THE DEFEAT OF THE THEOCRACY
The same decade and a half, the political events of which we traced in
the last chapter, was to witness also religious movements of utmost
importance. The firm establishment of the government of Rhode Island,
based upon religious liberty, and the preservation of the independence
of that colony and of its democratic neighbor, Connecticut, were matters
of profound import in the political and intellectual life of America.
Not less so was the struggle between the leaders of the theocracy and
the growing liberalism of the people of Massachusetts. As usual, the
political and religious movements were inextricably intertwined, and the
same conditions that brought forth the political disturbance over the
petition of Dr. Child and his associates, in 1645, were responsible for
the most important step taken in the ecclesiastical organization of the
theocracy some months later.
That petition had called attention to undoubted evils and injustices in
the political and religious régime in Massachusetts; and however
effectually the government might silence the protesting leaders, the
underlying causes were so widespread as to necessitate some action in
regard to them. Owing to the church-membership test for the franchise,
the unenfranchised class was so large, and the disadvantage under which
it labored was so palpably unjust, that the demand for reform was
growing steadily louder. Not only had there been from the very beginning
a considerable element in the population which, under no circumstances,
cared to join the New England churches, but there was also a large one
which would have been glad to do so, had the process not been made so
difficult for them. It was not enough that a person should believe in
the doctrines of the Church, that he should desire to live a godly life
and be in communion with it, but he was also required to have
experienced some special motion of God in his heart, by which he had
been convicted of his sin, and become regenerate. Of that conversion, he
was further obliged to make a public declaration before the
congregation, describing the particular manner in which he had thus felt
the workings of the spirit within him. Many blameless Christian men and
women did not feel that they could discover any such extraordinary
change in their lives as their rulers demanded; and modesty and a
natural reticence prevented many more from attempting the trying ordeal
of publicly detailing such an intimate spiritual experience.[637]
Failing that, however, they were debarred from Christian communion and
from all voice in the civil government, and their children were also
denied baptism and participation in the life of the Church. As in
Massachusetts no churches were allowed except such as partook of the
“New England way,” it followed that those who could not join them were
politically disfranchised, and that they and their children were cut off
from the advantages of Christian fellowship and discipline.
Footnote 637:
Lechford, _Plain Dealing_, pp. 66 _ff._
In so far as the resultant political disabilities were concerned, there
were two ways in which the situation might have been remedied. The first
and, according to modern ideas, the natural one would have been to do
away with the religious qualification for the franchise. This was,
theoretically at least, the method of Plymouth and Connecticut and Rhode
Island, and of the Bay Colony in so far as its possessions in Maine were
concerned. Nevertheless, it did not commend itself to the Massachusetts
leaders, and for that reason, and also to meet the religious features of
the case, a second method was favored by many, of making less rigid the
requirements for admission to the church. Of the two methods, the latter
would, of course, be more acceptable to the clergy, not as a step
forward, but as the lesser of two evils. They were, in fact, at that
very time planning a more formal organization of all the churches, and
the establishment of a uniform practice among them.[638] The creation of
such a standard can hardly be considered as consistent with the
principles in which Congregationalism had originated; but the Church in
Massachusetts had become as completely a state church as the Anglican
had ever been in England.[639]
Footnote 638:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 323.
Footnote 639:
_Cf._ Walker, _Creeds_, pp. 166 _f._
In 1646, soon after the presentation of the Child petition, some of the
Elders presented a bill to the General Court, asking that body to call a
synod at the end of the summer, to consider these various problems. The
bill was promptly passed by the magistrates; but the deputies demurred,
denying that the civil authorities had power over the ecclesiastical. It
was conceded, however, that the call might go out as a request and not
as a command.[640] According to the notice, the synod was to agree “upon
one forme of government and discipline,” and to consider whether “more
liberty and latitude” might be yielded in the matters of church
membership and baptism.[641] When their labors should be finished, the
result was to be submitted to the General Court, to receive “such
approbation as is meete.”[642] When the synod met, the churches of
Boston and Salem refused to join, partly because they believed that it
was intended to bind the liberty of churches by the passage of
ecclesiastical laws by the General Court, “whereby men should be forced
under penalty to submit to them.” In view of a point to be discussed
later in the chapter, Winthrop's account of the origin of the objections
is interesting. The principal men who raised them, he wrote, were some
“who came lately from England, where such a vast liberty was allowed,
and sought for by all that went under the name of Independents, not only
the anabaptists, antinomians, familists, seekers, etc., but even the
most godly and orthodox, as Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Burrows, etc., who
in the assembly there had stood in opposition to the presbytery, and
also the greater part of the house of commons, who by their
commissioners had sent order to all English plantations in the West
Indies and Summers Islands, that all men should enjoy their liberty of
conscience, and had by letters intimated the same to us.”[643] Some
weeks were consumed in endeavors to change the opinions of the two
churches, and when, after much difficulty, that was finally
accomplished, there was little time left for the work of the synod,
which adjourned in September, to meet the following June. It was not
until midsummer, 1648, however, that, after another adjournment, it
finally completed its labors.
Footnote 640:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 323 _f._
Footnote 641:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. III, pp. 71 _f._
Footnote 642:
_Ibid._, p. 72.
Footnote 643:
J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 329.
During the two years which it had been in session, Cromwell and the
Independents in England had removed all fear for Massachusetts of
Presbyterian or other interference from that country, and the temporary
alarm of the leaders had subsided. The question of a more liberal
policy, therefore, fell into the background, and the synod occupied
itself with the formulation of a strict polity by which innovation might
be resisted. Agreement with the recent declaration of Parliament in
matters of doctrine was voted by adopting, with certain reservations,
the Westminster Confession of Faith; but the suggested religious
toleration was, of course, denied.[644] Quite on the contrary, in fact,
the Cambridge Platform, as the order of discipline adopted has always
been called, provided that the full power of the state should be used to
enforce obedience and conformity to the rule and decisions of the
priesthood. “Idolatry, Blasphemy, Heresy, Venting corrupt and pernicious
opinions,” the Platform read, “are to be restrayned and punished by
civil authority. If any church one or more shall grow schismaticall,
rending it self from the communion of other churches, or shall walke
incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to
the rule of the word; in such case, the Magistrate is to put forth his
coercive power, as the matter shall require.”[645] What these early
American persecutors, drunk with their own conceit, were to think the
“matter shall require,” when other men refused to accept their personal
interpretation of the mind and ways of Almighty God as infallible, will
be only too clearly shown in the course of this chapter.
Footnote 644:
“Cambridge Platform,” in Walker, _Creeds_, p. 195.
Footnote 645:
Sections 8 and 9 of chap. xvii, of “Cambridge Platform”; _Ibid._, p.
237.
When the Platform was presented for ratification by the General Court,
through the towns, it seems to have met with considerable opposition on
the part of the deputies. The magistrates, owing to their customary
close working agreement with the ministers, approved of it unanimously;
but the deputies, representing public opinion rather than the oligarchy,
repeated their opposition of several years earlier. When, in 1645, new
laws had been proposed for the punishment of heretics, a brief entry in
the records tells of the struggle at that time. “The Howse of Deputies,”
so it reads, “cannot concur with our honored magistrates in their bill
to punish excommunicate persons.”[646] They were defeated, however, and
the next year a long act was passed for the purpose.[647] Although the
Cambridge Platform had been adopted by the synod in 1648, and had been
considered several times by the General Court, the deputies of many of
the towns, even three years later, still professed themselves unable to
“see light to impose any forms as necessary to be observed by the
churches as a bindinge rule.”[648] When it was finally passed by the
Court, in October, 1651, fourteen of the deputies still refused to
concur, and their names, an honored roll, are inscribed in the margin of
the records.[649] The towns they represented were Boston, Salem,
Braintree, Watertown, Roxbury, Wenham, Reading, Sudbury, Weymouth, and
Hingham, in Massachusetts, and Hampton in New Hampshire.[650]
Footnote 646:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. III, p. 16.
Footnote 647:
_Ibid._, p. 99.
Footnote 648:
_Ibid._, p. 236.
Footnote 649:
_Ibid._, p. 240.
Footnote 650:
Walker, _Creeds_, p. 188 _n._
The Platform represented no mere abstract doctrine. The whole history of
the oligarchy, thus far, indicated that the clauses regarding heresy and
schism were not intended to remain dead letters. The new relations of
the churches to one another, and the strengthened combination of the
civil and ecclesiastical authorities, mark the high point attained by
the theocracy in its organized opposition to liberty of thought. It had
been growing steadily narrower and more intolerant, more insistent upon
the extirpation of every idea, religious or political, that disturbed
its own control over the minds and lives of men. Unfortunately, at the
very time when new power for evil was thus being placed in its hands by
the action of the synod and the General Court, the more conservative
leaders, both of Massachusetts and Connecticut, were lost to their
communities by death, and the dangerous weapons were to be wielded by
two of the most bigoted and blood-thirsty fanatics whom either Old or
New England had produced.
Thomas Hooker died in 1647, as the work of the synod was beginning, and
John Winthrop in 1649, as it was ending. There is no comparison in the
debt that the political thought of America owes to the two men, whose
ideas have already been contrasted on an earlier page. Hooker led the
way along which the people of the United States were to follow, while
Winthrop was engaged in the attempt to found a state in a politically
impossible form. In spite of his inestimable services in the beginnings
of the colony, there was no originality in his contribution to thought,
and his subservience to the demands of the theocracy had been
foreshadowed by his statement in early manhood that he so honored a
faithful minister that he “could have kissed his feet.”[651] Of high
nobility of character, gentle, forgiving, frequently kindest to those
from whom he differed most, there was little in his nature of the born
persecutor. Led into acts of intolerant zeal by the ministers whom he so
devoutly followed, there is considerable probability in the story
related by Hutchinson, that when on his death-bed, being pressed by
Dudley to sign a warrant for the banishment of a heretic, he refused,
saying that “he had done too much of that work already.”[652] His
portrait depicts a face of gentleness rather than of strength. His
unquestioned integrity, his modesty, and his self-sacrificing devotion
to the interests of the colony as he saw them, amply fulfilled the high
opinion which the original undertakers of the enterprise had formed of
him, although, as in the case of most of the leaders, the effect upon
mind and character of the transplanting to America was not wholly a
happy one. “He was of a more catholic spirit than some of his brethren
before he left England,” wrote Hutchinson; “but afterward he grew more
contracted, and was disposed to lay too great stress upon indifferent
matters.”[653]
Footnote 651:
R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. I, p. 61.
Footnote 652:
Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, p. 142.
Footnote 653:
Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, p. 142.
The same effect had been felt in the case of John Cotton. The most
tolerant, as he was one of the ablest, of the Massachusetts divines, we
have already seen how he had started upon the true path when, dismayed
by the universal ecclesiastical clamor raised by the Antinomian
controversy, he drew back, like Winthrop, and ever after submitted to
smaller men. Nevertheless, his death, some months after the final
adoption of the Cambridge Platform, removed the last of the three men
who by inclination and influence might have done something to stay the
theocracy from the course into which it was soon to throw itself
headlong. In place of Winthrop and Cotton, its leaders became Endicott
and Norton. Able, stern, fiercely bigoted, absolutely convinced of their
own infallibility in interpreting the word of God, undeterred by doubt,
and unrestrained by pity, they were unwittingly to water the seeds of
liberty with the blood of their victims.
In the midsummer of the year in which the Platform was finally adopted
by the Court, John Clarke, one of the ablest citizens of Rhode Island,
Obadiah Holmes, and John Crandall, as representatives of the Baptist
church of Newport, arrived at Lynn to visit an aged member of that
church, who was too infirm to make a journey himself.[654] In 1644, a
law had been passed punishing with banishment anyone who should openly
or secretly speak against the orthodox Massachusetts doctrine regarding
baptism; and the three Baptists were at once arrested.[655] Clarke was
fined £20, Holmes £30, and Crandall £5, in default of which they were to
be whipped. The spirit of the court that tried them is vividly shown by
two incidents as told by the prisoners themselves. Clarke, having asked
by what law he was punished, the penalty not being that prescribed by
the ordinance of 1644, relates that Endicott “stept up to us, and told
us we had denyed Infants Baptism, and being somewhat transported broke
forth, and told me I had deserved death, and said he would not have such
trash brought into this jurisdiction.”[656] Holmes, describing his own
trial, wrote that, when receiving sentence, “I exprest myself in these
words; I blesse God I am counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus;
whereupon John Wilson (their pastor as they call him) strook me before
the Judgment Seat, and cursed me, saying, the Curse of God, or Jesus goe
with thee.”[657]
Footnote 654:
Newport Church Papers, cited by Backus, _Baptists_, vol. I, p. 178.
Footnote 655:
Backus, _Baptists_, vol. I, p. 198 _n._
Footnote 656:
John Clarke, “Ill Newes from New England” (London, 1652), in _Mass.
Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series IV, vol. II, p. 33.
Footnote 657:
_Ibid._, p. 47.
Crandall, who had figured but little in the proceedings, was released on
bail; while, without his knowledge, some unknown well-wisher paid
Clark's fine. Holmes, however, refused to pay his fine or allow others
to pay it for him, and insisted upon the sentence being executed in its
full barbarity. Thirty strokes, with a three-corded whip, were laid upon
his bare back. Two bystanders who, moved by pity, had the temerity to
take the prisoner by the hand as he left the whipping-post, were
themselves arrested and sentenced to pay forty shillings or be
whipped.[658] To one of them, who affirmed to Endicott that he believed
Holmes was a godly man and “carried himself as did become a Christian,”
the Governor threatened that “we will deal with you as we have dealt
with him.” “I am in the hands of God,” the prisoner replied.
Footnote 658:
The Court that passed the sentences was composed of the magistrates
only.
The following year, Clark went to England with Williams in regard to
the Coddington matter in Rhode Island, and, while there, published
his account of the treatment the Baptists had met with in
Massachusetts.[659] As so often before, the intolerance of the new
country was severely criticized by its friends in the old.[660] “It
doth not a little grieve my spirit,” wrote Saltonstall to Cotton and
Wilson, “what sadd things are reported dayly of your tyranny and
persecution in New England.... These rigid wayse have layd you very
lowe in the hearts of the saynts. I doe assure I have heard them
pray in the publique assemblies that the Lord would give you meeke
and humble spirits, not to stryve soe much for uniformity as to
keepe the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” He warns them
“not to practice those courses in a wilderness, which you went so
farre to prevent”; and adds, “I hope you doe not assume to
yourselves infallibillities of judgment, when the most learned of
the Apostles confesseth he knew but in parte.”[661]
Footnote 659:
Palfrey's far-fetched theory, that the whole affair was engineered by
Clark in order to acquire a grievance to be used in England later, has
no foundation whatever in any contemporary conjecture, and in any case
would not alter in the slightest the facts so far as Massachusetts is
concerned. It is of interest only as showing to what lengths that
colony's clerical historians have gone in their efforts to defend in
New England everything which they condemn in old England, and to treat
the Massachusetts settlers as saints instead of very human Englishmen
of the seventeenth century. Palfrey, _History_, vol. II, pp. 350, 354.
Footnote 660:
_Cf._ Chap. VII, _supra_.
Footnote 661:
Hutchinson, _Papers_, vol. II, pp. 127 _ff._; Backus, _Baptists_, vol.
I, pp. 198 _f._
In Cotton's reply, the ministers defended the acts of the Court, and,
speaking of the victims' imprisonment, Cotton even descended so low as
to write, “I believe they neither of them fared better at home, and I am
sure Holmes had not been so well clad of many years before.” More
interesting, however, is his plain enunciation of the doctrine that they
alone knew the will of God and should lay it down for the community,
which we noted in an earlier chapter as one of the outstanding
characteristics of Puritanism in every age. “There is a vast
difference,” he wrote, “between men's inventions and God's institutions;
we fled from men's inventions, to which we else should have been
compelled; we compel none to men's inventions.” The inference was, of
course, that, whatever the rest of mankind might think, any institution
decreed by the Massachusetts ministers was, _ipso facto_, God's.
Therefore, “if the worship be lawful in itself, the magistrate
compelling him to come to it, compelleth him not to sin, but the sin is
in his own will that needs to be compelled to a Christian duty.”[662]
Four fifths of their fellow citizens might refuse to join their
churches; the noblest spirits among the Puritan element in England might
plead with them; but in vain. The theocracy had now reached such a
height of intellectual pride, of intolerable belief in themselves as the
sole possessors of the knowledge of God, and as the only legitimate
interpreters of his will to the world, that either all freedom of
thought in Massachusetts must die, or their power must be destroyed. In
that struggle, the ministers and the magistrates were willing to shed
unlimited blood. Fortunately, noble men and women were not lacking to
offer themselves as victims that the liberty of God might be made
manifest.
Footnote 662:
Hutchinson, _Papers_, vol. II, pp. 131 _f._
The two who had dared to take Obadiah Holmes by the hand, as, streaming
with blood, he left the stake, were the silent witnesses of a great body
of liberal opinion. While the ministers and magistrates were, of course,
supported everywhere by very considerable numbers among the narrower and
more zealous members of the churches, many causes were at work to reduce
their proportion in relation to the community at large. Not only had the
body of non-church members always constituted the great majority of the
population, but even among the members themselves a new generation was
growing up, which had known nothing of the spiritual experiences in
England, and the struggle there against the established Church. Such a
struggle, as the Massachusetts authorities were soon to find in the case
of the Quakers, serves to intensify the zeal of the innovators. But in
Massachusetts, the former innovators had become transformed into
thoroughly orthodox members of a state church, supported by the arm of
the civil power, enjoying all the comfortable, safe, and deadening
results of an “establishment.” Their faith being no longer tried by
opposition, the inevitable consequence was a decline in interest and in
zeal. This was recognized by the ministers, and the rather curious
situation resulted, in which we find them adopting an apparently more
liberal attitude than the lay members themselves toward the question of
admission to membership. If, however, in the ministerial convention of
1657 and the synod of 1662, the clergy were rather the more anxious of
the two to effect a compromise on that point,[663] the cause is not far
to seek. Their power and influence—and it must always be remembered that
they thought they were using both for the work of the Lord—were
dependent upon the maintenance of the numbers of the Church, quite as
much as upon that of strict conformity and discipline. The theocracy
was, in fact, in very unstable equilibrium, and was equally in danger
from an increase in toleration or from a decrease in church-membership.
It was the preservation of their influence, from high motives as well as
from low, which was leading the clergy on the path to the “Half-Way
Covenant”; and the fact that they felt the need of lowering the
requirements for admission to the church is the strongest sort of
evidence as to the extent to which liberal opinion had developed among
the mass of laymen.
Footnote 663:
Walker, _Creeds_, pp. 244 _ff._
If, however, the clergy were to make the attempt, on the one hand, to
prevent the numbers of their followers from declining, by no longer
requiring them to have passed through the experience of conversion, on
the other, they were about to engage in the most determined effort yet
made to enforce conformity in matters of doctrine.
Of all the sects that had arisen during the religious ferment following
the Reformation, none seems to have been more misunderstood or to have
encountered greater opposition than the Quakers. In the middle of the
seventeenth century, both the beliefs and the practices of the sect were
in an inchoate state, and the vagaries of many of its adherents from the
lower walks of life seem not only to have called forth unparalleled
torrents of abuse from all quarters, but to have made men fear that
these inoffensive people were to repeat the excesses of some of the
frenzied sects of a century earlier. These fears and prejudices were
largely increased by the writings of various ministers, many of whom
were closely connected with New England.[664]
Footnote 664:
For example, Francis Higginson, Thomas Welde, Samuel Eaton,
Christopher Marshall. Jones, _Quakers_, p. 29.
Both the ideas and the carriage of the Quakers were such as to be
especially repugnant to the leaders of the theocracy in Massachusetts.
Their democratic tendency and peculiarities of social usage were
extremely offensive to persons who regarded themselves as an aristocracy
of the Saints of God, and who looked upon any lack of respect offered to
magistrates or ministers as little short of blasphemy. Moreover,
religion as professed by the Quakers was at the opposite pole of thought
and experience from that professed by the Puritans. The latter looked
upon the Bible as the only complete and final revelation of God to man,
of which the minister was the official expounder. To them, the covenant
between man and God, the preaching of the word, the scrupulous
observance of the Sabbath and of the letter of the Judaic laws, the
hard-won privilege of receiving the Sacrament, were all of the essence
of religion. On the other hand, the Quakers laid special stress upon the
divine illumination in the individual heart, and upon a continuing
revelation of Himself by God to man. They denied to the Bible the
position assigned to it by the Puritans, and were bitter in their
denunciations of “a hireling ministry.” To them the sacraments were
shadows, while their lives were saturated with the spirit of the New
Testament, not the Old. It was in this antithesis that lay the real
answer to George Bishop's question to the Massachusetts magistrates,
when he asked: “Why was it that the coming of two women so shook ye, as
if a formidable army had invaded your borders?”[665]
Footnote 665:
George Bishop, _New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord_ (London,
1703), p. 2.
Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, the two women in question, arrived at
Boston, from Barbadoes, in July, 1656, a few weeks after Ann Hibbens had
been hung as a witch.[666] Governor Endicott was away at the time, but
the Deputy Governor, Bellingham, took charge of the proceedings which
were immediately begun against them. Their baggage was searched, and a
hundred volumes, considered heretical, were confiscated and burned,
without compensation. Although there was nothing about their case to
suggest witchcraft, the authorities had them stripped stark naked and
examined for evidences, with unnecessary indignities.[667] They were
imprisoned, deprived of light in their cell, and refused communication
with anyone. Finally, after five weeks of this illegal punishment, they
were shipped back to Barbadoes, fortunate in having escaped before
Endicott's return.
Footnote 666:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 269.
Footnote 667:
Bishop, _New England Judged_, pp. 4 _f._, 12; _Swarthmore Collection_,
vol. I, p. 66, cited in Jones, _Quakers_, p. 28 _n._ One of the
curious elements in the psychology of the Puritans was their morbid
interest in the most indecent sexual matters. One may find the details
of a similar physical examination set forth by Winthrop, and the pages
of his journal, as those of Bradford, the records of colonies and
towns, the letters of clergymen, etc., all contain minute accounts of
matters which to-day would find their place only in a limited class of
medical textbooks.
Within a few days of their leaving, eight more Quakers arrived on a ship
from London, and were promptly accorded similar treatment, except that
witchcraft was not charged.[668] Endicott's attitude was shown at once.
“Take heed you break not our Ecclesiastical Laws,” he said to them, “for
then ye are sure to stretch by a Halter.” At the trial, when they asked
for a copy of the laws against them, he refused to allow them to see
one—"to the grieving of the People then present," wrote our contemporary
authority, “who said openly in the Court—How shall they know then when
they Transgress?”[669] After some weeks' confinement, they were shipped
back to England, and the Massachusetts authorities addressed a letter to
the United Colonies, asking for the passage of a general regulation
against allowing “such pests” as Quakers to be admitted to any of the
colonies.[670] In October, the Massachusetts General Court passed the
first law specifically directed against the sect, which provided that
any master of a ship bringing a known Quaker to Massachusetts should be
fined £100, and be required to give bonds for taking such out of the
colony again, in default of which he was to be imprisoned. The Quaker
was to be committed to the “house of correction,” to be severely
whipped, “kept constantly to worke,” and not permitted to speak with
anyone. If any resident of the colony defended any Quaker opinion, he
was to be fined or, on the third offense, banished; while any person
“reviling” a magistrate or minister, which meant criticizing them, was
to be fined or whipped.[671] Few bits of legislation can be more
complete than this, which thus provided punishment for an offender,
denied anyone the right to speak in his behalf, and made it a crime to
criticize the men who had passed the law. One voice, nevertheless, was
publicly raised on behalf of liberty. Nicholas Upshall, “a weakly old
man,” who, when the two Quakeresses were being starved in prison, had
bribed the jailer to give them food, heard the new law being proclaimed
in the streets. He protested against it, and for his temerity in daring
to criticize the magistrates, he was fined £20, and banished at the
beginning of winter.[672] On his way to free Rhode Island, he was
offered a home by an Indian who took pity upon him, and who, after
hearing of his misfortune, exclaimed, “What a God have the English who
deal so with one another about the worship of their God!”[673] Upshall,
however, continued his journey to Gorton's settlement, where he was
welcomed and cared for.
Footnote 668:
Richard Smith also arrived from Long Island, being deported thither
again.
Footnote 669:
Bishop, _New England Judged_, p. 10.
Footnote 670:
_Acts United Colonies_, vol. II, p. 156.
Footnote 671:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 277 _f._
Footnote 672:
_Ibid._, pp. 279 _f._
Footnote 673:
Bishop, _New England Judged_, p. 40.
The following year, a band of Quaker missionaries from England landed at
Newport, and were kindly received by the Rhode Islanders.[674] This at
once aroused the other colonies, whose Commissioners wrote to the Rhode
Island government of the “prudent care” that Massachusetts had taken
when Quakers had sought her hospitality, and requested that government
to banish such Quakers as were already on the Island, and to prohibit
any more from coming, so that the “contagion” might not spread. The
letter ended with the threat that, if the little colony did not take
such action, “wee apprehend that it will be our duty seriously to
consider what further provision God may call us to make to prevent the
aforesaid mischiefe.”[675]
Footnote 674:
Jones, _Quakers_, pp. 45 _ff._
Footnote 675:
_Acts United Colonies_, vol. II, pp. 180 _f._
To this bullying letter, Rhode Island sent an answer as wise as it was
dignified. After stating their desire to live in loving correspondence
with all the colonies, they wrote:—
“As concerning these quakers (so called), which are now among us, we
have no law among us, whereby to punish any for only declaring by words,
&c., theire mindes and understandings concerning the things and ways of
God, as to salvation and an eternal condition. And we, moreover, finde,
that in those places where these people aforesaid, in this colony, are
most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and are only opposed
by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come, and
we are informed that they begin to loath this place for that they are
not opposed by the civill authority, but with all patience and meekness
are suffered to say over their pretended revelations and admonitions,
nor are they like or able to gain many here to their way; surely we find
that they delight to be persecuted by civill powers, and when they are
soe, they are like to gain more adherents by the conseyte of their
patient sufferings, than by consent to their pernicious sayings: And yet
we conceive, that theire doctrines tend to very absolute cuttinge downe
and overturninge relations and civill government among men, if generally
received.”[676]
Footnote 676:
_R. I. Records_, vol. I, pp. 376 _f._
The General Assembly sent a similar reply, some months later, in which
they stated that freedom of conscience was the principal ground of their
charter, “which freedom we still prize as the greatest hapiness that men
can possess in this world”; and added that Quakers were “suffered to
live in England; yea even in the heart of the nation.”[677] Apparently
the only answer the United Colonies could make to the worldly wisdom and
nobility of their little neighbor, was to threaten to cut off her trade
and to deprive her of the necessities of life.[678] Nor has the letter,
which is one of the landmarks in the struggle for religious liberty in
America, fared better at the hands of New England's clerical historians.
Palfrey, who devotes thirty-five pages to an extenuating account of the
Massachusetts persecution, conceals Rhode Island's stand in a footnote;
and Dr. Ellis speaks of that colony's protest as “a quaint letter,” in
which, incredibly, he finds only “naïveté and humor.”[679]
Footnote 677:
_Ibid._, I, pp. 378 _ff._
Footnote 678:
_Ibid._, pp. 396 _ff._
Footnote 679:
Palfrey, _History_, vol. II, p. 472 _n._; Ellis, _Puritan Age_, pp.
xvii, 457.
Meanwhile, the other four colonies proceeded to pass more stringent laws
themselves, though those of Plymouth and Connecticut were less severe
than those of New Haven, where the penalties rose to branding the letter
H on the hands of male Quakers, and boring the tongues of Quakeresses
with a red-hot iron.[680] This latter punishment, as well as the cutting
off of ears, was likewise added to the Massachusetts laws.[681] In 1658,
the Commissioners of the United Colonies “seriously comended” to the
several colonies that they pass legislation declaring that, if any
Quaker, once banished, returned, the offender should suffer death.[682]
Massachusetts, however, which was clearly behind the suggestion, was the
only colony that did so. Connecticut, which was lenient in its
treatment, had but little trouble, and Governor Winthrop of that colony
told the Massachusetts magistrates that he would go down on his bare
knees to beg that they would not execute the death-penalty. Plymouth was
more influenced by its powerful neighbor, and one of the magistrates,
deposed for his toleration of the sect, wrote of the persecution in
Massachusetts, “we expect that we must do the like, we must dance after
their Pipe; now Plymouth-Saddle is upon the Bay-Horse.”[683]
Footnote 680:
_Plymouth Col. Records_, vol. XI, pp. 100, 101, 125, and _passim_
_Conn. Col. Records_, vol. I, pp. 283 _f._, 303, 308; _New Haven
Records_, vol. II, pp. 217, 238 _ff._; Bishop, _New England Judged_,
pp. 160 _ff._, 203 _ff._, 226 _ff._
Footnote 681:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 308 _f._
Footnote 682:
_Acts United Colonies_, vol. II, p. 212. John Winthrop, of
Connecticut, signed with the notation: “looking att the last as a
query and not as an Act; I subscribe.”
Footnote 683:
Letter from Cudworth, in _New England a degenerate Plant_ (London,
1659), p. 16.
In spite of a petition signed by twenty-five names, which was presented
to the General Court in Boston, asking for severer laws against the
Quakers,[684] and which was probably inspired by the Reverend John
Norton, there was a strong sentiment in the colony against such action.
The cruel sufferings that the authorities by this time had inflicted
upon Mary Dyer, Mary Clark, Christopher Holden, the Southwicks, Richard
Dowdney, and many others, and their patience under affliction, were
telling heavily in favor of the Quakers and against the clergy.[685] In
the case of William Brend, the people became so aroused as temporarily
to frighten the authorities in their mad course. He had been put “into
Irons, Neck and Heels, lockt so close together, as there was no more
room between each, than for the Horse-Lock that fastened them on”; and
was kept in that way for sixteen hours, without food, after having been
whipped. The next day he was whipped again with a tarred rope, so
severely that the rope untwisted; but a new one was procured, and he was
given ninety-seven more blows. “His Flesh was beaten Black, and as into
a Gelly; and under his Arms the bruised Flesh and Blood hung down,
clodded as it were in Baggs.” The next morning, after threatening to
give him more, the Puritan jailer went to church. Brend, who had then
been some days without food, finally became unconscious. The people,
learning the facts, protested loudly, and a tumult was raised. Endicott
sent “his Chyrurgion, to see what might be done (such Fear was fallen
upon you,” writes our authority, “lest ye should suffer for his Blood)
who thought it impossible according unto Men that he should live, but
that his Flesh would Rot from off his Bones, ere that bruised Flesh
could be brought to digest (this was the Judgment of your Governors
Chirurgion), and such a cry was made by the People that came in to see
him, that ye were constrained, for the satisfaction of them, to set up a
Paper at your Meeting-House-Door, and up and down the Streets, That the
Jaylor should be dealt withal the next Court; but it was soon taken down
again, upon the instigation of John Norton (your High-Priest unto whom,
as the Fountain or Principal, most of the Cruelty and Bloodshed herein
rehearsed, is to be imputed) and the Jaylor let alone: For, said John
Norton (but how Cruelly let the Sober judge)—W. Brend endeavored to beat
our Gospel-Ordinances black and blue; and if he was beaten black and
blue, it was Just upon him; and said he would appear in the Jaylor's
behalf.”[686]
Footnote 684:
_Massachusetts Archives_, cited by R. P. Hallowell, _The Quaker
Invasion of Massachusetts_ (Boston, 1887), pp. 153 _ff._
Footnote 685:
Bishop, _New England Judged_, pp. 47-62.
Footnote 686:
_Ibid._, p. 67.
It is not intended to go into all the details of the many other and,
happily, somewhat less terrible cases of the persecution; and the above
extract from a contemporary has been given because the grim realities of
the past are apt to be blurred by our easy modern phrases.
The Reverend John Norton, the Reverend Charles Chauncey, and other
divines, as well as the Governor and other leading laymen, continued to
press for a law allowing them to execute the death-penalty legally. The
struggle, as usual, ranged the people against the theocratical leaders,
and the deputies refused to pass the law prepared by the clergy and
voted by the magistrates, which not only imposed death upon any Quaker
who should return after banishment, but denied the right of trial by
jury, and relegated the cases to a court composed of three magistrates,
a majority of whom could impose the penalty.[687] The House of Deputies,
which contained twenty-six members, finally consented to the passage of
the law, somewhat amended, by a majority of one, owing to the absence,
on account of illness, of one of those who had opposed the bill.[688] In
view of the severe penalties imposed upon all who might speak in defense
of Quaker doctrines, the thirteen who stood out to the end deserve all
praise.
Footnote 687:
Bishop, _New England Judged_, p. 101.
Footnote 688:
_Ibid._, p. 102. The law is in _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt.
i, pp. 345 _ff._
Immediate steps were taken to influence public opinion in favor of the
new law, and Norton was appointed by the Court to write a treatise in
support of it, which was published the following year.[689] Meanwhile,
the persecution continued unabated. At the same court at which the law
was passed, six Quakers were banished on pain of death, and four months
later, the children of two of them, Daniel and Provided Southwick, were
ordered sold into bondage in Virginia or the West Indies, by the County
Treasurer, to pay the accumulated fines imposed upon them for not
attending a Puritan church. No ship's captain, however, sufficiently
hardened in the religion of New England could be found to share in the
guilt of this transaction.[690] There is no need of going into the
details of the other cases, which were soon overshadowed by those of the
martyrs who voluntarily suffered the extreme penalty, in order to
testify to the truth as they saw it, and to die for liberty of opinion.
Footnote 689:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 348; also, _The Heart of
New England rent at the Blasphemies of the present Generation_;
Cambridge, 1659. The liberty of conscience which the more liberal part
of the community was striving for he denounced as liberty “to answer
the dictates of the errors of Conscience in walking contrary to Rule.
It is a liberty to blaspheme, a liberty to seduce others from the true
God. A liberty to tell lies in the name of the Lord” (p. 51). We may
note here that several New England historians, as one of the defenses
of Massachusetts, lay stress upon the vituperative language employed
by the Quakers. As a matter of fact, none found in the contemporary
records at all equals that of the Puritans, the violence of whose
language is open for any to read in their legislative enactments and
state documents. Many remarks addressed by officers of the Puritan
courts, from Endicott down, to their helpless prisoners, could be
expressed in modern books only by a series of dashes.
Footnote 690:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 349, 367, 366; Bishop,
_New England Judged_, p. 107.
There is no doubt that Mary Dyer, William Robinson, and Marmaduke
Stevenson had counted the full cost when they returned from banishment
to face certain death, in the autumn of 1659. Sentence was pronounced on
the eighteenth of October, and the execution took place a few days
later.[691] On the petition of her son, Mary Dyer had been reprieved,
and was once more banished; but with a fiendish ingenuity of cruelty,
she was not to know of it, and was to be led to the gallows with a rope
about her neck, and to wait while the two men were being hung. As they
were led to execution, the three walked hand in hand. “Are you not
ashamed to walk between two young men?” asked the Puritan marshal, with
characteristic coarseness. “It is an hour of the greatest joy I can
enjoy in this world,” answered the pure-hearted woman. “No eye can see,
no ear can hear, no tongue can speak, no heart can understand, the sweet
incomes and refreshing of the spirit of the Lord which I now
enjoy.”[692] After the others had died, her hands and legs were bound,
her face covered, and the rope adjusted around her neck. At that moment
her reprieve was announced to her. She refused to accept her life, but
was taken to Rhode Island by her family. The following spring, however,
she returned and told the General Court that she was to bear witness
against the unjust law, which this time was allowed to take its
course.[693] A few months later, another Quaker, William Leddra,
suffered the same penalty.
Footnote 691:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 383 _f._
Footnote 692:
Bishop, _New England Judged_, p. 134.
Footnote 693:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 419.
So far, in the Puritan colonies, mainly in Massachusetts, over forty had
been whipped, sixty-four imprisoned, over forty banished, one branded,
three had had their ears cut off, five had had the right of appeal to
England denied them, four had been put to death, while many others had
suffered in diverse ways.[694]
Footnote 694:
Besse, _Abstract of the Sufferings, etc._, cited by Jones, _Quakers_,
pp. 91 _ff._
There are many contemporary evidences, however, to show that the
sympathy of the people went out more and more to the victims. At the
time of the execution of Robinson and Stevenson, a heavy guard had been
necessary to allow the sentence to be carried out, and the Court had
found it needful to prepare a long defense of their action against such
as might feel “pitty and comiseration,” and others who might look upon
the magistrates as “bloody persecutors.” Apologetic broadsides were
printed to the same effect.[695]
Footnote 695:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 384 _ff._; _Mass. Hist.
Soc. Proceedings_, Series III, vol. II, p. 203.
While the trial of Leddra was in progress, a banished Quaker, Wenlock
Christison, suddenly appeared in court, and after declaring his
identity, looked into the stern face of Endicott, and solemnly said to
him, “I am come here to warn you that you should shed no more innocent
blood, for the blood that you have shed already, cries to the Lord for
vengeance to come upon you.”[696] He was immediately arrested, and at
his trial protested that the colony had no authority to make laws
repugnant to the laws of England, and that there was no law there
providing for capital punishment against Quakers. But by this time even
the magistrates had begun to hesitate in their course, and several
refused to vote for his death. Endicott, in a fury, pounded the table,
and ordered another vote, thundering out, “You that will not consent,
record it: I thank God I am not afraid to give judgment.” It is said
that the result was uncertain, and that the Governor himself
precipitately passed the sentence of death.[697]
Footnote 696:
W. Sewel, _History of the Quakers_ (New York, 1844), vol. I, p. 338.
Footnote 697:
_Ibid._, p. 344; _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. ii, p. 20.
The sentence, however, was never executed. Not only had the people of
Massachusetts now risen in revolt against the persecuting tyranny of the
ministers and magistrates, but the colony was to be stayed in its course
by a stronger power. The English monarchy had been restored a year
before, and the relations of Massachusetts to the mother-country were
about to undergo a marked change.
Complaints had been made to King Charles of the persecutions in New
England, and word of this had been received privately in Massachusetts.
Partly from fear of his possible action, and partly in deference to the
evident opposition of the people, a new law was passed, which, while
still preserving the death-penalty, evidently intended to make it less
necessary of enforcement.[698] Under this new act, Christison and
twenty-seven others were released from prison, though two were stripped
to the waist, and whipped through the town.[699]
Footnote 698:
_Acts Privy Council, Colonial, 1613-1680_, p. 312; _Massachusetts
Records_, vol. IV, pt. ii, p. 20.
Footnote 699:
Sewel, _Quakers_, vol. I, p. 345; _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV,
pt. ii, p. 24.
On receiving news of Leddra's death, Edward Burrough, an English Quaker,
had secured an audience with the King, and told him that “there was a
vein of innocent blood opened in his dominions, which if it were not
stopped would overrun all”; to which the monarch answered, “but I will
stop that vein.” His secretary was called, and an order at once prepared
to be sent to the Massachusetts government. As no royal ship was then
sailing, the Quakers hired one and dispatched the “king's missive,” by
Samuel Shattuck, a banished Massachusetts Quaker. In six weeks, the
condemned man, now a King's messenger, confronted Endicott, and
delivered the letter, ordering that no further proceedings be taken
against Quakers, and that such as were under charges be sent to England.
Endicott read it, and with what must have been the most painful emotion
of his life, he looked at the hated heretic and said, “We shall obey his
Majesty's commands.”[700] Orders were issued for the release of all
Quakers, and Shattuck, speaking of the colonists, said that “many mouths
are now opened, which were before shutt, and some of them now say, Its
the welcomest ship that ever came into the land.”[701]
Footnote 700:
The account is from Sewel, _Quakers_, vol. I, pp. 345 _ff._ The letter
has often been reprinted. _Cf._ Jones, _Quakers_, p. 98; _Cal. State
Pap., Col., 1661-68_, pp. 55 _f._
Footnote 701:
The laws were temporarily suspended. _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV,
pt. ii, p. 34. A popular ballad, supposed to have been written about
1676, is interesting, not only for its confirmation of other
contemporary sources as to where the blame rested, but as showing the
popular feeling.
But may we know the Counsellors that brought our Rulers in,
To be so guilty as they are, of the aforesaid sin?
They were the tribe of Ministers, as they are said to be,
Who always to our Magistrates, must be the eyes to see.
* * * * * * *
And I am not alone herein, there's many hundreds more
That have for many Years ago spoke much upon that Score.
Peter Folger, “A Looking Glass for the Times”; S. S. Rider, _R. I.
Tracts_, Series V, vol. XVI, pp. 6, 12.
Though no more of the sect were put to death, their persecution was by
no means ended. The new law had provided that every Quaker should be
apprehended, stripped from the waist up, tied to a cart's tail, and
whipped through every town to the boundary of the colony. This was to be
repeated if they returned, and on the fourth offense they were to be
branded, and, on the fifth, banished on pain of death.[702] This law was
modified by limiting the whippings to three towns only, in 1662,
although an answer to the address of Massachusetts to the King had been
received some months earlier, withdrawing much of the royal protection
formerly offered to the Quakers.[703] The change was evidently due,
therefore, to public sentiment in the colony. Of the barbarous treatment
accorded the victims under the act, it is unnecessary to speak in
detail. To mention one of the worst cases, we may note that three women
were stripped to the waist, tied to the cart's tail, and, in the end of
December, forced to tramp through deep snow, receiving ten lashes on
their bare backs in eleven successive towns.[704] The end, however, was
not far off. In 1665, Endicott died, and the Royal Commissioners also
commanded the Massachusetts General Court not to molest Quakers in their
secular business.[705]
Footnote 702:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. ii, pp. 2 _ff._
Footnote 703:
_Ibid._, pp. 59, 164 _ff_; _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1661-1668_, p. 94.
Footnote 704:
The modern reader may find cases and references in Jones, _Quakers_,
pp. 101 _ff._
Footnote 705:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt. ii, p. 212.
Although a considerable body of opinion had, undoubtedly, been
throughout in favor of the course taken by the ministers and
magistrates,[706] all the evidence points to a large and increasing body
against it. The facts that the deputies were opposed to it, that the
Court, usually somewhat arrogant in the assertion of its authority, had
to stoop to public explanations and propaganda, that even the
magistrates finally revolted, and that in the last case, the
death-penalty could not be enforced even when passed, all indicate
clearly enough the refusal of the people to follow their ministers in
their frantic efforts to maintain orthodoxy at any cost.
Footnote 706:
_Cf._, _e.g._, the petition of the inhabitants of Dover in 1662
against the increase of Quakers. _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV, pt.
ii, p. 69.
It is needless to say that the seventeenth century cannot be judged by
the standards of the nineteenth, but the second half of the earlier one
was by no means as intolerant as many would have us believe. Opinion in
England and in all of the colonies, although naturally bigoted as yet,
on the part of many, was, beyond question, becoming far more liberal. We
have already noted the frequent remonstrances addressed to Massachusetts
by her friends at home. We have seen the consistent stand of Rhode
Island from the start, and noted the tolerant tendencies in Plymouth and
Connecticut. In England, Vane was raising his voice in Parliament for
religious liberty in its most extreme form.[707] In the same body,
Cromwell was asking, “Is it ingenuous to ask liberty and not to give it?
What greater hypocrisy than for those who were opposed by the Bishops to
become the greatest oppressors themselves, as soon as their yoke was
removed.”[708] Maryland had possessed religious freedom for all
professing Christ, since 1649, and in 1665 the New Jersey Concession
provided for complete liberty of conscience, as did the charter of South
Carolina four years later.[709] In Jamaica, toleration, with full civil
liberties to all Christians, including Quakers, was proclaimed in
1662.[710] Public opinion notoriously outruns legislation, yet in
addition to the above examples and others, Pennsylvania, in 1682,
provided in its laws for equal liberty for all who believed in God;
while the Toleration Act, a landmark in the struggle in England, was
passed seven years later.[711]
Footnote 707:
Burton's Diary, cited by Hosmer, _Young Sir Harry Vane_, p. 501.
Footnote 708:
Carlyle, _Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell_ (London, n.d.), p.
94.
Footnote 709:
Macdonald, _Select Charters_ (New York, 1906), pp. 142, 165.
Footnote 710:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1661-1668_, p. 111.
Footnote 711:
H. F. Russell Smith, _Theory of Religious Liberty in the Reigns of
Charles II and James II_ (Cambridge University Press, 1911), pp. 53, 1
_ff._
The progress made in the generation since Bradford and his little band
had tried to flee secretly from England had been great. A large section
of the people, however, both at home and in the colonies, was
undoubtedly as bigoted and intolerant as ever; and, unfortunately, the
leaders in charge of the destinies of the largest of the New England
colonies at the critical period we have been describing were numbered
among them. They had made a desperate stand, and hesitated at
nothing,—not even inflicting torture and taking human life,—in order to
maintain their position; and, happily for America, they had been
defeated, though not until they had set an indelible stain on the pages
of American history.
The struggle we have been describing has not been related at length
because of its antiquarian or dramatic interest. In toleration of
opinions lies the one hope for the advancement of the human race. If the
earthly end of man “is the highest and most harmonious development of
his powers to a complete and consistent whole,”[712] free scope must be
provided for differing opinion, and varieties in the experiment of
living. The contest in Massachusetts happened to be fought out on
religious lines, because it was an age of religious interests. It
happened to be fought against the ministers and magistrates because, in
that time and place, they represented the forces opposed to freedom and
to change. But there are other elements in man's nature than religion;
and tyranny and opposition to all innovation may be as securely
enthroned in the public opinion of a democracy as in the leaders of a
theocracy. So far as experience has shown, they are certain to be, in a
socialistic or communistic state; and the battle for toleration of
opinion, for the liberty of the individual personality to expand along
its own unique lines, for the chance of any further development in the
possibilities for the advancement of the race, may have to be fought out
again upon a grander scale than any the world has yet seen.
Footnote 712:
Humboldt; cited by J. S. Mill, _On Liberty_ (Oxford), p. 71.
That the course which the Massachusetts authorities took was wholly
unnecessary was proved by the events in the other colonies. What
happened was largely the consequence of their own acts. Rhode Island had
shown the just, and, at the same time, the wise course to pursue. As she
pointed out, wherever Quakers were not persecuted, they gave no trouble.
One of the glories of the present nation is its complete toleration, in
so far, at least, as religion is concerned; and its hard-won liberty is
in no small measure due to the people of its smallest state, and to the
noble men and women who suffered and gave their lives that the power of
the Massachusetts theocracy might be broken, and the human mind
unshackled. The debt which, in other ways, America owes to the largest
of the Puritan colonies is too great to require that aught but the truth
be told. It is not necessary to exalt erring and fallible men to the
rank of saints in order to show our gratitude to them or our loyalty to
our country. But the leaders and citizens of Rhode Island, the martyred
Quakers, and the men and women of Massachusetts and the other colonies,
who so lived and wrought and died that the glory of an heritage of
intellectual freedom might be ours, are the Americans whom, in the
struggle we have been reciting, it should be our duty to honor.