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"Then to the Bar, all they drew near Who dy'd in infancy."
is rather theology than poetry.
From the vast field of the sermons, an analytic student many doubtless derive many matters still fit to be stated in a religious tract, or in any essay by Santayana still writing on such in the twentieth century-and perhaps he is the last of Massachusetts writers upon religion. Yet the distance from
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MASSACHUSETTS IN LITERATURE
the Puritans' world to his is not in reality so far as the dis- tance from their life, manners, arts and tastes to those of the present day. It is not so far from the Puritans to the Roman Catholics as people think; and both churches in those days wished to impress their belief both on savages and on fellow citizens even to the death, but only for the salvation of their souls.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The four great civic freedoms may be summarized as-the liberty of the person or possessions ; political equality ; freedom of religion; and freedom of speech and thought, including of the press. Liberty of the person was established first, that of religion last. Civic liberty was not entirely assured in Massa- chusetts until the decline of the Congregational as an estab- lished church. We have seen that the first printing press was at Harvard College in 1639, and needed no censor; but it was twenty-six years later before there was a press in Bos- ton, and the restrictive censorship enacted in 1662 was lax in enforcement, and abandoned by 1723 entirely. Yet down to Franklin's time, the printer of a book or newspaper was doubt- less held responsible in the courts for his opinions after they had been printed (though not submitted to a censor ) in a way that would not be tolerated today. And it must always be remembered that the Puritans came to Massachusetts Bay for the freedom of their own religion, not of others. Conse- quently of the four cardinal liberties, that of free thinking was the last to appear. They sought not literature nor art-only their own peace-with a sword.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
[See also the bibliographies following Chapters iv (Plymouth) ; v (Charter and Colony) ; vii (Winthrop) ; x (Social) ; xi (Women) ; xii (Harvard) ; xvii (Controversies) ; xx (Crisis) ; and the General Biblio- graphy at the end of Volume V.]
BRADFORD, William .- History of Plimouth Plantation, 1608-1648 (Bos- ton, Little Brown, 1856) .- Ed. by Deane.
BRADSTREET, Anne .- The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650).
BRADSTREET, Anne .- Several Poems (Boston, 1678).
BYFIELD, Nathaniel .- The Late Revolution in New England, 1689 (Chis- well, 1689).
CARPENTER, G. R .- American Prose (New York, Macmillan, 1898). CHANNING, Edward and HART, Albert Bushnell .- Guide to the Study of American History (Boston, Ginn, 1896, 2nd ed. with Turner, 1918). COTTON, John .- A Brief Exposition of the Book of Canticles (London, Young, 1642).
DUYCKINCK, E. A. and G. L .- Cyclopedia of American Literature (Phil- adelphia, Zell, 1875) .- 1st ed. New York, Scribner, 1853.
ELIOT, John .- Indians are Descendants of the Jews .- Many other writ- ings about this time.
ELIOT, John .- Translation of the New Testament into Algonquin (1661). ELIOT, John .- The Holy Bible translated into the Indian Language (1663).
ELIOT, John .- The Dying Speeches of Several Indians (1663).
FISKE, John .- Beginnings of New England (Boston & New York, Houghton & Mifflin, 1889).
FORD, Paul Leicester .- The New England Primer (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1899).
GOOKIN, Daniel .- Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (Boston, Belknap, Hall, 1792).
HART, Albert Bushnell, editor .- American History Told by Contem- poraries (4 vols., N. Y., Macmillan, 1898-1902) .- Literary Extracts in Vol. I.
HIGGINSON, Francis .- New England's Plantation (London T. & R. C., 1629).
HOOKER, Thomas .- The Soul's Preparation (London assignes of T. P., 1638).
HUBBARD, William .- Narrative of the Troubles With the Indians (Bos- ton, Foster, 1677).
HUBBARD, William .- History of New England (1680).
JOHNSON, Edward .- Wonder-Working Providence (London, 1654, An- dover, W. F. Draper, 1867).
JOSSELYN, John .- An Account of Two Voyages to New England (Lon- don for G. Widdows, 1675, Boston, Veazie, 1865).
JOSSELYN, John .- Chronological Observations of America.
JOSSELYN, John .- New England's Rarities (London, for G. Widdows, 1672, Boston, Veazie, 1865).
379
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HARVARD COLLEGE
KEITH, George .- A Chronological Account of the World from Adam to Christ and from thence to the End of the World.
LETCHFORD, Thomas .- Plain Dealing, or News from New England. MASON, John .- History of the Pequot War (Boston, Kneeland & Green, 1736).
MATHER, Cotton .- The Long War with the Indians (1699).
MATHER, Cotton .- Magnalia Christi Americana (London, Andrus, 1702).
MATHER, Cotton .- Observanda on the Life of the Late Queen Mary (1695).
MATHER, Cotton .- Witchcraft.
MATHER, Cotton .- Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, B. Harris, 1693).
MATHER, Cotton .- The Short History of New England (1694).
MATHER, Increase .- Brief History of the War (London, for Chiswell, 1676).
MATHER, Increase .- A Discourse Concerning Comets (1683).
MATHER, Increase .- A Further Account of the New England Witches (London, for J. Dunton, 1692).
MATHER, Increase .- Ichabod What Cause there is to Fear that the Glory of God is Departing from New England (Boston, T. Green, 1702)
MATHER, Increase .- The Life and Death of Richard Mather (Cam- bridge, Greens Johnson, 1670).
MATHER, Increase .- The Unlawfulness of the Common Prayer Worship. MATHER, R .- The Bay Psalm Book (Cambridge, Day, 1640) .- The first English book printed in America.
MORRELL, William .- Nova Anglia (Latin verse, 1625).
MORTON, Nathaniel .- New England's Memorial (Cambridge, G. & J. 1669).
MORTON, Thomas .- New English Canaan 1624 (Amstredam, J. F. Stam, 1637).
NICHOL, J .- American Literature (Edinburgh, 1882).
PANCOAST, H. S .- Introduction to American Literature (New York, 1898).
PIERCE, William .- Almanac calculated for New England, 1639.
PIERCE, William .- Freeman's Oath (first product of the press in the United States-Whitcomb).
QUINCY, Josiah .- History of Harvard University.
RICHARDSON, C. F .- American Literature (New York, 1887).
ROWLANDSON, Mary .- Narrative of Captivity Among the Indians (1682).
SEWALL, Samuel .- Diary Begun (1673).
SHEPARD, Thomas .- Good News from New England (1648).
SIBLEY, J. L .- Harvard Graduates.
SMITH, John .- A Description of New England (1616).
SMITH, John .- New England's Trials (1620).
SMITH, John .- A True Relation, etc., (1608).
SMITH, John .- True Travels, Adventures and Observations (1630).
SMITH, John, and others .- The General Historie of New England, Vir- ginia and the Summer Isles (1624).
STEDMAN, E. C. and HUTCHINSON, Ellen M .- Library of American Literature (11 vols., New York, 1888-90).
THOMPSON, Benjamin .- New England's Crisis (Poem on King Philip's War), 1675.
TYLER, M. C .- A History of American Literature During the Colonial Period.
TYLER, Moses Cait .- The Literary History of the American Revolution. WARD, Nathaniel .- The Bodie of Liberties (1641).
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
381
WARD, Nathaniel .- The Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647).
WENDELL, Barrett .- A Literary History of America.
WENDELL, Barrett .- Stelligeri (New York, 1893).
WHITCOMB, S. L .- Chronological Outlines of American Literature (New York, 1894) .- For a complete chronological list, nothing has superseded this.
WHITE, Greenough .- Sketch of the Philosophy of American Literature (Boston, 1891).
WIGGLESWORTH, Michael .- The Day of Doom (1662).
WILLIAMS, Roger .- The Bloody Tenet of Persecution (1644).
WINSOR, Justin .- Narrative and Critical History of America.
WINTHROP, John .- The History of New England (1630-1648).
WOOD, William .- New England's Prospect (1634).
CHAPTER XIV
QUESTIONS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM (1630-1689)
BY EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE
Parkman Professor of Theology and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Harvard University
TOLERATION
The reverence in which the world holds the Pilgrim Fathers and the men of Massachusetts Bay Colony has led some to attribute to them an ideal which was not theirs-that of reli- gious toleration. The pride which Americans take in the sep- aration of church and state has caused some to imagine that beginnings of the application of that principle might be dis- cerned in the policy of the founders-which is far from being the case. The fact that the Pilgrims "found what there they sought, Freedom to worship God," did not at all mean the free- dom of others to worship God as they chose, or even the free- dom not to worship. Because no one of these things is true, some are disposed to discount the achievement of the founders and to disparage their high qualities.
It may be true that no passionately religious age has ever been tolerant. It may even be true that passionately religious individuals in any age are rarely tolerant. It is certainly true that much which in our age vaunts itself as tolerance is mere indifference and censoriousness toward those who take their religion seriously.
We have no cause however to attribute to the men of Massa- chusetts of three hundred years ago our own sentiments and then judge them by those sentiments. We should begin by inquiring what were the sentiments of the men of Massachu- setts upon this topic three hundred years ago. Fortunately
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neither in their writings nor by their conduct have they left us in doubt. We should inquire also what were the convic- tions concerning these matters prevalent in the England from which these men came out, to which some went back and with which those who remained kept up connection. Finally, we should do well to ask what were their civil rights under pat- ents and charters and what departures from these they may have felt to be forced upon them, either by the disturbed state of the homeland or by unforeseen experiences in the land of their adoption.
BASIS OF PURITAN RELIGIOUS CONTROL
After 1630 some of the best of men left England and,-for private reasons,-many who were not so good. After 1640 many of the best went back. They hoped to accomplish in the homeland things of which they had despaired when they came to these shores. We do not read that many of the worse element went back,-certainly not for such high rea- sons. When the tide turned again, between 1660 and 1689, institutions in Massachusetts both civil and religious had crys- tallized in marked degree. Meantime, the tremendous political and military conflict in England, the drawn battle between the two nearly balanced opposing elements, had there imposed more liberal views. The expectation of the potentialities and destiny of Puritanism at home was changed.
On this side of the ocean there had been no such gigantic struggle. The confusion of the period in England left the colonies in a degree to their own devices. The same causes were eventually to bring about the same changes of opinion here, but they worked more slowly. Here Puritanism was supreme. The growing variety of religious elements in the colony, the justice of their respective claims, were slowly to force greater tolerance and a truer conception of religious lib- erty. These influences were bitterly resisted by magistrates and ministers. The change of point of view was not achieved within the period of which we write. It is hardly an exag- geration to say that, in the modern sense of the words "reli- gious liberty" the history of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century is mainly the history of the lack of liberty. It is the
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history of some noble tentatives and some other influences not so noble. These tentatives and the resistance offered them will engage our attention.
The Puritan conflict in England was not a purely religious conflict. It was an antagonism of political and social prin- ciples as well. The Pilgrims were religious radicals. They were "come-outers." They were for "reform without tarry- ing for any." For a long time the more important part of the Puritan movement in England was within the Established Church. The men of the Bay Colony also took a view both of the mother country and of the ancestral church the poig- nancy of whose expression, as they left those beloved shores, could hardly be surpassed. They sought some concession to their religious views. The denial of inherited, and to them, obvious, political rights weighed upon them equally.
This double motive drove those of like mind who had not come to this country into the English Civil War. Those who did come to this country set up a government in which these same principles, civil and religious, were jointly to be ex- pressed. They did not imagine themselves to be setting up a government upon new principles. They were Englishmen rul- ing Englishmen under the king. They provided a government by representative persons, but it was far from being a democ- racy. They took a larger religious liberty for themselves than they were, at that moment, assured of at home. Yet the maxim "Cuius regio eius religio" was not a principle of am- bitious monarchs only. It was a rule which few of the most enlightened would then have disputed. Was it likely that men responsible for this little community, on the frontier of the world, with meagre resources and a growingly varied popula- tion, in a generation of the violence of sects, would take a different view? From the first they believed that theirs was the region, theirs the right to determine the religion.
POWER OF THE SCRIPTURES
Again, not the worst, but the best, of our forebears in the colonies felt themselves bound to demand of others obe- dience to another external authority which they acknowl- edged as sovereign over themseelves. This was the authority of God. Concretely it was that of the Word of God in the
From a portrait reconstructed under the direction of C. K. Bolton of the Boston Athenaeum from one which had been painted over and changed after its original completion
REVEREND JOHN COTTON
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CHARTERS
Holy Scriptures. "The most erected spirits" of the time be- lieved in a miraculous origin of the Bible and its oracular authority. Luther, for a brief time, had had a more adequate notion. He held that the truth was to validate itself in the experience of the devout heart. The exigencies of the conflict with the Roman Church, however, and the struggle against evils in Protestant circles, led to an assertion both by Luther and by the Puritan leaders of the authority of Scripture, not within, but over, the souls of men and over all their conduct, precisely parallel to that which Catholics asserted for the church. The insistent demand of the Puritans for a further reform of the church was that the church must be brought into accord with the Scripture. In civil matters we see the best of men bewildered between their normal reasonings and the meaning which they read out of the inflexible "Word." It was this latter which they felt bound to put above all their reasonings.
One easily thinks of high examples of dissent from this external authority of Scripture. Cromwell wavered. Milton deplored the excesses to which it led. George Fox developed a very different view. But, "The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants," said Chillingworth. For a hun- dred years in Britain, for far more than a hundred years in this country, this view maintained itself. The Old Tes- tament lived again as if Sinai were but of yesterday. When Judge Sewall said that "apart from the Scriptures" he "could see much that made against the belief in witches," he threw a flood of light upon the minds of seventeenth century New Englanders.
AUTHORITY FOR THE COLONIES
By the document generally cited as the First Virginia Char- ter (1606) James I claimed the right to colonize American lands between the 34th and 45th parallels of latitude, or from the Cape Fear River to Halifax and thence inland. The whole region was called Virginia. This charter provided that English Colonials and their posterity "shall enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunities within any of our dominions to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born
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RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
within this our realm of England or any other of our said dominions."
Channing asserts that this declaration marks off English colonization against any other up to the time of its enunciation. Attempts at settlement under this grant on the shores of Chesapeake Bay and again on the coast of New Hampshire met with little success. In 1620, a title to the region between the 40th and 48th parallels was granted to Sir Ferdinando Gor- ges with his associates. The new corporation took the title of the Council for New England. The Council was eagerly seek- ing settlers. The authorization originally provided for the Mayflower Company had been for settlement in Virginia. The fact that the Pilgrims were landing in New England probably led to the signing of the famous Mayflower Compact. The Compact, it is customary to attribute in form, at least, to the lofty spirit of William Brewster. In substance it is the reit- eration of principles known if not practiced in England. It is we who look back upon it, and not its signers, who con- ceived of it as an outline of government for a new world.
For three years, the condition of the Plymouth Colony was wretched. A mistaken policy as to the tenure of agricultural land had been imposed upon the Pilgrims by the supporters of the venture in England. Bradford on his own responsibility altered this arrangement. This is the first departure from the letter of the agreement.
As to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, its patent was issued in March, 1629, by the New England Company above men- tioned, to John Endecott and five colleagues. Endecott was to be the resident representative. Most of the associates in the Company were of the Non-conformist mind; a few were Sep- aratists. Some were, perhaps reluctant, conforming mem- bers of the Church of England. The venture was thought of at first as commercial.
In 1629 however, events occurred in England which caused men of this mind to feel that they had, for the present, small hope in their own country. One of these was John Winthrop. The Company had been counting upon Winthrop and his friends to emigrate. He hesitated. In Cambridge this group pledged themselves to be ready to go by the first of March. But they made explicit condition "that the charter of the Mas-
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LEADING SPIRITS
sachusetts Bay Colony and the whole government be first, by order of court, legally transferred to, established in, and remain with, us and others who shall inhabit upon said plan- tation." With Winthrop, political and economic considerations had place, but religious reasons took precedence of all others. In their own words, the Massachusetts settlers left the land of their birth to establish a church more in accord with the Scripture and their own conscience. The Company acceded to the demand, Winthrop being elected Governor in England.
LEADERS IN THE COMMUNITY
The company sailed on Easter Monday, 1630; and on June 12th twelve ships anchored at Salem. At Salem the ministers permitted themselves to be elected by their congregation, des- pite that fact that they were in good and regular standing in the Church of England. The location at Salem proved un- favorable. Winthrop, seeking a more favorable site, decided upon Boston Harbor.
So significant had the movement of population become, so important were men of the type of those who were leaving, that the royal government took drastic measures to prevent emigration. These measures met with no success. The king resolved to diminish the attraction of liberty beyond the sea. He appointed a commission to supervise the affairs of the col- onies, of which commission the Archbishops of Canterbury and York were members. Full powers were given to impose penalties in religious matters. The commission never func- tioned. Those who constituted it were fully occupied with affairs in their own land. This state of things, however, lent color to the accusation, now and then made, that disaffected immigrants were sending information to the government at home. The authorities in the colony dealt severely with such cases.
It is a point of inherited belief that the level of religious interest was higher among the men of the Massachusetts Colonies at this period than with any group of settlers in a primeval wilderness which the world has seen. This is prob- ably true. Emigrants and colonials of the first generation have usually been prompted by more obvious forms of self- interest,-prospect of wealth in the country to which they
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went, or of punishment in the country from which they came. That presently men of these self-betterment types appeared among the Bay settlers is beyond question. It is vicious to say that all evil elements present in the Colony,-say in 1640- were Puritans degenerated since their arrival. The men of the higher type, even if in proportion less than they were, could easily have maintained the ascendancy. They showed solid qualities of intellectual precedence as well.
It is said that one family in forty of those who came to New England in the earliest years included some members who had received a university education. Three-fourths of these educated forces were from Cambridge. The number of students in Oxford and Cambridge in those days was not large. The proportion of students to families in England was certainly nothing remotely resembling the figure just given. Those who then studied in Oxford and Cambridge were largely destined to the Church. Of the university men who emigrated, the great majority were ministers. This gave point to the phrase which the General Court used in the found- ing, in 1636, of the college presently called Harvard. "We dreaded to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." The colony was thus dominated from the first by men, some of whom had a modicum of property, some of whom had had a measure of civil experience, and an unusual proportion of whom were educated and religious men.
THE CHARTER AND THE FREEMEN
The political situation with which the heads of the colony had to deal was not an easy one. The actually resposible persons were, at the first, merely the twelve "members" of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Winthrop and these eleven had received by vote of the Company at home, the full power which they had demanded as the price of their coming at all. The Governor and assistants and freemen of the company (the twelve above referred to) possessed by grant from the king, power "to correct, govern, punish, pardon and rule all the king's subjects within the limits of this patent." The motive for this extraordinary grant may have been in part economic, in view of the hard experience of the early years at Plymouth.
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THE FREEMEN
It may have been partly civil. It was undoubtedly in large part religious. In any case, they had received it. Twelve gentlemen, with Winthrop at their head, possessed the legal right to govern a body which, within two years, had reached the number of two thousand of their fellow subjects.
Within a year of their landing, one hundred and nine per- sons applied to the Great and General Court for admission as freemen of the Corporation. One surmises that the ques- tion had already been raised by smaller groups and that this large number now made simultaneous demand, further to show the strength which lay behind it. This very show of strength put the Corporation on its guard. To yield all that was asked was to jeopardize their influence upon the future policy of an adventure, in which legal concessions had been made to them, of which they had taken the initial risk, for which they had made great sacrifices, and upon which they set large hopes. If, on the other hand, the application were denied, the men seeking the new citizenship might go elsewhere.
The governors compromised. They restricted the rights of the newly admitted freemen to the vote for assistants, re- taining the number of these assistants at twelve. This meant that the responsible body should still be a small group. Thus far the solution strikes us moderns as at least, human and natural. The leaders took however another step which had far-reaching significance. It was provided that no person should henceforth be admitted a freeman who was not a mem- ber of some one of the churches in the colony. Civil rights were thus limited to those who were in sympathy with the religious purposes of the colony.
This remained the basis of the franchise in Massachusetts until after the Restoration. Everyone in the colony was taxed under order of the Great and General Court, for the support alike of civil and religious institutions. Upon this point there was protest by Sir Richard Saltonstall of Watertown, but the protest was overruled. One wonders whether there were not questionings among the loftier spirits upon the other point, as well, namely, as to the limitation of the franchise to com- municants in the church. Was it likely that the king's patent and the intention of the New England Company would cover such a limitation of the franchise? Winthrop was a Trinity
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