AN ENGLISH OPPOSITION BECOMES A NEW
ENGLAND OLIGARCHY
In an earlier chapter, in discussing the problems which confronted
Elizabeth, we spoke of an established church as a necessity in her day
from all three standpoints—of religion, morals, and politics. We also
touched upon the simplicity of problems as they appear to those in
opposition, as contrasted with their aspect to those who bear the
responsibility of power. In England, in the earlier part of the
seventeenth century, in spite of the example of Holland, the doctrine of
the necessity of a state church, to which all men must conform, in their
capacity of citizens as well as of Christians, was still held, although
the influence of the “dissidence of dissent,” as the logical outcome of
individual interpretation of the Bible, was beginning to be felt. Voices
were being raised in many quarters denouncing the intolerance of the
various sects, both Anglican and Puritan; and, although the Protestants
might consider that the religious glacier which held all men in its
embrace was as rigidly frozen as ever, the ice was, in truth, rapidly
melting beneath the surface. To Englishmen in tolerant Leyden, John
Robinson was preaching that “magistrates are kings and lords over men
properly and directly, as they are their subjects, and not as they are
Christ's,” and that by “compulsion many become atheists, hypocrites, and
Familists, and being at first constrained to practise against
conscience, lose all conscience afterwards.”[344] In England,
Chillingworth, through the doctrine of the innocence of error, was
elevating toleration into a principle of justice and a practicable rule
of government.[345] In the New World, Roger Williams was soon to begin
his life-long struggle against what he vehemently denounced as “that
body-killing, soule-killing, and State-killing doctrine” of religious
persecution by the arm of the civil power.[346]
Footnote 344:
Robinson, _Works_, vol. II, p. 41.
Footnote 345:
Cited by A. A. Seaton, _The Theory of Toleration under the later
Stuarts_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1911), p. 56.
Footnote 346:
_Mr. Cotton's Letter examined; Narr. Club Pub._, vol. I, p. 44.
We cannot, perhaps, blame men for not being in advance of their age, or
even for being behind it. The founders of the Bay Colony were but little
qualified, by reason of the narrowness of their views and the intensity
with which they were held, to lead men to any higher ground than that
which they had been accustomed to tread. Moreover, having changed their
place from members of an opposition to members of a government, their
new responsibilities would tend to foster even more strongly that fear
of innovation which is nearly always characteristic of the middle-class
man in power. The exercise of authority is apt to prove an intoxicating
draught, even to the best-intentioned men who have been unaccustomed to
it; and, of the tiny group who now claimed absolute sway over two
thousand subjects, rapidly increasing to sixteen thousand, none had held
any position of administrative importance in the old country. Some of
them had, indeed, occupied offices, but they were rather of a nature to
encourage that intolerance of contradiction, and tendency to arbitrary
action upon a small stage, which are apt, in time, to become
characteristic of the petty judge, the schoolmaster and the clergyman.
Of Endicott's whole career in England, for example, we know only that
his rector spoke of him as “a man well knowne to divers persons of good
note,”[347] which, in reference to a parishioner in a small country
town, more probably referred to his moral character than to any
administrative experience. Winthrop had held an unimportant position in
a law court. Dudley had managed the estate of a nobleman. Cotton was the
rector of a large provincial parish. The work which they and the other
leaders did was done honestly; and although the course they pursued, in
regard both to the religious qualification for the franchise, and to the
later persecutions for religious beliefs, was, in the long run, to
hamper the growth of the colony and to be partly responsible for the
eventual loss of the charter, they should not be too severely condemned,
perhaps, for the illegal and unjust, as well as politically unwise,
course, upon which they now entered. It must be said, however, that,
when the great opportunity was offered them of advancing the cause of
religious liberty, they turned aside. To the new voices being raised on
behalf of justice and humanity, the Massachusetts leaders were as deaf
as Laud and the Anglican hierarchy. Equally, and for the same reason,
each party solidly and consciously blocked the path to toleration in so
far as lay in its power.
Footnote 347:
White, _Planter's Plea_, p. 43.
The problems of government in the new country soon came thick upon the
little group from the opposition in the old. The notorious Morton, for
example, was once more singing and trading in “his old nest in the
Massachusetts,” in the autumn of the year in which Winthrop landed.
There were valid reasons, notably his selling fire-arms to the Indians,
which might have served adequately as warrant for his arrest by the
authorities; but when that action was decided upon, the alleged grounds
bore a curiously trumped-up appearance. In the official order for his
apprehension, no crime was mentioned; and in his sentence the only
matters cited were the “many wrongs he hath done” the Indians, and the
theft of a canoe from them.[348] Whatever the moral nature of his
intercourse with the natives, it was not likely that, from their
standpoint, there had been any very serious crime committed against them
by a man living almost isolated in their midst, and whose sole business
was trading with them. The convenient, but apparently unfounded,
suspicions of a murder committed by him in England, and a warrant
procured from the Chief Justice for his shipment thither, could not have
served as a basis for any sentence inflicted in Massachusetts.[349] The
probable truth is that the Puritans either wanted to teach the
discontented “old planters” a lesson, for which purpose Morton offered
himself as an easy victim, or they suspected, what was indeed the fact,
that he was in communication with Gorges.[350] Obviously, neither of
these could be openly alleged as a cause for the punishment they
inflicted, which was extraordinarily severe. He was put in the stocks
and deported to England; his entire property was confiscated, and his
house burned to the ground. Set at liberty in England with little delay,
he got into communication with Gorges, and was soon joined by two other
victims of colonial methods.
Footnote 348:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 74 _f._
Footnote 349:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, p. 253.
Footnote 350:
C. F. Adams, _New English Canaan of Thomas Morton_ (Prince Soc.,
Boston, 1883), p. 41. For a fair and full account, _cf._ the same
author's _Three Episodes_, vol. I, pp. 240-50. Morton's own account is
in his _New English Canaan_, pp. 108 _ff._
Gorges, though a stanch supporter of the Church of England, was in close
relations with the Puritan peers. He and Warwick were having constant
dealings, as both were active in the Council for New England, and his
son John was a brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, in whose house, as
we have seen, the Massachusetts project took shape. There is nothing to
indicate any hostility upon his part to the Massachusetts colony until
1632; and the several emissaries whom he secretly sent there were
probably dispatched for the sole purpose of seeing whether or not the
settlers were encroaching upon the lands claimed by himself and his son
Robert, whose rights, it will be recalled, he specifically reserved when
he consented to the granting of the Massachusetts charter. The grantees
of that instrument, however, denied that the Gorges rights had any legal
validity, and claimed and occupied the disputed land as their own. A
quarrel was, therefore, inevitable, and as the Puritans, it must be
confessed, had little respect for legality themselves, they could, when
need required, be counted upon to take such steps as they might see fit
to oppose any action of Gorges.
Winthrop had been scarcely a month on the shores of the Bay, when
another newcomer arrived in the shape of one of the most picturesque and
mysterious characters who were ever to stroll on Boston Common. Sir
Christopher Gardiner, Knight of the Sepulchre (somewhat whited),
suddenly appeared, with no ostensible business, but with that unexpected
phenomenon in the Puritan colony, a pretty young mistress. To be sure,
he called her cousin, but it was soon suspected, as Bradford somewhat
quaintly wrote, that “she (after the Italian manner) was his
concubine.”[351] In spite of the fact that a late defender has claimed
that “he was unfitted for the quiet pleasures of domestic life,”[352] he
seems to have made some efforts in that direction; for the authorities
soon received word from London to the effect that he had two wives
there, who were then in conference, and of whom one was calling loudly
for his conversion, and the other for his destruction.[353] On the first
of March, 1631, it was ordered by the Massachusetts court that he and
seven others should be sent prisoners to England by the good ship
Lyon;[354] but the knight, getting word of what was proposed, fled to
the Indians.[355] Some weeks later he was taken into custody by the
Plymouth people, who asserted that they had found on his person evidence
that he was a Roman Catholic.[356] While he was lodged in jail in
Boston, letters addressed to him by Gorges, as well as one to the absent
Morton, came into the hands of Winthrop, who opened them, and decided
that they indicated a design on the part of Gorges to regain possession
of his land—an ambition not wholly unnatural.[357] Whether or not the
authorities decided that it was wiser that Gardiner should not appear in
England to add his testimony to that of Morton, nothing further seems to
have been done to carry into effect the order for his deportation, and
he was soon set at liberty.
Footnote 351:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, p. 294.
Footnote 352:
P. Oliver, _The Puritan Commonwealth_ (Boston, 1856), p. 35.
Footnote 353:
Dudley's Letter, in Young, _Chron. Mass._, p. 333.
Footnote 354:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 83.
Footnote 355:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 65.
Footnote 356:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, p. 295.
Footnote 357:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 68.
Meanwhile a lonely settler from Maine had appeared in Boston, and had
looked with favor upon Gardiner's fair companion. He decided to marry
the lady and to take her back to the Eveless Eden of the Androscoggin.
Gardiner himself accompanied them, and the curiously assorted trio spent
the winter together at Brunswick, from which season there was an odd
echo in the Maine law courts nine years later, when Gardiner's host, and
not himself, was properly sued for a warming-pan stolen by the knight
during his chilly stay. In the summer of 1632, Gardiner landed in
England just in time to add his witness to that of Morton and Ratcliffe
in Gorges's attack upon the Massachusetts charter.[358]
Ratcliffe, who was a mentally unbalanced servant of Cradock, had
apparently talked loosely about the government and the Salem church. For
these “mallitious and scandulous speeches,” as the crime was designated
in his sentence by the court, he was whipped, had both his ears cut off,
was fined the impossible sum of £40, and banished from the colony.[359]
He was not long in joining Morton and Gardiner in England, and becoming
one more arrow in Gorges's quiver.
These cases, moreover, though they proved more important individually,
in their reaction upon the colony, by no means stood alone. A certain
Thomas Gray, for an unspecified crime, was banished, his house was
pulled down, and all Englishmen were enjoined from giving him shelter,
“under such penalty as the Court shall thinke meete to inflicte.” Thomas
Dexter, for saying, “This captious government will bring all to naught,”
adding that “the best of them was but an atturney, &c.,” was put in the
stocks, fined £40, and disfranchised. Henry Lynn, “for writeing into
England falsely and mallitiously against the government and execuccion
of justice here,” was ordered whipped and banished; while Thomas Knower
was put in the stocks for saying that, if punished, he would have the
legality of his sentence tried in England.[360]
Footnote 358:
C. F. Adams, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings_, Series I, vol. XX, p. 80.
Footnote 359:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 88; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol.
I, p. 67.
Footnote 360:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 77, 101, 103, 104, 102.
The course of justice, if no worse than in contemporary England, was
evidently but little improved by its passage overseas, or by being
administered by those who had been so loud in their denunciations of the
summary methods of Laud and the High Commission. It seemed to many, as
to the “old planter” Blackstone, that the tyranny of the “Lord-Bishops”
had merely been exchanged for that of the “Lord-Brethren”; and it was
evident also that the fixed policy of the leaders was to allow no
appeals from their decisions to the home courts of England. All the
colonists, therefore, who would not, on the one hand, wholly refrain
from criticizing the policy and acts of the leaders, and, on the other,
prove themselves acceptable to the clergy, and so secure the franchise
by being elected freemen, were wholly without representation, without
voice in the making of their laws, and without recourse to the courts
and king at home.
As the charter was that of a trading corporation, the levying of taxes
was a mere development of the right to assess shareholders, and,
therefore, extended only to freemen. But no such legal restriction was
observed, and from the beginning, the authorities taxed the non-freemen
equally with themselves, though denying them the political rights which
they themselves possessed.[361] Indeed, not only their property was thus
subject to enactments in which they had no voice, but their time and the
work of their hands as well; for the General Court passed a law that all
except members of the court, and officers of the church and
commonwealth, were liable to be impressed for manual labor on all public
works.[362] The town meeting, indeed, seems to have been the only place
in which the great majority of the colonists could legally make their
voice heard at all, and there only upon questions concerning the most
trivial local matters.
Footnote 361:
H. L. Osgood, “New England Colonial Finance in the 17th Century”;
_Political Science Quarterly_, vol. XIX, p. 82.
Footnote 362:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 124.
The New England town, already noted as one of the three typical
institutions in the development and influence of that section, may be
considered in its origin as “the politically active congregation,” bound
together, in addition to its church ties, by a peculiar agrarian
policy.[363] Originating at Plymouth, it became universal throughout the
Puritan colonies on the mainland, and was reproduced with extraordinary
fidelity of detail wherever New Englanders migrated. The New England
colonies, for the most part, neither sold nor rented their land, but
granted it freely in fee to actual settlers, in rough proportion to
their present ability to use it.[364] In general most of it was granted
primarily to towns, which owned it in their corporate capacity; and by
them it was allotted to individuals in the form of home-lots or arable
land and meadow. The remainder formed the “common,” for the use of all,
under certain restrictions. The whole land-system, as well as the
methods of cultivation, exhibited many striking resemblances to those of
our early Teutonic ancestors; and, some years ago, these coincidences
were largely insisted upon as cases of genuine survival.[365] It is more
probable that a return to favorable wilderness conditions merely
strengthened those primitive elements still remaining in the manorial
system, with which the settlers were familiar in England. As we have
already pointed out, the geographical environment in New England, as
contrasted with that of the other colonies, tended strongly to develop
the type of compact settlement. This was further reinforced by the form
of emigration, which was distinctly of neighborhood groups, and by the
type of church government.
Footnote 363:
M. Eggleston, _The Land System of the New England Colonies_, Johns
Hopkins Univ. Studies, Baltimore, 1886. _Cf._ also C. M. Andrews, _The
River Towns of Conn._, J. H. U. S., 1889; W. E. Foster, _Town
Government in Rhode Island_, J. H. U. S., 1886; A. B. Maclear, _Early
New England Towns_, Columbia Univ. Studies, 1908; H. L. Osgood,
_American Colonies_, vol. I, pp. 424 _ff._; and for English towns on
Long Island, J. T. Adams, _History of the Town of Southampton_
(Bridgehampton, 1918), pp. 94-103.
Footnote 364:
The occasional few and unimportant exceptions do not affect the
general statement.
Footnote 365:
_Cf._ H. B. Adams, _The Germanic Origin of New England Towns_, J. H.
U. S., 1882; Id., _Village Communities of Cape Anne and Salem_, J. H.
U. S., 1883; G. E. Howard, _Local Constitutional History of the U.
S._, J. H. U. S., 1889. Too enthusiastic believers should read “The
Survival of Archaic Communities,” in F. W. Maitland, _Collected
Papers_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1911), vol. II, pp. 313 _ff._
The exigencies of the situation, when the settlers first landed, had
necessitated their dispersal in various communities, whose members at
once found it needful to manage their local affairs to some extent by
meeting together among themselves. The charter made no provision for any
but a general government; nor, under it, did the company have any legal
right to incorporate other bodies. These more or less informal local
governments were, therefore, extra-legal both before and after the
passage of a township act by which it was attempted specifically to give
them certain rights of local administration. At the town meetings, which
at first were spontaneous, and afterward regulated, all the inhabitants
had the right to be present and to take part in the discussion of public
affairs, although only the freemen were entitled to vote, except upon a
few questions of minor importance. The distinction was somewhat similar
to that in the churches, which all could attend, but in the management
of which only church members had a voice. The town meeting, therefore,
was a completely democratic institution in only one of its aspects,
although it came to have great influence upon both political theory and
practice.
A further development brought these local communities into working
relations with the General Court. Owing to the distance of the scattered
settlements from Boston, and the danger of all the freemen being absent
at once from their homes, it was enacted, in 1634, that every town
should elect two or three deputies, who should have the power of the
whole, and who should act as their representatives in the General
Court.[366] As the charter provided that seven of the eighteen
Assistants must be present in the Court in order to constitute a quorum,
that body was now composed of a small number of Assistants and a
steadily growing number of Deputies. As the Virginia House of Burgesses
had been established in 1619, and the Bermuda Assembly in 1620, the
representative government provided for in Massachusetts was the third in
the colonies.[367]
Footnote 366:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 118.
Footnote 367:
_Cf._ J. H. Lefroy, _On the Constitutional History of the Bermudas_
(Westminster, 1881), p. 6.
Owing to the close alliance maintained between the clergy and the
Magistrates, as the Assistants soon came to be called, the body of
deputies grew to be considered the more popular element in the Court. It
was clear that real grievances and the democratic influences at work in
the town meeting were likely to develop into attacks upon the arbitrary
power of the very limited body of freemen. The form that the struggle
assumed was that of a contest, lasting twenty years, between the
deputies and the magistrates, with the influence of the clergy
constantly on the side of the latter. The freemen themselves were,
indeed, not all in favor of the arbitrary exercise of power by the small
oligarchical group which for so long remained in control. As early as
1631, the people of Watertown, when taxed for fortifying Newtown,
declared that “it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear
of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage.”[368] Although
legally in the right, they accepted Winthrop's interpretation of the
charter, which is interesting as showing how completely the unjustified
transformation from a company into a commonwealth had already been
effected in the minds of the leaders.
Footnote 368:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 84.
Although the people, until well into the eighteenth century, probably
had little thought of becoming independent of England, it seems clear
from all the acts of the leaders, especially the transfer of the charter
itself, that it was their intention, even before leaving England, to
govern in as complete independence of that country as future
circumstances might permit. They wished, it is true, to found a state
for the glory of God and the establishment of true religion, but in
which, nevertheless, they themselves should constitute the supreme
power. Every encroachment upon it, from any direction, was grudgingly
yielded to; and it is not unlikely that, even then, some of them dreamed
of an actual political independence. “We are not a free state,” wrote
Pyncheon to Winthrop, in 1646, evidently with this in mind; “neither do
I think it our wisdom to be a free state; though we had our liberty, we
cannot _as yet_ subsist without England.”[369]
Footnote 369:
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series IV, vol. VI, p. 383. The italics are
mine.
The political history of Massachusetts under the charter was thus made
up of two separate elements. The first was the resistance of the
governing group to any effort of England, legal or illegal, to assert
her rights, even justly, over her colony; and the second was the
struggle of a part of the colonists themselves, for toleration and
liberty, against the governing class. Even had the colony never
separated from England, we should, in all probability, have come to
possess the same measure of civil liberty and religious toleration that
the English have to-day; but that separation having taken place, had the
Puritan oligarchy retained and extended their power, we should have but
little of either. It is, therefore, the second conflict which, although
less dramatic, is the more vital in the history of human freedom. We
must now turn to consider the earliest important attacks from both of
the quarters indicated.
Of those from across the water, the first was launched, as could well
have been foreseen, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and was brought upon the
colony directly through the policy pursued by its leaders. The untiring
interest of Gorges in the affairs of New England, and his hope of yet
creating a profitable settlement there for himself, were both well known
to the Puritans. The old knight had spent vastly greater sums in the
effort to plant the wilderness than had been contributed by any
individual among themselves. He had attempted the colonization of Maine
at a time when the men who were now engaged in banishing his agents were
hardly more than children.[370] He had made no effort to disturb the
Pilgrims during their ten-years' stay at Plymouth, and would probably
have left the Massachusetts settlers also in peace, had it not been for
their denial of the rights he claimed in a part of the soil they had
preëmpted, and for their treatment of his emissaries. The Massachusetts
authorities, by throwing down the gauntlet, had created a powerful enemy
who was not slow in picking it up.
Footnote 370:
Winthrop was a lad of 19 in 1607, and Endicott but 16.
In 1632, Gorges and Mason, with the assistance of Gardiner, Morton, and
Ratcliffe, prepared a petition, which was presented to the Privy Council
in December.[371] Winthrop stated that among many false accusations and
“some truths misrepeated,” it accused the colony of separating from the
Church of England, and of threatening to cast off its political
allegiance.[372] Supporters of the company in England hastily put into
motion those unseen agencies that were most efficacious in doing
business at the court of Charles; and, in spite of what seemed
overwhelming odds against them, in courtly influence, won an unexpected
victory, even gaining a word of commendation from the King.[373] Their
success is involved in a mystery, which, however, we suspect might be
unlocked by that same “golden key” which the Pilgrims were using
contemporaneously at another of the royal doors. Meanwhile, the Council
for New England had requested that the Company's charter be presented
for examination, and Humphrey had been forced to confess that it was in
New England, stating that, though he had often written for it, he had
been unable to obtain it.[374]
Footnote 371:
_Acts Privy Council, Colonial_, vol. I, p. 183.
Footnote 372:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 122.
Footnote 373:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 123 _n._
Footnote 374:
Records Council for New England; _American Antiquarian Society
Proceedings_, 1866, p. 107.
The demand, however, was repeated from a more powerful source two years
later. In 1633, Laud had become Archbishop of Canterbury, and had
declared war upon the Puritans. Colonial affairs, which had heretofore
been considered, when considered at all, by the Privy Council, were now
put into the hands of a body styled “the Lords Commissioners for
Plantations in General,” which was headed by the Archbishop, and given
almost royal powers in both civil and ecclesiastical matters, including
that of revoking all charters and patents unduly obtained.[375] Gorges
utilized this new opportunity, and at once began to work upon the
Archbishop's hatred of Puritanism, in order to recover his own legal
claims. On February 21, 1634, the Board, having taken into consideration
the great numbers of persons “known to be ill-affected and discontented,
as well with the Civil as Ecclesiastical government,” who were daily
resorting to New England, ordered that Cradock produce the Massachusetts
charter.[376] Upon receipt of Cradock's first letter requesting its
return, the authorities at Boston decided to return an evasive answer,
ignoring the Council's demand. After the first communication had been
followed by an official copy of the order itself, word was returned by
Winslow, who was acting as agent for both Plymouth and Massachusetts,
that the charter could not be sent except by a vote of the General
Court, which body would not meet until September.[377]
Footnote 375:
C. M. Andrews, _British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade
and Plantations, 1622-1675_, J. H. U. S., 1908, pp. 16 _f._
Footnote 376:
_Acts Privy Council, Colonial_, vol. I, p. 199. The order is given in
Hubbard, _History_, p. 153.
Footnote 377:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 161, 163.
Meanwhile, Gorges was plying the English authorities with letters
advising that a governor, “neither papistically nor scizmatically
affected,” be appointed for New England, modestly suggesting that he
himself was an eminently proper person for the office, and urging that
the Massachusetts charter be repealed.[378] His wish was gratified as to
the first two points, and it looked as if he was at last to see the
shores of that land which had been the chief object of his thoughts for
thirty years. Winslow, whose suit, at first, had seemingly prospered,
was suddenly and dramatically confronted, in the presence of Laud, with
his old enemy Morton of Merry Mount, and, as a result of the latter's
accusations, was temporarily committed to prison.[379]
Footnote 378:
Baxter, _Gorges_, vol. III, pp. 261-75.
Footnote 379:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, p. 330.
The grandiose scheme that Gorges had conceived contemplated the division
of all New England among certain members of the old Council, and the
validating of the individual assignments by legal sanctions. It was also
arranged that the charter should then be resigned by that body, which
had only too truly become, as the declaration read, “a Carcass in a
manner breathless.”[380] This was done in April, and in the following
month a writ of _Quo Warranto_ was entered, to deprive the Massachusetts
company of its own charter, as the final step in the transformation of
New England. Aside from the play of conflicting influences involved, the
leaders, by their handling of affairs, had, without question, violated
the terms of that instrument, and so had given their adversaries a
reputable cause to plead. The verdict was adverse to the Company,
judgment was entered against such of the patentees as appeared, and the
remainder were outlawed. The patentees, however, refused to acknowledge
the action of the courts, and the charter was not returned, though again
demanded two years later.[381] Meanwhile, Gorges's new-risen hopes had
been wholly dashed. Though he had been appointed governor, the King had
provided him with no funds from the empty treasury, and Gorges's own
resources were always inadequate for his undertakings. Mason, who was
aiding him, suddenly died. The ship which was to have carried the knight
to his new province broke as it was being launched, and delay followed
delay, while the aspect of public affairs was rapidly changing.
Footnote 380:
Hazard, _Hist. Coll._, vol. I, p. 391.
Footnote 381:
Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, p. 85; Hutchinson, _Papers_ (Prince
Soc., Albany, 1865), vol. I, p. 119.
This favorable turn, however, was not foreseen in the colony, and
immediately upon receipt of the news of the appointment of the new
Commission for Plantations, the Massachusetts government prepared for
armed resistance. A sentry was posted on a hill near Boston, to give
notice of the arrival of any hostile ships; £600 was raised for the
completion of the fortifications on Castle Island; a military committee
was appointed; and, a few weeks later, the clergy were consulted as to
what should be done if a general governor were sent out from England.
Their unanimous answer was that “We ought not to accept him, but defend
our lawful possessions (if we are able), otherwise to avoid or
protract.”[382] It must be recalled that the Massachusetts settlers were
as yet Englishmen, and not independent Americans; and the home
government, whose subjects they were, could hardly regard these acts and
utterances otherwise than as rank rebellion, however different an aspect
they might come to wear in the eyes of ourselves as heirs of a
subsequent and successful revolution. Political events in England soon
developed in such a way as to prevent any very serious consideration of
colonial affairs for another quarter of a century, and the policy of
“avoid or protract,” seemed temporarily to serve all purposes.
Footnote 382:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 136-39; J. Winthrop, _History_,
vol. I, pp. 170, 183. They were also asked whether it was lawful to
retain the cross in the royal ensign, Endicott having chosen this
inopportune moment to give an example of his blundering fanaticism, by
cutting it out. _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 136, 147; J.
Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 175, 183, 199.
The colonial government, which had thus assumed what was practically a
position of avowed independence of the king and courts of England, next
decided to take up a stronger line in regard to its own subjects in the
colony itself, for the spirit of the Watertown freemen against taxation
had evidently spread. Just prior to the meeting of the General Court in
the spring of 1634, every town deputed two men to consider such matters
as might come up; and after consultation, a demand was made upon the
governor to allow them to inspect the charter. Having found upon
examination that the General Court was the only legal body entitled to
legislate, they apparently inquired why that power had been usurped by
the magistrates. Winthrop replied that it was because the General Court
had become unwieldy in size; and he made the suggestion that, for the
present, “they might, at the general court, make an order, that, once in
the year, a certain number should be appointed, (upon summons from the
governor) to revise all laws, etc., and to reform what they found amiss
therein; but not to make any new laws, but prefer their grievances to
the court of assistants; and that no assessments should be laid upon the
country without the consent of such a committee, nor any lands disposed
of.”[383] It is difficult to conceive of a more complete abrogation of
the rights of even the very limited body of freemen; and, though
Winthrop does not tell us how this astonishing offer was received, the
records leave us in no doubt. At the meeting of the General Court, it
was immediately voted that there should be no trial for life or
banishment except by a jury summoned by themselves; that there should be
four such courts a year, not to be dissolved without their own consent;
that none but the General Court had power to make laws or to elect and
remove officials; and that none but the General Court had power to
dispose of lands or to raise money by taxation.[384]
Footnote 383:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 153.
Footnote 384:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 117 _ff._
Another incident, of less importance, but interesting as showing the
feeling abroad and the means by which it might, for a time, be
suppressed, occurred at a meeting of the inhabitants of Boston later in
the year, to choose some men to divide additional town-land. The voting
was by secret ballot, for the first time, and Winthrop, Coddington, and
the other leaders failed of election. The first stated in his account of
the affair, that the electors chose mostly men of “the inferior sort,”
fearing that the richer men would give the poor an unfairly small
proportion of land, the policy, he added, having been to leave a large
amount undivided for newcomers and commons.[385] The argument, which was
sound, might perhaps have been considered sounder by the discontented,
had the governor himself, for example, not acquired by that time above
eighteen hundred acres, Saltonstall sixteen hundred, and Dudley
seventeen hundred.[386] After Winthrop had made a speech, and the
Reverend Mr. Cotton had “showed them that it was the Lord's order among
the Israelites to have all such businesses committed to the elders,” a
new vote was ordered and the magistrates were elected.[387]
Footnote 385:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 181.
Footnote 386:
Adams, _Three Episodes_, vol. I, p. 365.
Footnote 387:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 181.
It was evident that, if the little group of leaders, lay and
ecclesiastic, were to retain power permanently, in view of the spirit
evinced by the people, and the extremely rapid growth of the population,
it could be only by securing a firmer hold upon the body of magistrates
and the election of freemen. A few months previously, Cotton had
preached a sermon arguing that the magistrates, who were annually
elected under the charter, were entitled to be perpetually reëlected,
except for “just cause”; and he compared their rights to office with
those of a man in his freehold estate.[388] This suggestion seems to
have borne fruit something more than a year afterward, when, it having
been shown “from the word of God, etc., that the principal magistrates
ought to be for life,” it was voted that a council should be created, to
have such powers as the General Court should grant them, and not to be
subject to removal except for crimes or “other weighty cause.” This, of
course, was again a violation of the charter, and, like so much of the
reactionary legislation, was due to the direct influence of the
clergy.[389] Though Winthrop, Dudley, and Endicott were elected to the
new offices, the council was never granted any powers, and the plan
failed.[390]
Footnote 388:
_Ibid._, vol. I, p. 157.
Footnote 389:
R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. II, p. 271.
Footnote 390:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 220; _Massachusetts Records_, vol.
I, pp. 167, 174, 195, 264.
Of somewhat more practical service, in view of the fact that church
membership was an indispensable qualification for the franchise, was the
law, passed at the same court, that no new churches could be organized
without the approbation of the magistrates and a majority of the elders
of the preëxisting churches, and that no man could become a freeman who
was not a member of a church so approved of. By this means a degree of
control, at least, could be maintained over the great numbers of
newcomers now arriving.
We do not wish to convey the impression that the leaders of the colony
were animated by mere love of power or a vulgar ambition, strong though
the former was in most of them. But the danger to the liberties of their
subjects was no less great because Winthrop and Cotton were wholly
convinced of the divine nature of their mission. It is too frequently
assumed that despotic acts are necessarily those of a self-conscious
despot; whereas, in most cases, they are merely the readiest means
employed for reaching ends which authority may think itself rightly
privileged, or morally bound, to attain. Charles and Laud were no less
certain than the rulers of Church and State in Massachusetts, that their
mandate was a heavenly one. Liberty cannot mean one thing in old England
and another in New, nor can intolerance be condoned in the one and
condemned in the other. The King and the Archbishop were no more closely
allied, nor more bent upon forcing their own will upon that of the
people, than were the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the little
American commonwealth, however worthy or unworthy the motives of each
may have been. Pride in the valiant work that the Massachusetts leaders
did in subduing the wilderness, and in the sacrifices that they made for
their religious beliefs, has tended to make their descendants, in the
words of the old English saw, “to their faults a little blind, and to
their virtues very kind”; but if the nations of the world are to grow in
mutual understanding and brotherly feeling, their histories must be
written from the standpoint of justice to all, and not from that of a
mistaken national piety.
We now come to the case of the first, and perhaps the most conspicuous,
individual who was to fall under the discipline of both Church and State
in New England. Roger Williams had arrived in Boston as early as 1631.
Added to a most winning nature and a personality that ever exerted a
charm over friends and enemies alike, he brought with him a reputation
for being a godly minister, and within a few months after his arrival,
was invited by the church at Salem to become their teacher. He had also,
apparently, within only a few weeks of his landing, been chosen to the
same office by the Boston congregation, but had refused to join with
them because they would not acknowledge themselves to be separated from
the Church of England.[391] He had also, thus early, declared his
doctrine that the power of the magistrates should be limited to civil
matters, and that they had no authority to punish the breach of the
Sabbath or other religious offenses.[392] For these reasons, the General
Court wrote a letter to Endicott, expostulating with the Salem church
for accepting Williams, which that church apparently ignored.[393] He
did not, however, remain long, but removed to Plymouth, where he stayed
preaching until again called to Salem in 1634.[394]
Footnote 391:
Letter to John Cotton, Jr., 1671 (_Narr. Club Pub._, vol. VI, p. 356).
Footnote 392:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 63.
Footnote 393:
The evidence is somewhat conflicting. _Cf._ citations of authorities
in H. M. Dexter, _As to Roger Williams_ (Boston, 1876), p. 5.
Footnote 394:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, p. 310.
Meanwhile, he had not only so extended his doctrine of the separation of
church and state as to deny that a magistrate had power to require an
oath, but had added a new and, it is needless to say, fundamentally
dangerous doctrine for the legal foundation of the colony, in his
declaration that, the Indians being the true owners of the soil, the
King had had no right to grant a charter, and the colony should repent
of having received it. The authorities might, perhaps, fear the
expression of such opinions, and his subsequent banishment, the motives
for which have always been the subject of heated dispute from his own
day to this, may have been caused by his denial of the legal basis of
the colony, as much as by his theory of religious toleration. It was
without doubt the latter, however, which brought down upon him the
special hostility of the clergy. Winthrop, who like Bradford and
Winslow, had an affectionate regard for the young clergyman,
specifically stated that the ministers rendered their judgment “that he
who should obstinately maintain such opinions, whereby a church might
run into heresy, apostacy, or tyranny, and yet the civil magistrate
could not intermeddle,” should be removed.[395]
Footnote 395:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 194.
The civil power was at once brought into play. Williams was cited to
appear, and the town of Salem was denied title to certain lands which it
claimed as its own, until it should discard its teacher.[396] Williams
then endeavored to have the Salem church separate from all the others,
and the congregation addressed a sharp letter of reproof to the
magistrates. The final triumph was, of course, on the side of the
established authorities. Williams, after what seems to have been a fair
trial, was ordered to be banished,[397] the decree being subsequently
revised to take effect in the spring, provided Williams would refrain
from attempting to spread his opinions, which, apparently, he was unable
to do. The authorities, having heard that he was planning to lead a
colony to Narragansett, and fearing that the “infection” would spread
from there throughout the churches, undertook to ship him back to
England; but he escaped in the middle of January, making his way through
the snow-filled forests to the safe confines and hospitable savages of
Rhode Island.[398]
Footnote 396:
_Ibid._, vol. I, p. 195.
Footnote 397:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 161.
Footnote 398:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 209.
His subsequent prominence as the founder of that state, and his written
advocacy of the principle of toleration, have tended to overemphasize
the contemporary importance of the proceedings just described.[399] The
authorities had a fair basis for their action, on civil grounds alone;
and although the religious aspect undoubtedly entered largely into the
case, it marked, in that respect, no new departure in policy.[400] It
merely showed somewhat more clearly, perhaps, that, in any case which
threatened to weaken the established relations of church and state or to
question the right of the latter to require the most rigid conformity to
the doctrines and practices of the former, the magistrates and clergy
could be counted upon to act rigorously together. Although personally
popular, Williams had acquired few adherents who were willing to follow
him beyond a certain point in his struggle, and the victory of the court
created but a slight disturbance. The colony, however, in order to avoid
even the possibility of strife, had lost what it could ill afford to
spare—a mind of wider vision than its own.
Footnote 399:
Besides his works already referred to, his doctrine of religious
liberty found expression in _The Bloody Tenent of Persecution_, 1644,
and _The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody_, 1652, reprinted as vols. III
and IV of the _Narr. Club Pub._
Footnote 400:
_Cf._, however, besides the standard histories, J. L. Diman, Preface
to _Narragansett Club Publications_, vol. II, pp. 1-8; and Dexter, _As
to Roger Williams_. The latter is strongly biased against Williams,
and contains some untenable views as to the founders' attitude toward
the charter, but is useful as citing almost all known references to
the case. It was critically reviewed by H. S. Burrage, _American
Historical Association Report_, 1899, vol. I, pp. 10-12.
If Williams's expulsion had caused no tumult, that was not to be true of
another case with which the authorities soon had to deal. Ann
Hutchinson, who had been a parishioner of John Cotton in England, had
come to Massachusetts with her husband, later followed by her
brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, and had been in Boston about two years
at the time of Williams's banishment. She had acquired a considerable
influence among the women, due more, perhaps, to her kindly spirit and
helpfulness in sickness, than to her brilliant mind, which seems to have
impressed itself upon many of the ablest men in the colony. The New
England of that day, as for long after, offered almost no opportunity
for the play of such a restless intellect as hers except upon religious
questions, and Mrs. Hutchinson was, in addition, a sincerely religious
woman. After some time, during which we hear nothing of her, she
appeared as holding Thursday meetings in her house for those women who
had been unable to attend church on the preceding Sunday, and to whom
she rehearsed the sermons preached. She soon passed on to comparing
those of various clergymen, and gradually evolved the doctrine that,
while Mr. Cotton and her brother-in-law preached a “Covenant of Grace,”
all of the others preached a “Covenant of Works”—a theological
distinction which has often been considered so baffling as to elude
understanding. Even at the time, Winthrop wrote that “no man could tell
(except some few, who knew the bottom of the matter) where any
difference was.”[401] It may be inferred, however, that by a “Covenant
of Grace” she meant a religion based upon a direct revelation in the
individual soul of God's grace and love, while by a “Covenant of Works”
was intended a religion founded upon a covenant between God as judge and
man as fallen, which men had merely to obey unquestioningly, as they
obeyed the civil law, and of which the minister was the official
interpreter.[402]
Footnote 401:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 255.
Footnote 402:
The modern literature regarding the Antinomian controversy is large.
_Cf._ C. F. Adams, _Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay_;
Prince Society, Boston, 1894; also his _Three Episodes_, vols. I, pp.
363, and II, 533-81. A very lucid account is given by R. N. Jones,
_The Quakers in the American Colonies_ (London, 1911), pp. 4-25.
It is needless to point out that the latter accorded with the whole
doctrine and polity of the Massachusetts church and state, while the
former would have undermined both as constituted. To many, the preaching
of a religion of love, as contrasted with the harsh tenets of the
established doctrine of law and judgment, brought a joy and peace they
had sought in vain in the latter, and Mrs. Hutchinson's followers grew
rapidly in number. Among them were included Mr. Cotton himself,—who,
however, drew back in the succeeding turmoil,—and the new young Governor
of the colony, Sir Harry Vane.
Vane, as yet but twenty-three years old, high-born and brilliant, but
immature, had arrived in the autumn of 1635 in the ship that brought the
Reverend Hugh Peter and John Winthrop, Jr. He had come over, as had the
younger Winthrop, in connection with the plantation project of Lords
Say, Brook, and others; but he remained in Boston, and was soon admitted
a member of Cotton's church. During the preceding years there had been
from time to time various disagreements between Winthrop and Dudley,
both of whom had occupied the office of governor, the troubles arising
largely from Dudley's touchy and overbearing nature. Reconciliations had
been effected by the kindly and patient Winthrop, and the petty quarrels
are of practically no historical importance, save in that the people had
taken sides to a certain extent. Vane and Peter had been but a few
months in the colony, when, for reasons best known to themselves, they
undertook to arrange a meeting between Governor Haynes, the two
ex-governors, the three clergymen, Cotton, Hooker, and Wilson, and
themselves. The discussion finally centred upon whether the mildness of
Winthrop or the severity of the fanatical Dudley was the wiser in
governing the colony. The question, as usual, was referred to the
ministers for their opinion, who gave it in favor of “strict discipline”
for the honor and safety of the gospel. Whereupon, Winthrop acknowledged
that he had been too lenient, and promised a stricter course thereafter,
and Massachusetts took one more step backward.[403] The following spring
Vane was elected governor.
Footnote 403:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 211 _ff._
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hutchinson had won over practically all the Boston
church, except Wilson, Winthrop, and a few others, who, however, were
strong enough to defeat the proposal to install Wheelwright as
teacher.[404] The strife was gradually spreading, and Vane, who had
allied himself with the Hutchinson party, made a flimsy excuse to resign
the governorship. The Boston church and the Court both refused to
consider his reasons valid, and the resignation was withdrawn. A
conference of the ministers, called by the Court, was held in December,
to try to compose the differences, but accomplished nothing except to
increase the bitter feeling between the parties. A day of fasting was
proclaimed, and although Wheelwright had removed to Mt. Wollaston, he
attended the Boston church on that occasion, and preached his famous
“fast-day sermon.”[405] For expressions contained in it, as falsely
interpreted by the authorities, he was declared by the Court to have
been guilty of contempt and sedition, the same body condemning Stephen
Greensmith to a fine of £40 for saying that all the ministers, except
Cotton, Wheelwright, and, possibly, Hooker, taught a covenant of
works.[406]
Footnote 404:
_Ibid._, vol. I, pp. 241 _ff._
Footnote 405:
It is reprinted by C. H. Bell, _John Wheelwright_ (Prince Society,
Boston, 1876), pp. 153 _ff._
Footnote 406:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 189.
Wheelwright having next been summoned to appear before the General
Court, a petition was presented, signed by nearly all the members of the
Boston church, asking that the hearings should be open to freemen, and
that cases of conscience might be first dealt with by the churches.[407]
This was declared to be “a groundless and presumptuous act.”
Wheelwright's examination was begun in private, and the authorities
stated that it would proceed _ex officio_. This raised loud complaints
among the people, who avowed that it was but one of those High
Commission proceedings which they had left England to escape.
Wheelwright refused to answer the questions put, and the hearings were
finally allowed to be open. The clergy were then asked by the Court
whether they did teach a covenant of works. All but Cotton replied in
the affirmative, and the verdict was thus foreshadowed. Nevertheless, it
took two days of further struggling, again behind closed doors, before
the sentence of sedition and contempt could be agreed to, and the party
of the priests and magistrates secure their victory.[408] A petition,
denying that any of Wheelwright's utterances had been seditious, was
presented to the Court, signed by sixty members of the Boston church,
for which they were rebuked by Winthrop.[409]
Footnote 407:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 256.
Footnote 408:
Adams, _Three Episodes_, vol. I, pp. 444 _f._
Footnote 409:
Adams, _Antinomianism_, pp. 133 _ff._; Winthrop, _History_, vol. I,
pp. 183 _f._
The majority of the Court, however, evidently feared the next election,
and secured the passage of a resolution requiring that the elections
should be held at Newtown, and not, as had always been customary, at
Boston.[410] At the election, in May, Vane and Winthrop were the
opposing leaders, and although the former attempted some ill-judged
political manœuvres, the ecclesiastical party was wholly successful.
Winthrop was elected governor, Dudley deputy—governor, and Endicott,
apparently as a reward for his share in the proceedings, was made a
member of the unconstitutional life council, while all the Boston
Antinomians were defeated for the magistracy. When, in answer to this,
that town next day returned Vane, Coddington, and Hoffe as deputies, the
Court “found a means to send them home again,” claiming that two of the
Boston freemen had not been notified of the election. The next morning,
Boston held a new election, and returned the same deputies, and “the
court not finding how they might reject them, they were admitted.”[411]
Footnote 410:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 191.
Footnote 411:
_Ibid._, vol. I, pp. 195 _ff._; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp.
261 _ff._
The victory over Boston, however, was evidently not considered
sufficient, and the Court proceeded to pass an immigration law, to the
effect that no town could receive any person for a longer time than
three weeks without permission of one of the council or two of the
magistrates. In other words, no Englishman could settle in Massachusetts
without personal permission from Winthrop, Dudley, or Endicott, or two
of their eight associates. The law had evidently been framed to prevent
any accession to the ranks of the Hutchinson party, and was promptly put
into execution on the arrival of a considerable body of newcomers,
including a brother of Mrs. Hutchinson, who were forced to leave the
colony after having reached its shores.[412] Feeling naturally ran high,
and Winthrop defended, while Vane attacked, the validity and justice of
such an enactment.[413] With the law already alluded to, placing the
whole control of the franchise in the hands of the magistrates and the
clergy, and with this new law, which gave the right of admission to the
colony wholly to the former, the control of the oligarchy would seem to
have been fairly complete.
Footnote 412:
_Ibid._, p. 278.
Footnote 413:
The documents are given in the Hutchinson _Papers_, vol. I, pp.
79-114.
The Court, however, even as constituted as a result of the May election,
did not move rapidly enough in the prosecution of Wheelwright, and was
summarily dissolved in September. Sixteen members were dropped, and the
new Court, comprising forty-two members, contained twenty-two new
names.[414] Even this purge was not enough, and two deputies were
expelled, one for declaring that the Boston petition was lawful, and the
other for declaring that he believed Wheelwright was innocent and was
being persecuted for the truth.
Footnote 414:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 204, 205.
Meanwhile, Vane had returned to England, and a synod of all the clergy
had met and declared that there were eighty-two erroneous or blasphemous
opinions involved in the controversy.[415] Mr. Cotton, who had no taste
for that banishment which he claimed was no hardship, now went over to
what was evidently to be the winning side. With a broader mind and wider
vision than any of the other clergy of the colony, he had not the
courage to stand alone, beyond a certain point, against their unanimity
in intolerance. The higher promptings of his nature were crushed by the
united voice of the priesthood, as Winthrop's had been so short a time
before, and the noblest of the colony's leaders, lay and clerical, from
that time tended to sink to the lower level of their fellows.
Footnote 415:
They are given in full by Adams, _Antinomianism_, pp. 95-124. J.
Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 284 _ff._, gives an account of the
meeting, but mentions only 80.
Events now moved more swiftly. At the November Court, Wheelwright was
sentenced to be disfranchised and banished, and was refused the
privilege of an appeal to England.[416] He was given fourteen days in
which to settle his affairs, and at the beginning of winter was on his
way to New Hampshire. One of the expelled deputies was disfranchised and
threatened with banishment should he “speake anything to disturbe the
publike peace.” Another was also disfranchised and banished. Two weeks
later, seven of the signers of the petition were disfranchised, and ten
more, who acknowledged their “sin” in having signed, were pardoned. The
following week, seventy-five men, in the towns of Boston, Salem,
Newbury, Roxbury, Ipswich, and Charlestown, were condemned to have all
their arms and ammunition taken from them unless they would likewise
acknowledge their “sin.” A law was passed that any one who should
“defame” any Magistrate or Court, or any of their acts or proceedings,
should be fined, imprisoned, disfranchised, or banished.[417]
Footnote 416:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 207; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol.
I, p. 294.
Footnote 417:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 207-13.
In the meantime, Mrs. Hutchinson had been brought to trial. When, at its
beginning, she asked what law had been broken, the Court answered, “the
fifth commandment,” which enjoined her to honor father and mother,
whereas she had brought reproach upon the “fathers of the
commonwealth.”[418] When the trial was over, and the sentence given that
she should be “banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman
not fit for our society,” she said, “I desire to know wherefore I am
banished.” “Say no more,” answered the Governor; “the Court knows
wherefore and is satisfied.”
Footnote 418:
Adams, _Antinomianism_, pp. 165, 237. Two reports of the trial are
given in that volume, pp. 157-284.
It was evident now that no voice could be raised in criticism of any
acts of the civil or ecclesiastical authorities, and that the minds and
lives of the ten thousand or more inhabitants of Massachusetts had come
wholly under the control of their rulers. One man, who with a group of
people undertook to organize a church without having secured the
permission of the magistrates and clergy, was fined £20 and imprisoned
“during the pleasure of Court.” Hugh Buet, being found guilty of
“heresy,” was condemned to leave the colony within three weeks or be
hanged. Two others were imprisoned for criticizing the government and
clergy; and, for the same offense, Katherine Finch was ordered to be
whipped.[419] In 1635, a law had been passed making church attendance
compulsory for all inhabitants, under pain of fine and imprisonment.
Three years later, it was enacted that every resident, whether a freeman
and church member or not, should be taxed for the support of the
ministers. In the Old World, the churches had been satisfied with
excommunication, but in Massachusetts, a law was now passed that, if any
person was excommunicated by the church, he must endeavor to have
himself restored within six months, under penalty of “fine,
imprisonment, banishment, or further.”[420] That ominous “further” was
evidently intended to mean death, and it is difficult to conceive of a
measure more conducive to the rearing of a race of conforming
hypocrites.
Footnote 419:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 252, 312, 262, 269, 234.
Footnote 420:
_Ibid._, pp. 140, 240, 242.
The policy so ruthlessly followed by the leaders can hardly be excused
by attributing it to the spirit of the age or to the necessity of
maintaining civil order. They were all familiar with the example of
religious toleration in Holland; and in neither Plymouth, Rhode Island,
nor Connecticut was church membership a legal requisite for the
franchise. Moreover, Massachusetts, only a few years later, in annexing
the northern settlements, permitted their inhabitants to vote without
being church members, although denying that privilege to her own
citizens.
Criticism of the leaders' actions was severe and constant, even from
their best friends in England. The real father of the colony, the
Reverend John White, wrote to Winthrop in alarm, saying that he desired
him “to have an eye to one thinge, that you fall not into that evill
abroad, which you labored to avoyd at home, to binde all men to the same
tenets and practise.” Stansby, in a letter to the Reverend Mr. Wilson,
complained that, on account of their strictness, over one half of the
people were not admitted to church membership, and that this would do
them much harm. Stephen Winthrop, temporarily in London, sent home word
to his brother John, that “here is great complaint against us for our
severity against Anabaptists. It doth discourage any people from coming
to us for fear they should be banished if they dissent from us in
opinion.” Sir George Downing, a cousin of the younger Winthrop, in a
letter retailing English opinion of the colony, speaks of that “law of
banishing for conscience, which makes us stinke everywhere.”[421]
Footnote 421:
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series V, vol. I, p. 252; Series IV, vol.
VII, p. 11; Series V, vol. VIII, p. 200; Series IV, vol. VI, p. 537.
Nor must the standpoint of the English citizen be neglected. England's
American possessions, in spite of monopolies and charters, were coming
more and more to be looked upon as the heritage of the English people,
as the land of opportunity for those who fell by the wayside in life's
race at home, as well as for religious exiles. Yet here was one of the
best parts of the whole continent being monopolized by a band of people
who rejected, oppressed, and banished others, or at the least deprived
them of all political rights, not because they were undesirable
citizens, not because they were immoral, but because they refused to
conform to the peculiar church polity and doctrine, neither Church of
England nor English Puritan, which the first settlers had evolved in the
American wilderness.
Winthrop, in his controversy with Vane over the immigration law, and
apologist historians since, have made much of the possible technical
rights under the charter possessed by the company members, and their
successors in perpetuity, to choose their fellow citizens according to
any standard, however fanatical, however unjust, of which they might
approve. These rights were questionable, and the controversy has usually
ignored those of the potential English colonist at home. But our
interest does not lie in legal technicalities: it is concerned with the
influences that moulded New England; and from that standpoint, we can
only point to the results of the policy of the first leaders and to its
baneful effects. As we noted above, Winthrop's finer impulses had been
permanently checked, while Cotton, who might have made a noble leader,
was now content to follow natures lower than his own. The voices that
had pleaded for religious toleration, for civil liberty, and for a
religion of love, were silenced. The intellectual life of the colony
ceased to be troubled and entered into peace, but it was the peace of
death. The struggle for civil freedom did, indeed, go on, and in that
alone lay the sole contribution of the colony to the cause of human
progress; for the almost complete suppression of free speech and free
inquiry surrendered the intellectual life of Massachusetts to the more
and more benumbing influence of a steadily narrowing theology.[422] For
two centuries, from the day that Winthrop pronounced that verdict, “the
Court knows wherefore and is satisfied,” the social and religious life
of New England as a whole conformed to the rigid lines of Calvinism in
its harshest and least attractive aspects. In England, Puritanism had
been grafted upon a national stock of abundant sturdiness and health. In
the forests of America, uncultured and ungrafted, the wild fruit grew
steadily more gnarled and bitter.
Footnote 422:
_Cf._ C.F. Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_;
Boston, 1898.