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and he finding thereby that he had corn, which was his design, Judas-like, he went … and measured it away as he pleased.”

“Another time, the said Eliakim being rated to the said priest, Seaborn Cotton, the said Seaborn having a mind to a pied heifer Eliakim had, as Ahab had to Naboth’s vineyard, sent his servant nigh two miles to fetch her; who having robb’d Eliakim of her, brought her to his master.”…

“Again the said Eliakim was had to your court, and being by them fined, they took almost all his marsh and meadow-ground from him to satisfie it, which was for the keeping his cattle alive in winter … and [so] seized and took his estate, that they plucked from him most of that he had.” [Footnote: _New England Judged,_ ed. 1703, pp. 374-376.] Lydia Wardwell, thus reduced to penury, and shaken by the daily scenes of unutterable horror through which she had to pass, was totally unequal to endure the strain under which the masculine intellect of Anne Hutchinson had reeled. She was pursued by her pastor, who repeatedly commanded her to come to church and explain her absence from communion. [Footnote: Besse, ii. 235.] The miserable creature, brooding over her blighted life and the torments of her friends, became possessed with the delusion that it was her duty to testify against the barbarity of flogging naked women; so she herself went in among them naked for a sign. There could be no clearer proof of insanity, for it is admitted that in every other respect her conduct was exemplary.

Her judges at Ipswich had her bound to a rough post of the tavern, in which they sat, and then, while the splinters tore her bare breasts, they had her flesh cut from her back with the lash. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 377.]

“Thus they served the wife, and the husband escaped not free; … he taxing Simon Broadstreet, … for upbraiding his wife … and telling Simon of his malitious reproaching of his wife who was an honest woman … and of that report that went abroad of the known dishonesty of Simon’s daughter, Seaborn Cotton’s wife; Simon in a fierce rage, told the court, ‘That if such fellows should be suffered to speak so in the court, he would sit there no more:’ So to please Simon, Eliakim was sentenc’d to be stripp’d from his waste upward, and to be bound to an oak-tree that stood by their worship-house, and to be whipped fifteen lashes; … as they were having him out … he called to Seaborn Cotton … to come and see the work done (so far was he from being daunted by their cruelty), who hastned out and followed him thither, and so did old Wiggins, one of the magistrates, who when Eliakim was tyed to the tree and stripp’d, said … to the whipper… ‘Whip him a good;’ which the executioner cruelly performed with cords near as big as a man’s little finger;… Priest Cotton standing near him … Eliakim … when he was loosed from the tree, said to him, amongst the people, ‘Seaborn, hath my py’d heifer calv’d yet?’ Which Seaborn, the priest, hearing stole away like a thief.” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 377-379.]

As Margaret Brewster was the last who is known to have been whipped, so is she one of the most famous, for she has been immortalized by Samuel Sewall, an honest, though a dull man.

“July 8, 1677. New Meeting House Mane: In sermon time there came in a female Quaker, in a canvas frock, her hair disshevelled and loose like a Periwigg, her face as black as ink, led by two other Quakers, and two other followed. It occasioned the greatest and most amazing uproar that I ever saw. Isaiah 1. 12, 14.” [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series, v. 43.]

In 1675 the persecution had been revived, and the stories the woman heard of the cruelties that were perpetrated on those of her own faith inspired her with the craving to go to New England to protest against the wrong; so she journeyed thither, and entered the Old South one Sunday morning clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head.

At her trial she asked for leave to speak: “Governour, I desire thee to hear me a little, for I have something to say in behalf of my friends in this place: … Oh governour! I cannot but press thee again and again, to put an end to these cruel laws that you have made to fetch my friends from their peaceable meetings, and keep them three days in the house of correction, and then whip them for worshipping the true and living God: Governour! Let me entreat thee to put an end to these laws, for the desire of my soul is, that you may act for God, and then would you prosper, but if you act against the Lord and his blessed truth, you will assuredly come to nothing, the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” …

“Margaret Brewster, You are to have your clothes stript off to the middle, and to be tied to a cart’s tail at the South Meeting House, and to be drawn through the town, and to receive twenty stripes upon your naked body.”

“The will of the Lord be done: I am contented.” …

_Governour._ “Take her away.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 263, 264.]

So ends the sacerdotal list of Quaker outrages, for, after Margaret Brewster had expiated her crime of protesting against the repression of free thought, there came a toleration, and with toleration a deep tranquillity, so that the very name of Quaker has become synonymous with quietude. The issue between them and the Congregationalists must be left to be decided upon the legal question of their right as English subjects to inhabit Massachusetts; and secondarily upon the opinion which shall be formed of their conduct as citizens, upon the testimony of those witnesses whom the church herself has called. But regarding the great fundamental struggle for liberty of individual opinion, no presentation of the evidence could be historically correct which did not include at least one example of the fate that awaited peaceful families, under this ecclesiastical government, who roused the ire of the priests.

Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were an aged couple, members of the Salem church, and Lawrence was a freeman. Josiah, their eldest son, was a man; but they had beside a younger boy and girl named Daniel and Provided.

The father and mother were first arrested in 1657 for harboring two Quakers; Lawrence was soon released, but a Quaker tract was found upon Cassandra. [Footnote: Besse, ii. 183.] Although no attempt seems to have been made to prove heresy to bring the case within the letter of the law, the paper was treated as a heretical writing, and she was imprisoned for seven weeks and fined forty shillings.

Persecution made converts fast, and in Salem particularly a number withdrew from the church and began to worship by themselves. All were soon arrested, and the three Southwicks were again sent to Boston, this time to serve as an example. They arrived on the 3d of February, 1657; without form of trial they were whipped in the extreme cold weather and imprisoned eleven days. Their cattle were also seized and sold to pay a fine of £4 l3s. for six weeks’ absence from worship on the Lord’s day.

The next summer, Leddra, who was afterwards hanged, and William Brend went to Salem, and several persons were seized for meeting with them, among whom were the Southwicks. A room was prepared for the criminals in the Boston prison by boarding up the windows and stopping ventilation. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 64.] They were refused food unless they worked to pay for it; but to work when wrongfully confined was against the Quaker’s conscience, so they did not eat for five days. On the second day of fasting they were flogged, and then, with wounds undressed, the men and women together were once more locked in the dark, close room, to lie upon the bare boards, in the stifling July heat; for they were not given beds. On the fourth day they were told they might go if they would pay the jail fees and the constables; but they refused, and so were kept in prison. On the morrow the jailer, thinking to bring them to terms, put Brend in irons, neck and heels, and he lay without food for sixteen hours upon his back lacerated with flogging.

The next day the miserable man was ordered to work, but he lacked the strength, had he been willing, for he was weak from starvation and pain, and stiffened by the irons. And now the climax came. The jailer seized a tarred rope and beat him till it broke; then, foaming with fury, he dragged the old man down stairs, and, with a new rope, gave him ninety- seven blows, when his strength failed; and Brend, his flesh black and beaten to jelly, and his bruised skin hanging in bags full of clotted blood, was thrust into his cell. There, upon the floor of that dark and fetid den, the victim fainted. But help was at hand; an outcry was raised, the people could bear no more, the doors were opened, and he was rescued. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 66.]

The indignation was deep, and the government was afraid. Endicott sent his own doctor, but the surgeon said that Brend’s flesh would “rot from off his bones,” and he must die. And now the mob grew fierce and demanded justice on the ruffian who had done this deed, and the magistrates nailed a paper on the church door promising to bring him to trial.

Then it was that the true spirit of his order blazed forth in Norton, for the jailer was fashioned in his own image, and he threw over him the mantle of the holy church. He made the magistrates take the paper down, rebuking them for their faintness of heart, saying to them:–

William “Brend endeavoured to beat our gospel ordinances black and blue, if he then be beaten black and blue, it is but just upon him, and I will appear in his behalf that did so.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 186.] And the man was justified, and commanded to whip “the Quakers in prison … twice a week, if they refused to work, and the first time to add five stripes to the former ten, and each time to add three to them…. Which order ye sent to the jaylor, to strengthen his hands to do yet more cruelly; being somewhat weakened by the fright of his former doings.” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 67.]

After this the Southwicks, being still unable to obtain their freedom, sent the following letter to the magistrates, which is a good example of the writings of these “coarse, blustering, … impudent fanatics:”– [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 138.]

* * * * *

_This to the Magistrates at Court in Salem._

FRIENDS,

Whereas it was your pleasures to commit us, whose names are under-written, to the house of correction in Boston, altho’ the Lord, the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, is our witness, that we had done nothing worthy of stripes or of bonds; and we being committed by your court, to be dealt withal as the law provides for foreign Quakers, as ye please to term us; and having some of us, suffered your law and pleasures, now that which we do expect, is, that whereas we have suffered your law, so now to be set free by the same law, as your manner is with strangers, and not to put us in upon the account of one law, and execute another law upon us, of which, according to your own manner, we were never convicted as the law expresses. If you had sent us upon the account of your new law, we should have expected the jaylor’s order to have been on that account, which that it was not, appears by the warrant which we have, and the punishment which we bare, as four of us were whipp’d, among whom was one that had formerly been whipp’d, so now also according to your former law. Friends, let it not be a small thing in your eyes, the exposing as much as in you lies, our families to ruine. It’s not unknown to you the season, and the time of the year, for those that live of husbandry, and what their cattle and families may be exposed unto; and also such as live on trade; we know if the spirit of Christ did dwell and rule in you, these things would take impression on your spirits. What our lives and conversations have been in that place, is well known; and what we now suffer for, is much for false reports, and ungrounded jealousies of heresie and sedition. These thing lie upon us to lay before you. As for our parts, we have true peace and rest in the Lord in all our sufferings, and are made willing in the power and strength of God, freely to offer up our lives in this cause of God, for which we suffer; Yea and we do find (through grace) the enlargements of God in our imprisoned state, to whom alone we commit ourselves and families, for the disposing of us according to his infinite wisdom and pleasure, in whose love is our rest and life.

From the House of Bondage in Boston wherein we are made captives by the wills of men, although made free by the Son, John 8, 36. In which we quietly rest, this 16th of the 5th month, 1658.

LAWRENCE |
CASSANDRA | SOUTHWICK
JOSIAH |
SAMUEL SHATTOCK
JOSHUA BUFFUM. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 74.]

* * * * *

What the prisoners apprehended was being kept in prison and punished under an _ex post facto_ law, and this was precisely what was done. When brought into court they demanded to be told the crime wherewith they were charged. They were answered: “It was ‘Entertaining the Quakers who were their enemies; not coming to their meetings; and meeting by themselves.’ They adjoyned, ‘That as to those things they had already fastned their law upon them.’ … So ye had nothing left but the hat, for which (then) ye had no law. They answered–that they intended no offence to ye in coming thither … for it was not their manner to have to do with courts. And as for withdrawing from their meetings, or keeping on their hats, or doing anything in contempt of them, or their laws, they said, the Lord was their witness … that they did it not. So ye rose up, and bid the jaylor take them away.” [Footnote: _New England Judged,_ ed. 1703, p. 85.]

An acquittal seemed certain; yet it was intolerable to the clergy that these accursed blasphemers should elude them when they held them in their grasp; wherefore, the next day, the Rev. Charles Chauncy, preaching at Thursday lecture, thus taught Christ’s love for men: “Suppose ye should catch six wolves in a trap … [there were six Salem Quakers] and ye cannot prove that they killed either sheep or lambs; and now ye have them they will neither bark nor bite: yet they have the plain marks of wolves. Now I leave it to your consideration whether ye will let them go alive, yea or nay.” [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 85, 86.]

Then the divines had a consultation, “and your priests were put to it, how to prove them as your law had said: and ye had them before you again, and your priests were with you, every one by his side (so came ye to your court) and John Norton must ask them questions, on purpose to ensnare them, that by your standing law for hereticks, ye might condemn them (as your priests before consulted) and when this would not do (for the Lord was with them, and made them wiser than your teachers) ye made a law to banish them, upon pain of death….” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 87.]

After a violent struggle, the ministers, under Norton’s lead, succeeded, on the 19th of October, 1658, in forcing the capital act through the legislature, which contained a clause making the denial of reverence to superiors, or in other words, the wearing the hat, evidence of Quakerism. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 100, 101; _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 346.]

On that very day the bench ordered the prisoners at Ipswich to be brought to the bar, and the Southwicks were bidden to depart before the spring elections. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 349.] They did not go, and in May were once more in the felon’s dock. They asked what wrong they had done. The judges told them they were rebellious for not going as they had been commanded. The old man and woman piteously pleaded “that they had no otherwhere to go,” nor had they done anything to deserve banishment or death, though £100 (all they had in the world) had been taken from them for meeting together. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 106.]

“Major-General Dennison replied, that ‘they stood against the authority of the country, in not submitting to their laws: that he should not go about to speak much concerning the error of their judgments: but,’ added he, ‘you and we are not able well to live together, and at present the power is in our hand, and therefore the stronger must send off.'” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 198.]

The father, mother, and son were banished under pain of death. The aged couple were sent to Shelter Island, but their misery was well-nigh done; they perished within a few days of each other, tortured to death by flogging and starvation.

Josiah was shipped to England, but afterward returned, was seized, and in the “seventh month, 1661, you had him before you, and at which according to your former law, he should have been tried for his life.”

“But the great occasion you took against him, was his hat, which you commanded him to pull off: ‘He told your governour he could not.’ You said, ‘He would not.’ He told you, ‘It was a cross to his will to keep it on; … and that he could not do it for conscience sake.’ … But your governour told him, ‘That he was to have been tryed for his life, but that you had made your late law to save his life, which, you said, was mercy to him.’ Then he asked you, ‘Whether you were not as good to take his life now, as to whip him after your manner, twelve or fourteen times at the cart’s tail, through your towns, and then put him to death afterward?'” He was condemned to be flogged through Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham; but he, when he heard the judgment, “with arms stretched out, and hands spread before you, said, ‘Here is my body, if you want a further testimony of the truth I profess, take it and tear it in pieces … it is freely given up, and as for your sentence I matter it not.'” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 354-356.]

This coarse, blustering, impudent fanatic had, indeed, “with a dogged pertinacity persisted in outrages which “had driven” the authorities almost to frenzy; “therefore they tied him to a cart and lashed him for fifteen miles, and while he “sang to the praise of God,” his tormentor swung with all his might a tremendous two-handed whip, whose knotted thongs were made of twisted cat-gut; [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 357, note.] thence he was carried fifteen miles from any town into the wilderness.” [Footnote: Besse, ii. 225.]

An end had been made of the grown members of the family, but the two children were still left. To reach them, the device was conceived of enforcing the penalty for not attending church, since “it was well known they had no estate, their parents being already brought to poverty by their rapacious persecutors.” [Footnote: Sewel, p. 223.]

Accordingly, they were summoned and asked to account for their absence from worship. Daniel answered “that if they had not so persecuted his father and mother perhaps he might have come.” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 381.] They were fined; and on the day on which they lost their parents forever, the sale as slaves of this helpless boy and girl was authorized to satisfy the debt. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 366.]

Edmund Batter, treasurer of Salem, brought the children to the town, and went to a shipmaster who was about to sail, to engage a passage to Barbadoes. The captain made the excuse that they would corrupt his ship’s company. “Oh, no,” said Batter, “you need not fear that, for they are poor harmless creatures, and will not hurt any body.” … “Will they not so?” broke out the sailor, “and will ye offer to make slaves of so harmless creatures?” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 112.]

Thus were free-born English subjects and citizens of Massachusetts dealt with by the priesthood that ruled the Puritan Commonwealth.

None but ecclesiastical partisans can doubt the bearing of such evidence. It was the mortal struggle between conservatism and liberality, between repression and free thought. The elders felt it in the marrow of their bones, and so declared it in their laws, denouncing banishment under pain of death against those “adhering to or approoving of any knoune Quaker, or the tenetts & practices of the Quakers, … manifesting thereby theire compliance with those whose designe it is to ouerthrow the order established in church and commonwealth.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 346.]

Dennison spoke with an unerring instinct when he said they could not live together, for the faith of the Friends was subversive of a theocracy. Their belief that God revealed himself directly to man led with logical certainty to the substitution of individual judgment for the rules of conduct dictated by a sacred class, whether they claimed to derive their authority from their skill in interpreting the Scriptures, or from traditions preserved by Apostolic Succession. Each man, therefore, became, as it were, a priest unto himself, and they repudiated an ordained ministry. Hence, their crime resembled that of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who “made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi;” [Footnote: Jeroboam’s sin is discussed in _Ne Sutor_, p. 25; _Divine Right of Infant Baptism_, p. 26.] and it was for this reason that John Norton and John Endicott resolved upon their extermination, even as Elisha and Jehu conspired to exterminate the house of Ahab.

That they failed was due to no mercy for their victims, nor remorse for the blood they made to flow, but to their inability to control the people. Nothing is plainer upon the evidence, than that popular sympathy was never with the ecclesiastics in their ferocious policy; and nowhere does the contrast of feeling shine out more clearly than in the story of the hanging of Robinson and Stevenson.

The figure of Norton towers above his contemporaries. He held the administration in the hollow of his hand, for Endicott was his mouthpiece; yet even he, backed by the whole power of the clergy, barely succeeded in forcing through the Chamber of Deputies the statute inflicting death.

“The priests and rulers were all for blood, and they pursued it…. This the deputies withstood, and it could not pass, and the opposition grew strong, for the thing came near. Deacon Wozel was a man much affected therewith; and being not well at that time that he supposed the vote might pass, he earnestly desired the speaker … to send for him when it was to be, lest by his absence it might miscarry. The deputies that were against the … law, thinking themselves strong enough to cast it out, forbore to send for him. The vote was put and carried in the affirmative,–the speaker and eleven being in the negative and thirteen in the affirmative: so one vote carried it; which troubled Wozel so … that he got to the court, … and wept for grief, … and said ‘If he had not been able to go, he would have crept upon his hands and knees, rather than it should have been.'” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 101, 102.]

After the accused had been condemned, the people, being strongly moved, flocked about the prison, so that the magistrates feared a rescue, and a guard was set.

As the day approached the murmurs grew, and on the morning of the execution the troops were under arms and the streets patrolled. Stevenson and Robinson were loosed from their fetters, and Mary Dyer, who also was to die, walked between them; and so they went bravely hand in hand to the scaffold. The prisoners were put behind the drums, and their voices drowned when they tried to speak; for a great multitude was about them, and at a word, in their deep excitement, would have risen. [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 122, 123.]

As the solemn procession moved along, they came to where the Reverend John Wilson, the Boston pastor, stood with others of the clergy. Then Wilson “fell a taunting at Robinson, and, shaking his hand in a light, scoffing manner, said, ‘Shall such Jacks as you come in before authority with your hats on?’ with many other taunting words.” Then Robinson replied, “Mind you, mind you, it is for the not putting off the hat we are put to death.” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 124.]

When they reached the gallows, Robinson calmly climbed the ladder and spoke a few words. He told the people they did not suffer as evil-doers, but as those who manifested the truth. He besought them to mind the light of Christ within them, of which he testified and was to seal with his blood.

He had said so much when Wilson broke in upon him: “Hold thy tongue, be silent; thou art going to dye with a lye in thy mouth.” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 125.] Then they seized him and bound him, and so he died; and his body was “cast into a hole of the earth,” where it lay uncovered.

Even the voters, the picked retainers of the church, were almost equally divided, and beyond that narrow circle the tide of sympathy ran strong.

The Rev. John Rayner stood laughing with joy to see Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose flogged through Dover, on that bitter winter day; but the men of Salisbury cut those naked, bleeding women from the cart, and saved them from their awful death.

The Rev. John Norton sneered at the tortures of Brend, and brazenly defended his tormentor; but the Boston mob succored the victim as lie lay fainting on the boards of his dark cell.

The Rev. Charles Chauncy, preaching the word of God, told his hearers to kill the Southwicks like wolves, since he could not have their blood by law; but the honest sailor broke out in wrath when asked to traffic in the flesh of our New England children.

The Rev. John Wilson jeered at Robinson on his way to meet his death, and reviled him as he stood beneath the gibbet, over the hole that was his grave; but even the savage Endicott knew well that all the trainbands of the colony could not have guarded Christison to the gallows from the dungeon where he lay condemned.

Yet awful as is this Massachusetts tragedy, it is but a little fragment of the sternest struggle of the modern world. The power of the priesthood lies in submission to a creed. In their onslaughts on rebellion they have exhausted human torments; nor, in their lust for earthly dominion, have they felt remorse, but rather joy, when slaying Christ’s enemies and their own. The horrors of the Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the atrocities of Laud, the abominations of the Scotch Kirk, the persecution of the Quakers, had one object,–the enslavement of the mind.

Freedom of thought is the greatest triumph over tyranny that brave men have ever won; for this they fought the wars of the Reformation; for this they have left their bones to whiten upon unnumbered fields of battle; for this they have gone by thousands to the dungeon, the scaffold, and the stake. We owe to their heroic devotion the most priceless of our treasures, our perfect liberty of thought and speech; and all who love our country’s freedom may well reverence the memory of those martyred Quakers by whose death and agony the battle in New England has been won.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SCIRE FACIAS.

Had the Puritan Commonwealth been in reality the thing which its historians have described; had it been a society guided by men devoted to civil liberty, and as liberal in religion as was consistent with the temper of their age, the early relations of Massachusetts toward Great Britain might now be a pleasanter study for her children. Cordiality toward Charles I. would indeed have been impossible, for the Puritans well knew the fate in store for them should the court triumph. Gorges was the representative of the despotic policy toward America, and so early as 1634, probably at his instigation, Laud became the head of a commission, with absolute control over the plantations, while the next year a writ of _quo warranto_ was brought against the patent. [Footnote: See introduction to _New Canaan_, Prince Soc. ed.] With Naseby, however, these dangers vanished, and thenceforward there would have been nothing to mar an affectionate confidence in both Parliament and the Protector.

In fact, however, Massachusetts was a petty state, too feeble for independence, yet ruled by an autocratic priesthood whose power rested upon legislation antagonistic to English law; therefore the ecclesiastics were jealous of Parliament, and had little love for Cromwell, whom they found wanting in “a thorough testimony against the blasphemers of our days.” [Footnote: Diary of Hull, Palfrey, ii. 400, 401, and note.]

The result was that the elders clung obstinately to every privilege which served their ends, and repudiated every obligation which conflicted with their ambition. Clerical political morality seldom fails to be instructive, and the following example is typical of that peculiar mode of reasoning. The terms of admission to ordinary corporations were fixed by each organization for itself, but in case of injustice the courts could give relief by setting aside unreasonable ordinances, and sometimes Parliament itself would interfere, as it did upon the petition against the exactions of the Merchant Adventurers. Now there was nothing upon which the theocracy more strongly insisted than that “our charter doeth expresly give vs an absolute & free choyce of our oune members;” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 287.] because by means of a religious test the ministers could pack the constituencies with their tools; but on the other hand they as strenuously argued “that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against us,” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 283.] because they well knew that any bench of judges before whom such questions might come would annul the most vital of their statutes as repugnant to the British Constitution.

Unfortunately for these churchmen, their objects, as ecclesiastical politicians, could seldom be reconciled with their duty as English subjects. At the outset, though made a corporation within the realm, they felt constrained to organize in America to escape judicial supervision. They were then obliged to incorporate towns and counties, to form a representative assembly, and to levy general taxes and duties, none of which things they had power to do. Still, such irregularities as these, had they been all, most English statesmen would have overlooked as unavoidable. But when it came to adopting a criminal code based on the Pentateuch, and, in support of a dissenting form of worship, fining and imprisoning, whipping, mutilating, and hanging English subjects without the sanction of English law; when, finally, the Episcopal Church itself was suppressed, and peaceful subjects were excluded from the corporation for no reason but because they partook of her communion, and were forbidden to seek redress by appealing to the courts of their king, it seems impossible that any self-respecting government could have long been passive.

At the Restoration Massachusetts had grown arrogant from long impunity. She thought the time of reckoning would never come, and even in trivial matters seemed to take a pride in slighting Great Britain and in vaunting her independence. Laws were enacted in the name of the Commonwealth, the king’s name was not in the writs, nor were the royal arms upon the public buildings; even the oath of allegiance was rejected, though it was unobjectionable in form. She had grown to believe that were offence taken she had only to invent pretexts for delay, to have her fault forgotten in some new revolution. General Denison, at the Quaker trials, put the popular belief in a nut-shell: “This year ye will go to complain to the Parliament, and the next year they will send to see how it is; and the third year the government is changed.” [Footnote: Sewel, p. 280.]

But, beside these irritating domestic questions, the corporation was bitterly embroiled with its neighbors. Samuel Gorton and his friends were inhabitants of Rhode Island, and were, no doubt, troublesome to deal with; but their particular offence was ecclesiastical. An armed force was sent over the border and they were seized. They were brought to Boston and tried on the charge of being “blasphemous enemies of the true religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all his holy ordinances, and likewise of all civil government among his people, and particularly within this jurisdiction.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 146.] All the magistrates but three thought that Gorton ought to die, but he was finally sentenced to an imprisonment of barbarous cruelty. The invasion of Rhode Island was a violation of an independent jurisdiction, the arrest was illegal, the sentence an arbitrary outrage. [Footnote: See paper of Mr. Charles Deane, _New Eng. Historical and Genealogical Register_, vol. iv.]

Massachusetts was also at feud in the north, and none of her quarrels brought more serious results than this with the proprietors of New Hampshire and Maine. The grant in the charter was of all lands between the Charles and Merrimack, and also all lands within the space of three miles to the northward of the said Merrimack, or to the northward of any part thereof, and all lands lying within the limits aforesaid from the Atlantic to the South Sea.

Clearly the intention was to give a margin of three miles beyond a river which was then supposed to flow from west to east, and accordingly the territory to the north, being unoccupied, was granted to Mason and Gorges. Nor was this construction questioned before 1639–the General Court having at an early day measured off the three miles and marked the boundary by what was called the Bound House.

Gradually, however, as it became known that the Merrimack rose to the north, larger claims were made. In 1641 the four New Hampshire towns were absorbed with the consent of their inhabitants, who thus gained a regular government; another happy consequence was the settlement of sundry eminent divines, by whose ministrations the people “were very much civilized and reformed.” [Footnote: Neal’s New England, i. 210.]

In 1652 a survey was made of the whole river, and 43° 40′ 12″ was fixed as the latitude of its source. A line extended east from three miles north of this point came out near Portland, and the intervening space was forthwith annexed. The result of such a policy was that Charles had hardly been crowned before complaints poured in from every side. Quakers, Baptists, Episcopalians, all who had suffered persecution, flocked to the foot of the throne; and beside these came those who had been injured in their estates, foremost of whom were the heirs of Mason and Gorges. The pressure was so great and the outcry so loud that, in September, 1660, it was thought in London a governor-general would be sent to Boston; [Footnote: Leverett to Endicott. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 40.] and, in point of fact, almost the first communication between the king and his colony was his order to spare the Quakers.

The outlook was gloomy, and there was hesitation as to the course to pursue. At length it was decided to send Norton and Bradstreet to England to present an address and protect the public interests. The mission was not agreeable; Norton especially was reluctant, and with reason, for he had been foremost in the Quaker persecutions, and was probably aware that in the eye of English law the executions were homicide.

However, after long vacillation, “the Lord so encouraged and strengthened” his heart that he ventured to sail. [Footnote: Feb. 11, 1661-2. Palfrey, ii. 524.] So far as the crown was concerned apprehension was needless, for Lord Clarendon was prime minister, whose policy toward New England was throughout wise and moderate, and the agents were well received. Still they were restless in London, and Sewel tells an anecdote which may partly account for their impatience to be gone.

“Now the deputies of New England came to London, and endeavored to clear themselves as much as possible, but especially priest Norton, who bowed no less reverently before the archbishop, than before the king….

“They would fain have altogether excused themselves; and priest Norton thought it sufficient to say that he did not assist in the bloody trial, nor had advised to it. But John Copeland, whose ear was cut off at Boston, charged the contrary upon him: and G. Fox, the elder, got occasion to speak with them in the presence of some of his friends, and asked Simon Broadstreet, one of the New England magistrates, ‘whether he had not a hand in putting to death those they nicknamed Quakers?’ He not being able to deny this confessed he had. Then G. Fox asked him and his associates that were present, ‘whether they would acknowledge themselves to be subjects to the laws of England? and if they did by what law they had put his friends to death?’ They answered, ‘They were subjects to the laws of England; and they had put his friends to death by the same law, as the Jesuits were put to death in England.’ Hereupon G. Fox asked, ‘whether they did believe that those his friends, whom they had put to death, were Jesuits, or jesuitically affected?’ They said ‘Nay.’ ‘Then,’ replied G. Fox, ‘ye have murdered them; for since ye put them to death by the law that Jesuits are put to death here in England, it plainly appears, you have put them to death arbitrarily, without any law.’ Thus Broadstreet, finding himself and his company ensnar’d by their own words, ask’d, ‘Are you come to catch us?’ But he told them ‘They had catch’d themselves, and they might justly be questioned for their lives; and if the father of William Robinson (one of those that were put to death) were in town, it was probable he would question them, and bring their lives into jeopardy. For he not being of the Quakers persuasion, would perhaps not have so much regard to the point of forbearance, as they had.’ Broadstreet seeing himself thus in danger began to flinch and to sculk; for some of the old royalists were earnest with the Quakers to prosecute the New England persecutors. But G. Fox and his friends said, ‘They left them to the Lord, to whom vengeance belonged, and he would repay it.’ Broadstreet however, not thinking it safe to stay in England, left the city, and with his companions went back again to New England.” [Footnote: Sewel, p. 288.]

The following June the agents were given the king’s answer [Footnote: 1662, June 28.] to their address and then sailed for home. It is certainly a most creditable state paper. The people of Massachusetts were thanked for their good will, they were promised oblivion for the past, and were assured that they should have their charter confirmed to them and be safe in all their privileges and liberties, provided they would make certain reforms in their government. They were required to repeal such statutes as were contrary to the laws of England, to take the oath of allegiance, and to administer justice in the king’s name. And then followed two propositions that were crucial: “And since the principle and foundation of that charter was and is the freedom of liberty of conscience, wee do hereby charge and require you that that freedom and liberty be duely admitted,” especially in favor of those “that desire to use the Book of Common Prayer.” And secondly, “that all the freeholders of competent estates, not vicious in conversations, orthodox in religion (though of different perswasions concerning church government) may have their vote in the election of all officers civill or millitary.” [Footnote: Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 101-103.]

However judicious these reforms may have been, or howsoever strictly they conformed with the spirit of English law, was immaterial. They struck at the root of the secular power of the clergy, and they roused deep indignation. The agents had braved no little danger, and had shown no little skill in behalf of the commonwealth; and the fate of John Norton enables us to realize the rancor of theological feeling. The successor of Cotton, by general consent the leading minister, in some respects the most eminent man in Massachusetts, he had undertaken a difficult mission against his will, in which he had acquitted himself well; yet on his return he was so treated by his brethren and friends that he died in the spring of a broken heart. [Footnote: April 5, 1663.]

The General Court took no notice of the king’s demands except to order the writs to run in the royal name. [Footnote: Oct. 8, 1662. _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 58.] And it is a sign of the boldness, or else of the indiscretion, of those in power, that this crisis was chosen for striking a new coin, [Footnote: 1662, May 7.]–an act confessedly illegal and certain to give offence in England, both as an assumption of sovereignty and an interference with the currency.

From the first Lord Clarendon paid some attention to colonial affairs, and he appears to have been much dissatisfied with the condition in which he found them. At length, in 1664, he decided to send a commission to New England to act upon the spot.

Great pressure must have been brought by some who had suffered, for Samuel Maverick, the Episcopalian, who had been fined and imprisoned in 1646 for petitioning with Childe, was made a member. Colonel Richard Nichols, the head of the board, was a man of ability and judgment; the choice of Sir Robert Carr and Colonel George Cartwright was less judicious.

The commissioners were given a public and private set of instructions, [Footnote: Public Instructions, Hutch. _Hist._ i. 459.] and both were admirable. They were to examine the condition of the country and its laws, and, if possible, to make some arrangement by which the crown might have a negative at least upon the choice of the governor; they were to urge the reforms already demanded by the king, especially a larger toleration, for “they doe in truth deny that liberty of conscience to each other, which is equally provided for and granted to every one of them by their charter.” [Footnote: Private Instructions _O’Callaghan Documents_, iii. 58.] They were directed to be conciliatory toward the people, and under no circumstances to meddle with public worship, nor were they to press for any sudden enforcement of the revenue acts. On one point alone they were to insist: they were instructed to sit to hear appeals in causes in which the parties alleged they had been wronged by colonial decisions.

Unquestionably the chancellor was right in principle. The only way whereby such powerful corporations as the trade-guilds or the East India Company could be kept from acts of oppression was through the appellate jurisdiction, by which means their enactments could be brought before the courts, and those annulled which in the opinion of the judges transcended the charters. The Company of Massachusetts Bay was a corporation having jurisdiction over many thousand English subjects, only a minority of whom were freemen and voters. So long, therefore, as she remained within the empire, the crown was bound to see that the privileges of the English Constitution were not denied within her territory. Yet, though this is true, it is equally certain that the erection of a commission of appeal without an act of Parliament was irregular. The stretch of prerogative, nevertheless, cannot be considered oppressive when it is remembered that Massachusetts was a corporation which had escaped from the realm to avoid judicial process, and which refused to appear and plead; hence Lord Clarendon had but this alternative: he could send judges to sit upon the spot, or he could proceed against the charter in London. The course he chose may have been illegal, but it was the milder of the two.

The commissioners landed on July 23, 1664, but they did not stay in Boston. Their first business was to subdue the Dutch at New York, and they soon left to make the attack. The General Court now recurred, for the first time, to the dispatch which their agents had brought home, and proceeded to amend the law relating to the franchise. They extended the qualification by enacting that Englishmen who presented a certificate under the hands of the minister of the town that they were orthodox in religion and not vicious in life, and who paid, beside, 10s. at a single rate, might become freemen, as well as those who were church- members. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 117.] The effect of such a change could hardly have been toward liberality, rather, probably, toward concentration of power in the church. However slight, there was some popular control over the rejection of an applicant to join a congregation; but giving a certificate was an act that must have depended on the pastor’s will alone.

The court then drew up an address to the king: “If your poore subjects, … doe… prostrate themselues at your royal feete, & begg yor favor, wee hope it will be graciously accepted by your majestje, and that as the high place you sustejne on earth doeth number you here among the gods, [priests can cringe as well as torture] so you will jmitate the God of heaven, in being ready… to receive their crjes…,” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 129.] And he was implored to reflect on the affliction of heart it was to them, that their sins had provoked God to permit their adversaries to procure a commission, under the great seal, to four persons to hear appeals. When this address reached London it caused surprise. The chancellor was annoyed. He wrote to America, pointing out that His Majesty would hardly think himself well used at complaints before a beginning had been made, and a demand that his commission should be revoked before his commissioners had been able to deliver their instructions. “I know,” he said, “they are expressly inhibited from intermedling with, or instructing the administration of justice, according to the formes observed there; but if in truth, in any extraordinary case, the proceedings there have been irregular, and against the rules of justice, as some particular cases, particularly recommended to them by His Majesty, seeme to be, it cannot be presumed that His Majesty hath or will leave his subjects of New England, without hope of redresse by an appeale to him, which his subjects of all his other kingdomes have free liberty to make.” [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 465.]

The campaign against New York was short and successful, and the commissioners were soon at leisure. As they had reason to believe that Massachusetts would prove stubborn, they judged it wiser to begin with the more tractable colonies first. They therefore went to Plymouth, [Footnote: Feb. 1664-5.] and, on their arrival, according to their instructions, submitted the four following propositions:–

First. That all householders should take the oath of allegiance, and that justice should be administered in the king’s name.

Second. That all men of competent estates and civil conversation, though of different judgments, might be admitted to be freemen, and have liberty to choose and be chosen officers, both civil and military.

Third. That all men and women of orthodox opinions, competent knowledge, and civil lives not scandalous, should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper [and have baptism for their children, either in existing churches or their own].

Fourth. That all laws … derogatory to his majesty should be repealed. [Footnote: Palfrey, ii. 601.]

Substantially the same proposals were made subsequently in Rhode Island and Connecticut. They were accepted without a murmur. A few appeal cases were heard, and the work was done.

The commissioners reported their entire satisfaction to the government, the colonies sent loyal addresses, and Charles returned affectionate answers.

Massachusetts alone remained to be dealt with, but her temper was in striking contrast to that of the rest of New England. The reason is obvious. Nowhere else was there a fusion of church and state. The people had, therefore, no oppressive statutes to uphold, nor anything to conceal. Provided the liberty of English subjects was secured to them they were content to obey the English Constitution. On the other hand, Massachusetts was a theocracy, the power of whose priesthood rested on enactments contrary to British institutions, and which, therefore, would have been annulled upon appeal. Hence the clerical party were wild with fear and rage, and nerved themselves to desperate resistance.

“But alasse, sir, the commission impowering those commisioners to heare and determine all cases whatever, … should it take place, what would become of our civill government which hath binn, under God, the heade of that libertie for our consciences for which the first adventurers … bore all … discouragements that encountered them … in this wildernes.” Rather than submit, they protested they had “sooner leave our place and all our pleasant outward injoyments.” [Footnote: Court to Boyle. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 113.]

Under such conditions a direct issue was soon reached. The General Court, in answer to the commissioners’ proposals, maintained that the observance of their charter was inconsistent with appeals; that they had already provided an oath of allegiance; that they had conformed to his majesty’s requirements in regard to the franchise; and lastly, in relation to toleration, there was no equivocation. “Concerning the vse of the Common Prayer Booke”… we had not become “voluntary exiles from our deare native country, … could wee haue seene the word of God, warranting us to performe our devotions in that way, & to haue the same set vp here; wee conceive it is apparent that it will disturbe our peace in our present enjoyments.” [Footnote: 1665. _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p.200]

Argument was useless. The so-called oath of allegiance was not that required by Parliament; the alteration in the franchise was a sham; while the two most important points, appeals to England and toleration in religion, were rejected. The commissioners, therefore, asked for a direct answer to this question: “Whither doe yow acknowledge his majestjes comission … to be of full force?” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p.204] They were met by evasion. On the 23d of May they gave notice that they should sit the next morning to hear the case of Thos. Deane et al. vs. The Gov. & Co. of Mass. Bay, a revenue appeal. Forthwith the General Court proclaimed by trumpet that the hearing would not be permitted.

Coercion was impossible, as no troops were at hand. The commissioners accordingly withdrew and went to Maine, which they proceeded to sever from Massachusetts. [Footnote: June, 1665] In this they followed the king’s instructions, who himself acted upon the advice of the law officers of the crown, who had given an opinion sustaining the claim of Gorges. [Footnote: Charles II.’s letter to Inhabitants of Maine. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 110; Palf. ii. 622.]

The triumph was complete. All that the English government was then able to do was to recall the commissioners, direct that agents should be sent to London at once, and forbid interference with Maine. No notice was taken of the order to send agents; and in 1668 possession was again taken of the province, and the courts of the company once more sat in the county of York. [Footnote: July, 1668. Report of Com. _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 401.]

This was the culmination of the Puritan Commonwealth. The clergy were exultant, and the Rev. Mr. Davenport of New Haven wrote in delight to Leverett:–

“Their claiming power to sit authoritatively as a court for appeales, and that to be managed in an arbitrary way, was a manifest laying of a groundworke to undermine your whole government established by your charter. If you had consented thereunto, you had plucked downe with your owne hands that house which wisdom had built for you and your posterity…. As for the solemnity of publishing it, in three places, by sounding a trumpet, I believe you did it upon good advice, … for declaring the courage and resolution of the whole countrey to defend their charter liberties and priviledges, and not to yeeld up theire right voluntarily, so long as they can hold it, in dependence upon God in Christ, whose interest is in it, for his protection and blessing, who will be with you while you are with him.” [Footnote: Davenport to Leverett. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 119.]

Although the colonists were alarmed at their own success, there was nothing to fear. At no time before or since could England have been so safely defied. In 1664 war was begun against Holland; 1665 was the year of the plague; 1666 of the fire. In June, 1667, the Dutch, having dispersed the British fleets, sailed up the Medway, and their guns were heard in London. Peace became necessary, and in August Clarendon was dismissed from office. The discord between the crown and Parliament paralyzed the nation, and the wastefulness of Charles kept him always poor. By the treaty of Dover in 1670 he became a pensioner of Louis XIV. The Cabal followed, probably the worst ministry England ever saw; and in 1672, at Clifford’s suggestion, the exchequer was closed and the debt repudiated to provide funds for the second Dutch war. In March fighting began, and the tremendous battles with De Ruyter kept the navy in the Channel. At length, in 1673, the Cabal fell, and Danby became prime minister.

Although during these years of disaster and disgrace Massachusetts was not molested by Great Britain, they were not all years during which the theocracy could tranquilly enjoy its victory.

So early as 1671 the movements of the Indians began to give anxiety; and in 1675 Philip’s War broke out, which brought the colony to the brink of ruin, and in which the clergy saw the judgment of God against the Commonwealth, for tenderness toward the Quakers. [Footnote: _Reforming Synod, Magnalia_, bk. 5, pt. 4.]

With the rise of Danby a more regular administration opened, and, as usual, the attention of the government was fixed upon Massachusetts by the clamors of those who demanded redress for injuries alleged to have been received at her hands. In 1674 the heirs of Mason and Gorges, in despair at the reoccupation of Maine, proposed to surrender their claim to the king, reserving one third of the product of the customs for themselves. The London merchants also had become restive under the systematic violation of the Navigation Acts. The breach in the revenue laws had, indeed, been long a subject of complaint, and the commissioners had received instructions relating thereto; but it was not till this year that these questions became serious.

The first statute had been passed by the Long Parliament, but the one that most concerned the colonies was not enacted till 1663. The object was not only to protect English shipping, but to give her the entire trade of her dependencies. To that end it was made illegal to import European produce into any plantation except through England; and, conversely, colonial goods could only be exported by being landed in England.

The theory upon which this legislation was based is exploded; enforced, it would have crippled commerce; but it was then, and always had been, a dead letter at Boston. New England was fast getting its share of the carrying trade. London merchants already began to feel the competition of its cheap and untaxed ships, and manufacturers to complain that they were undersold in the American market, by goods brought direct from the Continental ports. A petition, therefore, was presented to the king, to carry the law into effect. No colonial office then existed; the affairs of the dependencies were assigned to a committee of the Privy Council, called the Lords of Committee of Trade and Plantations; and on these questions being referred by them to the proper officers, the commissioners of customs sustained the merchants; the attorney-general, the heirs of Mason and Gorges. [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 281; Chalmers’s _Political Annals of the United Colonies_, p. 262.] The famous Edward Randolph now appears. The government was still too deeply embarrassed to act with energy. A temporizing policy was therefore adopted; and as the experiment of a commission had failed, Randolph was chosen as a messenger to carry the petitions and opinions to Massachusetts; together with a letter from the king, directing that agents should be sent in answer thereto. After delivering them, he was ordered to devote himself to preparing a report upon the country. He reached Boston June 10, 1676. Although it was a time of terrible suffering from the ravages of the Indian war, the temper of the magistrates was harsher than ever.

The repulse of the commissioners had convinced them that Charles was not only lazy and ignorant, but too poor to use force; and they also believed him to be so embroiled with Parliament as to make his overthrow probable. Filled with such feelings, their reception of Randolph was almost brutal. John Leverett was governor, who seems to have taken pains to mark his contempt in every way in his power. Randolph was an able, but an unscrupulous man, and probably it would not have been difficult to have secured his good-will. Far however from bribing, or even flattering him, they so treated him as to make him the bitterest enemy the Puritan Commonwealth ever knew.

Being admitted into the council chamber, he delivered the letter. [Footnote: Randolph’s Narrative. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 240.] The governor opened it, glanced at the signature, and, pretending never to have heard of Henry Coventry, asked who he might be. He was told he was his majesty’s principal secretary of state. He then read it aloud to the magistrates. Even the fierce Endicott, when he received the famous “missive” from the Quaker Shattock, “laid off his hat … [when] he look’d upon the papers,” [Footnote: Sewel, p. 282.] as a mark of respect to his king; but Leverett and his council remained covered. Then the governor said “that the matters therein contained were very inconsiderable things and easily answered, and it did no way concern that government to take any notice thereof;” and so Randolph was dismissed. Five days after he was again sent for, and asked whether he “intended for London by that ship that was ready to saile?” If so, he could have a duplicate of the answer to the king, as the original was to go by other hands. He replied that he had other business in charge, and inquired whether they had well considered the petitions, and fixed upon their agents so soon. Leverett did not deign to answer, but told him “he looked upon me as Mr. Mason’s agent, and that I might withdraw.” The next day he saw the governor at his own house, who took occasion, when Randolph referred to the Navigation Acts, to expound the legal views of the theocracy. “He freely declared to me that the lawes made by your majestie and your Parliament obligeth them in nothing but what consists with the interest of that colony, that the legislative power is and abides in them solely … and that all matters in difference are to be concluded by their finall determination, without any appeal to your majestie, and that your majestie ought not to retrench their liberties, but may enlarge them.” [Footnote: Randolph’s Narrative. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 243.] One last interview took place when Randolph went for dispatches for England, after his return from New Hampshire; then he “was entertained by” Leverett “with a sharp reproof for publishing the substance of my errand into those parts, contained in your majestie’s letters, … telling me that I designed to make a mutiny…. I told him, if I had done anything amisse, upon complaint made to your majestie he would certainly have justice done him.”…

“At my departure … he … intreated me to give a favourable report of the country and the magistrates thereof, adding that those that blessed them God would blesse, and those that cursed them God would curse.” And that “they were a people truely fearing the Lord and very obedient to your majestie.” [Footnote: _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 248.] And so the royal messenger was dismissed in wrath, to tell his story to the king.

The legislature met in August, 1676, and a decision had to be made concerning agents. On the whole, the clergy concluded it would be wiser to obey the crown, “provided they be, with vtmost care & caution, qualified as to their instructions.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 99.] Accordingly, after a short adjournment, the General Court chose William Stoughton and Peter Bulkely; and having strictly limited their power to a settlement of the territorial controversy, they sent them on their mission. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 114.]

Almost invariably public affairs were seen by the envoys of the Company in a different light from that in which they were viewed by the clerical party at home, and these particularly had not been long in London before they became profoundly alarmed. There was, indeed, reason for grave apprehension. The selfish and cruel policy of the theocracy had borne its natural fruit: without an ally in the world, Massachusetts was beset by enemies. Quakers, Baptists, and Episcopalians whom she had persecuted and exiled; the heirs of Mason and Gorges, whom she had wronged; Andros, whom she had maligned; [Footnote: He had been accused of countenancing aid to Philip when governor of New York. O’Callaghan Documents, iii. 258.] and Randolph, whom she had insulted, wrought against her with a government whose sovereign she had offended and whose laws she had defied. Even her English friends had been much alienated. [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 278, 279.]

The controversy concerning the boundary was referred to the two chief justices, who promptly decided against the Company; [Footnote: See Opinion; Chalmers’s _Annals_, p. 504.] and the easy acquiescence of the General Court must raise a doubt as to their faith in the soundness of their claims. And now again the fatality which seemed to pursue the theocracy in all its dealings with England led it to give fresh provocation to the king by secretly buying the title of Gorges for twelve hundred and fifty pounds. [Footnote: May, 1677. Chalmers’s _Annals_, pp. 396, 397. See notes, Palfrey, iii. 312.]

Charles had intended to settle Maine on the Duke of Monmouth. It was a worthless possession, whose revenue never paid for its defence; yet so stubborn was the colony that it made haste to anticipate the crown and thus become “Lord Proprietary” of a burdensome province at the cost of a slight which was never forgiven. Almost immediately the Privy Council had begun to open other matters, such as coining and illicit trade; and the attorney-general drew up a list of statutes which, in his opinion, were contrary to the laws of England. The agents protested that they were limited by their instructions, but were sharply told that his majesty did not think of treating with his own subjects as with foreigners, and it would be well to intimate the same to their principals. [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 309.] In December, 1677, Stoughton wrote in great alarm that something must be done concerning the Navigation Acts or a breach would be inevitable. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 288.] And the General Court saw reason in this emergency to increase the tension by reviving the obnoxious oath of fidelity to the country, [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 154.]–the substitute for the oath of allegiance,–and thus gave Randolph a new and potent weapon. In the spring [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 316, 317; Chalmers’s _Annals_, p. 439.] the law officers gave an opinion that the misdemeanors alleged against Massachusetts were sufficient to avoid her patent; and the Privy Council, in view of the encroachments and injuries which she had continually practised on her neighbors, and her contempt of his majesty’s commands, advised that a _quo warranto_ should be brought against the charter. Randolph was appointed collector at Boston. [Footnote: 1678, May 31.]

Even Leverett now saw that some concessions must be made, and the General Court ordered the oath of allegiance to be taken; nothing but perversity seems to have caused the long delay. [Footnote: Oct. 2, 1678. _Mass. Rec._ v. 193. See Palfrey, iii. 320, note 2.] The royal arms were also carved in the court-house; and this was all, for the clergy were determined upon those matters touching their authority. The agents were told, “that which is farr more considerable then all these is the interest of the Lord Jesus & of his churches … which ought to be farr dearer to us than our liues; and … wee would not that by any concessions of ours, or of yours… the least stone should be put out of the wall.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 202.]

Both agents and magistrates were, nevertheless, thoroughly frightened, and being determined not to yield, in fact, they resorted to a policy of misrepresentation, with the hope of deceiving the English government. [Footnote: See Answers of Agents, Chalmers’s _Annals_, p. 450.] Stoughton and Bulkely had already assured the Lords of Committee that the “rest of the inhabitants were very inconsiderable as to number, compared with those that were acknowledged church-members.” [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 318.] They were in fact probably as five to one. The General Court had been censured for using the word Commonwealth in official documents, as intimating independence. They hastened to assure the crown that it had not of late been used, and should not be thereafter; [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 198. And see, in general, the official correspondence, pp. 197-203.] yet in November, 1675, commissions were thus issued. [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 322.] But the breaking out of the Popish plot began to absorb the whole attention of the government at London; and the agents, after receiving a last rebuke for the presumption of the colony in buying Maine, were at length allowed to depart. [Footnote: Nov. 1679.]

Nearly half a century had elapsed since the emigration, and with the growth of wealth and population changes had come. In March, John Leverett, who had long been the head of the high-church party, died, and the election of Simon Bradstreet as his successor was a triumph for the opposition. Great as the clerical influence still was, it had lost much of its old despotic power, and the congregations were no longer united in support of the policy of their pastors. This policy was singularly desperate. Casting aside all but ecclesiastical considerations, the clergy consistently rejected any compromise with the crown which threatened to touch the church. Almost from the first they had recognized that substantial independence was necessary in order to maintain the theocracy. Had the colony been strong, they would doubtless have renounced their allegiance; but its weakness was such that, without the protection of England, it would have been seized by France. Hence they resorted to expedients which could only end in disaster, for it was impossible for Massachusetts, while part of the British Empire, to refuse obedience at her pleasure to laws which other colonies cheerfully obeyed.

Without an ally, no resistance could be made to England, when at length her sovereignty should be asserted; and an armed occupation and military government were inevitable upon a breach.

Though such considerations are little apt to induce a priesthood to surrender their temporal power, they usually control commercial communities. Accordingly, Boston and the larger towns favored concession, while the country was the ministers’ stronghold. The result of this divergence of opinion was that the moderate party, to which Bradstreet and Dudley belonged, predominated in the Board of Assistants, while the deputies remained immovable. The branches of the legislature thus became opposed; no course of action could be agreed on, and the theocracy drifted to its destruction.

The duplicity characteristic of theological politics grew daily more marked. In May, 1679, a law had been passed forbidding the building of churches without leave from the freemen of the town or the General Court. [Footnote: Mass. Rec. v. 213.] On the 11th of June, 1680, three persons representing the society of Baptists were summoned before the legislature, charged with the crime of erecting a meeting-house. They were admonished and forbidden to meet for worship except with the established congregations; and their church was closed. [Footnote: Mass. Rec. v. 271.] That very day an address was voted to the king, one passage of which is as follows: “Concerning liberty of conscience, … that after all, a multitude of notorious errors … be openly broached, … amongst us, as by the Quakers, &c., wee presume his majesty doeth not intend; and as for other Prottestant dissenters, that carry it peaceably & soberly, wee trust there shallbe no cause of just complaint against us on their behalfe.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 287.]

Meanwhile Randolph had renewed his attack. He declared that in spite of promises and excuses the revenue laws were not enforced; that his men were beaten, and that he hourly expected to be thrown into prison; whereas in other colonies, he asserted, he was treated with great respect. [Footnote: June, 1680. Palfrey, iii. 340.] There can be no doubt ingenuity was used to devise means of annoyance, and certainly the life he was made to lead was hard. In March [Footnote: March 15, 1680-1.] he sailed for home, and while in London he made a series of reports to the government which seem to have produced the conviction that the moment for action had come. In December he returned, commissioned as deputy-surveyor and auditor-general for all New England, except New Hampshire. When Stoughton and Bulkely were dismissed, the colony had been commanded to send new agents within six months. In September, 1680, another royal letter had been written, in which the king dwelt upon the misconduct of his subjects, “when … we signified unto you our gracious inclination to have all past deeds forgotten… wee then little thought that those markes of our grace and favour should have found no better acceptance amoung you…. We doe therefore by these our letters, strictly command and require you, as you tender your allegiance unto us, and will deserve the effects of our grace and favour (which wee are enclyned to afford you) seriously to reflect upon our commands; … and particularly wee doe hereby command you to send over, within three months after the receipt hereof, such… persons as you shall think fitt to choose, and that you give them sufficient instructions to attend the regulation and settlement of that our government.” [Footnote: Sept. 30. _Hutch. Coll. _, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 261.]

The General Court had not thought fit to regard these communications, and now Randolph came charged with a long and stern dispatch, in which agents were demanded forthwith, “in default whereof, we are fully resolved, in Trinity Term next ensuing, to direct our attorney-general to bring a quo warranto in our court of kings-bench, whereby our charter granted unto you, with all the powers thereof, may be legally evicted and made void; and so we bid you farewel.” [Footnote: Chalmers’s _Annals_, p. 449.]

Hitherto the clerical party had procrastinated, buoyed up by the hope that in the fierce struggle with the commons Charles might be overthrown; but this dream ended with the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and further inaction became impossible. Joseph Dudley and John Richards were chosen agents, and provided with instructions bearing the peculiar tinge of ecclesiastical statesmanship.

They were directed to represent that appeals would be intolerable; and, for their private guidance, the legislature used these words: “We therefore doe not vnderstand by the regulation of the gouernment, that any alteration of the patent is intended; yow shall therefore neither doe nor consent to any thing that may violate or infringe the liberties & priuiledges granted to us by his majesties royall charter, or the gouernment established thereby; but if any thing be propounded that may tend therevnto, yow shall say, yow haue received no instruction in that matter.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 349.] With reference to the complaints made against the colony, they were to inform the king “that wee haue no law prohibbiting any such as are of the perswasion of the church of England, nor haue any euer desired to worship God accordingly that haue been denyed.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 347. March 23.]

Such a statement cannot be reconciled with the answer made the commissioners; and the laws compelled Episcopalians to attend the Congregational worship, and denied them the right to build churches of their own.

“As for the Annabaptists, they are now subject to no other poenal statutes then those of the Congregational way.” This sophistry is typical. The law under which the Baptist church was closed applied in terms to all inhabitants, it is true; but it was contrived to suppress schism, it was used to coerce heretics, and it was unrepealed. Moreover, it would seem as though the statute inflicting banishment must then have still been in force.

The assurances given in regard to the reform of the suffrage were precisely parallel:–

“For admission of ffreemen, wee humbly conceive it is our liberty, by charter, to chuse whom wee will admitt into our oune company, which yet hath not binn restrayned to Congregational men, but others haue been admitted, who were also provided for according to his majestjes direction.” [Footnote: 1681-2, March 23.]

Such insincerity gave weight to Randolph’s words when he wrote: “My lord, I have but one thing to reminde your lordship, that nothing their agents can say or doe in England can be any ground for his majestie to depend upon.” [Footnote: Randolph to Clarendon. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 277]

With these documents and one thousand pounds for bribery, soon after increased to three, [Footnote: Chalmers’s _Annals_, p. 461.] Dudley and Richards sailed. Their powers were at once rejected at London as insufficient, and the decisive moment came. [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 413.] The churchmen of Massachusetts had to determine whether to accept the secularization of their government or abandon every guaranty of popular liberty. The clergy did not hesitate before the momentous alternative: they exerted themselves to the utmost, and turned the scale for the last time. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 303, note.] In fresh instructions the agents were urged to do what was possible to avert, or at least delay, the stroke; but they were forbidden to consent to appeals, or to alterations in the qualifications required for the admission of freemen. [Footnote: 1683, March 30. _Mass. Rec._ v. 390.] They had previously been directed to pacify the king by a present of two thousand pounds; and this ill-judged attempt at bribery had covered them with ridicule. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 303, note.]

Further negotiation would have been futile. Proceedings were begun at once, and Randolph was sent to Boston to serve the writ of _quo warranto_; [Footnote: 1683, July 20.] he was also charged with a royal declaration promising that, even then, were submission made, the charter should be restored with only such changes as the public welfare demanded. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 422, 423.] Dudley, who was a man of much political sagacity, had returned and strongly urged moderation. The magistrates were not without the instincts of statesmanship: they saw that a breach with England must destroy all safeguards of the common freedom, and they voted an address to the crown accepting the proffered terms. [Footnote: 1683, 15 Nov. Hutch. _Hist._ i. 304.] But the clergy strove against them: the privileges of their order were at stake; they felt that the loss of their importance would be “destructive to the interest of religion and of Christ’s kingdom in the colony,” [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 381.] and they roused their congregations to resist. The deputies did not represent the people, but the church. They were men who had been trained from infancy by the priests, who had been admitted to the communion and the franchise on account of their religious fervor, and who had been brought into public life because the ecclesiastics found them pliable in their hands. The influence which had moulded their minds and guided their actions controlled them still, and they rejected the address. [Footnote: Nov. 30. Palfrey, iii. 385.] Increase Mather took the lead. He stood up at a great meeting in the Old South, and exhorted the people, “telling them how their forefathers did purchase it [the charter], and would they deliver it up, even as Ahab required Naboth’s vineyard, Oh! their children would be bound to curse them.” [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 388, note 1.]

All that could be resolved on was to retain Robert Humphrys of the Middle Temple to interpose such delays as the law permitted; but no attempt was made at defence upon the merits of their cause, probably because all knew well that no such defence was possible.

Meanwhile, for technical reasons, the _quo warranto_ had been abandoned, and a writ of _scire facias_ had been issued out of chancery. On June 18, 1684, the lord keeper ordered the defendant to appear and plead on the first day of the next Michaelmas Term. The time allowed was too short for an answer from America, and judgment was entered by default. [Footnote: Decree entered June 21, 1684; confirmed, Oct. 23. Palfrey, iii. 393, note.] The decree was arbitrary, but no effort was made to obtain relief. The story, however, is best told by Humphrys himself:–

“It is matter of astonishment to me, to think of the returnes I haue had from you in the affaire of your charter; that a prudent people should think soe little, in a thing of the greatest moment to them.

“Which charge I humbly justify in the following particulars, and yet at the same time confess that all you could haue done would but haue gained more time, and spent more money, since the breaches assigned against you, were as obvious as vnanswerable, soe as all the service your councill and friends could haue done you here, would haue onely served to deplore, not prevent the inevitable loss.

“When I sent you the lord keeper’s order of the 18th of June 1684 requireing your appeareing peromptorily the first day of Michaelmas Tearme then next, and pleading to yssue … you may remember I sent with it such drafts of lettres of attorney, to pass vnder your comon seale as were essentially necessary to empower and justify such appearance, and pleading for you here, which you could not imagine but that you must haue had due time to returne them in, noe law compelling impossibilities.

“When the first day of that Michaelmas Tearme came, and your lettres of attorney neither were, nor indeed could be return’d … I applyd by councill to the Court of Chancery to enlarge that time urgeing the impossibility of hauing a returne from you in the time allotted…. But it is true my lord keeper cutt the ground from under us which wee stood upon, by telling us the order of the 18th of June was a surprize upon his lordship and that he ought not to haue granted it, for that every corporacon ought to haue an attorney in every court to appeare to his majesties suite, and that London had such…. However certainely you ought when my lettres were come to you, nunc pro tune, to haue past the lettres of attorney I sent you under your comon seale and sent them me, and not to haue stopt them upon any private surmises from other hands then his you had entrusted in that matter; and the rather for that the judgments of law, espetially those taken by defaults for non appearances, are not like the laws of the Medes and Persians irrevocable, but are often on just grounds sett aside by the court here, and the defendants admitted to plead as if noe such judgments had been entred vp, and the very order it selfe of the 18th of June guies you a home instance of it.

“And indeed I did therefore forbeare giueing you an account of a further time being denyd, and the entry of judgment against you, expecting you would before such lettre could haue reacht you haue sent me the lettres of attorney vnder your corporacon seale that the court might haue been moved to admitt your appearance and plea and waiued the judgment.

“But instead of those lettres of attorney under your seale you sent me an address to his late majesty, I confess judiciously drawne. But it is my wonder in which of your capacityes you could imagine it should be presented to his majesty, for if as a corporacon, a body politique, it should have been putt under your corporacon seale if as a private comunity it should haue been signed by your order. But the paper has neither private hand nor publique seale to it and soe must be lost….

“In this condicon what could a man doe for you, nothing publiquely for he had noe warrant from you to justify the accon.” [Footnote: _Mass. Archives_, cvi. 343.]

So perished the Puritan Commonwealth. The child of the Reformation, its life sprang from the assertion of the freedom of the mind; but this great and noble principle is fatal to the temporal power of a priesthood, and during the supremacy of the clergy the government was doomed to be both persecuting and repressive. Under no circumstance could the theocracy have endured: it must have fallen by revolt from within if not by attack from without. That Charles II. did in fact cause its overthrow gives him a claim to our common gratitude, for he then struck a decisive blow for the emancipation of Massachusetts; and thus his successor was enabled to open before her that splendid career of democratic constitutional liberty which was destined to become the basis of the jurisprudence of the American Union.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WITCHCRAFT.

The history of the years between the dissolution of the Company of Massachusetts Bay and the reorganization of the country by William III. in 1692 has little bearing upon the development of the people; for the presidency of Dudley and the administration of Andros were followed by a revolution that paralyzed all movement. During the latter portion of this interval the colony was represented at London by three agents, of whom Increase Mather was the most influential, who used every effort to obtain the reëstablishment of the old government; they met, however, with insuperable obstacles. Quietly to resume was impossible; for the obstinacy of the clergy, in refusing all compromise with Charles II., had caused the patent to be cancelled; and thus a new grant had become necessary. Nor was this all, for the attorney and solicitor general, with whom the two chief justices concurred, [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 139] gave it as their opinion that, supposing no decree had been rendered, and the same powers were exercised as before, a writ of _scire facias_ would certainly be issued, upon which a similar judgment would inevitably be entered. These considerations, however, became immaterial, as the king was a statesman, and had already decided upon his policy. His views had little in common with those held by the Massachusetts ecclesiastics, and when the Rev. Mr. Mather first read the instrument in which they had been embodied, he declared he “would sooner part with his life than consent unto such minutes.” [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 134.] He grew calmer, however, when told that his “consent was not expected nor desired;” and with that energy and decision for which he was remarkable, at once secured the patronage.

The constitutional aspect of the Provincial Charter is profoundly interesting, and it will be considered in its legal bearings hereafter. Its political tendencies, however, first demand attention, for it wrought a complete social revolution, since it overthrew the temporal power of the church. Massachusetts, Maine, and Plymouth were consolidated, and within them toleration was established, except in regard to Papists; the religious qualification was swept away, and in its stead freeholders of forty shillings per annum, or owners of personal property to the value of forty pounds sterling, were admitted to the franchise; the towns continued to elect the house of representatives, and the whole Assembly chose the council, subject to the approval of the executive. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ ii. 15, 16] The governor, lieutenant-governor, and secretary were appointed by the crown; the governor had a veto, and the king reserved the right to disallow legislation within three years of the date of its enactment. Thus the theocracy fell at a single blow; and it is worthy of remark that thenceforward prosecutions for sedition became unknown among the people of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Yet, though the clerical oligarchy was no longer absolute, the ministers still exerted a prodigious influence upon opinion. Not only did they speak with all the authority inherited with the traditions of the past; not only had they or their predecessors trained the vast majority of the people from their cradles to reverence them more than anything on earth, but their compact organization was as yet unimpaired, and at its head stood the two Mathers, the pastors of the Old North Church. Thus venerated and thus led, the elders were still able to appeal to the popular superstition and fanaticism with terrible effect.

Widely differing judgments have been formed of these two celebrated divines; the ecclesiastical view is perhaps well summed up by the Rev. John Eliot, who thus describes the President of Harvard: “He was the father of the New England clergy, and his name and character were held in veneration, not only by those, who knew him, but by succeeding generations.” [Footnote: _Biographical Dictionary_, p. 312.] All must admit his ability and learning, while in sanctimoniousness of deportment he was unrivalled. His son Cotton says he had such a “gravity as made all sorts of persons, wherever he came, to be struck with a sensible awe of his presence, … yea, if he laughed on them, they believed it not.” “His very countenance carried the force of a sermon with it.” [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 40.] He kept a strict account of his mental condition, and always was pleased when able to enter in his diary at the end of the day, “heart serious.” He was unctuous in his preaching, and wept much in the pulpit; he often mentions being “quickened at the Lord’s table [during which] tears gushed from me before the Lord,” [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 48.] but of his self-sacrifice, his mercy, and his truth, his own acts and words are the best evidence that remain.

When the new government was about to be put in operation, an extraordinary amount of patronage lay at the disposal of the crown; for, beside the regular executive officers, the entire council had to be named, since they could not be elected until a legislature had been organized to choose them. Increase Mather, Elisha Cooke, and Thomas Oakes were acting as agents, and all had been bitterly opposed to the new charter; but of the three, the English ministers thought Mather the most important to secure. And now an odd coincidence happened in the life of this singular man. He suddenly one day announced himself convinced that the king’s project was not so intolerable as to be unworthy of support; and then it very shortly transpired that he had been given all the spoil before the patent had passed the seals. [Footnote: Palfrey, iv. 85.] The proximity of these events is interesting as bearing on the methods of ecclesiastical statesmen, and it is also instructive to observe how thorough a master of the situation this eminent divine proved himself to be. He not only appointed all his favorite henchmen to office, but he rigidly excluded his colleagues at London, who had continued their opposition, and every one else who had any disposition to be independent. His creature, Sir William Phips, was made governor; William Stoughton, who was bred for the church, and whose savage bigotry endeared him to the clergy, was lieutenant- governor; and the council was so packed that his excellent son broke into a shout of triumph when he heard the news:–

“The time has come! the set time has come! I am now to receive an answer of so many prayers. All the councellors of the province are of my own father’s nomination; and my father-in-law, with several related unto me, and several brethren of my own church are among them. The governor of the province is not my enemy, but one whom I baptized; namely, Sir William Phips, one of my own flock, and one of my dearest friends.” [Footnote: Cotton Mather’s _Diary_; Quincy’s _History of Harvard_, i. 60.] Such was the government the theocracy left the country as its legacy when its own power had passed away, and dearly did Massachusetts rue that fatal gift in her paroxysms of agony and blood.

At the close of the seventeenth century the belief in witchcraft was widespread, and among the more ignorant well-nigh universal. The superstition was, moreover, fostered by the clergy, who, in adopting this policy, were undoubtedly actuated by mixed motives. Their credulity probably made them for the most part sincere in the unbounded confidence they professed in the possibility of compacts between the devil and mankind; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in their writings of their having been keenly alive to the fact that men horror-stricken at the sight of the destruction of their wives and children by magic would grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of the priest who promised to deliver them.

The elders began the agitation by sending out a paper of proposals for collecting stories of apparitions and witchcrafts, and in obedience to their wish Increase Mather published his “Illustrious Providences” in 1683-4. Two chapters of this book were devoted to sorceries, and the reverend author took occasion to intimate his opinion that those who might doubt the truth of his relations were probably themselves either heretics or wizards. This movement of the clergy seems to have highly inflamed the popular imagination, [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ ii. 24.] yet no immediate disaster followed; and the nervous exaltation did not become deadly until 1688. In the autumn of that year four children of a Boston mason named Goodwin began to mimic the symptoms they had so often heard described; the father, who was a pious man, called in the ministers of Boston and Charlestown, who fasted and prayed, and succeeded in delivering the youngest, who was five. Meanwhile, one of the daughters had “cried out upon” an unfortunate Irish washerwoman, with whom she had quarrelled. Cotton Mather was now in his element. He took the eldest girl home with him and tried a great number of interesting experiments as to the relative power of Satan and the Lord; among others he gravely relates how when the sufferer was tormented elsewhere he would carry her struggling to his own study, into which entering, she stood immediately upon her feet, and cried out, “They are gone! They are gone! They say they cannot–God won’t let ’em come here.” [Footnote: _Memorable Providences_, pp. 27, 28]

It is not credible that an educated and a sane man could ever have honestly believed in the absurd stuff which he produced as evidence of the supernatural; his description of the impudence of the children is amazing.

“They were divers times very near burning or drowning of themselves, but … by their own pittiful and seasonable cries for help still procured their deliverance: which made me consider, whether the little ones had not their angels, in the plain sense of our Saviour’s intimation…. And sometimes, tho’ but seldome, they were kept from eating their meals, by having their teeth sett when they carried any thing to their mouthes.” [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 15-17.]

And it was upon such evidence that the washerwoman was hanged. There is an instant in the battle as the ranks are wavering, when the calmness of the officers will avert the rout; and as to have held their soldiers then is deemed their highest honor, so to have been found wanting is their indelible disgrace; the people stood poised upon the panic’s brink, their pastors lashed them in.

Cotton Mather forthwith published a terrific account of the ghostly crisis, mixed with denunciations of the Sadducee or Atheist who disbelieved; and to the book was added a preface, written by the four other clergymen who had assisted with their prayers, the character of which may be judged by a single extract. “The following account will afford to him that shall read with observation, a further clear confirmation, that, there is both a God, and a devil, and witchcraft: that there is no outward affliction, but what God may, (and sometimes doth) permit Satan to trouble his people withal.” [Footnote: _Memorable Providences_, Preface.] Not content with this, Mather goaded his congregation into frenzy from the pulpit. “Consider also, the misery of them whom witchcraft may be let loose upon. What is it to fall into the hands of devils?… O what a direful thing is it, to be prickt with pins, and stab’d with knives all over, and to be fill’d all over with broken bones? ‘Tis impossible to reckon up the varieties of miseries which those monsters inflict where they can have a blow. No less than death, and that a languishing and a terrible death will satisfie the rage of those formidable dragons.” [Footnote: _Discourse on Witchcraft_, p. 19.] The pest was sure to spread in a credulous community, fed by their natural leaders with this morbid poison, and it next broke out in Salem village in February, 1691-2. A number of girls had become intensely excited by the stories they had heard, and two of them, who belonged to the family of the clergyman, were seized with the usual symptoms. Of Mr. Parris it is enough to say that he began the investigation with a frightful relish. Other ministers were called in, and prayer-meetings lasting all day were held, with the result of throwing the patients into convulsions. [Footnote: Calef’s _More Wonders_, p. 90 _et seq._] Then the name of the witch was asked, and the girls were importuned to make her known. They refused at first, but soon the pressure became too strong, and the accusations began. Among the earliest to be arrested and examined was Goodwife Cory. Mr. Noyes, teacher of Salem, began with prayer, and when she was brought in the sufferers “did vehemently accuse her of afflicting them, by biting, pinching, strangling, &c., and they said, they did in their fits see her likeness coming to them, and bringing a book for them to sign.” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 92] By April the number of informers and of the suspected had greatly increased and the prisons began to fill. Mr. Parris behaved like a madman; not only did he preach inflammatory sermons, but he conducted the examinations, and his questions were such that the evidence was in truth nothing but what he put in the mouths of the witnesses; yet he seems to have been guilty of the testimony it was his sacred duty to truly record [Footnote: _Grounds of Complaint against Parris_, Section 6; _More Wonders_, p. 96 (_i.e._ 56).]. And in all this he appears to have had the approval and the aid of Mr. Noyes. Such was the crisis when Sir William Phips landed on the 14th of May, 1692; he was the Mathers’ tool, and the result could have been foretold. Uneducated and credulous, he was as clay in the hands of his creators; and his first executive act was to cause the miserable prisoners to be fettered. Jonathan Cary has described what befell his wife: “Next morning the jaylor put irons on her legs (having received such a command) the weight of them was about eight pounds; these irons and her other afflictions, soon brought her into convulsion fits, so that I thought she would have died that night.” [Footnote: _More Wonders_, p. 97]

At the beginning of June the governor, by an arbitrary act, created a court to try the witches, and at its head put William Stoughton. Even now it is impossible to read the proceedings of this sanguinary tribunal without a shudder, and it has left a stain upon the judiciary of Massachusetts that can never be effaced.

Two weeks later the opinion of the elders was asked, as it had been of old, and they recommended the “speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious,” [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ ii. 53.] nor did their advice fall upon unwilling ears. Stoughton was already at work, and certain death awaited all who were dragged before that cruel and bloodthirsty bigot; even when the jury acquitted, the court refused to receive the verdict. The accounts given of the legal proceedings seem monstrous. The preliminary examinations were conducted amid such “hideous clamours and screechings,” that frequently the voice of the defendant was drowned, and if a defence was attempted at a trial, the victim was browbeaten and mocked by the bench. [Footnote: _More Wonders_, p. 102.]

The ghastly climax was reached in the case of George Burroughs, who had been the clergyman at Wells. At his trial the evidence could hardly be heard by reason of the fits of the sufferers. “The chief judge asked the prisoner, who he thought hindered these witnesses from giving their testimonies? and he answered, he supposed it was the devil. That honourable person then replied, How comes the devil so loath to have any testimony born against you? Which cast him into very great confusion.” Presently the informers saw the ghosts of his two dead wives, whom they charged him with having murdered, stand before him “crying for vengeance;” yet though much appalled, he steadily denied that they were there. He also roused his judges’ ire by asserting that “there neither are, nor ever were, witches.” [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 115-119.]

He and those to die with him were carried through the streets of Salem in a cart. As he climbed the ladder he called God to witness he was innocent, and his words were so pathetic that the people sobbed aloud, and it seemed as though he might be rescued even as he stood beneath the tree. Then when at last he swung above them, Cotton Mather rode among the throng and told them of his guilt, and how the fiend could come to them as an angel of light, and so the work went on. They cut him down and dragged him by his halter to a shallow hole among the rocks, and threw him in, and there they lay together with the rigid hand of the wizard Burroughs still pointing upward through his thin shroud of earth. [Footnote: _More Wonders_, pp. 103, 104.]

By October it seemed as though the bonds of society were dissolving; nineteen persons had been hanged, one had been pressed to death, and eight lay condemned; a number had fled, but their property had been seized and they were beggars; the prisons were choked, while more than two hundred were accused and in momentary fear of arrest; [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 110.] even two dogs had been killed. The plague propagated itself; for the only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their guilt and turn informers. Thus no one was safe. Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who began to falter, was threatened; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor of Beverly, who had been one of the great leaders of the prosecutions, was denounced; Lady Phips herself was named. But the race who peopled New England had a mental vigor which even the theocracy could not subdue, and Massachusetts had among her sons liberal and enlightened men, whose voice was heard, even in the madness of the terror. Of these, the two Brattles, Robert Calef, and John Leverett were the foremost; and they served their mother well, though the debt of gratitude and honor which she owes them she has never yet repaid.

On the 8th, four days before the meeting of the legislature, and probably at the first moment it could be done with safety, Thomas Brattle wrote an admirable letter, [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ first series, v. 61.] in which he exposed the folly and wickedness of the delusion with all the energy the temper of the time would bear; had he miscalculated, his error of judgment would probably have cost him his life. At the meeting of the General Court the illegal and blood-stained commission came to an end, and as the reaction slowly and surely set in, Phips began to feel alarm lest he should he called to account in England; accordingly, he tried to throw the blame on Stoughton: “When I returned, I found people much dissatisfied at the proceedings of the court; … The deputy-governor, [Stoughton] notwithstanding, persisted vigorously in the same method…. When I put an end to the court, there was at least fifty persons in prison, in great misery by reason of the extreme cold and their poverty…. I permitted a special superior court to be held at Salem, … on the third day of January, the lieutenant-governor being chief judge…. All … were cleared, saving three…. The deputy-governor signed a warrant for their speedy execution, and also of five others who were condemned at the former court…. But … I sent a reprieve; … the lieutenant-governor upon this occasion was enraged and filled with passionate anger, and refused to sit upon the bench at a superior court, at that time held at Charlestown; and, indeed, hath from the beginning hurried on these matters with great precipitancy, and by his warrant hath caused the estates, goods, and chattels of the executed to be seized and disposed of without my knowledge or consent.” [Footnote: Phips to the Earl of Nottingham, Feb. 21, 1693. Palfrey, iv. 112, note 2.] Some months earlier, also, just before the meeting of the legislature, he had called on Cotton Mather to defend him against the condemnation he had even then begun to feel, and the elder had responded with a volume which remains as a memorial of him and his compeers [Footnote: _Wonders of the Invisible World_.] He gave thanks for the blood that had already flowed, and prayed to God for more.” They were some of the gracious words, inserted in the advice, which many of the neighbouring ministers, did this summer humbly lay before our honourable judges: ‘We cannot but with all thankfulness, acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honourable rulers, to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country; humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses, may be perfected.’ If in the midst of the many dissatisfactions among us, the publication of these trials, may promote such a pious thankfulness unto God, for justice being so far, executed among us, I shall rejoyce that God is glorified; and pray that no wrong steps of ours may ever sully any of his glorious works.” [Footnote: _Wonders of the Invisible World_, pp. 82, 83.]

“These witches … have met in hellish randez-vouszes…. In these hellish meetings, these monsters have associated themselves to do no less a thing than to destroy the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the world…. We are truly come into a day, which by being well managed might be very glorious, for the exterminating of those, accursed things,… But if we make this day quarrelsome,… Alas, O Lord, my flesh trembles for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments.” [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 49-60.]

While reading such words the streets of Salem rise before the eyes, with the cart dragging Martha Cory to the gallows while she protests her innocence, and there, at her journey’s end, at the gibbet’s foot, stands the Rev. Nicholas Noyes, pointing to the dangling corpses, and saying: “What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there.” [Footnote: _More Wonders_, p. 108.]

The sequence of cause and effect is sufficiently obvious. Although at a moment when the panic had got beyond control, even the most ultra of the clergy had been forced by their own danger to counsel moderation, the conservatives were by no means ready to abandon their potent allies from the lower world; the power they gave was too alluring. “‘Tis a strange passage recorded by Mr. Clark, in the life of his father, That the people of his parish refusing to be reclaimed from their Sabbath breaking, by all the zealous testimonies which that good man bore against it; at last [one night] … there was heard a great noise, with rattling of chains, up and down the town, and an horrid scent of brimstone…. Upon which the guilty consciences of the wretches, told them, the devil was come to fetch them away; and it so terrify’d them, that an eminent reformation follow’d the sermons which that man of God preached thereupon.” [Footnote: _Wonders of the Invisible World_, p. 65.] They therefore saw the constant acquittals, the abandonment of prosecutions, and the growth of incredulity with regret. The next year Cotton Mather laid bare the workings of their minds with cynical frankness. “The devils have with most horrendous operations broke in upon our neighbourhood, and God has at such a rate overruled all the fury and malice of those devils, that … the souls of many, especially of the rising generation, have been thereby waken’d unto some acquaintance with religion; our young people who belonged unto the praying meetings, of both sexes, apart would ordinarily spend whole nights by the whole weeks together in prayers and psalms upon these occasions; … and some scores of other young people, who were strangers to real piety, were now struck with the lively demonstrations of hell … before their eyes…. In the whole–the devil got just nothing, but God got praises, Christ got subjects, the Holy Spirit got temples, the church got addition, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits.” [Footnote: _More Wonders_, p. 12.]

Mather prided himself on what he had done. “I am not so vain as to say that any wisdom or virtue of mine did contribute unto this good order of things; but I am so just as to say, I did not hinder this good.” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 12.] Men with such beliefs, and lured onward by such temptations, were incapable of letting the tremendous power superstition gave them slip from their grasp without an effort on their own behalf; and accordingly it was not long before the Mathers were once more at work. On the 10th of September, 1693, or about nine months after the last spasms at Salem, and when the belief in enchantments was fast falling into disrepute, a girl named Margaret Rule was taken with the accustomed symptoms in Boston. Forthwith these two godly divines repaired to her bedside, and this is what took place:–

* * * * *

Then Mr. M—- father and son came up, and others with them, in the whole were about thirty or forty persons, they being sat, the father on a stool, and the son upon the bedside by her, the son began to question her:

Margaret Rule, how do you do? Then a pause without any answer.

_Question._ What. Do there a great many witches sit upon you? _Answer._ Yes.

_Question._ Do you not know that there is a hard master?

Then she was in a fit. He laid his hand upon her face and nose, but, as he said, without perceiving breath; then he brush’d her on the face with his glove, and rubb’d her stomach (her breast not being covered with the bed clothes) and bid others do so too, and said it eased her, then she revived.

_Q._ Don’t you know there is a hard master? _A._ Yes.

_Reply._ Don’t serve that hard master, you know who.

_Q._ Do you believe? Then again she was in a fit, and he again rub’d her breast &c…. He wrought his fingers before her eyes and asked her if she saw the witches? _A._ No….

_Q._ Who is it that afflicts you? _A._ I know not, there is a great many of them….

_Q._ You have seen the black man, hant you? _A._ No.

_Reply._ I hope you never shall.

_Q._ You have had a book offered you, hant you?

_A._ No.

_Q._ The brushing of you gives you ease, don’t it?

_A._ Yes. She turn’d herselfe, and a little groan’d.

_Q._ Now the witches scratch you, and pinch you, and bite you, don’t they? _A._ Yes. Then he put his hand upon her breast and belly, viz. on the clothes over her, and felt a living thing, as he said; which moved the father also to feel, and some others.

_Q._ Don’t you feel the live thing in the bed?

_A._ No….

_Q._ Shall we go to pray … spelling the word.

_A._ Yes. The father went to prayer for perhaps half an hour, chiefly against the power of the devil and witchcraft, and that God would bring out the afflicters…. After prayer he [the son] proceeded.

_Q._ You did not hear when we were at prayer did you? _A._ Yes.

_Q._ You don’t hear always? you don’t hear sometimes past a word or two, do you? _A._ No. Then turning him about said, this is just another Mercy Short….

_Q._ What does she eat or drink? _A._ Not eat at all; but drink rum. [Footnote: _More Wonders_, pp. 13, 14.]

* * * * *

To sanctify to the godly the ravings of this drunken and abandoned wench was a solemn joy to the heart of this servant of Christ, who gave his life to “unwearied cares and pains, to rescue the miserable from the lions and bears of hell,” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 10.] therefore he prepared another tract. But his hour was well-nigh come. Though it was impossible that retribution should be meted out to him for his crimes, at least he did not escape unscathed, for Calef and the Brattles, who had long been on his father’s track and his, now seized him by the throat. He knew well they had been with him in the chamber of Margaret Rule, that they had gathered all the evidence; and so when Calef sent him a challenge to stand forth and defend himself, he shuffled and equivocated.

At length a rumor spread abroad that a volume was to be published exposing the whole black history, and then the priest began to cower. His Diary is full of his prayers and lamentations. “The book is printed, and the impression is this week arrived here…. I set myself to humble myself before the Lord under these humbling and wondrous dispensations, and obtain the pardon of my sins, that have rendered me worthy of such dispensations….

“28d. 10m. Saturday.–The Lord has permitted Satan to raise an extraordinary storm upon my father and myself. All the rage of Satan against the holy churches of the Lord falls upon us. First Calf’s book, and then Coleman’s, do set the people in a mighty ferment. All the adversaries of the churches lay their heads together, as if, by blasting of us, they hoped utterly to blow up all. The Lord fills my soul with consolations, inexpressible consolations, when I think on my conformity to my Lord Jesus Christ in the injuries and reproaches that are cast upon me….

“5d. 2m. Saturday [1701].–I find the enemies of the churches are set with an implacable enmity against myself; and one vile fool, namely, R. Calf, is employed by them to go on with more of his filthy scribbles to hurt my precious opportunities of glorifying my Lord Jesus Christ. I had need be much in prayer unto my glorious Lord that he would preserve his poor servant from the malice of this evil generation, and of that vile man particularly.” [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ 1855-58, pp. 290-293.]

“More Wonders of the Invisible World” appeared in 1700, and such was the terror the clergy still inspired it is said it had to be sent to London to be printed, and when it was published no bookseller in Boston dared to offer it in his shop. [Footnote: _Some Few Remarks_, p. 9.] Yet though it was burnt in the college yard by the order of Increase Mather, it was widely read, and dealt the deathblow to the witchcraft superstition of New England. It did more than this: it may be said to mark an era in the intellectual development of Massachusetts, for it shook to its centre that moral despotism which the pastors still kept almost unimpaired over the minds of their congregations, by demonstrating to the people the necessity of thinking for themselves. But what the fate of its authors would have been had the priests still ruled may be guessed by the onslaught made on them by those who sat at the Mathers’ feet. “Spit on, Calf; thou shalt be but like the viper on Pauls hand, easily shaken off, and without any damage to the servant of the Lord.” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 22.]

CHAPTER VIII.

BRATTLE CHURCH.

If the working of the human mind is mechanical, the quality of its action must largely depend upon the training it receives. Viewed as civilizing agents, therefore, systems of education might be tested by their tendency to accelerate or retard the intellectual development of the race. The proposition is capable of being presented with almost mathematical precision; the receptive faculty begins to fail at a comparatively early age; thereafter new opinions are assimilated with increasing difficulty until the power is lost. This progressive period of life, which is at best brief, may, however, be indefinitely shortened by the interposition of artificial obstacles, which have to be overcome by a waste of time and energy, before the reason can act with freedom; and when these obstacles are sufficiently formidable, the whole time is consumed and men are stationary. The most effectual impediments are those prejudices which are so easily implanted in youth, and which acquire tremendous power when based on superstitious terrors. Herein, then, lies the radical divergence between theological and scientific training: the one, by inculcating that tradition is sacred, that accurate investigation is sacrilege, certain to be visited with terrific punishment, and that the highest moral virtue is submission to authority, seeks to paralyze exact thought, and to produce a condition in which dogmatic statements of fact, and despotic rules of conduct, will be received with abject resignation; the other, by stimulating the curiosity, endeavors to provoke inquiry, and, by encouraging a scrutiny of what is obscure, tries to put the mind in an impartial and questioning attitude toward all the phenomena of the universe.

The two methods are irreconcilable, and spring from the great primary instincts which are called conservatism and liberality. Necessarily the movement of any community must correspond exactly with the preponderance of liberalism. Where the theological incubus is unresisted it takes the form of a sacred caste, as among the Hindoos; appreciable advance then ceases, except from some external pressure, such as conquest. The same tendencies in a mitigated form are seen in Spain, whereas Germany is scientific.

Such being the ceaseless conflict between these natural forces, the vantage-points for which the opposing parties have always struggled in western Europe are the pulpits and the universities. Through women the church can reach children at their most impressionable age, while at the universities the teachers are taught. Obviously, if a priesthood can control both positions their influence must be immense. At the beginning of any movement the conservatives are almost necessarily in possession, and their worst reverses have come from defection from within; for unless their organization is so perfect as not only to be animated by a single purpose, but capable of being controlled by a single will, liberals will penetrate within the fold, and if they can maintain their footing and preach with the authority of the ancient tradition it leads to revolution. It was thus the Reformation was accomplished.

The clergy of Massachusetts, with the true priestly instinct, took in the bearings of their situation from the instant they recognized that their political supremacy was passing away, and in order to keep their organization in full vigor they addressed themselves with unabated energy to enforcing the discipline which had been established; at the same time they set the ablest of their number on guard at Harvard. But the task was beyond their strength; they might as well have tried to dam the rising tide with sand.

There is a limit to the capacity of even the most gifted man, and Increase Mather committed a fatal error when he tried to be professor, clergyman, and statesman at once. He was, it is true, made president in 1685, but the next year John Leverett and William Brattle were chosen tutors and fellows, who soon developed into ardent liberals; so it happened that when the reverend rector went abroad in 1688, in his character of politician, he left the college in the complete control of his adversaries. He was absent four years, and during this interval the man was educated who was destined to overthrow the Cambridge Platform, the corner-stone of the conservative power.

Benjamin Colman was one of Leverett’s favorite pupils and the intimate friend of Pemberton. As he was to be a minister, he stayed at Cambridge until he took his master’s degree in 1695; he then sailed at once for England in the Swan. When she had been some weeks at sea she was attacked by a French privateer, who took her after a sharp action. During the fight Colman attracted attention by his coolness; but he declared that though he fired like the rest, “he was sensible of no courage but of a great deal of fear; and when they had received two or three broadsides he wondered when his courage would come, as he had heard others talk.” [Footnote: _Life of B. Colman_, p. 6.]

After the capture the Frenchmen stripped him and put him in the hold, and had it not been for a Madame Allaire, who kept his money for him, he might very possibly have perished from the exposure of an imprisonment in France, for his lungs were delicate. Moreover, at this time of his life he was always a pauper, for he was not only naturally generous, but so innocent and confiding as to fall a victim to any clumsy sharper. Of course he reached London penniless and in great depression of spirits; but he soon became known among the dissenting clergy, and at length settled at Bath, where he preached two years. He seems to have formed singularly strong friendships while in England, one of which was with Mr. Walter Singer, at whose house he passed much time, and who wrote him at parting, “Methinks there is one place vacant in my affections, which nobody can fill beside you. But this blessing was too great for me, and God has reserved it for those that more deserved it.–I cannot but hope sometimes that Providence has yet in store so much happiness for me, that I shall yet see you.” [Footnote: _Life of B. Colman_, p. 48.]

Meanwhile opinion was maturing fast at home; the passions of the witchcraft convulsion had gone deep, and in 1697 a movement began under the guidance of Leverett and the Brattles to form a liberal Congregational church. The close on which the meetinghouse was to stand was conveyed by Thomas Brattle to trustees on January 10, 1698, and from the outset there seems to have been no doubt as to whom the pastor should be. On the 10th of May, 1699, a formal invitation was dispatched to Colman by a committee, of which Thomas Brattle was chairman, and it was accompanied by letters from many prominent liberals. Leverett wrote, “I shall exceedingly rejoice at your return to your country. We want persons of your character. The affair offered to your consideration is of the greatest moment.” William Brattle was even more emphatic, while Pemberton assured him that “the gentlemen who solicit your return are mostly known to you–men of repute and figure, from whom you may expect generous treatment; … I believe your return will be pleasing to all that know you, I am sure it will be inexpressibly so to your unfeigned friend and servant.” [Footnote: _Life of B. Colman_, pp. 43, 44.] It was, however, thought prudent to have him ordained in London, since there was no probability that the clergy of Massachusetts would perform the rite. When he landed in November, after an absence of four years, he was in the flush of early manhood, highly trained for theological warfare, having seen the world, and by no means in awe of his old pastor, the reverend president of Harvard.

The first step after his arrival was to declare the liberal policy, and this was done in a manifesto which was published almost at once. [Footnote: _History of Brattle St. Church_, p. 20.] The efficiency of the Congregational organization depended upon the perfection of the guard which the ministers and the congregations mutually kept over each other. On the one hand no dangerous element could creep in among the people through the laxness of the elder, since all candidates for the communion had to pass through the ordeal of a public examination; on the other the orthodoxy of the ministers was provided for, not only by restricting the elective body to the communicants, but by the power of the ordained clergy to “except against any election of a pastor who … may be … unfit for the common service of the gospel.” [Footnote: Propositions determined by the Assembly of Ministers. _Magnalia_, bk. 5, Hist. Remarks, Section 8.]