The Beginnings of New England Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty

CHAPTER III.

Chapter 3457 wordsPublic domain

THE PLANTING OF NEW ENGLAND.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New England ... 88, 89

Wessagusset and Merrymount ... 90, 91

The Dorchester adventurers ... 92

John White wishes to raise a bulwark against the Kingdom of Antichrist ... 93

And John Endicott undertakes the work of building it ... 94

Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble; the Gorges and Mason claims ... 94, 95

Endicott's arrival in New England, and the founding of Salem ... 95

The Company of Massachusetts Bay; Francis Higginson takes a powerful reinforcement to Salem ... 96

The development of John White's enterprise into the Company of Massachusetts Bay coincided with the first four years of the reign of Charles I ... 97

Extraordinary scene in the House of Commons (June 5, 1628) ... 98, 99

The King turns Parliament out of doors (March 2, 1629) ... 100

Desperate nature of the crisis ... 100, 101

The meeting at Cambridge (Aug. 26, 1629), and decision to transfer the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the government established under it, to New England ... 102

Leaders of the great migration; John Winthrop ... 102

And Thomas Dudley ... 103

Founding of Massachusetts; the schemes of Gorges overwhelmed ... 104

Beginnings of American constitutional history; the question as to self-government raised at Watertown ... 105

Representative system established ... 106

Bicameral assembly; story of the stray pig ... 107

Ecclesiastical polity; the triumph of Separatism ... 108

Restriction of the suffrage to members of the Puritan congregational churches ... 109

Founding of Harvard College ... 110

Threefold danger to the New England settlers in 1636:--

1. From the King, who prepares to attack the charter, but is foiled by dissensions at home ... 111-113

2. From religious dissensions; Roger Williams ... 114-116 Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson ... 116-119 Beginnings of New Hampshire and Rhode Island ... 119-120

3. From the Indians; the Pequot supremacy ... 121

First movements into the Connecticut valley, and disputes with the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam ... 122, 123

Restriction of the suffrage leads to disaffection in Massachusetts; profoundly interesting opinions of Winthrop and Hooker ... 123, 124

Connecticut pioneers and their hardships ... 125

Thomas Hooker, and the founding of Connecticut ... 120

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (Jan 14, 1639); the first written constitution that created a government ... 127

Relations of Connecticut to the genesis of the Federal Union ... 128

Origin of the Pequot War; Sassacus tries to unite the Indian tribes in a crusade against the English ... 129, 130

The schemes of Sassacus are foiled by Roger Williams ... 130

The Pequots take the war path alone ... 131

And are exterminated ... 132-134

John Davenport, and the founding of New Haven ... 135

New Haven legislation, and legend of the "Blue Laws" ... 136

With the meeting of the Long Parliament, in 1640, the Puritan exodus comes to its end ... 137

What might have been ... 138, 391