USA > Massachusetts > Anglican beginnings in Massachusetts (history of Episcopal Church) > Part 3
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with a discipline very much unscriptural, vigorously prosecuted the tripartite plot of Arminianism and conciliation with Rome, in the church, and unbounded prerogative in the state; who set themselves to cripple as fast as they could the more learned, godly, painful ministers of the land, and silence and ruin such as could not read a book for Sports on the Lord's days; or did but use a prayer of their own conceiving, before or after sermon; or did but preach in an afternoon, as well as in a morning, or on a lecture, or on a market, or in aniwise did countenance old superstitions, or new extravagancies; and who at last threw the nation into the lamentable confusion of a civil war."31
IV. PURITAN INTOLERANCE
In the Greek tragedies, the spirit of retribution always works to excess ; and such was the case with the New England Puritans. They doubtless suffered much at the hands of the Anglican prelates; but they exerted an equal energy in forcing others into conformity with their practices and principles. The victims of intolerance, they became intolerant in turn. In May, 1631, a law was passed restricting the franchise to church-members; no one should be elected a freeman un- less he was a member of one of the churches within the limits of the colony. This was done in order to keep the government in the hands of the colonists; or, as the act says, "to the end the body of the com- mons may be preserved of honest & good men, it. was likewise ordered and agreed that for time to come noe man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body pollitick, but such as are members of some of the Churches within the lymitts of the same." Thus the cords of re- straint were being tightened around the few old settlers, who were still adherents of the English Church. It is true that the colony was only a small private trading corporation, settled upon land which had been received by grant, and that there was room outside for other peo- ple; nevertheless, the settlements which came under the influence of the law represented the center of civilization and protection in that domain, and individuals would have found it exceedingly difficult to sub- sist in isolation. Soon marriage was made a civil institution ; the magis- trate was authorised to perform the ceremony and offer the prayers. Winslow explained that this course was necessary, because of the lack of a minister; but this does not account for the fact that it was later made illegal to make marriage sacramental.
On the 4th of September, 1633, according to Winthrop's journal, the Reverend John Cotton arrived aboard the "Griffin". He was born
31Mather: Magnalia, Book I., ch. 5, #3.
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in Derby in 1584, and had been a brilliant scholar at Cambridge. After- wards he was rector of St. Botolph's Church, Boston, in Lincolnshire- a conspicuous post. His non-conformity was marked, and caused the loss of his living. Landing in Massachusetts, he became teacher of the First Church of Boston. In his "Questions and Answers upon Church Government" (dated "25. 11m. 1634," but probably not printed till years afterwards), he endeavoured to give a definite shape to the church-life of New England. He suggested the order of worship, which should consist of (1) prayer, (2) a psalm, (3) "to reade the Worde and with all Preaching to give the sense, and applying the use, in dis- pensing whereof the Ministers were wont to stand above all the people in a Pulpit of wood, and the Elders on both sides, while the People hearkened to them with Reverence and Attention ;" (4) an opportunity for any prophets who have a word of exhortation to give, to prophesy, if time permits, and (5) for any person young or old (women excepted) to ask questions "at the mouth of the Minister;" (6) the seals of Baptism and the Lord's Supper; (7) the singing of a psalm; (8) a collection for the support of the ministry, the needs of the poor saints, and the furthering of the outward service of the church; and (9) the blessing by the minister or any of the prophets. Other books followed, tending to stabilize and define the New England position.32
During the year 1633, one of the older Anglican residents won the praise of Governor Winthrop by his benevolent work. There was a small-pox epidemic, especially mortal among the Indians; and Samuel Maverick buried thirty of the victims in one day. (This was the same Maverick, who had settled on Noddle's Island-now East Boston- and had written in behalf of Thomas Morton). Winthrop said :-
"It wrought much with them"-the Indians-"that when their own people forsook them, yet the English came daily and ministered to them; and yet few, only two families, took any infection by it. Among others, Mr. Maverick of Wine- semett is worthy of a perpetual remembrance. Himself, his wife, and servants, went daily to them, ministered to their necessities, and buried their dead, and took home many of their children. So did other of the neighbors."
From 1638 to 1641, Thomas Lechford, of "Clement's Inne, in the County of Middlesex, Gent.," resided in Boston. Earlier, he had suffered imprisonment and a kind of banishment for some acts con- strued to oppose episcopacy and the established ecclesiastical govern- ment of England. Cotton says that his offense was "witnessing against the Bishops in soliciting the cause of Mr. Prynne." (William Prynne,
32Dexter: Congregationalism as seen in its literature, p. 423.
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a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, had incurred Archbishop Laud's anger by the publication of his Histriomatrix in 1633). Lechford landed in Bos- ton a little more than a year after Prynne's trial in the Star Chamber. From his arrival, he was regarded with distrust by those in authority ; his profession was objectionable, no advocate being allowed in matters requiring legal process, and his ecclesiastical views being opposed to those of Massachusetts Bay. Lechford tried to prove the divine right of episcopacy in a manuscript treatise, which he submitted to Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley. Dudley, however, was much prejudiced, and pronounced the work "erroneous and dangerous if not hereticall;" he sent it to Governor Winthrop with the suggestion "that instead of put- tinge it to the presse as hee desireth, it may rather be putt into the fire as I desire." This manuscript, with another of Lechford's the- ological essays, was submitted to a council of the elders, December 4th, 1638; but the author would not be convinced of his error. He remained outside the New England church, and was excluded from fellowship and disqualified for the privileges of a freeman or an office- holder. He said that he was "kept from all places of preferment in the commonwealth . . forced to get his living by writing petty things, which scarce found him bread." Regular employment as a clerk or notary was denied him, though he was permitted to practice again on apology and was employed in writing "the court booke" for Mr. Endicott and the "breviat of laws," which was subsequently adopted (with some amendments) as the Body of Liberties. His book, Plain Dealing, was an attempt to prove that "all was out of joint, both in Church and commonwealth," in Massachusetts. Bishop Perry regarded it as a conscientious study.33
In July, 1640, Lechford wrote to some friends in London :-
"I know my friends desire to know whether I am yet of any better mind than some of my actions about the time of my coming away did show me to bee. I doe professe that I am of this mind and judgment, I thank God; that Christians cannot live happily without Bishops, as in England; nor Eng- lishmen without a King. Popular elections indanger people with war and a multitude of other inconveniences. The people here, in short time, if the course were held long, (which God forbid !) are like to be most unchristian, and the rest erroneous and ignorant enough; I have not received the Sacrament these two yeares, nor am yet like to doe, for I cannot agree to such proceedings; I am not of them, in church or common weal: Some bid me be gone, of which I am in some sort
33Perry: American Episcopal Church, I., pp. 92-100; J. Hammond Trum- bull's reprint of Lechford's "Plain Dealing," pp. 22-23, &c .; Lechford's Note Book (American Antiquarian Society), pp. 89-90.
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glad : others labor with me to stay, fearing my returne will do their cause wrong; and loth am I to heare of a stay, but am plucking up stakes with as much speed as I may, if so be I may be so happy as to arrive in Ireland, there at leaste to follow my old profession. . . . When they press me to stay I hold them to such points as these: 1. Let them be pleased to show me by the Scriptures that a people may make a church without the presence and approbation of an Apostle or Evan- gelist sent unto them from a church: 2dly, That a people have power to choose and ordain their own officers: 3dly, That any ministers have power of imposition of hands, without apos- tolicall or evangelicall Bishops; and if they can, then I will stay. I tell them the Scots have done they know not what, in putting out of Bishops: I say further to them that others may if they will strain at gnats, the cap, tippet, surplice, cross, kneeling at the Sacrament, &c., whereof none can be singly evil : but I for my part will pray that I may never swallow such camels as departs from Christ and his Apostles and Evan- gelists, but dissent (from) receiving imposition of hands from one another, downe from the days of the Apostles hitherto."34
On the 28th of July, 1640, Lechford wrote :-
"I thank God, now I understand by experience, that there is no such government for English men or any nation as a Monarchy ; nor for Christians, as by a lawfull Ministerie, under godly Diocesan Bishops, deducting their station and calling from Christ and his Apostles, in descent or succession; a thing of greater consequence than ceremonies (would to God I had known it sooner) which wile I have in my place stood for here these two years, and not agreeing to this new dis- cipline, impossible to be executed, or long continued, what I have suffered, many here can tell; I am kept from the Sacra- ment, and all places of preferment in the Commonwealth, and forced to get my living by writing petty things, which scarce finds me bread. . . . If the people may make ministers, or any ministers make others without an apostolicall Bishop, what con- fusion will there be? If the whole Church, or every congrega- tion, as our good men think, have the power of the keyes, how many Bishops then shall we have? If every Parish or congregation be so free and independent, as they terme it, what unity can we expect. . . And whereas I was some- times misled by those of opinion that Bishops and Presbyters, & all Ministers are of the same authority: when I came to consider the necessary propagation of the truth, and govern- ment of the Church by experimentall footsteps here I quickly saw my error."35
Lechford's life became miserable; and he returned to England, 34 Lechford's Note Book (American Antiquarian Society), pp. 274-278. 35Ibid., pp. 287-289.
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sailing from Boston, August 3rd, 1641. On November 16th, he was again an inmate of Clement's Inn; he returned "humbly" to the Church of England, "for whose peace, purity, and prosperity" he prayed daily.36
On May 1st, 1646, there was submitted to the General Court of Massachusetts, a "Remonstrance and humble petition," signed by Robert Child (a young man, well trained and connected, and the reputed holder of a degree in medicine from the University of Padua), Thomas Fowle, Samuel Maverick, Thomas Burton, John Smith, David Yale, and John Dand. It was complained that the petitioners could not discern in that colony "a settled form of government according to the laws of England;" that many thousands were debarred from all civil employ- ments ; that numerous members of the Church of England were "de- tained from the seals of the covenant of free grace, because, as it was supposed, they will not take these churches' covenants." It was prayed 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 im- presses made of them or their children or servants into the war." The signers threatened to appeal to Parliament. This remonstrance caused much alarm in the General Court; it resulted in a synod for estab- lishing a form of government and discipline by joint agreement of the churches, and bound the incoherent congregations together that there might be unity of action. The petition itself was refused, and those who presented it were fined for seditious language. The court said of them :- "These are the champions who must represent the body of non-freeman. If this be their head, sure they have an un- savoury head, not to be seasoned with much salt."37 To prevent Thomas Fowle and John Smith from going to England to pursue their com- plaint, the Court stopped them with summons to appear and "answer to the matter of their petition." They replied by an appeal "to the Gentlemen Commissioners for Plantations." The Court committed them then to the custody of the marshall, until they gave security to be re- sponsible to the judgment of the Court; and they were released. All seven of the signers of the "Remonstrance" were next arraigned as authors of "divers false and scandalous passages in a certain paper --- against the churches of Christ and the civil government here estab- lished." They refused to answer; and appealed from the government, disclaiming its jurisdiction. The Court found them "deeply blamable ;" and fined them, unless they made "an ingenuous and public acknowl-
36Perry: American Episcopal Church, I., p. 100.
37 Anderson: Colonial Church (2nd ed.), II., p. 452.
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edgement of their misdemeanors." This they refused to do. Child was fined fifty pounds; Smith, forty pounds; Maverick, ten pounds ; and the others, thirty pounds apiece.
Apprehending further trouble, the Court sent Edward Winslow of Plymouth to England as the agent of the colony. Before Winslow's departure, the elders drew up a formal declaration, saying :-
"We conceive that, in point of government, we have, granted by patent, such full and ample power of choosing all officers that shall command and rule over us, of making all laws and rules of our obedience, and of a full and final de- termination of all cases in the administration of justice, that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against us."38
Being informed that Mr. Child and Mr. David were preparing to go to England with a petition from a number of the non-freemen to Parliament, the magistrates seized their papers. They found com- plaints of civil and ecclesiastical maladministration in the colony, as well as of personal injuries. Among other things, the petition prayed "for settled Churches according to the Reformation of England," for the establishment in the colony of the laws of the realm, for the ap- pointment of a governor general or some commissioner to reform the existing state of things. There were twenty-five signers of these papers. The Court imposed fines on those who remained in the colony. Child and David were fined two hundred pounds apiece; Smith and Burton, one hundred pounds; and Maverick, one hundred and fifty.39 After these proceedings were closed, Child followed Winslow to England.
Winslow was not well received in England by the Commissioners for Plantations. A brother of Doctor Child attacked him in a pamphlet, "New England's Jonas cast up at London." Winslow tried to put Parliament on its guard against the treasonable designs of the Massa- chusetts plantations. Child's efforts were unsuccessful, as the times were unfavourable and the Puritans were in the ascendancy. William Vassall, who carried over the petition of the complainants, withdrew to Barbadoes; it is not certain that he ever returned to England.
The complaint had served, as we have noted, to put the Inde- pendent churches on the defensive, so that they convened a synod for completing their organization. In 1648, the work of the synod was embodied in the famous Cambridge Platform, which adopted the West- minster Confession as its creed, carefully defined the powers of the clergy, and declared it to be the duty of magistrates to suppress heresy.
38Palfrey: History of New England, II., pp. 175-176. 39Ibid., pp. 177-178.
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In 1649, the General Court laid this platform before the congregations ; in 1651, it was adopted. This event may be regarded as completing the theocratic organization of the Puritan commonwealth in Massa- chusetts.40
The King was then a prisoner-that is, at the time of the drafting of the Cambridge Platform. Archbishop Laud had been beheaded; the prelates' power was destroyed. When William Bradford wrote his History of the Plymouth Plantations, he expressed his pleasure at the downfall of the bishops. In his preface, he said :-
"It is ye Lords doing, and ought to be marvelous in our eyes! ... The tiranous bishops are ejected, their courts dissolved, their cannons forceless, their servise casheired, their ceremonies uselesse and despised; their plots for popery pre- vented, and all their superstitions discarded & returned to Roome from whence they came, and ye monuments of idolatrie rooted out of ye land. And the proud and profane suporters, and cruell defenders of these (as bloody papists & wicked athists, and their malignant consorts) marvelously over throwne. And are not these greate things? Who can deney it?"
The Cambridge Platform had stated that "if any church one or more shall grow schimaticall, rending it self from the communion of other churches, or shall walke incorrigibly or obstinate in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the word; in such case, the magistrate is to put forth his coercive power, as the matter shall require." This was designed to anticipate any dissent from the estab- lished order. In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay for- bade the observance of Christmas.
"For pventing disorders arising in seuerall places wthin this jurisdiccon, by reason of some still observing such ffestiualls as were superstititously kept in other countrys, to the great dishonour of God & offence of others, it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, that whosoeuer shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, or feasting, or any other way, vpon any such accounts as aforesajd, every such person so offending shall pay for euery such offence fiue shillings, as a fine to the county."41
This law was not repealed till 1681, although the King objected to it in 1665, as "contrary to the laws of England," and proposed its re- peal.
40 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 142.
41 Records of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, IV., part 1, p. 366.
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The middle of the century witnessed the spirit of intolerance un- checked. John Winthrop died in 1649; and John Cotton in 1652. As John Fiske said, "both were men of extraordinary power. Of Winthrop it is enough to say that under his skilful guidance Massa- chusetts had been able to pursue the daring policy which characterized the first twenty years of her history, and which in weaker hands would almost surely have ended in disaster. Of Cotton it may be said that he was in some respects the most eminent among a group of clergymen who for learning and dialectical skill have seldom been sur- passed. Neither Winthrop nor Cotton approved of toleration upon prin- ciple. Cotton, in his elaborate controversy with Roger Williams, frankly asserted that persecution is not wrong in itself; it is wicked for false- hood to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood. This was the theologian's view. Winthrop's was that of a man of affairs. They had come to New England, he said, in order to make a society after their own model; all who agreed with them might come and join that society; those who disagreed with them might go elsewhere; there was room enough on the American con- tinent. But while neither Winthrop nor Cotton understood the prin- ciple of religious liberty, at the same time neither of them had the tem- perament which persecutes. Both were men of genial disposition, sound common-sense, and exquisite tact." But, Fiske adds, "it was most unfortunate that at this moment the places of these two men should have been taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever drew breath. For thirteen out of the fifteen years following Winthrop's death, the gover- nor of Massachusetts was John Endicott, a sturdy pioneer, whose services to the colony had been great. He was honest and conscientious, but passionate, domineering, and very deficient in tact. At the same time Cotton's successor in position and influence was John Norton, a man of pungent wit, unyielding temper, and melancholy mood. He was pos- sessed by a morbid fear of Satan, whose hirelings he thought were walking up and down over the earth in the visible semblance of heretics and schismatics. Under such leaders the bigotry latent in the Puritan commonwealth might easily break out in acts of deadly persecution."42
V. GROWING OPPOSITION TO PURITAN INTOLERANCE
After the accession of King Charles the Second, there were measures taken in favour of the English Church; and grievances were presented at court. John Leverett, agent of the General Court of Massachusetts in London, learned that the Quakers and others had been making known their grievances, and that a petition had been presented for the sub-
42 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, pp. 202-205.
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jection of New England to a general governor. His communication would imply that the Church of England members were complaining. He notified the Massachusetts people (1660) that "Episcopacy, common prayer, bowing at the name of Jesus, sign of the cross in baptism, the altar, and organs are in use and like to be more. The Lord keep and preserve his churches, that they may not be fainting in the day of trial."43 On receipt of the letter from Mr. Leverett, the General Court ordered, December 19th, 1660, that addresses be made to the King and to the High Court of Parliament.
On the 11th of February, 1661, there was presented to the King the petition of the General Court sitting at Boston, praying for his Majesty's "Gracious Protection of us, in the continuance both of our Civil Priviledges, according to (and of our Religious Liberties, the Grauntees known end of suing for) the Pattent conferred upon this Plantation by your Royal Father."
"Our Liberty to walk in the Faith of the Gospel, with all good conscience, according to the order of the Gospel (unto which the former in these ends of the earth is but subservient) was the cause of our transporting our selves, with our wives, little ones, and our substances from that pleasant Land, over the Atlantic Ocean, into this vast and waste Wilderness: chusing rather the pure Scripture worship with a good conscience, in this poor remote Wilderness, amongst the Heathens, than the pleasures of England, with subjection to the Imposition of the then so disposed, and so far prevailing Hierarchy, which we could not do without an evil conscience."
The petitioners asked that the King let nothing make an impression upon his royal heart against them, until they had opportunity and license to answer for themselves.44
The address of the General Court to Parliament was more con- cise than that to the King. In it the petitioners said that they had transplanted themselves, and for thirty years enjoyed the rights under their patents. Their late claiming and exercising of jurisdiction over some plantations to the eastward of them, supposed to be without the limits of their patent, had occurred upon petition of the inhabitants there, and not from any desire to extend a dominion or prejudice any man's rights.45
The answer of the King was dated June 28th, 1662, and was conveyed by Simon Bradstreet, a magistrate, and John Norton. His majesty declared his expectation that henceforth the oath of allegiance
43 Palfrey: History of New England, II., p. 448.
44 Humble Petition and Address of the General Court.
45 Palfrey: History of New England, II., pp. 449-450.
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be taken by the colonists; that the administration of justice be in his name; that all laws and ordinances contrary or derogatory to his au- thority and government be annulled and repealed. He further said :-
"And since the principle and foundation of that Charter was and is the freedom of liberty of conscience, Wee do hereby charge and require you, that that freedom and liberty be duely admitted and allowed, so that they that desire to use the Booke of Common Prayer and perform their devotion in that manner that is established here be not denyed the Exercise thereof, or undergoe any prejudice or disadvantage thereby, they using their liberty peaceably without any disturbance to others; and that all persons be admitted to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the said Book of Common Prayer, and their Children to Baptism."
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