THE BAY COLONY DISCIPLINED
Except for the northern frontier, where Indian forays and atrocities
continued for many years longer, the last great struggle with the
Indians in New England was finished. The next danger came from a
different quarter and in a different form. In June, 1676, two months
before the Indian War was over, one Edward Randolph arrived from England
to make an inquiry into the affairs of Massachusetts. That colony had
scarcely weathered the ever-threatening peril of the New World when it
was called upon to face an attack from the Old which endangered the
continuance of those precious privileges for which the magistrates at
Boston had contended with a vigor shrewd rather than wise. As we have
seen, the position that Massachusetts assumed as a colony largely
independent of British control was incompatible with England's colonial
and commercial policy, a position that was certain to be called in
question as soon as the authorities at home were able to give serious
attention to it.
This opportunity did not arrive until, in 1674, the plantations council
was dismissed, and colonial business was handed over to the Privy
Council and placed in the hands of a standing committee of that body
known as the Lords of Trade. This committee, which was more dignified
and authoritative than had been the old council, at once assumed a
firmer tone toward the colonies. It caused a proclamation to be issued
announcing the royal determination to enforce the acts of trade, and it
made the King's will known in America by means of new instructions to
the royal governors there. It stated clearly the purpose of the
Government to bring the colonies into a position of greater dependence
on the Crown in the interest of the trade and revenues of the kingdom,
and it showed no inclination to grant Massachusetts, with all the
charges and complaints against her, preferential treatment. At the same
time it was not disposed to pay much attention to religious differences,
minor misdemeanors, and neighborhood quarrels, if only the colony would
conform to British policy in all that concerned the royal prerogative
and the authority of Parliament; but it made it perfectly plain that
continued infractions of parliamentary acts and royal commands would not
be condoned.
Had the leaders of Massachusetts been more complaisant and less given to
a policy of evasion and delay, it is not unlikely that the colony would
have been allowed to retain its privileges; and had they been less
absorbed in themselves and more observant of the world outside, they
might have seen the changes that were coming over the temper and purpose
of those in England who were shaping the relations between England and
her colonies. But Massachusetts had grown provincial since the
Restoration, looking backward rather than forward and moving in very
narrow channels of thought and life, so that she was wrapped up in
matters of purely local interest. The clergy were struggling to maintain
their control in colony and college, while the deputies in the
legislature, representing in the main the conservative country
districts, were upholding the clerical party against some of the
magistrates, who represented the town of Boston and were inclined to
take a more liberal and progressive view of the matter. These country
members saw in England's attitude only the desire of a despotic Stuart
regime to suppress the liberties of a Puritan commonwealth, and failed
to see that the investigation into the affairs of Massachusetts was but
an effort to establish a colonial policy fundamental to England's
welfare and power.
It cannot be said that, from 1660 to 1684, the Government in England
displayed undue animus toward the colony. It allowed Massachusetts to do
a great many things that in law she had no right to do, such as coining
money and issuing a charter to Harvard College. Its demand for a
broadening of the Massachusetts franchise was in the interest of liberty
and not against it, and the insistence on freedom of worship deserves no
reproof. Its condemnation of many of the Massachusetts laws as
oppressive and unjust shows that in some respects legal opinion in
England at this time was more advanced than that in Massachusetts and
Connecticut, and, even at its worst, English law did not go to the
Mosaic code for its precedents. There is a distinct note of cruelty and
oppression in some of the Massachusetts and Connecticut legislation at
this time, and many of the Puritan measures were harsh and arbitrary and
liable to abuse. Even the Government's support of the Mason and Gorges
claims was not dishonorable, and while it may have been unwise and, in
equity, unjust, it was not without excuse. The Government listened to
complaints of persecution, as any sovereign power is required to do, and
was naturally impressed with the weightiness of some of the charges; yet
so little inclined was it to tamper with Massachusetts that the colony
might have succeeded, for a longer time at least, in maintaining the
integrity of its control, had not the question of colonial trade brought
matters to a crisis.
Under Charles II, finances presented a difficult problem, for Parliament
in controlling appropriations took no responsibility for the collection
of money granted. To meet the deficit which during the earlier years of
the reign was ever present, efforts were made to increase the revenue
from customs, and so successful was this policy that, after 1675, these
customs revenues came to be looked upon as among England's greatest
sources of wealth. Now, inasmuch as trade with the colonies was one of
the largest factors contributing to this result, England, as she could
not afford to maintain colonies that would do nothing to aid her, came
more and more to value her overseas possessions for their commercial
importance, classing as valuable assets those that advanced her
prosperity, and treating as insubordinate those that disregarded the
acts of trade and thwarted her policy. The independence that
Massachusetts claimed was diametrically opposed to the growing English
notion that a colony should be subordinate and dependent, should obey
the acts of trade and navigation, and should recognize the authority of
the Crown; and, from what they heard of the temper of New England,
English statesmen suspected that Massachusetts was doing none of these
things.
Edward Randolph, who was sent over in 1676 to make inquiry into the
affairs of the colony, was a native of Canterbury, a former student of
Gray's Inn, and at this time forty-three years old. The fact that he was
connected by marriage with the Mason family accounts for his interest in
the efforts of Gorges and Mason to break the hold of Massachusetts upon
New Hampshire and Maine. He was a personal acquaintance of Sir Robert
Southwell, the diplomatist, and of Southwell's intimate friend, William
Blathwayt, an influential English official interested in the colonies.
He had been in the employ of the government, and now, probably at the
instance of Southwell and Blathwayt, he was selected to fill the
difficult and thankless post of commissioner to New England. That he had
ability and courage no one can doubt, and that he pursued his course
with a tenacity that would have won commendation in other and less
controversial fields, his career shows. His devotion to the interests of
the Crown and his loyalty to the Church of England steeled him against
the almost incessant attacks and rebuffs that he was called upon to
endure, and his entire inability to see any other cause than his own
saved him from the discouragements that must certainly have broken a man
more sensitive than himself. He exhibited at times some of the obduracy
of the zealot and martyr; at others he displayed unexpected good sense
in protesting against extremes of action that he thought unjust or
unwise. He was honest and indefatigable in the pursuit of what he
believed to be his duty, and was ill-requited for his labors, but he was
a persistent fault-finder and his letters are masterpieces of complaint.
He was thrice married, his second wife dying at the height of his
troubles in Massachusetts, and he had five children, all daughters, one
of whom proved a grievous disappointment to him. Though he held many
offices, he was always in debt and died poor, at the age of seventy, in
Accomac County in Virginia. He was far from being the best man to send
to New England, but his natural obstinacy and his determination to
overcome difficulties were intensified by the discourteous and tactless
manner in which he was received by the Puritans. He had no sympathy with
the efforts of the "old faction" to save the colony, and the people of
Massachusetts responded with a bitter and lasting hate.
Randolph landed at Boston on June 10, and remained in the colony until
the end of July, about six weeks altogether. He visited Plymouth, New
Hampshire, and Maine, interviewed men in authority and all sorts of
other people, and he came to the conclusion that the majority of the
inhabitants were discontented with the Boston regime. The magistrates
ignored his presence as much as they dared, refusing to recognize him as
anything but an enemy representing the Mason and Gorges claims, and
insisting that though the King might enlarge their privileges he could
not abridge them. Randolph, thoroughly nettled, returned to England
prepared to do his worst. He sent several reports to the King and
constantly appeared before the Privy Council and the Lords of Trade,
each time doing all the damage that he could. He had undoubtedly got
much of his information from prejudiced sources or from hearsay, and he
was as eager to retail it as had been the Massachusetts authorities to
blast the moral character of the King's commissioners. He denounced the
"old faction" as cunning, deceptive, overbearing, and disloyal; he
called the clergy proud, ignorant, imperious, and inclined to sedition;
and he denounced those in authority as "inconsiderable mechanicks,
packed by the prevailing party of the factious ministry, with a
fellow-feeling both in the command and the profits." His picture of the
colony, containing much that was near the truth, was at the same time
distorted, out of proportion, and in parts almost a caricature. His most
effective reports were those which laid stress upon the failure of the
colony to obey the navigation acts and the royal commands, and upon its
use of the word "Commonwealth," as if the corporation were already an
independent state. These reports were accepted by the English
authorities as correct statements of fact, for they seemed to be
confirmed by the evidence of London merchants and by at least one West
Indian governor, who knew the colony and had no personal interests at
stake.
In October, 1676, Massachusetts sent over two of its leading men,
William Stoughton, a magistrate, and Peter Bulkeley, speaker of the
House of Representatives, to ward off, if possible, the attack on the
colony, but with characteristic short-sightedness gave them no authority
to discuss officially anything but the Mason and Gorges claims. For more
than two years these men, representative rather of the moderate party
than of the "old faction" in the colony, remained in England, frequently
appearing before the Lords of Trade, where they were subjected to a
searching examination at the hands of a not very sympathetic body of
men. The meetings in the Council Chamber in Whitehall, where the
committee sat, were occasions full of interest and excitement. At one of
them, on April 8, 1677, Stoughton, Bulkeley, Randolph, Mason, and Sir
Edmund Andros, Governor of New York for the Duke, were all present, and
the agents must have found the situation awkward and embarrassing. The
committee expressed its resentment at the colony's habit of disobedience
and evasion, and showed no inclination to adopt a moderate policy,
advocating, on the contrary, investigation "from the whole root." The
position of a Massachusetts agent in England during these trying years
was most undesirable, and so many difficulties and discouragements did
Stoughton and Bulkeley encounter that several times they asked for
permission to return home and once, at least, had to go to the country
for their health. But whatever were the troubles of an agent in England,
they were trifling as compared with those which confronted him at home
when he failed, as he almost invariably did fail, to obtain all that the
colony expected. Cotton Mather tells us that Norton died in 1663 of
melancholy and chagrin, and that for forty years there was not one agent
but met "with some very froward entertainment among his countrymen." No
wonder it was always difficult to find men who were willing to go.
At first the Lords of Trade favored the sending of a supplemental
charter and the extending of a pardon to the colony; but as the evidence
against Massachusetts accumulated, they began to consider the revision
of the laws, the appointment of a collector of customs and a royal
governor, and even the annulment of the charter itself. In short, they
determined to bring Massachusetts "under a more palpable declaration of
obedience to his Majesty." The general court of the colony, although it
had said that "any breach in the wall would endanger the whole," was at
last frightened by the news from England and passed an order in October,
1677, that the laws of trade must be strictly observed, and later
magistrates and deputies alike took the oath of allegiance prescribed by
the Crown, promising to drop the word "Commonwealth" for the future. The
members of the assembly wrote an amazing letter, pietistic and cringing,
in which they prostrated themselves before the King, asked to be
numbered among his "poore yet humble and loyal subjects," and begged for
a renewal of all their privileges. At best such a letter could have done
little in England to increase respect for the colony, but any good
results expected from it were completely destroyed by the serious
blunder which the colony made at this time in purchasing from the Gorges
claimants the title to the province of Maine, which with New Hampshire
had recently been declared by the chief justices of the King's Bench and
Common Pleas to lie outside of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. This
attempt to obtain, without the royal consent, a territory which the
legal advisers of the Crown had decided Massachusetts could not have,
only strengthened the determination of the authorities in England to
bring the colony into the King's hand by the appointment of a royal
governor. For the moment, however, the uprising of Bacon in Virginia and
the Popish Plot in England so distracted the Government that it was
obliged to slight or to postpone much of its business. It did succeed in
settling the perplexing question of New Hampshire, for, having obtained
from Mason a renunciation of all his claims to the Government, though
leaving him with full title to the soil, it organized that territory as
a colony under the control of the Crown.
With these matters out of the way or less exigent, the Lords of Trade
returned to the affairs of New England. They wished, before proceeding
to extremes, to give Massachusetts another chance to be heard; so, in
dismissing the agents in the autumn of 1679, they instructed the colony
to send over within six months others fully prepared "to answer the
misdemeanors imputed against them." They also decided to send Randolph
back as collector and surveyor of customs, with letters to all the New
England colonies, ordering them to enforce the acts of trade, and
another to Massachusetts requiring that she provide a minister for those
in Boston who wished an Anglican church. Randolph, who left for New
England for the second time, in December, 1679, has the distinction of
being the first royal official appointed for any of the northern
colonies. Almost his first task was to settle the province of New
Hampshire under royal authority, with a government consisting of a
president, a council, and an assembly. Thus British control in New
England was making progress, and the worst fears of the "old faction" in
Massachusetts were being realized.
It is difficult to understand the attitude of Massachusetts. Her leaders
probably thought that with the settlement of the Mason and Gorges claims
the most serious source of trouble with England was disposed of. They
believed, honestly enough, though the wish was father to the thought,
that the colony lay beyond the reach of Parliament and that the laws of
England were bounded by the four seas and did not reach America. Hence
they deemed the navigation acts an invasion of their liberties and could
not bring themselves to obey them. As to England's new colonial policy,
it is doubtful if they grasped it at all, or would have acknowledged it
as applicable to themselves, even if they had understood it. The
experiences and reports of their agents in England seem to have taught
them nothing and served only to confirm their belief that a Stuart was a
tyrant and that all English authorities were natural enemies. They had
labored and suffered in the vineyard of the Lord and they wished to be
let alone to enjoy their dearly won privileges. Randolph wrote, soon
after his arrival in New England, that the colony was acting "as high as
ever," and that "it was in every one's mouth that they are not subject
to the laws of England nor were such laws in force until confirmed by
their authority." The colony neglected to send the agents demanded,
alleging expense, the dangers of the sea, the difficulty of finding any
one to accept the post, and their belief that King and council were
"taken up with matters of greater importance," until finally in
September, 1680, the King wrote an exceedingly sharp letter, calling the
excuses "insufficient pretences," and commanding that agents be sent
within three months. Strange to say the colony even then allowed a year
to elapse before complying, and again instructed those whom they sent to
agree to nothing that concerned the charter.
Before the agents arrived in the summer of 1682, the royal patience was
exhausted. Randolph's continued complaints that he was obstructed in
every way in the performance of his duties; the act of the colony in
setting up a naval office of its own; the revival of an old law imposing
the death penalty upon any one who should "attempt the alteration or
subversion of the frame of government"; the opinion of the
Attorney-General that the colony had done quite enough to warrant the
forfeiture of its charter; and the delay in sending the agents, which
seemed a further flouting of the royal commands--all these things
brought matters to a crisis. Therefore, when finally the Massachusetts
agents reached England, they found the situation hopeless. "It is a hard
service we are engaged in," they wrote; "we stand in need of help from
Heaven." Their want of powers provoked the Lords of Trade to say that
unless they were procured, the charter would be forfeited at once.
Randolph was called back in May, 1683, to aid in the legal proceedings
which were immediately set on foot. Other charters were falling: that of
the Bermuda Company was under attack; that of the City of London was
already forfeited; and those of other English boroughs were in danger.
On June 27, a writ of _quo warranto_ was issued out of the Court of
King's Bench against the colony. The agents, refusing to defend the
suit, returned to New England, and the writ was given to Randolph to
serve. He reached Boston in October, but owing to delays in the colony
and a tempestuous voyage back, he was unable to return it to England
within the allotted time. The first attempt failed, but another was soon
made. By the advice of the Attorney-General, suit was brought in the
Court of Chancery by writ of _scire facias_ against the company, and
upon the rendering of judgment for non-appearance the charter was
declared forfeited on October 23, 1684.
Though the colony was given no opportunity to defend the suit, the
charter was legally vacated according to the forms of English law. The
colony was but a corporation, its charter but a corporation charter, and
in only one respect did it differ from other corporations, namely, its
residence in America. The methods of vacating corporate charters in
England were definite and in this case were strictly followed. Had
Massachusetts been a corporation in fact as well as in law, it is
doubtful if the question of illegality would ever have been raised; but
as this particular corporation was a Puritan commonwealth, the issue was
so vital to its continuance as to lead to the charge of unjust and
illegal oppression. On moral grounds a defence of the colony is always
possible, though it is difficult to uphold the Massachusetts system. It
was certainly neither popular nor democratic, tolerant nor progressive,
and in any case it must eventually have undergone transformation from
within. The city of Boston was increasing in wealth and importance, and
trade was bringing it into ever closer contact with the outside world.
There were growing up in the colony more open-minded and progressive men
who were opposing the dominance of the country party, which found its
last governor in Leverett, its chief advocates among the clergy, and its
strength in the House of Representatives, and which wished to preserve
things as they always had been. The leaders of this conservative party,
Danforth, Nowell, Cooke, and others, struggled courageously against all
concessions, but they were bound to be beaten in the end.
That the conservative members of the colony were thoroughly in earnest
and thoroughly convinced of the absolute righteousness of their
position, admits of no doubt. No man could speak of the loss of the
charter as a breach in the "Hedge which kept us from the Wild Beasts of
the Field," as did Cotton Mather, without expressing a fear of a Stuart,
of an Anglican, and of a Papist that was as real as the terrors of
witchcraft. To the orthodox Puritans, the preservation of their
religious doctrines and government and the maintenance of their moral
and social standards were a duty to God, and to admit change was a sin
against the divine command. But such an unyielding system could not
last; in fact, it was already giving way. Though conjecture is
difficult, it seems likely that the English interference delayed rather
than hastened the natural growth and transformation of the colony,
because it united moderates and irreconcilables against a common
enemy--the authority of the Crown.