Book: The Beginnings of New England

J >> John Fiske >> The Beginnings of New England




By this time other settlements were dotted about the coast. There were
a few scattered cottages or cabins at Nantasket and at the mouth of the
Piscataqua, while Samuel Maverick had fortified himself on Noddle's
Island, and William Blackstone already lived upon the Shawmut peninsula,
since called Boston. These two gentlemen were no friends to the
Puritans; they were churchmen and representatives of Sir Ferdinando
Gorges.

The case was very different with another of these earliest settlements,
which deserves especial mention as coming directly in the line of
causation which led to the founding of Massachusetts by Puritans. For
some years past the Dorchester adventurers--a small company of merchants
in the shire town of Dorset--had been sending vessels to catch fish off
the New England coast. In 1623 these men conceived the idea of planting
a small village as a fishing station, and setting up a church and
preacher therein, for the spiritual solace of the fishermen and sailors.
In pursuance of this scheme a small party occupied Cape Ann, where after
two years they got into trouble with the men of Plymouth. Several grants
and assignments had made it doubtful where the ownership lay, and
although this place was not near their own town, the men of Plymouth
claimed it. The dispute was amicably arranged by Roger Conant, an
independent settler who had withdrawn from Plymouth because he did not
fully sympathize with the Separatist views of the people there. The
next step was for the Dorchester adventurers to appoint Conant as their
manager, and the next was for them to abandon their enterprise, dissolve
their partnership, and leave the remnant of the little colony to shift
for itself. The settlers retained their tools and cattle, and Conant
found for them a new and safer situation at Naumkeag, on the site of the
present Salem. So far little seemed to have been accomplished; one more
seemed added to the list of failures.

But the excellent John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church in
Dorchester, had meditated carefully about these things. He saw that
many attempts at colonization had failed because they made use of unfit
instruments, "a multitude of rude ungovernable persons, the very scum of
the land." So Virginia had failed in its first years, and only succeeded
when settled by worthy and industrious people under a strong government.
The example of Plymouth, as contrasted with Wessagusset, taught a
similar lesson. We desire, said White, "to raise a bulwark against the
kingdom of Antichrist." Learn wisdom, my countrymen, from the ruin which
has befallen the Protestants at Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn
"to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did
till it overtook them." The Puritan party in England was numerous and
powerful, but the day of strife was not far off and none might foretell
its issue. Clearly it was well to establish a strong and secure retreat
in the New World, in case of disaster in the Old. What had been done at
Plymouth by a few men of humble means might be done on a much greater
scale by an association of leading Puritans, including men of wealth and
wide social influence. Such arguments were urged in timely pamphlets, of
one of which White is supposed to have been the author. The matter was
discussed in London, and inquiry was made whether fit men could be found
"to engage their persons in the voyage." "It fell out that among others
they lighted at last on Master Endicott, a man well known to divers
persons of good note, who manifested much willingness to accept of the
offer as soon as it was tendered." All were thereby much encouraged, the
schemes of White took definite shape, and on the 19th of March, 1628, a
tract of land was obtained from the Council for New England, consisting
of all the territory included between three miles north of the Merrimack
and three miles south of the Charles in one direction, and the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans in the other. [Sidenote: John White and his noble
scheme]

This liberal grant was made at a time when people still supposed the
Pacific coast to be not far west of Henry Hudson's river. The territory
was granted to an association of six gentlemen, only one of whom--John
Endicott--figures conspicuously in the history of New England. The
grant was made in the usual reckless style, and conflicted with various
patents which had been issued before. In 1622 Gorges and John Mason
had obtained a grant of all the land between the rivers Kennebec
and Merrimack, and the new grant encroached somewhat upon this. The
difficulty seems to have been temporarily adjusted by some sort of
compromise which restricted the new grant to the Merrimack, for in 1629
we find Mason's title confirmed to the region between that river and the
Piscataqua, while later on Gorges appears as proprietor of the territory
between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec. A more serious difficulty was
the claim of Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando. That young man had in
1623 obtained a grant of some 300 square miles in Massachusetts, and had
gone to look after it, but had soon returned discouraged to England
and shortly afterward died. But his claim devolved upon his surviving
brother, John Gorges, and Sir Ferdinando, in consenting to the grant to
Endicott and his friends, expressly reserved the rights of his sons. No
such reservation, however, was mentioned in the Massachusetts charter,
and the colonists never paid the slightest heed to it. In these
conflicting claims were sown seeds of trouble which bore fruit for more
than half a century. In such cases actual possession is apt to make nine
points in the law, and accordingly Endicott was sent over, as soon as
possible, with sixty persons, to reinforce the party at Naumkeag and
supersede Conant as its leader. On Endicott's arrival in September,
1628, the settlers were at first inclined to dispute his authority, but
they were soon conciliated, and in token of this amicable adjustment the
place was called by the Hebrew name of Salem, or "peace." [Sidenote:
Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble] [Sidenote: John Endicot and the
founding of Salem]

Meanwhile Mr. White and the partners in England were pushing things
vigorously. Their scheme took a wider scope. They were determined to
establish something more than a trading company. From Charles I. it
was sometimes easy to get promises because he felt himself under no
obligation to keep them. In March, 1629, a royal charter was granted,
creating a corporation, under the legal style of the Governor and
Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The affairs of this
corporate body were to be managed by a governor, deputy-governor, and a
council of eighteen assistants, to be elected annually by the company.
They were empowered to make such laws as they liked for their settlers,
provided they did not contravene the laws of England,--a proviso
susceptible of much latitude of interpretation. The place where the
company was to hold its meetings was not mentioned in the charter. The
law-officers of the crown at first tried to insert a condition that
the government must reside in England, but the grantees with skilful
argument succeeding in preventing this. Nothing was said in the charter
about religious liberty, for a twofold reason: the crown would not have
granted it, and it was not what the grantees wanted; such a provision
would have been liable to hamper them seriously in carrying out their
scheme. They preferred to keep in their own hands the question as to how
much or how little religious liberty they should claim or allow. Six
small ships were presently fitted out, and upon them were embarked 300
men, 80 women, and 26 children, with 140 head of cattle, 40 goats, and
abundance of arms, ammunition, and tools. The principal leader of this
company was Francis Higginson, of St. John's College, Cambridge, rector
of a church in Leicestershire, who had been deprived of his living for
non-conformity. With him were associated two other ministers, also
graduates of Cambridge. All three were members of the council. By the
arrival of this company at Salem, Endicott now became governor of a
colony larger than any yet started in New England,--larger than Plymouth
after its growth of nearly nine years. [Sidenote: The Company of
Massachusetts Bay]

The time was at length ripe for that great Puritan exodus of which the
voyage of the Mayflower had been the premonitory symptom. The grand
crisis for the Puritans had come, the moment when decisive action could
no longer be deferred. It was not by accident that the rapid development
of John White's enterprise into the Company of Massachusetts Bay
coincided exactly with the first four years of the reign of Charles I.
They were years well fitted to bring such a scheme to quick maturity.
The character of Charles was such as to exacerbate the evils of his
father's reign. James could leave some things alone in the comfortable
hope that all would by and by come out right, but Charles was not
satisfied without meddling everywhere. Both father and son cherished
some good intentions; both were sincere believers in their narrow theory
of kingcraft. For wrong-headed obstinacy, utter want of tact, and
bottomless perfidy, there was little to choose between them. The
humorous epitaph of the grandson "whose word no man relies on" might
have served for them all. But of this unhappy family Charles I. was
eminently the dreamer. He lived in a world of his own, and was slow
in rendering thought into action; and this made him rely upon the
quick-witted but unwise and unscrupulous Buckingham, [5] who was silly
enough to make feeble attempts at unpopular warfare without consulting
Parliament. During each of Charles's first four years there was an
angry session of Parliament, in which, through the unwillingness of the
popular leaders to resort to violence, the king's policy seemed able
to hold its ground. Despite all protest the king persisted in levying
strange taxes and was to some extent able to collect them. Men who
refused to pay enforced loans were thrown into jail and the writ of
_habeas corpus_ was denied them. Meanwhile the treatment of Puritans
became more and more vexatious. It was clear enough that Charles meant
to become an absolute monarch, like Louis XIII., but Parliament began
by throwing all the blame upon the unpopular minister and seeking to
impeach him.

On the 5th of June, 1628, the House of Commons presented the most
extraordinary spectacle, perhaps in all its history. The famous Petition
of Right had been Passed by both Houses, and the royal answer had just
been received. Its tone was that of gracious assent, but it omitted the
necessary legal formalities, and the Commons well knew what this meant.
They were to be tricked with sweet words, and the petition was not to
acquire the force of a statute. How was it possible to deal with such a
slippery creature? There was but one way of saving the dignity of the
throne without sacrificing the liberty of the people, and that was to
hold the king's ministers responsible to Parliament, in anticipation
of modern methods. It was accordingly proposed to impeach the Duke
of Buckingham before the House of Lords. The Speaker now "brought an
imperious message from the king, ... warning them ... that he would not
tolerate any aspersion upon his ministers." Nothing daunted by this,
Sir John Eliot arose to lead the debate, when the Speaker called him to
order in view of the king's message. "Amid a deadly stillness" Eliot
sat down and burst into tears. For a moment the House was overcome
with despair. Deprived of all constitutional methods of redress, they
suddenly saw yawning before them the direful alternative--slavery or
civil war. Since the day of Bosworth a hundred and fifty years had
passed without fighting worthy of mention on English soil, such an era
of peace as had hardly ever before been seen on the earth; now half the
nation was to be pitted against the other half, families were to be
divided against themselves, as in the dreadful days of the Roses, and
with what consequences no one could foresee. "Let us sit in silence,"
quoth Sir Dudley Digges, "we are miserable, we know not what to do!"
Nay, cried Sir Nathaniel Rich, "we _must_ now speak, or forever hold our
peace." Then did grim Mr. Prynne and Sir Edward Coke mingle their words
with sobs, while there were few dry eyes in the House. Presently they
found their voices, and used them in a way that wrung from the startled
king his formal assent to the Petition of Right. [Sidenote: Remarkable
scene in the House of Commons]

There is something strangely pathetic and historically significant [6]
in the emotion of these stern, fearless men. The scene was no less
striking on the 2d of the following March, when, "amid the cries and
entreaties of the Speaker held down in his chair by force," while the
Usher of the Black Rod was knocking loudly at the bolted door, and the
tramp of the king's soldiers was heard in the courtyard, Eliot's clear
voice rang out the defiance that whoever advised the levy of tonnage and
poundage without a grant from Parliament, or whoever voluntarily paid
those duties, was to be counted an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer
of its liberties. As shouts of "Aye, aye," resounded on every side, "the
doors were flung open, and the members poured forth in a throng." The
noble Eliot went to end his days in the Tower, and for eleven years no
Parliament sat again in England. [7]

It was in one and the same week that Charles I. thus began his
experiment of governing without a Parliament, and that he granted a
charter to the Company of Massachusetts Bay. He was very far, as we
shall see, from realizing the import of what he was doing. To the
Puritan leaders it was evident that a great struggle was at hand.
Affairs at home might well seem desperate, and the news from abroad was
not encouraging. It was only four months since the surrender of Rochelle
had ended the existence of the Huguenots as an armed political party.
They had now sunk into the melancholy condition of a tolerated sect
which may at any moment cease to be tolerated. In Germany the
terrible Thirty Years War had just reached the darkest moment for
the Protestants. Fifteen months were yet to pass before the immortal
Gustavus was to cross the Baltic and give to the sorely harassed cause
of liberty a fresh lease of life. The news of the cruel Edict of
Restitution in this same fateful month of March, 1629, could not but
give the English Puritans great concern. Everywhere in Europe the
champions of human freedom seemed worsted. They might well think that
never had the prospect looked so dismal; and never before, as never
since, did the venture of a wholesale migration to the New World so
strongly recommend itself as the only feasible escape from a situation
that was fast becoming intolerable. Such were the anxious thoughts of
the leading Puritans in the spring of 1629, and in face of so grave a
problem different minds came naturally to different conclusions. Some
were for staying in England to fight it out to the bitter end; some were
for crossing the ocean to create a new England in the wilderness. Either
task was arduous enough, and not to be achieved without steadfast and
sober heroism. [Sidenote: Desperate nature of the crisis]

On the 26th of August twelve gentlemen, among the most eminent in the
Puritan party, held a meeting at Cambridge, and resolved to lead a
migration to New England, provided the charter of the Massachusetts Bay
Company and the government established under it could be transferred to
that country. On examination it appeared that no legal obstacle stood in
the way. Accordingly such of the old officers as did not wish to take
part in the emigration resigned their places, which were forthwith
filled by these new leaders. For governor the choice fell upon John
Winthrop, a wealthy gentleman from Groton in Suffolk, who was henceforth
to occupy the foremost place among the founders of New England. Winthrop
was at this time forty-one years of age, having been born in the
memorable year of the Armada. He was a man of remarkable strength and
beauty of character, grave and modest, intelligent and scholarlike,
intensely religious and endowed with a moral sensitiveness that was
almost morbid, yet liberal withal in his opinions and charitable in
disposition. When his life shall have been adequately written, as it
never has been, he will be recognized as one of the very noblest figures
in American history. From early youth he had that same power of
winning confidence and commanding respect for which Washington was so
remarkable; and when he was selected as the Moses of the great Puritan
exodus, there was a wide-spread feeling that extraordinary results were
likely to come of such an enterprise.

In marked contrast to Winthrop stands the figure of the man associated
with him as deputy-governor. Thomas Dudley came of an ancient family,
the history of which, alike in the old and in the new England, has not
been altogether creditable. He represented the elder branch of that
Norman family, to the younger branch of which belonged the unfortunate
husband of Lady Jane Grey and the unscrupulous husband of Amy Robsart.
There was, however, very little likeness to Elizabeth's gay lover
in grim Thomas Dudley. His Puritanism was bleak and stern, and for
Christian charity he was not eminent. He had a foible for making verses,
and at his death there was found in his pocket a poem of his, containing
a quatrain wherein the intolerance of that age is neatly summed up:--

"Let men of God in courts and churches watch O'er such as do a
Toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison
all with heresy and vice."

Such was the spirit of most of the Puritans of that day, but in the
manifestation of it there were great differences, and here was the
strong contrast between Dudley and Winthrop,--a contrast which shows
itself in their portraits. In that of Dudley we see the typical
narrow-minded, strait-laced Calvinist for whom it is so much easier to
entertain respect than affection. In that of Winthrop we see a face
expressive of what was finest in the age of Elizabeth,--the face of a
spiritual brother of Raleigh and Bacon.

The accession of two men so important as Winthrop and Dudley served to
bring matters speedily to a crisis. Their embarkation in April, 1630,
was the signal for a general movement on the part of the English
Puritans. Before Christmas of that year seventeen ships had come to
New England, bringing more than 1000 passengers. This huge wave of
immigration quite overwhelmed and bore away the few links of possession
by which Gorges had thus far kept his hold upon the country. In January,
1629, John Gorges had tried to assert the validity of his late brother's
claim by executing conveyances covering portions of it. One of these
was to John Oldham, a man who had been harshly treated at Plymouth, and
might be supposed very ready to defend his rights against settlers
of the Puritan company. Gorges further maintained that he retained
possession of the country through the presence of his brother's tenants,
Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and others on the shores of the bay. In
June, 1629, Endicott had responded by sending forward some fifty persons
from Salem to begin the settlement of Charlestown. Shortly before
Winthrop's departure from England, Gorges had sent that singular
personage Sir Christopher Gardiner to look after his interests in the
New World, and there he was presently found established near the mouth
of the Neponset river, in company with "a comly yonge woman whom he
caled his cousin." But these few claimants were now at once lost in the
human tide which poured over Charlestown, Boston, Newtown, Watertown,
Roxbury, and Dorchester. The settlement at Merrymount was again
dispersed, and Morton sent back to London; Gardiner fled to the coast
of Maine and thence sailed for England in 1632. The Puritans had indeed
occupied the country in force.

Here on the very threshold we are confronted by facts which show that
not a mere colonial plantation, but a definite and organized state was
in process of formation. The emigration was not like that of Jamestown
or of Plymouth. It sufficed at once to make the beginnings of half a
dozen towns, and the question as to self-government immediately sprang
up. Early in 1631 a tax of L60 was assessed upon the settlements, in
order to pay for building frontier fortifications at Newtown. This
incident was in itself of small dimensions, as incidents in newly
founded states are apt to be. But in its historic import it may serve
to connect the England of John Hampden with the New England of Samuel
Adams. The inhabitants of Watertown at first declined to pay this tax,
which was assessed by the Board of Assistants, on the ground that
English freemen cannot rightfully be taxed save by their own consent.
This protest led to a change in the constitution of the infant colony,
and here, at once, we are introduced to the beginnings of American
constitutional history. At first it was thought that public business
could be transacted by a primary assembly of all the freemen in the
colony meeting four times in the year; but the number of freemen
increased so fast that this was almost at once (in October, 1630) found
to be impracticable. The right of choosing the governor and making the
laws was then left to the Board of Assistants; and in May, 1631, it was
further decided that the assistants need not be chosen afresh every
year, but might keep their seats during good behaviour or until ousted
by special vote of the freemen. If the settlers of Massachusetts had
been ancient Greeks or Romans, this would have been about as far as they
could go in the matter; the choice would have been between a primary
assembly and an assembly of notables. It is curious to see Englishmen
passing from one of these alternatives to the other. But it was only for
a moment. The protest of the Watertown men came in time to check these
proceedings, which began to have a decidedly oligarchical look. To
settle the immediate question of the tax, two deputies were sent from
each settlement to advise with the Board of Assistants; while the power
of choosing each year the governor and assistants was resumed by the
freemen. Two years later, in order to reserve to the freemen the power
of making laws without interfering too much with the ordinary business
of life, the colonists fell back upon the old English rural plan of
electing deputies or representatives to a general court. [Sidenote: The
question as to self-government raised at Watertown]

At first the deputies sat in the same chamber with the assistants, but
at length in 1644 they were formed into a second chamber with increased
powers, and the way in which this important constitutional change came
about is worth remembering, as an illustration of the smallness of the
state which so soon was to play a great part in history. As Winthrop
puts it, "there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion."
To a certain Captain Keayne, of Boston, a rich man deemed to be hard and
overbearing toward the poor, there was brought a stray pig, whereof he
gave due public notice through the town-crier, yet none came to claim it
till after he had killed a pig of his own which he kept in the same stye
with the stray. A year having passed by, a poor woman named Sherman came
to see the stray and to decide if it were one that she had lost. Not
recognizing it as hers, she forthwith laid claim to the slaughtered pig.
The case was brought before the elders of the church of Boston, who
decided that the woman was mistaken. Mrs. Sherman then accused the
captain of theft, and brought the case before a jury, which exonerated
the defendant with L3 costs. The captain then sued Mrs. Sherman for
defamation of character and got a verdict for L40 damages, a round
sum indeed to assess upon the poor woman. But long before this it had
appeared that she had many partisans and supporters; it had become a
political question, in which the popular protest against aristocracy was
implicated. Not yet browbeaten, the warlike Mrs. Sherman appealed to the
General Court. The length of the hearing shows the importance which
was attached to the case. After seven days of discussion, the vote
was taken. Seven assistants and eight deputies approved the former
decisions, two assistants and fifteen deputies condemned them, while
seven deputies refrained from voting. In other words, Captain Keayne has
a decided majority among the more aristocratic assistants, while Mrs.
Sherman seemed to prevail with the more democratic deputies. Regarding
the result as the vote of a single body, the woman had a plurality of
two; regarding it as the vote of a double body, her cause had prevailed
in the lower house, but was lost by the veto of the upper. No decision
was reached at the time, but after a year of discussion the legislature
was permanently separated into two houses, each with a veto power upon
the other; and this was felt to be a victory for the assistants. As for
the ecclesiastical polity of the new colony, it had begun to take
shape immediately upon the arrival of Endicott's party at Salem. The
clergymen, Samuel Skelton and Francis Higginson, consecrated each
other, and a church covenant and confession of faith were drawn up by
Higginson. Thirty persons joining in this covenant constituted the first
church in the colony; and several brethren appointed by this church
proceeded formally to ordain the two ministers by the laying on of
hands. In such simple wise was the first Congregational church in
Massachusetts founded. The simple fact of removal from England converted
all the Puritan emigrants into Separatists, as Robinson had already
predicted. Some, however, were not yet quite prepared for so radical a
measure. These proceedings gave umbrage to two of the Salem party, who
attempted forthwith to set up a separate church in conformity with
episcopal models. A very important question was thus raised at once, but
it was not allowed to disturb the peace of the colony. Endicott was a
man of summary methods. He immediately sent the two malcontents back to
England; and thus the colonial church not only seceded from the national
establishment, but the principle was virtually laid down that the
Episcopal form of worship would not be tolerated in the colony. For the
present such a step was to be regarded as a measure of self-defence on
the part of the colonists. Episcopacy to them meant actual and practical
tyranny--the very thing they had crossed the ocean expressly to get
away from--and it was hardly to be supposed that they would encourage
the growth of it in their new home. One or two surpliced priests,
conducting worship in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer, might
in themselves be excellent members of society; but behind the surpliced
priest the colonist saw the intolerance of Laud and the despotism of
the Court of High Commission. In 1631 a still more searching measure
of self-protection was adopted. It was decided that "no man shall be
admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of
some of the churches within the limits of the same." Into the merits of
this measure as illustrating the theocratic ideal of society which the
Puritans sought to realize in New England, we shall inquire hereafter.
At present we must note that, as a measure of self-protection, this
decree was intended to keep out of the new community all emissaries of
Strafford and Laud, as well as such persons as Morton and Gardiner and
other agents of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.

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