USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 17
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THE FREEMAN QUESTION,
development of Massachusetts, it is necessary to review the organization of government which Winthrop and his col- leagues, with the aid of the whole Massachusetts people, devised, completed and carried on, till the annullment of the charter in 1684.
England was well accustomed to corporations acting under a royal charter which prescribed the manner in which the powers of the company could be exercised. The original charter of 1628, modified in 1629, contemplated a body of participant members called "freemen"; they were the stock- holders. The freemen were annually to elect a governor, a deputy governor, and a board of assistants-corresponding to the modern president, vice-president, and directors of the company. Hence the "General Court" of the Massachusetts government on shore in 1630 was the first of a long series. A large number of the colonists, heads of families, at once applied for admission as freemen of the company and on October 19, 1630, more than one hundred were admitted. Between that time and 1648, that is, in Winthrop's lifetime, nearly all of the persons proposed were admitted. The total number of freemen up to 1684 has been stated as 2500.
Under the charter none of the freemen had a right to vote except personally in the quarter or general courts. In 1631 the general court took the extreme step of voting (May 18, 1631) that none should be admitted freemen who were not members of the church. The number of freemen was too great for a genuinely corporate government ; hence the system gave rise to strains and stresses which raised a series of con- stitutional questions and had to be hammered out somehow.
The first question was, should there be a liberal policy of admission such as would tend to attract colonists of a re- sponsible type; the solution was to make admission to the Company a privilege difficult to attain. The next question was whether the freemen had the right to elect only the assistants, or both assistants and governor. After a brief struggle the assistants gave up the claim to a right which by the charter was expressly conferred on the freemen at large. The next issue was on the right of towns to elect deputies so as to make a meeting that would be manageable. That was settled in con- nection with a difficulty on the "Watertown rates" and a
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delegate assembly was set up. Next came the question whether that assembly had sole legislative powers, or whether the magistrates (governor, deputy governor and assistants) had a "negative voice." On this question the freemen gave way; and thus was founded practically a legislative body of two houses.
In every one of these struggles Winthrop, took a prominent part because of education, experience in England and the prestige of office. He was almost always in favor of methods which brought into relief the authority of the governor and the magistrates. Thus by a succession of trials of strength, usually in good temper and a sporting spirit, Massachusetts worked out in what was in effect a constitutional system for a democratic commonwealth.
THE SUFFRAGE (1631-1649)
The question of suffrage and limitation to church members at once aroused opposition both in Massachusetts and Eng- land. Fenwick, a friend of the colony, wrote to Winthrop, "One thing only I doubt will seeme strange heare, that you confine all civil freedome within the lynes of your church." During Winthrop's life the question led to violent controversy including open protest by Child and others (1645) and an appeal to the English government to repeal a limitation which did not obtain in elections for Parliament. The first issue was the small number of persons who were admitted to the freedom of the company; even a church member had no prima facie right to be chosen freeman, though most male church members achieved that dignity. Still stronger was the contest which at once manifested itself between the freemen and the non- members who could never hope to be freemen, because, they were under the control of the accredited members of each individual church who might exercise authority to admit to the church or to refuse admittance. Upon this discrimination, recent writers on Massachusetts history, particularly the startling work of James Truslow Adams, have founded an indictment of the whole government and voting population of Massachusetts.
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MAGISTRACY AND GOVERNOR
Some of these writers seem entirely unaware of the fact that a large part of the public business in the colony was from the first carried on in the towns; that the vote of the General Court on the election of freemen did not exclude non church- members from town meetings or town office or jury service. In 1647 the Court allowed such persons to take an oath of fidelity to the government, "to be jury-men, and to have their vote in the choice of the selectmen for town affairs, assessment of taxes, and other prudentials proper to the selectmen of the several towns, provided, still, that the major part of all companies (of selectmen) be freemen that shall make any valid act."
Exact figures of the result of this distinction cannot be had; but it is frequently stated that four-fifths of the rightful voting population was disfranchised. It certainly was not the inten- tion at any time that residents for brief periods, or indentured servants, or ordinary wage servants, should have suffrage any- where. In any case, down to the American Revolution, 1775, the voters in Boston (all men) were in proportion to the population not more than one-third of the adult men. Property and tax qualifications kept down the suffrage in all the colonies. It is doubtful whether there ever was any feeling of common grievance even among non-voters. The only attempt to organize a general remonstrance upon this ground was that of Dr. Child and his friends in 1645, which broke down under pressure.
Elections of deputies were held in town meetings. From early times the governor, deputy and assistants were chosen by the freemen or by the deputies by "papers," that is, ballots; and there were even some features of a primary election.
MAGISTRACY AND GOVERNOR (1630-1636)
Massachusetts was from the beginning a commercial as well as an agricultural community, and granted or acknowl- edged large self-governing powers in the settlements that were called towns. Before arrival at a settled government the colony passed through a series of constitutional crises, each in the long run resulting in a definitely adjusted institution which thenceforward was permanent.
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In this process of commonwealth building, John Winthrop was by far the strongest individual force. He was always a magistrate, always present at the discussion, always on the bench when the magistrates sat as a judicial court. His journal contains many entries of proceedings by which his judgment was overborne, and some records of disagreeable personal dissensions. Yet though a natural conservative and very tenacious in claiming and holding authority for his end of the government, he had nevertheless a strong belief in personal rights and freedom of judgment and he was willing on occasion to accept the middle ground of compromise.
The governor was always the most important and powerful man in the commonwealth, and four sergeants carrying hal- berds, were expected to accompany the governor in and out of the place of meeting. In 1639 he formed the idea that it would save trouble if he were elected governor for life. This proposition was abandoned, as was a similar proposal that there be a standing council, renewed only when vacancies accidentally occuried. In 1632 Winthrop insisted that "the patent, making him a governour, gave him whatsoever power belonged to a governour by common law or the statutes," and he was even accused by one of the deputies of intending "to make himself popular, that he might gain absolute power, and bring all the assistants under his subjection." The magistracy, that is, the assistants plus the two gubernatorial offices, exer- cised considerable administrative power beside sharing in the enactment of laws. In 1636 Winthrop was brought in very close contact with Thomas Dudley, his principal rival in the state, who several times defeated Winthrop for the governor- ship. We have elaborate accounts of Winthrop's private opin- ion of Dudley, but unfortunately no Dudley's Journal from which to know his private views on Winthrop. Dudley was peppery, had a strong sense of his own dignity, was easily aroused and a good fighter. His occasional choices as governor served to ease the tension; and when two young people of the two families married each other the old feuds were appeased. Winthrop was not always reasonable as was shown by his pointed attack on Dudley for "putting wainscott in his house at New Town" which proved to be nothing but clapboards. In their numerous differences and quarrels Winthrop usually
يرعبيد
POLITICAL CONTROVERSIES
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sought accord and in the end the fiery Dudley ceased to glow. Considering the close contact and the intensity of Puritan life, the two men worked well together.
Sir Henry Vane arrived in the colony in 1633. He was a young heady and rather indiscreet man and represented a distinct opposition to Winthrop, whom he twice defeated; but they parted good-friends. John Endecott, governor under the first settlement at Salem, was several times governor of Massa- chusetts. He was a fiery spirit who early got into trouble through his highly indiscreet and dangerous act of cutting out the cross from the English flag. Other friends, rivals and foes appear in various parts of this volume.
THE GENERAL COURT
The General Court, originally a mass meeting of freemen, became an elective body. The name in the course of time was applied to the two orders of deputies and assistants acting in coordination. Thus, Winthrop says, "The general court began at Newton, and continued a week, and then was adjourned fourteen days. Many things were there agitated and con- cluded, as fortifying in Castle Island, Dorchester, and Charles- town; also against tobacco, and costly apparel, and immodest fashions ; and committees appointed for setting out the bounds of towns." The number of deputies was two from each town, though all did not attend. The "speaker" for the deputies is mentioned in 1641.
The assistants, (after the settlement of the negative voice), were part of an upper house in legislative matters. Part of them were also made justices for the hearing of causes. Sometimes the court of justice was made up of the governor and assistants as a body.
POLITICAL CONTROVERSIES (1630-1649)
The political development of the colony went through a series of crises, the first being the refusal of the principal inhabitants of the town of Watertown to pay taxes levied by
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the magistrates. Winthrop laid down the constitutional doc- trine that such a levy by the authority of the assistants was legal and reasonable; because once a year the freemen who lived in Watertown could join the others in electing the assist- ants who would make up the budget. He says, "The ground of their error was, for that they took this government to be no other but as of a mayor and alderman, who have not power to make laws or raise taxations without the people." In 1632 he yielded the point that the governor was to be chosen not by the assistants but (as the charter directed) by the freemen; and he was reelected. The next year Rev. John Cotton insisted that "a magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause," but public sentiment on that point was made clear when Thomas Dudley was chosen governor, Ludlow, deputy governor, and Winthrop one of the assistants. In 1634 a permanent system of deputies from the various towns was established. An effort was made to quash the charter by proceedings in England. On request of the magistrates, the ministers considered the question, and "they all agreed that if a general governour was sent, we ought not to accept him but defend our lawful possessions, (if we were able;) otherwise to avoid or protract." This year also was settled once for all the question of "the negative voice." This was a triumph for the magistrates, inasmuch as it was conceded that no statute could be passed by the freemen in general court or their deputies without the assent of the magistrates. In fact a quo warranto directed against the charter of the colony was proposed but there is no evidence that it was ever a completed proceeding.
During the years 1634 to 1637, Winthrop was deeply con- cerned in the Antinomian difficulties. He returned to the governorship in 1637 and served till Dudley was elected in 1640. The deputies a second time protested against the nega- tive voice of the magistrates in 1644, in which year Endecott was elected governor. The deputies unsuccessfully desired a right of representation in the proceedings of the magistracy in the interim between the meetings of the court. Except for the service of Dudley in 1645, Winthrop continued gover- nor till his death.
From a copy in the Boston Athenaeum of the portrait by Sir Peter Lely SIR HENRY VANE
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SUFFRAGE QUESTION
SUFFRAGE QUESTION REVIEWED (1645)
In the very last years of his public service, a new controversy arose, headed by Dr. Child, who made desperate attempts to appeal to England. Winthrop was very desirous of going to England in behalf of the colony. However, the general court chose a man from outside the colony, Edward Winslow from Plymouth, "as a fit man to be employed in our present affairs in England." The issue was squarely the exclusion from suffrage of the non-church members. An attempt was made without much effect to secure a monster petition, and the malcontents openly defended their principle that they were deprived of a natural right and were entitled to test that question overseas. In this important issue, involving the liber- ties of the individual and the powers of civil government, the general court would not act without "the advice of the elders." They replied, as was expected, in an articulated document "denying any right of appeal or other ways of interrupting our proceedings." Naturally the conservative element was very unwilling to permit anything that might result in the loss of the charter.
Winthrop took a very high and arrogant tone and insisted that it was a crime punishable by the court to sign or to urge a petition even though respectfully addressed to the court. As governor, he informed Child and his friends that "he would admit no appeal, nor is it allowed by our charter"-a proof from a negative. He went on almost in a fury to tell the petitioners that "they complained of fear of perpetual slavery, etc., but their intent was, to make us slaves to them, as such they themselves were." As to Dr. Child, "in regard he had no cause to complain [presumably being himself a freeman ] and yet was a leader to the rest and had dared himself proudly etc., in the court," he was duly fined fifty pounds, one of the charges being "that they had transgressed the rule of the Apostle-to be quiet and to meddle with their own business." Winthrop seems to think it very unreasonable that "the other petition was from some non-freemen (pretending to be in the name, and upon the sighs and tears of many thousands-but of the many thousands they spake of, they could hear but from twenty-five to the chief petition." In the end Child was jailed
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till the ship on which he expected to sail was gone. Others connected with him were so heavily fined that they were obliged to remain in prison. An elaborate statement was drawn up and sent to England inveigling against this move- ment ; was passed by the General Court and duly superscribed, "John Withrop governor."
THE ANTINOMIANS (1633-1637)
One very important question of public policy has been reserved for more detailed treatment. No episode in Massa- chusetts history has been more searchingly studied than the serious difficulties with dissidents in doctrine, especially the Antinomians, Baptists, Quakers, and Church of England men.
The foundations of Puritan religion may be summed up as a profound distrust of the authority of ecclesiastics, coupled with a profound veneration of the authority of the scriptures, provided they are properly interpreted. The most damaging enemy of the Established Church, both in England and New England, was Archbishop Laud, whose persecutions drove many of the strongest Puritan ministers across the ocean. At first professing allegiance to the mother church, and punishing the fiery Endecott for cutting the cross out of the flag at Salem, they almost immediately betook themselves to the anti- episcopal practice of setting up individual churches which chose their own ministers.
Winthrop showed no hostility to this movement and became a pillar of the only Boston church formed in his lifetime. Judging by the Journal, Winthrop's thoughts were always much on the personal conduct of Christians and less on their doctrinal belief. As is set forth elsewhere, the church or rather the ministers as a class became a political institution. The church doctrines were hammered out in sermons and slowly confirmed by synods and writers of theological books. Yet each church had its own confession of faith and Winthrop describes the formation of several such church bodies.
The difficulty of government by the scripture was that not only churches and church-members but non-members, magis- trates and rogues were all tangled up in a network of religious enquiry which concerned itself with every act and every thought
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THE ANTINOMIANS
of every person. The minds of men were turned upon the dread- ful effects of error in religious belief, and held damnation to be a reasonable penalty for a failure to interpret the scriptures properly. Texts were applied to all men of all classes, from babies to Boston ministers, one of whom, Rev. John Cotton, on one occasion "showed, (out of 'the Canticles, 6,') that some churches were as queens, some as concubines, some as damsels, and some as doves, etc."
Even ministers were subject to the cold pressure of public opinion. Winthrop speaks with approval of the proceedings in 1634 against Rev. John Eliot who in a sermon had criticised the peace with the Pequod Indians. And adds :
"We took order, that he should be dealt with by Mr. Cotton, Mr. Hooker and Mr. Welde, to be brought to see his errour, and to heal it by some public explanation of his meaning; for the people began to take occasion to murmur against us for it."
In the great controversy with the Antinomians, which lasted from 1634 to 1637 the trouble was not so much with the doctrines as with the large number of good people in Massa- chusetts who preferred the minority doctrine; and in this case Winthrop was the official leader of the majority. Pos- sibly there may then have been persons in Massachusetts who really understood the intricate differences between the ortho- dox and the Antinomians; although it must be observed that the dissidents were not by any means in agreement with each other.
Doctrines were always plentiful in Massachusetts. The serious offence of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was not that her theology was erratic, so much as her introduction of two startling novelties into orthodox Boston. First she attacked the spiritual accuracy of the ministers, who were the most powerful group of men in the colonies. She excepted only John Cotton, who in his heart sympathized but ultimately recanted. Still worse, this first woman in Massachusetts who needed no man to tell her what she ought to believe, was also the first founder of a woman's club in America; and the club criticised the theology of the most doctrinal sermons. Win- throp sums up the trouble as follows :
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"One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman of a ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: 1. That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person. 2. That no sanctifi- cation can help to evidence to us our justification .- From these two grew many branches; as, 1, Our union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains dead to every spiritual action, and hath no gifts nor graces, other than such as are in hypocrites, nor any other sanctification but the Holy Ghost himself."
TOLERATION AND INTOLERANCE (1631-1640)
Apologists ever since that day have endeavored to make out that the real reprehension of Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends, and of Roger Williams and his friends, was that they struck at the foundations of the body politic. It was cer- tainly annoying for the ministers to be criticized, but it can- not be gainsaid that for the most part the Antinomians were people of orderly lives and Christian conversation. In the trial of Mrs. Hutchinson before Governor Winthrop her quotations from Scripture seem as apt as those brought against her.
Roger Williams came into the controversy not so much as an Antinomian or even a pernicious Baptist, but as the leader and pastor of the unruly church at Salem which defied the General Court. In 1633 the governor and council, reviewing a book of Williams, "found the matters not the least so evil as at first they seemed. Whereupon they agreed, that, upon his retraction, etc., or taking an oath of allegiance to the king, etc., it should be passed over." Winthrop liked not the business; and remained on terms of personal friendship for the rest of his life.
Toleration then and until the end of the Charter was not the practice of any Protestant church, except bodies like the Baptists and the Quakers, who were so far away from the orthodox course that there were no wrong believers left theologically below them. In this case as in some others, Win- throp though an upright man could not rise above the pre- judices and extravagances of rigid Calvinistic and Puritanic doctrines.
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TOLERATION AND INTOLERANCE
Personally he inclined to mercy; and as a member of a dis- sident church order which in his own lifetime practically cut the cable connecting it with the ecclesiastical organization and doctrines of the home country, he might well have pleaded for toleration in non-essentials. The trouble was that to the Puritan mind, every text of Scripture was essential, every action of the mind was essential, and the only way to secure any kind of uniformity was to accept what the majority of the ministers laid down as the meaning of scripture.
The Massachusetts point of view on toleration did not go to the extent of the English theologian Cartwright who said, "Hereticks ought to be put to deathe now. If this be bloudie and extreme, I am contente to be soe counted, with the holie Ghoste. I denie that upon repentance there oughte to fol- lowe any pardon of deathe." Similarly Baxter, author of Saints Rest, openly declared. "I abhor unlimited liberty or toleration for all." Even Ward, the Cobbler of Agawam in Massachusetts and violent critic of the government said, "He that is willing to tolerate any religion, or discrepant way of religion, besides his own, unless it be in matters merely in- different, either doubts of his own or is not sincere in it."
In fact the prosecutions of Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson were a reflex of political strife. The Boston people were long favorable to the Antinomians; outside towns except Salem were mostly against them. Sir Harry Vane was a moderate departer from the extreme faith, and when he was elected governor in 1635 the orthodox were for the time defeated.
The instinct of Winthrop's mind, as revealed in many pas- sages of his journal and letters, was kindness, forbearance and respect for honest adversaries. It was Winthrop who cured his poor neighbor of stealing wood by inviting him to help himself from the Winthrop woodpile throughout the winter. Yet he always stood by the right of the colony to expel those whom the government disliked, whether criminals or unruly persons or non-conformable in religion. Justice requires that he be placed in the background of 1637 and not of 1927.
Winthrop records that "when one Painter now on the sudden turned anabaptist" and refused to have his child baptized, he was "again brought to the court not only for his former contempt, but also for saying that our baptism
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was antichristian; and in the open court he affirmed the same. Whereupon after much patience and clear conviction of his errour, &c. because he was very poor, so as no other but cor- poral punishment could be fastened upon him, he was ordered to be whipped, not for his opinion, but for reproaching the Lord's ordinance, and for his bold and evil behaviour both at home and in the court. He endured his punishment with much obstinacy, and when he was loosed, he said boastingly, that God had marvellously assisted him."
Even very troublesome dissidents received some mercy, as in the case of Francis Hutchinson (1641) who "reviled the church of Boston, calling her a strumpet". He also had the assurance to tell Governor Winthrop. "If you should proceed with a brother other than you ought, I might deal with you in a church way." This attack on official dignity was much resented, so that Hutchinson though he "did freely and very affectionately confess his error and his contempt of authority," was fined fifty pounds and jailed, "in case he could not pay it." But afterwards says Winthrop, "because the winter grew on; and the prison was inconvenient [a very mild expression], we abated to twenty pounds."
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