USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the colony of New Haven to its absorption into Connecticut > Part 2
USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the colony of New Haven to its absorption into Connecticut > Part 2
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
"Certain Considerations Touching the Better Pacifica- tion and Edification of the Church of England," written by Lord Bacon, and "dedicated to his most excellent majesty," that James, like Rehoboam, came to his decis- ion in opposition to wise counsel. Bacon says, "These ecclesiastical matters are things not properly appertain- ing to my profession ; but finding that it is in many things seen that a man that standeth off and somewhat removed from a plot of ground doth better survey it and discover it than those which are upon it, I thought it not impossible, but that I, as a looker-on, might cast mine eyes upon some things which the actors them- selves, especially some being interested, some being led and addicted, some declared and engaged, did not or would not see." He inquires, " Why the civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every third or fourth year in parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief ; and contrariwise the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these five and forty years or more. But if it be said to me that there is a difference be- tween civil causes and ecclesiastical, they may as well tell me that churches and chapels need no reparations, though castles and houses do : whereas, commonly, to speak truth, dilapidations of the inward and spiritual edifications of the church of God are in all times as great as the outward and material."
The first parliament in the reign of the new king met a few weeks after the conference at Hampton Court. A majority of the lower house were in full sympathy with the Puritan clergy in desiring further reformation
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
of the Church ; and some who were personally indiffer- ent to the ceremonies and other matters in controversy were disposed to side with the aggrieved party, either on the ground that rings, surplices, and crosses were important to those who esteemed them important, or that, by favoring the Puritans, they might obtain from them more aid in the impending contest between the Crown and the Commons. The speaker, in his first address to the king, took occasion to affirm that "by the power of your majesty's great and high court of parliament only, new laws are to be instituted, imper- fect laws reformed, and inconvenient laws abrogated ;" that "no such law can be instituted, reformed, or abro- gated, but by the unity of the Commons' agreement, the Lords' accord, and your majesty's royal and regal assent ;" that "this court standeth compounded of two powers ; the one ordinary, the other absolute : ordinary in the Lords' and Commons' proceedings, but in your highness absolute, either negatively to frustrate or affirmatively to confirm, but not to institute."
In making up the roll of the House, it was found that the king had already decided that one of the persons returned as elected was ineligible, and had ordered a new election, so that there were two claimants of the seat. The House insisted on its privilege of determin- ing its own membership in all cases of contested elec- tions, but compromised with the king by excluding both claimants with the consent of the first chosen, and ordering a third election. With great copiousness of courteous speech they established so firmly the privi- lege of the House to determine contested elections, that it has never since been brought in question.
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
On the 13th of June, a committee reported a form for a petition to his majesty, in which they say, "We have thought it expedient, rather by this our humble peti- tion to recommend to your majesty's godly considera- tion certain matters of grievance resting in your royal power and princely zeal, either to abrogate or moderate, than to take the public discussing of the same unto ourselves ; to the end (if it so seem good to your high- ness) we may from the sacred fountain of your ma- jesty's most royal and religious heart, wholly and only derive such convenient remedy and relief therein as to your princely wisdom may seem most meet. The mat- ters of grievance (that we be not troublesome to your majesty) are these : the pressing the use of certain rites and ceremonies in this Church, as the cross in baptism, the wearing of the surplice in ordinary parish churches, and the subscription required of the ministers further than is commanded by the laws of the realm ; things which, by long experience, have been found to be the occasion of such difference, trouble, and contention in this Church, as thereby divers profitable and painful ministers, not in contempt of authority or desire of novelty, as they sincerely profess and we are verily persuaded, but upon conscience toward God, refusing the same, some of good desert have been deprived, others of good expectation withheld from entering into the ministry." It is not certain that this petition was ever presented to the king; but he must have known that it was on the way, when, on the 26th of the same month, he sent a letter to the House declining to re- ceive a subsidy, which all the world knew would be granted only in return for the redress of grievances.
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
Meantime the House had sent to the king a letter styled " An Apology Touching Their Privileges," in which they complain, with great copiousness of respect- ful language, of the wrong which had been done to his majesty by misinformation, touching the estate of his subjects and the privileges of the House, and " disclosing unto your majesty the truth of such matters as hitherto by misinformation hath been suppressed or perverted."
On the 7th of July the House was prorogued ; and when it again assembled in November, 1605, the discov- ery of the gunpowder-plot had hushed the strife be- tween the Puritans and the king, uniting all Protes- tants in a common enmity against Papists. But in subsequent sessions the Commons found so many grievances to be redressed before supplies could be granted, that the king preferred to dissolve the Parlia- ment in February, 1611, rather than fill his exchequer by further sacrifices of his prerogative.
In April, 1614, having first by private negotiation secured a promise of aid from some who had been lead- ers of the popular party, the king ventured to call his second Parliament, but the experiment proved a failure ; the Commons, even after the king had sent a message requesting that a supply might be granted and threat- ening to dissolve the Parliament if they refused, voting to postpone supply till their grievances were redressed. The Parliament was accordingly dissolved just two months after it began to sit.
The Parliament which assembled in January, 1621, was at first on good terms with the monarch, who in the opening speech, acknowledging that he had been misled by evil counsellors, made fair promises for the
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
future. The two parties were drawn together by their common sympathy with the king's son-in-law, the Elect- or Palatine, involved in a quarrel with the German emperor, which threatened to deprive him of his hered- itary dominions. The king naturally desired to assist the husband of his daughter and the father of her chil- dren to preserve his patrimony ; and the people sympa- thized with the elector as the champion of Protestant- ism, overborne by the combined forces of Romanism. The Commons at once voted supplies for carrying on war in aid of the elector. But, before the expiration of the year, the king and the Commons were again at vari- ance; he rebuking them for meddling with matters of state which did not concern them, and declaring him- self "very free and able to punish any man's misde- meanors in Parliament, as well during their sitting as after ;" and they responding with a formal protest as follows : viz., "That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England ; and that the arduous and urgent affairs con- cerning the king, state, and the defence of the realm and of the Church of England, and the making and maintenance of laws and redress of mischiefs and griev- ances which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in Parlia- ment ; and that, in the handling and proceeding of those businesses, every member of the House hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same ; that the Commons in Parliament have like liberty and freedom to treat of these matters in such order as in their judg-
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
ments shall seem fittest ; and that every such member of the said House hath like freedom from all impeach- ment, imprisonment, and molestation (other than by the censure of the House itself), for or concerning any bill, speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter or mat- ters touching the Parliament or Parliament business ; and that, if any of the said members be complained of and questioned for any thing said or done in Parliament, the same is to be showed to the king, by the advice and assent of all the Commons, before the king give cre- dence to any private informations."
This formal protest having been recorded in the journal of the House, the king erased it with his own hand, and a few days afterward dissolved the Parlia- ment.
The next Parliament met in February, 1624, was pro- rogued in May, and did not again assemble, being dis- solved by the king's death on the 27th of March, 1625. During its brief session, unusual concord prevailed between the king and the Commons, by reason of war with Spain, which religious animosity rendered popu- lar ; and the more so, that the war had been preceded by an apprehension that a Spanish princess would become the wife of the heir to the British crown. The Commons voted large supplies for carrying on the war, and with the more alacrity, because the king had himself proposed that the money should be put into the hands of a committee of Parliament, to be expended by them, and not into the royal exchequer.
Charles the First was constrained by his need of money to call a Parliament immediately upon his ac- cession, but soon quarrelled with the Commons, as his
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
father had done, about his prerogative and their privi- leges. Putting an end to their sessions, he called another Parliament in the succeeding year, but with no improvement in the state of feeling between the king and the Commons; and in a few months the second Parliament of this reign came to an end. The king, left without revenue by the refusal of Parliament to vote supplies, not only laid and collected arbitrary taxes, but exacted from the nobility, the gentry, the clergy, and the merchants, forced loans. Those who refused to lend were imprisoned, and, when they claimed their liberty by habeas corpus, found that Magna Charta was of no avail against the will of the king.
In this state of things, Charles called his third Par- liament in 1628; being constrained to such a course by the insufficiency of the revenue collected by illegal means. When the Commons assembled on the 17th of March, they came with the determination not to vote supplies unless the king would promise to put an end to his arbitrary measures. Early in the session, they passed the following resolutions, without a dissenting voice : -
" I. That no freeman ought to be committed or de- tained in prison, or otherwise restrained, by command of the king, or the Privy Council, or any other, unless some cause of the commitment, detainer, or restraint be ex- pressed, for which by law he ought to be committed, de- tained, or restrained. 2. That the writ of habeas corpus cannot be denied, but ought to be granted to every man that is committed or detained in prison or otherwise restrained by command of the king, Privy Council, or any other ; he praying the same. 3. That if a freeman
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
be committed, or detained in prison, or otherwise re- strained, by command of the king, Privy Council, or any other, no cause of such commitment, &c., being ex- pressed, and the same be returned upon an habeas corpus granted for the said party, that then he ought to be delivered, or bailed. 4. That the ancient and undoubted right of every freeman is, that he hath a full and absolute property in his goods and estate ; and that no tax, tallage, loan, benevolence, or other like charges, ought to be commanded or levied by the king or his ministers, without common assent of Parliament."
A few days after this declaration of the right of English subjects, they presented a petition to the king, in which they showed how all these rights of the sub- ject had been recognized in Magna Charta, and in acts of Parliament subscribed by his majesty's royal pred- ecessors ; declared that they had all been violated of late by forced loans, by imprisonment without cause shown, by disregard of the writ of habeas corpus, by billeting soldiers and mariners in private houses, and by the unnecessary establishment of martial law. The petition closed with a prayer that such illegalities and wrongs might cease.
The answer of the king was regarded as evasive ; and both houses of Parliament joined in a request that his majesty would return a more explicit reply to the Peti- tion of Right. Charles, thus harassed, came into the House of Lords, commanded the Commons to attend upon him there, and gave his assent to the petition in the customary form, declaring that in his former answer he had had no intention of withholding any thing con- ceded in the latter. Three days later, to accelerate a
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
vote of supplies, he expressed his willingness that the Petition of Right should be recorded, not only in both houses of Parliament, but in all the courts of West- minster, and that it should be printed for his honor, and · the content and satisfaction of his subjects.
The Commons, pleased with such a triumph of law over autocracy, immediately voted a liberal sum for supplying the king's necessities, and were proceeding to pass an act for a further supply by a grant of tonnage and poundage, when the incorrigible Stuart, learning that the grant was to be accompanied by a remon- strance against the illegal collection of the tax before it had been granted, prorogued the Parliament in a speech in which he denied that in giving assent to the Petition of Right he had debarred himself from exacting ton- nage and poundage by virtue of his royal prerogative, and commanded all present to take notice, that the interpretation he was giving to the instrument was its true meaning and intent ; adding, "But especially you, my lords the judges, for to you only, under me, belongs the interpretation of laws." After the proroga- tion this violent speech was, by the king's command, entered on the journal of the House ; and by the same authority it was printed along with the Petition of Right and the unsatisfactory answer it had at first re- ceived, no mention being made of the explicit assent afterward given in the customary formula of royal ratification.
When the Parliament again assembled on the 20th of January, 1629, the nation was greatly irritated, not only by the collection of tonnage and poundage and other illegal taxes, but by the excessive and cruel punishments
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
unjustly, and without warrant of law, inflicted by the Star-Chamber and the High Commission. Hitherto the questions at issue between the king and the Commons had pertained chiefly to civil rights : but, during the contest, the assertors of civil rights and the advocates of further reform in the Church had more and more coalesced; the Puritans being to a man opposed to despotism, and the leaders of the popular party, if they had no positive and earnest convictions in regard to the religious questions at issue, taking sides with the Puri- tans because the Puritans had taken sides with them.
Similar reasons had drawn the king into a closer connection with those Churchmen who insisted on the retention of the ceremonies obnoxious to Puritans, and on the enforcement of an absolute conformity. The king favored such men as Laud and his co-adjutors in their churchmanship, because they supported him in his attempt to trample upon the constitution and the laws. Through Laud, who since the death of the Duke of Buckingham had become his principal adviser, Charles enjoined upon the clergy to preach the merit of paying taxes and making loans not authorized by Parliament. When Archbishop Abbott refused to license the print- ing of one of the sermons thus originated, he was sus- pended from the functions of his office, and his authority was transferred to a commission over which Laud pre- sided.
. The two parties being thus at variance on ecclesias- tical as well as political questions, Parliament had no sooner assembled than the Commons began to seek the redress of grievances relating to religion, as well as of such as related to person and property. It had been
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
discovered that in the negotiations for the marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria, both he and his father had secretly signed a promise that not only the queen and her attendants, but all Englishmen as well, should be exempt from the operation of the laws of England which prohibited the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship. It was seen that the Church of England, under the direction of Laud, was drifting toward the Church of Rome, and thus becoming more unsatisfac- tory to Puritans than it had been under the administra- tion of Abbott. The latter prelate had been lenient toward those who had conscientious scruples about cere- monies : Laud, on the other hand, not only exacted the most rigid conformity to the ceremonies legally required, but procured an order of the king's privy council, or- daining changes in the position and furniture of the communion-table, exceedingly unpalatable to those who already experienced sufficient difficulty in overcoming their scruples and persuading themselves to conform.
On the 25th of February a committee previously appointed for the purpose made a report on religious grievances. They complained, among other things; that books in favor of popery were licensed by the bishops, and books against popery were suppressed ; that candle- sticks were placed on the communion-table, which they said was now wickedly called a high altar ; that pictures, images, and lights were used in the worship of the Church ; that clergymen celebrating divine service crossed them- selves at every change of posture, and in time of prayer turned their backs toward the people, as if the eastward position were essential ; that, these ritualistic practices being enjoined upon them by their bishops, learned,
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
orthodox, and pious ministers, who could not in con- science obey the injunction, were brought to grief for disobedience.
The king, enraged at this attack upon his hierarchical allies, endeavored to prevent action on the report by ordering the speaker to pronounce the House adjourned. But, the House claiming that it could be adjourned only by its own act, some of the members held the speaker in the chair, while others locked the door, and brought the keys to the table. The speaker declaring that he dare not and would not put to vote any motion, seeing that the House was adjourned by the king's command, one of the members read a protest to which others assented, and the House then adjourned itself to the IOth of March. On the 10th of March the king dis- solved the Parliament, in a speech in which he threat- ened with his vengeance those vipers, as he called them, who had been most active in resisting his adjournment of the House of Commons.
His third Parliament being thus brought to an end, Charles was by this time so disgusted, that in a procla- mation issued twelve days afterward he said, " We have showed, by our frequent meeting our people, our love to the use of Parliaments ; yet, the late abuse having for the present driven us unwillingly out of that course, we shall account it presumption for any to prescribe any time unto us for Parliaments, the calling, continuing, and dissolving of which is always in our power." So deep- rooted was his dislike, that eleven years intervened be tween his third and his fourth Parliaments, during which time he levied taxes, and exacted benevolences and loans at his pleasure, punishing with imprisonment and heavy
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HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COLONY.
fines those who refused to open their purses at his arbitrary demand.
The Puritan emigration from England, for which we are endeavoring to account, commenced while Charles was holding his third Parliament. Plymouth had, indeed, been settled before this time and before Charles came to the throne ; but the Pilgrims who planted that colony had been already exiles from their native land for twelve years before they crossed the ocean. The successful prosecution of that enterprise for eight years had now demonstrated the feasibility of establishing such planta- tions on the American coast, and had suggested to the Puritans of England that by emigrating to America they might not only escape from their foes, but estab- lish, in a new world, those principles of civil freedom and pure worship for which they were contending with little success in their native land.
The first company who left their homes in the mother- . country to establish a Puritan plantation in New Eng- land sailed in 1628, and, under the leadership of Endi- cott, established themselves at Salem. They had been twice re-enforced, when a much larger company. came with Winthrop in 1630, and settled first at Charles- town, and afterward at Boston. To induce Winthrop and other gentlemen of capacity and wealth to engage personally in this enterprise, the Company of Massa- chusetts Bay generously offered to transfer to New England the government of the plantations which had been or might be formed there, by electing a majority of its directors and its governor from among those who would engage to emigrate with their families and estates.
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PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL.
From this time onward the current of emigration was broad and rapid, stimulated as well by the descriptions of the New World which the first adventurers sent back as by the troubles in the mother-country. So general was the interest in these reports that three editions of "New England's Plantation " by Rev. Francis Higginson, who arrived in Salem in 1629, were printed during the following year. The stream thus set in motion did not cease to flow till the civil war had given the Puritans hope of relief without exile from their native land.
The project which resulted in the establishment of a colony at New Haven was undertaken in 1636. Seven years had then elapsed without a parliament ; the king was evidently determined not to call another : without a parliament no check could be put on arbitrary govern- ment. To all other illegal methods of replenishing the exchequer, including the sale of monopolies, the de- mand of loans and benevolences, the collection of ton- nage and poundage, the imposition of arbitrary and excessive fines, another had now been added called ship-money ; the first writ for levying it in London being issued in 1634, and the exaction being extended to the whole country in the following year. The tax was small in amount ; for John Hampden (who, having already suffered imprisonment for not submitting to a forced loan, now refused to pay ship-money) was a man of large wealth, and yet was assessed at only twenty shillings. But, though small in amount, this new tax excited earnest indignation in the minds of thoughtful patriots, because it was laid without the consent of those who were to pay it.
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The Star-Chamber, instead of relaxing its severity, had of late in numerous instances punished with ruin- ous fines, and with imprisonment of which no one could foresee the end, those who resisted the exactions of the government, or even ventured to speak of them with too strong disapproval. Thus in 1630, Richard Cham- bers, a merchant of London, smarting under a sense of the wrong he suffered in having a bale of silk confis- cated because he would not pay the duty illegally de- manded, was heard to say that merchants had more encouragement, and were less screwed and wrung, in Turkey than in England. For this ebullition of temper he was fined two thousand pounds. In the same year Alexander Leighton, a Scotch clergyman, was sentenced, for publishing a book entitled, " An Appeal to the Par- liament ; or, Sion's Plea against Popery," to be twice publicly whipped, to stand two hours in the pillory, to have his ears cut off, to have his nostrils slit, to be branded in the cheek with the letters S.S. to denote a sower of sedition, and to be imprisoned for life. He lay in prison ten years, and until he was released by the Long Parliament. In 1634 Prynne, a Puritan lawyer, being prosecuted before the same tribunal for publish- ing a book against plays, masquerades, &c., which was thought to reflect severely upon the royal court where such amusements were in vogue, was sentenced to. pay a fine of five thousand pounds, to stand twice in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to remain a prisoner for life. He employed the leisure of his prison in writing another book, for which he suffered, by decree of the Star-Chamber, another mutilation. This second pun- ishment, however, did not take place till after the com-
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