Chapter 23

PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH

[1612]

The Pilgrims who settled New England were Independents, peculiar in their ecclesiastical tenet that the single congregation of godly persons, however few or humble, regularly organized for Christ's work, is of right, by divine appointment, the highest ecclesiastical authority on earth. A church of this order existed in London by 1568; another, possibly more than one, the "Brownists," by 1580. Barrowe and Greenwood began a third in 1588, which, its founders being executed, went exiled to Amsterdam in 1593, subsequently uniting with the Presbyterians there. These churches, though independent, were not strictly democratic, like those next to be named.

Soon after 1600 John Smyth gathered a church at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, England, which persecution likewise drove to Amsterdam. Here Smyth seceded and founded a Baptist church, which, returning to London in 1611 or 1612, became the first church of its kind known to have existed in England. From Smyth's church at Gainsborough sprang one at Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, and this, too, exiled like its parent, crossed to Holland, finding home in Leyden in 1607 and 1608. Of this church John Robinson was pastor, and from its bosom came the Plymouth Colony to New England.

[1620]

This little band set out for America with a patent from the Virginia Company, according to James I.'s charter of 1606, but actually began here as labor-share holders in a sub-corporation of a new organization, the Plymouth Company, chartered in 1620. Launching in the Mayflower from Plymouth, where they had paused in their way hither from Holland, they arrived off the coast of Cape Cod in 1620, December 11th Old Style, December 21st New Style, and began a settlement, to which they gave the name Plymouth. Before landing they had formed themselves into a political body, a government of the people with "just and equal laws."

They based their civil authority upon this Mayflower compact, practically ignoring England. Carver was the first governor, Bradford the second. The colony was named Plymouth in memory of hospitalities which its members had received at Plymouth, England, the name having no connection with the "Plymouth" of the Plymouth Company. The members of the Plymouth Company had none but a mercantile interest in the adventure, merely fitting out the colonists and bearing the expense of the passage for all but the first. On the other hand, the stock was not all retained in England. Shares were allotted to the Pilgrims as well, one to each emigrant with or without means, and one for every 10 pounds invested.

Plymouth early made a treaty with Massasoit, the chief of the neighboring Wampanoags, the peace lasting with benign effects to both parties for fifty years, or till the outbreak of Philip's War, discussed in a later chapter. The first winter in Plymouth was one of dreadful hardships, of famine, disease and death, which spring relieved but in part. Yet Plymouth grew, surely if slowly. It acquired rights on the Kennebec, on the Connecticut, at Cape Ann. It was at first a pure democracy, its laws all made in mass-meetings of the entire body of male inhabitants; nor was it till 1639 that increase of numbers forced resort to the principle of representation. In 1643 the population was about three thousand.

[1626-1630]

Between 1620 and 1630 there were isolated settlers along the whole New England coast. White, a minister from Dorchester, England, founded a colony near Cape Ann, which removed to Salem in 1626. The Plymouth Company granted them a patent, which Endicott, in charge of more emigrants, brought over in 1628. It gave title to all land between the Merrimac and Charles Rivers, also to all within three miles beyond each. These men formed the nucleus of the colony to which in 1629 Charles I. granted a royal charter, styling the proprietors "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." Boston was made the capital. Soon more emigrants came, and Charlestown was settled.

It was a momentous step when the government of this colony was transferred to New England. Winthrop was chosen Governor, others of the Company elected to minor offices, and they, with no fewer than one thousand new colonists, sailed for this side the Atlantic. In Massachusetts, therefore, a trading company did not beget, as elsewhere, but literally became a political state. Many of the Massachusetts men, in contrast with those of Plymouth, had enjoyed high consideration at home. Yet democracy prevailed here too. The Governor and his eighteen assistants were chosen by the freemen, and were both legislature and court. As population increased and scattered in towns, these chose deputies to represent them, and a lower house element was added to the General Court, though assistants and deputies did not sit separately till 1644.

[1631]

At this time Massachusetts had a population of about 15,000. To all New England 21,200 emigrants came between 1628 and 1643, the total white population at the latter date being about 24,000.

So early as 1631 this colony decreed to admit none as freemen who were not also church members. Thus Church and State were made one, the government a theocracy. The Massachusetts settlers, though in many things less extreme than the Pilgrims, were decided Puritans, sincere but formal, precise, narrow, and very superstitious. They did not, however, on coming hither, affect or wish to separate from the Church of England, earnestly as they deprecated retaining the sign of the cross in baptism, the surplice, marriage with ring, and kneeling at communion. Yet soon they in effect became Separatists as well as Puritans, building independent churches, like those at Plymouth, and repudiating episcopacy utterly.

[1635]

Much as these Puritans professed and tried to exalt reason in certain matters, in civil and religious affairs, where they took the Old Testament as affording literal and minute directions for all sorts of human actions for all time, they could allow little liberty of opinion. This was apparent when into this theocratic state came Roger Williams, afterward the founder of Rhode Island. Born in London, England, about 1607, of good family, he was placed by his patron, Coke, at the Charter House School. From there he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1631 he arrived in Boston. Somewhat finical in his political, moral, and religious ideas, he found it impossible, having separated from the Church of England, in which he had been reared, to harmonize here with those still favoring that communion. At Salem he was invited by a little company of Separatists to become their teacher. His views soon offended the authorities. He declared that the king's patent could confer no title to lands possessed by Indians. He denied the right of magistrates to punish heresy, or to enforce attendance upon religious services. "The magistrate's power," he said, "extends only to the bodies, goods, and outward state of men."

Alarmed at his bold utterances, the General Court of Massachusetts, September 2, 1635, decreed his banishment for "new and dangerous opinions, against the authority of magistrates." His fate was not, therefore, merely because of his religious views. The exile sought refuge at Seekonk, but this being within the Plymouth jurisdiction, he, on Governor Winslow's admonition, moved farther into the wilderness, settling at Providence. He purchased land of the natives, and, joined by others, set up a pure democracy, instituting as a part thereof the "lively experiment," for which ages had waited, of perfect liberty in matters of religious belief. Not for the first time in history, but more clearly, earnestly, and consistently than it had ever been done before, he maintained for every man the right of absolute freedom in matters of conscience, for all forms of faith equal toleration.

[1638]

Some friends of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson established a colony on Aquidneck, the Indian name for Rhode Island. Williams went to England and secured from Parliament a patent which united that plantation with his in one government. Charles II.'s charter of 1663 added Warwick to the first two settlements, renewing and enlarging the patent, and giving freest scope for government according to Williams' ideas. Mrs. Hutchinson, a woman of rare intellect and eloquence, who maintained the right of private judgment and pretended to an infallible inner light of revelation, was, like Williams, a victim of Puritan intolerance. She and her followers were banished, and some of them, returning, put to death, 1659-60. She came to Providence, then went to Aquidneck, where her husband died in 1642. She next settled near Hurl Gate, within the Dutch limits, where herself and almost her entire family were butchered by the Indians in 1643.

In 1633 the Dutch erected a fort where Hartford now is, but some English emigrants from Plymouth Colony, in defiance of a threatened cannonade, sailed past and built a trading-house at Windsor, where, joined by colonists, from about Boston, they soon effected a settlement. Wethersfield and Hartford were presently founded. In 1630 the Plymouth Company had granted Connecticut to the Earl of Warwick, who turned it over to Lord Brooke, Lord Say-and-Seal, and others. Winthrop the Younger, son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, commissioned by these last, built a fort at Saybrook. Till the expiration of his commission the towns immediately upon the Connecticut were under the government of Massachusetts. Their population in 1643 was three thousand. A convention of these towns met at Hartford, January 14, 1639, and formed a constitution, like that of Massachusetts Bay, thoroughly republican in nature. Connecticut breathed a freer spirit than either Massachusetts or New Haven, being in this respect the peer of Plymouth. At Hartford Roger Williams was always welcome.

Meantime, in 1638, having touched at Boston the year before, Davenport, Eaton, and others from London began planting at New Haven. The Bible was adopted as their guide in both civil and religious affairs, and a government organized in which only church members could vote or be elected to the General Court. The colony flourished, branching out into several towns. In 1643 it numbered twenty five hundred inhabitants.

As early as 1622, Mason and Gorges were granted land partly in what is now Maine, partly in what is now New Hampshire; and in 1623 Dover and Portsmouth were settled. Wheelwright, a brother-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson, with others, purchased of the natives the southeast part of New Hampshire, between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, and in 1638 Exeter was founded. In the same year with Wheelwright's purchase, Mason obtained from the council of the Plymouth Company a patent to this same section, and the tract was called New Hampshire. These conflicting claims paved the way for future controversies and lawsuits. The settlers here were not Puritans, nor were they obliged to be church members in order to be deputies or freemen.

The settlement of Maine goes back to 1626, when the Plymouth Company granted lands there both to Alexander and to Gorges. In 1639 Gorges secured a royal charter to re-enforce his claim. Large freedom, civil and religious, was allowed. For many years the Maine settlements were small and scattered, made up mostly of such as came to hunt and fish for a season only.

[1650]

From 1643 to 1684 Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed a confederation under the style of the United Colonies of New England. Maine, Providence, and Rhode Island sought membership, but were refused as being civilly and religiously out of harmony with the colonies named. Connecticut, offensive to the Dutch, and exposed to hostilities from them, was the most earnest for the union, while at the same time the most conservative as to its form. It was a loose league, leaving each colony independent save as to war and peace, Indian affairs, alliances and boundaries. Questions pertaining to these were to be settled by a commission of two delegates from each of the four colonies, meeting yearly, voting man by man, six out of the eight votes being necessary to bind.

The confederacy settled a boundary dispute between New Haven and New Netherland in 1650. It received and disbursed moneys, amounting some years to 600 pounds, for the propagation of the gospel in New England, sent over by the society which Parliament incorporated for that purpose in 1649. It was also of more or less service in securing united action against the savages in Philip's War. The union was, however, of little immediate service, useful rather as an example for the far future. Its failure was due partly to the distance of the colonies apart, and to the strength of the instinct for local self-government, a distinguishing political trait of New England till our day. Its main weakness, however, was the overbearing power and manner of Massachusetts, especially after her assumption of Maine in 1652. In 1653 the Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut commissioners earnestly wished war with New Netherland, but Massachusetts proudly forbade--a plain violation of the articles. After this there was not much heart in the alliance. The last meeting of the commissioners occurred at Hartford, September 5, 1684.