WINNING THE CHARTERS
The accession of Charles II to the throne of England provoked a crisis
in the affairs of the Puritans and gave rise to many problems that the
New Englanders had not anticipated and did not know how to solve. With a
Stuart again in control, there were many questions that might be easily
asked but less easily answered. Except for Massachusetts and Plymouth,
not a settlement had a legal title to its soil; and except for
Massachusetts, not one had ever received a sufficient warrant for the
government which it had set up. Naturally, therefore, there was
disquietude in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven; and even
Massachusetts, buttressed as she was, feared lest the King might object
to many of the things she had done. Entrenched behind her charter and
aware of her superiority in wealth, territory, and population, she had
taken the leadership in New England and had used her opportunity to
intimidate her neighbors. Except for New Haven, not a colony or group of
settlements but had felt the weight of her claims. Plymouth and
Connecticut had protested against her demands; the Narragansett towns
with difficulty had evaded her attempt to absorb them; and the
settlements at Piscataqua and on the Maine coast had finally yielded to
her jurisdiction. As long as Cromwell lived and the Government of
England was under Puritan direction, Massachusetts had little to fear
from protests against her; but, with the Cromwellian regime at an end,
she could not expect from the restored monarchy a favoring or friendly
attitude.
The change in England was not merely one of government; it was one of
policy as well. Even during the Cromwellian period, Englishmen awoke to
a greater appreciation of the importance of colonies as assets of the
mother country, and began to realize, in a fashion unknown to the
earlier period, the necessity of extending and strengthening England's
possessions in America. England was engaged in a desperate commercial
war with Holland, whose vessels had obtained a monopoly of the carrying
trade of the world; and to win in that conflict it was imperative that
her statesmen should husband every resource that the kingdom possessed.
The religious agitations of previous years were passing away and the New
England colonies were not likely to be troubled on account of their
Puritanism. The great question in England was not religious conformity
but national strength based on commercial prosperity.
Thus England was fashioning a new system and defining a new policy. By
means of navigation acts, she barred the Dutch from the carrying trade
and confined colonial commerce in large part to the mother country. She
established councils and committees of trade and plantations, and, by
the seizure of New Netherland in 1664 and the grant of the Carolinas and
the Bahamas in 1663 and 1670, she completed the chain of her possessions
in America from New England to Barbados. A far-flung colonial world was
gradually taking shape, demanding of the King and his advisers an
interest in America of a kind hitherto unknown. It is not surprising
that so vast a problem, involving the trade and defense of nearly twenty
colonies, should have made the internal affairs of New England seem of
less consequence to the royal authorities than had been the case in the
days of Charles I and Archbishop Laud, when the obtaining of the
Massachusetts Bay charter had roused such intensity of feeling in
England. What was interesting Englishmen was no longer the matter of
religious obedience in the colonies, but rather that of their political
and commercial dependence on the mother country.
As the future of New England was certain to be debated at Whitehall
after 1660, the colonies took pains to have representatives on the
ground to meet criticisms and complaints, to ward off attacks, and to
beg for favors. Rhode Island sent a commission to Dr. John Clarke, one
of her founders and leading men, at that time in London, instructing him
to ask for royal protection, self-government, liberty of conscience, and
a charter. Massachusetts sent Simon Bradstreet and the Reverend John
Norton, with a petition that reads like a sermon, praying the King not
to listen to other men's words but to grant the colonists an opportunity
to answer for themselves, they being "true men, fearers of God and the
King, not given to change, orthodox and peaceable in Israel."
Connecticut, with more worldly wisdom, sent John Winthrop, the Governor,
a man courtly and tactful, with a petition shrewdly worded and to the
point. Plymouth entrusted her mission also to Winthrop, hoping for a
confirmation of her political and religious liberties. All protested
their loyalty to the Crown, while Massachusetts, her petition signed by
the stiff-necked Endecott, prostrated herself at the royal feet, craving
pardon for her boldness, and subscribing herself "Your Majesties most
humble subjects and suppliants." Did Endecott remember, we wonder, a
certain incident connected with the royal ensign at Salem?
Against the lesser colonies no complaints were presented, except in the
case of New Haven, which was charged by the inhabitants of Shelter
Island with usurpation of their goods and territory; but for
Massachusetts the restoration of the Stuarts opened a veritable
Pandora's box of troubles. In "divers complaints, petitions, and other
informations concerning New England," she was accused of overbearance
and oppression, of seizing the territory of New Hampshire and Maine, of
denying the rights of Englishmen to Anglicans and non-freemen of the
colony, and of persecuting the Quakers and others of religious views
different from her own. She was declared to be seeking independence of
Crown and Parliament by forbidding appeals to England, refusing to
enforce the oath of allegiance to the King, and in general exceeding the
powers laid down in her charter. The new plantations council,
commissioned by the King in December, 1660, sent a peremptory letter the
following April ordering the colony to proclaim the King "in the most
solemn manner," and to hold herself in readiness to answer complaints by
appointing persons well instructed to represent her before itself in
England. At the same time, it begged the King to go slowly, giving
Massachusetts an opportunity to be heard, and to write a letter "with
all possible tenderness," pointing out that submission to the royal
authority was absolutely essential. This the King did, confirming the
charter of Massachusetts, renewing the colony's rights and privileges,
and in conciliatory fashion ascribing all derelictions of duty to the
iniquity of the times rather than to any evil intention of the heart.
Then declaring that the chief aim of the charter was liberty of
conscience, the King struck at the very heart of the Massachusetts
system, by commanding the magistrates to grant full liberty of worship
to members of the Anglican Church and the right to vote to all who were
"orthodox" in religion and possessed of "competent estates." Though this
order was evaded by various definitions of "orthodox" and "competent
estates" and was not to be fully executed for many years, yet its
meaning was clear--no single religious body would ever again be allowed,
by the royal authorities in England, to monopolize the government or
control the political destinies of a British colony in America or
elsewhere.
The policy thus adopted toward Massachusetts became even more
conciliatory when applied to the other colonies. It is not improbable
that the King's advisers saw in the strengthening of Connecticut and
Rhode Island an opportunity to check the power of Massachusetts and to
reduce her importance in New England. However that may be, they lent
themselves to the efforts that Winthrop and Clarke were making to obtain
charters for their respective colonies. These agents were able,
discreet, and broadminded men. Clarke, a resident in England for a
number of years, had acquired no little personal influence; and
Winthrop, as an old-time friend of the English lords and gentlemen whose
governor he had been at Saybrook, could count on the help of the one
surviving member of that group, Lord Saye and Sele, who was a privy
councillor, a member of the House of Lords and of the plantations
council, and, as we are told, Lord Privy Seal, a position that would be
of direct service in expediting the issue of a charter. Winthrop had
personal qualities, also, that made for success. He was a university
man, had made the grand tour of the Continent, and was familiar with
official traditions and the ways of the court. Soon after his arrival in
England, he became a member of the Royal Society and served on several
of its committees, and thus had an opportunity of making friends and of
showing his interest in other things than theology. If Cotton Mather was
rightly informed, Winthrop was accorded a personal interview with
Charles II and presented the King with a ring which Charles I, as Prince
of Wales, had given his grandfather, Adam Winthrop.
Winthrop made good use of a good cause. Connecticut had behaved herself
well and had incurred no ill-will. She had had no dealings with the
Cromwellian Government, had dutifully proclaimed the King, had been
discreet in her attitude toward Whalley and Goffe, the regicides who had
fled to New England, and had aroused no resentment against herself among
her neighbors. With proceedings once begun, the securing of the charter
went rapidly forward. Winthrop at first petitioned for a confirmation
of the old Warwick patent, which had been purchased of the English lords
and gentlemen in 1644, but later, encouraged it may be by friends in
England, he asked for a charter. The request was granted.[2] The
document gave to Connecticut the same boundaries as those of the old
patent, and conferred powers of government identical with those of the
Fundamental Orders of 1639. That the main features of the charter were
drawn up in the colony before Winthrop sailed is probable, though it is
not impossible that they were drafted in London by Winthrop himself. All
that the English officials did was to give the text its proper legal
form.
After the receipt of the charter and its proclamation in the colony and
after a slight readjustment of the government to meet the few changes
required, the general court of Connecticut proceeded to enforce the full
territorial rights of the colony. The men of Connecticut had made up
their minds, now that the charter had come, to execute its terms to the
uttermost and to extend the authority of the colony to the farthest
bounds, so that, next to the government of the Bay, Connecticut might
be the greatest in New England. The court took under its protection the
towns of Stamford and Greenwich, and on the ground that the whole
territory westward was within its jurisdiction warned the Dutch governor
not to meddle. It accepted the petition of Southold on Long Island and
of certain residents of Guilford, both of the New Haven federation, for
annexation, and, sending a force to Long Island to demand the surrender
of the western towns there, it seized Captain John Scott, who was
planning to establish a separate government over them, and brought him
to Hartford for trial. It informed the towns of Mystic and Pawcatuck,
lying in the disputed land between Connecticut and Rhode Island, that
they were in the Connecticut colony and must henceforth conduct their
affairs according to its laws. The relations with Rhode Island were to
be a matter of later adjustment, and no immediate trouble followed; but
Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor, protested angrily against Connecticut's
claim to Dutch territory and brought the matter to the attention of the
commissioners of the United Colonies. On one pretext or another, the
latter delayed action; and the matter was not settled until England's
seizure of New Amsterdam in 1664 brought the Dutch rule to an end and
made operative the royal grant of the territory to the Duke of York,
thus stopping Connecticut in her somewhat headlong career westward and
taking from her the whole of Long Island and all the land west of the
Connecticut River. If maintained, this grant would have reduced the
colony by half and would have materially retarded its progress; but
Connecticut eventually saved the western portion of her territory as far
as the line of 1650. However, her people could do no more crowding on
into the region beyond, for the province of New York now lay directly
across the path of her westward expansion.
But with New Haven her success was complete. That unfortunate colony,
which had made an effort to obtain a patent in 1645, when the "great
ship," bearing the agent Gregson, had foundered with all on board, had
no friends at court, and had been too poor after 1660 to join the other
colonies in sending an agent to London. Consequently its right to exist
as an independent government was not considered in the negotiations
which Winthrop had carried on. Serious complaints had been raised
against it; its rigorous theocratic policy had created divisions among
its own people, many of whom had begun to protest; it had been friendly
with the Cromwellian regime and had proclaimed Charles II unwillingly
and after long delay; it had protected the regicides until the
messengers sent out for their capture could report the colony as
"obstinate and pertinacious in contempt of His Majestie." Governor
Leete, of the younger generation, was not in sympathy with Davenport's
persistent refusal of all overtures from Hartford, and would probably
have favored union under the charter of 1662 if Connecticut had been
less aggressive in her attitude. As it was, the controversy became
pungent and was prolonged for more than two years, though the outcome
was never uncertain. The New Haven colony was poor, unprotected, and
divided against itself. Its population was decreasing; Indian massacres
threatened its frontiers; the malcontents of Guilford, led by Bray
Rossiter, were demanding immediate and unconditional surrender to
Connecticut; and finally in 1664 the successful capture of New
Netherland and the grant to the Duke of York threatened the colony with
annexation from that quarter. Rather than be joined to New York, New
Haven surrendered. One by one the towns broke away until in December of
that year only Branford, Guilford, and New Haven remained. On December
13, 1664, the freemen of these towns, with a few others, voted to
submit, "as from a necessity ... but with a _salvo jure_ of our former
right & claime, as a people who have not yet been heard in point of
plea."
The New Haven federation was dissolved; Davenport withdrew to Boston,
where he became a participant in the religious life of that colony; and
the strict Puritans of Branford, Guilford, and Milford, led by Abraham
Pierson, went to New Jersey and founded Newark. The towns, left loose
and at large, joined Connecticut voluntarily and separately, and the New
Haven colony ceased to exist. But the dual capital of Connecticut and
the alternate meetings of its legislature in Hartford and New Haven,
marked for more than two hundred years the twofold origin of the colony
and the state.
In the meantime Rhode Island had become a legally incorporated colony.
Even before Winthrop sailed for England, Dr. John Clarke had received a
favorable reply to his petition for a charter. But a year passed and
nothing was done about the matter, probably owing to the arrival of
Winthrop and the feeling of uncertainty aroused by the conflicting
boundary claims, which involved a stretch of some twenty-five miles of
territory between Narragansett Bay and the Pawcatuck River. A third
claimant also appeared, the Atherton Company, with its headquarters in
Boston, which had purchased lands of the Indians at various points in
the area and held them under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. When
Clarke heard that Winthrop, in drawing the boundaries for the
Connecticut charter of 1662, had included this Narragansett territory,
he protested vehemently to the King, saying that Connecticut had
"injuriously swallowed up the one-half of our colonie," and demanding a
reconsideration. Finally, after the question had been debated in the
presence of Clarendon and others, the decision was reached to give Rhode
Island the boundaries and charter she desired, but to leave the question
of conflicting claims for later settlement. Evidently Winthrop, though
not agreeing with Clarke in matters of fact regarding the boundaries,
supported Rhode Island's appeal for a charter, for Clarendon said
afterwards that the draft which Clarke presented had in it expressions
that were disliked, but that the charter was granted out of regard for
Winthrop.
The Rhode Island charter passed the seals July 8, 1663, and was received
in the colony four months later with great joy and thanksgiving. It
created a common government for all the towns, guaranteeing full liberty
"in religious concernments" and freedom from all obligations to conform
to the "litturgy, formes, and ceremonyes of the Church of England, or
take or subscribe the oathes and articles made and established in that
behalfe." This may have been the phrase that Clarendon, who was a High
Churchman, objected to when the draft was presented. The form of
government was similar in all essential particulars to that of
Connecticut.
Rhode Island's enthusiasm in obtaining a charter is not difficult to
understand. That amphibious colony, consisting of mainland, islands, and
a large body of water, was inhabited by "poor despised peasants," as
Governor Brenton described them, "living remote in the woods" and
subject to the "envious and subtle contrivances of our neighbour
colonies round about us, who are in a combination united together to
swallow us up." The colony had not been asked to join the New England
Confederation, and its leaders were convinced that the members of the
Confederation were in league to filch away their lands and, by driving
them into the sea, to eliminate the colony altogether. Plymouth, seeking
a better harbor than that of Plymouth Bay, claimed the eastern mainland
as well as the chief islands, Hog, Conanicut, and Aquidneck;
Massachusetts claimed Pawtuxet, Warwick, and the Narragansett country
generally; while Connecticut wished to push her eastern boundary as far
beyond the Pawcatuck River (the present boundary) as she might be able
to do. Had each of these colonies made good its claim, there would have
been little left of Rhode Island, and we do not wonder that the settlers
looked upon themselves as fighting, with their backs to the sea, for
their very existence. Hence they welcomed the charter with the joy of
one relieved of a great burden, for, though the boundary question
remained unsettled, the charter assured the colony of its right to exist
under royal protection.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The King's warrant was issued on February 28, the writ of Privy Seal
on April 23, and the great seal was affixed on May 10, 1662.