Part IV…

Part IV

CONTEST BETWEEN KING CHARLES AND THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY PURITANS, DURING TEN TEARS, FROM 1630 TO 1640; PROFESSIONS OF THE PURITANS ON LEAVING ENGLAND; THEIR CONDUCT ON ARRIVING AT MASSACHUSETTS BAY; SUPPRESSION OF PURITAN CORRESPONDENCE; COMPLAINTS TO ENGLAND OF THEIR CHURCH REVOLUTION AND INTOLERANCE; MEMBERS OF THE NEW CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES ALONE ELECTORS AND ELIGIBLE TO OFFICE; FIVE-SIXTHS OF THE POPULATION DISFRANCHISED; COMPLAINTS OF THE DISFRANCHISED AND PROSCRIBED TO ENGLAND; SUPPRESSION OF CORRESPONDENCE AND THE DENIAL OF FACTS, AND THE PROFESSIONS OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS PERSECUTORS OF EPISCOPALIANS OBTAIN A FAVOURABLE DECISION OF THE KING AND PRIVY COUNCIL, AND THEY ARE ENCOURAGED IN THEIR SETTLEMENT AND TRADE; TRANSFER OF THE CHARTER, PLAIN VIOLATIONS OF IT; RUMOURS OF THE APPOINTMENT OF A GOVERNOR-GENERAL, AND APPOINTMENT OF A ROYAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY AND REGULATION; PREPARATION TO RESIST THE APPOINTMENT AT MASSACHUSETTS BAY; ROYAL AND COLONIAL RESTRICTIONS ON EMIGRATION; IT CEASES; COLONIAL PROPERTY AND TRADE DEPRESSED; REVIEW OF THE TREATMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY BY KING CHARLES THE FIRST, AND THEIR PROFESSIONS AND TREATMENT IN RETURN; THE REAL AUTHORS AND PROMOTERS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND LIBERTY IN ENGLAND.

It is well known that the Puritans in England objected to the ceremonies enforced by Laud, as "corrupt and superstitious," and many ministers were ejected from their benefices for nonconformity to them; but none of the nonconformists who refused compliance with such "corrupt and superstitious" ceremonies ever professed that the polity and worship of the Church was "corrupt and superstitious," and should therefore be renounced, much less abolished, as did Endicot and his party at Massachusetts Bay, and that twenty years before the death of Charles the First and the usurpation of Cromwell.[58]

It might be confidently expected that Mr. Winthrop, after an address of loyalty and affection to his "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England," from the very ship on which he left his native land, would, on his arrival at Massachusetts Bay and assuming its government, have rectified the wrongs of Endicot and his party, and have secured at least freedom of worship to the children of his "dear Mother." But he seems to have done nothing of the kind; he seems to have fallen in with the very proceedings of Endicot which had been disclaimed by him in his address to his "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England," on embarking at Yarmouth for his new government. American historians are entirely silent on the subject. It is very clear that Mr. Winthrop had correspondence with his English friends on these matters, as intimated by Mr. Bancroft in words quoted on page 59. If this suppressed correspondence were published, it would doubtless show how it was that Mr. Winthrop, like Endicot, and to the astonishment of his Puritan friends in England, changed from and suppressed the worship of his "dear Mother" Church, on changing from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Mr. Hutchinson, referring to the address of Governor Winthrop to his "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England," to remove suspicions and misconstructions, says: "This paper has occasioned a dispute, whether the first settlers in Massachusetts were of the Church of England or not. However problematical it may be what they were while they remained in England, they left no room to doubt after they arrived in America."[59]

But though the Editor of Winthrop has suppressed the letters which would explain how Mr. Winthrop changed from Episcopalianism to Congregationalism on his assuming the government of Massachusetts Bay, we are at no loss to know the character of his proceedings, since, in less than a year after his arrival there, the worship of his "dear Mother" Church not only continued to be suppressed, but its members were deprived of the privilege of even becoming "freemen" or electors in the new "Commonwealth," as it forthwith begun to call itself, and the privileges of citizenship were restricted to members of the new established Congregational Churches; for on May 18th, 1631, the newly organized Legislature, or "General Court," as it was called, enacted that, "To the end the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and agreed that for time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same."

Mr. Bancroft, after quoting this extraordinary and unprecedented enactment, remarks--"The principle of universal suffrage was the usage of Virginia; Massachusetts, resting for its defence on its unity and its enthusiasm, gave all power to the select band of religious votaries, into which the avenues could be opened only by the elders [ministers]. The elective franchise was thus confined to a small proportion of the whole population, and the Government rested on an essentially aristocratic foundation. But it was not an aristocracy of wealth; the polity was a sort of theocracy; the servant of the bondman, if he were a member of the Church, might be a freeman of the Company."--"It was the reign of the Church; it was a commonwealth of the chosen people in covenant with God."[60]

It thus appears that the new Congregationalists of Massachusetts were far behind the old Episcopalians of Virginia in the first principle of civil liberty; for while among the latter the Episcopal Church alone was the recognized Church, the elective franchise was not restricted to the members of that Church, but was universal; while in the new Government of Massachusetts, among the new Puritan Congregationalists, none but a Congregational Church member could be a citizen elector, and none could be a Church member without the consent and recommendation of the minister; and thus the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay, at the very beginning, became, in the words of Mr. Bancroft, "the reign of the Church"--not indeed of the Church of England, but of the new Congregational Church established by joining of hands and covenant around the well-pump of Naumkeag--then christened Salem.

The New England historians assure us that on the settlement of the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay, the connection between Church and State ceased. It is true that the connection of the Church of England with the State ceased there; it is true that there was not, in the English sense of the phrase, connection between the Church and State there; for there was no State but the Church; the "Commonwealth" was not the government of free citizens by universal suffrage, or even of property citizens, but was "the reign of the Church," the members of which, according to Mr. Bancroft himself, constituted but "a small proportion of the whole population"--this great majority (soon five-sixths) of the population being mere helots, bound to do the work and pay the taxes imposed upon them by the "reigning Church," but denied all eligibility to any office in the "Commonwealth," or even the elective franchise of a citizen! It was indeed such a "connection between Church and State" as had never existed, and has never existed to this day, in any Protestant country. "The reign of the Church"--the small minority over the great majority of the "Commonwealth;" and this system of "the reign of the Church" over the State--of the government of a Church minority of one-sixth over a whole population of five-sixths--continued for sixty years (as will hereafter appear), until suppressed by a second Royal Charter, which placed all citizens upon equal footing before the law, and in respect to the elective franchise. Though the Congregational Puritans of Massachusetts Bay may have been the fathers of American independence of England, they were far from being the fathers or even precursors of American liberty. They neither understood nor practised the first principles of civil and religious liberty, or even the rights of British subjects as then understood and practised in England itself.

It is admitted on all sides, that, according to the express words of the Royal Charter, the planter emigrants of Massachusetts Bay should enjoy all "the privileges of British subjects," and that no law or resolution should be enacted there "contrary to the laws and statutes of England." Was it not, therefore, perfectly natural that members of the Church of England emigrating to Massachusetts Bay, and wishing to continue and worship as such after their arrival there, should complain to their Sovereign in Council, the supreme authority of the State, that, on their arrival in Massachusetts, they found themselves deprived of the privilege of worshipping as they had worshipped in England, and found themselves subject to banishment the moment they thus worshipped? And furthermore, when, unless they actually joined one of the new Congregational Churches, first established at Massachusetts Bay, August 6th, 1629, five months after granting the Royal Charter (March 4th, 1629), they could enjoy none of the rights of British subjects, they must have been more or less than men had they not complained, and loudly complained, to the highest authority that could redress their grievances, of their disappointments, and wrongs as British subjects emigrating to Massachusetts. And could the King in Council refuse to listen to such complaints, and authorize inquiry into their truth or falsehood, without violating rights which, even at that period of despotic government, were regarded as sacred to even the humblest British subject? And the leading complainants were men of the most respectable position in England, and who had investments in New England--not only the Messrs. Brown, but Capt. John Mason and Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who complained that the Massachusetts Company had encroached upon the territory held by them under Royal Charter--territory which afterwards constituted portions of New Hampshire and Maine. Were the King and Privy Council to be precluded from inquiring into such complaints? Yet New England historians assail the complainants for stating their grievances, and the King and Council for listening to them even so far as to order an inquiry into them. The petitioners are held up as slanderers and enemies, and the King and Council represented as acting tyrannically and as infringing the rights of the Massachusetts Puritans, and seeking the destruction of their liberties and enterprise even by inquiring into complaints made. The actual proceedings of the King in Council prove the injustice and falsity of such insinuations and statements.

The pretence set up in Massachusetts was that the authority of the Local Government was supreme; that to appeal from it to the King himself was sedition and treason;[61] and the defence set up in England was that the allegations were untrue, and that the Massachusetts Corporation was acting loyally according to the provisions of the Charter and for the interests of the King. The account of these proceedings before the King's Privy Council is given in a note from Mr. Palfrey himself.[62]

In regard to these proceedings, the reader's attention is directed to the following facts: 1. The principal charges of the complainants were denied--resting to be proved by parties that must be called from that place [Massachusetts], which required long, expensive time, "and were in due time further to be inquired into;" and the Massachusetts Corporation took effectual precaution against any documentary evidence being brought thence, or "parties" to come, unless at the expense of their all, even should the complainants be able and willing to incur the expense of bringing them to England. The Privy Council therefore deferred further inquiry into these matters, and in the meantime gave the accused the benefit of the doubt and postponement. 2. The nominal Governor of the Company in England, Mr. Cradock, Sir R. Saltonstall, &c., "appeared before the Committee of Council on the Company's behalf, and had the address or good fortune to vindicate their clients," &c. This they did so effectually as to prejudice the King and Council against the complainants, and excite their sympathies in favour of the Company, the King saying "he would have them severely punished who did abuse his Governor and Plantations." But the question arises, And by what sort of "address or good fortune" were Messrs. Cradock and Company able to vindicate their clients "to the King's satisfaction and their complete triumph?" Must it not have been by denying the charges which all the world now knows to have been true? Must it not have been by appealing to the address of Mr. Winthrop and Company to their "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England," declaring their undying attachment to their "dear Mother?" and also by appealing to the letter of Deputy Governor Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, declaring in 1630 that no such Church innovations as had been alleged had taken place at Massachusetts Bay? Must it not have been by their assuring the King's Council that the worship of the Church of England had not been abolished in Massachusetts, much less had anyone been banished thence for continuing to worship according to the Prayer Book of that Church? Must it not have been by their declaring that they were faithfully and loyally carrying out the intentions and provisions of the Charter, according to the statutes and laws of England? 3. Let it be further observed that the King, according to the statements of the very party who was imposing upon his confidence in their sincerity, that throughout this proceeding he evinced the same good-will to the Massachusetts Bay colony that he had done from the granting of the Charter, and which they had repeatedly acknowledged in their communications with each other, as quoted above. Yet the Puritan historians ascribe to Charles jealous hostility to their colony from the commencement, and on that ground endeavour to justify the deceptive conduct of the Company, both in England and at Massachusetts Bay. Had Charles or his advisers cherished any hostile feelings against the Company, there was now a good opportunity of showing it. Had he been disposed to act the despot towards them, he might at once, on a less plausible pretext than that now afforded him, have cancelled his Charter and taken the affairs of the colony into his own hands.

It is a singular concurrence of circumstances, and on which I leave the reader to make his own comments, that while the representatives of the Company were avowing to the King the good faith in which their clients were carrying out his Majesty's royal intentions in granting the Charter, they at that very time were not allowing a single Planter to worship as the King worshipped, and not one who desired so to worship to enjoy the privilege of a British subject, either to vote or even to remain in the colony. As Mr. Bancroft says in the American, but not in the English edition of his History, men "were banished because they were Churchmen. Thus was Episcopacy first professed in Massachusetts, and thus was it exiled. The blessings of the promised land were to be kept for Puritan dissenters."

But while the King and Privy Council were showering kindness and offers of further help, if needed, to advance the Plantation, believing their statements "that things were carried there as was pretended when the patents were granted," complaints could not fail to reach England of the persecution of members of the Church of England, and of the disfranchisement of all Planters who would not join the Congregational Church, in spite of the efforts of the dominant party in Massachusetts to intercept and stifle them; and it at length came to the knowledge of the King and Privy Council that the Charter itself had been, as it was expressed, "surreptitiously" carried from England to Massachusetts, new councillors appointed, and the whole government set up at Massachusetts Bay instead of being administered in England, as had been intended when the Charter was granted. This had been kept a profound secret for nearly four years; but now came to light in 1634.

It has been contended that this transfer of the Charter was lawful, and was done in accordance with the legal opinion of an able lawyer, Mr. John White, one of the party to the transfer. I enter not into the legal question; the more important question is, Was it honourable? Was it loyal? Was it according to the intention of the King in granting it? Was there any precedent, and has there ever been one to this day, for such a proceeding? And when they conceived the idea of transferring the management of the Company from London to Massachusetts, and Mr. Winthrop and his friends refused to emigrate except on the condition of such transfer of the Charter, did not fairness and duty dictate application to the King, who granted the Charter, for permission to transfer it as the best means of promoting the original objects of it? And is there not reason to believe that their application would have been successful, from the kind conduct of the King and Privy Council towards them, as stated above by themselves, when complaints were made against them? Was their proceeding straightforward? Was not the secrecy of it suspicious, and calculated to excite suspicion, when, after more than three years of secrecy, the act became known to the King and Privy Council?[63]

The complainants against the Company in 1632, who found themselves so completely overmatched before the Privy Council by the denials, professions, and written statements produced by Mr. Cradock, Sir R. Saltonstall, and others, could not but feel exasperated when they knew that their complaints were well-founded; and they doubtless determined to vindicate the truth and justice of them at the first opportunity. That opportunity was not long delayed. The discovery that the Charter and government of the Company had been secretly transferred from London to Massachusetts Bay excited suspicion and curiosity; rumours and complaints of the proscriptions and injustice of the Colonial Government began to be whispered on all sides; appeal was again made to the King in Council; and the further inquiry indicated in the proceedings of the Privy Council two years before, was decided upon; a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into these and all other complaints from the colonies, and redress the wrongs if found to exist; the appointment of a Governor-General over all the New England colonies, to see justice done to all parties, was contemplated.

The complainants against the conduct of the government of Endicot and Winthrop are represented by their historians as a few individuals of malicious feelings and more than doubtful character; but human nature at Massachusetts Bay must have been different from itself in all civilized countries, could it have been contented or silent when the rights of citizenship were denied, as Mr. Bancroft himself says, to "by far the larger proportion of the whole population," and confined to the members of a particular denomination, when the only form of worship then legalized in England was proscribed, and its members banished from the land claimed as the exclusive possession of Puritan dissenters. The most inquisitorial and vigilant efforts of the Local Government to suppress the transmission of information to England, and punish complainants, could not prevent the grievances of the proscribed and oppressed being wafted to England, and commanding attention, and especially in connection with the startling fact now first discovered, that the Royal Charter had been removed from England, and a government under its authority set up at Massachusetts Bay.

Mr. Bancroft ascribes the complaints on these subjects as originating in "revenge," and calls them "the clamours of the malignant," and as amounting to nothing but "marriages celebrated by civil magistrates," and "the system of Colonial Church discipline;" confined, as he himself says elsewhere, "the elective franchise to a small proportion of the whole population," and "established the reign of the [Congregational] Church." Mr. Bancroft proceeds: "But the greater apprehensions were raised by a requisition that the Letters Patent of the Company should be produced in England--a requisition to which the emigrants returned no reply."

"Still more menacing," says Mr. Bancroft, "was the appointment of an arbitrary Special Commission [April 10, 1634] for all the colonies.[64]

"The news of this Commission soon reached Boston [Sept. 19, 1634;] and it was at the same time rumoured that a Governor-General was on his way. The intelligence awakened the most intense interest in the whole colony, and led to the boldest measures. Poor as the new settlements were, six hundred pounds were raised towards fortifications; 'and the assistants and the deputies discovered their minds to one another,' and the fortifications were hastened. All the ministers assembled in Boston [Jan. 19, 1635]; it marks the age, that their opinions were consulted; it marks the age still more, that they unanimously declared against the reception of a General Governor. 'We ought,' said the fathers of Israel, 'to defend our lawful possessions, if we are able; if not, to avoid and protract.'"

The rumour of the appointment of a Governor-General over all the New England colonies was premature; but it served to develop the spirit of the ruling Puritans of Massachusetts Bay in their determining to resist the appointment of a general officer to which no other British colony had, or has, ever objected.[65] The decision in their behalf by the King in Council, in regard to the complaints made against them in 1632, deserved their gratitude; the assurance in the recorded Minutes of the Privy Council, that the King had never intended to impose upon them those Church ceremonies which they had objected to in England, and the liberty of not observing which they went to New England to enjoy, should have produced corresponding feelings and conduct on their part. In their perfect liberty of worship in New England, there was no difference between them and their Sovereign. In the meeting of the Privy Council where the Royal declaration is recorded that liberty of worship, without interference or restriction, should be enjoyed by all the settlers in New England, Laud (then Bishop of London) is reported as present. Whatever were the sins of King Charles and Laud in creating by their ceremonies, and then punishing, nonconformists in England, they were not justly liable to the charge of any such sins in their conduct towards the Puritans of New England. Throughout the whole reign of either Charles the First or Second, there is no act or intimation of their interfering, or intending or desiring to interfere, with the worship which the Puritans had chosen, or might choose, in New England. In Plymouth the Congregational worship was adopted in 1620, and was never molested; nor would there have been any interference with its adoption nine years afterwards at Massachusetts Bay, had the Puritans there gone no further than their brethren at Plymouth had gone, or their brethren afterwards in Rhode Island and Connecticut. But the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay assumed not merely the liberty of worship for themselves, but the liberty of prohibiting any other form of worship, and of proscribing and banishing all who would not join in their worship; that is, doing in Massachusetts what they complained so loudly of the King and Laud doing in England. This was the cause and subject of the whole contest between the Corporation of Massachusetts Bay and the authorities in England. If it were intolerance and tyranny for the King and Laud to impose and enforce one form of worship upon all the people of England, it was equal intolerance and tyranny for the Government of Massachusetts Bay to impose and enforce one form of worship there upon all the inhabitants, and especially when their Charter gave them no authority whatever in the matter of Church organization.[66] They went to New England avowedly for liberty of worship; and on arriving there they claimed the right to persecute and to banish or disfranchise all those who adhered to the worship of the Church to which they professed to belong, as did their persecutors when they left England, and which was the only Church then tolerated by the laws of England.

When it could no longer be concealed or successfully denied that the worship of the Church of England had been forbidden at Massachusetts Bay and its members disfranchised; and when it now came to light that the Charter had been secretly transferred from England to Massachusetts, and a new Governor and Council appointed to administer it there; and when it further became known that the Governor and Council there had actually prepared to resist by arms the appointment of a General Governor and Royal Commission, and had not only refused to produce the Charter, but had (to "avoid and protract") not even deigned to acknowledge the Privy Council's letter to produce it, the King was thrown upon the rights of his Crown, either to maintain them or to have the Royal authority exiled from a part of his dominions. And when it transpired that a large and increasing emigration from England was flowing to the very Plantation where the Church had been abolished and the King's authority set at defiance,[67] it became a question of prudence whether such emigration should not be restricted; and accordingly a Royal Order in Council was issued forbidding the conveyance of any persons to New England except those who should have a Royal license.

This Order has been stigmatized by New England writers as most tyrannical and oppressive. I do not dispute it; but it was provided for in the Royal Charter, and the writers who assail King Charles and his Council for such an Act should remember that Cromwell himself and his Rump Parliament passed a similar Act eighteen years later, in 1653, as will hereafter appear; and it is a curious coincidence, that the same year, 1637, in which the King ordered that no person should be conveyed to New England without first obtaining a certificate that they had taken the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and conformed to the worship of the Church of England, the Massachusetts General Court passed an ordinance of a much more stringent character, and interfering with emigration and settlement, and even private hospitality and business to an extent not paralleled in Colonial history. It was enacted "That none shall entertain a stranger who should arrive with intent to reside, or shall allow the use of any habitation, without liberty from the Standing Council."[68]

The Charter having been transferred to Massachusetts, a new Council appointed to administer it there, and no notice having been taken of the Royal order for its production, the Commissioners might have advised the King to cancel the Charter forthwith and take into his own hands the government of the obstreperous colony; but instead of exercising such authority towards the colonists, as he was wont to do in less flagrant cases in England, he consented to come into Court and submit his own authority, as well as the acts of the resistant colonists, to judicial investigation and decision. The Grand Council of Plymouth, from which the Massachusetts Company had first procured their territory, were called upon to answer by what authority and at whose instigation the Charter had been conveyed to New England. They disclaimed any participation in or knowledge of the transaction, and forthwith surrendered their own patent to the King. In doing so they referred to the acts of the new patentees at Massachusetts Bay, "whereby they did rend in pieces the foundation of the building, and so framed unto themselves both new laws and new conceits of matter of religion, forms of ecclesiastical and temporal orders of government, and punishing divers that would not approve them," etc. etc., and expressed their conviction of the necessity of his Majesty "taking the whole business into his own hands."[69]

After this surrender of their Charter by the Grand Council of Plymouth (England), the Attorney-General Bankes brought a quo warranto in the Court of King's Bench against the Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Council of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Bay, to compel the Company to answer to the complaints made against them for having violated the provisions of the patent.[70] The patentees residing in England disclaiming all responsibility for the acts complained of at Massachusetts (except Mr. Cradock), and no defence having been made of those acts, nor the authors of them appearing either personally or by counsel, they stood outlawed, and judgment was entered against the Company in the person of Mr. Cradock for the usurpation charged in the information.

The Lords Commissioners, in pursuance of this decision of the Court of King's Bench, sent a peremptory order to the Governor of Massachusetts Bay, to transmit the Charter to England, intimating that, in case of "further neglect or contempt," "a strict course would be taken against them."[71] They were now brought face to face with the sovereign authority; the contempt of silence; nor did they think it prudent to renew military preparations of resistance, as they had done in 1634; their policy now was to "avoid and protract," by pleading exile, ignorance, innocence, begging pardon and pity, yet denying that they had done anything wrong, and insinuating that if their Charter should be cancelled, their allegiance would be forfeited and they would remove, with the greater part of the population, and set up a new government. I have not met with this very curious address in any modern history of the United States--only glosses of it. I give it entire in a note.[72] They profess a willingness to "yield all due obedience to their Soveraigne Lord the King's Majesty," but that they "are much grieved, that your Lordships should call in our patent, there being no cause knowne to us, nor any delinquency or fault of ours expressed in the order sent to us for that purpose, our government being according to his Majestie's patent, and wee not answerable for any defects in other plantations. This is that which his Majestie's subjects here doe believe and professe, and thereupon wee are all humble suitors to your Lordships, that you will be pleased to take into further consideration our condition, and to afford us the liberty of subjects, that we may know what is laid to our charge; and have leaive and time to answer for ourselves before we be condemned as a people unworthy of his Majestie's favour or protection."

This profession and these statements are made in presence of the facts that three years before the Royal Commissioners had in like manner demanded the production of the patent in England, giving the reasons for it, and the present "humble suitors to their Lordships" had "avoided and protracted," by not even acknowledging the reception of the order, much less answering the charges of which they were informed, but rather preparing military fortifications for resisting a General Governor and Royal Commissioners of Inquiry, and "for regulating the Plantations." Yet they profess not to know "what is laid to their charge," and are "grieved that their Lordships should now demand the patent," as if the production of it had never before been demanded. It will be seen by the letter of their Lordships, given in a note on p. 77, that they refer to this treatment of their former order, and say, in the event of "further neglect and contempt" a strict course would be taken against them.

The authors of the Address profess that the cancelling of their Charter would involve the loss of their labours, their removal from Massachusetts, the exposure of the country to the invasions of the French and Dutch, the forfeiture of their allegiance, and their setting up a new government. It was a mere pretext that the Plantation becoming a Crown colony, as it would on the cancelling of the Charter, would not secure to the planters the protection of the Crown, as in the neighbouring Plymouth settlement, which had no Royal Charter. They knew that, under the protection of the King and laws of England, their liberties and lives and properties would be equally secure as those of any other of his Majesty's subjects. They twice repeat the misstatement that "nothing had been laid to their charge," and "no fault found upon them;" they insinuate that they would be causelessly denied the protection of British subjects, that their allegiance would be renounced, and they with the greater part of the population would establish a new government, which would be a dangerous precedent for other colonies. These denials, professions, insinuations, and threats, they call "opening their griefes," and conclude in the following obsequious, plaintive, and prayerful words:

"If in any thing wee have offended his Majesty and your Lordships, wee humbly prostrate ourselves at the footstool of supreme authority; let us be made the objects of his Majestie's clemency, and not cut off, in our first appeal, from all hope of favour. Thus with our earnest prayers to the King of kings for long life and prosperity to his sacred Majesty and his Royall family, and for all honour and welfare to your Lordships."

The Lords Commissioners replied to this Address through Mr. Cradock, pronouncing the jealousies and fears professed in the Address to be groundless, stating their intentions to be the regulation of all the Colonies, and to continue to the settlers of Massachusetts Bay the privileges of British subjects. They repeated their command upon the Corporation to transmit the Charter to England, at the same time authorising the present Government to continue in office until the issuing of a new Charter. Mr. Cradock transmitted this letter to the Governor of Massachusetts Bay, the General Court of which decided not to acknowledge the receipt of it, pronouncing it "unofficial" (being addressed to Mr. Cradock, who, though the Governor mentioned in the Charter, and the largest proprietor, was not now Governor); that the Lords Commissioners could not "proceed upon it," since they could not prove that it had been delivered to the Governor; and they directed Mr. Cradock's agent not to mention Lords Commissioners' letter when he wrote to Mr. C.

At this juncture the whole attention of the King was turned from Massachusetts to Scotland, his war with which resulted ultimately in the loss of both his crown and his life.

In view of the facts stated in this and the preceding chapters, I think it must be admitted that during the nine years which elapsed between granting the first Charter by Charles and the resumption of it by quo warranto in the Court of King's Bench, the aggression and the hostility was on the side of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. Their first act was one of intolerance, and violation of the laws of England in abolishing the worship of the Church of England, and banishing its members for adhering to its worship. Their denials of it were an admission of the unlawfulness of such acts, as they were also dishonourable to themselves. Their maxim seems to have been, that the end sanctified the means--at least so far as the King was concerned; and that as they distrusted him, they were exempt from the obligations of loyalty and truth in their relations to him; that he and his were predestined reprobates, while they and theirs were the elected saints to whom, of right, rule and earth belonged. They were evidently sincere in their belief that they were the eternally elected heirs of God, and as such had a right to all they could command and possess, irrespective of king or savage. Their brotherhood was for themselves alone--everything for themselves and nothing for others; their religion partook more of Moses than of Christ--more of law than of Gospel--more of hatred than of love--more of antipathy than of attractiveness--more of severity than of tenderness. In sentiment and in self-complacent purpose they left England to convert the savage heathen in New England; but for more than twelve years after their arrival in Massachusetts they killed many hundreds of Indians, but converted none, nor established any missions for their instruction and conversion.

The historians of the United States laud without stint the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay; and they are entitled to all praise for their industry, enterprise, morality, independence. But I question whether there are many, if any, Protestants in the United States who would wish the views and spirit of those Puritans to prevail there, either in religion or civil government--a denial of the liberty of worship to Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, or Quakers; a denial of eligibility to office or of elective franchise to any other than members of the Congregational Churches; compulsory attendance upon Congregational worship, and the support of that worship by general taxation, together with the enforcement of its discipline by civil law and its officers.

Had the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay understood the principles and cherished the spirit of civil and religious liberty, and allowed to the Browns and their Episcopalian friends the continued enjoyment of their old and venerated form of worship, while they themselves embraced and set up a new form of worship, and not made conformity to it a test of loyalty and of citizenship in the Plantation, there would have been no local dissensions, no persecutions, no complaints to England, no Royal Commissions of Inquiry or Regulation, no restraints upon emigration, no jealousies and disputes between England and the colony; the feelings of cordiality with which Charles granted the Charter and encouraged its first four years' operations, according to the testimony of the Puritans themselves, would have developed into pride for the success of the enterprise, and further countenance and aid to advance it; the religious toleration in the new colony would have immensely promoted the cause of religious toleration in England; and the American colonies would have long since grown up, as Canada and Australia are now growing up, into a state of national independence, without war or bloodshed, without a single feeling other than that of filial respect and affection for the Mother Country, without any interruption of trade or commerce--presented an united Protestant and English nationality, under separate governments, on the great continents of the globe and islands of the seas.

I know it has been said that, had Episcopal worship been tolerated at Massachusetts Bay, Laud would have soon planted the hierarchy there, with all his ceremonies and intolerance. This objection is mere fancy and pretence. It is fancy--for the Corporation, and not Laud, was the chartered authority to provide for religious instruction as well as settlement and trade in the new Plantation, as illustrated from the very fact of the Company having selected and employed the first ministers, as well as first Governor and other officers, for the two-fold work of spreading religion and extending the King's dominions in New England. The objection is mere pretence, for it could not have been dread of the Church of England, which dictated its abolition and the banishment of its members, since precisely the same spirit of bigotry, persecution, and proscription prevailed, not only against Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson and her brother Wright and their friends, but in 1646 against the Presbyterians, and in 1656 against the Baptists, as will hereafter appear.

Their iron-bound, shrivelled creed of eternal, exclusive election produced an iron-hearted population, whose hand was against every man not of their tribal faith and tribal independence; but at the same time not embodying in their civil or ecclesiastical polity a single element of liberty or charity which any free State or Church would at this day be willing to adopt or recognize as its distinctive constitution or mission.

It was the utter absence of both the principles and spirit of true civil and religious liberty in the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, and in their brethren under the Commonwealth and Cromwell in England, that left Nonconformists without a plea for toleration under Charles the Second, from the example of their own party on either side of the Atlantic, and that has to this day furnished the most effective argument to opponents against dissenters' pretensions to liberality and liberty, and the strongest barrier against their political influence in England. They were prostrate and powerless when the liberal Churchmen, guided by the views of Chillingworth, Burnet, and Tillotson, under William and Mary, obtained the first Parliamentary enactment for religious toleration in England. It is to the same influence that religious liberty in England has been enlarged from time to time; and, at this day, it is to the exertions and influence of liberal Churchmen, both in and out of Parliament, more than to any independent influence of Puritan dissenters, that civil and religious liberty are making gradual and great progress in Great Britain and Ireland--a liberty which, I believe, would ere this have been complete but for the prescriptive, intolerant and persecuting spirit and practice of the Puritans of the seventeenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 58: It appears that the cause of dissatisfaction among the Puritan clergy of the Church, and of the emigration of many of them and of their lay friends to New England, was not the Prayer Book worship of the Church (abolished by Endicot at Massachusetts Bay), but the enforced reading of the Book of Sports, in connection with "the rigorous proceedings to enforce ceremonies;" for Rushworth, Vol. II., Second Part, page 460, Anno 1636, quoted by the American antiquarian, Hazard, Vol. I., p. 440, states as follows:

"The severe censures in the Star Chamber, and the greatness of the fines and the rigorous proceedings to impose ceremonies, the suspending and silencing of multitudes of ministers, for not reading in the Church the Book of Sports to be exercised on the Lord's Day, caused many of the nation, both ministers and others, to sell their estates, and set sail for New England (a late Plantation in America), where they held a Plantation by patent from the Crown."]

[Footnote 59: History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 19, 20. It appears, however, that within a month after Mr. Winthrop's arrival at Massachusetts Bay, both he and the Deputy-Governor Dudley joined the new Endicot and Higginson Church; for Mr. Holmes in his Annals says: "A fleet of 14 sail, with men, women and children, and provisions, having been prepared early in the year to make a firm plantation in New England, 12 of the ships arrived early in July [1630] at Charlestown. In this fleet came Governor Winthrop, Deputy Governor Dudley, and several other gentlemen of wealth and quality. In this fleet came about 840 passengers." "On the 30th of July, a day of solemn prayer and fasting was kept at Charlestown; when Governor Winthrop, Deputy Governor Dudley, and Mr. Wilson first entered into Church covenant; and now was laid the foundation of the Church of Charlestown, and the first Church in Boston." (Vol. I., pp. 202, 203.)]

[Footnote 60: History of the United States, Vol. I., pp. 390, 391.

Referring to this order, May 18, 1631--not a year after Mr. Winthrop's arrival--Mr. Hutchinson says: "None may now be a freeman of that Company unless he be a Church member among them. None have voice in the election of Governor, or Deputy, or assistants--none are to be magistrates, officers, or jurymen, grand or petit, but freemen. The ministers give their votes in all the elections of magistrates. Now the most of the persons at New England are not admitted to their Church, and therefore are not freemen; and when they come to be tried there, be it for life or limb, name or estate, or whatsoever, they must be tried and judged too by those of the Church, who are, in a sort, their adversaries. How equal that hath been or may be, some by experience do and others may judge."--In a note, quoted from the lawyer Lichford, Vol. I., p. 26.]

[Footnote 61: Examples of such pretensions and imputations will be given in future pages.]

[Footnote 62: The malcontents had actually prevailed to have their complaints entertained by the Privy Council. "Among many truths misrepeated," writes Winthrop, "accusing us to intend rebellion, to have cast off our allegiance, and to be wholly separate from the Church and laws of England, that our ministers and people did continually rail against the State, Church, and Bishops there, etc." Saltonstall, Humphrey, Cradock (Ratcliff's master) appeared before the Committee of the Council in the Company's behalf, and had the address or good fortune to vindicate their clients, so that on the termination of the affair, the King said "he would have them severely punished who did abuse his Governor and Plantation;" and from members of the Council it was learned, says Winthrop, "that his Majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England upon us, for that it was considered that it was freedom from such things that made the people come over to us; and it was credibly informed to the Council that this country would be beneficial to England for masts, cordage, etc., if the Sound [the passage to the Baltic] should be debarred." "The reason for dismissing the complaint was alleged in the Order adopted by Council to that effect: 'Most of the things informed being denied, and resting to be proved by parties that must be called from that place, which required a long expense of time, and at the present their Lordships finding that the adventurers were upon the despatch of men, victuals, and merchandise for that place, all which would be at a stand if the adventurers should have discouragement, or take suspicion that the State there had no good opinion of that Plantation,--their Lordships not laying the fault, or fancies (if any be,) of some particular men upon the general government, or principal adventurers, which in due time is further to be inquired into, have thought fit in the meantime to declare that the appearances were so fair, and the hopes so great, that the country would prove both beneficial to this country and to the particular adventurers, as that the adventurers had cause to go on cheerfully with their undertakings, and rest assured, if things were carried as was pretended when the patents were granted, and accordingly as by the patents is appointed, his Majesty would not only maintain the liberties and privileges heretofore granted, but supply anything further that might tend to the good government of the place, and prosperity and comfort of his people there."--Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. I., Chap, ix., pp. 364, 365.]

[Footnote 63: The Congregational Society of Boston has published, in 1876, a new book in justification of the "Banishment of Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Plantation," by the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter, of Boston. It is a book of intense bitterness against Roger Williams, and indeed everything English; but his account of the origin and objects of the Massachusetts Charter suggests, stronger than language can express, the presumption and lawlessness of Endicot's proceedings in establishing a new Church and abolishing an old one; and Dr. Dexter's account of the removal of the Charter, and its secrecy, is equally suggestive. It is as follows:

"Let me here repeat and emphasize that it may be remembered by and by that this 'Dorchester Company,' originally founded on the transfer of a portion of the patent of Gorges, and afterwards enlarged and re-authorized by the Charter of Charles the First, as the 'Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay,' was in its beginning, and in point of fact, neither more nor less than a private corporation chartered by the Government for purposes of fishing, real estate improvement, and general commerce, for which it was to pay the Crown a fifth part of all precious metals which it might unearth. It was then more than this only in the same sense as the egg, new-laid, is the full-grown fowl, or the acorn the oak. It was not yet a State. It was not, even in the beginning, in the ordinary sense, a colony. It was a plantation with a strong religious idea behind it, on its way to be a colony and a state. In the original intent, the Governor and General Court, and therefore the Government, were to be and abide in England. When, in 1628, Endicot and his little party had been sent over to Salem, his authority was expressly declared to be 'in subordination to the Company here' [that is, in London]. And it was only when Cradock [the first Governor of the Company] found that so many practical difficulties threatened all proceedings upon that basis, as to make it unlikely that Winthrop, and Saltonstall, and Johnson, and Dudley, and other men whose co-operation was greatly to be desired, would not consent to become partners in the enterprise unless a radical change were made in that respect, that he proposed and the Company consented, 'for the advancement of the Plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant themselves and families thither, and for other weighty reasons therein contained, to transfer the government of the Plantation to those that shall inhabit there,' &c. It was even a grave question of law whether, under the terms of the Charter, this transfer were possible." ... "They took the responsibility--so quietly, however, that the Home Government seem to have remained in ignorance of the fact for more than four years thereafter." (pp. 12, 13.)

In a note Dr. Dexter says: "I might illustrate by the Hudson Bay Company, which existed into our time with its original Charter--strongly resembling that of the Massachusetts Company--and which has always been rather a corporation for trade charterers in England than a colony of England on American soil." (Ib., p. 12.)

It is evident from the Charter that the original design of it was to constitute a corporation in England like that of the East India and other great Companies, with powers to settle plantations within the limits of the territory, under such forms of government and magistracy as should be fit and necessary. The first step in sending out Mr. Endicot, and appointing him a Council, and giving him commission, instructions, etc., was agreeable to this constitution of the Charter. (Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 12, 13.)]

[Footnote 64: History of the United States, Vol. I., pp. 439, 440.]

[Footnote 65: The New England historians represent it as a high act of tyranny for the King to appoint a Governor-General over the colonies, and to appoint Commissioners with powers so extensive as those of the Royal Commission appointed in 1634. But they forget and ignore the fact that nine years afterwards, in 1643, when the Massachusetts and neighbouring colonies were much more advanced in population and wealth than in 1634, the Parliament, which was at war with the King and assuming all his powers, passed an Ordinance appointing a Governor-General and Commissioners, and giving them quite as extensive powers as the proposed Royal Commission of 1634. This Ordinance will be given entire when I come to speak of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans, under the Long Parliament and under Cromwell. It will be seen that the Long Parliament, and Cromwell himself, assumed larger powers over the New England colonies than had King Charles.]

[Footnote 66: "The Charter was far from conceding to the patentees the privilege of freedom of worship. Not a single line alludes to such a purpose; nor can it be implied by a reasonable construction from any clause in the Charter." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. I., pp. 271, 272.)]

[Footnote 67: It has been seen, p. 45, that the London Company had transmitted to Endicot in 1630 a form of the oath of allegiance to the King and his successors, to be taken by all the officers of the Massachusetts Bay Government. This had been set aside and a new oath substituted, leaving out all reference to the King, and confining the oath of allegiance to the local Government.]

[Footnote 68: Historians ascribe to this circumstance a remarkable change in the political economy of that colony; a cow which formerly sold for twenty pounds now selling for six pounds, and every colonial production in proportion. (Chalmers' Annals, pp. 265, 266. Neal's History of New England, Vol. I., Chap. ix., pp. 210-218.)]

[Footnote 69: Hazard, Vol. I.]

[Footnote 70: "At the trial, 'In Michas. T. XImo Carl Primi,' and the patentees, T. Eaton, Sir H. Rowsell, Sir John Young, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Ven, George Harmood, Richard Perry, Thomas Hutchins, Nathaniel Wright, Samuel Vassall, Thomas Goffe, Thomas Adams, John Brown pleaded a disclaimer of any knowledge of the matters complained of, and that they should not 'for the future intermeddle with any the liberties, privileges and franchises aforesaid, but shall be for ever excluded from all use and claim of the same and every of them."

"Matthew Cradock [first Governor of the Company] comes in, having had time to interplead, etc., and on his default judgment was given, that he should be convicted of the usurpation charged in the information, and that the said liberties, privileges and franchises should be taken and seized into the King's hands; the said Matthew not to intermeddle with and be excluded the use thereof, and the said Matthew to be taken to answer to the King for the said usurpation."

"The rest of the patentees stood outlawed, and no judgment entered against them."

Collection of Original Papers relative to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (in the British Museum), by T. Hutchinson, Vol. I., pp. 114-118.]

[Footnote 71: The following is a copy of the letter sent by appointment of the Lords of the Council to Mr. Winthrop, for the patent of the Plantations to be sent to them:

"At Whitehall, April 4th, 1638:--

"This day the Lords Commissioners for Foreign Plantations, taking into consideration the petitions and complaints of his Majesty's subjects, planters and traders in New England, grew more frequent than heretofore for want of a settled and orderly government in those parts, and calling to mind that they had formerly given order about two or three years since to Mr. Cradock, a member of that Plantation (alleged by him to be there remaining in the hands of Mr. Winthrop), to be sent over hither, and that notwithstanding the same, the said letters patent were not as yet brought over; and their Lordships being now informed by Mr. Attorney-General that a quo warranto had been by him brought, according to former order, against the said patent, and the same was proceeded to judgment against so many as had appeared, and that they which had not appeared were outlawed: 'Their Lordships, well approving of Mr. Attorney-General's care and proceeding therein, did now resolve and order, that Mr. Meawtis, clerk of the Council attendant upon the said Commissioners for Foreign Plantations, should, in a letter from himself to Mr. Winthrop, inclose and convey this order unto him; and their Lordships hereby, in his Majesty's name and according to his express will and pleasure, strictly require and enjoin the said Winthrop, or any other in whose power and custody the said letters patent are, that they fail not to transmit the said patent hither by the return of the ship in which the order is conveyed to them, it being resolved that in case of any further neglect or contempt by them shewed therein, their Lordships will cause a strict course to be taken against them, and will move his Majesty to resume into his hands the whole Plantation.'" (Ib., pp. 118, 119.)]

[Footnote 72: "To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for Foreign Plantations.

"The humble Petition of the Inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, of the Generall Court there assembled, the 6th day of September, in the 14th year of the Reigne of our Soveraigne Lord King Charles.

"Whereas it hath pleased your Lordships, by order of the 4th of April last, to require our patent to be sent unto you, wee do hereby humbly and sincerely professe, that wee are ready to yield all due obedience to our Soveraigne Lord the King's majesty, and to your Lordships under him, and in this minde wee left our native countrie, and according thereunto, hath been our practice ever since, so as wee are much grieved, that your Lordships should call in our patent, there being no cause knowne to us, nor any delinquency or fault of ours expressed in the order sent to us for that purpose, our government being according to his Majestie's patent, and we not answerable for any defects in other plantations, etc.

"This is that which his Majestie's subjects here doe believe and professe, and thereupon wee are all humble suitors to your Lordships, that you will be pleased to take into further consideration our condition, and to afford us the liberty of subjects, that we may know what is layd to our charge; and have leaive and time to answer for ourselves before we be condemned as a people unworthy of his Majestie's favour or protection. As for the quo warranto mentioned in the said order, wee doe assure your Lordships wee were never called to answer it, and if we had, wee doubt not but wee have a sufficient plea to put in.

"It is not unknowne to your Lordships, that we came into these remote parts with his Majestie's license and encouragement, under the great seale of England, and in the confidence wee had of that assurance, wee have transported our families and estates, and here have wee built and planted, to the great enlargement and securing of his Majestie's dominions in these parts, so as if our patent should now be taken from us, we shall be looked up as renegadoes and outlaws, and shall be enforced, either to remove to some other place, or to returne into our native country againe; either of which will put us to unsupportable extremities; and these evils (among others) will necessarily follow. (1.) Many thousand souls will be exposed to ruine, being laid open to the injuries of all men. (2.) If wee be forced to desert this place, the rest of the plantations (being too weake to subsist alone) will, for the most part, dissolve and goe with us, and then will this whole country fall into the hands of the French or Dutch, who would speedily embrace such an opportunity. (3.) If we should loose all our labour and costs, and be deprived of those liberties which his Majestie hath granted us, and nothing layd to our charge, nor any fayling to be found in us in point of allegiance (which all our countrymen doe take notice of, and will justify our faithfulness in this behalfe), it will discourage all men hereafter from the like undertakings upon confidence of his Majestie's Royal grant. Lastly, if our patent be taken from us (whereby wee suppose wee may clayme interest in his Majestie's favour and protection) the common people here will conceive that his Majestie hath cast them off, and that, heereby, they are freed from their allegiance and subjection, and, thereupon, will be ready to confederate themselves under a new Government, for their necessary safety and subsistence, which will be of dangerous example to other plantations, and perillous to ourselves of incurring his Majestie's displeasure, which wee would by all means avoyd.

"Wee dare not question your Lordships' proceedings; wee only desire to open our griefs where the remedy is to be expected. If in any thing wee have offended his Majesty and your Lordships, wee humbly prostrate ourselves at the footstool of supreme authority; let us be made the object of his Majestie's clemency, and not cut off, in our first appeal, from all hope of favour. Thus with our earnest prayers to the King of kings for long life and prosperity to his sacred Majesty and his Royall family, and for all honour and welfare to your Lordships, we humbly take leave.

"EDWARD RAWSON, Secretary."

(Hutchinson's History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., Appendix V., pp. 507, 508, 509.)]

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Chapter IV

THE GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT, THE COMMONWEALTH, AND CROMWELL.

Charles the First ceased to rule after 1640, though his death did not take place until January, 1649. The General Court of Massachusetts Bay, in their address to the King's Commissioners in September, 1637, professed to offer "earnest prayers for long life and prosperity to his sacred Majesty and his royal family, and all honour and welfare to their Lordships;" but as soon as there was a prospect of a change, and the power of the King began to decline and that of Parliament began to increase, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay transferred all their sympathies and assiduities to the Parliament. In 1641, they sent over three agents to evoke interest with the Parliamentary leaders--one layman, Mr. Hibbins, and two ministers, Thomas Weld and Hugh Peters, the latter of whom was as shrewd and active in trade and speculations as he was ardent and violent in the pulpit. He made quite a figure in the civil war in England, and was Cromwell's favourite war chaplain. Neither he nor Weld ever returned to New England.

As the persecution of Puritans ceased in England, emigration to New England ceased; trade became depressed and property greatly depreciated in value; population became stationary in New England during the whole Parliamentary and Commonwealth rule in England, from 1640 to 1660--more returning from New England to England than emigrating thither from England.[73]

The first success of this mission of Hugh Peters and his colleagues soon appeared. By the Royal Charter of 1629, the King encouraged the Massachusetts Company by remitting all taxes upon the property of the Plantations for the space of seven years, and all customs and duties upon their exports and imports, to or from any British port, for the space of twenty-one years, except the five per cent. due upon their goods and merchandise, according to the ancient trade of merchants; but the Massachusetts delegates obtained an ordinance of Parliament, or rather an order of the House of Commons, complimenting the colony on its progress and hopeful prospects, and discharging all the exports of the natural products of the colony and all the goods imported into it for its own use, from the payment of any custom or taxation whatever.[74]

On this resolution of the Commons three remarks may be made: 1. As in all previous communications between the King and the Colony, the House of Commons termed the colony a "Plantation," and the colonists "Planters." Two years afterwards the colony of Massachusetts Bay assumed to itself (without Charter or Act of Parliament) the title and style of "a Commonwealth." 2. While the House of Commons speaks of the prospects being "very happy for the propagation of the Gospel in those parts," the Massachusetts colony had not established a single mission or employed a single missionary or teacher for the instruction of the Indians. 3. The House of Commons exempts the colony from payment of all duties on articles exported from or imported into the colony, until the House of Commons shall take further order therein to the contrary,--clearly implying and assuming, as beyond doubt, the right of the House of Commons to impose or abolish such duties at its pleasure. The colonists of Massachusetts Bay voted hearty thanks to the House of Commons for this resolution, and ordered it to be entered on their public records as a proof to posterity of the gracious favour of Parliament.[75]

The Massachusetts General Court did not then complain of the Parliament invading their Charter privileges, in assuming its right to tax or not tax their imports and exports; but rebelled against Great Britain a hundred and thirty years afterwards, because the Parliament asserted and applied the same principle.

The Puritan Court of Massachusetts Bay were not slow in reciprocating the kind expressions and acts of the Long Parliament, and identifying themselves completely with it against the King. In 1644 they passed an Act, in which they allowed perfect freedom of opinion, discussion, and action on the side of Parliament, but none on the side of the King; the one party in the colony could say and act as they pleased (and many of them went to England and joined Cromwell's army or got places in public departments); no one of the other party was allowed to give expression to his opinions, either "directly or indirectly," without being "accounted as an offender of a high nature against this Commonwealth, and to be prosecuted, capitally or otherwise, according to the quality and degree of his offence."[76]

The New England historians have represented the acts of Charles the First as arbitrary and tyrannical in inquiring into the affairs of Massachusetts Bay, and in the appointment of a Governor-General and Commissioners to investigate all their proceedings and regulate them; and it might be supposed that the Puritan Parliament in England and the General Court of Massachusetts Bay would be at one in regard to local independence of the colony of any control or interference on the part of the Parent State. But the very year after the House of Commons had adopted so gracious an order to exempt the exports and imports of the colony from all taxation, both Houses of Parliament passed an Act for the appointment of a Governor-General and seventeen Commissioners--five Lords and twelve Commoners--with unlimited powers over all the American colonies. Among the members of the House of Commons composing this Commission were Sir Harry Vane and Oliver Cromwell. The title of this Act, in Hazard, is as follows:

"An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament: whereby Robert Earl of Warwick is made Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral of all those Islands and Plantations inhabited, planted, or belonging to any of his Majesty the King of England's subjects, within the bounds and upon the coasts of America, and a Committee appointed to be assisting unto him, for the better government, strengthening and preservation of the said Plantations; but chiefly for the advancement of the true Protestant religion, and further spreading of the Gospel of Christ[77] among those that yet remain there, in great and miserable blindness and ignorance."[78]

This Act places all the affairs of the colonies, with the appointment of Governors and all other local officers, under the direct control of Parliament, through its general Governor and Commissioners, and shows beyond doubt that the Puritans of the Long Parliament held the same views with those of Charles the First, and George the Third, and Lord North a century afterwards, as to the authority of the British Parliament over the American colonies. Whether those views were right or wrong, they were the views of all parties in England from the beginning for more than a century, as to the relations between the British Parliament and the colonies. The views on this subject held and maintained by the United Empire Loyalists, during the American Revolution of 1776, were those which had been held by all parties in England, whether Puritans or Churchmen, from the first granting of the Charter to the Company of Massachusetts Bay in 1629. The assumptions and statements of American historians to the contrary on this subject are at variance with all the preceding facts of colonial history.[79]

Mr. Bancroft makes no mention of this important ordinance passed by both Houses of the Long Parliament;[80] nor does Hutchinson, or Graham, or Palfrey. Less sweeping acts of authority over the colonies, by either of the Charters, are portrayed by these historians with minuteness and power, if not in terms of exaggeration. The most absolute and comprehensive authority as to both appointments and trade in the colonies ordered by the Long Parliament and Commonwealth are referred to in brief and vague terms, or not at all noticed, by the historical eulogist of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans,[81] who, while they were asserting their independence of the royal rule of England, claimed and exercised absolute rule over individual consciences and religious liberty in Massachusetts, not only against Episcopalians, but equally against Presbyterians and Baptists; for this very year, says Hutchinson, "several persons came from England in 1643, made a muster to set Presbyterian government under the authority of the Assembly of Westminster; but the New England Assembly, the General Court, soon put them to the rout."[82] And in the following year, 1644, these "Fathers of American liberty" adopted measures equally decisive to "rout" the Baptists. The ordinance passed on this subject, the "13th of the 9th month, 1644," commences thus: "Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved that since the first arising of the Anabaptists, about one hundred years since, they have been the incendaries of the Commonwealths and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion, and the troubles of churches in all places where they have been, and that they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful, have usually held other errors or heresies therewith, though they have (as other heretics used to do) concealed the same till they spied out a fit advantage and opportunity to vent them by way of question or scruple," etc.: "It is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the ministration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right and authority to make war, or to punish the outward breakers of the first Table, and shall appear to the Court to continue therein after the due time and means of conviction, shall be sentenced to banishment."[83]

In the following year, 1646, the Presbyterians, not being satisfied with having been "put to the rout" in 1643, made a second attempt to establish their worship within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay. Mr. Palfrey terms this attempt a "Presbyterian cabal," and calls its leaders "conspirators." They petitioned the General Court or Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, and on the rejection of their petition they proposed to appeal to the Parliament in England. They were persecuted for both acts. It was pretended that they were punished, not for petitioning the local Court, but for the expressions used in their petition--the same as it had been said seventeen years before, that the Messrs. Brown were banished, not because they were Episcopalians, but because, when called before Endicot and his councillors, they used offensive expressions in justification of their conduct in continuing to worship as they had done in England. In their case, in 1629, the use and worship of the Prayer Book was forbidden, and the promoters of it banished, and their papers seized; in this case, in 1646, the Presbyterian worship was forbidden, and the promoters of it were imprisoned and fined, and their papers seized. In both cases the victims of religious intolerance and civil tyranny were men of the highest position and intelligence. The statements of the petitioners in 1646 (the truth of which could not be denied, though the petitioners were punished for telling it) show the state of bondage and oppression to which all who would not join the Congregational Churches--that is, five-sixths of the population--were reduced under this system of Church government--the Congregational Church members alone electors, alone eligible to be elected, alone law-makers and law administrators, alone imposing taxes, alone providing military stores and commanding the soldiery; and then the victims of such a Government were pronounced and punished as "conspirators" and "traitors" when they ventured to appeal for redress to the Mother Country. The most exclusive and irresponsible Government that ever existed in Canada in its earliest days never approached such a despotism as this of Massachusetts Bay. I leave the reader to decide, when he peruses what was petitioned for--first to the Massachusetts Legislature, and then to the English Parliament--who were the real "traitors" and who the "conspirators" against right and liberty: the "Presbyterian cabal," as Mr. Palfrey terms the petitioners, or those who imprisoned and fined them, and seized their papers. Mr. Hutchinson, the best informed and most candid of the New England historians, states the affair of the petitioners, their proceedings and treatment, and the petition which they presented, as follows:

"A great disturbance was caused in the colony this year [1646] by a number of persons of figure, but of different sentiments, both as to civil and ecclesiastical government, from the people in general. They had laid a scheme for petition of such as were non-freemen to the courts of both colonies, and upon the petitions being refused, to apply to the Parliament, pretending they were subjected to arbitrary power, extra-judicial proceedings, etc. The principal things complained of by the petitioners were:

"1st. That the fundamental laws of England were not owned by the Colony, as the basis of their government, according to the patent.

"2nd. The denial of those civil privileges, which the freemen of the jurisdiction enjoyed, to such as were not members of Churches, and did not take an oath of fidelity devised by the authority here, although they were freeborn Englishmen, of sober lives and conversation, etc.

"3rd. That they were debarred from Christian privileges, viz., the Lord's Supper for themselves, and baptism for their children, unless they were members of some of the particular Churches in the country, though otherwise sober, righteous, and godly, and eminent for knowledge, not scandalous in life and conversation, and members of Churches in England.

"And they prayed that civil liberty and freedom might be forthwith granted to all truly English, and that all members of the Church of England or Scotland, not scandalous, might be admitted to the privileges of the Churches of New England; or if these civil and religious liberties were refused, that they might be freed from the heavy taxes imposed upon them, and from the impresses made of them or their children or servants into the war; and if they failed of redress there, they should be under the necessity of making application to England, to the honourable Houses of Parliament, who they hoped would take their sad condition, etc.

"But if their prayer should be granted, they hoped to see the then contemned ordinances of God highly prized; the Gospel, then dark, break forth as the sun; Christian charity, then frozen, wax warm; jealousy of arbitrary government banished; strife and contention abated; and all business in Church and State, which for many years had gone backward, successfully thriving, etc.

"The Court, and great part of the country, were much offended at this petition. A declaration was drawn up by order of the Court, in answer to the petition, and in vindication of the Government--a proceeding which at this day would not appear for the honour of the supreme authority. The petitioners were required to attend the Court. They urged their right of petitioning. They were told they were not accused of petitioning, but of contemptuous and seditious expressions, and were required to find sureties for their good behaviour, etc. A charge was drawn up against them in form; notwithstanding which it was intimated to them, that if they would ingenuously acknowledge their offence, they should be forgiven; but they refused, and were fined, some in larger, some in smaller sums, two or three of the magistrates dissenting, Mr. Bellingham,[85] in particular, desiring his dissent might be entered. The petitioners claimed an appeal to the Commissioners of Plantations in England; but it was not allowed. Some of them resolved to go home with a complaint. Their papers were seized, and among them was found a petition to the Right Honourable the Earl of Warwick, etc., Commissioners, from about five and twenty non-freemen, for themselves and many thousands more, in which they represent that from the pulpits[86] they had been reproached and branded with the names of destroyers of Churches and Commonwealths, called Hamans, Judases, sons of Korah, and the Lord entreated to confound them, and the people and magistrates stirred up against them by those who were too forward to step out of their callings, so that they had been sent for to the Court, and some of them committed for refusing to give two hundred pounds bond to stand to the sentence of the Court, when all the crime was a petition to the Court, and they had been publicly used as malefactors, etc.

"Mr. Winslow, who had been chosen agent for the colony to answer to Gorton's complaint, was now instructed to make defence against these petitioners; and by his prudent management, and the credit and esteem he was in with many members of the Parliament and principal persons then in power, he prevented any prejudice to the colony from either of these applications."[87]

Mr. (Edward) Winslow, above mentioned by Mr. Hutchinson, had been one of the founders and Governors of the Plymouth colony; but twenty-five years afterwards he imbibed the persecuting spirit of the Massachusetts Bay colony, became their agent and advocate in London, and by the prestige which he had acquired as the first narrator and afterwards Governor of the Plymouth colony, had much influence with the leading men of the Long Parliament. He there joined himself to Cromwell, and was appointed one of his three Commissioners to the West Indies, where he died in 1655. Cromwell, as he said when he first obtained possession of the King, had "the Parliament in his pocket;" he had abolished the Prayer Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore (who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr. Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Massachusetts Bay for liberty of worship in behalf of both Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

But was ever a petition to a local Legislature more constitutional, or more open and manly in the manner of its getting up, more Christian in its sentiments and objects? Yet the petitioners were arraigned and punished as "conspirators" and "disturbers of the public peace," by order of that Legislature, for openly petitioning to it against some of its own acts. Was ever appeal to the Imperial Parliament by British subjects more justifiable than that of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, Mr. Vassal (progenitor of British Peers), and others, from acts of a local Government which deprived them of both religious rights of worship and civil rights of franchise, of all things earthly most valued by enlightened men, and without which the position of man is little better than that of goods and chattels? Yet the respectable men who appealed to the supreme power of the realm for the attainment of these attributes of Christian and British citizenship were imprisoned and heavily fined, and their private papers seized and sequestered!

In my own native country of Upper Canada, the Government for nearly half a century was considered despotic, and held up by American writers themselves as an unbearable tyranny. But one Church was alleged to be established in the country, and the government was that of a Church party; but never was the elective franchise there confined to the members of the one Church; never were men and women denied, or hailed before the legal tribunals and fined for exercising the privilege of Baptism, the Lord's Supper, or public worship for themselves and families according to the dictates of their own consciences; never was the humblest inhabitant denied the right of petition to the local Legislature on any subject, or against any governmental acts, or the right of appeal to the Imperial Government or Parliament on the subject of any alleged grievance. The very suspicion and allegation that the Canadian Government did counteract, by influences and secret representations, the statements of complaining parties to England, roused public indignation as arbitrary and unconstitutional. Even the insurrection which took place in both Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 and 1838 was professedly against alleged partiality and injustice by the local Government, as an obstruction to more liberal policy believed to be desired by the Imperial Government.

But here, in Massachusetts, a colony chartered as a Company to distribute and settle public lands and carry on trade, in less than twenty years assumes the powers of a sovereign Commonwealth, denies to five-sixths of the population the freedom of citizenship, and limits it to the members of one Church, and denies Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and worship to all who will not come to the one Church, punishes petitioners to itself for civil and religious freedom from those who were deprived of it, and punishes as "treason" their appeal for redress to the English Parliament. Though, for the present, this unprecedented and unparalleled local despotism was sustained by the ingenious representations of Mr. Winslow and the power of Cromwell; yet in the course of four years the surrender of its Charter was ordered by the regicide councillors of the Commonwealth, as it had been ordered by the beheaded King Charles and his Privy Council thirteen years before. In the meantime tragical events in England diverted attention from the colonies. The King was made prisoner, then put to death; the Monarchy was abolished, as well as the House of Lords; and the Long Parliament became indeed Cromwell's "pocket" instrument.

It was manifest that the government of Massachusetts Bay as a colony was impossible, with the pretensions which it had set up, declaring all appeals to England to be "treason," and punishing complainants as "conspirators" and "traitors." The appointment by Parliament in 1643 of a Governor-General and Commissioners had produced no effect in Massachusetts Bay Colony; pretensions to supremacy and persecution were as rife as ever there. Dr. Child and his friends were punished for even asking for the administration that appointed the Governor-General and those Commissioners; and whether the Government of England were a monarchy or republic, it was clear that the pretensions to independence of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay must be checked, and their local tyranny restrained. For this purpose the Long Parliament adopted the same policy in 1650 that King Charles had done in 1637; demanded the surrender of the Charter; for that Parliament sent a summons to the local Government ordering it to transmit the Charter to England, to receive a new patent from the Parliament in all its acts and processes.

This order of Parliament to Massachusetts Bay Colony to surrender its Charter was accompanied by a proclamation prohibiting trade with Virginia, Barbadoes, Bermuda, and Antigua, because these colonies continued to recognize royal authority, and to administer their laws in the name of the King. This duplicate order from the Long Parliament was a double blow to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and produced general consternation; but the dexterity and diplomacy of the colony were equal to the occasion. It showed its devotion to the cause of the Long Parliament by passing an Act prohibiting trade with the loyal, but by them termed rebel colonies;[88] and it avoided surrendering the Charter by repeating its policy of delay and petition, which it had adopted on a similar occasion in 1638 to King Charles; and its professions of loyalty to Charles, and prayers for the Royal Family, and the success of the Privy Council, it now repeated for the Long Parliament and its leaders, supporting its petition by an appeal to its ten years' services of prayers and of men to the cause of the Long Parliament against the King. I will, in the first place, give in a note Mr. Bancroft's own account of what was claimed and ordered by the Long Parliament, and the pretensions and proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, and then will give the principal parts of their petition to the Long Parliament in their own words. The words and statements of Mr. Bancroft involve several things worthy of notice and remembrance: 1. The Congregational Church rulers of Massachusetts Bay denied being British subjects, admitting no other allegiance to England than the Hanse Towns of Northern Germany to the Empire of Austria, or the Normandy ducal kings of England to the King of France; or, as Mr. Palfrey says, "the relations which Burgundy and Flanders hold to France." 2. Mr. Bancroft calls the petitioners "disturbers of the public security," and Mr. Palfrey calls them "conspirators"--terms applied to the Armenian remonstrants against the persecuting edicts of the Synod of Dort--terms applied to all the complainants of the exclusive and persecuting policy of the Tudor and Stuart kings of England--terms applied to even the first Christians--terms now applied to pleaders of religious and civil freedom by the advocates of a Massachusetts Government as intolerant and persecuting as ever existed in Europe. The petition of these impugned parties shows that all they asked for was equal religious and civil liberty and protection with their Congregational oppressors. Opprobrious names are not arguments; and imputations of motives and character are not facts, and are usually resorted to for want of them. 3. Mr. Bancroft designates as "usurpations of Parliament" the proceedings of the Long Parliament in appointing a Governor-General and Commissioners for the colonies, and in exercising its right to receive and decide upon appeals from the colonies; and terms the support of the Parliament in the colony "domestic treachery;" and the one member of the Legislature who had the courage to maintain the supremacy of the Mother Country is called the "faithless deputy," who was forthwith turned out of the House, which then proceeded, "with closed doors," to discuss in secret conclave its relations to England, and concluded by declaring "against any assertion of paramount authority" on the part of the English Parliament. This was substantially a "Declaration of Independence;" not, indeed, against an arbitrary king, as was alleged sixteen years before, and a hundred and thirty years afterwards, but against a Parliament which had dethroned and beheaded their King, and abolished the House of Lords and the Episcopal Church! All this Mr. Bancroft now treats as maintaining the Charter, of which he himself had declared, in another place, as I have quoted above: "The Charter on which the freemen of Massachusetts succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty did not secure to them a single privilege of self-government, but left them as the Virginians had been left, without any valuable franchise, at the mercy of the Corporation within the realm." Who then were the "usurpers," and had been for twenty years, of power which had not been conferred on them--the new Church and the persecuting Government of Massachusetts Bay, or the supreme authority of England, both under a King and under a professed republican commonwealth? 4. Mr. Bancroft says: "Had the Long Parliament succeeded in revoking the patent of the Massachusetts Bay,[90] the tenor of American history would have been changed." I agree with him in this opinion, though probably not in his application of it. I believe that the "tenor of American history" would have led to as perfect an independence of the American States as they now enjoy--as free, but a better system of government, and without their ever having made war and bloodshed against Great Britain.

The facts thus referred to show that there were Empire Loyalists in America in the seventeenth, as there were afterwards in the eighteenth century; they then embraced all the colonies of New England, except the ruling party of Massachusetts Bay; they were all advocates of an equal franchise, and equal religious and civil liberty for all classes--the very reverse of the Massachusetts Government, which, while it denied any subordination to England, denied religious and civil liberty to all classes except members of the Congregational Churches.

It is a curious and significant fact, stated by Mr. Bancroft, that these intolerant and persecuting proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Legislature were submitted to the Congregational ministers for their approval and final endorsement. The Long Parliament in England checked and ruled the Assembly of Westminster divines; but in Massachusetts the divines, after a day's consideration, "approved the proceedings of the General Court." No wonder that such divines, supported by taxes levied by the State and rulers of the State, denounced all toleration of dissent from their Church and authority.

Before leaving this subject, I must notice the remarks of Mr. Palfrey,--the second, if not first in authority of the historians of New England.

Mr. Palfrey ascribes what he calls "the Presbyterian Cabal" to Mr. William Vassal, who was one of the founders and first Council of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose brother Samuel had shared with Hampden the honour of having refused to pay ship-money to Charles, and who was now, with the Earl of Warwick,[91] one of the Parliamentary Commissioners for the colonies. It appears that Mr. Vassal opposed from the beginning the new system of Church and proscriptive civil government set up at Massachusetts Bay, and therefore came under Mr. Bancroft's category of "disturbers of the public security," and Mr. Palfrey's designation of "conspirators;" but was in reality a liberal and a loyalist, not to King Charles indeed, but to the Commonwealth of England. I give Mr. Palfrey's statements, in his own words, in a note.[92]

The spirit and sentiments of Mr. Palfrey are identical with those which I have quoted of Mr. Bancroft; but while Mr. Bancroft speaks contemptuously of the authors of the petition for equal civil and religious rights, Mr. Palfrey traces the movement to Mr. William Vassal, one of the founders and first Council of the Massachusetts Colony, and progenitor of the famous Whig family of Holland House. Nor does Mr. Palfrey venture to question the doctrine or one of the statements of the petitioners, though he calls them "conspirators."

Mr. Palfrey--very unfairly, I think--imputes to the petitioners a design to subvert the Congregational worship and establish the Presbyterian worship in its place; and to give force to his imputations says that a numerous party in the English Parliament "were bent on setting up Presbytery as the established religion in England and its dependencies." There is not the slightest ground for asserting that any party in the Long Parliament, any more than in Massachusetts, designed the setting up of Presbytery as the established worship in the "dependencies of England." King Charles the First, on his first sitting in judgment on complaints against the proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Council, declared to his Privy Council, in 1632, that he had never intended to impose the Church ceremonies, objected to by the Puritan clergy of the time, upon the colonists of Massachusetts. Charles the Second, thirty years afterwards, declared the same, and acted upon it during the quarter of a century of his reign. The Long Parliament acted upon the same principle. There is not an instance, during the whole sixty years of the first Massachusetts Charter, of any attempt, on the part of either King or Commonwealth, to suppress or interfere with the Congregational worship in New England; all that was asked by the King, or any party in Massachusetts, was toleration of other forms of Protestant worship as well as that of the Congregational. The very petition, whose promoters are represented as movers of sedition, asked for no exclusive establishment of Presbyterianism, but for the toleration of both the Episcopal and Presbyterian worship, and the worship of other Protestant Churches existing in England; and their petition was addressed to a Legislature of Congregationalists, elected by Congregationalists alone; and it was only in the event of their reasonable requests not being granted by the local Legislature that they proposed to present their grievances to the Imperial Parliament. The plea of fear for the safety of Congregational worship in Massachusetts was a mere pretence to justify the proscription and persecution of all dissent from the Congregational establishment. The spirit of the local Government and of the clergy that controlled it was intolerance. Toleration was denounced by them as the doctrine of devils; and the dying lines of Governor Dudley are reported to have been--

"Let men of God, in Court and Church, watch O'er such as do a toleration hatch."[94]

There is one other of Mr. Palfrey's statements which is of special importance; it is the admission that a majority of the population of Massachusetts were excluded from all share in the Government, and were actually opposed to it. Referring to the petition to the local Legislature, he says: "The demand was enforced by considerations which were not without plausibility, and were presented in a seductive form. It was itself an appeal to the discontent of the numerical majority not invested with a share in the government."[95]

It is thus admitted, and clear from indubitable facts, that professing to be republicans, they denied to the great majority of the people any share in the government. Professing hatred of the persecuting intolerance of King Charles and Laud in denying liberty of worship to all who differed from them, they now deny liberty of worship to all who differ from themselves, and punish those by fine and imprisonment who even petition for equal religious and civil liberty to all classes of citizens. They justify even armed resistance against the King, and actually decapitating as well as dethroning him, in order to obtain, professedly, a government by the majority of the nation and liberty of worship; and they now deny the same principle and right of civil and religious liberty to the great majority of the people over whom they claimed rule. They claim the right of resisting Parliament itself by armed force if they had the power, and only desist from asserting it, to the last, as the salus populi did not require it, and for the sake of their "godly friends in England," and to not afford a pretext for the "rebellious course" of their fellow-colonists in Virginia and the West Indies, who claimed the same independence of Parliament that the Government of Massachusetts claimed, but upon the ground which was abhorrent to the Congregational Puritans of Massachusetts--namely, that of loyalty to the king.

I will now give in a note, in their own words, the principal parts of their petition, entitled "General Court of Massachusetts Bay, New England, in a Petition to Parliament in 1651,"[97] together with extracts of two addresses to Cromwell, the one enclosing a copy of their petition to Parliament, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the army, and the other in 1654, after he had dismissed the Rump Parliament, and become absolute--denying to the whole people of England the elective franchise, as his admiring friends in Massachusetts denied it to the great majority of the people within their jurisdiction. Chalmers says they "outfawned and outwitted Cromwell." They gained his support by their first address, and thanked him for it in their second. Having "the Parliament in his pocket" until he threw even the rump of it aside altogether, Cromwell caused Parliament to desist from executing its own order.

It will be seen in the following chapter, that ten years after these laudatory addresses to Parliament and Cromwell, the same General Court of Massachusetts addressed Charles the Second in words truly loyal and equally laudatory, and implored the continuance of their Charter upon the ground, among other reasons, that they had never identified themselves with the Parliament against his Royal father, but had been "passive" during the whole of that contest. Their act against having any commerce with the colonies who adhered to the King indicated their neutrality; and the reader, by reading their addresses to the Parliament and Cromwell, will see whether they did not thoroughly identify themselves with the Parliament and Cromwell against Charles the First. They praise Cromwell as raised up by the special hand of God, and crave upon him the success of "the Captain of the Lord's hosts;" and they claim the favourable consideration of Parliament to their request upon the ground that they had identified themselves with its fortunes to rise or fall with it; that they had aided it by their prayers and fastings, and by men who had rendered it valuable service. The reader will be able to judge of the agreement in their professions and statements in their addresses to Parliament and Cromwell and to King Charles the Second ten years afterwards. In their addresses to Parliament and Cromwell they professed their readiness to fall as well as rise with the cause of the Parliament; but when that fell, they repudiated all connection with it.

In the year 1651, and during the very Session of Parliament to which the General Court addressed its petition and narrated its sacrifices and doings in the cause of the Parliament, the latter passed the famous Navigation Act, which was re-enacted and improved ten years afterwards, under Charles the Second, and which became the primary pretext of the American Revolution. The Commonwealth was at this time at war with the Dutch republic, which had almost destroyed and absorbed the shipping trade of England. Admiral Blake was just commencing that series of naval victories which have immortalized his name, and placed England from that time to this at the head of the naval powers of the world. Sir Henry Vane, as the Minister of the Navy, devised and carried through Parliament the famous Navigation Act--an Act which the colony of Massachusetts, by the connivance of Cromwell (who now identified himself with that colony), regularly evaded, at the expense of the American colonies and the English revenue.[98] Mr. Palfrey says:

"The people of Massachusetts might well be satisfied with their condition and prospects. Everything was prospering with them. They had established comfortable homes, which they felt strong enough to defend against any power but the power of the Mother Country; and that was friendly. They had always the good-will of Cromwell. In relation to them, he allowed the Navigation Law, which pressed on the Southern colonies, to became A DEAD LETTER, and they received the commodities of all nations free of duty, and sent their ships to all the ports of continental Europe."[99]

But that in which the ruling spirits of the Massachusetts General Court--apart from their ceaseless endeavours to monopolise trade and extend territory--seemed to revel most was in searching out and punishing dissent from the Congregational Establishment, and, at times, with the individual liberty of citizens in sumptuary matters. No Laud ever equalled them in this, or excelled them in enforcing uniformity, not only of doctrine, but of opinions and practice in the minutest particulars. When a stand against England was to be taken, in worship, or inquisition into matters of religions dissent, and woman's apparel, Endicot became Governor (according to the "advice of the Elders" in such matters), and Winthrop was induced to be Deputy Governor, although the latter was hardly second to the former in the spirit and acts of religious persecution. He had been a wealthy man in England, and was well educated and amiable; but after his arrival at Massachusetts Bay he seems to have wanted firmness to resist the intolerant spirit and narrow views of Endicot. He died in 1649. Mr. Palfrey remarks: "Whether it was owing to solicitude as to the course of affairs in England after the downfall of the Royal power, or to the absence of the moderating influence of Winthrop, or to sentiments engendered, on the one hand by the alarm from the Presbyterians in 1646, and on the other by the confidence inspired by the [Congregational] Synod in 1648, or to all these causes in their degree, the years 1650 and 1651 appear to have been some of more than common sensibility in Massachusetts to danger from Heretics."[100]

In 1650, the General Court condemned, and ordered to be publicly burnt, a book entitled "The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, Justification, etc., Clearing of some Common Errors," written and published in England, by Mr. Pynchion, "an ancient and venerable magistrate." This book was deficient in orthodoxy, in the estimation of Mr. Endicot and his colleagues, was condemned to be burnt, and the author was summoned to answer for it at the bar of the inquisitorial court. His explanation was unsatisfactory; and he was commanded to appear a second time, under a penalty of one hundred pounds; but he returned to England, and left his inquisitors without further remedy.

"About the same time," says Mr. Palfrey, "the General Court had a difficulty with the Church of Malden. Mr. Marmaduke Matthews having 'given offence to magistrates, elders, and many brethren, in some unsafe and unsound expressions in his public teaching,' and the Church of Malden having proceeded to ordain him, in disregard of remonstrances from 'both magistrates, ministers, and churches,' Matthews was fined ten pounds for assuming the sacred office, and the Church was summoned to make its defence" (Massachusetts Records, III., 237); which "failing to do satisfactorily, it was punished by a fine of fifty pounds--Mr. Hathorne, Mr. Leverett, and seven other Deputies recording their votes against the sentence." (Ibid. 252; compare 276, 289.)

But these reputed fathers of civil and religious liberty not only held inquisition over the religious writings and teachings of magistrates and ministers, and the independence of their Congregational Churches, but even over the property, the income, and the apparel of individuals; for in this same year, 1651, they passed a Sumptuary Act. Mr. Holmes justly remarks: "This sumptuary law, for the matter and style, is a curiosity." The Court, lamenting the inefficacy of former "Declarations and Orders against excess of apparel, both of men and women," proceed to observe: "We cannot but to our grief take notice, that intolerable excess and bravery hath crept in upon us, and especially among people of mean condition, to the dishonour of God, the scandal of our profession, the consumption of estates, and altogether unsuitable to our poverty. The Court proceed to order, that no person whose visible estate should not exceed the true and indifferent sum of £200, shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold and silver buttons, or have any lace above two shillings per yard, or silk hoods or scarves, on the penalty of ten shillings for every such offence." The select men of every town were required to take notice of the apparel of any of the inhabitants, and to assess such persons as "they shall judge to exceed their ranks and abilities, in the costliness or fashion of their apparel in any respect, especially in wearing of ribbands and great boots," at £200 estates, according to the proportion which some men used to pay to whom such apparel is suitable and allowed. An exception, however, is made in favour of public officers and their families, and of those "whose education and employment have been above the ordinary degree, or whose estates have been considerable, though now decayed."[101]

It will be recollected by the reader that in 1644 the Massachusetts Bay Court passed an act of banishment, etc., against Baptists; that in 1643 it put to "the rout" the Presbyterians, who made a move for the toleration of their worship; that in 1646, when the Presbyterians and some Episcopalians petitioned the local Court for liberty of worship, and in the event of refusal expressed their determination to appeal to the English Parliament, they were punished with fines and imprisonment, and their papers were seized. The above acts of censorship over the press, and private opinions in the case of Mr. Pinchion, and their tyranny over the organization of new Churches and the ordinations of ministers--fining both Church and ministers for exercising what is universally acknowledged to be essential to independent worship--are but further illustrations of the same spirit of intolerance. It was the intolerance of the Massachusetts Bay Government that caused the settlement of Connecticut, of New Haven, as well as of Rhode Island. The noble minds of the younger Winthrop, of Eaton, no more than that of Roger Williams, could shrivel themselves into the nutshell littleness of the Massachusetts Bay Government--so called, indeed, by courtesy, or by way of accommodation, rather than as conveying a proper idea of a Government, as it consisted solely of Congregationalists, who alone were eligible to office and eligible as electors to office, and was therefore more properly a Congregational Association than a civil government; yet this association assumed the combined powers of legislation, administration of government and law, and of the army--absolute censorship of the press, of worship, of even private opinions--and punished as criminals those who even expressed their griefs in petitions; and when punished they had the additional aggravation of being told that they were not punished for petitioning, but for what the petitions contained, as if they could petition without using words, and as if they could express their griefs and wishes without using words for that purpose. Yet under such pretexts was a despotism established and maintained for sixty years without a parallel in the annals of colonial history, ancient or modern; under which five-sixths of the population had no more freedom of worship, of opinion, or of franchise, than the slaves of the Southern States before the recent civil war. It is not surprising that a Government based on no British principle, based on the above principle of a one Church membership, every franchise under which was granted, or cancelled, or continued at the pleasure of Elders and their Courts--such a Government, un-British in its foundation and elements, could not be expected to be loyal to the Royal branch of the constitution.

It is not surprising that even among the Puritan party themselves, who were now warring against the King, and who were soon to bring him to the block, such unmitigated despotism and persecutions in Massachusetts should call forth, here and there, a voice of remonstrance, notwithstanding the argus-eyed watchfulness and espionage exercised by the Church government at Massachusetts Bay over all persons and papers destined for England, and especially in regard to every suspected person or paper. One of these is from Sir Henry Vane, who went to Massachusetts in 1636, and was elected Governor; but he was in favour of toleration, and resisted the persecution against Mrs. Anne Hutchinson and her brother, Mr. Wheelwright. The persecuting party proved too strong for him, and he resigned his office before the end of the year. He was succeeded as Governor by Mr. Winthrop, who ordered him to quit Massachusetts. He was, I think, the purest if not the best statesman of his time;[102] he was too good a man to cherish resentment against Winthrop or against the colony, but returned good for evil in regard to both in after years. Sir Henry Vane wrote to Governor Winthrop, in regard to these persecutions, as follows:

"Honoured Sir,--

"I received yours by your son, and was unwilling to let him return without telling you as much. The exercise of troubles which God is pleased to lay upon these kingdoms and the inhabitants in them, teaches us patience and forbearance one with another in some measure, though there be no difference in our opinions, which makes me hope, that from the experience here, it may also be derived to yourselves, lest while the Congregational way amongst you is in its freedom, and is backed with power, it teach its oppugners here to extirpate it and roote it out, and from its own principles and practice. I shall need say no more, knowing your son can acquaint you particularly with our affairs.

"&c., &c., H. VANE.[103] June 10, 1645."

Another and more elaborate remonstrance of the same kind was written by Sir Richard Saltonstall, one of the original founders, and of the first Council of the Company--one who had appeared before the King in Council in 1632, in defence of Endicot and his Council, in answer to the charges of Church innovation, of abolishing the worship of the Church of England, and banishing the Browns on account of their adhering to the worship which all the emigrants professed on their leaving England. Sir R. Saltonstall and Mr. Cradock, the Governor of the Company, could appeal to the address of Winthrop and his eleven ships of emigrants, which they had delivered to their "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England" on their departure for America, as to their undying love and oneness with the Church of England, and their taking Church of England chaplains with them; they could appeal to the letter of Deputy Governor Dudley to Lady Lincoln, denying that any innovations or changes whatever had been introduced; they could appeal to the positive statements of the Rev. John White, "the Patriarch of Dorchester," a Conformist clergyman, and the first projector of the colony, declaring that the charges of innovations, etc., were calumnies. Doubtless all these parties believed what they said; they believed the denials and professions made to them; and they repeated them to the King's Privy Council with such earnestness as to have quite captivated the Judges, to have secured even the sympathies of the King, who was far from being the enemy of the colony represented by his enemies. Accordingly, an order was made in Council, January 19, 1632, "declaring the fair appearances and great hopes which there then were, that the country would prove beneficial to the kingdom, as profitable to the particular persons concerned, and that the adventurers might be assured that if things should be carried as was pretended when the patents were granted, and according as by the patent is appointed, his Majesty would not only maintain the liberties and privileges heretofore granted, but supply anything further which might tend to the good government, prosperity, and comfort of the people there." According to the statement of some of the Privy Council, the King himself said "he would have severely punished who did abuse his Governor and Plantation."

Mr. Palfrey well observes: "Saltonstall, Humphrey, and Cradock appeared before a Committee of the Council on the Company's behalf, and had the address or good fortune to vindicate their clients."[104] It was certainly owing to their "address or good fortune," and not to the justice of their case, that they succeeded in deceiving the King and Council. The complainants had unwisely mixed the charge of disloyal speeches, etc., with Church innovations. It was to parry the former, by assuming the statements to be ex parte, and at any rate uttered by private individuals, who should be called to account for their conduct, and for whose words the Company could not be justly held responsible. On the main charge of Church innovations, or Church revolution, and proscription of the worship of the Church of England, positive denials were opposed--the profession of Winthrop with his company and chaplains on leaving England, the positive statement of the "Patriarch of Dorchester," and that of Deputy Governor Dudley, who went to Massachusetts with Winthrop, and wrote to the Countess of Lincoln the year after his arrival, denying that any innovations had been made. To all this the complainants had only to oppose their own words--their papers having been seized. They were overwhelmed by the mass of authority arrayed against them. But though they were defeated for the time, they were not silenced; and the following two years were productive of such a mass of rumours and statements, all tending to prove the Church revolutionary and Church proscriptive proceedings of the Massachusetts Corporation, that the King and Council found it necessary to prosecute those inquiries which they had deferred in 1632, and to appoint a Royal Commission to proceed to Massachusetts Bay and inquire into the disputed facts, and correct all abuses, if such should be found, on the spot. This was what the Massachusetts Bay persecutors most dreaded. As long as the inquiry should be conducted in London, they could, by intercepting papers and intimidating witnesses, and with the aid of powerful friends in England--one or two of whom managed to retain their place in office and in the Privy Council, even when Charles ruled without a Parliament--with such advantages they could laugh to scorn the complaints of the persecuted, and continue their proscriptions and oppressions with impunity. But with a Royal Commission sitting on the spot, these acts of concealment and deception would be impossible. They therefore changed their ground; they now denied the right of the King to inquire into their proceedings; they invoked, as was their wont, the counsel of their ministers, or "Elders," who preached warlike sermons and gave warlike advice--"to resist if they were strong enough;" but if not strong enough to fight, "to avoid and delay." For the former purpose they forthwith raised £800 to erect a fort to protect the entrance of their harbour, and organized and armed companies; and in pursuance of the latter, they delayed a year even to acknowledge the receipt of the Royal orders to answer the charges preferred against them, and then, when a more imperative and threatening Royal demand was sent, they pleaded for another year to prepare for their defence, and thus "avoided and delayed" from time to time, until the King, getting so entangled with his Scottish subjects and Parliament, became unable to pursue his inquiries into the proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Plantation; and the Congregational Church rulers there had, for more than twenty years, the luxury of absolute rule and unrestricted persecution of all that dissented from their newly set up Church polity and worship.

Sir Richard Saltonstall, as well as Sir Henry Vane, and doubtless many others of the Puritan party in England, could not endure in silence the outrageous perversions of the Charter, and high-handed persecutions by the Congregational rulers of Massachusetts Bay.[105] Sir R. Saltonstall therefore wrote to Cotton and Wilson, who, with Norton, were the ablest preachers among the "Elders," and were the fiercest persecutors. The letter is without date, but is stated by Mr. Hutchinson, in his Collection of Massachusetts State Papers, to have been written "some time between 1645 and 1653." Sir R. Saltonstall's indignant and noble remonstrance is as follows:

"Reverend and deare friends, whom I unfaynedly love and respect:

"It doth not a little grieve my spirit to heare what sadd things are reported day by day of your tyranny and persecutions in New England as that you fine, whip and imprison men for their consciences. First, you compell such to come to your assemblys as you know will not joyne, and when they show their dislike thereof or witness against it, then you stirre up your magistrates to punish them for such (as you conseyve) their publicke affronts. Truly, friends, this your practice of compelling any in matters of worship to do that whereof they are not fully persuaded, is to make them sin, for so the apostle (Rom. xiv. 23) tells, and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward man for feare of punishment. We pray for you and wish you prosperity every way; we hoped the Lord would have given you so much light and love there, that you might have been eyes to God's people here, and not to practise those courses in the wilderness, which you went so far to prevent. These rigid ways have laid you very lowe in the hearts of the saints. I do assure you I have heard them pray in the public assemblies that the Lord would give you meeke and humble spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity as to keepe the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."

Addressed: "For my reverend and worthyly much esteemed friends, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Wilson, preachers to the Church which is at Boston, in New England."[106]

It is seen that Sir R. Saltonstall's letter was addressed to the two principal Congregational ministers of Boston. It has been shown that the preachers were the counsellors and prompters of all violent measures against dissenting Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Quakers--a fact further illustrated and confirmed by Mr. Bancroft, who, under the date of 1650 and 1651, says: "Nor can it be denied, nor should it be concealed, that the Elders, especially Wilson and Norton, instigated and sustained the Government in its worst cruelties."[107]

During this first thirty years of the Massachusetts Bay Government, it evinced, in contrast with all the other British American colonies, constant hostility to the authorities in England, seizing upon every possible occasion for agitation and dispute; perverting and abusing the provisions of the Royal Charter to suppress the worship of the Church of England, and banishing its adherents; setting up a new Church and persecuting, by whipping, banishment and death, those who refused to conform to it; seeking its own interests at the expense of the neighbouring colonies; sacrificing the first principles of civil and religious liberty in their legislation and government; basing eligibility to office, and even the elective franchise, upon the condition of membership in a Congregational Church--a condition without a precedent or a parallel in any Protestant country.

I cannot better conclude this review of the first three decades of the Massachusetts Bay Puritan Government, than in the words of the celebrated Edmund Burke, who, in his account of the European settlements in America, after describing the form of government established at Massachusetts Bay, remarks that: "From such a form as this, great religious freedom might, one would have imagined, be well expected. But the truth is, they had no idea at all of such freedom. The very doctrine of any sort of toleration was so odious to the greater part, that one of the first persecutions set up here was against a small party which arose amongst themselves, who were hardy enough to maintain that the civil magistrate had no lawful power to use compulsory measures in affairs of religion. After harassing these people by all the vexatious ways imaginable, they obliged them to fly out of their jurisdiction." "If men, merely for the moderation of their sentiments, were exposed to such severe treatment, it was not to be expected that others should escape unpunished. The very first colony had hardly set its foot in America, when, discovering that some amongst them were false brethren, and ventured to make use of the Common Prayer, they found means to make the country so uneasy to them, that they were glad to fly back to England. As soon as they began to think of making laws, I find no less than five about matters of religion; all contrived, and not only contrived, but executed in some respects with a rigour that the persecution which drove the Puritans out of England, might be considered lenity and indulgence in the comparison. For, in the first of these laws, they deprive every man who does not communicate with their Established Church, of the right to his freedom, or a vote in the election of their magistrates. In the second, they sentence to banishment any who should oppose the fourth commandment, or deny the validity of infant baptism, or the authority of the magistrates. In the third, they condemn Quakers to banishment, and make it capital for them to return; and not stopping at the offenders, they lay heavy fines upon all who should bring them into the province, or even harbour them for an hour. In the fourth, they provide banishment, and death in case of return, for Jesuits and Popish priests of every denomination. In the fifth, they decree death to any who shall worship images. After they had provided such a complete code of persecution, they were not long without opportunities of reading bloody lectures upon it." "In short, this people, who in England could not bear to be chastised with rods, had no sooner got free from their fetters than they scourged their fellow-refugees with scorpions; though the absurdity as well as injustice of such proceeding in them might stare them in the face!"[108]

Mr. Palfrey observes, that "the death of the Protector is not so much as referred to in the public records of Massachusetts." If this silence even as to the fact of Cromwell's death was intended to disclaim having had any connection or sympathy with the Protector, it was a deception; if it was intended as preparatory to renouncing the worship of the setting sun of Cromwell, and worshipping the rising sun of Charles the Second, it was indeed characteristic of their siding with the stronger party, if they could thereby advance their own interests. But I think every candid man in this age will admit, that there was much more dignity of sentiment and conduct of those loyal colonies who adhered to their Sovereign in his adversity as well as in his prosperity, who submitted to compulsory subjection to the Cromwell power without acknowledging its legitimacy, and were the first to recognize and proclaim the restored king.[109]

The reader will be better able to appreciate the professions of the Massachusetts Bay Government, in regard to the restored king, after reviewing its professions and relations to the Government of the Long Parliament and of Cromwell.

It has been shown above, that when obstinate silence could not prevent the inquiry by a Royal Commission into the oppressive and disloyal proceedings complained of, and that resistance was fruitless, the Massachusetts Bay Government, September 1638, transmitted to the Lords Commissioners for the Colonies a petition in which it professed not to question the authority of their Lordships' proceedings, but only to open their griefs; that if they had offended in anything, they prostrated themselves at the foot of authority. They begged for time to answer, before condemnation, professed loyalty to the King and prayers for his long life, and the happiness of his family, and for the success of the Lords of his Council. Two years after, when the King's power began to wane, the Massachusetts Bay Government sent home a Commission, headed by the notorious Hugh Peters,[110] to conciliate the support of the leading members of the Commons against the King's commission, and to aid the opposition to the King. In 1644, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay enacted, "that what person so ever shall draw a party to the King, against the Parliament, shall be accounted a high offender against this Commonwealth, and shall be punished capitally." (See this Act, quoted at large in a previous page.) This proceeding was as decisive as possible against the King and all who adhered to the monarchy.

Again, in the Massachusetts General Court's address to Parliament, in 1651, occur the following words:

"And for our carriage and demeanour to the honourable Parliament, for these ten years, since the first beginning of your differences with the late king, and the war that after ensued, we have constantly adhered to you, not withdrawing ourselves in your weakest condition and doubtfullest times, but by our fasting and prayers for your good success, and our thanksgiving after the same was attained, in days of solemnity set apart for that purpose, as also by our over-useful men (others going voluntarily from us to help you), who have been of good use and done good acceptable service to the army, declaring to the world hereby that such was the duty and love we bear unto the Parliament that we were ready to rise and fall with them; for which we have suffered the hatred and threats of other English colonies, now in rebellion against you, as also the loss of divers of our ships and goods, taken by the King's party that is dead, by others commissioned by the King of Scots [Charles II.] and by the Portugalls."[111]

An address of the same General Court, in the same year, 1651, and on the same occasion (against the order of Parliament to recall the old and grant the new Charter), to Oliver Cromwell, concludes in the following words:

"We humbly petition your Excellence to be pleased to show us what favour God shall be pleased to direct you unto on our behalf, to the most honourable Parliament, unto whom we have now presented a petition. The copy of it, verbatim, we are bold to send herewith, that if God please, we may not be hindered in our comfortable work of God here in this wilderness. Wherein, as for other favours, we shall be bound to pray, that the Captain of the host of Israel may be with you and your whole army, in all your great enterprises, to the glory of God, the subduing of his and your enemies, and your everlasting peace and comfort in Jesus Christ."

Likewise, August 24th, 1654, after Cromwell had not only put the King to death, but abolished the House of Lords, excluded by his soldiers 154 members of Parliament, then dismissed the remaining "rump" of the Parliament itself and become sole despot, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay concluded an address to him as follows:

"We shall ever pray the Lord, your protector in all your dangers, that hath crowned you with honour after your long service, to lengthen your days, that you may long continue Lord Protector of the three nations, and the Churches of Christ Jesus."[112]

The documentary evidence which I have adduced, shows, I think, beyond reasonable doubt, that the rulers of Massachusetts Bay Colony were disaffected to the King from the beginning, and so displayed that feeling on every occasion except one, in 1638, when they professed humiliation and loyalty in order to avert the investigation which they dreaded into their proceedings; that the King, whatever may have been his misdoings towards his subjects in England, treated his subjects in the colonies, and especially in Massachusetts Bay, with a kindness and consideration which should have secured their gratitude; that the moment, in the matters of dispute between the King and his Parliament (and in which the colonies had no concern), the scale appeared to turn in favour of the Parliament, the rulers of Massachusetts Bay renounced their allegiance to the King, and identified themselves as thorough partizans of the war against the King--that they suppressed, under the severest penalties, every expression of loyalty to the King within their jurisdiction--offered prayers for and furnished men in aid of the Parliamentary army--denounced and proscribed all recognition, except as enemies, the other American colonies who adhered to their oaths of allegiance to the King; that when Cromwell had obliterated every landmark of the British constitution and of British liberty--King, Lords, and Commons, the freedom of election and the freedom of the press, with the freedom of worship, and transformed the army itself to his sole purpose--doing what no Tudor or Stuart king had ever presumed to do--even then the General Court of Massachusetts Bay bowed in reverence and praise before him as the called and chosen of the Lord of hosts.[113]

But when Cromwell could no longer give them, in contempt to the law of Parliament, a monopoly of trade against their fellow-colonists, and sustain them in their persecutions; when he ceased to live, they would not condescend to record his demise, but, after watching for a while the chances of the future, they turned in adulation to the rising sun of the restored Charles the Second.

The manner in which they adjusted their denials and professions to this new state of things, until they prevailed upon the kind-hearted King not to remember their past transgressions, and to perpetuate their Charter on certain conditions; how they evaded those conditions of toleration and administering the government, and resumed their old policy of hostility to the Sovereign and of persecution of their Baptist and other brethren who differed from them in worship, and in proscribing them from the elective franchise itself, will be treated in the following chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 73: Neal says: "Certainly never was country more obliged to a man than New England to Archbishop Laud, who by his cruel and arbitrary proceedings drove thousands of families out of the kingdom, and thereby stocked the Plantations with inhabitants, in the compass of a very few years, which otherwise could not have been done in an age." This was the sense of some of the greatest men in Parliament in their speeches in 1641. Mr. Tienns (afterwards Lord Hollis) said that "a certain number of ceremonies in the judgment of some men unlawful, and to be rejected of all the churches; in the judgment of all other Churches, and in the judgment of our own Church, but indifferent; yet what difference, yea, what distraction have those indifferent ceremonies raised among us? What has deprived us of so many thousands of Christians who desired, and in all other respects deserved, to hold communion with us? I say what has deprived us of them, and scattered them into I know not what places and corners of the world, but these indifferent ceremonies."--(Several other speeches to the same effect are quoted by Neal.)--History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 210-212.]

[Footnote 74: "Veneris, 10 March, 1642:

"Whereas the plantations in New England have, by the blessing of the Almighty, had good and prosperous success, without any public charge to the State, and are now likely to prove very happy for the propagation of the gospel in those parts, and very beneficial and commodious to this nation. The Commons assembled in Parliament do, for the better advancement of those plantations and the encouragement of the planters to proceed in their undertaking, ordain that all merchandising goods, that by any person or persons whatsoever, merchant or other, shall be exported out of the kingdom of England into New England to be spent or employed there, or being of the growth of that kingdom [colony], shall be from thence imported thither, or shall be laden or put on board any ship or vessel for necessaries in passing to and fro, and all and every the owner or owners thereof shall be freed and discharged of and from paying and yielding any custom, subsidy, taxation, or other duty for the same, either inward or outward, either in this kingdom or New England, or in any port, haven, creek or other place whatsoever, until the House of Commons shall take further order therein to the contrary."--Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 114, 115.]

[Footnote 75: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 114.]

[Footnote 76: The following is the Act itself, passed in 1644: "Whereas the civil wars and dissensions in our native country, through the seditious words and carriages of many evil affected persons, cause divisions in many places of government in America, some professing themselves for the King, and others for the Parliament, not considering that the Parliament themselves profess that they stand for the King and Parliament against the malignant Papists and delinquents in that kingdom. It is therefore ordered, that what person whatsoever shall by word, writing, or action endeavour to disturb our peace, directly or indirectly, by drawing a party under pretence that he is for the King of England, and such as join with him against the Parliament, shall be accounted as an offender of a high nature against this Commonwealth, and to be proceeded with, either capitally or otherwise, according to the quality and degree of his offence." (Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 135, 136.)]

[Footnote 77: It was not until three years after this, and three years after the facts of the banished Roger Williams' labours in Rhode Island (see note V. below), that the first mission among the Indians was established by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay--seventeen years after their settlement there; for Mr. Holmes says: "The General Court of Massachusetts passed the first Act (1646) to encouraging the carrying of the Gospel to the Indians, and recommended it to the ministers to consult on the best means of effecting the design. By their advice, it is probable, the first Indian Mission was undertaken; for on the 28th of October [1646] Mr. John Eliot, minister of Roxbury, commenced those pious and indefatigable labours among the natives, which procured for him the title of The Indian Apostle. His first visit was to the Indians at Nonantum, whom he had apprised of his intention." (Annals of America, Vol. I., p. 280.)]

[Footnote 78: Hazard, Vol. I., pp. 533, 534. The provisions of this remarkable Act are as follows:

"Governours and Government of Islands in America.--November 2nd, 1643:

"I. That Robert Earl of Warwick be Governour and Lord High Admirall of all the Islands and other Plantations inhabited, planted, or belonging unto any of his Majestie's the King of England's subjects, or which hereafter may be inhabited, planted, or belonging to them, within the bounds and upon the coasts of America.

"II. That the Lords and others particularly named in the Ordinance shall be Commissioners to joyne in aid and assistance of the said Earl, Chief Governour and Admirall of the said Plantations, and shall have power from Time to Time to provide for, order, and dispose of all things which they shall think most fit and advantageous for the well governing, securing, strengthening and preserving of the sayd Plantations, and chiefly for the advancement of the true Protestant Religion amongst the said Planters and Inhabitants, and the further enlarging and spreading of the Gospel of Christ amongst those that yet remain there in great Blindness and Ignorance.

"III. That the said Governour and Commissioners, upon all weighty and important occasions which may concern the good and safety of the Planters, Owners of Lands, or Inhabitants of the said Islands, shall have power to send for, view, and make use of all Records, Books, and Papers which may concern the said Plantations.

"IV. That the said Earl, Governour in Chief, and the said Commissioners, shall have power to nominate, appoint, and constitute, as such subordinate Commissioners, Councillors, Commanders, Officers, and Agents, as they shall think most fit and serviceable for the said Islands and Plantations: and upon death or other avoidance of the aforesaid Chief Governour and Admirall, or other the Commissioners before named, to appoint such other Chief Governour or Commissioners in the roome and place of such as shall be void, as also to remove all such subordinate Governours and Officers as they shall judge fit.

"V. That no subordinate Governours, Councillors, Commanders, Officers, Agents, Planters, or Inhabitants, which now are resident in or upon the said Islands or Plantations, shall admit or receive any new Governours, Councillors, Commanders, Officers, or Agents whatsoever, but such as shall be allowed and approved of under the hands and seals of the aforesaid Chief Governour and High Admirall, together with the hands and seals of the said Commissioners, or six of them, or under the hands of such as they shall authorize thereunto.

"VI. That the Chief Governour and Commissioners before mentioned, or the greater number of them, are authorized to assign, ratifie, and confirm so much of their aforementioned authority and power, and in such manner, to such persons as they shall judge fit, for the better governing and preserving the said Plantations and Islands from open violence and private distractions.

"VII. That whosoever shall, in obedience to this Ordinance, do or execute any thing, shall by virtue hereof be saved harmless and indemnified."]

[Footnote 79: In 1646 the Parliament passed another ordinance, exempting the colonies for three years from all tollages, "except the excise," provided their productions should not be "exported but only in English vessels." While this Act also asserted the parliamentary right of taxation over the Colonial plantations, it formed a part of what was extended and executed by the famous Act of Navigation, first passed by the Puritan Parliament five years afterwards, in 1651, as will be seen hereafter.]

[Footnote 80: Mr. Bancroft must have been aware of the existence of this ordinance, for he makes two allusions to the Commission appointed by it. In connection with one allusion to it, he states the following interesting facts, illustrative of Massachusetts exclusiveness on the one record, and on the other the instruments and progress of religious liberty in New England. "The people of Rhode Island," says Mr. Bancroft, "excluded from the colonial union, would never have maintained their existence as a separate state, had they not sought the interference and protection of the Mother Country; and the founder of the colony (Roger Williams) was chosen to conduct the important mission. Embarking at Manhattan [for he was not allowed to go to Boston], he arrived in England not long after the death of Hampden. The Parliament had placed the affairs of the American Colonies under the Earl of Warwick, as Governor-in-Chief, assisted by a Council of five peers and twelve commoners. Among these commoners was Henry Vane, a man who was ever true in his affections as he was undeviating in his principles, and who now welcomed the American envoy as an ancient friend. The favour of Parliament was won by his [Roger Williams'] incomparable 'printed Indian labours, the like whereof was not extant from any part of America;' and his merits as a missionary induced both houses of Parliament to grant unto him and friends with him a free and absolute charter[84] of civil government for those parts of his abode.' Thus were the places of refuge for 'soul-liberty' on the Narragansett Bay incorporated 'with full power and authority to rule themselves.' To the Long Parliament, and especially to Sir Harry Vane, Rhode Island owes its existence as a political State."--History of the United States, Vol. I., pp. 460, 461.

The other allusion of Mr. Bancroft to the Parliamentary Act and Commission of 1643 is in the following words: "The Commissioners appointed by Parliament, with unlimited authority over the Plantations, found no favour in Virginia. They promised indeed freedom from English taxation, but this immunity was already enjoyed. They gave the colony liberty to choose its own Governor, but it had no dislike to Berkeley; and though there was a party for the Parliament, yet the King's authority was maintained. The sovereignty of Charles had ever been mildly exercised."--Ib., p. 222.]

[Footnote 84: Hazard, Vol. 1., p. 538; Massachusetts Records. The working of this Act, and the punishments inflicted under it for more than twenty years, will be seen hereafter.]

[Footnote 81: This is not quite accurate. The word 'absolute' does not occur in the patent. The words of the Charter are: "A free Charter of civil incorporation and government; that they may order and govern their Plantations in such a manner as to maintain justice and peace, both among themselves, and towards all men with whom they shall have to do"--"Provided nevertheless that the said laws, constitutions, and punishments, for the civil government of said plantations, be conformable to the laws of England, so far as the nature and constitution of the place will admit. And always reserving to the said Earl and Commissioners, and their successors, power and authority for to dispose the general government of that, as it stands in relation to the rest of the Plantations in America, as they shall conceive from time to time most conducing to the general good of the said Plantations, the honour of his Majesty, and the service of the State."--(Hazard, Vol. I., pp. 529-531, where the Charter is printed at length.)]

[Footnote 82: But Mr. Holmes makes explicit mention of the parliamentary ordinance of 1643 in the following terms:--"The English Parliament passed an ordinance appointing the Earl of Warwick Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral of the American Colonies, with a Council of five Peers and twelve Commoners. It empowered him, in conjunction with his associates, to examine the state of affairs; to send for papers and persons, to remove Governors and officers, and appoints other in their places; and to assign over to these such part of the powers that were now granted, as he should think proper." (Annals of America, Vol. I., p. 273.)]

[Footnote 83: History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 117; Massachusetts Laws, pp. 140-145.]

[Footnote 85: "Mr. Winthrop, who was then Deputy-Governor, was active in the prosecution of the petitioners, but the party in favour of them had so much interest as to obtain a vote to require him to answer in public to the complaint against him. Dr. Mather says: 'He was most irregularly called forth to an ignominious hearing before a vast assembly, to which, "with a sagacious humility," he consented, although he showed he might have refused it. The result of the hearing was that he was honourably acquitted,' etc."]

[Footnote 86: This refers to a sermon preached by Mr. Cotton on a fast day, an extract of which is published in the Magnalia, B. III., p. 29, wherein he denounces the judgments of God upon such of his hearers as were then going to England with evil intentions against the country.]

[Footnote 87: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., pp. 145-149.

Mr. Palfrey, under the head of "Presbyterian Cabal," states the following facts as to the treatment of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, and others who proposed to make their appeal to the English Parliament:

"Child and Dand, two of the remonstrants, were preparing to go to England with a petition to the Parliament from a number of the non-freemen. Informed of their intention, the magistrates ordered a seizure of their papers. The searching officers found in their possession certain memorials to the Commissioners for Plantations, asking for 'settled Churches according to the (Presbyterian) Reformation in England;' for the establishment in the colony of the laws of the realm; for the appointment of 'a General Governor, or some honourable Commissioner,' to reform the existing state of things. For this further offence, such of the prominent conspirators as remained in the country were punished by additional fines. Child and Dand were mulcted in the sum of two hundred pounds; Mauerick, in that of a hundred and fifty pounds; and two others of a hundred pounds each."--Palfrey's History of New England [Abridged edition], Vol. I., pp. 327, 328.]

[Footnote 88: Mr. Bancroft, referring to the petition of Dr. Child and others, quoted on page 94, says: "The document was written in the spirit of wanton insult;" then refers to the case of Gorton, who had appealed to the Earl of Warwick and the other Parliamentary Commissioners against a judicial decision of the Massachusetts Bay Court in regard to land claimed by him. From Mr. Bancroft's statement, it appears that the claim of Gorton, friendless as he was, was so just as to commend itself to the favourable judgment of an impartial and competent tribunal of the Parliamentary Commissioners, whose authority his oppressors expressly denied, and then, in their address to Parliament in reference to its order, denied any authority of Parliament over their proceedings. Mr. Bancroft's words are as follows:

"Gorton had carried his complaints to the Mother Country; and, though unaided by personal influence or by powerful friends, had succeeded in all his wishes. At this very juncture an order respecting his claims arrived in Boston; and was couched in terms which involved an assertion of the right of Parliament to reverse the decisions and control the Government of Massachusetts. The danger was imminent; it struck at the very life and foundation of the rising Commonwealth. Had the Long Parliament succeeded in revoking the patent of Massachusetts, the Stuarts, on their restoration, would have found not one chartered government in the colonies; and the tenor of American history would have been changed. The people[89] rallied with great unanimity in support of their magistrates.

"At length the General Court assembled for the discussion of the usurpations of Parliament and the dangers from domestic treachery. The elders [ministers] did not fail to attend in the gloomy season. One faithless deputy was desired to withdraw; and then, with closed doors, that the consultation might remain in the breast of the Court, the nature of the relation with England was made the subject of debate. After much deliberation it was agreed that Massachusetts owed the same allegiance to England as the free Hanse Towns had rendered to the Empire; as Normandy, when its dukes were kings in England, had paid to the monarchs of France. It was also resolved not to accept a new Charter from Parliament, for that would imply a surrender of the old. Besides, Parliament granted none but by way of ordinance, and always made for itself an express preservation of a supreme power in all things. The elders (ministers), after a day's consultation, confirmed the decisions.

"The colony proceeded to exercise the independence which it claimed. The General Court replied to the petition in a State paper, written with great moderation; and the disturbers of the public security were summoned into its presence. Robert Child and his companions appealed to the Commissioners in England. The appeal was not admitted." "To the Parliament of England the Legislature remonstrated with the noblest frankness against any assertion of permanent authority of that body."--Hist. U.S., Vol. I., pp. 475-477.]

[Footnote 89: By the "people" here Mr. Bancroft must mean the members of the Congregational Churches (one-sixth of the whole population), for they alone were freemen, and had all the united powers of the franchise--the sword, the legislation--in a word, the whole civil, judicial, ecclesiastical, and military government.]

[Footnote 90: But Mr. Bancroft seems to forget that in less than forty years after this the Charter was revoked, and that very system of government was established which the General Court of Massachusetts Bay now deprecated, but under which Massachusetts itself was most prosperous and peaceful for more than half a century, until the old spirit was revived, which rendered friendly government with England impossible.]

[Footnote 91: Mr. Hutchinson says: "The Earl of Warwick had a patent for Massachusetts Bay about 1623, but the bounds are not known." (History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 7.)]

[Footnote 92: Mr. Palfrey says: "While in England the literary war against Presbytery was in great part conducted by American combatants, their attention was presently required at home. William Vassal, a man of fortune, was one of the original assistants named in the Charter of the Massachusetts Company. He came to Massachusetts with Winthrop's fleet in the great emigration; but for some cause--possibly from dissatisfaction with the tendencies to Separatism which he witnessed--he almost immediately returned. He crossed the sea again five years after, but then it was to the colony of Plymouth. Establishing his home at Seituate, he there conducted himself so as to come under the reproach of being 'a man of a busy, factious spirit, and always opposite to the civil government of the country and the way of the Churches.'" (Winthrop, II., p. 261.) His disaffection occasioned the more uneasiness, because his brother Samuel, also formerly an assistant of the Massachusetts Company, was now one of the Parliament's Commissioners for the government of Foreign Plantations.

In the year when the early struggle between the Presbyterians and Independents in England had disclosed the importance of the issues depending upon it, and the obstinate determination with which it was to be carried on, Vassal "practised with" a few persons in Massachusetts "to take some course, first by petitioning the Courts of Massachusetts and of Plymouth, and if that succeeded not, then to the Parliament of England, that the distinctions which were maintained here, both in civil and church state, might be done away, and that we might be wholly governed by the laws of England." In [93] a "Remonstrance and Humble Petition," addressed by them to the General Court [of Massachusetts], they represented--1. That they could not discern in that colony "a settled form of government according to the laws of England;" 2. That "many thousands in the plantation of the English nation were debarred from civil employments," and not permitted "so much as to have any vote in choosing magistrates, captains, or other civil and military officers;" and, 3. "That numerous members of the Church of England,... not dissenting from the latest reformation in England, Scotland, etc., were detained from the seals of the covenant of free grace, as it was supposed they will not take these Churches' covenants." They prayed for relief from each of these grievances; and they gave notice that, if it were denied, they should "be necessitated to apply their humble desires to the honourable Houses of Parliament, who, they hoped, would take their sad condition into their serious consideration."

After describing the social position of the representative petitioners, Mr. Palfrey proceeds: "But however little importance the movement derived from the character or position of the agitators, it was essentially of a nature to create alarm. It proposed nothing less than an abandonment of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, which the settlers and owners of Massachusetts had set up, for reasons impressing their own minds as of the greatest significance and cogency. The demand was enforced by considerations which were not without plausibility, and were presented in a seductive form. It was itself an appeal to the discontent of the numerical majority, not invested with a share in the government. And it frankly threatened an appeal to the English Parliament--an authority always to be dreaded, for encroachment on colonial rights, and especially to be dreaded at a moment when the more numerous party among its members were bent on setting up a Presbytery as the established religion of England and its dependencies, determined on a severe suppression of dissent from it, and keenly exasperated against that Independency which New England had raised up to torment them in their own sphere, and which, for herself, New England cherished as her life."

"It being understood that two of the remonstrants, Fowle and Smith, were about to embark for England, to prosecute their business, the Court stopped them with a summons to appear and 'answer to the matter of the petition.' They replied 'to the Gentlemen Commissioners for Plantations;' and the Court committed them to the custody of the Marshal till they gave security to be responsible to the judgment of the Court. The whole seven were next arraigned as authors of divers false and scandalous statements in a certain paper ... against the Churches of Christ and the civil government here established, derogating from the honour and authority of the same, and tending to sedition. Refusing to answer, and 'appealing from this government, they disclaimed the jurisdiction thereof.' This was more than Presbyterian malcontents could be indulged in at the present critical time in Massachusetts. The Court found them all deeply blamable, and punished them by fines, which were to be remitted on their making 'an ingenuous and public acknowledgment of their misdemeanours;' a condition of indemnity which they all refused, probably in expectation of obtaining both relief and applause in England."--"Four deputies opposed the sentence; three magistrates--Bellingham, Saltonstall, and Bradstreet--also dissented."--Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 166-170.]

[Footnote 93: Winthrop, II., 261. "The movement in Plymouth was made at a General Court in October, 1645, as appears from a letter of Winslow to Winthrop (Hutchinson's Collection, 154); though the public record contains nothing respecting it. I infer from Winslow's letter, that half the assistants (namely, Standish, Hatherly, Brown, and Freeman) were in favour of larger indulgence to the malcontents." (Note by Mr. Palfrey.)

(The majority of the General Court were clearly in favour of the movement; and knowing this, the Governor, Prince (the only persecuting Governor of the Plymouth Colony), refused to put the question to vote.)]

[Footnote 94: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., Chap. v., p. 75.]

[Footnote 95: History of New England, Vol. II. p. 169. In another case mentioned by Mr. Palfrey, it is clear the public feeling was not with the local Government, which pretended to absolute independence of Parliament, and called the entrance of a parliamentary war vessel into its harbour, and action there, a "foreign encroachment." A Captain Stagg arrived at Boston from London, in a vessel carrying twenty-four guns, and found there a merchant vessel from Bristol (which city was then held for the King), which he seized. Governor Winthrop wrote to Captain Stagg "to know by what authority he had done it in our harbour." Stagg produced his commission from the Earl of Warwick to capture vessels from ports in the occupation of the King's party, as well in harbours and creeks as on the high seas. Winthrop ordered him to carry the paper to Salem, the place of the Governor's residence, there to be considered at a meeting of the magistrates. Of course the public feeling was with the Parliament and its officers; but it was not so heedless as to forget its jealousy of foreign encroachment from whatever quarter. "Some of the elders, the last Lord's Day, had in their sermons reproved this proceeding, and exhorted magistrates to maintain the people's liberties, which were, they said, violated by this act, and that a commission could not supersede a patent. And at this meeting some of the magistrates and some of the elders were of the same opinion, and that the captain should be forced to restore the ship." The decision, however, was different; and the reasons for declining to defy the Parliament, and allowing its officer to retain possession of his prize, are recorded. The following are passages of this significant manifesto: "This could be no precedent to bar us from opposing any commission or other foreign power that might indeed tend to our hurt or violate our liberty; for the Parliament had taught us that salus populi is suprema lex."[96] "If Parliament should hereafter be of a malignant spirit, then, if we have strength sufficient, we may make use of salus populi to withstand any authority from thence to our hurt." "If we who have so openly declared our affection to the cause of Parliament by our prayers, fastings, etc., should now oppose their authority, or do anything that would make such an appearance, it would be laid hold on by those in Virginia and the West Indies to confirm them in their rebellious course, and it would grieve all our godly friends in England, or any other of the Parliament's friends."--Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. II., pp. 161-163.

Note.--It is plain from these words, as well as from other words quoted elsewhere, how entirely and avowedly the Massachusetts Court identified themselves with the Parliament and Cromwell against the King, though they denied having done so in their addresses to Charles the Second.]

[Footnote 96: This maxim, that the safety of the people is the supreme law, might, by a similar perversion, be claimed by any mob or party constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme authority of the nation. They had no doubt of their own infallibility; they had no fear that they "should hereafter be of a malignant spirit;" but they thought it very possible that the Parliament might be so, and then it would be for them to fight if they should have "strength sufficient." But after the restoration they thought it not well to face the armies and fleets of Charles the Second, and made as humble, as loyal, and as laudatory professions to him--calling him "the best of kings"--as they had made to Cromwell.]

[Footnote 97: They say: "Receiving information by Mr. Winslow, our agent, that it is the Parliament's pleasure that we should take a new patent from them, and keep our Courts and issue our warrants in their names, which we have not used in the late King's time or since, not being able to discern the need of such an injunction,--these things make us doubt and fear what is intended towards us. Let it therefore please you, most honourable, we humbly entreat, to take notice hereby what were our orders, upon what conditions and with what authority we came hither, and what we have done since our coming. We were the first movers and undertakers of so great an attempt, being men able enough to live in England with our neighbours, and being helpful to others, and not needing the help of any for outward things. About three or four and twenty years since, seeing just cause to fear the persecution of the then Bishops and High Commissioners for not conforming to the ceremonies then pressed upon the consciences of those under their power, we thought it our safest course to get to this outside of the world, out of their view and beyond their reach. Yet before we resolved upon so great an undertaking, wherein should be hazarded not only all our estates, but also the lives of ourselves and our posterity, both in the voyage at sea (wherewith we were unacquainted), and in coming into a wilderness uninhabited (unless in some few places by heathen, barbarous Indians), we thought it necessary to procure a patent from the late King, who then ruled all, to warrant our removal and prevent future inconveniences, and so did. By which patent liberty and power was granted to us to live under the government of a Governor, magistrates of our own choosing, and under laws of our own making (not being repugnant to the laws of England), according to which patent we have governed ourselves above this twenty years, we coming hither at our proper charges, without the help of the State, an acknowledgment of the freedom of our goods from custom," etc. "And for our carriage and demeanour to the honourable Parliament, for these ten years, since the first beginning of your differences with the late King, and the war that after ensued, we have constantly adhered to you, not withdrawing ourselves in your weakest condition and doubtfullest times, but by our fasting and prayers for your good success, and our thanksgiving after the same was attained, in days of solemnity set apart for that purpose, as also by our sending over useful men (others also going voluntarily from us to help you), who have been of good use and done acceptable services to the army, declaring to the world hereby that such was the duty and love we bear unto the Parliament, that we were ready to rise and fall with them; for which we have suffered the hatred and threats of other English colonies now in rebellion against you, as also the loss of divers of our ships and goods, taken by the King's party that is dead, by others commissioned by the King of Scots [Charles II.], and by the Portugalls." "We hope that this most honourable Parliament will not cast such as have adhered to you and depended upon you, as we have done, into so deep despair, from the fear of which we humbly desire to be speedily freed by a just and gracious answer; which will freshly bind us to pray and use all lawful endeavours for the blessing of God upon you and the present Government." Appendix viii. to the first volume of Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, pp. 516-518.

The "General Court" also sent a letter to Oliver Cromwell, enclosing a copy of the petition to Parliament, to counteract representations which might be made against them by their enemies, and intreat his interest in their behalf. This letter concludes as follows:

"We humbly petition your Excellence to be pleased to shew us what favour God shall be pleased to direct you unto on our behalf, to the most honourable Parliament, unto whom we have now presented a petition. The copy of it, verbatim, we are bold to send herewith, that, if God so please, we be not hindered in our comfortable proceedings in the work of God here in this wilderness. Wherein, as for other favours, we shall be bound to pray, that the Captain of the Host of Israel may be with you and your whole army, in all your great enterprises, to the glory of God, the subduing of his and your enemies, and your everlasting peace and comfort in Jesus Christ." (Ib., Appendix ix., p. 522.)

In August (24th), 1654, the General Court addressed another letter to Oliver Cromwell, commencing as follows:

"It hath been no small comfort to us poor exiles, in these utmost ends of the earth (who sometimes felt and often feared the frowns of the mighty), to have had the experience of the good hand of God, in raising up such, whose endeavours have not been wanting to our welfare: amongst whom we have good cause to give your Highness the first place: who by a continued series of favours, have oblidged us, not only while you moved in a lower orb, but since the Lord hath called your Highness to supreme authority, whereat we rejoice and shall pray for the continuance of your happy government, that under your shadow not only ourselves, but all the Churches, may find rest and peace." (Ib., Appendix x., p. 523.)]

[Footnote 98: "1651.--The Parliament of England passed the famous Act of Navigation. It had been observed with concern, that the English merchants for several years past had usually freighted the Hollanders' shipping for bringing home their own merchandise, because their freight was at a lower rate than that of the English ships. For the same reason the Dutch ships were made use of even for importing American products from the English colonies into England. The English ships meanwhile lay rotting in the harbours, and the English mariners, for want of employment, went into the service of the Hollanders. The Commonwealth now turned its attention towards the most effectual mode of retaining the colonies in dependence on the parent State, and of securing to it the benefits of their increasing commerce. With these views the Parliament enacted, 'That no merchandise, either of Asia, Africa, or America, including the English Plantations there, should be imported into England in any but English-built ships, and belonging either to English or English Plantation subjects, navigated also by an English commander, and three-fourths of the sailors to be Englishmen; excepting such merchandise as should be imported directly from the original place of their growth, manufactured in Europe solely: and that no fish should thenceforward be imported into England or Ireland, nor exported thence to foreign parts, nor even from one of their own ports, but what should be caught by their own fishers only." (Holmes' Annals of America, Anderson, ii., 415, 416; Robertson, B. 9, p. 303; Janes' edit. Vol. I., p. 294.) Mr. Holmes adds in a note: "This Act was evaded at first by New England, which still traded to all parts, and enjoyed a privilege peculiar to themselves of importing their goods into England free of customs." (History Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 40.)]

[Footnote 99: Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. II., p. 393.]

[Footnote 100: Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. II., p. 397, in a note.]

[Footnote 101: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 152; Holmes' Annuls, Vol. I., p. 294. Note xxxi., p. 579.

This law was passed in 1651, while Endicot was Governor. Two years before, shortly after Governor Winthrop's death, Governor Endicot, with several other magistrates, issued a declaration against men wearing long hair, prefaced with the words, "Forasmuch as the wearing of long hair, after the manner of the ruffians and barbarous Indians, has begun to invade New England," and declaring "their dislike and detestation against wearing of such long hair as a thing uncivil and unmanly, whereby men do deform themselves, and offend sober and modest men, and do corrupt good manners," etc.--Ib.]

[Footnote 102: Such was the opinion of the late Mr. John Forster, in his beautiful Life of Sir Henry Vane, in his Lives of the Puritan Statesmen of the Commonwealth.]

[Footnote 103: Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers, etc.; Publication of the Prince Society.

Note by Mr. Hutchinson: "Mr. Winthrop had obliged Mr. Vane to leave Massachusetts and return to England. The letter was written when Mr. Vane's interest in Parliament was very great. It shows a good spirit, and the reproof is decent as well as seasonable."]

[Footnote 104: History of New England, Vol. I., p. 364.]

[Footnote 105: Mr. Neal gives the following account of certain Baptists--Clarke, Holmes and Crandall--who "were all apprehended upon the 20th July this year, (1651), at the house of one William Witters, of Lin. As they were worshipping God in their own way on a Lord's-day morning, the constable took them into custody. Next morning they were brought before the magistrate of the town, who sent them in custody to Boston, where they remained in prison a fortnight, when they were brought to trial, convicted and fined: John Clarke, twenty pounds or to be well whipped; John Crandall, five pounds or to be whipped; Obadiah Holmes, thirty pounds for several offences." Mr. Neal adds: "The prisoners agreed not to pay their fines but to abide the corporal punishment the Court had sentenced them to; but some of Mr. Clarke's friends paid the fine without his consent; and Crandall was released upon the promise to appear at the next Court; but Holmes received thirty lashes at the whipping-post. Several of his friends were spectators of his punishment; among the rest John Spear and John Hazell, who, as they were attending the prisoner back to prison, took him by the hand in the market-place, and, in the face of all the people, praised God for his courage and constancy; for which they were summoned before the General Court the next day, and were fined each of them forty shillings, or to be whipped. The prisoners refused to pay the money, but some of their friends paid it for them."

Mr. Neal adds the following just and impressive remarks: "Thus the Government of New England, for the sake of uniformity in divine worship, broke in upon the natural rights of mankind, punishing men, not for disturbing the State, but for their different sentiments in religion, as appears by the following Law:" [Then Mr. Neal quotes the law passed against the Baptists seven years before, in 1644, and given on page 92.] (Neal's History of New England, Vol. I., pp. 299, 300, 302, 303.)]

[Footnote 106: Hutchinson's Collection of State Papers, etc., pp. 401, 402.

Mr. Cotton wrote a long letter in reply to Sir R. Saltonstall, denying that he or Mr. Wilson had instigated the complaints against the Baptists, yet representing them as profane because they did not attend the established worship, though they worshipped God in their own way. Cotton, assuming that the Baptist worship was no worship, and that the only lawful worship was the Congregational, proceeds to defend compulsory attendance at the established worship upon the ground of preventing Sabbath profaneness (which was a perversion of Sir R. Saltonstall's letter), the same as compulsory attendance at the established worship was justified in the time of Elizabeth and James the First, and against which the whole army of Puritan writers had contended. Some of Cotton's words were as follows: "But (you say) it doth make men hypocrites to compel men to conforme the outward men for fear of punishment. If it did so, yet better be hypocrites than profane persons. Hypocrites give God part of his due, the outward man; but the profane person giveth God neither the outward or inward man."--"If the magistrate connive at his absenting himself from the Sabbath duties, the sin will be greater in the magistrate than can be the other's coming."

Mr. Hutchinson, referring to Sir R. Saltonstall's letter, says:--"It discovers a good deal of that catholic spirit which too many of our first settlers were destitute of, and confirms what I have said of Mr. Dudley's zeal in the first volume of the Massachusetts History."]

[Footnote 107: History of the United States, Vol. I., p. 484.

"I believe," says Mr. Bancroft, "that the elder Winthrop had relented before his death, and, it is said, became weary of banishing heretics. The soul of the younger Winthrop was incapable of harbouring a thought of intolerant cruelty; but the rugged Dudley was not mellowed by old age." Cotton affirmed: "Better tolerate hypocrites and tares than thorns and briers." "Religion," said Norton, from the pulpit, "admits of no eccentric motions." (Ib., pp. 486, 487.)]

[Footnote 108: Burke, Vol. II., Second London Edition, 1758, pp. 148-152.]

[Footnote 109: "In October, 1650, the Commons passed a memorable ordinance, prohibiting trade with Barbadoes, Virginia, Antigua, and the Bermudas, because they had adhered to the fortunes of their late Sovereign. It declared such persons 'notorious robbers and traitors;' it forbade every one to confederate with them; it prohibited all foreign vessels from sailing thither, and it empowered the Council of State to compel all opponents to obey the authority of Parliament. Berkley's defence of Virginia against the fortunate invaders gained him the approbation of his prince and the applause of his countrymen. When he could no longer fight, he delivered up the government, upon such favourable terms as the English Commissioners were willing to grant. He retired to a private station, to wait with patience for favourable events. Virginia changed the various rulers which the revolutions of the age imposed on England, with the reluctance that acknowledged usurpation generally incites. But with the distractions that succeeded the death of Cromwell, she seized the opportunity to free herself from the dominion of her hated masters by recalling Berkley from his obscurity, and proclaiming the exiled king; and she by this means acquired the unrivalled honour of being the last dominion of the State which submitted to that unjust exercise of government, and the first which overturned it."--Chalmers' History of the Revolt of the American Colonies, Vol. I., pp. 74, 75 (Boston Collection).]

[Footnote 110: It was proved on Hugh Peters' trial, twenty years afterwards, that he had said his work, out of New England, was, "to promote the interest of the Reformation, by stirring up the war and driving it on." He was Cromwell's favourite chaplain, and preached before the Court that tried King Charles I., urging the condemnation and execution of the King.]

[Footnote 111: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., Appendix viii., pp. 517, 518.

"The 'other English Colonies' with which Massachusetts, by her attachment to the new Government, had been brought into unfriendly relations, were 'Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermudas, and Antigua.' Their persistent loyalty had been punished by an ordinance of Parliament forbidding Englishmen to trade with them--a measure which the General Court of Massachusetts seconded by a similar prohibition addressed to masters of vessels belonging to that jurisdiction. The rule was to remain in force 'until the compliance of the aforesaid places with the Commonwealth of England, or the further order of this Court;' and the penalty of disobedience was to be a confiscation of ship and cargo. In respect to Virginia, it may be presumed that this step was not the less willingly taken, on account of a grudge of some years' standing. At an early period of the civil war, that colony had banished nonconformist ministers who had gone thither from Massachusetts [1643]; and the offence had been repeated five years afterwards."--Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. II., pp. 402, 403.

But Mr. Palfrey omits to remark that the Act of the Virginia Legislature, in forbidding the Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts Bay from propagating their system in Virginia, was but a retaliation upon the Government of Massachusetts Bay, which had not only forbidden Episcopal worship, but denied citizenship to Episcopalians. The Virginia Legislature, while it established the Episcopal Church, had never, like the Legislature of Massachusetts Bay, disqualified all except the members of one Church from either holding office or exercising the elective franchise. The Massachusetts Bay Government, like that of the Papacy, would tolerate only their own form of worship; would allow no Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Baptist worship within their jurisdiction; yet complain of and resent it as unjust and persecuting when they are not permitted to propagate their system in other colonies or countries.]

[Footnote 112: Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., Appendix ix., p. 522.

To these extraordinary addresses may be added a letter from the Rev. John Cotton, a chief Congregational minister in Boston, to "Lord General Cromwell," dated Boston, N.E., May 5th, 1651.

There are three things in this letter to be specially noticed.

The first is, the terms in which Cromwell is addressed and complimented.

The second is, the indication here given of the manner in which the Scotch prisoners taken at the battle of Dunbar (while fighting in their own country and for their King) were disposed of by Cromwell, and with what complacency Mr. Cotton speaks of the slavery into which they were sold not being "perpetual servitude," but limited to "6 or 7, or 8 years."

The third thing noteworthy in this letter, in which Mr. Cotton compliments Cromwell for having cashiered from the army every one but his own partizans, thus placing the army beneath his feet, to support his absolutism in the State, having extinguished the Parliament itself, and with it every form of liberty dear to the hearts of all true Englishmen.

The chief passages of Mr. Cotton's letter are as follows:

"Right Honourable,--For so I must acknowledge you, not only for the eminency of place and command to which the God of power and honour hath called you; but also for that the Lord hath set you forth as a vessell of honour to his name, in working many and great deliverances for his people, and for his truth, by you; and yet helping you to reserve all the honour to him, who is the God of salvation and the Lord of hosts, mighty in battell."

"The Scots, whom God delivered into your hand at Dunbarre, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. Such as were sick of the scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick or chyrurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7, or 8 years, as we do our owne: and he that bought the most of them (I heare) buildeth houses for them, for every 4 an house, layeth some acres of ground thereto, which he giveth them as their owne, requiring three dayes in the weeke to worke for him (by turnes), and 4 dayes for themselves, and promiseth, as soon as they can repay him the money he layed out for them, he will set them at liberty."

"As for the aspersion of factious men, I hear, by Mr. Desborough's letter [Cromwell's brother-in-law], last night, that you have well vindicated yourselfe therefrom by cashiering sundry corrupt spirits out of the army. And truly, Sir, better a few and faithfull, than many and unsound. The army on Christ's side (which he maketh victorious) are called chosen and faithfull, Rev. 17. 14--a verse worthy your Lordship's frequent and deepe meditation. Go on, therefore (good Sir), to overcome yourselfe (Prov. 16. 32), to overcome your army (Deut. 29. 9, with v. 14), and to vindicate your orthodox integrity to the world." (Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers relative to the History of Massachusetts Bay, pp. 233-235.)]

[Footnote 113: In view of the documents which I have quoted, it seems extraordinary to see Mr. Hutchinson, usually so accurate, so far influenced by his personal prejudices as to say that the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony "prudently acknowledged subjection to Parliament, and afterwards to Cromwell, so far as was necessary to keep upon terms, and avoid exception, and no farther. The addresses to the Parliament and Cromwell show this to have been the case."--History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., p. 209.

The addresses to Parliament and to Cromwell prove the very reverse--prove that the rulers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony avowedly identified themselves with the Parliament and afterwards with Cromwell, when he overthrew the Parliament, and even when he manipulated the army to his purpose of absolutism.]

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