USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume I > Part 14
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32 Garvan, Architecture and Town Planning, pp. 104, 118-19.
33 Ibid., pp. 116, 120.
34 Ibid., pp. 18, 78, 99, 120, 149.
35 Ibid., pp. 103-16, 119-120, 123, 125, 127-28, 149.
36 Ibid., pp. 49-50, 120, 128.
37 Ibid., pp. 81-83.
38 Wish, Society and Thought, p. 48; Kelly, Early Domestic Architecture, pp. 7, 13-14; Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, pp. 214-15.
39 Ibid., p. 216; Kelly, Early Domestic Architecture, pp. 73, 77; Earle, Home Life, pp. 52-75. 40 Ibid., pp. 76-107; Weeden, Economic aand Social History, I, pp. 214-17.
41 Kelly, Early Domestic Architecture, pp. 13-14; 185-86.
42 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 214.
43 Waterman, Dwellings of Colonial America, pp. 246-47; Garvan, Architecture and Town Planning, pp. 84-102; Kelly, Early Domestic Architecture, pp. 21-61, 65-86.
44 Ibid., pp. 62-64, 87-101; Waterman, Dwellings of Colonial America, pp. 247-48, 251, 278-79; Garvan, Architecture and Town Planning, pp. 85-87, 91-93; Wish, Society and Thought, p. 48.
45 Kelly, Early Domestic Architecture, pp. 78, 80, 132-163; Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 214.
46 Ibid., pp. 215-17, 399.
47 Ibid., pp. 414-16.
48 Earle, Home Life, pp. 212-13, 300 ff .; Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York, c. 1938), pp. 116-17.
49 Dorfman, Economic Mind, I, pp. 13, 41-42, 56-57.
50 Ibid .; Miller, New England Mind, pp. 3-8, 14, 36-37, 40-41, 46-47; Earle, Sabbath, pp. 267, 318-19.
51 Conn. Col. Rec., I, p. 64; II, p. 283.
52 Ibid .; Dorfman, Economic Mind, I, p. 35; Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 226.
53 Ibid., pp. 105, 228, 293; Dorfman, Economic Mind, I, pp. 13-14; Earle, Home Life, p. 287.
54 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, pp. 418-19.
55 Miller, New England Mind, p. 46.
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56 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, pp. 74-75, 278-80, 417; Garvan, Architec- ture and Town Planning, p. 143.
57 Earle, Sabbath, p. 250; Conn. Col. Rec., II, p. 61.
58 Ibid., p. 88.
59 Ibid., p. 280.
60 Wish, Society and Thought, p. 45; Earle, Sabbath, pp. 245-58; Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, pp. 223-24.
61 Earle, Sabbath, pp. 13-14, 90-112.
62 Ibid., pp. 26 ff., 77-84, 316; Morison, Puritan Pronaos, p. 162.
63 Ibid., pp. 163, 165.
64 Earle, Sabbath, pp. 113-124.
65 Ibid., pp. 287-88, 292-310.
66 Morison, Puritan Pronaos, p. 163.
67 Miller, New England Mind, p. 56. See below, Ch. X.
Chapter VII Educational Institutions and Intellectual Development
T HE IMMEDIATE SOURCES of the intellectual life of Con- necticut, as of all New England, seem to lie in the English uni- versities. A number of university alumni migrated to Connecti- cut and were in a position to exert an influence disproportionate to their numbers. Most of them were parsons who were scattered through- out the settlements. Others were magistrates in a position to implement their convictions. It was at Cambridge that many of these leaders had studied theology, including divinity, or the nature of God and his rela- tionship to nature and man, and ecclesiastical polity, or the organization of the church and its relation to the state. The non-separatist congrega- tionalism which was transported to Massachusetts and Connecticut was largely the product of William Ames, a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.
Intellectual Basis
The Cambridge faculty united Renaissance and Reformation beliefs in Christian Platonism. They drew heavily on Petrus Ramus who had attended the College of Navarre when the reaction against scholasticism was at its height. Ramus had selected as his thesis, when he took his degree, "Everything that Aristotle taught is false." He followed this with a book criticizing Aristotelian logic and presented a new textbook of the science of logic. His logic enjoyed a great celebrity for a time. The sys- tem was generally accepted by the Puritans: Milton wrote a treatise on it. Ramus logic was taught at Harvard at least until 1686 when William Brattle, a tutor, placed Cartesian logic in the hands of his students. Logic was regarded as a divine instrument essential to all valid interpre-
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tation and reliable construction, and a textbook in logic was even pre- pared for the Indians. Ames taught that logic was important as a method allowing orderly classification with proper heads and subheads, and ac- cording to Thomas Hooker, order by the received rules of logic was the fundamental principle in all activities. This order, by the Puritan's logi- cal principle of relative and correlative, assumed always the subordina- tion of an inferior to a superior, not an equilibrium of equals. Aristotle was dethroned, and Plato substituted. Authoritarianism continued in the guise of a new discipline and form. However, the substitution of Ramus' Platonic system gave Puritanism a philosophic structure. By Ramus' system, the founder's thought was limited in method and procedure to logical argument, premised on revelation, rather than to emotional appeal.2
The dogma, premised on the revelation of absolute and eternal principles predestined to govern all affairs, resisted change, and its tenets banned activities in certain fields such as drama, religious music, and erotic poetry. Intellectual life was not stifled, however, but even re- ceived its impetus from its religious base. Inherent in Protestantism-no matter how assiduously it is suppressed-is the principle of private judg- ment which promotes intellectual development. The Puritans were not opposed to science, and spoke of Francis Bacon with approbation. Eventually its arguments forced certain modifications though it did not lead to a rationalism that repudiated revelation. Moreover, the Puritans were of necessity defensive. In spite of absolute power within the com- munity, their position within the empire fell short of the complete se- curity that might have allowed complacency, yet gave them enough status to be argumentative. They also had to indoctrinate new genera- tions with their convictions and train them to a competence to continue its management and defense. The Puritans were more successful in establishing institutions, the college, public schools, church, and town, in which to preserve, transmit, and nurture ideas, than they were in in- tellectual production.3
In addition, their intellectual life was important as an indication of the relation of thought to communal experience. The initial political, economic, and social provisions were transpositions of the systematic body of theory brought over from England. As it was applied in a social
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context, however, certain modifications were made, and although the code resisted change, these were reflected in adjustments in thought.4
Educational Institutions
Intellectual interest very early focused on the establishment of a college for the training of replacements for the graduates of English uni- versities. In part, this was motivated by a desire to ensure a supply of educated ministers. Attention was given, however, to the liberal arts training of those who did not take advanced work in theology. This em- phasized the Greek and Roman classics in accordance with the humanist interest. Schoolmasters, physicians, and civil officers had to be provided as well as theologians. On this basis, Harvard College was founded and served Connecticut and New Haven during the 17th century, for Yale in Connecticut was not founded until 1701. Connecticut and New Haven contributed to Harvard's support after 1644 when the New England Confederation requested every family in New England to give annually a quarter of a bushel of wheat, or a shilling in money, or the equivalent in wampum. Connecticut, in addition, granted a 20£ fellowship in 1653. Only a small percentage of the people of Connecticut were touched di- rectly by education at Harvard, but its indirect impact was broad. Much of what the students learned was transmitted to the people through ser- mons and writings of graduates, through contact with college educated schoolmasters, and by writings of the students themselves in the al- manacs which circulated widely.5
Interest extended to elementary and college preparatory training as well, and a certain amount of education was made a compulsory respon- sibility of parent or master. The Connecticut Code of 1650 provided that parents and masters teach, "by themselues or others," their children or apprentices so much learning as would enable them perfectly to read the English language and know the capital laws. The penalty was 20 shillings for each neglect. Children and servants were to be catechised at least once a week in the grounds and principles of religion, or "if any bee vnable to doe so much, that then at the least they procure such Chil- dren or Apprentices to learne some shorte orthodox Catechisme, with- out booke, that they may bee able to answer to the questions that shall bee propounded to them out of such Catechismes by their parents or
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Masters or any of the Select men." Parents and masters were to teach children and apprentices some honest, lawful employment profitable to themselves and to the Commonwealth, if they "will not nor cannot train them up in Learning to fitt them for higher employments." This was compulsory education of a minimum sort, but as Jernegan has pointed out, it did not suggest that school attendance was necessary and should
The First School House in Hartford -- 1642. In those days it was called "Ye Skole Haws."
(Courtesy Mills Coll., Conn. State Lib.)
be distinguished from compulsory school attendance. The motivation was partly economic, since it was intended to insure that none would grow up without a means of maintenance and to provide poor relief where the parent could not care for the child; and partly religious, de- volving from the Protestant emphasis on the necessity of reading the Bible.6
The provision of schools was compulsory under certain conditions, even though attendance at them was not. The early establishment of schools was practicable under the group plan of settlement which had been followed in New England, as it was not in plantation areas. The
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Connecticut Code ordered every town of fifty families to provide a schoolmaster to teach all who came to him. This provision specifically tied the need of learning to the necessity of reading the Bible. These schools were public, but, again as Jernegan points out, a careful distinc- tion must be made between public and free. The Code provided that the school master's wages should be paid either by parents and masters or by inhabitants in general "as the major part of those who order the prudentialls of the Town (e) shall appoint." It was provided that the charges to parents and masters not be excessive as compared to similar costs in other towns. A year's neglect carried a fine of 5f to be paid to the next town maintaining such a school. In 1677, permission was granted to the towns to tax for the maintenance of such schools unless the town agreed upon some other way of maintaining the schoolmaster. In actual practice, there prevailed many combinations of mixed systems of public and private establishment, management, and support.7
Connecticut, at first, provided for the additional establishment of grammar schools, or Latin schools, in towns of 100 inhabitants. After Connecticut annexed New Haven and developed a county organization. it was provided that one grammar school would be maintained in each of the four counties. In 1677, a fine of 10f was placed on a county town not keeping a grammar school and was to be paid to the next town that did so. In 1687, Connecticut distributed an amount of surplus revenue to the counties for their schools, but three years later it was decided to eliminate grammar schools in the two poorer counties and concentrate on the two in Hartford and New Haven. Each was granted 60£ in coun- try pay, half from the colony treasury and half from a bequest from Gov- ernor Hopkins. Even these two principal grammar schools were not in continuous existence through every year of the century, and the masters complained that too much of their time had to be taken up with the more elementary instruction for which they were also responsible. The grammar schools were intended to serve essentially as college prepara- tory schools, emphasizing Latin and Greek grammar. Boys entered at seven or eight years old and were prepared for college in seven years.s
In its legislation, Connecticut essentially followed the Massachusetts revision of 1648. New Haven's system was based in part on that of Massachusetts, but included some new principles. It relied primarily on
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laws stating parental and masters' responsibility, but established better machinery for locating negligence and more severe penalties. In New Haven, a money penalty was used for the first time. The education de- manded was broader than in Massachusetts or in Connecticut. There was no special mention of trades, and all sons of inhabitants were to be taught to read and write and all daughters to read.º
After Philip's war, the enforcement of laws on compulsory educa- tion were weakened, and following the difficult period of 1675-86, the Andros regime had a deleterious effect on educational progress. A poor law, passed in March 1687/8 by the Andros regime repealed, in effect, all educational laws in New England, for it replaced the apprentice law without including the compulsory religious and educational clauses in previous laws which had applied to all children, not merely to poor chil- dren. When Connecticut resumed her government on May 9, 1689, the General Court voted that all laws in force when Andros took possession were again in full force, and Connecticut's charter enabled this to pre- vail, although a similar blanket reenactment in Massachusetts was dis- allowed. In 1690, however, a new Connecticut act was passed, which appeared to strengthen enforcement, but which actually excused any parent or master incapable of giving adequate instruction. In these circumstances, the memorization of a short catechism was accepted as fulfilling requirements. Thus religious instruction substituted for book education. The laws did continue to apply to all children, however, not merely to poor children.10
The laws indicate a minimum requirement rather than perform- ance. In some cases this minimum was not met, as would be indicated both by the many fines and by the probability that towns were not al- ways presented for lapses. There were instances, however, when the re- quired minimum was exceeded. Several towns established schools before this was required by general legislation. New Haven took measures to establish a free school only three years after the colony was founded, en- gaging the most famous of all colonial schoolmasters, Ezekiel Cheever. Hartford was only a few months behind.11
The extensive criticism by the ministry and legislature is as signifi- cant for the concern which it evidenced as for the deficiencies indicated. That many could not read English, as charged by the legislature in 1690,
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was of less consequence in the long run than the official concern with literacy. The ministers attempted to influence alteration of the condi- tions they charged: to counteract a tendency for parents to keep chil- dren working rather than to educate them and to eradicate objections to
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(Courtesy Mills Coll., Conn. State Lib.)
NEW HAVEN-FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE, BUILT IN 1644 "ON THE MARKET PLACE NEAR WHERE THE UNITED CHURCH NOW STANDS." (REDRAWN FROM OLD PRINT LOANED MR. MILLS BY WILBUR F. GORDY)
tax supported schools. The schools were public and cheap, though not free. They were secular, in the sense that teachers were required to be laymen. It was expected that no heresies be taught, but Connecticut, un- like Massachusetts, did not legislate to this effect. In towns too small to maintain a grammar school, ministers ordinarily prepared boys for col- lege, and such private tutorial arrangements mitigated some of the defi- ciencies of the publc schools based on public law.12
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The Printing Press
An adjunct to the educational system and a factor in the dissemina- tion of information was the printing press, the first of which arrived in New England in 1638 and was in operation by the next year at Cam- bridge. Just as Harvard College, this press had significance for Connecti- cut and New Haven. It not only printed the Bay Psalm Book, and President Dunster's revision of this, but also tracts, broadsides, laws, al- manacs, catechisms, and primers. After 1660, when the English presses became very inhospitable, more creative works were printed including the Half-Way covenant tracts. In addition, English books and translations of continental works were reprinted. The press was subject to censor- ship from 1662 on. A licensing board, subject to review by the Massachu- setts General Court, governed. An indication of the degree of censorship exercised is indicated by the instance when the board allowed a begin- ning on Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ but the Court ordered the work ended. The astronomical essays by Harvard students were al- lowed to be included in the almanacs however and were effective in dis- seminating new learning in astronomy to the general populace. The Cambridge press was the only one in New England until 1675, when one was established in Boston. The authors dealt directly with the printer. Usually the author assumed cost and risk, although an arrangement by which the bookseller paid printing bills and promised a lump sum to the author was also used.13
Books and Libraries
There was a bookshop in New Haven and possibly in other Con- necticut towns. In addition, hawkers and peddlers sold books through the country. For the most part the booksellers' stock consisted of im- portations from England or of private libraries put into their hands for sale. Possibly two-thirds of their stock was religious, but the remainder included law books, practical works, biography, romances, and some poetry. Bacon, More, Mandeville, and Milton were included among the authors.14
The generalizations possible about libraries would be that prob- ably they were generally small, and the smaller they were the greater
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would be the proportion of theological works. Inventories of parsons' libraries uniformly show enough medical titles to confirm the tradition that it was customary for the early ministers to practise medicine. The first settlers brought a number of private libraries to which they con- tinued to add titles. The largest private library in New England seems to be that of John Winthrop, Jr. of Connecticut. Morison concludes that this contained over a thousand volumes by 1640. A remnant of 250 volumes, deposited in the New York Society Library, contains cer- tain titles that were published after Winthrop's death and were added by his sons. One-half of the titles were in Latin, and the remainder in- cluded works in English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. The remnant contains 124 titles classified as scientific, which included works on alchemy, witchcraft, astrology, and occult lore. In the re- mainder are theological works, history, travel, philosophy, law, and sundry grammars and dictionaries. It is significant that some of the vol- umes show evidence of having been borrowed by Winthrop's friends.15
Except by special permission. Harvard's library, of 3,517 titles, the largest single collection in New England at the end of the century, was available to the Connecticut students enrolled there only if they were engaged in theological study. It was planned primarily for graduate students and was largely theological in content. Undergraduates were expected to procure their own textbooks. New Haven began a town library, with a legacy of books which belonged to Governor Eaton and his brother. The books in this legacy, about ninety titles, most of which were theological, were kept for thirty years and then sold by the town.16
Intellectual Production
To some extent a test of these institutions was provided by the work of the second generation Puritans. The first generation, as Miller indicates, were essentially Europeans, who had been trained in England and considered themselves a part of the general stream of world history. The second generation, trained in the local institutions, were provincial and isolated. The outcome of their development was seen as disparate rather than integral to European development and, although they con- tinued to receive and read accounts from abroad, these were now re- ceived as something foreign.17 Morison points out that some of the
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changes occurring in New England paralleled a literary depreciation in England and to the extent that this is true, diminishing literary quality should not be scored against local institutions and conditions. More- over their production was the accomplishment of a small community. It was estimated that there were only 20,000 people in Connecticut in 1690. The quality of Gershom Bulkeley's political writing is enough to make the record a creditable accomplishment.18
Much of the effort of New England, as would be expected, was de- voted to the preparation of sermons and other religious discourses. These reflected the influence of Ramus in their plain style and in the ordered enumeration of argument. Few points of controversial theol- ogy were posed, for the Church Synod of 1637 had defined the limits of permissible speculation and it was known that heresy would not be countenanced. Early in the period Thomas Hooker had engaged in the controversy over the concept of preparation and in the second half of the century John Davenport had led the pamphleteering opposing the baptismal compromise represented in the Half-Way covenant. It was only a layman who was considered to have transgressed the estab- lished bounds, however. This was William Pynchon, a resident of Springfield, who had figured in Connecticut history because of his opposition to monopoly. His book on atonement, The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, which was published in London in 1650, was publicly burned when a copy arrived in Boston. Pynchon was de- prived of his magistracy and he returned to England rather than recant. In general, the works were mainly expository or defensive of orthodox stands.19
In the area of church polity, Connecticut residents made a distinct contribution. Here, Thomas Hooker's posthumously printed "Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline" was important. He undertook this work reluctantly at the deputation of fellow ministers, and his first finished version was lost at sea en route to London publishers. That which was published was a second writing which had not been com- pleted at his death. Parrington calls it "crabbed prose, not altogether worthy of a man who kept the thorns crackling under the pot" as he lectured before congregations, but points, too, to the excellence of its defense of Congregationalism. Along with a work by Richard Mather
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and one by John Cotton, Hooker's "Summe" served as constitutional law for Independent churches in England as well as for Congregational churches in New England.20
In the sermons, few of which were printed or preserved, the minis- ters took cognizance of secular matters. The changes that occurred were interpreted as defections, since the established arrangements were assumed to be transpositions of absolute and eternal principles. Changes, then, were catalogued as sins and lamented for the doom they would entail. These "Jeremiads", as Perry Miller calls them, are valua- ble for the information they give on such developments as the deteriora- tion of regulatory efforts, the complaints of the lower orders and the complaints about them, the increase of trade, the unwillingness to sup- port education and ministers, and the growing contention which was leading to increased numbers of lawsuits.21
The religious point of view colored the accounts of secular ex- periences contained in the histories, biographies, chronicles, and politi- cal tracts, produced in New England. These accounts attempted to demonstrate God's protective interest in the covenanted state even though he sometimes meted out stern punishments. The charge, made by Edward Wharton, a New England Friend, that Philip's war repre- sented God's just vengeance on the Puritans for their Quaker persecu- tions, called forth many answers from the clergy. In these, it was agreed that the war was a divine judgment, but its cause was attributed to the immorality of inhabitants or to the laxity in the persecution of heretics. Personal narratives, which became popular and found a wide English market after the publication of Mrs. Rowlandson's account of her captivity, also attested to God's providences. To this Indian record, Connecticut contributed accounts of the Pequot wars by Captain John Underhill and Lion Gardiner.22
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