As a result of the complete crushing of the power of the Pequots their
whole country was opened to peaceful settlement, and the extension of
the frontier in that direction became rapid. Within about two years from
the signing of the treaty with the savages, the foundations were laid of
Guilford, New Haven, Milford, Stratford, Fairfield, Norwalk, and
Stamford along the Sound, and of Southampton and Southold on the eastern
end of Long Island, thus making a continuous line of English settlement
up to the Dutch boundary, if not, indeed, within it.[494]
Footnote 494:
The Southampton settlers at first tried to plant well within it, but
were forced out by the Dutch. _Cf._ _N. Y. Col. Docts._, vols. II, pp.
145 _ff._, and XIV, pp. 30 _ff._; Adams, _History of Southampton_, pp.
48 _ff._
For its size, New Haven was undoubtedly the wealthiest colony in New
England, its assessed valuation, the year after it was planted, having
been £33,000, or the present equivalent of, perhaps, $700,000.[495] Its
founders, under the leadership of the Reverend John Davenport, a
Nonconformist London clergyman, and Theophilus Eaton, a schoolmate of
his, had arrived in the early summer of 1637, just in time to take part
in the Antinomian controversy and the taxes for the Pequot war. Mr.
Davenport was requested to contribute to the former, and Mr. Eaton to
the latter.[496] Their company was a distinguished one, including
several other wealthy London merchants besides Eaton; five ministers;
four school-teachers, among whom was the first president of Harvard; the
father of Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale University; and Michael
Wigglesworth, the “lurid morning star” of New England verse.[497] Both
Davenport and Eaton had been, for some years, members of the
Massachusetts Bay Company, and that company's colony made great efforts
to retain the new body of settlers within its own bounds. While the
leaders took under consideration the various offers made to them, they
either found them unsatisfactory, or had already determined to establish
an independent colony of their own.[498] After Eaton had examined the
country around Quinnipiack, it was decided to plant there, and seven men
were left to guard the site during the winter, the whole company
following in the spring. Not only were the resources of the colonists
unusually ample, but their preparations seem to have been exceptionally
complete, and the little town soon contained the most stately dwellings
in all New England. Some idea of their scale may be gained from the
reputed presence in Davenport's of thirteen fireplaces, and of nineteen
in Eaton's.[499] The intention, apparently, was not only to found a
Puritan state, but to have it become the chief mercantile centre of the
New World, which accounts for their having built, as one of their
Massachusetts critics wrote, “as if trade and merchandize had been as
inseparably annexed to them as the shadow is to the body, in the shining
of the sun.”[500] One disaster followed another in their business
ventures, however, and the dreams of the merchant-founders were never
realized.
Footnote 495:
Estimated from entry in _Records of the Colony and Plantation of New
Haven_ (Hartford, 1857), p. 25. Hereafter cited as _New Haven
Records_.
Footnote 496:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 271 _ff._; _Massachusetts
Records_, vol. I, pp. 210, 225.
Footnote 497:
C. H. Levermore, _Republic of New Haven_ (J. H. U. S., 1886), p. 8; E.
E. Atwater, _History of Colony of New Haven_ (New Haven, 1881), pp.
112 _ff._
Footnote 498:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 283; letter from Davenport and
Eaton to Massachusetts, _Bulletin New York Public Library_, 1899, pp.
393 _f._
Footnote 499:
Atwater, _New Haven_, pp. 393 _f._
Footnote 500:
Hubbard, _History of New England_, p. 334.
Davenport and most of his company were not only Puritans, but of the
strictest sect, and the Bible Commonwealth which they proceeded to form
was of the most extreme type. Like the Connecticut and Rhode Island
people, they were without a charter, and were mere squatters upon the
soil; but in June, 1639, a meeting was held of the “free planters,” to
discuss a frame of government to replace a previously signed plantation
covenant, now lost. We have no knowledge of what constituted a “free
planter,” but the term undoubtedly excluded a large number of males in
the settlement. The proceedings took the form of queries put by Mr.
Davenport, upon which those present voted by raising hands. As a result
of unanimous votes at this meeting, the fundamental agreement provided
that the franchise should be restricted to church members, and that the
free planters should choose twelve men, to whom should be intrusted the
sole right of selecting from among the rest of the colonists those who
should become church members and freemen, and who were to have the power
of appointing magistrates from among themselves, of making and repealing
laws, and, in fact, of performing all public duties.[501] This was
legalizing the most extreme claims of the Massachusetts oligarchy. Only
one voice, apparently that of Eaton, was raised to protest “that free
planters ought not to give this power out of their hands”; but he was,
of course, overruled. Four months later, at the October court, it was
further voted that “the worde of God shall be the only rule to be
attended unto in ordering the affayres of government in this
plantation.”[502] As had been the case in Connecticut, no mention had
been made of allegiance to England; but in this additional step, the new
colony swept away all obligation to observe the common and statute laws
of the mother-country. The conflicting texts of the Bible, as
arbitrarily chosen and interpreted by the small self-perpetuating group
of rulers, became the only laws that might safeguard, or hazard, the
rights of dwellers in New Haven and the affiliated church-towns which
soon sprang up. The reactionary thought of the framers of these
fundamental orders, however, was to be without appreciable influence
upon the growth of colonial political theory as then developing; for New
Haven was to have only a quarter of a century of independent but
unimportant life before being absorbed by Connecticut, while a more and
more democratic tendency was manifesting itself in all the colonies,
even in Massachusetts.
Footnote 501:
_New Haven Records_, vol. I, pp. 11 _ff._
Footnote 502:
_Ibid._, p. 21.
The effects of the frontier life, and of the distance separating England
from her colonies, were already beginning to show themselves strongly.
The semi-independent communities which had been established in Rhode
Island, Connecticut, and New Haven were entirely without legal
authority; and the two latter, in their “constitutions,” had utterly
ignored the existence of any power outside of themselves. The situation
was not wholly overlooked in England, but as the crisis in public
affairs there was rapidly drawing near, the authorities were helpless to
interfere. A new demand for the return of the Massachusetts charter,
when flatly refused by that colony in 1638,[503] could not be followed
by any show of force; and during the next twenty-two years—which were
those of the Civil War, the fall of the Stuart monarchy, and the reign
of Cromwell—the New England colonies pursued their way almost wholly
without reference to the power of England.
Footnote 503:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 324; _Acts Privy Council,
Colonial_, vol. I, pp. 217, 227 _f._; Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I,
pp. 84 _ff._, 442 _ff._; Hazard, _Historical Collections_, vol. I, pp.
432 _f._
The influence of the frontier was being felt in their domestic concerns
as well. Although the most aggressively radical of the inhabitants of
Massachusetts had, perhaps, gone to the other colonies, there to
establish themselves in greater freedom, the struggle of the citizens
continued, nevertheless, against the arbitrary power of their
government. From the first, the body of magistrates had acted in a
judicial, as well as an executive, capacity. The only rule by which they
were guided is indicated by a resolution in the General Court of 1636,
which provided that they should “determine all causes according to the
lawes nowe established, and where there is noe law, then as neere the
lawe of God as they can.”[504] As English law, in many cases, was not
justly applicable, and as, in others, it was largely neglected, this
really meant the comparatively few laws already enacted in the colony,
and the same arbitrary selection and interpretation of Old Testament
texts that we have just noted in New Haven. As the magistrates acted as
both attorneys and judges, and as no appeals were permitted from their
decisions, no accused person had any protection against them. Anyone,
therefore, who might be obnoxious to the ruling powers on account of his
views, could not hope for justice; and the so-called trials of Mrs.
Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and other notable offenders, were, in reality,
not trials at all, but “relentless inquisitions used by the government
for the purpose of crushing opposition.”[505] That condition was not,
indeed, peculiar to Massachusetts, and was probably just as true of
contemporary England. It was Hooker's glory in Connecticut to have
raised his voice, as the leader of that colony, to plead for a legal
restraint upon this arbitrary exercise of the judicial power of
government, and for the creation of a body of fundamental law. In 1639,
a committee was appointed in that colony for the purpose of drawing up
such a code. The same had been formally demanded in Massachusetts even
earlier, but there the wishes of the people had been steadily opposed by
their leaders.
Footnote 504:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 175.
While the Massachusetts trials of the type just noted were exceptional,
and in general, when passions were not aroused, the ordinary course of
justice was fairly equitable, nevertheless, the entire absence of any
restraint upon the unbridled will of the magistrates was a source of
apprehension to the more serious thinking and liberty-loving residents
of Massachusetts, outside the ring of authority. Not only was any
opposition to the course pursued by the government liable to result in
banishment, with the complete uprooting of a man's life, and perhaps the
financial ruin of himself and his family, but in trivial matters all the
inhabitants, and more particularly, of course, the four fifths who were
not church members, were liable to constant interference by the
authorities. Such a law, for example, as that declaring that whosoever
should “spend his time idlely or unproffitably” should suffer such
penalty “as the court shall thinke meete to inflicte”[506] was typical,
both in its utter lack of definition of the nature of the crime, and in
its failure to specify the penalty to be incurred by the criminal.
Footnote 505:
Osgood, _American Colonies_, vol. I, p. 189.
Footnote 506:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 109.
In spite of the demands of the people in Massachusetts, however, it was
not until 1640 that a draft of a fundamental law seems to have really
been considered. The clergy and most of the magistrates had been opposed
to any limitation of arbitrary authority, and had fought the requests
with what their modern defender has called the weapon of “a good-natured
procrastination,” but which may have worn another aspect to some at the
time.[507] Finally, in 1641, an Abstract of Laws, or Body of Liberties,
was passed, which marked a distinct step forward, though by no means
assuring full protection. One draft, which was not, however, accepted,
was based entirely upon Bible texts, of which, characteristically, but
two were drawn from the New Testament and forty-six from the Old.[508]
Additional safeguards were required, and four years later, the whole
discussion as to specific penalties for specific offenses was again
reopened. The clergy and Winthrop still opposed any limitation upon
judicial authority, the Governor, indeed, going so far as to say that
God had made specific penalties only in certain cases, and as “judges
are Gods upon earth,” their power should not be more limited than
his—which might be denominated strong doctrine.[509] In spite of all
opposition, however, a new code, based in part upon the Body of
Liberties, was finally secured and printed in 1648, twenty years after
the first demand, and ten after Hooker's famous sermon at Hartford.[510]
Footnote 507:
Palfrey, _History_, vol. II, p. 22. For earlier efforts to secure its
passage, _cf._ _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 174, 222, 279,
292; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 191, 240.
Footnote 508:
_Cf._ _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series I, vol. V, pp. 171 _ff._ The
Body as passed is in _Ibid._, Series III, vol. VIII, pp. 216 _ff._
Footnote 509:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, pp. 92 _ff._; “Arbitrary Government
Described,” in R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. II, p. 448. _Cf._
also J. Winthrop, _History_, vols. I, pp. 388 _ff._, and II, pp. 67
_ff._
Footnote 510:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, pp. 61, 168, 262.
The antagonism to the power of the magistrates was manifested also by
new episodes in the struggle between them and the more democratic
deputies, which we noted as beginning at the time of the Connecticut
emigration. A dispute over the ownership of a sow, between a poor widow
and a rich man notorious for his unjust business dealings, was finally
brought to the General Court for decision. The evidence was by no means
convincing, and the Court was divided, with a majority of the
magistrates in favor of a verdict for the rich Keaynes, and a majority
of the deputies in favor of the poor widow. The point was thus raised
again as to whether the small number of magistrates, by a negative vote,
could block the will of the much larger body of deputies.[511] Winthrop
wrote a treatise on the question, appealing to certain English
precedents and the Old Testament, and stated that, if the magistrates
were not allowed to veto the action of the deputies, the colony would be
a democracy and “there was no such government in Israel.”[512] So
implacably did the grim shades of Moses and Aaron block the paths of
Boston Common. The magistrates, in view of the strong opposition that
developed, offered to leave the matter to the clergy, and to give way if
the decision were adverse. They knew, of course, that it would not be
so, and Winthrop records that it was “their only care to gain time,”
until the people could be brought to the heel of their clerical leaders
as usual. As part of the plan, the members of the Court were asked to
take advice before the next meeting; and it is interesting as showing
the normal danger for the ordinary citizen in discussing public matters,
that a special act should be thought necessary making it “no offence for
any, either publicly or privately, to declare their opinion in the case,
so it were modestly.”[513] The following year, a compromise was
effected, which, however, was distinctly in favor of the magistrates;
and thereafter the deputies and the magistrates sat as two separate
houses, each with a negative vote on the other.[514]
Footnote 511:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vols. I, pp. 377 _ff._; and II, pp. 83 _ff._,
142 _ff._
Footnote 512:
The essay is given in R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. II, pp. 427
_ff._
Footnote 513:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 143.
Footnote 514:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, pp. 58 _f._
Another incident in the struggle, which soon occurred, involved both the
question of the power of the local government over the colonists, and
the relations of the colony to the home government in England. In 1644,
it was suggested to the General Court that the condition of the large
number of unrepresented inhabitants be improved by increasing the civil
privileges that a citizen might possess without being a church member,
such privileges then being limited, apparently, to a small share in
local town business.[515] Nothing, however, was done, and two years
later, a petition signed by a Dr. Robert Child, Samuel Maverick, and
five others was presented, reciting that there were many thousands in
the colony who were debarred from all participation in government,
although they paid taxes and were subject to military and other duties.
Child was a newcomer, “a gentleman and a scholar,” and a graduate of the
University of Padua. Maverick was the richest of the “old planters,” and
the only freeman who was not a church member—a privilege which he owed
to the circumstances connected with the first planting of the colony, as
already related. Thomas Fowle, another of the signers, was a merchant;
while yet another, David Yale, was a man of property, and both a stepson
of Theophilus Eaton of New Haven and a brother-in-law of Governor
Hopkins of Connecticut. At this very time, he was acting as attorney for
the Earl of Warwick.[516] The motives of the signers may not have been
wholly disinterested, but the effort to make out that they were persons
of no importance in the colony has been overdone.[517]
Footnote 515:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 193, 349.
Footnote 516:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660_, p. 327.
Footnote 517:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 320 _n._, 358. _Cf._ Winslow,
“New England's Salamander,” in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series III,
vol. II, pp. 117 _ff._
The petitioners desired that “members of the church of England, not
scandalous in their lives and conversations,” be admitted to the
churches, and that “civil liberty and freedom be forthwith granted to
all truly English, equall to the rest of their countrymen, as in all
plantations is accustomed to be done, and as all freeborne enjoy in our
native country.”[518] Other reforms were demanded, and although some of
the charges were overdrawn, nevertheless, the main point was not fairly
met in the lengthy reply prepared by Winthrop, Dudley, and others of the
court.[519] That point was that in an English colony, and upon English
soil, the great majority of the inhabitants were debarred from a share
in the government because of beliefs which would not have so
disfranchised them in the home country. No amount of legal casuistry
expended upon the charter, and no amount of sophistry employed in
explaining the relations between the colony and England, could alter
that fact, nor the additional one that Massachusetts was a colony and
not an independent nation. As the request of the petitioners was for
such liberties only as they would have possessed at home, and not for
general religious toleration, an appeal to England was natural, and was
set on foot as soon as the reply of the magistrates was received.
Winthrop, however, declared that he would not tolerate such an appeal,
and the petitioners were heavily fined by the court, and two of them
imprisoned.[520] Child, and some of the others insisting upon going to
England, they were seized just before the ship sailed, their baggage and
houses were searched, and they themselves imprisoned. As some of the
magistrates had not agreed to the earlier proceedings, they were not
consulted in the present one, which was distinctly of a Star-Chamber
sort. Among the papers of Dand, another signer, was found one suggesting
the appointment of a royal governor, for which he also was promptly put
in jail. Vassall and Fowle finally reached England; but the political
situation there by 1647 had become such as to preclude any consideration
of colonial matters.
Footnote 518:
Hutchinson, _Papers_, vol. I, pp. 216 _ff._; _New England's Jonas cast
up in London_, Force Tracts, vol. IV, pp. 8 _ff._
Footnote 519:
Hutchinson, _Papers_, vol. I, pp. 223 _ff._; J. Winthrop, _History_,
vol. II, pp. 348 _ff._ Prof. G. L. Kittredge has recently written an
elaborate account of Dr. Child—"Doctor Robert Child the Remonstrant,"
reprinted from _Publications, Col. Soc., Mass._, 1919. It is a strong
brief in defense of the action taken by the Massachusetts authorities,
and contains the fullest and most accurate account of the Petition and
the subsequent trials yet written. Prof. Kittredge is a firm supporter
of the old theory that Child was plotting to overthrow the government
in the interests of Presbyterianism. While this may be so, it seems
not to cover the cases of the other remonstrants. The main interest of
the affair for our present work, however, lies in the evidence
afforded of discontent with the Puritan regime, and in that
connection, Prof. Kittredge, after showing the extreme diversity of
views held by the signers on most matters, speaks of “their discontent
with the administration which was the sole binding element common to
all the Remonstrants” (p. 29). He also states (p. 52), that “there was
more or less public sentiment in favor of the defendants.”
Footnote 520:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, pp. 196, 199, 205, 241.
The tide of popular rights in the colonies was rising, however, and “all
the troubles of New England” were “not at the Massachusetts,” as Winslow
wrote to Winthrop, nor were high-handed proceedings wholly limited to
that commonwealth. In Plymouth, a written proposal, favored by many of
the inhabitants and of the deputies, was presented to the General Court,
“to allow and maintaine full and free tollerance of religion to all men
that would preserve the civill peace and submit unto government.” “You
would have admired [wondered] to have seen,” wrote Winslow, “how sweet
this carrion relished to the pallate of most of the deputies.”
“Notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted,” the
Governor would not permit any vote to be taken; and the effort thus to
extend to others the same freedom that the leading founders of the
colony had availed themselves of for twelve years in Holland was
summarily suppressed.[521]
Footnote 521:
Letter of Winslow to Winthrop, in Hutchinson, _Papers_, vol. I, p.
174.
During the decade we have been considering, the struggle of Englishmen
at home for the preservation of their liberties against the incompetent
and reactionary rule of the second Stuart, had left that ruler but
little leisure to consider the American colonies. Except for occasional
and ineffectual efforts to retain some control over them by the home
government, they had been left free to work out their own theories,
untrammeled by any higher power. By 1640, the scattered settlements in
Maine, the towns in New Hampshire, the Bay Colony, Plymouth, the four
separate towns in what is now Rhode Island, Saybrook, the affiliated
towns of New Haven, and the river settlements of Connecticut, were
pursuing their several ways virtually as independent states, preëmpting
lands, erecting governments, treating with the natives, with each other,
and with the French and Dutch, as if they were sovereign powers. Nor was
there anything to prevent innumerable other petty states, each with its
few square miles of territory, and ruling according to its own ideas,
from arising over all New England, save as restrained by the jealousy of
those already in existence. If this tendency had not been restrained,
New England might have come in time to be a checker-board of tiny
republics, engaged in constant disputes over boundaries and other
relations at home, and, should the shield of England cease to protect
them, the prey of foreign foes abroad.
There were three possible methods of preventing this development of a
Puritan Balkans. England might assert her rights legitimately, and
endeavor to bring some sort of uniformity and order out of what might
otherwise become an impossible situation; one or another of the colonies
might, by force of greater strength, subdue its weaker neighbors, and
thus create one or several greater states; or, finally, a confederation
might be formed of all of them. Under the circumstances, the legal and
logical method would have been some sort of imperial control by the
mother-country, but that was out of the question unless the English
government was strong and united enough to enforce her will, and wise
and experienced enough to make it acceptable to the colonists. For the
present, that solution was impossible. Of the other two, the first would
naturally appeal to a strong and aggressive colony like Massachusetts,
while a confederacy would be favored by her weaker but no less
independent neighbors. Both the latter plans were tried, and the
intercolonial relations of the next quarter of a century were largely
the result of these two conflicting methods of unifying New England
being pursued simultaneously.
Owing to the death of Mason, and the failure of Gorges's plans for
Maine, the settlements north of Massachusetts were without a settled
government, and the inhabitants do not seem to have had the ability to
create a stable one for themselves, which was so marked a characteristic
of those in Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven. We
have already seen how Massachusetts, by an unwarrantable construction of
her charter, had begun to lay claim to all the land of New Hampshire and
Maine lying eastward of the most northerly source of the Merrimack,
although the whole course of the Crown and Council for New England at
the time of the grant showed that such a claim was absolutely untenable.
Nor, in the beginning, had the Massachusetts leaders dreamed of making
it,[522] and it was, in fact, as Professor Osgood says, “more clearly an
usurpation than was any later act of the crown which affected New
England.”[523] The decision, otherwise favorable to Massachusetts, of
the English Chief Justices in 1677, declaring the interpretation claimed
to be utterly without warrant, and reassigning the lands to the heirs of
the two original patentees, seems entirely just.[524]
Footnote 522:
_Cf._ letter of Emanuel Downing, already cited, asking for an
extension of the charter limits northward, in 1633. _Cal. State Pap.,
Col., 1675-76_, p. 74.
Footnote 523:
Osgood, _American Colonies_, vol. I, p. 377.
Footnote 524:
_Acts Privy Council, Colonial_, vol. I, pp. 723 _ff._ Palfrey's
statement that the charter, “literally interpreted,” endowed
Massachusetts with the lands claimed is hardly borne out by the facts.
_History_, vol. I, p. 587. _Cf._, however, Burrage, _Colonial Maine_,
p. 364.
Early in 1641, a dispute between church factions in Dover, headed by two
contending clergymen, gave Massachusetts a chance to intervene. Captain
Underhill, who had been banished from that colony at the time of the
Hutchinson controversy, was then on the Piscataqua, and, perhaps with an
idea of once more ingratiating himself with the home authorities, sent a
petition to the Massachusetts Court, asking aid for himself and his
party. Massachusetts at once dispatched a magistrate and two clergymen,
and the Underhill party were victorious, the clergyman heading the
opposing faction having opportunely turned out to be a personally
immoral character.[525] The Dover patentees, Warwick, Say, and the
others, who had purchased the patent in the interests of Massachusetts
some years before, now passed the grant, with slight reservations, to
that colony, which at once annexed the town.[526] A temporary government
was installed, and, two years later, it was agreed that the inhabitants
should have the privilege of freemen to manage their local affairs, and
to elect deputies, even though they were not church members.[527] Thus a
right not yielded to four fifths of her own citizens was granted to
those in her new possessions, and imperial ambition seems to have won
the first victory over Israelitish polity. This provision not only
disproved her former claim that civil order could not be maintained
without forced religious conformity, but, combined with the further
provision that the settlers in the newly annexed territory should be
subject only to local, and not to general, taxation, it tended to show
that she herself did not believe the claims she made as to the
interpretation of the charter.[528] If she really considered that the
territory now being seized under pretext of ownership was as indubitably
hers as that south of the Merrimack, why did she thus deprive herself of
the right of religious and fiscal control?
Footnote 525:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 33 _f._
Footnote 526:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 332; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol.
II, p. 50. Apparently Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth) was also annexed.
_Cf._ _New Hampshire Provincial Papers_, vol. I, p. 192.
Footnote 527:
_Ibid._, pp. 183 _ff._, 168.
Footnote 528:
_New Hampshire Provincial Papers_, vol. I, pp. 182, 184.
She next claimed and absorbed the town of Exeter, and her new claims,
extending to Maine, there came into conflict with those of Gorges and
the Pilgrims. The latter, indeed, had lately heard her state that she
was entitled to a part of the town of Plymouth itself, and she did
encroach upon the Plymouth territory.[529] A further enlargement of her
power to the south, and one obviously outside her jurisdiction, was next
made within the present limits of Rhode Island.
Footnote 529:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 367 _ff._
Samuel Gorton, from his heretical notions in religion, according to the
Gospel of New England, and his somewhat explosive efforts to defend
persons he thought oppressed by the colonial authorities, had led a
troubled and troubling life in Massachusetts, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and
Providence. Indeed, in his wandering course through the Puritan heavens,
he seems to have been as fatally followed by trouble as a comet by its
luminous tail. As he punctuated his career by denominating the
Massachusetts magistrates “a generation of vipers,” the Governor of
Plymouth, “Satan,” and the justice of Portsmouth, “a just-ass,” he can
hardly be said to have had an ingratiating way with the authorities,
although no crime could be laid at his door. The people of that day had
an insatiable passion for ploughing in the theological field, which was
always proving as full of unexploded shells as any on the modern
battle-front of France, and Gorton seems to have had a fatal facility
for turning these up. He had already been blown out of three colonies,
when, after some experience with him, the men of Providence decided that
he or they must leave. Finally banished, he made an Indian purchase, and
settled some miles to the south.
This, however, was not far enough for his former neighbors, who, in
1641, asked assistance from Massachusetts in ridding them of Gorton.
That colony refused to consider the request, unless Providence would
place herself under her jurisdiction.[530] The matter became complicated
by a dispute between Miantanomo and two other sachems, arising out of
Gorton's purchase, and the sachems also applied to Massachusetts. Both
they and the Providence men were received under her jurisdiction, and
the next move was to send a force of forty armed men to take Gorton and
his party into custody.[531] Even those opposed to him in Providence
suggested arbitration; but the Massachusetts clergy advised the
magistrates that this was not an “honorable” course, as the Gorton party
“were no state, but a few fugitives living without law or government,”
and “their blasphemous and reviling writings” could be “purged away only
by repentence and public satisfaction.”[532] The case was, therefore,
prejudged without a hearing, and the more summary method was taken of
trying to set fire to the log fort in which Gorton and his company had
taken refuge.
Footnote 530:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 69 _ff._; _Rhode Island
Historical Society Collections_, vol. II, pp. 191 _f._
Footnote 531:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 144 _ff._; _Massachusetts
Records_, vol. II, pp. 26 _f._, 40.
Footnote 532:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 168 _f._
It must be presumed that the ministers of Christ considered this as a
more “honorable” course than arbitration with “a few fugitives” from
their vindictiveness. The attack was made on a Sabbath morning, and even
the heretical Gorton was naturally surprised.[533] In receiving the
Indians under their jurisdiction, Massachusetts had required that the
savages should not profane that day by doing any work upon it, and that
they should not kill any man but upon just cause and authority.[534] The
attempt, immediately following, on the part of that colony's expedition,
to burn their fellow white men alive during church hours, because they
were too impatient to wait, may have struck their new savage subjects as
a little incongruous. Nine of the Gortonists were captured, taken to
Boston, and imprisoned. The clergy called for blood, and gave their
written opinion that all nine of the prisoners “deserved death by the
law of God.” In this unjust and inhuman decision, all the magistrates
but three concurred, and it was prevented from passing only by the
people's representatives among the deputies. Finally, the prisoners were
condemned to be distributed among seven towns, there to be “kept to
worke for their living, and wear irons upon one leg, and not to depart
the limits of the town, nor by word or writing maintain any of their
blasphemous or wicked errors upon pain of death.”[535] The sentence was
executed and the prisoners were kept in irons until the following year;
when the growing popular disapproval of the clergy's actions caused
their victims to be suddenly released and banished.[536]
Footnote 533:
Gorton, _Simplicities Defence_; Force Tracts, vol. IV, pp. 58 _ff._
Footnote 534:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 147.
Footnote 535:
_Ibid._, vol. II, pp. 176 _f._; _Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, pp.
51 _ff._; Gorton, _Simplicities Defence_, pp. 66 _ff._
Footnote 536:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 188 _f._; Gorton, _Simplicities
Defence_, p. 83.
The Massachusetts authorities had thus utilized the request of one
faction in a settlement wholly outside their own limits, to extend their
jurisdiction. They had attempted, upon a charge of heresy directed
against persons living in another colony, to murder the entire body of
the opposing faction, after refusing the arbitration proposed by that
faction's own enemies. When the decree was finally softened to
banishment, this was held to include exclusion of the prisoners from
their former homes, now considered as part of the Bay Colony. They had
seized and sold the cattle and goods of the unfortunate people, to pay
the expenses of their so-called trial and illegal detention. In all
this, there had not been even the fallacious plea, as in the case of
Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson, that the civil peace of Massachusetts had
been endangered.
The outcome showed, however, that the cruel and immoral power of the
clergy and magistrates was coming to be opposed by a growing body of
healthy and liberal opinion. The bloody sentence demanded by them had
been refused by the people's leaders, and public opinion had finally
secured the reversal, within a year, of the milder one that had been
executed. The confusion of Gorton's own religious views, and his
incoherence in expressing them, could in themselves have won him little
popular support.[537] What the people were groping after was the right
of the individual to think and act for himself, so long as the state was
not endangered, as had been clearly expressed in the Plymouth petition.
The road was to be long and bloodstained, but there was now no doubt
that the people of Massachusetts intended to travel it, and that their
feet were at last set in the right direction.
Footnote 537:
Most of Gorton's writings are as incoherent as they are vituperative.
Age, however, seemed to clear his mind and style, and his letter to
Morton, in 1669, defending himself from the charges in the latter's
book, was clear and dignified. It is given in Hutchinson, _History_,
vol. I, pp. 467 _ff._
By 1640, although new arrivals had not been coming in so rapidly of
late, the population of the New England settlements had grown to about
eighteen thousand. Moreover, they had, on the whole, been prosperous. We
have already seen how even Plymouth, with its slender resources, its
poor soil, and its ill-chosen site, had yet achieved more than economic
independence, and we have noted the financial resources of New Haven.
The capital and numbers of Massachusetts were, of course, far larger
than those of either of the others, and it was estimated that that
colony had spent, in its first dozen years, nearly £200,000, or in our
day, perhaps, five million dollars, in making its settlement.[538]
Possessed of the unrestricted resources of a continent, and having
suffered no losses from Indians or foreign foe, New England was
apparently in a sound economic condition, when suddenly the crash came.
“Merchants would sell no wares but for ready money,” Winthrop wrote in
1640; “men could not pay their debts though they had enough, prices of
lands and cattle fell soon to the one-half, yea to a third, and after
one-fourth part.”[539] The Massachusetts General Court was soon called
upon to pass special legislation to assist debtors, as the suffering
became general.
Footnote 538:
Jeremiah Dummer, _A Defence of the New England Charters_ (London,
1721), p. 9.
Footnote 539:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 21; _cf._ also pp. 8, 29, 37.
In spite of their enormous natural resources, the colonies, like all new
countries, lacked capital in the form of money. They borrowed heavily
from England and imported from her still more heavily in food, clothes,
and manufactured goods, without as yet having developed sufficient
export trade to enable them to meet their foreign bills.[540] The
inherent unsoundness of the position had been concealed, temporarily, by
the effects of the continued influx of new settlers on a large scale,
which had created a demand for all the colonists' surplus in the shape
of everything required by a planter during his first years. Prices of
both goods and lands advanced steadily, as a fire is blown into flame by
a forced draught. Suddenly the tide of immigration stopped entirely; the
exceptional demand, which had come to be regarded as normal, ceased;
English merchants naturally required payment on overdue accounts; and
all the familiar phenomena of an economic crisis became evident.
Footnote 540:
A very complete list of imports could be made up from the bills of
lading of the ships arriving in 1640, given in _Acts Privy Council_,
Colonial, vol. I, p. 268.
It is usually stated that emigration from England stopped because the
prospect there had become so much brighter for the Puritans that there
was no longer reason for leaving home.[541] This, however, by no means
meets all the requirements of the case. We have already seen that the
great majority of the people who had been coming to New England had not
joined the churches there, although in the main of Puritan stock. Nor,
at the time in question, did the Puritan leaders in England, in spite of
altered conditions, by any means relax their efforts to plant Puritan
colonies. In fact, such men as Say and Pym were more enthusiastic than
ever in their plans. These efforts, however, were no longer directed
toward New England, but in quite other directions.[542] By her religious
persecutions and peculiar church-membership requirement for the
franchise, Massachusetts had, little by little, antagonized all her old
friends at home, from the Earl of Warwick down, who had been constantly
calling the attention of her leaders to the fact that no more people,
not even Puritans, would go to her if she did not discontinue her career
of persecution. By that course she had already virtually excluded from
her portion of the English Empire all Englishmen not acceptable to her
clergy and a dozen of her leading laymen. This closed her ports to
almost the entire stream of English emigration, which continued large,
although somewhat changed in character, while the labor of her former
friends was now expended in diverting what remained of the Puritan
element itself in that stream away from, instead of toward,
Massachusetts.
Footnote 541:
This was Winthrop's version: _History_, vol. II, p. 37.
Footnote 542:
Newton, _Puritan Colonisation_, pp. 287 _ff._
In this connection, Winthrop wrote bitterly to Lord Say, complaining of
his efforts to induce settlers to go out from England to the Caribbean
instead of to New England. To this, Say made a long reply, rebuking the
authorities in the colony for their misuse of Scripture texts to further
their own views, and ended with the admonition that “for what you say of
the church not compatable with another frame of government, I pray putt
away that error ... the church beinge wholly spirritual, can subsist
with any forme of outward government.”[543]
Footnote 543:
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series V, vol. I, p. 302; J. Winthrop,
_History_, vol. I, pp. 399 _f._
Not only, however, did immigration to Massachusetts stop, but there
threatened to be an emigration from that colony to the English leaders'
Caribbean settlement. John Humphrey, one of the most influential of the
original planters, who had not prospered in the Bay, was made Governor
of the West Indian Puritan settlements, and, in 1641, sailed thither
with several hundred Massachusetts people.[544] Many others removed to
other colonies, and Winthrop relates, with evident relish, the
misfortunes which befell them as God's judgment upon them for
leaving.[545] That the influences checking the growth of Massachusetts
were not wholly due to general conditions is indicated also by the fact
that, while her population, in the next two decades, was considerably
less than doubled, that of New Hampshire was nearly tripled, Rhode
Island increased five-fold, and Connecticut four-fold.[546] The actual
numbers are even more striking than the percentages. Massachusetts,
starting the period with fourteen thousand, added less than ten
thousand, while the other three, beginning with but three thousand,
added nearly nine thousand. Connecticut's growth, moreover, was made in
spite of the fact that apparently Massachusetts made even greater
efforts to divert emigrants from that colony than were being made in
England to divert them from herself; so that Hooker, in complaining of
the methods employed by her citizens, was forced to write to Winthrop,
that “such impudent forgery is scant found in hell.”[547]
Footnote 544:
_Manchester Papers_, p. 424, cited by Newton, _Puritan Colonisation_,
p. 292; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 15. There was also some
movement the other way: 1200 persons are said to have gone from
Barbadoes to New England from 1643 to 1647. _Cal. State Pap., Col.,
1661-68_, p. 529.
Footnote 545:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 103 _ff._, 113, 156.
Footnote 546:
_Century of Population_, p. 9.
Footnote 547:
Letter in _Connecticut Historical Society Collections_, vol. I, pp. 4
_ff._
In the absence of any attempt by England to unify these scattered
settlements, the only tendency toward unification, as against the
centrifugal forces at work, had been the process of annexation and
attempted domination by Massachusetts. The growth of the frontier,
however, with the resultant Pequot war, had fostered a sense of unity in
the face of a common danger among those exposed to it. As Professor
Turner points out, in speaking of the colonies in general, particularism
was always strongest in those not so exposed, and the Indian frontier
“stretched along the western border like a cord of union.”[548] The
extension, northward and westward, had also brought the English into
immediate and hostile contact with both French and Dutch. Apparently as
a result of the somewhat inefficient joint action in the Pequot war, a
confederation between the colonies was informally discussed at Boston in
1637, and a draft prepared by Massachusetts the following year.[549]
Connecticut objected to one of the terms, the ground of her dislike,
Winthrop wrote, being her “shyness of coming under our government.”[550]
The smaller colony, however, had, within a few years, so far got over
her shyness as to be ready to “entertain a firm combination for a
defensive and offensive war, and all other mutual offices of love,” as
the records somewhat quaintly word it.[551] The decrease in immigration,
and the business panic throughout the colonies, may have helped to bring
them to a more realizing sense of their isolation from England, and of
the need of mutual dependence, which was greatly increased by a
threatened renewal of Indian hostilities in 1642. The latter is the sole
reason given by Bradford for the remarkable effort now made to combine
the colonies into a confederation, in regard to which all our
contemporary authorities are singularly silent.[552]
Footnote 548:
Turner, _Significance of the Frontier_, p. 92.
Footnote 549:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 283 _f._
Footnote 550:
_Ibid._, p. 342; _Connecticut Historical Society Collections_, vol. I,
p. 9.
Footnote 551:
_Conn. Col. Records_, vol. I, p. 31.
Footnote 552:
Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 416 _f._
The settlements, however, were well fitted to be thus joined in closer
bonds, in spite of minor differences. The country in which they were
planted formed a geographical unit, the natural boundaries of which were
emphasized by the human elements of hostile French, Indians, and Dutch.
The economic and social life, based upon the geographical, religious,
and political factors, was, in the main, remarkably homogeneous. Their
attitude toward English policy, and their trade-relations with the rest
of the empire, were very similar. There was not only no such clashing of
interests as divided them from the staple colonies of the West Indies,
but not even the minor differences that would have made impossible such
a combination between Pennsylvania and Virginia. United action in the
Indian war, and the religious Synod of the same year, had been the first
steps taken in the formation of the political machinery for
consideration of joint affairs. The way was smoothly paved, therefore,
for the establishment of a genuine union.
There was, however, one stumbling-block, which was the intense local
feeling and exaggerated sense of importance of the separate settlements.
The leaders in each of them must often have dreamed of what the future
might have in store for the little colonies in which they had cast their
lots, but it is impossible to say what those dreams may have been. They
could not have included the actual development of the present British
Empire or of the United States, the creation of each of which has been
largely dependent upon economic forces and scientific inventions beyond
the vision of any seventeenth-century mind. Whatever their dreams may
have been, in practice the leaders adopted an opportunist policy, which,
in general, may be described as the endeavor to keep from being
entangled with England without losing the value of her protection. That
any of them could seriously have thought that their individual colonies,
as such, could ever become powerful nations, is unlikely. Added,
therefore, to their policy regarding England was probably an opportunist
policy regarding their neighbors. The extent and nature of the New
England country had, by this time, become fairly well known, and the
rate of growth could be more or less accurately forecast. With extending
frontiers and but ill-defined territorial limits, disputes, already
occurring, could also be foreseen as bound to become more frequent and
more serious.
All of the colonies had shown the tendency toward expansion. Plymouth
had started her trading posts on the rivers of Maine and Connecticut;
settlements multiplied in Rhode Island; New Haven, from the meadows of
Quinnipiack, was soon planting on Long Island, and nearing the Dutch
boundaries on the Sound; while Connecticut, through her purchase of
Saybrook from the disappointed patentees in 1644,[553] and her planting
of towns westward even of New Haven's expansion, was rapidly stretching
east and west. Massachusetts had long adopted the definite policy of
extending her claims and control as fast and as far as possible. In the
race for land and power, her numbers, resources, and central position,
all gave her immense advantages, to which was added the no mean one of
an unscrupulous disregard for the prior rights of others. On the one
hand, then, the weaker colonies might hope to gain from union some
protection, not only from the Indian and the foreigner, but from the
growing aggressiveness of Massachusetts. On the other, that colony might
anticipate dominating the councils of the Confederacy, while free scope
was still left for her own aggrandizement.
Footnote 553:
_Conn. Col. Records_, vol. I, pp. 266 _ff._
Although they were far inferior to her as military powers, the
acknowledgment of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven as of equal
political weight in the Union served largely to protect them against the
Bay Colony; but there was no such protection for Maine or for the towns
in Rhode Island, which were refused admission to the league. The
inhabitants of the former were not received, Winthrop wrote, because the
people of Agamenticus had recently “made a taylor their mayor, and had
entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person, and very contentious,
for their minister.”[554] These somewhat surprising reasons for refusing
representation to the few inhabitants of a territory equal in size to
all the rest of New England combined may be dismissed as not the true
ones. We are more likely to find the latter in that new interpretation
of her charter by which Massachusetts laid claim to all this vast tract,
which she formally annexed ten years later. To have allowed its
inhabitants representation in the proposed confederacy would have been
to acknowledge their right to be considered an independent colony, and
so would have placed awkward moral obstacles in the way of the manifest
destiny of God's elect. In regard to the Rhode Island plantations, in
spite of Winthrop's affection for Williams, the Bay Colony had always
exhibited a vindictive spite, the extreme virulence of which it is
somewhat difficult to understand, even after making all allowances for
the known facts. In 1640, under the administration of Dudley, the
Massachusetts General Court had received a letter from the magistrates
of Connecticut, New Haven, and Aquidneck, “wherein they declared their
dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted out,” and their desire
of “seeking to gain them by justice and kindness,” although carefully
watching them for any hostile intent. While the Massachusetts Court
voted its assent, it also insisted that the answer should be addressed
only to the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven, formally excluding
any communication with those of Aquidneck “as men not to bee capitulated
withall by us, either for themselves or the people of the iland where
they inhabit.”[555] Silly bigotry, as well as intercolonial discourtesy,
could hardly go further than in this childish refusal even to discuss a
humanitarian project of importance and of common interest. The real
motive, however, may have been, as in the case of Maine, to leave the
way open to annexation by refusing to acknowledge any separate
government; and when, a year after the confederacy was formed, the Rhode
Island towns applied for admission, the answer, undoubtedly dictated by
Massachusetts, was an “utter refusall” unless they would “absolutely and
without reservacon submitt” to either Plymouth or herself.[556]
Footnote 554:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 121.
Footnote 555:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 24; _Massachusetts Records_, vol.
I, p. 305.
Footnote 556:
_Acts United Colonies_, vol. I, p. 23.
At the time of the formation of the Confederacy, Massachusetts had just
driven the entering wedge at Providence and absorbed New Hampshire, and
was engaged in encroaching upon the northern bounds of Plymouth and
Connecticut. The three smaller colonies, therefore, had everything to
gain by having their existence recognized by being admitted as political
equals in the league; while they were further protected by the third
clause in the Articles, which guaranteed the independence of each of
them, and even forbade the voluntary union of any colony with another
without consent of the Confederation. On the other hand, Massachusetts,
with the rich territories to the north and south—which she was already
absorbing—left open to her, had also much to gain by having a body that
could give some sort of legal approval to her illegal poachings; and her
own power, in extreme circumstances, could be counted upon to nullify
any adverse vote. These were probably the reasons which induced her to
enter a Confederation in which her two commissioners had only an equal
voting power with those of each of the three smaller colonies in the
governing board of eight.
Although the Articles of Confederation agreed that the four colonies
should thereafter be known as the United Colonies of New England, the
machinery set up was not that of a genuine federal state, but simply
that of “a firme and perpetual league of friendship and amity for
offence and defence, mutual advice and succor.”[557] Even the very
moderate powers granted the board of commissioners, which constituted
the only organ of the league, tended to decline, and it can hardly be
considered as other than a joint committee to consider matters of mutual
interest and to proffer advice to the general courts of the several
colonies. According to the Articles, however, the commissioners, when
they met at the regular annual meetings, were to be possessed of full
authority from their home courts to determine all military matters, it
being provided that no colony should engage in either offensive or
defensive war without the consent of at least six of the eight
commissioners. This was the majority required to decide all other
questions, and in case six could not agree, the matter in dispute was to
be referred back to the general courts.
Footnote 557:
The articles have been many times reprinted. The citations above are
from _Acts United Colonies_, vol. I, pp. 3 _ff._
The Confederation, which no more recognized the existence of England
than the “constitutions” of Connecticut and New Haven had done,
possessed no means of operating directly upon the people as individuals,
or of enforcing its will upon a recalcitrant colony. It was a useful
piece of machinery, but not a new government, and it failed to call
forth affection or loyalty from its members. It is impossible to say
what it might have developed into had the colonies remained permanently
as independent of England as they were until the restoration of the
Stuarts in 1660. The various results of that event did away, in time,
with the possibility, or the necessity, of such an organization. But,
during the Union's existence, it performed valuable service, not merely
in accustoming the colonies to act together, but also in concentrating
their resources in military emergencies, and, negatively, in saving the
smaller members from the encroachments of Massachusetts. As was
inevitable, that colony largely dominated its councils, and the attitude
that the commissioners adopted upon questions of civil and religious
polity was, in the main, that of Massachusetts rather than that of
Plymouth or Connecticut. In all that concerned the liberty of the
individual, the weight of their authority was, as a rule, thrown upon
the side of reaction, rather than of progress. The small extent of their
real powers, however, is indicated by the fact that the history of New
England under the Confederacy continued to be the history of
Massachusetts and her neighbors, and not that of the “United Colonies of
New England.”