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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01872 7310 E
GC 974.4 P38AN
ANGLICAN BEGINNINGS IN MASSACHUSETTS
BY EDGAR LEGARE PENNINGTON, S.T.D.
PUBLICATION No. 4
1941
Massachusetts Diocesan Library 1 Joy Street Boston
ANGLICAN BEGINNINGS IN MASSACHUSETTS* By Edgar Legare Pennington
W HILE the early history of Massachusetts shows a repudiation of the Church of England and the establishment of an ecclesi- astical order exclusive of the Church of the mother country, there were traces of Anglicanism throughout the whole period of coloni- zation. Eventually the Church secured a footing in the Colony, and parishes sprang into life. The story of the struggling but persisting elements is an interesting one.
After the discovery of New England, its coasts were often visited. Some vessels came to perfect the discoveries; others were attracted by the fisheries and forests. One David Ingram, a wandering sailor, was landed with about a hundred companions on the Gulf of Mexico, in October, 1568, by Captain John Hawkins. With two others, Ingram travelled afoot along the Indian trails, passing through Massachusetts and Maine to the St. John's river, where he embarked in a French ship. He wrote a narrative of his journey, which was printed by Hakluyt in 1589.1 Bartholomew Gosnold rounded Cape Cod in 1602; and, the following year, Martin Pring went into Massachusetts Bay, and entered Plymouth harbour, where he remained about six weeks. Robert Sal- terne, who was with Pring at Plymouth, afterwards took orders in the English Church. This leads to the conjecture that public worship may have been conducted at Plymouth in 1603.2
I. THE PILGRIMS AND THE CHURCH
The "Mayflower" colonists, who landed December 21st, 1620, were separatists from the English Church, as is well known. The grounds for their dissatisfaction have been frequently reiterated and discussed. As a sympathetic student summarized the situation, this separatism was induced by the perpetual interference of the Church with common life, by the low quality of all prescriptions for salvation, by the ill moral character and influence of both clergy and Church, and by the intolerable tyranny of the Roman Church over the mind.
*Reprinted from HISTORICAL MAGAZINE OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, Vol. X, pp. 242-289.
1Winsor: Narrative and Critical History, III., p. 170; MSS. Sloane (British Museum), #1447; MSS. Tanner (Bodleian), #79.
2Winsor: Narrative and Critical History, III., p. 175.
"Such was the England into which our religious fathers were born, as it was entering upon the sixteenth century of the Christian era. The Word of God was withdrawn from men. There was no open vision of a Saviour. . . . Except for a man to trudge wearily obedient his daily tread-mill round of appointed idolatries, led by ecclesiastics whom he felt to be bad in an ecclesiasticism which he could not feel to be good; there was nothing for him but a brief, blind, instinctive and ineffec- tual struggle for something better he knew not what, swiftly ending in bell, book and candle, and the funeral pyre, or a craven submission, abjuration and absolution, which left his last state worse than the first. It was like trying to breathe in an exhausted receiver. The light that was in the land had be- come darkness, and how great was that darkness !"3
Queen Elizabeth's policy of uniformity was sternly pursued by her last Archbishop of Canterbury (Whitgift), and was ostentatiously adopted by King James the First at the Hampton Court Conference in the first year of his reign. There were various thriving groups of separatists in the kingdom; and some of them migrated to Amsterdam in 1606. Those who remained in England found their position exceed- ingly difficult; and they in turn joined their compatriots in Holland. There they found other residents of similar religious sentiments. In 1617, the Holland separatists sent agents to confer with the Virginia Company in London with reference to settling in America. They found the Company well disposed, and gained a friend in no less a person than Sir Edwyn Sandys-not a Puritan but the son of an Archbishop of York. The efforts to procure a patent and to obtain the funds for their undertaking were at length successful. It is interesting to note that when the agents went to confer with the Virginia Company, "they took with them, for use in conciliating the sentiments which any petition from a community with their history would awaken at court, a memorable declaration in seven articles, signed by the pastor and elder, which pro- fessed their full assent to the doctrines of the Church of England, as well as their acknowledgment of the King's supremacy and of the obedience due to him, 'either active if the thing commanded be not against God's Word, or passive (i. e., undergoing the appointed penal- ties), if it be.' The same articles, in carefully guarded language, recog- nized as lawful the existing relations of Church and State in England, and disavowed the notion of authority inhering in any assembly of ecclesiastical officers, except as conferred by the civil magistrate."4
There was undoubtedly a basis for the grievances of the separatists. The Sixteenth Century had been marked by drastic changes, and the
3Dexter: Congregationalism as seen in its literature, pp. 47-48.
+Winsor: Narrative and Critical History, III., pp. 264-265.
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break with Rome had been followed by controversy and bloodshed. The Pope had published a bull of excommunication against the Queen of England, and had absolved her subjects from all loyalty to her. The Spanish Armada was designed to put an end to the power of the nation. There were plots and intrigues. It is not surprising that the policy of State should demand religious uniformity as an important element of national stability. Conscientious objectors to the approved order of things were naturally regarded with suspicion. More than three cen- turies removed, we are able to look back on the Brownists (or Separatists) with sympathy and admiration ; but it is easy to see that they may have been suspected as a disloyal and inharmonious element, capable of retarding the progress of the land. Their position was made difficult in England ; hence they left the country. In their desire to secure the right of settlement in the new world, they showed a con- ciliatory disposition. In their articles, sent from the Church of Leyden in 1617 to the Great Council of England, they declared that "to ye confession of fayth published in ye name of ye Church of England & to every artikell thereof we . . . assent wholly . .. Wee judg itt lawfull for his Majesty to apoynt bishops. . .. The authoryty of ye present bishops in ye Land wee do acknolidg so far forth as ye same is indeed derived from his Majesty untto them."
When King James the First said that he would "connive at their separatism" and not molest them so long as they gave no public offence ; but he would not allow them "under the great seal:" they evidently felt that they were not bound by the concessions they had made. There- fore, when they came to America, they proceeded to set up an inde- pendent order of church government. They acknowledged no ties with the English Church; and had no intention that Anglican clergymen should get a foot-hold or that anything distinctive of the Established Church should be introduced. Their intellectual leaders had been nur- tured in Elizabethan radicalism. They were men of plebeian origin, and had studied the Bible texts closely. Ecclesiastical traditions meant little or nothing to them; under the guidance of John Robinson, they had developed their own theories and practices of primitive congre- gationalism. So they brought to America a consciously democratic church-order.5
On reaching this country, the Pilgrims found themselves faced with painful and irksome problems. They had hoped to get their rude houses built before the winter should set in; but the many de- lays and mishaps had brought them ashore in the coldest season. When winter was over, fifty-one of their number had died. At one time, the
5 Johns Hopkins Studies, X., pp. 104-105; New England Historical and Genea- logical Register, XXV., p. 276.
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living were scarcely able to bury the dead. At first, all were crowded under a single roof. But they were undaunted; they applied them- selves to their task with grim determination, encouraged by the con- sciousness of God's protecting care.
Their religious convictions had moulded their outlook and spurred them onward. With privation and constant struggle, they were strength- ened by the assurance that they had made a great venture for faith. It is not surprising that they were intolerant of those who did not share their views. The opportunity soon arose for them to show that they had no intention of retaining the festivals of the Church. Some new settlers had arrived in November, 1621, on the "Fortune;" and they proceeded to celebrate Christmas as a holiday. Governor Bradford tells us in his journal about the incident.
"On ye day called Christmas-day ye Govr called them out to worke, (as it was used,) but ye most of this new company excused them selves and said it went against their consciences to work on yt day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye streete at play, openly ; some pitching ye barr, & some at stoole ball, and shuch like sports. So he went to them, and tooke away their implements, and tould them that was against his conscience, that they should play & others worke. If they made ye keeping of it mater of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly."6
That Englishmen and members of the Established Church should appear in the newly settled region was inevitable. In the summer of 1622, Thomas. Weston, a merchant, projected a settlement at what was later known as Weymouth; the enterprise lasted scarcely a year. Weston's company were Anglicans; and, as a contemporary expressed it, since they were "looked upon with an evil eye by the independents, and abandoned to the fury of the savages, they were obliged to quit their settlement." Their neighbours said that "Weston and his men were so scandalously wicked, that they were a nuisance to the very savages."?
Probably Thomas Morton, of "Cliffords Inne gent.," was one of Weston's group. That he was in New England in 1622, he tells us in the following language :-
6 Bradford: History of the Plymouth Plantation, 1912 ed., I., p. 70.
"Morton goes into details about Weston and his colonists; but says nothing about their Anglicanism.
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"In the year since the incarnation of Christ, 1622, it was my chance to be landed in these parts of New England, where I found two sorts of people, the one Christians, the other Infidels, these I found most full of humanity, and more friendly than the others."
Morton probably left with the breaking up of Weston's company ; but he was back in 1625, when he was established with thirty servants and provisions for a plantation on Passonagesset, or Mount Wollaston, an eminence in the present town of Quincy overlooking the Bay. Mor- ton's life was out of accord with the principles of the austere separatists ; and he was regarded as a "maine enemy to theire Church and State." He named his settlement, "Ma-re Mount" ("Merie Monte")-obviously because of its vicinity to the sea, rather than to label it as the citadel of abandonment; but it was in the latter sense that the rigid Pilgrims regarded it. On the 1st of May, 1627, Morton erected at his home a May-pole, "a goodly pine tree of 80 foote longe ;" and, in company with the Indians, with whom he lived on friendly terms, he held high revels to the disgust of the Plymouth elders. He not only continued his merry pranks in disregard of the Pilgrims but composed satires on them. His example was said to have attracted a number of malcontents to his place, Endicott admonished the revellers to mend their ways, but this advice was unheeded. Miles Standish led a punitive expedition to "Ma-re Mount." Morton was arrested; the may-pole was cut down, and the little colony dispersed. The next year, Morton reappeared at "Ma-re Mount," where he kept annoying the settlers by his free and easy ways.
Bradford dubbed Morton the "Lord of misrule," and said that he maintained, as it were, "a school of Atheism."
"And after they had gott some goods into their hands, and gott much by trading with the Indians, they spent it as vainly, in quaffing and drinking both wine and strong waters in great excess.'
But Bradford makes a very serious charge indeed, when he says that Morton traded guns, powder, and shot to the Indians, and taught them how to use ammunition. This caused anxiety, because it gave the Indians a great advantage and made them more a menace. This was deplorable, "when some of their neighbours and friends are daly killed by the Indeans, or are in Deanger thereof, and live but at the Indeans mercie."
Another charge made against Morton was that he had committed injuries both to the English and the Indians, and that he had shot
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hail-shot at a troop of Indians, because they had not brought him a canoe with which to cross a river. In so doing, he had hurt one, and shot through the garments of another. That this charge was based on fact is doubtful; Morton was a fractious, unwelcome element in the colony, but it is equally apparent that the people were ready to resort to every means, fair or foul, to get rid of him. On the 7th of Septem- ber, 1630, he was sentenced by court to be set into the bilbees, and afterwards sent prisoner to England. All of his goods were ordered seized to defray the charge of his transportation, to pay his debts, and to give satisfaction to the Indians for a canoe which he took away from them. It was also decreed that his house, after the goods were re- moved, should be burnt down in the sight of the Indians, for their satisfaction for the many wrongs which he had done them from time to time.
Commenting on this trial and sentence, Charles Francis Adams said in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1877, that "these were high-handed acts of unmistakable oppression. . . . The probabilities in the case would seem to be that the Massachusetts magistrates had made up their minds in advance to drive this man out of Massachusetts."
The sentence was carried out. It was ordered that Morton "saile in sight of his house," which was to be fired by his foes; and thus witness his own ruin. The captain of the "Gift" refused to carry him agreeably to the order of the court; and it was three months before the authorities could get rid of their culprit.
Samuel Maverick, the first inhabitant of "Noddle's Island," and a man described in Johnson's Wonder Working Providence of Sion's Saviour as "a man of very loving and courteous behaviour, very ready to entertain strangers, yet an enemy to the Reformation in hand, being strong for the Lordly Prelaticall Power one (on) this Island," wrote a letter to the Earl of Clarendon in Morton's behalf. He said :-
"One Mr Morton, a gent of good qualities, vpon pretence that he had shott an Indian, wittingly, wch was indeede but ac- cidentally, and no hurt donn, they sentenced him to be sent for, England prisoner, as one who had a designe to sett the Indians at variance wth vs, they further ordered as he was to saile in sight of his howse that it should be fired; he refusinge to goe in to the shippe, as havinge no business there, was hoisted by a tackle, and neare starued in the passage. No thinge was said to him heare: in the tyme of his abode heare, he wrote a booke entitled New Canan, a good description of the Cuntery as then it was, only in the end of it he pinched too closely on some in authoritie there, for wch some yeares after cominge ouer to look after his land for wch he had a patent many
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yeares before, he found his land disposed of and made a towne- ship, and himselfe shortly after apprehended, put into the gaole wthout fire or beddinge, no bayle to be taken, where he re- mained a very cold winter, nothing laid to his charge but the writings of this booke, wch he confessed not, nor could they proue. He died shortly after, and as he said, and may well be supposed on his hard vsage in prison."8
The fact is, Morton after his banishment antagonised the Massa- chusetts settlers by seeking redress for his injuries, and by publishing his book. The latter was styled by Bradford, "an infamouse and scurri- lous booke against many godly and cheefe men of ye cuntrie; full of lyes and slanders, and fraight with profane callumnies against their names and persons, and ye ways of God." Morton's book, New English Canaan or New Canaan, was printed in Amsterdam in 1637. "The first Booke setting forth the originall of the Natives, their Manners and Customes, together with their tractable Nature and Love towards the English. The second Booke setting forth the naturall Indowments of the Country, and what staple Commodities it yealdeth. The third Booke setting forth, what people are planted there, their prosperity, what remarkable accidents have happened since the first planting of it, together with their Tenents and practise of their Church." He bit- terly upbraided the bigotry of the separatists. He said that the revels around the May-pole were in their eyes as bad "as if they had anew revived and celebrated the Feasts of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or the beastly practieses of ye madd Bachanalians. Morton likewise (to shew his poetrie) composed sundry rimes and verses, some tending to las- civiousness, and others to the detraction and scandall of some persons, which he affixed to their idle or idoll May-polls."
While Morton has been alluded to repeatedly as a liberal spirit in the midst of an intolerant, narrow age, it does not appear that he was of heroic stature. The colony was passing through a very pre- carious phase; and his antagonism was hardly based on deep, funda- mental principles. While his Anglican affiliations may have had much to do with rendering him undesirable, he was not representative of the true spirit of the Church.9
About the middle of September, 1623, Robert Gorges, the younger son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, arrived in Massachusetts Bay, where he intended to start a plantation with "sundrie passangers and families." He selected the place which Weston's company had forsaken ; and there
8Coll. N. Y. Historical Society, 1869, Publication Fund, "Clarendon Papers," p. 40.
9The Morton bibliography is extensive. See Morton: New English Canaan; Bradford: History of the Plymouth Plantation; Perry: American Episcopal Church, I., pp. 82ff .; references in numerous histories.
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he remained for a short time-probably less than a year. His people became discouraged ; some went to England, others to Virginia. A few remained in Massachusetts, among whom were Samuel Maverick and the Reverend William Blaxton. Among those who returned to the mother country, there was an Anglican clergyman, the Reverend Wil- liam Morrell. It is said that he had a commission from the ecclesiastical courts of England to supervise churches which might be established in New England. Still he did not mention his commission till just before leaving Plymouth for England. During his stay in Massachu- setts, he composed a Latin poem in hexameters, with a translation into English heroic verse. Morrell's disappointment with the new world is seen in his introductory message to the "Vnderstanding Reader," when he warns against the propaganda used to entice settlers :---
"Error in Poesie is lesser blemish than in Historie. Ex- perience cannot plead me ignorant, much lesse innocent, having seen and suffered. I should delude others vana spe, or falso gaudio. What can be expected from false Relations, but vn- happie proceedings to the best intended, and most hopefull Colonies. So that want of provisions, and right information, begets in the distracted planter nothing but mutinies, fearfull execrations, and sometimes miserable interitures. But of all such perchance hereafter. These were at this time beyond my intent. I onely now and ever desire that my best incense may for ever waite vpon all truely zealous and religious planters and adventurers, who seriously endeavour the dilating of Christs Kingdoms, in the propagating of the Gospell, and so advisedly vndertake so weightie and so worthie a worke, as that they and theirs may paralell these worthie of the world in all externall, internall, and eternall abundances. Farewell, with this one Memento: That the best intended conclusions, without an equivalent abilitie, produce nothing but losse, dis- contents, opprobries, and imperfections."10
The tendency of New England to separation could not well be resisted. There were churchmen among the early settlers; but an English priest, who revealed himself as such, would hardly be tolerated.
In March, 1624, the Reverend John Lyford, an Anglican minister sent over by London merchants interested in the success of the colony, arrived at Plymouth with Edward Winslow. Bradford described his appearance :---
"When this man first came a shore, he saluted them (of the plantation of Plymouth) with that reverence and humilitie as is
10Winsor: Narrative and Critical History, III., p. 304; Mass. Historical Collections I., p. 125; Morton: New England Memorial, p. 58; Perry: American Episcopal Church, I., p. 81.
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seldome to be seen, and indeed made them ashamed, he so bowed and cringed unto them, and would have kissed their hands if they would have suffered him; yea, he wept and shed many tears, blessing God that had brought him to see their faces; and admiring the things they had done in their wants, etc., as if he had been made all of love, and the humblest per- son in the world."
Lyford was hospitably received. According to Bradford,-
"They gave him the best entertainment they could, (in all simplisitie,) and a larger allowans of food out of the store than any other had, and as the Govr had used in all waightie affairs to consulte with their Elder, Mr. Brewster, (together with his assistants), so now he caled Mr. Liford also to counsell with them in their waightiest bussinesses. After some short time he desired to joyne him selfe a member to the church hear, and was accordingly received. He made a large confession of his faith, and an acknowledgemente of his former disorderly walking, and his being intangled with many corruptions, which had been a burthen to his conscience, and blessed God for this opportunitie of freedom and libertie to injoye the ordinances of God in puritie among his people, with many more shuch like ex- pressions."
John Oldham, who had come over in the "Anne" with ten asso- ciates, began to be a partner of Lyford. Oldham, it seems, had already given trouble, by his failure to co-operate in colonial affairs and by the reports he had sent back to England. Bradford found that Oldham and Lyford "grew very perverse, and shewed a spirite of great malignan- cie, drawing as many into faction as they could; were they never so vile or profane, they did nourish and back them in all their doings: so they would but cleave to them and speak against the church hear; so as ther was nothing but private meetings and whisperings amongst them." When the ship was about to return to England, Lyford wrote several letters which caused suspicion; these were intercepted, and dis- covered to be full of ridicule and slanders. One of them was addressed to a minister named John Pemberton, who was known to be "a great opposite" to the plantation. Another letter intimated that Oldham and Lyford "intended a reformation in church and commone wealth; and as soon as the ship was gone, they intended to joyne together, and have the sacraments." An investigation revealed that Lyford and his accomplices "withdrew themselves," and "set up a publick meeting aparte on the Lord's day; with sundry shuch insolente cariages . . . begining thus publickly to acte what privately they had been long plotting."
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Thereupon court was convened; and Lyford was reminded that in joining the local church, he had professed "that he held not himself a minister, till he had a new calling etc. And yet now he contested against them, and drew a company aparte, and sequestred him selfe; and would goe to minister the sacraments. (by his Episcopall calling)." Lyford was convicted; and the court censured Oldham. Both were sentenced to expulsion from the colony. Oldham's wife and family were permitted to stay all winter, or longer, until he could remove them comfortably; Lyford had liberty to remain six months. It is recounted that he burst into tears and confessed that he feared he was a reprobate, and that he acknowledged that his censure was far less than he deserved. Afterwards he confessed his sin publickly in the Church. The people stood ready to reinstate him and allow him to teach amongst them.11
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