USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 3
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For the activities of these Puritans, as they came to be called, were not, and could not be, confined to purely ecclesias- tical controversy. According to the Elizabethan settlement the church and state were one. The crown was the head of the ecclesiastical as well as of the civil establishment; the new communion was established by act of Parliament; the bishops not merely presided in their dioceses, they sat in the House of Lords. It was therefore inevitable that any attack upon the Church of England should involve the government. The op- ponents of one must be regarded as opponents of the other ; and with this identification of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, Puritanism was drawn into the wider field of politics.
KING JAMES AND THE PURITANS (1602-1625)
So long as Elizabeth lived, despite annoyance to her govern- ment by Puritan attacks in the Commons, there came no open breach, but when in 1603 James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne as King James I, there came a change. The new king, though bred in a Presbyterian atmosphere-or be- cause of that-was an active and energetic champion of the divine right of kings. Well-educated, argumentative, un- heroic, tactless, he was prepared to challenge the new doctrines on their own grounds, political and theological. He perceived that their success meant the reduction of the power of mon- archy, if not, indeed, its extinction.
The issue was soon raised. On his progress from Scotland to London he was presented with the so-called Millenary Peti- tion of the Puritans, objecting to the use of the surplice, of the cross in baptism and of the ring in marriage, to the read- ing of the so-called Apochrypha, to non-residence of ministers, the encouragement of preaching, and urging the observance of Sunday and the non-observance of saints' days. And
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THE WORLD MOVEMENT
scarcely was he on the throne when he summoned a conference at Hampton Court to consider the question of the church, 1604.
There met the bishops and the Puritan champions under the king's presidency, and there was settled the issue of Eng- lish affairs for two generations. Rejecting the Puritan con- tentions, James upheld the episcopal argument, and in a burst of passion at the end he summed up his whole position and laid down the lines of the conflict in his well-known words: "If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery," he declared, "it agreeth as well with a monarchy as God and the Devil. . No bishop, no king. If this be all you have to say, I will make them conform themselves, or else will harry them out of the land or else do worse." Thus in two minutes, as it has been said, he sealed his own fate and that of England.
More than that, he pronounced the future of New Eng- land, especially of Massachusetts. He made compromise im- possible. Up to the Hampton Court conference, in theory the English church was one. It was, indeed, divided between the Anglicans who upheld episcopacy and the more advanced and more essentially "Puritan" group who looked toward a more popular form of government. Under that name were reckoned men as moderate as those who merely wished some modification of the liturgy and ceremonies, with clerical, or even lay representation in the church affairs; those who went the whole length of Presbyterian government; and those still more advanced, who were divided even among themselves as to the forms of service and church government.
Henceforth the breach was widened and deepened. On the one side stood those who, like the king, regarded monarchy and episcopacy as divine institutions not subject to lay criti- cism or control. On the other were those who whether out- side the pale of the conformity or remaining nominally mem- bers of the Anglican establishment reckoned the church gov- ernment, like that of the state, in greater or less degree the concern of every individual. Nor was this quarrel merely ecclesiastical. The reign of James I was a time when Eng- land faced the problem of readjustment in almost every field.
As a result of the events of the preceding century prices risen to an unheard-of level; the cost of monarchy and gov- ernment in general had advanced in like proportion; old rev-
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From an engraving in the American Antiquarian Society KING JAMES THE FIRST
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SANDYS
enue proved insufficient; and the crown sought new sources of income. It found them in the exercise and the extension of prerogative, especially in the customs ; and here it came into conflict with Parliament, now growing steadily more "Puri- tan." The Parliament refused the Great Contract by which it was proposed to commute the feudal dues for money pay- ments; it looked with jealous eyes on every effort of the crown to increase its revenue; it doled out supplies with nig- gardly reluctance; it opposed the king's pretension to supreme authority; and through some twenty years the struggle be- tween those who would extend the power of the executive and those who would make Parliament the dominant element went on, increased by differences of opinion in foreign policy, and intensified by the religious controversy.
INFLUENCE OF SANDYS (1602-1619)
In such an atmosphere and under such conditions was born the movement to colonize America; and in the course of it this struggle between the bishops and the Puritans, as that be- tween the crown and Parliamentarians, took its place. In particular there came a change in the Virginia Company. Its management was transferred from men like Smyth-an old member of the East India Company who had embarked on this new enterprise-to men like the great Parliament leader, Sir Edwin Sandys, committed to opposition to royal preten- sions and divine right principles, steadfast in asserting the right of the Commons to preserve those liberties and privileges which "were the undoubted birthright of the subjects of England ; the State, the defence of the realm, the Church, the laws and grievances were proper matters for debate"; con- tending that "members have liberty of speech and freedom from all imprisonment for speaking on any matters touching Parliamentary business."
In a sense the settlement of the territory of Massachusetts centers in the person of this Sir Edwin Sandys, whose part in affairs and whose character still remain to be accurately de- termined. The second son of an archbishop of York, destined for the church and actually a prebend, he never took orders. After his education at Oxford and travel abroad, he went
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THE WORLD MOVEMENT
into Parliament. Trained by his tutor, Thomas Hooker, the author of that famous book the Ecclesiastical Polity, paying court to James and knighted by him, he signalized his early career in Parliament by opposing those grants of monopoly which were one of the causes of dispute between Parliament and the crown; yet, apparently, he did not lose favor with the king. Some time before 1614 he became connected with the East India Company ; and so, presently, with the Virginia Company of 1607, of which he became treasurer in 1619. It was largely to his efforts in England as to those of John Smith in America that the Jamestown settlement owed its survival, and throughout his life he was recognized as one of the leaders in the colonizing movement.
THE PILGRIMS IN HOLLAND (1607-1616)
To him, more directly, was due that part of the movement which led to the colonizing of Massachusetts, by the well- known but still romantic story of the Pilgrims. It so hap- pened by a curious coincidence that, as the story goes, there was in that region where Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Yorkshire join, and partly on the estate of his brother at Scrooby in Yorkshire a "poor people" so-called "Separatists," from their doctrines; or "Brownists," from him whose teach- ings they followed. In the year of the Hampton Court Con- ference this group had "become enlightened in the word of God." "Scoffed at and scorned by the profane multitude," they were led "to see further," that not only were "the beggarly ceremonies" of the Church of England "monuments of idol- atry," but that "the lordly power of the prelates ought not to be submitted to." They were thus typical Puritans of the more advanced sort. As such they were naturally a concern of the local authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical. Under the guidance of their pastor, John Robinson, and their ruling elder, William Brewster, they determined in 1607 to seek refuge in flight. At the very moment, therefore, that the set- tlers of Jamestown were busy with their cabins and stockade in that remote Virginia outpost, these people made their first attempt to escape to Holland, then regarded by those in au- thority as "a nest of foul and unclean birds," but by the Pil-
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EMIGRATION PROJECTS
grims as a place where, they had heard, was "freedom of re- ligion for all men"-descriptions which reveal the gulf now fixed between prelacy and Puritanism.
This effort failed, but another in the succeeding spring (1608) was more successful. Landing in Amsterdam they pro- ceeded to Leyden where, after the natural hardship and diffi- culties of establishing themselves in a strange land, they came in time to "a comfortable condition, grew in the gifts and grace of the spirit of God, and lived together in peace and love and holiness." To them gathered others fleeing from English prelacy. Their pastor Robinson issued an apology for their discipline and took part in the disputes in the uni- versity between the Arminians and the Gomarists, and in gen- eral they commended themselves to the people among whom they dwelt. Brewster became a teacher of English and a printer ; Bradford a silk-dyer; and it seemed not improbable that in time they might be absorbed into the Dutch population.
As the years went on such a prospect became more and more repugnant to them. They were a country people compelled to work at unfamiliar tasks in town; they saw their children growing away from their English traditions; they were strangers in a land which never ceased to be strange to them; and in time they conceived the idea of sharing in this new movement of colonization, "of advancing the gospel in the remote parts of the New World; yea, though they should be but stepping-stones unto others for performing so great a work."
PLANS OF PURITAN EMIGRATION (1617-1620)
They were ideal recuits for colonizing enterprise. Sturdy, industrious, bound together by a common sentiment, disci- plined under recognized leaders, bred to country life, inured to hardship, independent, self-reliant, brave, adventurous, they were capable, if any group was capable, of caring for them- selves. Their project being known, the Dutch hastened to offer them inducements to go to their recently established colony of New Amsterdam. This they considered but re- jected, desiring to keep their own language and nationality. Virginia had made by this time the upward turn, and the
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THE WORLD MOVEMENT
reports of its success, made them desirous of emigrating thither, though, true to their Separatist traditions, proposing to live "in a distinct body by themselves" in "the most north- ern parts" of that province.
In consequence two of their number, John Carver and Robert Cushman, repaired to London in 1617 to interview the officials of the London Company. With them they took their terms, to be laid upon the English council, recognizing the Anglican creed, the civil authority of king and bishops, and agreeing to submit to their authority, "obedience in all things, active if the thing commanded be not against God's word, passive if it be."
And thus they came in contact with Sir Edwin Sandys who put before them the proposals from his company. Hav- ing consulted with their fellow-exiles in Leyden, at the end of 1617 they transmitted their formal request to the company. "We are well weaned," their leaders declared, "from the deli- cate milk of our mother country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land; the people are industrious and frugal straitly tied to all care of each other's good, and of the whole. It is not with us as with men whom small things can dis- courage."
With these assurances the Company was content; and be- tween its members and the Leyden congregation an agreement was soon framed. For it the plan of the Virginia settlement offered an example. Seventy subscribers provided the capital. One share went to each emigrant above sixteen years of age; two to each family furnishing itself; one for each two chil- dren between ten and sixteen. Store of food and utensils was provided; and the plans for settlement arranged.
It remained to secure the king's assent. To one thing he agreed. "To advance the dominions of England" he thought "a good and honest motion; and fishing was an honest trade, the apostles' own calling." But "who shall make your ministers?" he inquired. It seemed they must apply to the English bishops for confirmation of their enterprise. They were well advised not to seek permission from that quarter; instead they secured informal promise of neglect; and their shrewd common-sense assured them that their distance from episcopal authority was their best safeguard against prelacy.
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THE PILGRIM SETTLEMENT
THE PILGRIM SETTLEMENT (1620)
Then followed one of the great epics of American history. Every American school boy knows how they chartered that vessel whose name has lent a touch of romance to their ad- venture, the Mayflower-so fortunately not named the Sarah Jane; how they made their way across the Atlantic in the autumn of 1620 first to what is now Provincetown, thence across the bay to Plymouth; and how, before they landed, they drew up that famous compact in which they agreed "sol- emnly and mutually" to "covenant and combine" themselves "into a civil body politic and by virtue thereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordi- nances, acts, constitutions and offices as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of society. Unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." Then, after the beginning of hardships such that it is recorded "some of the people that died that winter took the original of their death," on Monday, Dec. 11-21, 1620 they landed and New England was begun.
The Pilgrim Fathers occupy the same relation to New Eng- land as Columbus to the discovery of America. As others- Norsemen, and perhaps Basques, or Breton or British-pre- ceded Columbus, yet left neither lasting trace nor permanent effect, so the Pilgrims were preceded by others, now all but lost to history. The greeting of the Indian Samoset who visited them, exclaiming "Welcome, Englishmen," echoed the memories of the English fishing rendezvous on the Penobscot where he had learned these words of their language. They knew the history of the ill-fated settlement of Sagadahoc on the Kennebec thirteen years before. There was a lone and almost forgotten settler on what is known as Thompson's Is- land in what was later to be called Boston Harbor. There were, doubtless, other summer headquarters of adventurous fishermen and perhaps other now nameless individual pioneers. A long-lived tradition asserted that a settlement on Cape Ann preceded that of Plymouth. The great contribution of the Pilgrim Fathers, like that of Columbus, is that they brought this coast and its hinterland into the realm of practical and permanent affairs.
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THE WORLD MOVEMENT
OTHER SETTLEMENTS PRECEDING MASSACHUSETTS (1608-1627)
Nor were they long alone. Their heroic endurance of losses and suffering in that first fierce winter, which, mild as it was supposed to be, was such a drain upon their numbers and vitality was the foundation of the eventual New England for none returned in April when the Mayflower set sail for England. The English fur-traders looked with envious eyes upon this new field for their activities; and Thomas Weston, who had been active in the London company, secured a patent for land around what was to be Weymouth. He sent over sixty men who built a trading station at what was then known as Wessagusset opposite the mouth of the Quincy River, and established another colony. That settlement, indeed, fell on evil days, and it was in his effort to relieve it in the spring of 1623 that Miles Standish performed his "capital exploit," his first fight with the Indians. But though Weston's venture failed, the houses and stockade were occupied in that same year by Captain Robert Gorges and his party, and the spot has never since been long devoid of white inhabitants.
Meanwhile in these eventful seven years since they had first landed, many changes had taken place in the colonial world most of which centered in the territory which was to be known as Massachusetts. By this time that coast was perhaps better known to Englishmen than any similar stretch of the Atlantic seaboard. Since 1602 when Gosnold and Gilbert had sailed from Cape Elizabeth to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, through Pring's expedition of 1603, Weymouth's voyage of 1605, and Hanham and Pring's "exact discovery" of that coast, the Sagadahoc colony of 1607, with Smith's expedition of 1614 which first named the new region New England, with the beginning of settlement at Plymouth and elsewhere, and the annual visits of the fishing fleets, this region had been brought into the circle of English knowledge to a remarkable extent.
That incident had brought New England into closer touch with one of its greatest promoters, Captain Gorges' father, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, sometime a captive of the Spanish Armada, sometime a soldier of Henry of Navarre, later a
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OTHER EARLY SETTLEMENTS
follower of the Earl of Essex, then governor of Plymouth, a member of the Plymouth Company, a promoter of the ill- fated Sagadahoc colony and an active agent in securing the charter for Plymouth. To his son Robert Gorges the com- pany granted a patent for a ten mile frontage on Massachu- setts Bay and thirty miles inland with a commission of Lieu- tenant-General of New England, with power to deal with "interlopers"; but Robert's settlement, though fortified by an Episcopal clergyman, Morell, failed, like his father's.
Already "five-and-thirty sail" of fishermen had made such a successful voyage in 1622, as to tempt many to follow their example. In 1623 Francis West was despatched to exclude not only unlicensed fishermen from those happy fishing grounds, but others pressing in. Meanwhile settlements in 1623 by Thompson at Little Harbor and by the Hiltons at Dover, in what was to be New Hampshire were more suc- cessful; however weak they had served their purpose as piers in the colonial structure. The way to New England was now a well-sailed path; more and more men looked to that land as a goal of their colonizing efforts, as well as a field for fur trade and headquarters of the fishing fleets.
To Massachusetts in particular; and hither in 1625 came that picturesque royalist Thomas Morton, who, after three months in New England in 1622 returned three years later with a company which settled again in Weymouth. There in the year following, when most of its settlers had removed to Virginia, he became commander of the little colony, whose looser life was a thorn in the side of the sober Plymouth folk, till on May-day, 1627, Morton's men set up a May-pole, crowning their transgressions of selling rum and fire-arms to the Indians by this "Idoll the Calf of Horeb." So their leader was arrested and sent back to England, while his Merrymount was altered to a "woeful mount" and came into the power of the Plymouth men.
Between Plymouth and those posts which were to be Dover and Portsmouth in New Hampshire, there was by 1627 a slender line of settlement along the Massachusetts coast-at Charlestown the blacksmith Thomas Waldorf; in what was to be East Boston, the "prelatist," Samuel Maverick; on the slope of what was some day to be Beacon Hill, the recluse
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THE WORLD MOVEMENT
Anglican clergyman, William Blackstone, with his house and rose-garden. On Cape Ann, still other habitations, temporary or permanent, pointed the way to the next step in the settle- ment of Massachusetts-that about the great bay which stretched from Cape Cod on the south to Cape Ann on the north; and to this, in consequence, was directed the attention of other groups of intending settlers.
COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND (1620-1628)
Meanwhile the situation in England itself had undergone a change. The original company, or companies, the London and Plymouth groups, had in a measure already played their parts. In 1620 the Plymouth Company under the name of the Council for New England obtained a charter for the lands from forty to forty-eight degrees north latitude and west- ward to the sea. Of course the patent which Sandys secured could not overrule the grant of the Plymouth Company; but in the unsettled situation, the struggle between the companies, the grantees, the settlers, and the various independent adven- turers did not interfere with the establishment of the Plymouth colony.
The appointment of West as admiral, with quarrels between the Weston and Gorges settlers, with the rising tide of reli- gious feeling, produced two results. The first was the at- tempted division of the coast among twenty individual paten- tess in 1623 ; the second was the report of the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, to Parliament that the charter of the Coun- cil for New England was a national grievance, which tended to bring that body into disrepute and limited its usefulness. Meanwhile the disagreements between the original Plymouth Separatist group and later settlers created not only a schism in the old colony but the foundation of the Nantasket settle- ment.
In the arrangement of 1623 the Cape Ann region had fallen to Lord Sheffield who conveyed it to Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow in behalf of the Plymouth colonists. But in that very year some Dorchester merchants followed up their fishing interests by despatching to that region a little colony which they reinforced in the year following. Between
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THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARACTER
them and their predecessors disagreements naturally arose, especially when the Nantasket exiles from the Plymouth col- ony joined the settlement. These, with the decline of the fish- ing trade seemed likely to break up the enterprise, for all but three or four of the disputants abandoned it. This was not to be the end. The Plymouth colonists who had sent Miles Standish to assert their power over Cape Ann, had set up trad- ing and fishing outposts on Buzzard's Bay, with two or three in Maine, in an effort to control the whole Massachusetts coast.
In that design they were anticipated. The little group of Cape Ann settlers who survived the break-up of that post re- moved to what appeared to them more favorable territory, Naumkeag (the later Salem). Encouraged by their friends in England, especially the merchant-preacher, John White of Dorchester, and reinforced by a group of Lincolnshire men, this new enterprise secured from the Council for New Eng- land a patent for the land between the "Merrimack" and the Charles rivers, "being in the Bottome of a certayne Bay there, comonlie called Massachusetts" and three miles each side, "to the western sea." Naturally in the unregulated situ- ation of colonial grants this conflicted with the area that had been assigned some five years earlier to John Mason, extend- ing from the Merrimac to Naumkeag; as well as another grant to Captain Robert Gorges. For the moment these hap- penings disturbed the new company as little as the possibility of opposition from the Plymouth colonists or the grant to other patentees. They quickly raised and despatched a little group to Massachusetts Bay where in the summer of 1628 they were reinforced by another party under the newly ap- pointed governor, John Endecott. There they finally founded the settlement of Salem, "the paradise of New England," and promptly extended the claim of their jurisdiction to all the lands about the Bay.
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