a part of his power. Young Henry Vane, son of a baronet, had
already gone to America, and such men as Lord Saye and Sele, Lord
Brooke, and Sir Arthur Haslerigg were thinking of migrating and had
prepared a refuge at Saybrook where they might find peace. But the turn
of the tide soon came. The royal Government was bankrupt, the resistance
to the payment of ship-money was already making itself felt, and
disturbances in the central and eastern counties were absorbing the
attention and energies of the Government. Gorges, left alone to execute
the writ against the colony, joined with Mason in building a ship for
the purpose of carrying the _quo warranto_ to New England, but the
vessel broke in the launching, and their resources were at an end. Mason
died in 1635, and Gorges, an old man of seventy, bankrupt and
discouraged, could do no more. Though Morton continued the struggle, and
though, in 1638, the Committee of the Council for Foreign Plantations
(the Laud Commission) again demanded the charter, the danger was past:
conditions in England had become so serious for the King that the
complaints against Massachusetts were lost to view. At last in 1639
Gorges obtained his charter for a feudal propriety in Maine but no
further attempts were made to overthrow the Massachusetts Bay colony.
During the years from 1630 to 1640, the growth of the colony was
extraordinarily rapid. In the first year alone seventeen ships with
two thousand colonists came over, and it is estimated that by 1641
three hundred vessels bearing twenty thousand passengers had crossed
the Atlantic. It was a great migration. Inevitably many went back,
but the great majority remained and settled in Boston and its
neighborhood--Roxbury, Charlestown, Dorchester, Cambridge, and
Watertown, where in 1643 were situated according to Winthrop "near half
of the commonwealth for number of people and substance." From the first
the colonists dispersed rapidly, establishing in favorable places
settlements which they generally called plantations but sometimes towns.
In these they lived as petty religious and civil communities, each under
its minister, with civil officials chosen from among themselves. In the
decade following 1630 the number of such settlements rose to twenty-two.
The inhabitants were almost purely English in stock, with here and there
an Irishman, a few Jews, and an occasional negro from the West Indies.
Nearly all the settlers were of Puritan sympathies, and of middle-class
origin--tenants from English estates, artisans from English towns, and
many indentured servants. A few were of the aristocracy, such as Lady
Arabella Johnson, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln, Sir Richard
Saltonstall, Lady Deborah Moody, members of the Harlakenden family,
young Henry Vane, Thomas Gorges, and a few others. Of "Misters" and
"Esquires" there was a goodly number, such as Winthrop, Haynes, Emanuel
Downing, and the like. The first leaders were exceptional men,
possessed of ability and education, and many were university graduates,
who brought with them the books and the habits of the reader and scholar
of their day. They were superior to those of the second and third
generation in the breadth of their ideas and in the vigor and
originality of their convictions.
Migration ceased in 1641, and a time of stress and suffering set in.
Commodities grew scarce, prices rose, many colonists returned to England
leaving debts behind, and as yet the colony produced no staples to
exchange for merchandise from the mother country. Some of the settlers,
discouraged, went to the West Indies; others, fleeing for fear of want,
found their way to the Dutch at Long Island. Pressure was brought to
bear at various times to persuade the people to migrate elsewhere as a
body, to Old Providence and Trinidad in the Caribbean, to Maryland, and
later to Jamaica; but these attempts proved vain. The Puritan was
willing to endure hardship and suffering for the sake of civil and
religious independence, but he was not willing to lose his identity
among those who did not share his faith in the guiding hand of God or
who denied the principles according to which he wished to govern his
community. At first the leaders of the migration were Nonconformists not
Separatists. Francis Higginson, Endecott's minister at Salem, had
declared in 1629 that they did not go to New England as separatists from
the Church of England but only as those who would "separate from the
corruption in it"; and Winthrop used "Easter" and the customary names of
the months until 1635. But the Puritans became essentially Separatists
from the day when Dr. Samuel Fuller of Plymouth persuaded the Salem
community, even before the company itself had left England, to accept
the practices of the Plymouth Church. Each town consequently had its
church, pastor, teacher, and covenant, and became an independent
Congregational community--a circumstance which left a deep impress upon
the life and history of New England.
The government of the colony was never a democracy in the modern sense
of the term. At first in 1630, control was assumed by the governor and
his assistants, leaving but little power in the hands of the freeman;
but such usurpation of power could not last, and in 1634 the freemen
were given the right to elect officials, to make and enforce laws,
raise money, impose taxes, and dispose of lands. Thus was begun the
transformation of the court of the company into a parliament, and the
company itself into a commonwealth. So self-sufficient did the colony
become in these early years of its history that by 1646 Massachusetts
could assert that it owed only allegiance to England and was entirely
independent of the British Parliament in all matters of government, in
which affairs under its charter it had absolute power. Many denied this
contention of the leaders, asserting that the company was only a
corporation and that any colonist had a right of appeal to England.
Winthrop refused definitely to recognize this right, and measures were
taken to purge the colony of these refractory spirits, among whom were
Dr. Robert Child, one of the best educated men of the colony, William
Vassall, and Samuel Maverick. All were fined, some clapped in irons, and
many banished. Child returned to England, Vassall went to Barbados, and
the rest were silenced. So menacing was the revolt that Edward Winslow
was sent to England to present the case to the parliamentary
commissioners, which he did successfully.
But among those who upheld the freedom of the colony from English
interference and control there were many who complained of the form the
government was taking. The franchise was limited to church members,
which debarred five-sixths of the population from voting and holding
office; the magistrates insisted on exercising a negative vote upon the
proceedings of the deputies, because they deemed it necessary to prevent
the colony from degenerating into "a mere democracy"; and the ministers
or elders exercised an influence in purely civil matters that rendered
them arbiters in all disputes between the magistrates and the deputies.
Until 1634, the general court had been a primary assembly, but in that
year representation was introduced and the towns sent deputies, who soon
began to complain of the meagerness of their powers. From this time on,
the efforts of the deputies to reduce the authority of the magistrates
and to increase their own were continuous and insistent. One bold
dissenter was barred from public office in 1635 for daring to deny the
magistrates' claim, and others expressed their fear that autocratic rule
and a governor for life would endanger the liberty of the people. The
dominance of the clergy tended to the maintenance of an intolerant
theocracy and was offensive to many in Massachusetts who, having fled
from Laud's intolerance at home, had no desire to submit to an equal
intolerance in New England. Between 1634 and 1638 the manifestations of
this dislike became conspicuous and alarming. The Governor's son, the
younger John Winthrop, dissatisfied with the hard regime in
Massachusetts, returned to England in 1634. Henry Vane, though elected
Governor in 1636, showed marked discontent, and when defeated the next
year left the colony. The English aristocratic Puritans, Saye and Sele,
Brooke, and others, who planned to leave England in 1635, found
themselves so out of accord with the Massachusetts policy of limiting of
the suffrage to church members--and to church membership as determined
by the clergy--that they refused to go to Boston, and persisted in their
plan for a settlement at Saybrook. The Massachusetts system had thus
become not a constitutional government fashioned after the best liberal
thought in England of that day, but a narrow oligarchy in which the
political order was determined according to a rigid interpretation of
theology. This excessive theocratic concentration of power resulted in
driving from the colony many of its best men.
More notorious even than the political dissensions were the moral and
theological disputes which almost disrupted the colony. The magistrates
and elders did not compel men to leave the colony because of political
heresy, but they did drive them out because of difference in matters of
theology. Even before the company came over, Endecott had sent John and
Samuel Browne back to England because they worshiped according to the
Book of Common Prayer. Morton and six others were banished in 1630 as an
immoral influence. Sir Christopher Gardiner, Philip Ratcliffe, Richard
Wright, the Walfords, and Henry Lynn were all forced to leave in 1630
and 1631 as "unmeete to inhabit here." Roger Williams, the tolerationist
and upholder of soul-liberty, who complained of the magistrates for
oppression and of the elders for injustice and who opposed the close
union of church and state, was compelled to leave during the winter of
1635 and 1636. But the great expulsion came in 1637, when an epidemic of
heresy struck the colony. A synod at Newtown condemned eighty erroneous
opinions, and the general court then disarmed or banished all who
persisted in error.
A furor of excitement gathered about Anne Hutchinson, who claimed to be
moved by the spirit and denied that an outward conformity to the letter
of the covenant was a sufficient test of true religion unless
accompanied with a change in the inner life. She was a nonconformist
among those who, refusing to conform to the Church of England, had now
themselves become conformists of the strictest type. To Mrs. Hutchinson
the "vexatious legalism of Puritanism" was as abhorrent as had been the
practices of the Roman and Anglican churches to the Puritans, and,
though the latter did not realize it, they were as unjust to her as Laud
had been to them. She broke from a covenant of works in favor of a
covenant of grace and in so doing defied the standing authorities and
the ruling clergy of the colony. Her wit, undeniable power of
exhortation, philanthropic disposition, and personal attributes which
gave her an ascendency in the Boston church, drew to her a large
following and placed the supremacy of the orthodox party in peril. After
a long and wordy struggle to check the "misgovernment of a woman's
tongue" and to rebuke "the impudent boldness of a proud dame," Mrs.
Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished; and certain of those who
upheld her--Wheelwright, Coggeshall, Aspinwall, Coddington, and
Underhill, all leading men of the colony--were also forced to leave. In
Boston and the adjoining towns dozens of men were disarmed for fear of a
general uprising against the orthodox government.
This discord put a terrible strain on the colony, and one marvels that
it weathered the storm. Only an iron discipline that knew neither
charity nor tolerance could have successfully resisted the attacks on
the standing order. The years from 1635 to 1638 were a critical time in
the history of the colony, and the unyielding attitude of magistrates
and elders was due in no small part to the danger of attack from
England. Determined, on the one hand, to save the colony from the menace
of Anglican control, and, on the other, to prevent the admission of
liberal and democratic ideas, they struggled to maintain the rule of a
minority in behalf of a precise and logically defined theocratic system
that admitted neither experiment nor compromise. For the moment they
were successful, because the Cromwellian victory in England was
favorable to their cause. But should independence be overthrown at home,
should religion cease to be a deciding factor in political quarrels, and
should the monarchy and the Established Church gain ascendency once
more, then Massachusetts would certainly reap the whirlwind. The
harvesting might be long but the garnering would be none the less sure.