LOSS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARTER
The year 1676 was doubly noteworthy in the history of New England. As we
have seen in the preceding chapter, it marked the definite end of the
internal menace of the Indians in the colonies, which henceforth, except
for border wars, could develop their life without that lurking fear of
the savage that had always haunted the dwellers in such little towns as
were planted beyond the area of compact settlement. If, on the one hand,
the year thus seemed to open an era of an even more unrestricted
development for the peculiar polity of New England, on the other, it
also marked the beginning of a more determined effort on the part of the
mother-country to exert her power over the colonies, and to bring them
within the administrative scope of a better organized empire. The
resultant contest, the earlier phases of which have already been
described, was, in the main, carried on between Massachusetts and the
Crown, and continued intermittently during the quarter of a century from
the Restoration of the Stuarts to the inevitable loss of the colony's
charter in 1684. In a less critical day, it was wont to be described as
an unmitigated struggle between liberty-loving colonists fighting for
freedom, and a king bent solely upon wreaking his tyrannical will. But
the door of the past is not to be unlocked with so crude a key, and
historians have learned to distrust simple formulas.
In the domestic affairs of England, the question that was more and more
urgently pressing for solution was that of the location of sovereignty,
and the source of power. Following the Reformation, with the development
of the modern nationalities, the establishment of state-churches, and
the growth of dissent, the sixteenth century had witnessed the transfer
of allegiance from ecclesiastical to civil authority. The idea of law,
however, as non-moral and as derived from sanctions other than divine,
was but slowly coming into being. The theory of the divine right of a
king to rule, although it might be used to further the purposes of a
self-seeking monarch, had not been originated to serve that end. It was
a natural and necessary stage in the transfer of authoritative sanction
from the Papacy to the civil rulers. It was, in a word, “the assertion
that civil society has an inherent right to exist apart from its
ecclesiastical utility,” and that it has a sanctity of its own, which
may be set off against the claims of the theocrats.[903]
Footnote 903:
J. N. Figgis, “Political Thought in the 16th Century,” in _Cambridge
Modern History_, vol. III, pp. 751, 763. _Cf._ the same author's
_Divine Right of Kings_ (Cambridge University Press, 1914), pp. 44
_f._, 54, 100.
If we would understand the expression of a political idea, it is as
essential to study it in relation to the previous one which it was
brought forth to contradict, as it is to analyze it philosophically.
From the first standpoint, the doctrine of the divine right of kings
performed a useful bit of service, while, philosophically, it is neither
more nor less legitimate than that of the divine right of a majority.
Liberty is not, as our forefathers were too often told, a natural fact.
The only natural liberty is that granted to the individual, human or
brute, to sustain his life and propagate his species if he can, in the
face of a universe almost overwhelmingly bent upon their destruction.
Civil liberty, on the other hand, is purely social, and is a very
delicate and varying adjustment of rights and duties in the succeeding
stages of man's institutional development, which has risen and fallen in
the past as that equilibrium has been disturbed. The divine right of
kings was a protest against the divine right of the Pope. The divine
right of a majority is a protest against the divine right of kings; but
democracy has yet to prove whether it is any more capable than theocracy
or monarchy of the sustained moral effort necessary to maintain the
balance between rights and duties, so as to preserve and enlarge the
liberty of the individual.
Aside from this question of divine right, there was a good deal to be
said for the theory of sovereignty held by the later Stuarts, who
possessed not only the legal, but the recognized, right to summon and
dissolve Parliament, to create enough peers, lay and spiritual, and to
charter enough boroughs, to alter completely the composition of both the
Houses. With such a relationship, they may well have considered their
Parliaments as but emanations of their own power. There is, however,
even more to be admitted as to their later colonial policy. For while,
in their domestic struggle with Parliament, they were setting themselves
in opposition to almost all the progressive influences of the times, in
their colonial plans, they were furthering some of the most important.
The reign of Charles II may be taken to mark the end of religion and the
beginning of commerce as the prime influence in national politics and
international relations. From 1672, when Protestant England joined with
Catholic France to crush Protestant Holland, until 1815, the wars of
England were wars for trade; and the long duel for empire between that
country and France was to make the imperial question essentially one of
trade and defense. It was becoming more and more evident, indeed, that
the seventeenth-century empire rested, fundamentally, upon trade; and it
is probable that the pressure exerted by the merchant class was quite as
large an element in shaping policy as was any personal design of the
King.
The beginnings of settlement, scattered and unimportant, had in no way
presaged the empire which was to develop within a half-century, and not
only had territory been granted away recklessly, but the monarchs had
been equally heedless of the future in the forms of government which
they had permitted to grow up. By the time our story has now reached,
the colonial problem, aside from any question of tyranny, undoubtedly
called for new treatment. If the Empire were not to be a source of great
military weakness, and if the Navigation Acts, upon which its commercial
power rested, were to be properly enforced, it was obvious that a much
greater degree of administrative unity and control would have to be
realized. In particular, the granting of the charters, in which no
provision had been made for a royal governor or for any definite channel
of communication between the imperial government and the colony, had
undoubtedly been a serious administrative blunder, which the attitude of
Massachusetts had made at once worse and more obvious.
Indeed, just at a time when a strong administrative control was most
necessary, it may well have appeared as if the Empire were drifting
toward disruption. However different the material for colonization may
have been in the various colonies,—and, in the main, it is now
considered as more uniform than was formerly thought to have been the
case,—the frontier influence was at work in them all; and the main
characteristic which they possessed in common was their insistence upon
the right of self-government. Not only among the continental colonies,
but among the island ones as well, we find the same spirit from the
start, and the same reiterated demand for assemblies and self-taxation.
The story varies only in detail, whether we study Tobago, Trinidad,
Antigua, Nevis, Jamaica, Barbadoes, Bermuda, or New England.[904] These
two points were wholly compatible with a well-organized empire, however,
and England, for the most part, made no effort to interfere with either.
Footnote 904:
H. E. Egerton, in _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. IV, p. 758; V. L.
Oliver, _History of the Island of Antigua_ (London, 1894-99), vol. I,
p. xxxix; _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1661-68_, pp. 545, 169 _ff._, 96.
It was a different matter when the colonies declined to admit that the
imperial government possessed any authority over them, or refused to
observe those laws made for the regulation of the Empire as a whole. The
case of Massachusetts had become notorious, not only throughout the
Empire, but even among foreigners; and Colbert's agent in the French
West Indies could write that “the English who dwell near Boston will not
worry themselves about the prohibitions which the King of England may
issue, because they hardly recognize his authority.”[905] Although, with
reference to Virginia, it was reported that this “New England disease is
very catching,”[906] it seems to have been indigenous in the soil of
most of the colonies. It had long since been reported that many in
Barbadoes wished to become independent “and not run any fortune with
England either in peace or war,” but to erect their “little limb of the
Commonwealth into a free state.”[907] In the very year in which
Massachusetts lost her charter, the inhabitants of Bermuda were
proclaiming that “we are free-born people, our Lands are our own, and
wee will doe with our own what wee please, and if wee doe not like of
the King's Government wee can desert the Country.”[908]
Footnote 905:
Cited by Mims, _Colbert's West Indian Policy_, p. 222.
Footnote 906:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, p. 153.
Footnote 907:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660_, pp. 384, 408.
Footnote 908:
_Ibid._, _1685-88_, p. 49.
Aside from the influence of the frontier, however, the element of time
was also beginning to make itself felt. In New England, practically the
entire first generation of settlers had died by the end of Philip's War.
The “freemen” who were now guiding her destinies had, for the most part,
been born in the settlements, and were colonials, in the strict sense of
the word. They possessed no fond memories of the mother-country, or
close personal ties with individuals there. Their interests and outlook
were provincial and local to a degree that we can hardly realize. They
were caught in a little back-water, and the great current of English
life was sweeping on with but slight influence upon them. The first
planters had been drawn to a large extent from a very sound element in
the England of their day, but, with few exceptions, they were men of
narrow outlook, which had naturally become still narrower in their
laborious, isolated life in America. Among the religious elements in the
new communities, the intensity of their faith in the divine nature of
their mission, combined with their extraordinary self-consciousness,
tended to breed a belief in their own superiority, which infected not
only the whole of New England, but much subsequent historical writing.
Stoughton's preaching that “God sifted a whole nation that he might send
choice grain over into this wilderness” was but a mild expression of
what the New Englanders thoroughly believed and loved to be told.[909]
Footnote 909:
_New England's true Interest not to Lie_; cited by Tyler, _History of
American Literature_ (New York, 1879), vol. II, p. 163.
We have already expressed our high appreciation of the character of much
of the early immigration to that section of the country; but it cannot
be claimed that it included any of the real leaders in England in any
line of thought or action; and figures which loom large against the
background of the wilderness change their proportions materially when
measured by the national life in the old country. It has been claimed
that Cromwell, at one time, thought seriously of emigrating to New
England; and it is illuminating to consider, had he done so, the
resultant comparative stature, in view of the new standard of measure
thus introduced, of such men as Bradstreet and Stoughton. The New
England leaders were, indeed, of a more intellectual type generally than
came to the other colonies, and there was, perhaps, more play of mind
among the people than in either the southern continental or the island
settlements. Common-school education was fostered to a degree unknown
elsewhere at the time, and the village school, with the town-meeting and
the Congregational church, soon took its place in New England's typical
community life. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a law requiring every town
of fifty families to maintain a teacher of reading and writing, and each
town of one hundred families to establish a grammar school.[910] Every
town in Connecticut had its provision for elementary education, and each
county its Latin school. Even Plymouth, in spite of its poverty, was
also fairly well provided.[911] In Harvard, which was founded as early
as 1636, the colonies long possessed the only English institution of
higher learning in the new world, although there was a French college in
Quebec, founded at virtually the same time as Harvard.[912] The early
Virginia settlers were, at first, indeed, as solicitous as the New
Englanders about education, but the results of the geographic
environment were felt as strongly in this as in the other matters on
which we have already touched. With the bad roads and the scattered life
of the plantations, it was impossible for the common school to take root
as it did in the compact little villages of New England. But if the
common schooling was somewhat less diffused, the culture of the educated
class was wider, and the private libraries of the Virginians offer to
the booklover a refreshing contrast to the dead weight of theology on
the New England shelves. Nor were these southern libraries confined, as
used to be thought, to a few families, research tending constantly to
minimize the supposed difference between New England and the rest of the
colonies in this regard.[913]
Footnote 910:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, p. 203.
Footnote 911:
_Conn. Col. Records_, vols. II, p. 307, and III, p. 9; _Plymouth
Records_, vol. II, pp. 81, 102. Rhode Island seems to have been
backward, but had at least one school as early as 1640. _Vide_ Arnold,
_Rhode Island_, vol. I, p. 145.
Footnote 912:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 183; G. M. Wrong, _Conquest of New
France_ (Yale University Press, 1918), p. 42.
Footnote 913:
_Cf._ _Virginia Magazine_, vols. III, pp. 388 _ff._, VII, pp. 299
_ff._, X, pp. 399 _ff._, and XVII, pp. 147 _f._; _William and Mary
Quarterly_, vols. II, pp. 169 _ff._, III, pp. 43 _f._, 132 _f._, 180
_f._, 246 _f._, and IV, pp. 15 _f._, 94, 156. _Cf._ J. H. Tuttle “The
Libraries of the Mathers,” in _American Antiquarian Society
Proceedings_, N. S., vol. XX, pp. 269 _ff._
Moreover, although her devotion to education was to bear noble fruit in
the years to come, and is one of the chief contributions of New England
to our national life, its original object, and almost the sole use to
which it was put, was religious, and it may be questioned whether its
earlier influence upon the people at large was not narrowing rather than
broadening. For, in the absence, for the average citizen in New England,
of almost any books other than theological, and of any intellectual
stimulus other than the sermon, the earlier result of such education as
the people received seems to have been mainly an intensified
preoccupation with the problems of Calvinism, and a remarkable extension
of the influence of the priesthood. The attitude of Massachusetts, in
extirpating so far as possible all ideas opposed to her official
theology, in banishing those who persisted in giving expression to them,
and in exercising a strict censorship over the only printing-press in
New England, nullified, to a great extent, the benefits that might
otherwise have been derived from her “educational” system in the sense
of schools.[914] In the writings of the men who settled Massachusetts or
visited it in the earliest period, there is a freshness and charm of
outlook and phrase which allures the reader even of to-day. In Smith or
Bradford, Higginson or Wood, one feels in the presence of a healthy
mind, actively interested in this world or the next; but when these men
have passed, the balance of the century leaves us hardly a work which,
for a modern reader, possesses any interest other than antiquarian or
historical.
Footnote 914:
C. A. Duniway, _Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts_
(Harvard University Press, 1906), pp. 22 _ff._
In England, men's minds had been profoundly stirred by the great
parliamentary struggle, the Civil War, and all the influences of the new
period. In science, Ray was founding systematic zoölogy, Harvey had
discovered the circulation of the blood, Newton the law of gravitation,
Boyle the law of gases which bears his name, and Halley was working in
his observatory at Greenwich. Among the numerous contemporary writers
whom our educated colonists might have been reading had they been in
England, we may mention, at hazard, Locke, Hobbes, Butler, Marvell, Sir
Thomas Browne, Milton, Taylor, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Fuller, Clarendon,
Herbert, Dryden, and Herrick. But of all this varied intellectual life,
it may be said that practically nothing reached the vast majority of New
Englanders, whose science was still made up of the superstitious
observances of “special providences,” and whose political life was
centred in the meeting of church or town. If they felt the need of
verse, they read Uriah Oakes or Michael Wigglesworth, and the need must
have been as great as its reward was inadequate. Of other printed
literature indigenous to the soil, there was practically none except
theological, and the few historical accounts brought out by the Indian
wars.[915]
Footnote 915:
_Vide_ the appallingly theological and dreary catalogue of the Boston
bookseller, Michael Perry, in John Dunton's _Letters from New England_
(Prince Society, 1867), pp. 314 _ff._ The whole intellectual life of
the period in England noted above is unrepresented by a single volume
except _Pilgrim's Progress_.
Such impoverishment of the intellectual life was a necessary consequence
of living in the wilderness in the seventeenth century; but it was none
the less a misfortune because inevitable. In New England, however, a
peculiar result ensued from the combination of the extreme rarity of the
intellectual atmosphere and the partial education of her people. In the
other colonies, men may have been more ignorant of books, but they were
healthy-minded. In New England, the concentration of an awakened mental
life almost wholly upon the problems of election or damnation created a
condition of ethical morbidity, and bequeathed to us the legacy of what
may almost be called that section's fourth contribution to American
life—the New England conscience, with its pathological questionings and
elaborate system of taboos. It is an interesting psychological study,
not without its immediate historical bearings, to contrast the diaries
of such English officials as Pepys or Evelyn with that kept by the
active Massachusetts official, Sewall, who could amuse himself all
Christmas Day arranging the coffins in the family vault, and pronounce
the occupation to have been “an awfull yet pleasing Treat.”[916] Toward
the end of the seventeenth century, public opinion in New England,
economic, religious, political, and social, had grown largely out of
touch with that in the old country; but the nature of the case demanded
that, in the last analysis, the government of the Empire must be mainly
determined by the latter and not by the former.
Footnote 916:
Samuel Sewall, _Diary_, vol. I, p. 444.
As in England, however, parties based on civil differences were
replacing the old religious ones, so in New England, parties were
forming due to the rise of altered economic conditions, and the passing
of the early religious spirit. We have already noted the presence in
Massachusetts, from the start, of a considerable body of dissent from
the doctrine and polity of the colonial state church, and the decline in
fervor even within the group of the Saints themselves. Men who,
according to the official church theory, were not of the elect, and yet
who were conscious of trying to live helpful, honest, God-fearing lives,
refused to acknowledge the truth of the denunciations which, under
penalty of fine, they were forced to listen to, Sunday after Sunday,
hurled at themselves by the leading divines. Hooker might thunder that
“no carrion in a ditch smells more loathsomely in the nostrils of man,
than a natural man's works do in the nostrils of the Almighty”; or
Shepard declare that the mind of the natural man “is a nest of all the
foul opinions, heresies, that ever were vented,” and his heart “a foul
sink all of atheism, sodomy, blasphemy, murder, whoredom, adultery,
witchcraft, buggery.”[917] The bow had been bent too long, and had lost
its spring. Bradstreet might still demand that “the old stand firm”
against “that cursed Bratt Toleration,” but Bishop reported more truly
“that many are gospel-glutted and growing weary.”[918]
Footnote 917:
Extracts, in Tyler, _American Literature_, vol. I, pp. 201, 208.
Footnote 918:
Letters to Increase Mather, in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series IV,
vol. VIII, pp. 478, 314.
At the time when religion was thus gradually passing as the leading
cause of division in New England, other forces were at work to align the
citizens into new parties. In a former chapter, we called attention to
the early beginning, on a small scale, of the divergence between the
life of the frontiers and that of the older and more established
settlements. With the growth of a few of the larger centres, notably
Boston, there also developed the conflict of economic interests and
political outlook between town and country.[919] The prosperity of the
Empire under the Navigation Acts had increased enormously, and New
England, although refusing to obey the laws, had shared to the full in
the resultant growth of trade and wealth. From all these causes, there
had developed fairly distinct opposing groups—a large element of
liberals in theology, as against the maintainers of rigid orthodoxy; a
conservative “east” against a radical “west,” a progressive urban
population, contrasted with the more narrow-minded, unchanging rural
laborers and farmers; and a trading, moneyed class, with views and
interests differing from the agricultural.[920] The distinctions are
real and marked, though the numbers of those in the various parties, and
their exact groupings on special questions, can only be approximated.
The magistrates, consisting, for the most part, of men of wealth and
position chosen from the larger centres, and the deputies, resident in
each of the towns from which they were elected, represented, in their
differing attitudes, the moderate and radical opinion of the colonies as
a whole. In the relations with England, those who were liberal in
theology, in closer personal or commercial contact with the old country,
and more conservative in their outlook, would naturally favor a
conciliatory attitude. Those, on the other hand, who believed that the
supreme object at stake was the maintaining of the peculiar
ecclesiastical organization of their church-state, with its religious
franchise tests, and those who had no direct business relations with
England or other countries, would as naturally tend to adopt an
unyielding attitude of opposition. There is a direct line of descent
from the moderate party of 1676 to the Loyalist party of 1776; and, as
the wholesale condemnation of the latter is now considered uncritical,
so, also, we cannot off-hand divide the parties of the earlier struggle
into traitors and patriots.
Footnote 919:
_Cf._ _Queries upon the present state of the New English affairs_, by
S. E. (London, _circa_ 1689); Sabin reprint, New York, 1865, p. 17.
Footnote 920:
Randolph wrote in Feb., 1686: “There are no small endeavors betwixt
the Landed men and the Merct how to ease the publick Charges: The
Mercts are for land Taxes, but Mr. Dudley, Stoughton and others who
have gott very larg tracts of Land are for Laying all upon the trading
party,” etc. _Randolph Papers_, vol. VI, p. 211.
As in old England the main question of the day was the location of
sovereignty, so it was in the New, and in the relations between the two.
The theory of the state as based upon original contract, which, although
implicit in feudalism, was, as we have seen, probably derived in New
England from the church covenant, had even less historical or
philosophical basis than that of divine right. However, the advances
made by mankind are not less real because they have nearly always been
contemporaneously justified by false assumptions. In such cases
“conclusions are more permanent than premises,” as Mr. Balfour points
out in speaking of “the incongruity between the causes by which beliefs
are sustained, and the official reasons by which they are from time to
time justified.”[921] It is in this very failure of man to reason
rightly as to the grounds of his own efforts that we perceive most
clearly the operations of forces in human history independent of man's
own will and thought, precisely where, for himself, the illusion of a
reasoned freedom is strongest. Although the theories of divine right and
of original compact have now both been discarded among the philosophical
lumber of the past, the latter theory was of enormous influence in
shaping American political thought. Before, however, that thought could
legitimately give expression to the dictum, “No taxation without
representation,” it was necessary that the community as a whole, and not
a religious sect, should be considered to be the “people”; and before
Massachusetts could join in declaring that “All men are created equal,”
she had to abandon her earlier politico-religious distinction between a
minority born to be everlasting saints and a majority doomed to eternal
damnation. We must now turn to consider, more in detail, the story of
how that result was achieved.
Footnote 921:
A. J. Balfour, _Foundations of Belief_ (New York, 1918), p. 227.
The heirs of Mason and Gorges had never abandoned their claims to the
territory in New Hampshire and Maine which had been illegally absorbed
by Massachusetts, and, of late, they had been pressing their respective
cases with more and more insistence. In May, 1675, the law officers of
the Crown reported to the Committee for Foreign Plantations that, in
their opinion, both claims were based upon valid titles.[922] It was not
mainly, however, the complaints of these individual claimants, or
Mason's detailed recommendations to send commissioners to New
England,[923] which decided the government to take a more active part in
the administration of the colonies. Peace had been signed with the Dutch
in the preceding year, and the ending of the war provided leisure for
undertaking more seriously the reorganization of colonial
administration. The reform began at home with the abolition of the old
Council Committee, and the placing of colonial affairs in the hands of a
new committee known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations. Its members
were able men, well qualified for their work, and displayed considerable
energy, holding eighty-nine meetings in the first year after their
organization.[924]
Footnote 922:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, pp. 232 _f._
Footnote 923:
_Ibid._, pp. 222 _ff._
Footnote 924:
_Cf._ W. T. Root, “Lords of Trade and Plantations, 1675-1696,” in
_American Historical Review_, vol. XXIII, pp. 21 _ff._ Also, Andrews,
_British Committees_, pp. 111 _ff._
The New England question promptly came in for a share of their
attention. We have already noted the many and constant complaints in
regard to Massachusetts, and the attitude of that colony toward the
Royal Commissioners in 1664. While all these old matters, as well as the
newly delivered legal opinions regarding the Mason and Gorges claims,
were before the Lords of Trade, they probably found their chief ground
for dissatisfaction with Massachusetts in her disregard of the
Navigation Acts, and the assumption of virtual independence. Captain
Wyborne of H. M. S. Garland, after a visit to Boston, reported that New
England's trade to Europe and the West Indies had become very great, and
that the magistrates refused to act regarding violations of the law, the
people looking upon themselves as “a free state.”[925] About six weeks
later, twenty-eight English merchants complained that New England was
illegally trading on a great scale between Europe and the various parts
of the British Empire, and so underselling the English in both markets,
and ruining business.[926] New England herself produced none of the
“enumerated commodities,” and, had she confined herself to legitimate
trade, would not have been placed at any appreciable disadvantage by the
Navigation Acts of this period. By evading the law, however, she gained
not only the advantage of an unrestricted commerce, when such was not
allowed in any of the over-seas empires of the time, but also an extra,
illegitimate profit, over and above her law-abiding competitors, exactly
as a smuggler of dutiable articles makes a larger profit than the
legitimate merchant, solely by virtue of the existence of the very laws
that the former evades. The amount lost by England on New England's
domestic illegal trade was not great; but, if the rapidly increasing
business of those colonies between Europe and the rest of the Empire
were allowed to go on unchecked, the integrity of the whole imperial
structure would be seriously threatened.[927]
Footnote 925:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, pp. 306 _ff._; Beer, _Old Colonial
System_, vol. II, pp. 257 _f._
Footnote 926:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, p. 337. The complaint is given in
full in _Randolph Papers_, vol. I, pp. 49 _n._ The latter gives 25
signers, while the Calendar gives 28.
Footnote 927:
_Cf._ Beer, _Old Colonial System_, vol. II, pp. 256 _f._, 308 _f._
Mason had advised that a new commissioner, or a governor general, be
sent to New England; but the English government refused, on the ground
that it would give needless affront, and “would look like awarding
execution on those people before they were heard.”[928] It was,
therefore, decided that Massachusetts should be asked to send over
agents; and, probably in view of the colony's now well-known policy of
delay, it was determined to transmit the demand by a special messenger,
who should bring back personally the answer of the General Court. The
individual selected for this task was Edward Randolph, who was
instructed, not only to deliver the King's letter, and receive the
reply, but also to make a report on trade and other conditions in the
colony, in order that the government might have a better basis for
intelligent action.[929]
Footnote 928:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, p. 308.
Footnote 929:
_Ibid._, pp. 322, 358, 362.
Randolph was of the narrow-minded, official type, a stickler for
technicalities, a thorough believer in centralized imperial control, and
easily influenced by prejudice, but possessed of enormous energy, and of
very considerable ability. He had the not uncommon fault of forcing
facts to fit his theories rather than building theories from the facts;
but in his long connection with the colonies, in offices in which it
would have been peculiarly easy to live by bribes, he was incorruptibly
honest, a rare quality in that day. Moreover, although always poor, and
in his later life embittered, he could yet be generous toward the
distress of others; and when Mason's motherless children were suffering
from poverty in England, he allowed them £20 a year from his own scanty
income.[930] While he was violently opposed to the decentralization of
authority involved in the charter governments, he was not anxious to
play the tyrant, and seems to have believed that the changes he had at
heart would benefit not only the Empire, but the colonists as well. On
more than one occasion, indeed, this “blasted wretch,” as Mather called
him, defended their interests against the Crown. No English official in
our colonial history, however, was more thoroughly hated, and he
returned the feeling in so far as the ruling powers of Massachusetts
were concerned. In this he was hardly to be blamed, for their attitude
and policy toward him, from the first, consisted in covert obstruction
and open insult.
Footnote 930:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. IV, p. 69.
He arrived in Boston early in June, and at once showed his credentials,
and stated his errand, to Governor Leverett. At the meeting of the
Council, at which the King's letter was presented, the Governor and all
but three magistrates kept their hats on while the missive was being
read, refusing to uncover according to the usual custom. When the
reading was concluded, Leverett curtly stated that “the matters therein
contained were very inconsiderable things and easily answered,”
although, in reality, it was the most important communication that the
local government had ever received. When Randolph called their attention
to the demand of the King that an answer be returned, he was simply told
that the matter would be considered.[931]
Footnote 931:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. II, pp. 216 _f._
Although his instructions were that he should remain a month, in order
to gather the data required before returning, the Council announced,
within two days, that they had an answer prepared to the royal letter,
which they were going to send immediately, but which they would not
entrust to Randolph, offering him only a copy, despite the King's
express command. When Randolph asked if they could have well considered
so weighty a matter in forty-eight hours, he was curtly requested to
withdraw, unless he had further orders from the King, as the Councillors
looked upon him as Mason's agent.
Meanwhile, several ships had arrived direct from various European ports,
contrary to the Navigation Acts, of which Randolph spoke to the Governor
in the course of an interview on the following day. Leverett thereupon
declared that the laws made by King and Parliament did not apply to
Massachusetts, and that any dispute between England and the colony was
to be decided by the colony and not by England.[932]
Footnote 932:
_Ibid._, pp. 218 _f._ While our account is derived from Randolph,
there is no reason to doubt its accuracy, for the statement contained
nothing contrary to the frequently avowed policy of the colony, as we
have already found.
Randolph next proceeded into New Hampshire, where he showed letters from
Mason, and naturally received many complaints from disaffected
inhabitants in regard to Massachusetts. For his actions there, he was
sharply rebuked by Leverett, who accused him of trying to “make a mutiny
and disturbance.” Randolph had also suggested, just before going to New
Hampshire, that the General Court be summoned, in order to consider the
King's dispatch; but this was not done, and he finally sailed for
England with only a copy of the letter written by the Council.[933] In
that letter, Leverett wrote, with considerable effrontery, that the
complaints of Mason and Gorges were “impertinencies, mistakes and
falsehoods,” but said nothing about complying with the demand to send
agents, except that the General Court, which, he claimed, could not then
be summoned on account of sickness and the Indian War, would be convened
later.[934]
Footnote 933:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. II, pp. 220, 224 _f._, 203 _ff._
Footnote 934:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, pp. 402 _f._
Owing to the unwise course of the rulers, Randolph could hardly fail to
have been biased by the information received from their opponents; and
the result is evident in the long report which he submitted to the Lords
of Trade on his return. Although, owing to his preconceived ideas, and
the circumstances of his stay, he misjudged the strength of the opposing
parties in the colony, and although certain of his statistics were
greatly exaggerated, the report, on the whole, gave a detailed and
truthful presentation of the general situation, and confirmed other
information possessed in England.[935] For, while Randolph was on his
way west, the Lords of Trade had pursued their investigations, and
summoned before them merchants trading with New England. Of these, “some
were shy to unfold the mystery, others pretended ignorance, but most
declared plainly” that New England traders were regularly breaking the
law, and that, by their direct trade in European goods with the other
colonies they were able to undersell, by twenty per cent, those doing a
legitimate business.[936] This was confirmed, a few weeks later, by an
official returned from a trip to the West Indies, who reported seventeen
New England ships engaged there in a clandestine trade with Europe in
log-wood for dyeing, which not only threatened to involve the whole
Empire in a war with Spain, but provided England's rivals with cheaper
dyes than she herself obtained.[937] It was becoming more and more
evident, the deeper the matter was probed, that the question was not a
domestic one for Massachusetts, whatever she might choose to assume, but
one that involved the interests of England and the Empire.
Footnote 935:
Osgood's estimate of the report, as well as Beer's, seems to me more
just than Doyle's. Osgood, _American Colonies_, vol. III, pp. 316
_f._; Beer, _Old Colonial System_, vol. II, p. 265; Doyle, _Puritan
Colonies_, vol. II, pp. 196 _f._ The report is given in full in
_Randolph Papers_, vol. II, pp. 225 _ff._
Footnote 936:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, pp. 377, 379 _f._
Footnote 937:
_Ibid._, p. 398; Beer, _Old Colonial System_, vol. II, p. 256.
The meeting of the General Court in Massachusetts, to consider the
King's letter, was not held until August, when the question of complying
with the order to send agents to England was referred for advice to the
clergy, as usual. Their opinion being in favor of obedience, the
people's representatives, in the following month, adopted an address to
the King, and appointed Stoughton and Bulkley as agents.[938] The
address was accompanied by a long statement of the claims of
Massachusetts to the disputed eastern territory, which presented her
interpretation of her boundaries, and the benefits to the inhabitants of
her government there, in as favorable a light as possible, dismissing
the claims of Mason and Gorges, adjudged valid by the Crown lawyers, as
“frivolous and insignificant allegations.”[939] The colony still
delayed, however, and her agents did not reach England until January of
the following year. Their position was evidently realized to be an
unenviable one, for the Reverend John Eliot wrote in his diary, “Mr.
Stoughton & mr. Bulkly were sent to England to agent for the Country.
Lord p'ty ym.”[940] They were furnished with two sets of instructions,
according to which they were given authority to act in regard to the
Mason-Gorges matters only, and to plead lack of power as to all others.
They were also, on the one hand, to represent to the King that the
eastern provinces were of little value, and, on the other, to endeavor
to purchase them from Mason and Gorges, if possible.[941]
Footnote 938:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 99 _f._, 113.
Footnote 939:
_Ibid._, pp. 108 _ff._
Footnote 940:
_Boston Record Commissioners' Report_, vol. VI, p. 195.
Footnote 941:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 113-117.
In limiting her agents to the one matter of the eastern provinces,
Massachusetts was technically complying with the King's request; but the
New England question was much wider in scope than that, and the unhappy
agents soon found themselves in deep waters. The colony's policy had
been such that the English government could not expect more from other
agents than from those who were then actually present, who were, after
all, primarily English subjects and not colonial representatives, and
who could, therefore, well be called upon to explain their colony's
acts, though they could not bind her by agreements. Randolph was now
busily engaged in pressing his views on the government, listing the
crimes and misdemeanors of the colony, and outlining a course of action.
While some of his accusations were so exaggerated as to be palpably
false, others were unquestionably true, such as denying appeals to
England, violating the Navigation Acts, imposing an oath of fidelity to
the local government while refusing the oath of allegiance to England,
and putting English citizens to death for religious opinions.[942] He
proposed that the King issue a general pardon for all past offenses,
confirm real-estate titles on payment of a moderate quit-rent, grant
liberty of conscience, and organize the colony as a royal province.[943]
Detailed evidence, in reference to the illegal trading, derived from
such widely separated points as London, Jamaica, and Amsterdam, was also
laid before the Committee.[944] All these various allegations, together
with the question of the validity of the charter, and the laws made by
the General Court, were divided into “matters of law” and “matters of
state,” and submitted to the Judges and Privy Council respectively.[945]
While the decisions were pending, the agents were questioned in
reference to the complaints against the colony, and answered as “private
men,” admitting some of the statements, as to coining money and
violating the Navigation Acts, but denying that the Quakers had been put
to death on account of their religion only.[946]
Footnote 942:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. II., pp. 265 _ff._
Footnote 943:
_Ibid._, pp. 265 _ff._
Footnote 944:
_Ibid._, pp. 268 _ff._; _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, p. 102.
Footnote 945:
_Randolph Papers_, pp. 270 _ff._
Footnote 946:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. II, pp. 276 _f._
The decisions of the judges in regard to the matters submitted to them
were eminently fair. The validity of the Massachusetts charter was
upheld as originally granted, and it was further stated that the
document had created the patentees a corporation upon the place. The
latter opinion, which was of very doubtful legality, not only decided,
in so far as it went, that the transfer of the charter to New England
had been legal, but also settled in favor of the colony the question
whether or not the _Quo Warranto_ proceedings of 1635 had in reality
dissolved the corporation. In regard to the geographical limits of the
colony, however, the interpretation that Massachusetts had developed, in
order to cover her encroachments, was declared to be without foundation.
But at the last moment either the agents or the colony's counsel had
themselves retracted the absurd claims, in spite of their recent
statement that those of Gorges and Mason were “frivolous,” and the
earlier characterization of them as impertinent falsehoods. Those of the
former were now sustained in full, both as to ownership and power of
government. Mason was declared not to have received any legal rights to
govern, although his title to the land north of the Merrimac was
pronounced a valid one. As to the smaller territory in dispute, lying
between that river and Salem, the Attorney-General was of the opinion
that Mason had never taken legal possession, and that his claim,
therefore, was probably not good against the actual possession by
Massachusetts settlers for fifty years; but that the question would have
to be tried in courts upon the place.[947]
Footnote 947:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, pp. 118 _ff._; Hutchinson,
_History_, vol. I, pp. 284 _ff._; _Acts Privy Council, Colonial,
1613-80_, pp. 722 _ff._
In regard to the Massachusetts laws, the Attorney-General properly
objected to making capital such offenses “which are so by the word of
God,” it being “suspicious what are so.” He pointed in particular, also,
to such statutes as provided for the putting to death of stubborn and
rebellious children, for civil marriage, for levying fines for observing
Christmas Day, and laying penalties upon children for playing on Sunday,
as well as those against heresy, and to the lack of provision for the
oath of allegiance.[948]
Footnote 948:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, pp. 139 _ff._
All these matters were then discussed with the agents, who were told
that Massachusetts must confine herself to her legal boundaries, that
she must ask pardon for having coined money, prepare to accept a
supplementary charter, observe the Navigation Acts, receive a royal
revenue officer, and repeal such laws as were repugnant to the laws of
England. The question of the colony's assumed right to tax non-freemen
and strangers was also raised. The agents were further told that they
could not return home as yet, as their presence would be useful; and as
for their not having full powers, “his Majesty did not think of treating
with his own subjects as with foreigners.” The whole course of
Massachusetts in reference to the Royal Commissioners and her own
agents, and her assuming to deal with the home government or not as she
pleased, as if she were in reality independent and sovereign, had made
some such step necessary, unless England was willing to allow the Empire
to disintegrate. The agents were also sharply reminded that although,
twelve years previously, the colony had been told that it could not
retain the exclusive religious test for the franchise, and a law had
been passed ostensibly granting it to non-church members, yet in reality
the law was disregarded, and virtually only church members were allowed
to vote.
To this the agents made a reply so disingenuous as to be false. They
stated that they knew of no such practice, and that religious opinion
was no bar to being elected a freeman, although the records indicate
that only one man who was not a church member had been given the
franchise in the preceding eleven years, as compared with eight hundred
and seventy-five who were church members.[949] Moreover, only five years
previously, in the legal code of 1672, the law disfranchising all
persons who did not attend the Congregational church had been reënacted,
and, in fact, remained in force until the forfeiture of the charter.
Footnote 949:
The nature of the law has already been discussed. McKinley states that
from 1664 to 1680 inclusive, 20 non-church members were admitted on
certificates. Of these six were in 1664 and four in 1680. Of the
remaining ten, however, reference to the Records seems to show that
nine were church members, leaving only the one mentioned in my text.
McKinley, _Suffrage_, pp. 328 _f._; _Massachusetts Records_, vol. IV,
pt. ii, pp. 145 _f._, 408.
The agents having sent home an account of their mission, the General
Court passed a law requiring obedience to the Navigation Acts, and,
without foundation, stated in a preamble that the King's desire that the
laws be enforced had not “binn before now signified unto us,” although
the colony's failure to observe them had been one of the main complaints
of the Royal Commissioners in 1665, and in that year, the Court had
promised to obey them and had repealed laws inconsistent with them.[950]
The government immediately called this false statement to the attention
of the colony's agents, who attempted to apologize for it as an “act of
precipitation,” made just as the Court was rising,[951] which could
hardly improve the government's opinion of the honesty of the colonial
authorities, or of the attention they were giving to a very serious
situation. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to find excuse for the
statement; for not only were all the earlier proceedings a matter of
record, but of the eleven magistrates who now declared that the colony
had never had any knowledge of the matter before, nine had been members
of the earlier Court, which had received the complaints, and passed the
legislation. The Court's own communication thus seemed to prove
Randolph's contention, and the evidence from other sources, that
Massachusetts was, in reality, paying no attention to the laws of trade.
Footnote 950:
_Ibid._, pp. 193, 202, and vol. V, p. 155.
Footnote 951:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. II, p. 295.
No effort was made by the Court to meet the other charges or
requirements, and, so far from enforcing the oath of allegiance, they
passed a new ordinance that any one in the colony, stranger or resident,
who refused to take the local oath of fidelity, should be deprived of
all legal rights and protection.[952] In spite of the failure of the
Court to attempt to meet any of the other points raised by the English
government, they petitioned for an extension of the colony's northern
boundary so as to include the land lying between the Merrimac and the
Piscataqua, and again instructed their agents to buy Maine from
Gorges.[953]
Footnote 952:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 154 _f._
Footnote 953:
_Ibid._, 158, 164; _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, pp. 147 _ff._,
198.
Randolph had no difficulty in exposing the misstatements as to the
franchise and the Navigation Acts, and made further representations to
the Lords of Trade. That body was now thoroughly tired of the attitude
and tactics of Massachusetts, and decided that, so far from granting
that colony an extension of territory, the “whole matter ought to bee
considered from the Very Root.”[954] They decided that the colonists
both ignored “fair persuasions” and took no notice of orders, and that
it was evidently impossible, judging presumably from the statements that
were made by both the colonial government and its agents, to determine
whether the laws were being enforced or not. In view of the facts, some
of the Lords were of the opinion that nothing would solve the problem
except the sending out of a royal governor, who could look after
imperial interests and serve as a real channel of communication between
the colony and the home government. As this could not be done under the
charter, the question was referred to the Attorney-General whether, if
the charter were, indeed, valid, the violations of its provisions had
been sufficient to warrant its forfeiture.[955] His opinion being that
the violations were great enough to justify action, the Lords advised
that _Quo Warranto_ proceedings be instituted, and that Randolph be
appointed Collector of Customs in New England. Shortly after, he
received the appointment, in spite of the protests of the agents.[956]
For the first time there was now to be resident in the colony an
official directly responsible to the imperial, and not to the local,
government. The choice of both office and person for the introduction of
a new system of control was unfortunate, but the change in the system
itself had been forced by the colony's own rulers.
Footnote 954:
_Randolph Papers_, vols. II, p. 297, and VI, pp. 73 _f._
Footnote 955:
_Ibid._, vol. II, p. 297. In spite of the former decision, serious
doubts had been cast upon its validity, which cannot be dismissed
lightly. _Cf._ Osgood, _American Colonies_, vol. III, p. 322.
Footnote 956:
_Randolph Papers_, vols. III, pp. 3 _ff._, and VI, pp. 75 _ff._
Meanwhile, Massachusetts was doing nothing to render her position more
favorable, and the purchase of Maine, which the agents had effected
privately with Gorges for £1250, further irritated the government.[957]
Moreover, although Gorges could not alienate his rights of government,
Massachusetts proceeded to exercise them in defiance of the royal order,
of her own legal powers, and gradually, it would seem, of the desires of
the inhabitants.[958] The disaffection of the Maine people, who had been
fairly contented before, may have been caused in part by the levying of
quit-rents by Massachusetts, who, on becoming proprietor in place of
Gorges, may have taken this means of reimbursing herself for the £1250
expended; for the records show that she did exercise such rights, and
considered herself as in receipt of a regular income from quit-rents in
her new province.[959]
Footnote 957:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, p. 224; _Massachusetts Records_,
vol. V, pp. 195, 203.
Footnote 958:
It is difficult to judge public sentiment by petitions, but in 1680 a
petition signed by 136 inhabitants of York, Kittery, and Wells prayed
for release from Massachusetts. Later, what was evidently intended as
a counter-petition from the General Assembly, was signed by 16
burgesses. _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, pp. 608, 622. _Cf._
Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, p. 296.
Footnote 959:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 451, 326 _f._
To add to the bad odor of New England affairs, the Atherton Land Company
chose this particular juncture to reassert its claim to the Narragansett
country, and that question rose to the surface again, Holden and Greene,
of Rhode Island, making serious complaints before the Crown of the
encroachments of Massachusetts. Although, so far as Connecticut and the
Bay Colony were concerned, the whole question of the King's Province had
been settled a dozen years previously, they had both continued to plague
their smaller neighbor with their claims, and Rhode Island now asked
that the King appoint a “Supreme Court of Judicature” over all the New
England colonies, to settle boundary disputes.[960] Although this was
not done, Massachusetts was told to let the province alone,[961] and the
whole episode could not fail to impress the English government more
forcibly than ever with the necessity of establishing a greater degree
of local royal control. Soon after, the same suggestion of a Supreme
Court was made in the curious case of a Connecticut Indian, who had made
his way to England to complain both of fraud against himself and of the
general treatment of his race by the colonists, against whom, he
claimed, it was impossible to secure justice in the colonial
courts.[962]
Footnote 960:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, p. 279. _Cf._ the land company's
advertisement for settlers and claims of title, in _R. I. Records_,
vol. III, p. 18.
Footnote 961:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, p. 309.
Footnote 962:
_Ibid._, p. 340. There is additional reference to this case in _Conn.
Col. Records_, vol. III, pp. 281 _ff._ _Cf._ also the unjust action of
Connecticut toward the Indians the same year, when, in order to
recover £30 damage done by some drunken individual, the colony
confiscated 600 acres of Mohegan lands. _Ibid._, pp. 43 _n._, 56.
In the fall of 1678, the Massachusetts Court finally agreed to
administer the oath of allegiance, and to pass a law against treason;
but beyond that they refused to go.[963] In fact, in their answer to the
Attorney-General regarding their laws, they announced that the laws of
England did “not reach Amerrica,” and that, as the colonies were not
represented in Parliament, they were not subject to the Navigation Acts.
These, however, the Court reënacted, in order, according to their
theory, to give them validity within Massachusetts.[964]
Footnote 963:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 192, 194.
Footnote 964:
_Ibid._, pp. 200 _f._; _Randolph Papers_, vol. III, p. 60.
The doctrine of no taxation without representation is a natural
deduction from the contract theory, and has as little historical or
philosophical justification as has that of the theoretical contract
itself. It is mere commonplace to dwell on the philosophical weakness of
the doctrine, the brief expression of which was to become the rallying
cry of a continent a century later. From a practical standpoint,
however, it may be pointed out, that what may be called the historical
basis of representation in England in the seventeenth century was quite
different from the numerical basis in the United States to-day, and
that, in the former sense, the inhabitants of Massachusetts were as
fully represented for purposes of taxation as were the vast majority of
the citizens then resident in England, except for the unavoidable
effects of distance alluded to in an earlier chapter.[965] If, on the
other hand, it be claimed that the colony's government had in mind
representation in the modern American sense, then they were acting even
more tyrannically than was England, for they were themselves, without
any legal right to do so under the charter, taxing the four fifths of
the residents of Massachusetts who had no voice in the local government,
save in exactly the same vicarious way in which all the colonists were
represented in Parliament. It may also be noted that we, to-day, deny
such representation, as Massachusetts was now claiming, to our own
citizens resident in our territories and colonies. The theory of direct
representation in Parliament of England's overseas possessions was not a
new one, however, nor was it evolved in America. In the sixteenth
century, Calais had been represented for a short time,[966] while
Barbadoes had declared how “impracticable” it was that they should be
taxed when unrepresented in Parliament, five years before the cry was
raised in New England.[967] Nor was that cry raised solely in the cause
of freedom. The demand, in reality, was, not that there should be no
taxation without representation, but that the members of the
Congregational church should be confirmed in their claim to tax the
entire community without interference from England.
Footnote 965:
The difference in the two methods was then beginning to be understood
and was clearly brought out in a discussion in Carolina in 1685. _Cal.
State Pap., Col., 1685-88_, pp. 12 _f._
Footnote 966:
Maitland, _Constitutional History_, p. 239.
Footnote 967:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1669-74_, p. 475. _Cf._, also, _The Groans of
the Plantations_ (London, 1689), p. 23. “Our Masters the Projectors
think they have a great advantage over us, in regard we have none to
represent _us_ in Parliament. 'Tis true, we have not: but we hope we
may have them. It is no disparagement to the Kingdom of Portugall,
rather it is the only thing that looks great; that in that assembly of
their Estates the Deputies of the City of Goa have their place among
their other cities.”
In the letter which the King sent to the colony by its agents, who, on
account of the attention of the government being entirely absorbed with
the Popish Plot, were at last permitted to leave in June, 1679, he again
returned to the question of religion and the suffrage. He insisted upon
toleration for all except Papists, and a property qualification as the
only one necessary for the franchise.[968] He also expressed his
displeasure at the colony's secret purchase of Maine, and directed the
surrender of the title-deeds upon repayment of the price paid. The
colony was also instructed to withdraw all commissions granted for
governing New Hampshire, as the legal right of administration was vested
in the Crown, which was then considering a new establishment there.
Other agents, in place of those now returning, were ordered to be sent
within six months, duly instructed to act in the necessary regulating of
the colony's affairs.[969]
Footnote 968:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. III, pp. 50, 68.
Footnote 969:
_Ibid._, pp. 48 _ff._
Massachusetts persisted in her old tactics, and it was over three years
before she sent the required agents to England. Meanwhile, Randolph,
during his first year as customs officer, had met with no assistance,
and every possible obstruction, in the performance of his duties, so
that not a single ship had been seized for irregular trading.[970] In
the court of February, 1680, the royal instructions were considered, and
during the early part of the year a committee was appointed to revise
the laws, while the New Hampshire commissions were canceled. The colony,
however, proceeded to establish its own government in Maine, under the
presidency of Danforth, despite the King's commands and a local
disturbance at Casco.[971] In two letters to the English Secretary of
State, Bradstreet, who had succeeded Leverett as governor, defended the
purchase of the province, and virtually refused to alter the colony's
practice in the matter of the franchise, except by nominally conceding
that members of the Church of England would not be considered heterodox.
He held out no prospect of agents being sent, alleging the poverty of
the colony and the danger of the “Turkish” pirates, who had captured
several vessels.[972] In reply, the King wrote, in September, insisting
that agents be sent within three months, with sufficient powers to
settle all outstanding questions, and with such evidences of title as
the colony might claim, to the strip of land in dispute with Mason.[973]
Footnote 970:
_Ibid._, vols. III, pp. 60, 70 _ff._, 86, and VI, pp. 99 _ff._; _Cal.
State Pap., Col., 1677-80_, pp. 372 _f._; _Records of the Court of
Assistants of Massachusetts Bay_ (Boston, 1901), vol. I, pp. 149 _f._,
160, 168, 171, 176 _f._, _et passim_.
Footnote 971:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 268, 263.
In January, 1681, this letter was read at a special meeting of the
General Court, and Stoughton and Samuel Nowell were appointed agents.
Stoughton evidently had no desire to repeat his former experiences, and,
two months later, John Richards, a wealthy Boston merchant, was
appointed in his place.[974] The months went by, however, and the end of
the year found the agents still in America.
Footnote 972:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 268, 286, 278, 287 _ff._
Footnote 973:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. III, pp. 81 _ff._
Footnote 974:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 304, 307.
The patience of the English government had now become exhausted. For
twenty years, since the Restoration, that government had been
endeavoring, by every means in its power, to settle the New England
question in a way that would be satisfactory to all the colonists,
regardless of creed, and would, at the same time, permit the maintenance
of the trade-system upon which the Empire was based. Had Massachusetts
at any time been willing to give up her illicit profits, she could very
possibly have saved her charter. The violations of that instrument upon
which final action was taken were as palpable and actual in 1660 as in
1684. Had the English government merely wished to overthrow that of
Massachusetts, it could legally have done so at any time it desired; and
the prompt dispatch of a thousand English troops, at the time of Bacon's
rebellion in Virginia, showed that it was capable of vigorous and
effective action, when it was felt to be necessary. But every evidence
points to the fact that it did not wish to be bothered with the problem
in Massachusetts, or to proceed to strong measures until absolutely
forced to do so by the persistent attitude of the colony, which was
virtually seceding from the Empire.[975] The “New England disease” of
avowed independence and nullification was infecting the rest of the
Empire, and undermining England's prestige both within and without. The
colony's increasing illegal trade was threatening the destruction of the
legitimate business of colonial and home merchants alike, as well as the
Empire's international relations. Although New England's domestic trade
was of slight value to the mother-country, she occupied a strategic
position of first importance in relation to the valuable staple colonies
of the south and the West Indies, and, in case of war with France, it
was essential that England should have some means of official
communication with, and control over, her strongest colony on the
enemy's frontier in America.
Footnote 975:
_Cf._ Beer, _Old Colonial System_, vol. II, pp. 305 _f._
Over two years had now elapsed since Massachusetts had received orders
to send agents, but she had sent none. She was, nevertheless, given one
last chance. At the end of 1681, Randolph, who had been in England
strongly urging _Quo Warranto_ proceedings against the charter, arrived
in Boston bearing a letter from the King. It required that more
assistance be given to Randolph as collector, that the Navigation Acts
be enforced, and that agents be sent within three months, or “wee shall
take such further resolutions as are necessary to preserve our authority
from being neglected.”[976] The letter was much milder than the
situation really warranted, and than the wording of a suggested draft by
the Lords of Trade.[977]
Footnote 976:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. III, pp. 110 _ff._
Footnote 977:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1681-85_, pp. 129 _f._ Osgood (_American
Colonies_, vol. III, p. 328) states that this draft accompanied the
King's letter, as does Doyle (_Puritan Colonies_, vol. II, p. 216).
Hutchinson does not mention it in his account, however (_History_,
vol. I, pp. 300 _f._), and it seems to me that this document, which is
undated, is merely the preliminary draft, as its heading indicates, of
the final letter, which is in _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1681-85_, pp.
128 _ff._ The final drafts were often milder in expression than the
preliminary ones.
In February, 1682, the letter was read at a General Court, and, a month
later, Stoughton and Joseph Dudley were elected agents against
considerable opposition. Stoughton again refused to serve, and Richards
was chosen in his place.[978] Although comparatively little is known of
him, it appears that he was strongly opposed to any concessions, whereas
Dudley's more pliant nature and moderate views, influenced perhaps by
ambition to take a leading place under the altered conditions which he
evidently considered inevitable, led him to an early and willing
coöperation with the English government after the blow had fallen.[979]
Over three months more elapsed before the agents sailed, and it was
midsummer when they reached England.[980] Although they carried with
them confidential instructions, and a public defense of the colony, they
were given no powers to treat of anything that might tend to infringe
“the liberties and priviledges” granted by the charter as interpreted by
Massachusetts.[981] It was obvious, therefore, that nothing could come
of the negotiations, and that there was no recourse left to the English
government except to acknowledge the virtual independence of the colony,
or to void its charter.
Footnote 978:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 333, 346; Hutchinson, _History_,
vol. I, p. 301; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series IV, vol. VIII, p.
494.
Footnote 979:
Randolph's description of Dudley as an opposer of the “faction,” and a
man who “hath his fortune to make,” is well known. _Randolph Papers_,
vol. III, pp. 145, 171, 172. _Cf._ E. Kimball, _Public Life of Joseph
Dudley_ (Harvard Historical Studies, 1911), pp. 1-21.
Footnote 980:
Hutchinson gives the date of sailing as May 31, N. S.; _History_, vol.
I, p. 301.
Footnote 981:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 346 _ff._
In the answer that the agents made on their arrival, there was little
that was new.[982] When it was pointed out to them that the requirement
for the franchise had been that no religious distinction should be made,
and no qualification be necessary, except that the applicant be a
freeholder, of the Protestant religion, taxable at ten shillings, they
stated that there was no other distinction, and that all contrary laws
had been repealed. As was shown by both the law and the practice of the
colony, this statement was false both in fact and in implication. In
reference to the three-years' delay in complying with the request for
agents, they alleged the danger of the seas, and lack of money, which
latter was soon disproved by their clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to
bribe the Lord Treasurer with £2000, which made them the laughing-stock
of the Court.[983] Their answers in other respects were almost equally
unsatisfactory, and their lack of power having been acknowledged, they
were told that they must secure sufficient authority from the colony or
that the _Quo Warranto_ proceedings would begin.[984]
Footnote 982:
_Cal. State Pap., Col., 1681-85_, pp. 288 _ff._
Footnote 983:
Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, p. 303; _Cal. State Pap., Col.,
1681-85_, p. 373.
Footnote 984:
_Ibid._, p. 296.
At the end of March, 1683, the General Court sent them additional
instructions, but did not enlarge their powers, except that they were
authorized to “tender” Maine or anything else which “our charter will
not warrant our keeping.” They were to reiterate their statements as to
the franchise, and to consent to nothing which would alter their
“liberties and privileges in matters of religion.”[985] In the last
analysis, it became evident that the one thing the controlling element
in Massachusetts would not yield was its ecclesiastical power.
Footnote 985:
_Massachusetts Records_, vol. V, pp. 390 _f._
The King hesitated no longer. Randolph, however, who carried the notice
of the beginning of _Quo Warranto_ proceedings to Boston, was
authorized, at his own suggestion, to offer to Massachusetts the promise
of a full protection of private interests and property rights, and a
liberal regulation of the charter, if she would voluntarily submit, in
which case the proceedings would be abandoned.[986] The wholesale
“regulation” of charters, as then being conducted by the Stuarts in
England, held out little hope of the colony's securing any such
liberties in a new charter as she possessed in the old; but, on the
other hand, not to yield was to lose all, and, in view of her past
record, she could expect little sympathy from any quarter.
Footnote 986:
_Randolph Papers_, vol. III, pp. 242, 246 _f._
The magistrates were in favor of accepting the offer, but the deputies
refused, and the Court continued deadlocked.[987] It is impossible to
determine what the public opinion was as to the situation. In the annual
election, in spite of a determined effort to defeat him, Bradstreet, who
was a moderate, secured 690 votes, against 631 for Danforth, who
belonged to the radicals.[988] Dudley, indeed, failed of reëlection, but
so, also, did Richards; and the general result seems to represent only a
slight preponderance for the party of no compromise. It must be
remembered also that, owing to the fact that only one fifth of the men
of the colony possessed the franchise, and that they were all church
members, the vote cannot be taken to represent the sentiment of the
colony as a whole, much of the discontented element necessarily not
showing in the returns. Under the circumstances, it is significant that
over one half of the church members seem to have voted for Bradstreet
and compromise, for it is fair to presume that they would include a much
larger proportion of irreconcilables than the unenfranchised body of
non-church members, who would have nothing to gain by fighting England
to a finish, in order to preserve a church of which they were not
members, and a theocratical government which excluded them from power.
Their very legitimate grievance may well have been, indeed, that that
same government, in its effort to preserve privileges for itself which
meant nothing, or worse than nothing, to four fifths of the inhabitants
of the colony, had sacrificed those other privileges which did mean
something to them.
Footnote 987:
_Ibid._, pp. 271 _ff._
Footnote 988:
Hutchinson, _History_, vol. I, p. 306. Doyle (_Puritan Colonies_, vol.
II, p. 222) makes a slip in this connection. He states that only one
freeman in ten cast his vote. As a matter of fact there were not over
1500 freemen (McKinley, _Suffrage_, pp. 334 _f._), so that the 1321
votes cast would seem to indicate great interest in the election,
instead of the lack of it which Doyle suggests.
We need not enter into the legal details of the course by which the
charter was canceled. The _Quo Warranto_ proceedings having proved
abortive, a writ of _Scire Facias_ was entered, and, on October 13,
1684, Massachusetts ceased to be a chartered colony, and found herself
without a single one of the rights to which she had clung so
tenaciously.[989]
Footnote 989:
For the legal proceedings, _vide_ Winsor, _Memorial History_, vol. I,
pp. 378 _f._
There seems to be no question of the technical legality of the
proceedings; but, passing beyond those, there is nothing to regret in
the course pursued by the Crown. The interpretation of the charter by
the church party not only was inconsistent with the terms of that
instrument itself, so that any government built upon it was illegal and
constantly open to attack, but was inconsistent, also, with the
development of liberty itself in its widest sense. If it were, indeed,
true that the charter formed an unalterable constitution, under which
company members alone were able to become enfranchised citizens, then
the power to govern the state could legally have been confined forever
to the two or three dozen “freemen” who alone were called for by the
charter. The pressure had been so great that the number of freemen had
been greatly enlarged, it is true; but, according to the leaders'
interpretation, this had been merely a boon granted out of good-will,
and no additional freemen need ever be admitted. Their number might
again be allowed to shrink, by death or disfranchisement, to the few
required to fill the offices, who would, according to this theory, have
the sole power of all government, including life and death, over the
rest of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants. Although this, of course,
was unlikely, nevertheless, those in control had shown definitely, when
in order to maintain the theocracy they had sacrificed the whole
political structure, rather than abandon their position with reference
to extending the franchise, that nothing but a power so overwhelming as
to be unopposable would have forced them peaceably to do so.
When we speak of liberty in connection with this early struggle with the
home country, we should realize clearly that the party opposed to
England fought to the end to perpetuate religious intolerance, and the
intrenched privilege of a minority to tax an unenfranchised majority
four times as numerous, and for the right to concentrate all political
power in the hands of one religious sect. The clergy, who had wielded an
extraordinary influence in the counsels of this governing minority, had,
in many instances, been men of marked ability and fanatically devoted to
the truth as they saw it. But as leaders, in the highest sense, they had
very largely failed. From the beginning, they had striven to banish from
the colony all ideas not in harmony with their own, and had thus lowered
and impoverished the intellectual life of the community. On nearly every
occasion, they had led in fanning the flames of intolerance and
persecution. Over and over, they had helped to brutalize the natures of
the citizens by calling for the blood of victims to whom the community
would otherwise have shown mercy. One such example was yet to come,
before the colony, disillusioned, was to reject their leadership finally
in civil affairs.
But the present situation must have been of marked effect, when the
people as a whole, non-church members as well as church members, found
that, in the effort to perpetuate the theocracy, every civil right and
safeguard, which they had considered they possessed under the charter,
had been allowed to be taken from them. It is impossible, as we have
said, accurately to gauge the public sentiment of the time from any data
now available.[990] The people, unquestionably, could be trusted to
resist any real efforts from across the water to restrict such liberties
as they were prepared to enjoy. We seem too often to take it for
granted, not only that liberty is something which all men are entitled
to, but that they are at all times ready for it. The story of their
gradually being moulded, so that they are, in an ever-increasing degree,
fit for it, would seem quite as important as that of their struggle to
obtain it.
Footnote 990:
The report of a meeting in Boston, from which non-freemen were
excluded, a vote being then taken after an exhortation from Mather,
cannot be considered as evidence of the sentiment of the community at
large. The very fact that the non-freemen were not allowed to be
present is in itself significant.
It would have been a great misfortune had the Massachusetts of 1684 been
allowed to go her own way, and to strengthen and perpetuate the combined
ecclesiastical and political system for which her leaders had fought. As
it is, the influence remains too strong of her fundamental doctrine
that, in matters in any degree tinged with an ethical value, a minority
has the “divine right” to force its will upon the majority, and to use
the arm of the civil power to enforce its moral views upon the nation.
In the town-meeting and the public school, the founders of
Massachusetts, lay and clerical, had made two contributions of untold
influence to American political life; but it was well for personal
liberty and intellectual freedom, when the real struggle came and
independence was achieved, that it was for a people who had had some
training in religious toleration and political equality, regardless of
class or creed. And, curiously enough, so tangled is the skein of
history, the laws which voiced and fostered those beliefs were due to
one of the most shameless of English kings, and not to the fathers of
the New England commonwealth.