USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Cape Cod, the right arm of Massachusetts : an historical narrative > Part 8
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provide for them. I trust in that God, and verily believe that the time will come when thy necessity will be greater than mine." He carried off the goods, but remembered the testimony, and lived to see it verified.
William Allen was not the only sufferer. Edward Perry, his neighbor, a man of wealth and education, endured greater pecuniary loss. Robert Harper had his house, lands, and all that he had, taken, and suffered besides, crucl imprisonments and punishments. Thomas Johnson, a weaver, was stripped of all his possessions. William Gifford, Richard Kerby, Sr. and Jr., Matthew Allen, Thomas Ewer and still others, experienced the full rigors of the law in these terrible years. John Jenkins, 2d, of Sandwich, for refusing to take the oath or fidelity, and attending Quaker meetings, was fined £19, 10s. Barlow seized 1 cow, 2 steers, money due him, and the only kettle in the house. When he seized this vessel, Mrs. Jenkins threw down a piece of cloth, twice the value of the kettle, and begged him to take that, as she would have nothing in which to cook for her family. Barlow refused. In levying for fines, his object was as much to annoy and injure as to secure booty, and he took such articles as would inflict the most distress upon the family. Cooking utensils of all kinds were scarce and had to be imported from England.
Barlow did not carry himself with this high hand without meeting with considerable opposition from many of the leading citizens, among whom there were some not of Quaker proclivities. Mr. Edmund Freeman, Thomas Buur- gess and others, were fined for refusing to act when called upon by him as aids in his seizures, some of them accompanying their refusal with uncomplimentary remarks. Not only the Quakers, but many others used a plainness of speech towards Barlow and his employers
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that gave great offence to the subjects of their remarks.
In October, 1659, the court ordered Barlow to repair to the houses of William Newland and Ralph Allen of Sandwich, and Nicholas Davis of Barnstable, to search for Quaker books and writings, but as no return is made thereon, the presumption is that none such were found. Nicholas Davis had suffered much for conscience sake. He was in a court at Plymouth, in June, 1656, when Sandwich men were fined for refusing to take the oath of fidelity. Though not then a Quaker, he was indignant, and attempted to speak, saying, "He was a witness for the Lord against their oppression." He was about to say wherein, when he was ordered to desist, was arrested and put into prison, but was soon released. The same month he went to Boston on a business mission, but was imprisoned to await the session of the court of Assistants. His companions were William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, Quaker prisoners who were afterwards hung on Boston Common. Here Davis was kept in confinement until September, 1659, and was liberated on the threat that if he was found in the colony two days after he should suffer death. His only offence consisted in bearing his testimony honestly against persecu- tion for opinion's sake.
Complaints were made during the year 1660, against parties in Sandwich for attending Quaker meetings, and for harboring Quakers and refusing to take the oath of fidelity, and fines and distraints followed. Wenlock Christison, for refusing to depart out of the colony, was sent to prison, was ordered to "lay neck and heels," and to be whipped, which sentence was executed upon him ; and his entertainer, William Newland of Sandwich, was fined £5.
It would be strange if such outrages against the freedom of conscience and the liberty of belief should go unrebuked
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in a community founded by the adherents of John Robinson and William Brewster. Enough of the old leaven was left in the body politie to make itself felt and respected, and which could not be suppressed by fines and seourgings. James Cudworth, one of the most noble men of his day, James Hatherly, Isaac Robinson, son of the Leyden pastor, who inherited his father's tolerant spirit, and many others in the colony, uttered their protests against the persecuting mania which beset the government and the churches. For the boldness and plainness of speech in which he indulged, Mr. Cudworth was disfranchised and removed from all military and civil employment under the government. Isaac Robinson of Barnstable was permitted to attend Quaker meetings, to try to admonish them, and after full examination and intercourse with them, he recommended that coercive measures be discontinued, and that every man be unmolested in the exercise of his honest belief; he was treated in the same manner as Cudworth, and for thirteen years was deprived of all his rights as a freeman.
The Quakers themselves did not tamely submit to this accumulated catalogue of outrage and wrong without a protest, and an effort to obtain from the home government redress for their injuries. Samuel Shattuck, who had been banished from Massachusetts on pain of death, returned from London in November, 1661, with the King's missive, ordering them to "forbear to proceed any further" against the Quakers, and to send such as were imprisoned to England for trial. It must have been mortifying in the extreme to Gov. Endicott to receive such a message at the hands of this detested Quaker, but he expressed his intention of complying with its requirements. He kept his promise only until it became safe to resume his old system of persecution, by new and scarcely less barbarous methods.
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In Plymouth colony, the King's missive was embraced as the occasion for a change of policy in this respect, though it may be doubted, if the home government had not interposed, whether the people would much longer have endured the excesses of Barlow or the oppressions of the magistrates. It had begun to be regarded that such trans- actions as have been narrated were in contravention of truth and justice and opposed to the teachings of the earlier Pilgrims, and the most enlightened minds of the colony felt, as their children now feel, that they placed an indelible blot on the record of the people and government. But for the mass of the people of Cape Cod, these transactions have left to all time an imperishable record of heroic resistance to the attempt to fetter the consciences and restrain the opinions of their fellow men.
Barlow's discreditable career about the same time came to a close. He had already become offensive to those who had employed him in their infamous business. He had accused some of the best citizens of offences which the evidence failed to substantiate, and had himself been convicted of pilfering and drunkenness. He had grown rich on "the spoils of the innocent," but soon lost it all and became very poor and needy. In his old age he often craved the charity of Priscilla Allen, and never was refused ; yet he was to the last ungrateful, and lived despised and died unregretted.
From the date of the arrival of the King's missive to the death of Gov. Prence, in 1673, though the laws of Plymouth colony against the Quakers were not repealed, they remained obsolete, so far as any active repressive measures were concerned. Josias Winslow, who was then elected Governor, at once entered upon a policy of reconciliation. His associates in the government, some of whom-as in the case of Mr. Hinckley and John Alden -had co-operated
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with Gov. Prence in his severe measures, are also to be credited with the effort to establish a more humane and tolerant system of dealing with differences of opinion and belief. Capt. Cudworth and Isaac Robinson, by express enactments of the court, were restored to their rights as freemen, and the former was, by appointment and election, designated for the highest offices in the gift of the colony, dying while in England in her service. The Quakers still resisted the payment of taxes for the support of the ministry, and in most of the towns in the colony, these dues were collected by distraints upon their property ; or where no effects could be found, by fines or imprisonment. Occasional outbreaks and disturbances are recorded; in some instances the old animosities engendered by former troubles overcoming the self-restraint of the Quakers and leading them to become the aggressors. Edward Perry, of Sandwich, was, in 1662, before the court for a "railing letter," which he had addressed to the Governor, but there is no record that any further action was taken thereon. Two years later, Robert Harper, of the same town, was publicly whipped "for disturbing the public worship at Sandwich and Barnstable," and Richard Willis was set in the stocks "for ribaldry." Some of the Cape towns-Yarmouth among the others -at a subsequent date, while including the names of these people on the tax list, added a sufficient sum to the rates of those whose taxes were collectable, to make up the default on the part of the Quakers to pay the "priest's tax," and thus these people were practically exempted from contributing for the support of a ministry obnoxious to their consciences .*
/
It is difficult to assign an adequate motive, founded simply upon the question of their opinions or morals, for the
*Yarmouth Records.
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rancorous hatred of the Puritans towards the Quakers. For, although Secretary Morton has styled them "a pernicious sect" that "sowed their corrupt and damnable doctrines in almost every town," and others have written of them in a similar strain, their belief, as defined by themselves, does not bear out this construction. In the "Vindication," which was published as an authentic exposition of their opinions, they declare : "We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine origin, and give full credit to the historical facts, as well as the doctrines therein delivered, and never had any doubt of the truth of the actual birth, life and sufferings, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, as related by the evangelists ; without any mental or other reserve, or the least diminution by allegorical explanation." Their personal habits were simple, abstemions, and self-denying; in their dealings they were scrupulous and exact. No issue could be raised, founded simply on their life or their professions. But they believed and practised these things, not, they said, because they had been taught them by those who were set up as spiritual teachers, but because they had been revealed to them by the Most High. As expounded by George Fox, the Quaker held that the Divine law is written in the hearts of men, and that to read it aright we must listen to the voice of God in our own souls. This voice he called the "Inward Light." "The principle of the inward light," says one of their modern authorities, "is the theological basis of Quakerism, and, in fact, it is the only theological doctrine involved in the Quaker religion." *¿
With this conception of spiritual truth in their minds, it is not difficult to appreciate the Quaker protest against an ordained ministry, composed of hired officials. The spirit
*Hallowell's Pioneer Quakers.
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of God revealed to men, and not intellectual training, they held, qualified men to become religious teachers. In a community which regarded the ministerial office almost as sacred, and church organizations as essential to the spiritual well-being of mankind, the doctrines of Quakerism must therefore have been regarded as pernicious and demoralizing, and the ministers as a class, especially, felt that the dissemination of its tenets meant a life and death struggle for their position in civil society. But it is to the credit of the Cape ministers that, unlike those of Massachusetts Bay, they did not seek to persecute or coerce the Quakers. On the contrary, some of them-especially Mr. Walley-are distinctly on record as against the prevailing policy of the colony ; and the proceedings of the Plymouth magistrates fell far short in ferocity of those of Massachusetts Bay.
The defence which is most commonly made against the charge of cruelty and intolerance on the part of the churches and government was, (1) that the Quakers, by their abusive and indecent conduct, compelled society to deal with them with great severity ; and, (2) that the colonies had a right to exclude those of differing religious creeds whom they deemed unworthy or undesirable residents. So far as this community, at least, is concerned, the Quakers were an orderly and unoffending class. They were perhaps socially unattractive, and unconciliatory so far as the usages of society were concerned; employing great plainness of speech and lack of deference to men of station and authority, but were in hardly any other way aggressive. The exceptions in this respect, perhaps, were in the cases where they invaded the meetings of the congregations assembled for religious exercises, and insisted npon "bearing their testimony" to the scandal of the assembled worshippers. Their addressing the governor in court, with the exclamation,
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"Thomas, thou lyest," "thou art a malicious man," was sufficient excuse for committing them for contempt, if the court itself had not indulged in language of vituperation and denunciation not strictly judicial in its tone.
As to the pretension that a right had been acquired by the authority of any charter or patent, to exclude disagree- able or obnoxions persons coming into the colony, that doctrine will not be seriously contended for at this day, however it may have impressed our fathers. No such power was conferred upon them by virtue of any instrument under which they acted, and the Quakers had as good a right, both legally and morally, to the exercise of their opinions, as any other sectaries had to theirs. The plea has by some writers been set up that "the Quakers who first appeared in the colony were not inhabitants of the country ; they came from abroad," etc .* This is a flimsy pretext by people who themselves had but recently come to these shores. But if it were a valid plea it was not true in the case of the Quakers of the Cape. The greater part of those proceeded against in these towns were not recent comers, but old residents here, who had acquired property and rights as citizens, and their change of views and opinions was the result of reflection and meditation, and in accordance with their conscientious sense of duty. They naturally felt outraged at being denied the right of speaking their minds on matters of the highest concern to them, or of being deprived of exercising hospitality and christian charity, at the dictation of men fallible like themselves; and in this the world now recognizes that they were right, and that their persecutors were altogether in the wrong.
*Baylies.
D
CHAPTER VIII.
KING PHILIP'S WAR.
Philip Idealized in literature-Capt. John Gorham's march to Mount Hope-Battle of Narragansett Swamp-Death of Capt. Gorham -Second year's campaigu-Cape losses in Capt. Pierce's Ambus- cade-Death of Philip and close of the War-Attitude of Cape Indians-War Policy of the Government discussed-Pecuniary Burdens-Irish subscription.
HE sanguinary period in colonial history known as King Philip's War, although not waged within the limits of Cape Cod, was brought near to her people by their partici- pation in the various campaigns; by losses of her sons in battle ; by diseases contracted i during its progress ; and by charges incident to its prosecution. It is known in history as "Philip's War," because Philip was so intimately connected with its inception, and so far as the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies were concerned, it closed with his life. As to Philip himself, he seems to have been destitute of the lofty and patriotic traits, or the comprehensive foresight, which have been attributed to him by sentimental writers of both fictitious and historical compositions. Washington Irving invested him with many romantic traits, of which he was destitute, and Dr. Palfrey, in his early Barnstable Centennial discourse, spoke of him in a style which his later historical studies led him to disavow. A jealous and morose
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savage, he so poisoned and embittered the minds of the Indians, with whom he came in contact, that they rushed unprepared into a conflict, which he had neither the capacity nor resources to direct to a successful issue against the English colonists.
Philip, after the death of his father, Massasoit, and his brother, Alexander, while professing friendship for the English, was really, through jealousy, misapprehension or natural violence of disposition, nourishing resentment and acquiring a spirit of discontent. The murder, near Middle- boro, by some of his men, probably at his suggestion and with his assent, of the educated Indian, Sausaman, who had formerly been in his employ, was followed by the trial and execution of the murderers by the colonial authorities. This added fuel to the fire of resentment in the bosom of the unreflecting savage. The attack of the Indians upon Swansey, June 20, 1675, followed by other hostile move- ments, resulted iu a state of general hostilities. Orders were sent to the captains of all the companies in the colony to march without delay, and June 24, Capt. John Gorham and twenty-nine men from Yarmouth, whose names appear on the record, "took their first march" to Mount Hope. Capt. Gorham had been of Barnstable only the year previous, and it seems probable that the men from that town were also under his command, although their names do not appear on the town's books. The other towns also furnished their quotas. They were mounted men, and proceeded with a good degree of celerity. The Plymouth forces were in command of Major Cudworth, and were in Swansey by June 24. The theatre of war soon after changed to Massachusetts, and Capt. Gorham and his command proceeded ouwards to the Connecticut valley. The Cape soldiers, though doing their best to find and engage the enemy, had an opportunity
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to do but little fighting, but they were much worn by fourteen weeks' incessant marching and the hardships incident to the campaign.
Oct. 4, the general court at Plymouth, after choosing Major James Cudworth commander-in-chief of the colonial forces in the field, chose Capt. John Gorham as captain of the other company, with Jonathan Sparrow of Eastham his lieutenant. Mr. Thomas Huckens of Barnstable was chosen commissary-general of the forces, and Capt. Matthew Fuller of Barnstable surgeon-general. The number of soldiers called for in the colony was 182, of which Sandwich was required to furnish 16, Yarmouth 15, Barnstable 16, Eastham 8. Of these the four towns named were credited with 3, 3, 2, 1, respectively, for their men then in garrison at Mount Hope. A town council of three for each town was established, whose duty it should be to send forth scouts, order watch and ward in the towns to take care of the towns' ammunition, and to call the towns together for making rates. For the Cape they were as follows: Sand- wich, Mr. Richard Bourne, Mr. Edmund Freeman, Jr., Thomas Tobey, Sr. ; Barnstable, Mr. Thomas Hinckley, Mr. Thomas Huckens, Mr. Barnabas Lothrop; Yarmouth, Mr. Edmund Hawes, John Miller, Jeremiah Howes; Eastham, Mr. John Freeman, Jonathan Sparrow, Mark Snow.
The powerful Narragansett tribe, that had, some time previous to the breaking out of hostilities, engaged by treaty in a compact of friendship and amity with the English, was found to be treacherously aiding and abetting Philip. This was the most powerful tribe in New England, and its subjugation was considered essential to the security of the colonists. The Commissioners of the United Colonies determined to raise a force of one thousand more men for
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this special service. Governor Winslow of the Plymouth colony was selected for commander-in-chief. For this service another levy was made of 11 men from Sandwich, 10 from Yarmouth, 13 from Barnstable and 9 from Eastham. It was ordered that if any one pressed into service should refuse to go, he should forfeit £10, or suffer imprisonment for six months.
The place where the Narragansetts were encamped for the winter was in the present town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island. It was a position of great natural strength and inaccessibility. It was a solid lot of upland of about six acres, wholly surrounded by dense swamp. On the inner side the Indians had driven rows of palisades, making a barrier of nearly a rod in thickness ; and the only entrance to the enclosure was over a rude bridge, consisting of a felled tree four or five feet from the ground, the bridge being protected by a block-house. According to information afterwards received from a captive, the Indian warriors here collected were as many as 3500. They were on their guard for invaders. The English, after a march of eighteen miles, through a deep snow, on the forenoon of Dec. 19, arrived at the fort about 1 o'clock, and immediately advanced to the attack. The battle was desperate and bloody. Four English captains were killed, other officers were killed or received mortal wounds, and seventy men were killed and one hundred and fifty wounded. At length victory declared for the assailants, who finished their work by setting fire to the wigwams within the fort. The number of the enemy that perished was estimated to be in the neighborhood of one thousand fighting men. The number of women and non-combatants that perished from hunger and cold none can tell. The military strength of the tribe was irreparably broken. The English, being without shelter, were obliged
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to immediately retrace their way by a night-march to Wickford, where, with their wounded, after hours of suffering and exertion through the gathering snow, they arrived early the next morning. Some of the wounded died before reaching their camp, and others suffered from severe sickness contracted during that fearful day. Capt. John Gorham, who led the company comprising the Cape Cod contingent, contracted a fever, from which he died at Swansey, the ensuing February. Sergeant Nathaniel Hall of the Yarmouth company, and John Barker of Barnstable, a private, were wounded, but no other Cape man was reported as injured. The Connecticut and Massachusetts companies, that first entered the fort, sustained the chief loss. Mr. Thomas Hinckley, of Barnstable, who was afterwards governor of Plymouth colony, was commissary- general of this expedition, and a daughter was born to him Dec. 15, four days before this battle. The child was named Reliance, because the mother relied that God would proteet the father in the perils which surrounded him.
The council of war, which, alternately with the general court and the magistrates, performed legislative and executive functions in relation to war matters, ordered that the sum of £1000 be assessed, for the payment of the necessities of the soldiers, the proportions of the several towns being: Sandwich, £92, 13s., 6d .; Barnstable, £99, 3s., 6d. ; Yarmouth, £74, 15s., 6d. ; Eastham, £66, 16s., 6d.
Another levy of three hundred English and one hundred Indians was ordered to be ready for a march by the 11th of April, 1676, the proportions this time being 28, 26, 30 and 18, for the towns of Sandwich, Yarmouth, Barnstable and Eastham, respectively. Before that day arrived changes in the aspect of affairs had occurred, and the troops were not in all cases promptly furnished. Governor Winslow com-
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plained that Scituate and Sandwich "proved very deficient," by which his plans were frustrated. Both these towns, it subsequently appeared, had good reason for their apparent remissness. Sandwich was a frontier town for the whole Cape, and was obliged to act as a barrier to the incursions of the Indians from abroad, who were extremely anxious to establish communications with the Cape Indians, by which they might be seduced from their allegiance to the English. This required a good many men to keep guard. The town, owing to the Quaker element, had a larger number of non- combatants than any other in the colony. The isolation of the Cape Indians from those of the Plymouth colony was a most valuable service, in more than one way. At a time when an interior line of communication was unsafe, Capt. Benj. Church, who lived in the vicinity of Mount Hope, and wished to communicate with the Plymouth authorities, took passage in a Barnstable vessel for Woods Holl, and proceeding thence through Succannesset and Sandwich and by the bay, arrived at Plymouth while the General Court was in session, to their great joy and surprise. He returned by the same route, being paddled in their canoe, by two Succannesset Indians by way of the Elizabeth Islands, to his home in Rhode Island. Subsequently, the squaw sachem, Awashonks, gave in her adhesion to the English, and was ordered with all her retinue of men, women and children, to repair to Sandwich, where she could be beyond the reach of unfriendly influences. Capt. Church, who after her capture, repaired to Sandwich to fulfill his engagement to meet her there in a week, was unable to find her, and proceeded to Mattapoisett, where she and her followers had encamped near the seashore .*
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