checked. Murder and pillage are comparatively infrequent, massacre is seldom heard of, and torture is almost or quite as extinct as cannibalism. The mass of citizens escape physical suffering, the angry emotions are so directed upon impersonal objects as to acquire a strong ethical value, and the intervals of strife may find individual soldiers of hostile armies exchanging kindly services. Members of a complex industrial society, without direct experience of warfare save in this mitigated form, have their characters wrought upon in a way that is distinctively modern, as they become more and more disinclined to violence and cruelty. European historians have noticed, with words of praise, the freedom from bloodthirstiness which characterizes the American people. Mr. Lecky has more than once remarked upon this humane temperament which is so characteristic of our peaceful civilization, and which sometimes, indeed, shows the defects of its excellence and tends to weaken society by making it difficult to inflict due punishment upon the vilest criminals. In respect of this humanity the American of the nineteenth century has without doubt improved very considerably upon his forefathers of the seventeenth. The England of Cromwell and Milton was not, indeed, a land of hard-hearted people as compared with their contemporaries. The long experience of internal peace since the War of the Roses had not been without its effect; and while the Tudor and Stuart periods had atrocities enough, we need only remember what was going on at the same time in France and Germany in order to realize how much worse it might have been. In England, as elsewhere, however, it was, when looked at with our eyes, a rough and brutal time. It was a day of dungeons, whipping-posts, and thumbscrews, when slight offenders were maimed and bruised and great offenders cut into pieces by sentence of court. The pioneers of New England had grown up familiar with such things; and among the townspeople of Boston and Hartford in 1675 were still many who in youth had listened to the awful news from Magdeburg or turned pale over the horrors in Piedmont upon which Milton invoked the wrath of Heaven. [Sidenote: Growth of humane sentiment in recent times]
When civilized men are removed from the safeguards of civilization and placed in the wilderness amid the hideous dangers that beset human existence in a savage state of society, whatever barbarism lies latent in them is likely to find many opportunities for showing itself. The feelings that stir the meekest of men, as he stands among the smouldering embers of his homestead and gazes upon the mangled bodies of wife and children, are feelings that he shares with the most bloodthirsty savage, and the primary effect of his higher intelligence and greater sensitiveness is only to increase their bitterness. The neighbour who hears the dreadful story is quick to feel likewise, for the same thing may happen to him, and there is nothing so pitiless as fear. With the Puritan such gloomy and savage passions seemed to find justification in the sacred text from which he drew his rules of life. To suppose that one part of the Bible could be less authoritative than another would have been to him an incomprehensible heresy; and bound between the same covers that included the Sermon on the Mount were tales of wholesale massacre perpetrated by God’s command. Evidently the red men were not stray children of Israel, after all, but rather Philistines, Canaanites, heathen, sons of Belial, firebrands of hell, demons whom it was no more than right to sweep from the face of the earth. Writing in this spirit, the chroniclers of the time were completely callous in their accounts of suffering and ruin inflicted upon Indians, and, as has elsewhere been known to happen, those who did not risk their own persons were more truculent in tone than the professional fighters. Of the narrators of the war, perhaps the fairest toward the Indian is the doughty Captain Church, while none is more bitter and cynical than the Ipswich pastor William Hubbard. [Sidenote: Warfare with savages likely to be truculent in character]
While the overthrow of the Narragansetts changed the face of things, it was far from putting an end to the war. It showed that when the white man could find his enemy he could deal crushing blows, but the Indian was not always so easy to find. Before the end of January Winslow’s little army was partially disbanded for want of food, and its three contingents fell back upon Stonington, Boston, and Plymouth. Early in February the Federal Commissioners called for a new levy of 600 men to assemble at Brookfield, for the Nipmucks were beginning to renew their incursions, and after an interval of six months the figure of Philip again appears for a moment upon the scene. What he had been doing, or where he had been, since the Brookfield fight in August, was never known. When in February, 1676, he re-appeared it was still in company with his allies the Nipmucks, in their bloody assault upon Lancaster. On the 10th of that month at sunrise the Indians came swarming into the lovely village. Danger had already been apprehended, the pastor, Joseph Rowlandson, the only Harvard graduate of 1652, had gone to Boston to solicit aid, and Captain Wadsworth’s company was slowly making its way over the difficult roads from Marlborough, but the Indians were beforehand. Several houses were at once surrounded and set on fire, and men, women, and children began falling under the tomahawk. The minister’s house was large and strongly built, and more than forty people found shelter there until at length it took fire and they were driven out by the flames. Only one escaped, a dozen or more were slain, and the rest, chiefly women and children, taken captive. The Indians aimed at plunder as well as destruction; for they were in sore need of food and blankets, as well as of powder and ball. Presently, as they saw Wadsworth’s armed men approaching, they took to flight and got away, with many prisoners and a goodly store of provisions. [Sidenote: Attack upon Lancaster, February 10, 1676]
Among the captives was Mary Rowlandson, the minister’s wife, who afterward wrote the story of her sad experiences. The treatment of the prisoners varied with the caprice or the cupidity of the captors. Those for whom a substantial ransom might be expected fared comparatively well; to others death came as a welcome relief. One poor woman with a child in her arms was too weak to endure the arduous tramp over the icy hillsides, and begged to be left behind, till presently the savages lost their patience. They built a fire, and after a kind of demon dance killed mother and child with a club and threw the bodies into the flames. Such treatment may seem exceptionally merciful, but those modern observers who best know the Indian’s habits say that he seldom indulges in torture except when he has abundance of leisure and a mind quite undisturbed. He is an epicure in human agony and likes to enjoy it in long slow sips. It is for the end of the march that the accumulation of horrors is reserved; the victims by the way are usually despatched quickly; and in the case of Mrs. Rowlandson’s captors their irregular and circuitous march indicates that they were on the alert. Their movements seem to have covered much of the ground between Wachusett mountain and the Connecticut river. They knew that the white squaw of the great medicine man of an English village was worth a heavy ransom, and so they treated Mrs. Rowlandson unusually well. She had been captured when escaping from the burning house, carrying in her arms her little six-year-old daughter. She was stopped by a bullet that grazed her side and struck the child. The Indian who seized them placed the little girl upon a horse, and as the dreary march began she kept moaning “I shall die, mamma.” “I went on foot after it,” says the mother, “with sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms till my strength failed me, and I fell down with it …. After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on they stopped. And now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap, and calling much for water, being now, through the wound, fallen into a violent fever …. Oh, may I see the wonderful power of God that my spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction; still the Lord upheld me with his gracious and merciful spirit.” The little girl soon died. For three months the weary and heartbroken mother was led about the country by these loathsome savages, of whose habits and manners she gives a vivid description. At first their omnivorousness astonished her. “Skunks and rattlesnakes, yea the very bark of trees” they esteemed as delicacies. “They would pick up old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, … then boil them and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar and so eat them.” After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one of Philip’s boys, she was invited to dine with the great sachem. “I went,” she says, “and he gave me a pancake about as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear’s grease; but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life.” Early in May she was redeemed for 20 pounds, and went to find her husband in Boston, where the Old South Church society hired a house for them. [Sidenote: Mrs. Rowlandson’s narrative]
Such was the experience of a captive whose treatment was, according to Indian notions, hospitable. There were few who came off so well. Almost every week while she was led hither and thither by the savages. Mrs. Rowlandson heard ghastly tales of fire and slaughter. It was a busy winter and spring for these Nipmucks. Before February was over, their exploit at Lancaster was followed by a shocking massacre at Medfield. They sacked and destroyed the towns of Worcester, Marlborough, Mendon, and Groton, and even burned some houses in Weymouth, within a dozen miles of Boston. Murderous attacks were made upon Sudbury, Chelmsford, Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley, Northampton, Wrentham, Andover, Bridgewater, Scituate, and Middleborough. On the 18th of April Captain Wadsworth, with 70 men, was drawn into an ambush near Sudbury, surrounded by 500 Nipmucks, and killed with 50 of his men; six unfortunate captives were burned alive over slow fires. But Wadsworth’s party made the enemy pay dearly for his victory; that afternoon 120 Nipmucks bit the dust. In such wise, by killing two or three for one, did the English wear out and annihilate their adversaries. Just one month from that day Captain Turner surprised and slaughtered 300 of these warriors near the falls of the Connecticut river which have since borne his name, and this blow at last broke the strength of the Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Virtual exterminations of the Indians, February–August, 1676]
Meanwhile the Narragansetts and Wampanoags had burned the towns of Warwick and Providence. After the wholesale ruin of the great “swamp fight,” Canonchet had still some 600 or 700 warriors left, and with these, on the 26th of March, in the neighbourhood of Pawtuxet, he surprised a company of 50 Plymouth men under Captain Pierce and slew them all, but not until he had lost 140 of his best warriors. Ten days later Captain Denison, with his Connecticut company, defeated and captured Canonchet, and the proud son of Miantonomo met the same fate as his father. He was handed over to the Mohegans and tomahawked. The Narragansett sachem had shown such bravery that it seemed, says the chronicler Hubbard, as if “some old Roman ghost had possessed the body of this western pagan.” But next moment this pious clergyman, as if ashamed of the classical eulogy just bestowed upon the hated redskin, alludes to him as a “damned wretch.” [Sidenote: Death of Canonchet]
The fall of Canonchet marked the beginning of the end. In four sharp fights in the last week of June, Major Talcott, of Hartford, slew from 300 to 400 warriors, being nearly all that were left of the Narragansetts; and during the month of July Captain Church patrolled the country about Taunton, making prisoners of the Wampanoags. Once more King Philip, shorn of his prestige, comes upon the scene. We have seen that his agency in these cruel events had been at the outset a potent one. Whatever else it may have been, it was at least the agency of the match that explodes the powder-cask. Under the conditions of that savage society, organized leadership was not to be looked for. In the irregular and disorderly series of murdering raids Philip may have been often present, but except for Mrs. Rowlandson’s narrative we should have known nothing of him since the Brookfield fight.
At length in July, 1676, having seen the last of his Nipmuck friends overwhelmed, the tattered chieftain showed himself near Bridgewater, with a handful of followers. In these his own hunting-grounds some of his former friends had become disaffected. The daring and diplomatic Church had made his way into the wigwam of Ashawonks, the squaw sachem of Saconet, near Little Compton, and having first convinced her that a flask of brandy might be tasted without fatal results, followed up his advantage and persuaded her to make an alliance with the English. Many Indians came in and voluntarily surrendered themselves, in order to obtain favourable terms, and some lent their aid in destroying their old sachem. Defeated at Taunton, the son of Massasoit was hunted by Church to his ancient lair at Bristol Neck and there besieged. His only escape was over the narrow isthmus of which the pursuers now took possession, and in this dire extremity one of Philip’s men presumed to advise his chief that the hour for surrender had come. For his unwelcome counsel the sachem forthwith lifted his tomahawk and struck him dead at his feet. Then the brother of the slain man crept away through the bushes to Church’s little camp, and offered to guide the white men to the morass where Philip lay concealed. At daybreak of August 12 the English stealthily advancing beat up their prey. The savages in sudden panic rushed from under cover, and as the sachem showed himself running at the top of his speed, a ball from an Indian musket pierced his heart, and “he fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him.” His severed head was sent to Plymouth, where it was mounted on a pole and exposed aloft upon the village green, while the meeting-house bell summoned the townspeople to a special service of thanksgiving. [Sidenote: Death of Philip, August 12]
It may be supposed that in such services at this time a Christian feeling of charity and forgiveness was not uppermost. Among the captives was a son of Philip, the little swarthy lad of nine years for whom Mrs. Rowlandson had made a cap, and the question as to what was to be done with him occasioned as much debate as if he had been a Jesse Pomeroy [34] or a Chicago anarchist. The opinions of the clergy were, of course, eagerly sought and freely vouchsafed. One minister somewhat doubtfully urged that “although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing the child for the father’s sin,” yet after all “the children of Saul and Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their guilt.” Thus curiously did this English reverence for precedent, with a sort of grim conscientiousness colouring its gloomy wrath, search for guidance among the ancient records of the children of Israel. Commenting upon the truculent suggestion, Increase Mather, soon to be president of Harvard, observed that, “though David had spared the infant Hadad, yet it might have been better for his people if he had been less merciful.” These bloodthirsty counsels did not prevail, but the course that was adopted did not lack in harshness. Among the sachems a dozen leading spirits were hanged or shot, and hundreds of captives were shipped off to the West Indies to be sold into slavery; among these was Philip’s little son. The rough soldier Church and the apostle Eliot were among the few who disapproved of this policy. Church feared it might goad such Indians as were still at large to acts of desperation. Eliot, in an earnest letter to the Federal Commissioners, observed: “To sell souls for money seemeth to me dangerous merchandise.” But the plan of exporting the captives was adhered to. As slaves they were understood to be of little or no value, and sometimes for want of purchasers they were set ashore on strange coasts and abandoned. A few were even carried to one of the foulest of mediaeval slave-marts, Morocco, where their fate was doubtless wretched enough. [Sidenote: Indians sold into slavery]
In spite of Church’s doubts as to the wisdom of this harsh treatment, it did not prevent the beaten and starving savages from surrendering themselves in considerable numbers. To some the Federal Commissioners offered amnesty, and the promise was faithfully fulfilled. Among those who laid down arms in reliance upon it were 140 Christian Indians, with their leader known as James the Printer, because he had been employed at Cambridge in setting up the type for Eliot’s Bible. Quite early in the war it had been discovered that these converted savages still felt the ties of blood to be stronger than those of creed. At the attack on Mendon, only three weeks after the horrors at Swanzey that ushered in the war, it was known that Christian Indians had behaved themselves quite as cruelly as their unregenerate brethren. Afterwards they made such a record that the jokers and punsters of the day–for such there were, even among those sombre Puritans–in writing about the “Praying Indians,” spelled _praying_ with an _e_. The moral scruples of these savages, under the influence of their evangelical training, betrayed queer freaks. One of them, says Mrs. Rowlandson, would rather die than eat horseflesh, so narrow and scrupulous was his conscience, although it was as wide as the whole infernal abyss, when it came to torturing white Christians. The student of history may have observed similar inconsistencies in the theories and conduct of people more enlightened than these poor red men. “There was another Praying Indian,” continues Mrs. Rowlandson, “who, when he had done all the mischief he could, betrayed his own father into the English’s hands, thereby to purchase his own life; … and there was another … so wicked … as to wear a string about his neck, strung with Christian fingers.” [Sidenote: Conduct of the Christian Indians]
Such incidents help us to comprehend the exasperation of our forefathers in the days of King Philip. The month which witnessed his death saw also the end of the war in the southern parts of New England; but, almost before people had time to offer thanks for the victory, there came news of bloodshed on the northeastern frontier. The Tarratines in Maine had for some time been infected with the war fever. How far they may have been comprehended in the schemes of Philip and Canonchet, it would be hard to say. They had attacked settlers on the site of Brunswick as early as September, 1675. About the time of Philip’s death, Major Waldron of Dover had entrapped a party of them by an unworthy stratagem, and after satisfying himself that they were accomplices in that chieftain’s scheme, sent them to Boston to be sold into slavery. A terrible retribution was in store for Major Waldron thirteen years later. For the present the hideous strife, just ended in southern New England, was continued on the northeastern frontier, and there was scarcely a village between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua but was laid in ashes. [Sidenote: War with the Tarratines, 1676-78]
By midsummer of 1678 the Indians had been everywhere suppressed, and there was peace in the land. For three years, since Philip’s massacre at Swanzey, there had been a reign of terror in New England. Within the boundaries of Connecticut, indeed, little or no damage had been inflicted, and the troops of that colony, not needed on their own soil, did noble service in the common cause.
In Massachusetts and Plymouth, on the other hand, the destruction of life and property had been simply frightful. Of ninety towns, twelve had been utterly destroyed, while more than forty others had been the scene of fire and slaughter. Out of this little society nearly a thousand staunch men, including not few of broad culture and strong promise, had lost their lives, while of the scores of fair women and poor little children that had perished under the ruthless tomahawk, one can hardly give an accurate account. Hardly a family throughout the land but was in mourning. The war-debt of Plymouth was reckoned to exceed the total amount of personal property in the colony; yet although it pinched every household for many a year, it was paid to the uttermost farthing; nor in this respect were Massachusetts and Connecticut at all behind-hand. [Sidenote: Destructiveness of the war]
But while King Philip’s War wrought such fearful damage to the English, it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction. Most of the warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the conquerors showed but scant mercy. The Puritan, who conned his Bible so earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching. Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England, except as an ally of the French in bloody raids upon the frontier. In that capacity he does mischief enough for yet a half-century more, but from central and southern New England, as an element of disturbance or a power to be reckoned with, he disappears forever.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.
The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern history. It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions, official reports, and private letters. It was not a time in which mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such things we do find in the history of New England. There was nevertheless a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern reader. This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity. The men who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness. They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of “manifest destiny.” Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of God’s kingdom upon earth. Such opinions, which took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its pages for illustrations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle, almost as a talisman. In every propitious event they saw a special providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the snares of an ever watchful Satan. This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. It was of great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them, like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and aggressive energy. At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a true historical perspective. [Sidenote: Romantic features in the early history of New England]
Among such writings that which perhaps best epitomizes the Puritan philosophy is “The Wonder-working Providence of Zion’s Saviour in New England,” by Captain Edward Johnson, one of the principal founders of Woburn. It is an extremely valuable history of New England from 1628 to 1651, and every page is alive with the virile energy of that stirring time. With narrative, argument, and apologue, abounding in honesty of purpose, sublimity of trust, and grotesqueness of fancy, wherein touching tenderness is often alternated with sternness most grim and merciless, yet now and then relieved by a sudden gleam of humour,–and all in a style that is usually uncouth and harsh, but sometimes bursts forth in eloquence worthy of Bunyan,–we are told how the founders of New England are soldiers of Christ enlisted in a holy war, and how they must “march manfully on till all opposers of Christ’s kingly power be abolished.” “And as for you who are called to sound forth his silver trumpets, blow loud and shrill to this chiefest treble tune–for the armies of the great Jehovah are at hand.” “He standeth not as an idle spectator beholding his people’s ruth and their enemies’ rage, but as an actor in all actions, to bring to naught the desires of the wicked, … having also the ordering of every weapon in its first produce, guiding every shaft that flies, leading each bullet to his place of settling, and weapon to the wound it makes.” To men engaged in such a crusade against the powers of evil, nothing could seem insignificant or trivial; for, as Johnson continues, in truly prophetic phrase, “the Lord Christ intends to achieve greater matters by this little handful than the world is aware of.” [Sidenote: Edward Johnson]
The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that of the “Wonder-working Providence,” though it did not always find such rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their children’s children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders, upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth’s surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire, alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and superstitious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been determined by circumstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of 1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible; while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong, plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a wrong standard]
From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the “Wonder-working Providence” that hurled the tyrant from his throne at Whitehall and prepared the way for the emancipation of modern Europe. No spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane or a Sidney could never have done it. The passion for liberty as felt by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman’s love of self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote: Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]
The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old to the spirit of the “Wonder-working Providence.” The theocratic ideal which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon. It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the way for the work of achieving political independence a century later. Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of the struggle was what has been aptly termed “the emancipation of Massachusetts.” [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]
The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord’s Supper, as administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe; other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers across the ocean. Under the circumstances there was something to be said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case, however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church members]
At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut, and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain in Massachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a discontented class of people, always ready to join hand in glove with dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding of Boston the disfranchisement of such citizens as could not participate in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]
Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers were “not very forward in this matter,” for they preferred to supplement the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the assistants and secured for Massachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of Moses. Here, as in Massachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of justice combined with partial disfranchisement to awaken discontent, and it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]
In Massachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered, for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for participation in the Lord’s Supper. This theory of church-membership, based on what was at that time stigmatized as the “Halfway Covenant,” aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In 1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Massachusetts was held five years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey, the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of all toward the new theory of church-membership was, naturally enough, Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The “Halfway Covenant”]
This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it. Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669 the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new society under the title of the “Third Church in Boston.” A wooden meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing in favour with the people, it soon became the most flourishing church in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building which still stands was erected on the same spot,–a building with a grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]
The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested, in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be established in Massachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in the history of New England. Massachusetts, though not lacking in the spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years later. Her attitude toward the Stuarts–as we have seen–had been sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter, but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the crown, must administer justice in the king’s name, and must repeal their laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]
When the people of Massachusetts received this message they consented to administer justice in the king’s name, but all the other matters were referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were especially instructed to ascertain whether Massachusetts had complied with the king’s demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years in favour of this independent attitude of the colonists, though during all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Massachusetts had absorbed; the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current in small transactions. “In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence.” [35] As early as 1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of shillings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a more serious matter. “Ships from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in any English port.” [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive Massachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful class of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Massachusetts]
In 1675, the first year of King Philip’s War, the British government made up its mind to attend more closely to the affairs of its American colonies. It had got the Dutch war off its hands, and could give heed to other things. The general supervision of the colonies was assigned to a standing committee of the privy council, styled the “Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations,” and henceforth familiarly known as the “Lords of Trade.” Next year the Lords of Trade sent an agent to Boston, with a letter to Governor Leverett about the Mason and Gorges claims. Under cover of this errand the messenger was to go about and ascertain the sentiments which people in the Kennebec and Piscataqua towns, as well as in Boston, entertained for the government of Massachusetts. The person to whom this work was entrusted was Edward Randolph, a cousin of Robert Mason who inherited the property claim to the Piscataqua county. To these men had old John Mason bequeathed his deadly feud with Massachusetts, and the fourteen years which Randolph now spent in New England were busily devoted to sowing the seeds of strife. In 1678 the king appointed him collector and surveyor of customs at the port of Boston, with instructions to enforce the navigation laws. Randolph was not the man to do unpopular things in such a way as to dull the edge of the infliction; he took delight in adding insult to injury. He was at once harsh and treacherous. His one virtue was pecuniary integrity; he was inaccessible to bribes and did not pick and steal from the receipts at the custom-house. In the other relations of life he was disencumbered of scruples. His abilities were not great, but his industry was untiring, and he pursued his enemies with the tenacity of a sleuth-hound. As an excellent British historian observes, “he was one of those men who, once enlisted as partisans, lose every other feeling in the passion which is engendered of strife.” [37] [Sidenote: The Lords of Trade] [Sidenote: Edward Randolph]
The arrival of such a man boded no good to Massachusetts. His reception at the town-house was a cold one. Leverett liked neither his looks nor his message, and kept his peaked hat on while he read the letter; when he came to the signature of the king’s chief secretary of state, he asked, with careless contempt, “Who is this Henry Coventry?” Randolph’s choking rage found vent in a letter to the king, taking pains to remind him that the governor of Massachusetts had once been an officer in Cromwell’s army. As we read this and think with what ghoulish glee the writer would have betrayed Colonel Goffe into the hands of the headsman, had any clue been given him, we can quite understand why Hubbard and Mather had nothing to say about the mysterious stranger at Hadley. Everything that Randolph could think of that would goad and irritate the king, he reported in full to London; his letters were specimens of that worst sort of lie that is based upon distorted half-truths; and his malicious pen but seldom lay idle.
While waiting for the effects of these reports to ripen, Randolph was busily intriguing with some of the leading men in Boston who were dissatisfied with the policy of the dominant party, and under his careful handling a party was soon brought into existence which was ready to counsel submission to the royal will. Such was the birth of Toryism in New England. The leader of this party was Joseph Dudley, son of the grim verse-maker who had come over as lieutenant to Winthrop. The younger Dudley was graduated at Harvard in 1665, and proceeded to study theology, but soon turned his attention entirely to politics. In 1673 he was a deputy from Roxbury in the General Court; in 1675 he took part in the storming of the Narragansett fort; in 1677 and the three following years he was one of the Federal Commissioners. In character and temper he differed greatly from his father. Like the proverbial minister’s son whose feet are swift toward folly, Joseph Dudley seems to have learned in stern bleak years of childhood to rebel against the Puritan theory of life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. His party in Massachusetts was largely made up of men who had come to the colony for commercial reasons, and had little or no sympathy with the objects for which it was founded. Among them were Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists, who were allowed no chance for public worship, as well as many others who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. Their numbers, moreover, must have been large, for Boston had grown to be a town of 5000 inhabitants, the population of Massachusetts was approaching 30,000, and, according to Hutchinson, scarcely one grown man in five was a church-member qualified to vote or hold office. Such a fact speaks volumes as to the change which was coming over the Puritan world. No wonder that the clergy had begun to preach about the weeds and tares that were overrunning Christ’s pleasant garden. No wonder that the spirit of revolt against the disfranchising policy of the theocracy was ripe. [Sidenote: Joseph Dudley]
It was in 1679, when this weakness of the body politic had been duly studied and reported by Randolph, and when all New England was groaning under the bereavements and burdens entailed by Philip’s war, that the Stuart government began its final series of assaults upon Massachusetts. The claims of the eastern proprietors, the heirs of Mason and Gorges, furnished the occasion. Since 1643 the four Piscataqua towns–Hampton, Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth–had remained under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. After the Restoration the Mason claim had been revived, and in 1677 was referred to the chief-justices North and Rainsford. Their decision was that Mason’s claim had always been worthless as based on a grant in which the old Plymouth Company had exceeded its powers. They also decided that Massachusetts had no valid claim since the charter assigned her a boundary just north of the Merrimack. This decision left the four towns subject to none but the king, who forthwith in 1679 proceeded to erect them into the royal province of New Hampshire, with president and council appointed by the crown, and an assembly chosen by the people, but endowed with little authority,–a tricksome counterfeit of popular government. Within three years an arrogant and thieving ruler, Edward Cranfield, had goaded New Hampshire to acts of insurrection. [Sidenote: Royal province of New Hampshire]
To the decisions of the chief-justices Massachusetts must needs submit. The Gorges claim led to more serious results. Under Cromwell’s rule in 1652–the same year in which she began coining money–Massachusetts had extended her sway over Maine. In 1665 Colonel Nichols and his commissioners, acting upon the express instructions of Charles II., took it away from her. In 1668, after the commissioners had gone home, Massachusetts coolly took possession again. In 1677 the chief-justices decided that the claim of the Gorges family, being based on a grant from James I., was valid. Then the young Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of the first proprietor, offered to sell the province to the king, who had now taken it into his head that he would like to bestow it upon the Duke of Monmouth, his favourite son by Lucy Walters. Before Charles had responded, Governor Leverett had struck a bargain with Gorges, who ceded to Massachusetts all his rights over Maine for L1250 in hard cash. When the king heard of this transaction he was furious. He sent a letter to Boston, commanding the General Court to surrender the province again on repayment of this sum of L1250, and expressing his indignation that the people should thus dare to dispose of an important claim off-hand without consulting his wishes. In the same letter the colony was enjoined to put in force the royal orders of seventeen years before, concerning the oath of allegiance, the restriction of the suffrage, and the prohibition of the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: The Gorges claim]
This peremptory message reached Boston about Christmas, 1679. Leverett, the sturdy Ironsides, had died six months before, and his place was filled by Simon Bradstreet, a man of moderate powers but great integrity, and held in peculiar reverence as the last survivor of those that had been chosen to office before leaving England by the leaders of the great Puritan exodus. Born in a Lincolnshire village in 1603, he was now seventy-six years old. He had taken his degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had served as secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and in 1629 had been appointed member of the board of assistants for the colony about to be established on Massachusetts bay. In this position he had remained with honour for half a century, while he had also served as Federal Commissioner and as agent for the colony in London. His wife, who died in 1672, was a woman of quaint learning and quainter verses, which her contemporaries admired beyond measure. One of her books was republished in London, with the title: “The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America.” John Norton once said that if Virgil could only have heard the seraphic poems of Anne Bradstreet, he would have thrown his heathen doggerel into the fire. She was sister of Joseph Dudley, and evidently inherited this rhyming talent, such as it was, from her father. Governor Bradstreet belonged to the moderate party who would have been glad to extend the franchise, but he did not go with his brother-in-law in subservience to the king. [Sidenote: Simon Bradstreet and his wife]
When the General Court assembled, in May, 1680, the full number of eighteen assistants appeared, for the first time in the history of the colony, and in accordance with an expressed wish of the king. They were ready to yield in trifles, but not in essentials. After wearisome discussion, the answer to the royal letter was decided on. It stated in vague and unsatisfactory terms that the royal orders of 1662 either had been carried out already or would be in good time, while to the demand for the surrender of Maine no reply whatever was made, save that “they were heartily sorry that any actings of theirs should be displeasing to his Majesty.” After this, when Randolph wrote home that the king’s letters were of no more account in Massachusetts than an old London Gazette, he can hardly be accused of stretching the truth. Randolph kept busily at work, and seems to have persuaded the Bishop of London that if the charter could be annulled, episcopacy might be established in Massachusetts as in England. In February, 1682, a letter came from the king demanding submission and threatening legal proceedings against the charter. Dudley was then sent as agent to London, and with him was sent a Mr. Richards, of the extreme clerical party, to watch him. [Sidenote: Massachusetts answers the king]
Meanwhile the king’s position at home had been changing. He had made up his mind to follow his father’s example and try the experiment of setting his people at defiance and governing without a parliament. This could not be done without a great supply of money. Louis XIV. had plenty of money, for there was no constitution in France to prevent his squeezing what he wanted out of the pockets of an oppressed people. France was thriving greatly now, for Colbert had introduced a comparatively free system of trade between the provinces and inaugurated an era of prosperity soon to be cut short by the expulsion of the Huguenots. Louis could get money enough for the asking, and would be delighted to foment civil disturbances in England, so as to tie the hands of the only power which at that moment could interfere with his seizing Alsace and Lorraine and invading Flanders. The pretty Louise de Keroualle Duchess of Portsmouth, with her innocent baby face and heart as cold as any reptile’s, was the French Delilah chosen to shear the locks of the British Samson. By such means and from such motives a secret treaty was made in February, 1681, by which Louis agreed to pay Charles 2,000,000 livres down, and 500,000 more in each of the next two years, on condition that he should summon no more parliaments within that time. This bargain for securing the means of overthrowing the laws and liberties of England was, on the part of Charles II., an act no less reprehensible than some of those for which his father had gone to the block. But Charles could now afford for a while to wreak his evil will. He had already summoned a parliament for the 21st of March, to meet at Oxford within the precincts of the subservient university, and out of reach of the high-spirited freemen of London. He now forced a quarrel with the new parliament and dissolved it within a week. A joiner named Stephen College, who had spoken his mind too freely in the taverns at Oxford with regard to these proceedings, was drawn and quartered. The Whig leader Lord Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland. In the absence of a parliament the only power of organized resistance to the king’s tyranny resided in the corporate governments of the chartered towns. The charter of London was accordingly attacked by a writ of _quo warranto_, and in June, 1683, the time-serving judges declared it confiscated. George Jeffreys, a low drunken fellow whom Charles had made Lord Chief Justice, went on a circuit through the country; and, as Roger North says, “made all the charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down before him, and returned laden with surrenders, the spoils of towns.” At the same time a terrible blow was dealt at two of the greatest Whig families in England. Lord William Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, and Algernon Sidney, younger son of the Earl of Leicester, two of the purest patriots and ablest liberal leaders of the day, were tried on a false charge of treason and beheaded. [Sidenote: Secret treaty between Charles II. and Louis XIV] [Sidenote: Shameful proceedings in England]
By this quick succession of high-handed measures, the friends of law and liberty were for a moment disconcerted and paralyzed. In the frightful abasement of the courts of justice which these events so clearly showed, the freedom of Englishmen seemed threatened in its last stronghold. The doctrine of passive obedience to monarchs was preached in the pulpits and inculcated by the university of Oxford, which ordered the works of John Milton to be publicly burned. Sir Robert Filmer wrote that “not only in human laws, but even in divine, a thing may by the king be commanded contrary to law, and yet obedience to such a command is necessary.” Charles felt so strong that in 1684 he flatly refused to summon a parliament.
It was not long before the effects of all this were felt in New England. The mission of Dudley and his colleague was fruitless. They returned to Boston, and Randolph, who had followed them to London, now followed them back, armed with a writ of _quo warranto_ which he was instructed not to serve until he should have given Massachusetts one more chance to humble herself in the dust. Should she modify her constitution to please a tyrant or see it trampled under foot? Recent events in England served for a solemn warning; for the moment the Tories were silenced; perhaps after all, the absolute rule of a king was hardly to be preferred to the sway of the Puritan clergy; the day when the House of Commons sat still and wept seemed to have returned. A great town-meeting was held in the Old South Meeting-House, and the moderator requested all who were for surrendering the charter to hold up their hands. Not a hand was lifted, and out from the throng a solitary voice exclaimed, with deep-drawn breath, “The Lord be praised!” Then arose Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, and reminded them how their fathers did win this charter, and should they deliver it up unto the spoiler who demanded it “even as Ahab required Naboth’s vineyard, Oh! their children would be bound to curse them.” Such was the attitude of Massachusetts, and when it was known in London, the blow was struck. For technical reasons Randolph’s writ was not served; but on the 21st of June a decree in chancery annulled the charter of Massachusetts. [Sidenote: Massachusetts refuses to surrender her charter] [Sidenote: It is annulled by degree of chancery, June 21, 1684]
To appreciate the force of this blow we must pause for a moment and consider what it involved. The right to the soil of North America had been hitherto regarded in England, on the strength of the discoveries of the Cabots, as an appurtenance to the crown of Henry VII.,–as something which descended from father to son like the palace at Hampton Court or the castle at Windsor, but which the sovereign might alienate by his voluntary act just as he might sell or give away a piece of his royal domain in England. Over this vast territory it was doubtful how far Parliament was entitled to exercise authority, and the rights of Englishmen settled there had theoretically no security save in the provisions of the various charters by which the crown had delegated its authority to individual proprietors or to private companies. It was thus on the charter granted by Charles I. to the Company of Massachusetts Bay that not only the cherished political and ecclesiastical institutions of the colony, but even the titles of individuals to their lands and houses, were supposed to be founded. By the abrogation of the charter, all rights and immunities that had been based upon it were at once swept away, and every rood of the soil of Massachusetts became the personal property of the Stuart king, who might, if he should possess the will and the power, turn out all the present occupants or otherwise deal with them as trespassers. Such at least was the theory of Charles II., and to show that he meant to wreak his vengeance with no gentle hand, he appointed as his viceroy the brutal Percy Kirke,–a man who would have no scruples about hanging a few citizens without trial, should occasion require it. [Sidenote: Effect of annulling the charter]
But in February, 1685, just as Charles seemed to be getting everything arranged to his mind, a stroke of apoplexy carried him off the scene, and his brother ascended the throne. Monmouth’s rebellion, and the horrible cruelties that followed, kept Colonel Kirke busy in England through the summer, and left the new king scant leisure to think about America. Late in the autumn, having made up his mind that he could not spare such an exemplary knave as Kirke, James II. sent over Sir Edmund Andros. In the mean time the government of Massachusetts had been administered by Dudley, who showed himself willing to profit by the misfortunes of his country. Andros had long been one of James’s favourites. He was the dull and dogged English officer such as one often meets, honest enough and faithful to his master, neither cruel nor rapacious, but coarse in fibre and wanting in tact. Some years before, when governor of New York, he had a territorial dispute with Connecticut, and now cherished a grudge against the people of New England, so that, from James’s point of view, he was well fitted to be their governor. James wished to abolish all the local governments in America, and unite them, as far as possible, under a single administration. With Plymouth there could be no trouble; she had never had a charter, but had existed on sufferance from the outset. In 1687 the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were rescinded, but the decrees were not executed in due form. In October of that year Andros went to Hartford, to seize the Connecticut charter but it was not surrendered. While Sir Edmund was bandying threats with stout Robert Treat, the queller of Indians and now governor of Connecticut, in the course of their evening conference the candles were suddenly blown out, and when after some scraping of tinder they were lighted again the document was nowhere to be found, for Captain Wadsworth had carried it away and hidden it in the hollow trunk of a mighty oak tree. Nevertheless for the moment the colony was obliged to submit to the tyrant. Next day the secretary John Allyn wrote “Finis” on the colonial records and shut up the book. Within another twelvemonth New York and New Jersey were added to the viceroyalty of Andros; so that all the northern colonies from the forests of Maine to the Delaware river were thus brought under the arbitrary rule of one man, who was responsible to no one but the king for whatever he might take it into his head to do. [Sidenote: Sir Edmund Andros] [Sidenote: The Charter Oak]
The vexatious character of the new government was most strongly felt at Boston where Andros had his headquarters. Measures were at once taken for the erection of an Episcopal church, and meantime the royal order was that one of the principal meeting-houses should be seized for the use of the Church of England. This was an ominous beginning. In the eyes of the people it was much more than a mere question of disturbing Puritan prejudices. They had before them the experience of Scotland during the past ten years, the savage times of “Old Mortality,” the times which had seen the tyrannical prelate, on the lonely moor, begging in vain for his life, the times of Drumclog and Bothwell Brigg, of Claverhouse and his flinty-hearted troopers, of helpless women tied to stakes on the Solway shore and drowned by inches in the rising tide. What had happened in one part of the world might happen in another, for the Stuart policy was the same. It aimed not at securing toleration but at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir Edmund’s formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal services were held there alternately with the regular services until the overthrow of Andros. The pastor, Samuel Willard, was son of the gallant veteran who had rescued the beleaguered people of Brookfield in King Philip’s war. Amusing passages occurred between him and Sir Edmund, who relished the pleasantry of keeping minister and congregation waiting an hour or two in the street on Sundays before yielding to them the use of their meeting-house. More kindly memories of the unpopular governor are associated with the building of the first King’s Chapel on the spot where its venerable successor now stands. The church was not finished until after Sir Edmund had taken his departure, but Lady Andros, who died in February, 1688, lies in the burying-ground hard by. Her gentle manners had won all hearts. For the moment, we are told, one touch of nature made enemies kin, and as Sir Edmund walked to the townhouse “many a head was bared to the bereaved husband that before had remained stubbornly covered to the exalted governor.” [38] [Sidenote: Episcopal services in Boston] [Sidenote: Founding of the King’s Chapel, 1689]
The despotic rule of Andros was felt in more serious ways than in the seizing upon a meetinghouse. Arbitrary taxes were imposed, encroachments were made upon common lands as in older manorial times, and the writ of _habeas corpus_ was suspended. Dudley was appointed censor of the press, and nothing was allowed to be printed without his permission. All the public records of the late New England governments were ordered to be brought to Boston, whither it thus became necessary to make a tedious journey in order to consult them. All deeds and wills were required to be registered in Boston, and excessive fees were charged for the registry. It was proclaimed that all private titles to land were to be ransacked, and that whoever wished to have his title confirmed must pay a heavy quit-rent, which under the circumstances amounted to blackmail. The General Court was abolished. The power of taxation was taken from the town-meetings and lodged with the governor. Against this crowning iniquity the town of Ipswich, led by its sturdy pastor, John Wise, made protest. In response Mr. Wise was thrown into prison, fined L50, and suspended from the ministry. A notable and powerful character was this John Wise. One of the broadest thinkers and most lucid writers of his time, he seems like a forerunner of the liberal Unitarian divines of the nineteenth century. His “Vindication of the Government of the New England Churches,” published in 1717, was a masterly exposition of the principles of civil government, and became “a text book of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers, containing some of the notable expressions that are used in the Declaration of Independence.” [Sidenote: Tyranny] [Sidenote: John Wise of Ipswich]
It was on the trial of Mr. Wise in October, 1687, that Dudley openly declared that the people of New England had now no further privileges left them than not to be sold for slaves. Such a state of things in the valley of the Euphrates would not have attracted comment; the peasantry of central Europe would have endured it until better instructed; but in an English community it could not last long. If James II. had remained upon the throne, New England would surely have soon risen in rebellion against Andros. But the mother country had by this time come to repent the fresh lease of life which she had granted to the Stuart dynasty after Cromwell’s death. Tired of the disgraceful subservience of her Court to the schemes of Louis XIV., tired of fictitious plots and judicial murders, tired of bloody assizes and declarations of indulgence and all the strange devices of Stuart tyranny, England endured the arrogance of James but three years, and then drove him across the Channel, to get such consolation as he might from his French paymaster and patron. On the 4th of April, 1689, the youthful John Winslow brought to Boston the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England. For the space of two weeks there was quiet and earnest deliberation among the citizens, as the success of the Prince’s enterprise was not yet regarded as assured. But all at once, on the morning of the 18th, the drums beat to arms, the signal-fire was lighted on Beacon Hill, a meeting was held at the Town-House, militia began to pour in from the country, and Andros, summoned to surrender, was fain to beseech Mr. Willard and the other ministers to intercede for him. But the ministers refused. Next day the Castle was surrendered, the Rose frigate riding in the harbour was seized and dismantled, and Andros was arrested as he was trying to effect his escape disguised in woman’s clothes. Dudley and the other agents of tyranny were also imprisoned, and thus the revolution was accomplished. It marks the importance which the New England colonies were beginning to attain, that, before the Prince of Orange had fully secured the throne, he issued a letter instructing the people of Boston to preserve decorum and acquiesce yet a little longer in the government of Andros, until more satisfactory arrangements could be made. But Increase Mather, who was then in London on a mission in behalf of New England, judiciously prevented this letter of instructions from being sent. The zeal of the people outstripped the cautious policy of the new sovereign, and provisional governments, in accordance with the old charters, were at once set up in the colonies lately ruled by Andros. Bradstreet now in his eighty-seventh year was reinstated as governor of Massachusetts. Five weeks after this revolution in Boston the order to proclaim King William and Queen Mary was received, amid such rejoicings as had never before been seen in that quiet town, for it was believed that self-government would now be guaranteed to New England. [Sidenote: Fall of James II.] [Sidenote: Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of Andros, April 18, 1689]
This hope was at least so far realized that from the most formidable dangers which had threatened it, New England was henceforth secured. The struggle with the Stuarts was ended, and by this second revolution within half a century the crown had received a check from which it never recovered. There were troubles yet in store for England, but no more such outrages as the judicial murders of Russell and Sidney. New England had still a stern ordeal to go through, but never again was she to be so trodden down and insulted as in the days of Andros. The efforts of George III. to rule Englishmen despotically were weak as compared with those of the Stuarts. In his time England had waxed strong enough to curb the tyrant, America had waxed strong enough to defy and disown him. After 1689 the Puritan no longer felt that his religion was in danger, and there was a reasonable prospect that charters solemnly granted him would be held sacred. William III. was a sovereign of modern type, from whom freedom of thought and worship had nothing to fear. In his theology he agreed, as a Dutch Calvinist, more nearly with the Puritans than with the Church of England. At the same time he had no great liking for so much independence of thought and action as New England had exhibited. In the negotiations which now definitely settled the affairs of this part of the world, the intractable behaviour of Massachusetts was borne in mind and contrasted with the somewhat less irritating attitude of the smaller colonies. It happened that the decree which annulled the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut had not yet been formally enrolled. It was accordingly treated as void, and the old charters were allowed to remain in force. They were so liberal that no change in them was needed at the time of the Revolution, so that Connecticut was governed under its old charter until 1818, and Rhode Island until 1842. [Sidenote: Effects of the Revolution of 1689]
There was at this time a disposition on the part of the British government to unite all the northern colonies under a single administration. The French in Canada were fast becoming rivals to be feared; and the wonderful explorations of La Salle, bringing the St. Lawrence into political connection with the Mississippi, had at length foreshadowed a New France in the rear of all the English colonies, aiming at the control of the centre of the continent and eager to confine the English to the sea-board. Already the relations of position which led to the great Seven Years’ War were beginning to shape themselves; and the conflict between France and England actually broke out in 1689, as soon as Louis XIV.’s hired servant, James II., was superseded by William III. as king of England and head of a Protestant league. [Sidenote: Need for union among all the northern colonies]
In view of this new state of affairs, it was thought desirable to unite the northern English colonies under one head, so far as possible, in order to secure unity of military action. But natural prejudices had to be considered. The policy of James II. had aroused such bitter feeling in America that William must needs move with caution. Accordingly he did not seek to unite New York with New England, and he did not think it worth while to carry out the attack which James had only begun upon Connecticut and Rhode Island. As for New Hampshire, he seems to have been restrained by what in the language of modern politics would be called “pressure,” brought to bear by certain local interests. [39] But in the case of the little colony founded by the Pilgrims of the Mayflower there was no obstacle. She was now annexed to Massachusetts, which also received not only Maine but even Acadia, just won from the French; so that, save for the short break at Portsmouth, the coast of Massachusetts now reached all the way from Martha’s Vineyard to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. [Sidenote: Plymouth, Maine, and Acadia, annexed to Massachusetts]
But along with this great territorial extension there went some curtailment of the political privileges of the colony. By the new charter of 1692 the right of the people to be governed by a legislature of their own choosing was expressly confirmed. The exclusive right of this legislature to impose taxes was also confirmed. But henceforth no qualification of church-membership, but only a property qualification, was to be required of voters; the governor was to be appointed by the crown instead of being elected by the people; and all laws passed by the legislature were to be sent to England for royal approval. These features of the new charter,–the extension, or if I may so call it, the _secularization_ of the franchise, the appointment of the governor by the crown, and the power of veto which the crown expressly reserved,–were grave restrictions upon the independence which Massachusetts had hitherto enjoyed. Henceforth her position was to be like that of the other colonies with royal governors. But her history did not thereby lose its interest or significance, though it became, like the history of most of the colonies, a dismal record of irrepressible bickerings between the governor appointed by the crown and the legislature elected by the people. In the period that began in 1692 and ended in 1776, the movements of Massachusetts, while restricted and hampered, were at the same time forced into a wider orbit. She was brought into political sympathy with Virginia. While two generations of men were passing across the scene, the political problems of Massachusetts were assimilated to those of Virginia. In spite of all the other differences, great as they were, there was a likeness in the struggles between the popular legislature and the royal governor which subordinated them all. It was this similarity of experience, during the eighteenth century, that brought these two foremost colonies into cordial alliance during the struggle against George III., and thus made it possible to cement all the colonies together in the mighty nation whose very name is fraught with so high and earnest a lesson to mankind,–the UNITED STATES! [Sidenote: Massachusetts becomes a royal province]
For such a far-reaching result, the temporary humiliation of Massachusetts was a small price to pay. But it was not until long after the accession of William III. that things could be seen in these grand outlines. With his coronation began the struggle of seventy years between France and England, far grander than the struggle between Rome and Carthage, two thousand years earlier, for primacy in the world, for the prerogative of determining the future career of mankind. That warfare, so fraught with meaning, was waged as much upon American as upon European ground; and while it continued, it was plainly for the interest of the British government to pursue a conciliatory policy toward its American colonies, for without their wholehearted assistance it could have no hope of success. As soon as the struggle was ended, and the French power in the colonial world finally overthrown, the perpetual quarrels between the popular legislatures and the royal governors led immediately to the Stamp Act and the other measures of the British government that brought about the American revolution. People sometimes argue about that revolution as if it had no past behind it and was simply the result of a discussion over abstract principles. [Sidenote: Seeds of the American Revolution already sown]
We can now see that while the dispute involved an abstract principle of fundamental importance to mankind, it was at the same time for Americans illustrated by memories sufficiently concrete and real. James Otis in his prime was no further distant from the tyranny of Andros than middle-aged men of to-day are distant from the Missouri Compromise. The sons of men cast into jail along with John Wise may have stood silent in the moonlight on Griffin’s Wharf and looked on while the contents of the tea-chests were hurled into Boston harbour. In the events we have here passed in review, it may be seen, so plainly that he who runs may read, how the spirit of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
An interesting account of the Barons’ War and the meeting of the first House of Commons is given in Prothero’s _Simon de Montfort_, London, 1877. For Wyclif and the Lollards, see Milman’s _Latin Christianity_, vol. vii.
The ecclesiastical history of the Tudor period may best be studied in the works of John Strype, to wit, _Historical Memorials_, 6 vols.; _Annals of the Reformation_, 7 vols.; _Lives of Cranmer, Parker, Whitgift, etc._, Oxford, 1812-28. See also _Burnet’s History of the Reformation of the Church of England_, 3 vols., London, 1679-1715; Neal’s _History of the Puritans_, London, 1793; Tulloch, _Leaders of the Reformation_, Boston, 1859. A vast mass of interesting information is to be found in _The Zurich Letters, comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops, and Others, with some of the Helvetian Reformers_, published by the Parker Society, 4 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1845-46. Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_ was published in London, 1594; a new edition, containing two additional books, the first complete edition, was published in 1622.
For the general history of England in the seventeenth century, there are two modern works which stand far above all others,–Gardiner’s _History of England_, 10 vols., London, 1883-84; and Masson’s _Life of Milton, narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time_, 6 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1859-80. These are books of truly colossal erudition, and written in a spirit of judicial fairness. Mr. Gardiner’s ten volumes cover the forty years from the accession of James I. to the beginning of the Civil War, 1603-1643. Mr. Gardiner has lately published the first two volumes of his history of the Civil War, and it is to be hoped that he will not stop until he reaches the accession of William and Mary. Indeed, such books as his ought never to stop. My friend and colleague, Prof. Hosmer, tells me that Mr. Gardiner is a lineal descendant of Cromwell and Ireton. His little book, _The Puritan Revolution_, in the “Epochs of History” series, is extremely useful, and along with it one should read Airy’s _The English Restoration and Louis XIV_., in the same series, New York, 1889. The best biography of Cromwell is by Mr. Allanson Picton, London, 1882; see also Frederic Harrison’s _Cromwell_, London, 1888, an excellent little book. Hosmer’s _Young Sir Henry Vane_, Boston, 1888, should be read in the same connection; and one should not forget Carlyle’s _Cromwell_. See also Tulloch, _English Puritanism and its Leaders_, 1861, and _Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century_, 1872; Skeats, _History of the Free Churches of England_, London, 1868; Mountfield, _The Church and Puritans_, London, 1881. Dexter’s _Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years_, New York, 1880, is a work of monumental importance.
On the history of New England the best general works are Palfrey, _History of New England_, 4 vols., Boston, 1858-75; and Doyle, _The English in America–The Puritan Colonies_, 2 vols., London, 1887. In point of scholarship Dr. Palfrey’s work is of the highest order, and it is written in an interesting style. Its only shortcoming is that it deals somewhat too leniently with the faults of the Puritan theocracy, and looks at things too exclusively from a Massachusetts point of view. It is one of the best histories yet written in America. Mr. Doyle’s work is admirably fair and impartial, and is based throughout upon a careful study of original documents. The author is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and has apparently made American history his specialty. His work on the Puritan colonies is one of a series which when completed will cover the whole story of English colonization in America. I have looked in vain in his pages for any remark or allusion indicating that he has ever visited America, and am therefore inclined to think that he has not done so. He now and then makes a slight error such as would not be likely to be made by a native of New England, but this is very seldom. The accuracy and thoroughness of its research, its judicial temper, and its philosophical spirit make Mr. Doyle’s book in some respects the best that has been written about New England.
Among original authorities we may begin by citing John Smith’s _Description of New England_, 1616, and _New England’s Trial_, 1622, contained in Arber’s new edition of Smith’s works, London, 1884. Bradford’s narrative of the founding of Plymouth was for a long time supposed to be lost. Nathaniel Morton’s _New England’s Memorial_, published in 1669, was little more than an abridgment of it. After two centuries Bradford’s manuscript was discovered, and an excellent edition by Mr. Charles Deane was published in the _Massachusetts Historical Collections_, 4th series, vol. iii., 1856. Edward Winslow’s _Journal of the Proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth_, 1622, and _Good News from New England_, 1624, are contained, with other valuable materials, in Young’s _Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers_, Boston, 1844. See also Shurtleff and Pulsifer, _Records of Plymouth_, 12 vols., ending with the annexation of the colony to Massachusetts in 1692; Prince’s _Chronological History of New England_, ed. Drake, 1852; and in this connection Hunter’s _Founders of New Plymouth_, London, 1854; Steele’s _Life of Brewster_, Philadelphia, 1857; Goodwin’s _Pilgrim Republic_, Boston, 1887; Bacon’s _Genesis of the New England Churches_, New York, 1874; Baylies’s _Historical Memoir_, 1830; Thacher’s _History of the Town of Plymouth_, 1832.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges wrote a _Briefe Narration of the Originall Undertakings of the advancement of plantations into the parts of America, especially showing the beginning, progress, and continuance of that of New England_, London, 1658, contained in his grandson’s collection entitled _America Painted to the Life_. Thomas Morton, of Merrymount, gave his own view of the situation in his _New English Canaan_, which has been edited for the Prince Society, with great learning, by C.F. Adams. Samuel Maverick also had his say in a valuable pamphlet entitled _A Description of New England_, which has only come to light since 1875 and has been edited by Mr. Deane. Maverick is, of course, hostile to the Puritans. See also Lechford’s _Plain Dealing in New England_, ed. J.H. Trumbull, 1867.
The earliest history of Massachusetts is by Winthrop himself, a work of priceless value. In 1790, nearly a century and a half after the author’s death, it was published at Hartford. The best edition is that of 1853. In 1869 a valuable life of Winthrop was published by his descendant Robert Winthrop. Hubbard’s _History of New England_ (_Mass. Hist. Coll._, 2d series, vols. v., vi.) is drawn largely from Winthrop and from Nathaniel Morton. There is much that is suggestive in William Wood’s _New England’s Prospect_, 1634, and Edward Johnson’s _Wonder-working Providence of Zion’s Saviour in New England_, 1654; the latter has been ably edited by W.F. Poole, Andover, 1867. The records of the Massachusetts government, from its founding in 1629 down to the overthrow of the charter in 1684, were edited by Dr. Shurtleff in 6 vols. quarto, 1853-54; and among the documents in the British Record Office, published since 1855, three volumes–_Calendar of State Papers_, _Colonial America_, vol. i., 1574-1660; vol. v., 1661-1668; vol. vii., 1669–are especially useful. Of the later authorities the best is Hutchinson’s _History of Massachusetts Bay_, the first volume of which, coming down to 1689, was published in Boston in 1764. The second volume, continuing the narrative to 1749, was published in 1767. The third volume, coming down to 1774, was found among the illustrious author’s MSS. after his death, and was published in London in 1828. Hutchinson had access to many valuable documents since lost, and his sound judgment and critical acumen deserve the highest praise. In 1769 he published a volume of _Original Papers_, illustrating the period covered by the first volume of his history. Many priceless documents perished in the shameful sacking of his house by the Boston rioters, Aug. 26, 1765. The second volume of Hutchinson’s _History_ was continued to 1764 by G.R. Minot, 2 vols., 1798, and to 1820 by Alden Bradford, 3 vols., 1822-29. Of recent works, the best is Barry’s _History of Massachusetts_, 3 vols., 1855-57. Many original authorities are collected in Young’s _Chronicles of Massachusetts_, Boston, 1846. Cotton Mather’s _Magnolia Christi Americana_, London, 1702 (reprinted in 1820 and 1853), though crude and uncritical, is full of interest.
Many of the early Massachusetts documents relate to Maine. Of later books, especial mention should be made of Folsom’s _History of Saco and Biddeford_, Saco, 1830; Willis’s _History of Portland_, 2 vols., 1831-33 (2d ed. 1865); _Memorial Volume of the Popham Celebration_, Portland, 1862; Chamberlain’s _Maine, Her Place in History_, Augusta, 1877. On New Hampshire the best general work is Belknap’s _History of New Hampshire_, 3 vols., Phila., 1784-92; the appendix contains many original documents, and others are to be found in the _New Hampshire Historical Collections_, 8 vols., 1824-66.
The _Connecticut Colonial Records_ are edited by Dr. J.H. Trumbull, 12 vols., 1850-82. The _Connecticut Historical Society’s Collections_, 1860-70, are of much value. The best general work is Trumbull’s _History of Connecticut_, 2 vols., Hartford, 1797. See also Stiles’s _Ancient Windsor_, 2 vols., 1859-63; Cothren’s _Ancient Woodbury_, 3 vols., 1854-79. Of the Pequot War we have accounts by three of the principal actors. Mason’s _History of the Pequod War_ is in the _Mass. Hist. Coll._, 2d series, vol. viii.; Underhill’s _News from America_ is in the 3d series, vol. vi.; and Lyon Gardiner’s narrative is in the 3d series, vol. iii. In the same volume with Underhill is contained _A True Relation of the late Battle fought in New England between the English and the Pequod Savages_, by Philip Vincent, London, 1638. The _New Haven Colony Records_ are edited by C.J. Hoadly, 2 vols., Hartford, 1857-58. See also the _New Haven Historical Society’s Papers_, 3 vols., 1865-80; Lambert’s _History of New Haven_, 1838; Atwater’s _History of New Haven_, 1881; Levermore’s _Republic of New Haven_, Baltimore, 1886; Johnston’s _Connecticut_, Boston, 1887. The best account of the Blue Laws is by J.H. Trumbull, _The True Blue Laws of Connecticut and New Haven, and the False Blue Laws invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters_, etc., Hartford, 1876. See also Hinman’s _Blue Laws of New Haven Colony_, Hartford, 1838; Barber’s _History and Antiquities of New Haven_, 1831; Peters’s _History of Connecticut_, London, 1781. The story of the regicides is set forth in Stiles’s _History of the Three Judges_ [the third being Colonel Dixwell], Hartford, 1794; see also the _Mather Papers_ in _Mass. Hist. Coll._, 4th series, vol. viii.
_The Rhode Island Colonial Records_ are edited by J.R. Bartlett, 7 vols., 1856-62. One of the best state histories ever written is that of S.G. Arnold, _History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations_, 2 vols., New York, 1859-60. Many valuable documents are reprinted in the _Rhode Island Historical Society’s Collections_. The _History of New England, with particular reference to the denomination called Baptists_, by Rev. Isaac Backus, 3 vols., 1777-96, has much that is valuable relating to Rhode Island. The series of _Rhode Island Historical Tracts_, issued since 1878 by Mr. S.S. Rider, is of great merit. Biographies of Roger Williams have been written by J.D. Knowles, 1834; by William Gammell, 1845; and by Romeo Elton, 1852. Williams’s works have been republished by the Narragansett Club in 6 vols., 1866. The first volume contains the valuable _Key to the Indian Languages of America_, edited by Dr. Trumbull. Williams’s views of religious liberty are set forth in his _Bloudy Tenent of Persecution_, London, 1644; to which John Cotton replied in _The Bloudy Tenent washed and made White in the Blood of the Lamb_, London, 1647; Williams’s rejoinder was entitled _The Bloudy Tenent made yet more Bloudy through Mr. Cotton’s attempt to Wash it White_, London, 1652. The controversy was conducted on both sides with a candour and courtesy rare in that age. The titles of Williams’s other principal works, _George Fox digged out of his Burrowes_, Boston, 1676; _Hireling Ministry none of Christ’s_, London, 1652; and _Christenings make not Christians_, 1643; sufficiently indicate their character. The last-named tract was discovered in the British Museum by Dr. Dexter and edited by him in Rider’s _Tracts_, No. xiv., 1881. The treatment of Roger Williams by the government of Massachusetts is thoroughly discussed in Dexter’s _As to Roger Williams_, Boston, 1876. See also G.E. Ellis on “The Treatment of Intruders and Dissentients by the Founders of Massachusetts,” in _Lowell Lectures_, Boston, 1869.
The case of Mrs. Hutchinson is treated, from a hostile and somewhat truculent point of view, in Thomas Welde’s pamphlet entitled _A Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines that infected the Churches of New England_, London, 1644. It was answered in an anonymous pamphlet entitled _Mercurius Americanus_, republished for the Prince Society, Boston, 1876, with prefatory notice by C.H. Bell. Cotton’s view of the theocracy may be seen in his _Milk for Babes, drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments_, London, 1646; _Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven_; and _Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared_, London, 1648. See also Thomas Hooker’s _Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline_, London, 1648. The intolerant spirit of the time finds quaint and forcible expression in Nathaniel Ward’s satirical book, _The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam_, 1647.
For the Gorton controversy the best original authorities are his own book entitled _Simplicitie’s Defence against Sevenheaded Polity_, London, 1646; and Winslow’s answer entitled _Hypocracie Unmasked_, London, 1646. See also Mackie’s _Life of Samuel Gorton_, Boston, 1845, and Brayton’s _Defence of Samuel Gorton_, in Rider’s _Tracts_, No. xvii.
For the early history of the Quakers, see Robert Barclay’s _Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_, London, 1876,–an admirable book. See also _New England a Degenerate Plant_, 1659; Bishop’s _New England judged by the Spirit of the Lord_, 1661; Sewel’s _History of the Quakers_, 1722; Besse’s _Sufferings of the Quakers_, 1753; _The Popish Inquisition newly erected in New England_, London, 1659; _The Secret Works of a Cruel People made Manifest_, 1659; and the pamphlet of the martyrs Stevenson and Robinson, entitled _A Call from Death to Life_, 1660. John Norton’s view of the case was presented in his book, _The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation_, London, 1660. See also J.S. Pike’s _New Puritan_, New York, 1879; Hallowell’s _Pioneer Quakers_, Boston, 1887; and his _Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts_, Boston, 1883; Brooks Adams, _The Emancipation of Massachusetts_, Boston, 1887; Ellis, _The Puritan Age and Rule_, Boston, 1888.
Some additional light upon the theocratic idea may be found in a treatise by the apostle Eliot, _The Christian Commonwealth; or, the Civil Polity of the Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ_, London, 1659. An account of Eliot’s missionary work is given in _The Day breaking, if not the Sun rising, of the Gospel with the Indians in New England_, London, 1647; and _The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England_, 1649. See also Shepard’s _Clear Sunshine of the Gospel breaking forth upon the Indians_, 1648; and Whitfield’s _Light appearing more and more towards the Perfect Day_, 1651.
The principal authority for Philip’s war is Hubbard’s _Present State of New England, being a Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians_, 1677. Church’s _Entertaining Passages relating to Philip’s War_, published in 1716, and republished in 1865, with notes by Mr. Dexter, is a charming book. See also Mrs. Rowlandson’s _True History_, Cambridge, Mass., 1682; Mather’s _Brief History of the War_, 1676; Drake’s _Old Indian Chronicle_, Boston, 1836; Gookin’s _Historical Collections of the Indians in New England_, 1674; and _Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians_, in _Archchaeologia Americana_, vol. ii. Batten’s _Journal_ is the diary of a citizen of Boston, sent to England, and it now in MS. among the _Colonial Papers_. Mrs. Mary Pray’s letter (Oct. 20, 1675) is in _Mass. Hist. Coll._, 5th series, vol. i. p. 105.
The great storehouse of information for the Andros period is the _Andros Tracts_, 3 vols., edited for the Prince Society by W.H. Whitmore. See also Sewall’s _Diary, Mass. Hist. Coll._, 5th series, vols. v.–viii. Sewall has been appropriately called the Puritan Pepys. His book is a mirror of the state of society in Massachusetts at the time when it was beginning to be felt that the old theocratic idea had been tried in the balance and found wanting. There is a wonderful charm in such a book. It makes one feel as if one had really “been there” and taken part in the homely scenes, full of human interest, which it so naively portrays. Anne Bradstreet’s works have been edited by J.H. Ellis, Charlestown, 1867.
For further references and elaborate bibliographical discussions, see Winsor’s _Narrative and Critical History of America_, vol. iii.; and his _Memorial History of Boston_, 4 vols., Boston, 1880. There is a good account of the principal New England writers of the seventeenth century, with illustrative extracts, in Tyler’s _History of American Literature_, 2 vols., New York, 1878. For extracts see also the first two volumes of Stedman and Hutchinson’s _Library of American Literature_, New York, 1888.
In conclusion I would observe that town histories, though seldom written in a philosophical spirit and apt to be quite amorphous in structure, are a mine of wealth for the philosophic student of history.
NOTES:
[1] Milman, _Lat. Christ._ vii. 395.
[2] Gardiner, _The Puritan Revolution_, p. 12.
[3] Green, _History of the English People_, iii. 47.
[4] Steele’s _Life of Brewster,_ p. 161.
[5] Gardiner, _Puritan Revolution_, p. 50.
[6] It is now 204 years since a battle has been fought in England. The last was Sedgmoor in 1685. For four centuries, since Bosworth, in 1485, the English people have lived in peace in their own homes, except for the brief episode of the Great Rebellion, and Monmouth’s slight affair. This long peace, unparalleled in history, has powerfully influenced the English and American character for good. Since the Middle Ages most English warfare has been warfare at a distance, and that does not nourish the brutal passions in the way that warfare at home does. An instructive result is to be seen in the mildness of temper which characterized the conduct of our stupendous Civil War. Nothing like it was ever seen before.
[7] Picton’s _Cromwell_, pp. 61, 67; Gardiner, _Puritan Revolution_, p. 72.
[8] Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 654.
[9] C.F. Adams, _Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight_, p. 31.
[10] The compact drawn up in the Mayflower’s cabin was not, in the strict sense a constitution, which is a document defining and limiting the functions of government. Magna Charta partook of the nature of a written constitution, as far as it went, but it did not create a government.
[11] See Johnston’s Connecticut, p. 321, a very brilliant book.
[12] See the passionate exclamation of Endicott, below, p. 190.
[13] Excursions of an Evolutionist: pp. 250, 255.
[14] A glimmer of light upon Gorton may be got from reading the title-page of one of his books: “AN INCORRUPTIBLE KEY, composed of the CX PSALME, wherewith you may open the Rest of the Holy Scriptures; Turning itself only according to the Composure and Art of that Lock, of the Closure and Secresie of that great Mystery of God manifest in the Flesh, but justified only by the Spirit, which it evidently openeth and revealeth, out of Fall and Resurrection, Sin and Righteousness, Ascension and Descension, Height and Depth, First and Last, Beginning and Ending, Flesh and Spirit, Wisdome and Foolishnesse, Strength and Weakness, Mortality and Immortality, Jew and Gentile, Light and Darknesse, Unity and Multiplication, Fruitfulness and Barrenness, Curse and Blessing, Man and Woman, Kingdom and Priesthood, Heaven and Earth, Allsufficiency and Deficiency, God and Man. And out of every Unity made up of twaine, it openeth that great two-leafed Gate, which is the sole Entrie into the City of God, of New Jerusalem, _into which none but the King of glory can enter_; and as that Porter openeth the Doore of the Sheepfold, _by which whosoever entreth is the Shepheard of the Sheep_; See Isa. 45. 1. Psal. 24. 7, 8, 9, 10. John 10. 1, 2, 3; Or, (according to the Signification of the Word translated _Psalme_,) it is a Pruning-Knife, to lop off from the Church of Christ all superfluous Twigs _of earthly and carnal Commandments_, Leviticall Services or Ministery, and fading and vanishing Priests, or Ministers, who are taken away and cease, and are not established and confirmed by Death, as holding no Correspondency with the princely Dignity, Office, and Ministry of our _Melchisedek_, who is the only Minister and Ministry of the Sanctuary, and of that true Tabernacle which the Lord pitcht, and not Man. For it supplants the Old Man, and implants the New; abrogates the Old Testament or Covenant, and confirms the New, unto a thousand Generations, or in Generations forever. By Samuel Gorton, _Gent._, and at the time of penning hereof, in the Place of Judicature (upon Aquethneck, alias Road Island) of Providence Plantations in the Nanhyganset Bay, New England. Printed in the Yeere 1647.”
[15] Father of Benedict Arnold, afterward governor of Rhode Island, and owner of the stone windmill (apparently copied from one in Chesterton, Warwickshire) which was formerly supposed by some antiquarians to be a vestige of the Northmen. Governor Benedict Arnold was great-grandfather of the traitor.
[16] _Gorton, Simplicitie’s Defence against Seven-headed Policy_, p. 88.
[17] De Forest, _History of the Indians of Connecticut_, Hartford, 1850, p. 198.
[18] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, i. 324.
[19] See below, p. 222, note.
[20] See my _Excursions of an Evolutionist,_ pp. 239-242, 250-255, 286-289.
[21] Gorton’s life at Warwick, after all these troubles, seems to have been quiet and happy. He died in 1677 at a great age. In 1771 Dr. Ezra Stiles visited, in Providence, his last surviving disciple, born in 1691. This old man said that Gorton wrote in heaven, and none can understand his books except those who live in heaven while on earth.
[22] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_,: i. 369.
[23] Doyle, i.: 372.
[24] Milman, _Latin Christianity_, vii. 390.
[25] Doyle, ii. 133, 134; Rhode Island Records, i. 377, 378.
[26] Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, pp. 14-16; Levermore’s Republic of New Haven, p. 153.
[27] See my remarks above, p. 145.
[28] The daring passage in the sermon is thus given in Bacon’s _Historical Discourses_, New Haven, 1838: “Withhold not countenance, entertainment, and protection from the people of God–whom men may call fools and fanatics–if any such come to you from other countries, as from France or England, or any other place. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. Remember those that are in bonds, as bound with them. The Lord required this of Moab, saying, ‘Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.’ Is it objected–‘But so I may expose myself to be spoiled or troubled’? He, therefore, to remove this objection, addeth, ‘For the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land.’ While we are attending to our duty in owning and harbouring Christ’s witnesses, God will be providing for their and our safety, by destroying those that would destroy his people.”
[29] Palfrey, _History of New England,_ in. 138-140.
[30] See Parkman, _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, i. 80-85.
[31] De Forest, _History of the Indians of Connecticut,_ pp. 252, 257.
[32] The story rests chiefly upon the statements of Hutchinson, an extremely careful and judicious writer, and not in the least what the French call a _gobemouche_. Goffe kept a diary which came into Hutchinson’s possession, and was one of the priceless manuscripts that perished in the infamous sacking of his house by the Boston mob of August 26, 1765. What light that diary might have thrown upon the matter can never be known. Hutchinson was born in 1711, only thirty-six years after the event, so that his testimony is not so very far removed from that of a contemporary. Whalley seems to have died in Hadley shortly before 1675, and Goffe deemed it prudent to leave that neighbourhood in 1676. His letters to Increase Mather are dated from “Ebenezer,” i. e., wherever in his roamings he set up his Ebenezer. One of these letters, dated September 8, 1676, shows that his Ebenezer was then set up in Hartford, where probably he died about 1679 In 1676 the arrival of Edward Randolph (see below, p. 256) renewed the peril of the regicide judge, and his sudden removal from his skilfully contrived hiding-place at Hadley might possibly have been due to his having exposed himself to recognition in the Indian fight. Possibly even the supernatural explanation might have been started, with a touch of Yankee humour, as a blind. The silence of Mather and Hubbard was no more remarkable than some of the other ingenious incidents which had so long served to conceal the existence of this sturdy and crafty man. The reasons for doubting the story are best stated by Mr. George Sheldon of Deerfield, in _Hist.-Genealogical Register_, October, 1874.
[33] If Philip was half the diplomatist that he is represented in tradition, he never would have gone into such a war without assurance of Narragansett help. Canonchet was a far more powerful sachem than Philip, and played a more conspicuous part in the war. May we not suppose that Canonchet’s desire to avenge his father’s death was one of the principal incentives to the war; that Philip’s attack upon Swanzey was a premature explosion; and that Canonchet then watched the course of events for a while before making up his mind whether to abandon Philip or support him?
[34] A wretched little werewolf who some few years ago, being then a lad of fourteen or fifteen years, most cruelly murdered two or three young children, just to amuse himself with their dying agonies. The misdirected “humanitarianism,” which in our country makes every murderer an object of popular sympathy, prevailed to save this creature from the gallows. Massachusetts has lately witnessed a similar instance of misplaced clemency in the case of a vile woman who had poisoned eight or ten persons, including some of her own children, in order to profit by their life insurance. Such instances help to explain the prolonged vitality of “Judge Lynch,” and sometimes almost make one regret the days in old England when William Probert, after escaping in 1824 as “king’s evidence,” from the Thurtell affair, got caught and hanged within a twelvemonth for horse-stealing. Any one who wishes to study the results of allowing criminality to survive and propagate itself should read Dugdale’s The Jukes; Hereditary Crime, New York, 1877.
[35] Weeden, _Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization_, Johns Hopkins University Studies, II. viii., ix. p. 30.
[36] Doyle, ii. 253.
[37] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, ii. 254.
[38] The quotation is from an unpublished letter of Rev. Robert Ratcliffe to the Bishop of London, cited in an able article in the _Boston Herald_, January 4, 1888. I have not seen the letter.
[39] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, ii. 379, 380.