HOW THEY LIVED IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS
The first generation or two of settlers on the Cape were no freer to
choose their occupation than they were to choose their religion. They
had to be farmers or starve, even if they came from London and had
never drawn a furrow. It must have been hard for some of them--men
who like Robert Linnel came to Barnstable with Lothrop without ever
having cut down a tree or hauled a stump. But there were compensations;
the land was their own; and there is deep satisfaction in toiling
over one’s own acres. Furthermore, when once cleared, it yielded a
respectable crop; there was no need of cultivating big tracts either,
for hay grew wild on the marshes, and a small cornfield and a patch
of onions sufficed for a good-sized family. Every man had some cattle
and sheep, which were immensely profitable and required no pasturage,
for they were turned loose to roam at will, branded as Western cattle
are to-day. Some of these brands showed originality, but no one had a
saltier device than Jonathan Weekes, Jr., of Falmouth, who marked his
‘creatures’ with a mackerel-tail in the top of each ear. Pigs also were
allowed to root about at large, provided their noses were ringed to
prevent their doing damage.
The large numbers of cattle brought tanners and cobblers at a very
early date, but even these specialists laid aside the tools of their
trade in spring and followed the plough until October. In this way
every family was self-supporting. There were at first no local markets
for food or clothing. The men sheared their sheep, and the women spun
the wool and fashioned it into garments which made up in durability
what they lacked in grace. Our ancestors sometimes eked out their
wardrobes with deerskin coats, after the Indian fashion. Good food
was abundant. If a man grew tired of corn and beans and onions, he
had only to dig a ‘dreener’ of clams or pick up a bushel of lobsters.
Herring were so plentiful that they were spread on the ploughed land
for manure--another practice which the settlers learned from the
natives. Every now and then they killed a pig. There was little time
for hunting, but who can doubt that many a haunch of venison found its
way to a hook in the back shed, where it hung frozen until its duty was
done? It would be strange, too, if the old flintlock in the corner was
not sometimes put to a livelier use than waiting for the Indian raid
that never came, and brought down a backload of ducks or geese in the
course of a windy afternoon. Add to this gamey diet an abundance of
home-grown beef and mutton, and it will appear that there was no need
for the first Cape-Codders to be vegetarians.
Corn was their principal crop. Corn was, indeed, the very backbone of
their existence. It was not only food, but money, and remained for
years the standard measure of value. No one had any money to speak
of--it has been stated that in 1675 there was not five hundred pounds
in the whole Plymouth Colony--but every one had corn, which passed
current in any sort of transaction, from buying a farm to paying the
minister. But the settlers were experimentalists, and tried other
crops, too, with varying success. They planted wheat, which did
tolerably well for a time, but about 1670 it was attacked by a sort of
mildew, and since then has never been raised in any quantity on the
Cape. Rye proved to be a better investment, and there has always been
more or less of it for local consumption. From the very first, the Cape
men set out orchards from seeds imported from the old country; but
it took generations of cultivation to make the apples good for much.
Pears were as poor as apples until years of toil brought them up from
hard and gnarled excrescences to their present mellow excellence. Some
cherry trees were planted as well, but though they were hardy, the
fruit would pucker any but the most robust palate.
As the years passed, the Cape farmers grew more prosperous and more
ambitious. Each season they converted a few more acres of woodland
into arable fields, and thus they began to produce more corn than
they needed. The days of struggling for existence--incomparably less
severe on the Cape than they had been at Plymouth--were over. The
settlements had gained momentum, and steady industry took the place of
heart-breaking toil. By 1700, half the citizens had farms of thirty
acres or more, a pair of oxen for ploughing, a horse or two for
occasional visits to a neighboring town, besides an appropriate number
of cattle and sheep. While the sons of the family were growing, a slave
or two helped the farmer with the heaviest work. The families were
large. One reason that has been suggested for this phenomenon is that,
according to the old idea, every son was worth a hundred pounds to the
family and every daughter fifty pounds! This explanation need not be
taken with undue solemnity.
It was one thing to raise corn, however, and another to grind it.
Except for what little was pounded up at home in hand mortars, all
the corn had to be ground at a mill, and there were no mills nearer
than Plymouth. Even Sandwich had a long haul overland to reach the Old
Colony headquarters, for boats were as scarce as mills. The plight of
the towns farther down the Cape can be imagined. Half the pleasure
of a good crop was spoiled by the difficulty of getting it ground.
The remedy was obvious--to construct local mills; but the art of the
millwright was second only to that of the shipbuilder in difficulty,
and few had mastered it. But the need of mills was so urgent that the
inhabitants spared no pains to find the men who could build them.
The easiest type to construct was that operated by water-power, and,
although there is some truth in the statement that the scarcity of
water-power on the Cape forced the settlers to build windmills, which
were far more intricate and expensive, yet it must not be supposed that
no running water was to be found on the crooked peninsula. Falmouth,
Bourne, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Brewster, Eastham, and Truro
all had streams which were set to work soon after the towns were
settled, and some of these water-mills were still grinding away within
the memory of men now living. So, even without the aid of wind, the
Cape was not powerless to grind its own corn and full its own homespun.
Useful as these water-mills were, they were not the type that attracted
the eye of early Cape travelers or inspired the pencil of such graceful
artists as Miss Amelia Watson. For picturesqueness, the long-armed old
windmills stand alone; but the difficulty of finding men who could
build them was so great that capitalists who wanted a mill found it
easier to scour the Cape for an old one, and move it to the desired
location, than to hunt up a millwright who could start work on a new
one in less than six months or a year. Half the windmills on the Cape
ended their days on new sites.
The most celebrated millwright was Thomas Paine, of Eastham. This
overworked craftsman was kept traveling from one town to another all
the way from Barnstable to Truro. First, in 1683-84, with proper
loyalty, he put up two windmills for his fellow citizens in Eastham.
Then he was called to Barnstable, where in 1687 he erected the first
windmill that town had ever seen. Not to be outdone, Yarmouth ordered
one from him immediately afterwards, and Paine complied. He returned to
Eastham and appears to have enjoyed a well-earned breather, until the
citizens of Truro assured him that they, too, must have a windmill, and
held out flattering inducements if he would build it for them. ‘A man
must go where his trade calls,’ thought Paine; and he liked Truro so
well that he never left it; subsequently he became one of her leading
citizens. The first mill in Truro was not built so easily as the last
one, however, which appeared about 1800, long after Paine was in his
grave. Every stick of lumber used in it came ashore from wrecks, most
of it landing as a single windfall when a lumber schooner piled up on
the outer beach; it would not have been surprising if the corn ground
at this mill had had a salty flavor--the more so as Freeman Atkins, the
miller, was a retired shipmaster.
Another family of millwrights won such distinction that they were
celebrated in verse; they were Thomas Baxter and his two sons, of West
Yarmouth, who put up two windmills near Parker’s River. Their success
was crowned by the following ballad:
‘The Baxter boys they built a mill;
Sometimes it went; sometimes stood still;
And when it went, it made no noise
Because it was built by the Baxter boys.’
Close behind the builder in prestige, came the miller. His task was
no sinecure, and was so essential to the prosperity of the towns that
great inducements were held out to any man who would undertake it.
Just as the mill itself went untaxed, so was the miller exempt from
military duty, and he was a privileged character in other ways besides;
he need not hold office, his social position was assured, and he was
often given a good-sized piece of land adjacent to the mill. His pay
was in kind; from every bushel of corn he ground he was authorized to
take a stated quantity, known as the miller’s ‘pottle’; and it was well
earned. At the beginning of each day he had to mount to the top of the
mill and scale the long arms to set the sails, which were rigged in
nautical fashion with halliards; at night he must climb out again and
furl them. If it blew hard, he had to shorten sail by twisting up the
lower part of each sail. In a gale the mill scudded under bare poles,
the surface of the slats across the arm offering sufficient resistance
to the wind. Unlike the master of a ship, however, the miller had no
crew of nimble acrobats to carry out his orders aloft. He was his
own crew, and was perpetually short-handed. The clumsy rigging and
primitive mechanism of his command made the work not only hard but
dangerous. But for the fact that many of the millers were retired
seamen who had learned agility at the mastheads of fishing schooners,
casualties would have been more frequent than they were. If Henry Hall,
for example, who at the age of seventy operated a mill in Dennis, had
not been a sailor in his early days, he never could have extricated
himself from the very ticklish position in which he once found himself.
He had stopped his mill to shorten sail, but had neglected to make the
arms fast with the huge iron chain which was used for that purpose.
When he was halfway out on one of the arms, a free flaw caught the
sails, and the arms began to turn. With amazing activity Hall worked
his way back along the revolving arm until he reached the shaft, which,
of course, was also revolving. Here he perched, three stories above
the ground, straddling the shaft and maintaining an upright position
by hitching himself clear of his seat as it turned under him. Luckily
assistance arrived before the old mariner was exhausted.
Blow high, blow low, millers must turn out each man’s corn with
as little delay as possible, for the farmers were impatient
and, if the truth is to be told, not a little envious of this
privileged specialist. Their envy took the form that envy usually
takes--criticism. Sometimes they declared that their corn was only half
ground; sometimes they accused the miller of stretching his pottle
and taking more than the law allowed. There was right and wrong on
both sides, of course. Human nature, alas! is not always proof against
temptation, nor were millers more righteous than other men. One at
least, Philip Dexter of Falmouth, was thought to be a pottle-stretcher,
and the townspeople put up a rival mill. But envy is a commoner sin
than avarice, and the citizens were probably jealous oftener than
millers were dishonest.
Of the scores of windmills that once spread their sails to the Cape
breezes, only a few are standing to-day--sole survivors of a high
art and a dead industry. A few channeled millstones are in use as
doorsteps; a few more may be seen lying abandoned and half buried
beside creeks alongshore. ‘Nothing beside remains.’
The early Cape houses varied greatly, according to men’s means, and
became more elaborate from generation to generation as building
improved. The first hasty structures that some of the pioneers erected
were never intended to be more than makeshifts to provide temporary
shelter until the owner had a chance to draw his breath and contemplate
something better. These early buildings, sometimes called ‘booths,’
were not frame houses at all; the walls consisted of two parallel rows
of saplings stuck in the ground, and the space between was filled with
clay and stones. Slanting poles covered with the longest marsh-grass
formed the roof, and the fireplace, which often backed into the side
of a hill for convenience and support, was crowned by a chimney built
cob-house fashion of green sticks smeared with clay inside. Oiled paper
covered the windows. There was no floor--unless dry thatch spread on
the ground can be called a floor. The only virtue of such structures
was that they could be thrown together in a very short time and without
any expense; but one winter in such quarters was usually enough to
persuade the owner that he must have a real house.
Not all the original settlers lived in such flimsy contrivances, of
course. Some of them had frame houses from the first. Mr. Hull, for
example, was living in one when John Lothrop and his flock arrived in
Barnstable, and some of Hull’s parishioners had followed his example.
These dwellings, though anything but elaborate, were durable and snug.
They were nearly square, one story high, with walls and floors made of
planks sawed by hand and a thatched roof sharply pitched. The cracks
between the boards were daubed with clay.
The ‘great room’ was usually in the southeast corner. Its bare wooden
floor was sanded and thereby scrubbed smooth. One side of the room was
chiefly occupied by a stone fireplace eight feet wide and high enough
for the goodwife to walk into easily and reach the door of the brick
oven, which opened out of one corner of the back. Across the whole
breadth of the fireplace ran an iron bar festooned with trammels for
the pots. The swinging crane is a comparatively modern contrivance.
The whole structure was wide enough to allow for the traditional
seats in the chimney corner, favorite places for the youngsters, who
perched there happily on dye-tubs or empty beer-kegs until bed time.
At one end of the room stood the big dining-table with stools for the
children and chairs for the man of the house and his wife. Near it was
placed the corner cupboard, a tall semicircular piece of furniture
containing shelves for pewter or glassware. A big wooden chest against
one wall held the family valuables--the deed for the farm, what money
the man happened to have on hand, and in summer some of the extra bed
‘furnishings.’ If the children were not all grown up, there would
certainly be a cradle in the room, and near it a loom where the wife
could weave woolen cloth and keep an eye on the baby at the same time.
A few chairs, either home-made or else the product of a local artisan,
a couple of candles in iron candlesticks on the great mantelpiece,
an hourglass, and a brass warming pan hanging beside the chimney
completed the furniture of this room. No paint or paper adorned its
walls (plaster was rarely used except by the rich until after 1700),
but it was homelike and comfortable, and for several generations the
Cape farmer of moderate means wisely regarded it as sufficient for his
needs. The cost of building such a house complete, ‘latched, thatched
and daubed,’ was twenty-five dollars. The inhabitants of the temporary
‘booths’ were therefore very soon able to build one and live in comfort.
Snug as they were, these one-story cottages were beneath the dignity
of the wealthy, who wanted something more elaborate and were willing
to pay as high as one hundred dollars for their ambition. In the
seventeenth century this sum would produce a big two-story house, like
that which Nathaniel Bacon built in Barnstable in 1642. Bacon was a
prosperous tanner and could afford to live in style. His house was set
on enormous hand-hewn oak sills which projected into the rooms and made
convenient ledges for the children to sit on. When, after more than two
hundred years, this structure was torn down, the timbers were still as
hard as iron. Some of the walls may have been plastered. There was a
spacious though low-studded bedroom on the second floor, with a couple
of smaller ones at the rear and plenty of space for the servants in the
garret.
The houses that have been mentioned--either as types or individual
specimens--were built during the fifty years or so after the settlers
arrived. The biggest and most elaborate of them were very plain, and
from the modern point of view unfinished in many ways. The turn of the
century, however, saw the beginning of the era of fine houses, with
more rooms, a wider variety of types, and some handsome interiors.
Skilled artisans began to take pride in their creations and produced
houses whose pleasing proportions and easy lines made them look like
natural objects in the gently rolling landscape. They presented no
high, flat surfaces to challenge the northeasters; the rule was ‘a
short hoist and a long peak’ for one-story houses, and a broad enough
foundation for two-story structures to make them look lower than they
were. The story-and-a-half style, called ‘salt-boxes,’ was always
popular, too, rising to two floors in front with a short slope to
the ridgepole and a long, easy slant down almost to the ground on
the other side. A fine specimen of this type is the Isaac Dillingham
house in Brewster. Gambrel roofs made their appearance, like that of
Captain James Baxter’s house in Barnstable, the most beautiful model
yet devised for applying the virtues of a short hoist to a two-story
house. With it came the well-known hip-roofed type, another scheme for
relieving the boxlike appearance of the second story by slicing down
both ends of the roof on a slant from a short ridgepole.
[Illustration: ISAAC DILLINGHAM HOUSE, BREWSTER]
[Illustration: WALTER DILLINGHAM HOUSE, BREWSTER]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JAMES BAXTER’S HOUSE, BARNSTABLE
Burned about 1898]
[Illustration: SEARS HOUSE, DENNIS
Built about 1750]
Inside, these eighteenth-century houses were finished with plaster
and paneling, the latter sometimes covering the walls from floor to
ceiling, as in the old Hinckley house in Barnstable. Thus the Cape
builders advanced, adhering in the main to a few approved types, but
ready at any moment to experiment with some new design, until, at the
beginning of the Revolution, Squire Edward Bacon wrote from Barnstable
that he had a mansion with twenty rooms, a striking contrast, indeed,
to the humble booths of 1639.
In addition to their dwelling-houses, our ancestors built two kinds of
fortified structures to defend themselves from attacks by Indians. A
blockhouse of the traditional type, built of hewn timbers placed one on
the other, was put up in Yarmouth very soon after the town was settled.
The upper story of this fort projected over the lower, and the whole
was pierced with narrow loopholes. At Great Marshes--then a part of
Barnstable--two stone forts were built; the first one disappeared very
early, but the second was not taken down until after the War of 1812.
Its lower walls were of rough stone, but the upper story, which was
built with a three-foot overhang like that in Yarmouth, was of wood.
Another method of defense was for a man to build the lower walls of his
house out of broken stone and mortar. This type of construction was
very much like that of the primitive booths. Two rows of holes were
bored in the sills, with saplings stuck into them to serve as studding.
The plate-beams were similarly bored to admit the upper end of these
poles, and the space between the two rows was filled with stone and
mortar--a rudimentary sort of concrete, with saplings taking the place
of modern board ‘forms.’ Houses built in this fashion were almost
indestructible. John Crow’s house in Yarmouth, built about 1650, was of
this type and stood for two hundred years, its stone and mortar walls
being concealed by clapboards that had been nailed on by a subsequent
owner. Some men surrounded their houses with palisades of sharpened
poles; but it was soon obvious that the last thing the Indians wanted
was a fight; the blockhouses were therefore converted into dwellings,
and no more palisades were put up.
It would be a temptation to pursue the history of architecture on the
Cape further, were the prospect not spoiled by the looming horrors of
the Victorian epoch and the serviceable but unsightly bungalows of the
Finns. High courage alone can confront undaunted these dreary examples
of modern taste; it is pleasanter to take comfort from reflecting
that our ancestors built, not for decades, but for centuries, and that
their houses may yet be sound when the amorphous outrages of their
descendants are dust.
The simplicity of life in the early days appears in the importance
which the settlers attached to trifles. Robert Eldridge, of Chatham,
was a prosperous farmer who died in 1682 possessed of an estate
valued at three hundred and sixteen pounds. Yet the inventory of his
possessions mentions such items as a pair of pot hooks, an hourglass,
a gridiron, and a toaster. About a half-century later, the inventory
of Kenelm Winslow, of Harwich, contains among other things two wool
shirts, mittens and garters, a ‘line,’ part of a land compass, two
forks, and a brush and two combs. Yet Mr. Winslow was wealthy enough
to be the owner of several slaves. Almost a hundred years after the
settlement of Barnstable, one of its richest citizens, John Bacon,
left his best hat and wig to his son Nathaniel, and bequeathed to his
youngest son, Judah, the whole family orchard, but with the stipulation
that the other children should have the _fruit of five trees each for
seven years_. Andrew Hallett, of Yarmouth, died in 1684 the wealthiest
man in town; but his executors particularize such trifles as a knife,
a spit, ‘and other small things.’ In 1669, a stolen shirt caused the
Sandwich authorities grave concern, and received the attention of two
sittings of the Court. As for the value of a cow, one could not be
bought in the first years of the settlements for less than the price of
a good-sized farm.
Such painstaking particularity in keeping close track of all
possessions--even the smallest--needs no comment. Our ancestors
found it easier to buy a woodlot than an hourglass. Because all
manufactured articles had to be imported from England, the value
was disproportionately high. Food and land were cheap; tools and
kitchenware were very dear, and were handed down from one generation
to another with the same care that our own age takes in bequeathing
diamonds.
Farmers after a day’s work in the cornfield or onion patch are not
ordinarily inclined to spend the evening in conviviality. They are more
likely to be in bed by nine o’clock. Since most of the Cape men in the
early days were farmers, it is natural that after an April day with
the plough and an hour by the fireside after supper, when they perhaps
received a call from a neighbor, broached a keg of home-made beer,
and smoked a leisurely pipe, they were ready for bed. But in winter
the evenings were longer, and work on the farm was a mere round of
chores. The farmer puttered about, mending his tools and getting ready
for spring. At night he was as fresh as a lark. However exemplary a
husband and father he might be from seedtime to harvest, in winter his
thoughts began to wander from his own fireside to the group gathered at
the tavern. The Cape had its share of cotters, to be sure, who could
spend as pious a Saturday night as the dourest Scotsman, but its shores
produced some Tam O’Shanters as well, and the company and the liquor
both beckoned from the tavern hearth. Home-brewed beer did very well as
a steady diet, but there was a quality in the landlord’s rum that could
not be reproduced on the premises. Innkeepers must live, and away went
the happy farmer.
It was quite right for him to do so. When a man went to the tavern for
an evening, his horizon was broadened, at least enough to include other
farms besides his own, and often so much that he gained a bird’s-eye
view of the policies of the entire Colony. For the group gathered in
the taproom was very different from George Eliot’s assemblages of
ignorant yokels, presided over by a portly host as ignorant as they.
Raveloe and Colonial Cape Cod had nothing in common but the King. The
landlords of all the taverns from Sandwich to Eastham were leading
citizens and had been carefully chosen by the selectmen of the town.
They were intelligent and public-spirited. Well versed in the doings
at Plymouth, they were able to steer town activities in a course
consistent with the grim court there. A glance at a few of them will
show their quality.
About 1700, Ebenezer Hawes was the proprietor of a tavern in Chatham.
He was a man of intelligence and honor, a foe to bigotry, and a
valuable citizen for any town. The esteem in which he was held by
the townspeople was shown by their choosing him as selectman, an
office which he filled with ability, and he was also captain of the
military company. His taproom became the rendezvous for the best men
of the village; many a bushel of corn and barrel of tar was bargained
for over a friendly glass before his fire. His one enemy was Mr.
Adams, the parson. This gentleman took exception to Hawes’s public
house, not because it was improperly run, but because it was a public
house, and he took up arms against Hawes, not because the latter
was an undesirable character, but because he sold rum. Parsons were
formidable men, but when Mr. Adams attacked Hawes, he was opposing a
man who was quite as formidable as he and just as strongly entrenched
in respectability. The battle went through two Courts, with the
tavern-keeper victorious both times. Not until the case was carried
to Plymouth for a third hearing did the minister get the meager
satisfaction of seeing Hawes fined ten shillings. Public sentiment,
however, was too strong for Mr. Adams, and he was forced out of town.
The contest between Adams and Hawes was a contest between mighty
opposites--not a one-sided skirmish in which armed Virtue routed
slinking Vice.
Nor was Chatham any more fortunate than other towns in its selection
of a man to run the tavern. In 1663 and earlier, Thomas Huckins was
bringing rum to Barnstable in his own packet, and selling it to
the citizens from his own tap. And Huckins was seven times chosen
selectman and was for eight years a deputy to the Colonial Court. If
the conversation of such a man failed to lift his patrons out of petty
policies and narrow-mindedness, the case was hopeless. An evening in
his tavern was an evening of liberal education in affairs of state, and
the townsmen who went there returned home better citizens than they had
come.
Another dignitary was the captain of the militia company that every
town was ordered to maintain. Although these companies were very small,
the citizens would certainly have resented having to spend valuable
time in drill had not the fear of Indian attacks hung over them like a
cloud. This fear, as unnecessary as it was natural, kept the townsmen
drilling vigorously. The trouble and expense of maintaining these
military organizations was partly justified in 1675 by the outbreak
of King Philip’s War, to which every town was required to send its
quota of men. No doubt the drill they had received was of some value
to them at this time as discipline, though the tactics which they had
been taught can scarcely have been adapted to fighting Indians. The
great service of these companies, however, was in creating a sense of
security in the minds of the population.
* * * * *
And now it is time to take a look at the government of the Cape towns.
As has already been suggested, the new settlements could not roam far
afield in any direction without being brought up short by a tether that
reached to Plymouth; so in order to form an intelligent conception of
their government, it is necessary to hark back to headquarters, from
which all government was derived, and see how things were done there;
for the Cape, though geographically quite distinct from Plymouth, was
bound to that stern autocrat by ties of kinship, loyalty, and fear.
The highest authority in the Colony was the Governor, who was elected
annually by the ‘freemen’--those who were members of the orthodox
church and whose estate was not less than twenty pounds. With him was
elected one assistant; but it soon appeared that one was not enough,
so in 1624 the number of assistants was increased to five, and in
1633 to seven. At this figure it remained until the Plymouth Colony
merged with Massachusetts Bay in 1692. The Governor and his assistants
comprised the General Court, or Legislature. The first function of the
General Court was to make laws, and this function it performed without
hesitation. As the Colony grew, the General Court grew with it by the
addition of more assistants, and when the Cape was settled as part of
the Colony, the Court was still further enlarged by the addition of two
deputies from each new town.
Sandwich, Yarmouth, Barnstable, and Eastham elected such deputies
as soon as they were incorporated, and the men thus honored went to
Plymouth and became part of the Government, with full right to vote
on new laws. But Plymouth kept matters under her control in two ways:
first, by entitling herself to four deputies besides the Governor
and assistants, and secondly by reserving the right to dismiss the
Cape deputies if she saw fit, and demand new ones in their place.
Each town paid its deputies with money raised by taxing every
householder--whether or not he was a freeman. It seemed only proper,
therefore, to give all these householders a vote in electing them.
This was done, and forms a unique exception to the rule that none but
freemen should vote. It looked like the Cape’s first reluctant step
toward universal suffrage; but it was not, in fact, for this extension
of franchise was withdrawn in 1671.
Such, then, was the composition of that grim abstraction, the General
Court: the Governor and his assistants, four deputies from Plymouth
and two from each of the other towns; its duties were primarily duties
of legislation. Its most startling performance, which it executed in
1636 before the addition of any Cape deputies, was the Declaration of
Rights, which announced to the world that thereafter the colonists
would recognize no laws made for them without their full consent and
approval. This is really something like a declaration of independence,
and it is not without significance that it was made the same year that
the last installment was paid on the debt to the Merchant Adventurers.
The Plymouth law courts at first were composed of the Governor and his
assistants, supported by a jury of all the freemen in the town. But
as the population increased, this rudimentary arrangement gave way to
grand and petty juries--like those of to-day--with the Governor and
assistants as judges. As all cases anywhere in the Colony must be heard
before this tribunal, the Court soon found itself overworked. So in
1641 certain men in the outlying towns were authorized to constitute
themselves as a court for deciding cases that involved not more than
twenty shillings. By this arrangement the citizens of Sandwich,
Yarmouth, and Barnstable could take their minor troubles to a court of
three men--Edmund Freeman, of Sandwich, Thomas Dimock, of Barnstable,
and John Crow, of Yarmouth--who were empowered to settle such disputes.
The fact that Mr. Freeman was one of the Governor’s assistants lent
prestige to the tribunal.
This was the beginning of local courts on the Cape, and they developed
in prestige and power until the establishment of Circuit Courts in
1811. This very early court was also important because it was the
germ from which, twenty years later, developed the now time-honored
custom of choosing selectmen to guide the destinies of each town. As
an interesting step, the Court in 1651 designated four men who were
authorized to call town meetings in Sandwich whenever they thought
it necessary, and a dozen years after this, the regular election of
selectmen for every town was established. These selectmen originally
had powers which, owing to the more intricate organization of modern
government, they no longer retain. They might even act as an impromptu
court and judge cases of debt up to forty shillings. A great part of
their work consisted in settling differences between the townspeople
and the Indians. In short, they were created, to quote the words of
the Plymouth Court, ‘for the better managing of the town’s affairs.’
They were elected by the freemen of their town, subject always to the
approval of Plymouth.
Another factor in local government on the Cape--the Proprietors--were
at first far more important than the selectmen. It is easy to define
the title ‘Proprietor,’ but by no means easy to explain what authority
it carried with it, for the authority varied greatly, diminishing as
the years passed. The Proprietors were in a very literal sense the
fathers of the town, for they were the men to whom the General Court
granted the land on which the earliest settlements were made. This
gave them control of the important question of dividing land and
admitting newcomers as townsmen and owners of property. The committees
formed in each town for this purpose were composed exclusively of
Proprietors--naturally enough, because of their strategic position
as titleholders to the land. The number of Proprietors was at first
small in every case, sometimes no more than three or four; their
first concern was to induce others to join them, and the bait they
offered was land, for they had more of this than they knew what to do
with. They held themselves responsible also for building roads, for
subdividing all land that was suitable for tillage, and for seeing to
it that, for the time being at least, woodland and marsh were held as
common property for the benefit of all.
Their heirs and assigns, together with others whom for one reason
or another they chose to admit, became Proprietors as well, so that
their numbers grew rapidly. At first they held the reins of all the
town’s activities, both political and economic; a town meeting
was a Proprietors’ meeting. But later, when town governments were
organized, the Proprietors’ duties were restricted to apportioning
land to newcomers--for they still held title to the hundreds of acres
that they had not been able to give away. When finally everything had
been divided--even the public woodland and marsh--the usefulness and
prestige of the Proprietors came to an end. Their title vanished,
and they became ordinary citizens. The dates of their disappearance
depended, of course, on the speed with which they divided the land in
their town. The Proprietors of some towns got rid of their commons very
promptly. Others never quite got rid of it.
But in spite of selectmen, Proprietors, and local courts, no town
was allowed to forget that Plymouth was in command. To enumerate all
the little privileges which Plymouth forbade the Cape to enjoy, and
which to-day we regard as the inalienable rights of freemen, would be
too discouraging altogether; it is pleasanter to let a few of them
indicate the nature of the rest. Smoking on Sunday within two miles
of the meetinghouse was an offense that could be expiated only by
paying twelve pence to the General Court. Jurors might not smoke while
trying to reach a verdict. Stocks, a pound, and military drill were
all required for the welfare of the citizens, and any towns which were
delinquent in these respects were ‘presented,’ reprimanded, and fined.
If a youth, be he never so respectable, paid court to a maid without
first asking her parents’ permission, he was punished by a fine or
corporal punishment or both. The Court did not approve of driving sharp
bargains except when its own members wished to buy Indian land, and the
records are full of cases where men were fined for charging too much
either for their work or for their wares. Swearing was punished by a
three-hour sojourn in the stocks, and when the supply of specific human
errors gave out, the Court in desperation passed an act in 1640 ‘to
prevent idleness and other evils.’ Whatever charges may be laid at the
door of the Plymouth legislators, lack of ambition cannot in fairness
be included among them.
Annoying as these edicts must have been, none of them so far has struck
deep at the roots of self-government in the towns. But Plymouth had
no hesitation about interfering with even this important privilege.
Some of the people whom the Sandwich committee on personnel had allowed
to settle there were displeasing to the General Court; the committee
was therefore promptly taken to task and ‘forbidden to dispose of
any more land.’ This was in 1639, and it must have very thoroughly
shattered any hopes that the citizens had of being allowed to decide
town matters for themselves. To be sure, the Cape sent representatives
to this Court, as we have seen, and it may therefore be said that this
strict surveillance was practiced on each town, in part at least, by
its own citizens. But it should be remembered that the Governor and his
assistants reserved the right to reject the representatives that the
town elected--and thereby kept the control of the Colony in their own
hands. If the representatives were courageous and tried to oppose the
Plymouth faction, they were replaced. If they were weak, they voted as
Plymouth voted, and kept their positions.
Such, at least, was the autocratic theory on which the General Court
based its government. In practice, however, things might have been much
worse, because, though the principle had no virtue, the men themselves
had a great deal. Such a scheme in the hands of modern politicians
would result in a corrupt oligarchy. In the hands of our ancestors,
it was an oligarchy, but it was not corrupt. The real trouble with
Plymouth was that she had not learned the great secret of leadership,
which is to refrain from meddling with subordinates when they are
making the mistakes of inexperience in carrying out general principles
which you have laid down for them.
Whatever suffering the Cape towns endured, therefore, came not so much
from any actual restrictions that Plymouth placed on them, as from hurt
feelings when the General Court interfered with their honest attempts
to manage their own affairs. As far as restrictions went, their own
town meetings abounded in them. The local authorities in Eastham fined
a man for ‘lying about a whale,’ and Sandwich punished two maidens for
laughing in church at the attempts of the tithing man to chase a dog
out of the building.