USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 37
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THE QUAKER DOCTRINE (1648-1689)
Far more extravagrant was the treatment of the Quakers in Massachusetts. It is the more striking because it comes late in our period. It is the most serious indictment of the Massachusetts Puritans because it had to do with a people in the main so peaceable. Yet it is the most logical of all these episodes. For however peaceable their conduct these people put forth the most revolutionary theological and gov- ernmental ideas with which we have to deal. The Quakers came into existence as a distinct religious society during the period of the English Commonwealth. George Fox began
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his mission as itinerant preacher in 1648. From the year 1652, when Fox fell in with bands of "Seekers" in the northern counties, the movement grew rapidly. It attracted notice, and because of its uncompromising views and practices brought persecution upon its adherents.
Fox and his followers at first called themselves "Children of Light." They professed to be led by a divine light re- vealing the truth to the believing soul. Later, by a happy insight, they called themselves "Friends." By the populace they were known as "Quakers," probably because, in their meetings, they sometimes trembled under excess of feeling. Their claim to the inner light might be thought to resemble that which the Hutchinsonians professed, but it was a pro- founder thing. It was not the crude assertion of one's own individuality over against that of another. It was a rever- sion to the mystic's position that even the Scripture itself is only an expression. It but records the fact that the Eternal Spirit once moved great souls. Why should not the Spirit move upon the hearts of the least of men and express itself through their utterances, if only they are open to the influence.
Fox held that the Church with its tradition regarded itself far too much as an external authority. When he looked at the sects with their bibliolatry he thought the case was even worse. It would be absurd to attribute to Fox a theory of knowledge. By intuition he had however anticipated some religious con- sequences of the theory of knowledge given to the world by the greatest of modern philosophers. This theory makes it possible for us to hold a reasonable view of the nature and authority of Scripture and even of dogma, so that we neither blindly worship these nor yet blindly reject them.
With Fox it was pure religious insight. It carried him much further than any of the dissentients with whom we have dealt. Not only was there to be no Bible commonwealth. There was to be no Bible, in the sense of Puritans and Pro- testants in general. There was to be no church, either Estab- lishment or Independent. There was to be no ministry of con- stituted interpreters. There was to be only a body of men and women waiting for the spirit of God to speak to them. Men, and equally women, to whom the spirit spoke were then to speak to the rest. There were to be no sacraments.
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These were but signs. If one had the thing signified, the sign was superfluous. If one had not the thing, the sign was a snare. There was to be no taxation for religious pur- poses. There was to be no taxation for other purposes, like war, which the Friends could not approve. There was to be virtually no government, only a maintaining of peace and order in view of the evils in the world. There were to be no punishments for revenge, but only for reformation. There were to be no outward sign of respect for persons, no differ- ences of stations, nor even of dress.
QUAKERS IN MASSACHUSETTS (1656-1681)
When the new faith was stated in this way, it is not sur- prising that organized society turned against them. Their non-resistance had a very resistant quality. To ordinary men, the Quakers seemed to represent a completely disorganizing principle. They were accordingly the objects of a persecution both in England and in America which went far beyond that. which befell others, who by modern standards more deserved it. Our eyes may be quite dry over Mrs. Hutchinson who shrewdly defended herself. The deep things within us are touched at the thought of men who suffered for a vision of truth which we are still immeasurably far from realizing.
Nevertheless, these doctrinal contentions were not the whole truth. Organization has something to say for itself. Quakers have never permanently prospered except where some one else has furnished the government against which they render the invaluable service of protest. The modern decline of their community as a religious body shows not necessarily the de- cline of the inner spirit. It does show that a spirit must have some external organism through which to work.
The first recorded visit of Quakers to Massachusetts was that of two women, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, who ar- rived from Barbadoes in July, 1656. There was as yet no law against Quakers as such. The Deputy-governor, how- ever, on their arrival searched their chests, seized their books and commanded that they be detained on board. Later the women were imprisoned and their books publicly burned. They were subjected to an unseemly examination as to whether they might not be witches, though the witchcraft
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THE EPISCOPALIANS
fury was not yet raging. After four months the unfortunates were sent back to Barbadoes. Shortly afterward a ship ar- rived from England bringing eight members of the sect. These the master was compelled to take on his return voyage.
Then a law was passed, in 1656, by the terms of which any Quakers were to be committed forthwith to the house of cor- rection. There they were to be kept constantly at work. No one was permitted to speak to them. Finally, in 1661, it was enacted that those banished the colony and returning might be put to death. Under this law, three men and one woman, Mary Dyer, were hanged on Boston Common. It was said that Mary Dyer was led to her execution through a side street because of the possibility of public disapproval. A solid public opinion was no longer behind the magistrates.
The king rebuked this cruelty and twenty-eight prisoners were released. Whippings, even of women, stripped to the waist, took place as before. Imprisonments continued. In 1681 the law against Quakers as such was suspended. In 1724 the Royal Council, on appeal, reversed the action of the colonial government in all particulars.
THE EPISCOPALIANS (1629-1684)
As to members of the Anglican Church, Episcopalians as we now call them, there seem to have been in both Plymouth and Massachusetts those who entered New England in the name not only of the crown but of the church as well. When Salem men came to settle in Charlestown in 1629, they found Samuel Maverick of Chelsea, and with him the Rev. William Black- iston. A saying of Blackiston's is famous: "I have come from England because I did not like the Lord Bishops. I cannot join you because I would not be under the lord breth- ren." He afterward removed to Providence, "near to Wil- liams but far from his opinions." There was also a Rev. Robert Jordan, at Casco, now Portland, Maine. After his death in 1679 it is said there was no Episcopal clergyman re- maining in the whole territory of New England.
Yet many of the earlier clergy of the Bay Colony had origi- nally been ordained in the Church of England. Their low churchmanship, beginning with non-conformity to details not according to Scripture, had been aroused by the excesses of
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the high church party and by the use of the king's power in favor of this party. Their non-conformity developed into separatism not widely different from that of Plymouth. One sees the parallel to this frame of mind in the cooperation of churchmen in England with the Puritans in the civil war. That they would be the first to recoil when they saw the lengths to which the Puritans were going, needs no saying.
When, however, the Commonwealth and Protectorate were ended and Charles and the Church had been restored, measures were taken in England to deal with religious issues in this country also which tended rather to widen the political breach and to stiffen the determination of the colonists. These had long been free from immediate interference on the part of the mother country. That this degree of freedom was partly due to the paralysis of both State and Church at home is ob- vious to us. It was not so obvious to the colonists.
EPISCOPALIAN WORSHIP ESTABLISHED (1686-1693)
In Judge Sewall's diary for May 30, 1686, he reveals his deep feeling about the fact that "worship is to be held ac- cording to the rites of the Church of England as it is called, in the town house, by consent of our authorities." The privi- lege of the use of any one of three meeting houses in Boston for this purpose had been asked for and refused. In December in that year, Governor Andros newly arrived, asked for the use of one of the meeting-houses. The request was again re- fused. Tuesday of Holy Week, the Governor "viewed" the three meeting-houses. On Easter, the governor's company met in the South meeting house at eleven o'clock, telling the proprietors that they might come at one-thirty.
By 1688 this relation had been so far from contributing to good feeling that the Governor and Council "took a corner of the burying ground for their own undivided use." In June 1689, the first service was held in the church erected thereon. As it happened, although these events were not yet known on this side of the sea the Revolution had already taken place in England, James had been dethroned by act of Parliament, William of Orange and Mary had been called to reign in his stead. Andros was recalled. His departure wore the aspect of an expulsion. The enthusiasm of a part of the populace
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vented itself upon the little ecclesiastical building, it is said, in base manner.
The ship which brought Dudley to be President of Massa- chusetts in 1693 brought also the Rev. Robert Ratcliff to conduct services in Boston according to the Book of Common Prayer. The Church of England came thus to New England with a show of legal backing which was not good for its cause.
These events, so differently viewed in court circles in Eng- land and in colonial councils in America, inaugurated a state of tension between the Colony and the Church of England which lasted in some sense, until after the American Revolu- tion. The Puritans were quite right in identifying the reli- gious with the political situation. Their opponents did the same. Governor Cranford of New Hampshire, wrote home expressing his "humble opinion as a Churchman that it will be absolutely necessary to admit no person to any place of trust but such as will take the Sacrament and are conform- able to the rites of the Church of England." He said further : "I utterly despair of any true duty and obedience paid to his Majesty until their college is suppressed and their ministers silenced."
THE ISSUE OF TOLERATION SUMMARIZED
It is difficult to say which side is most to blame in these deplorable events. The affiliation of the representatives of the Church of England with the assumption of arbitrary power upon the part of the realm had obscured the fact that, in any case, the body for which they stood had rights and should have been accorded privileges. The unwise procedure of the repre- sentatives of what had till fifty years before been the mother church of all Englishmen, cut off this church, and by and by this church only, from the benefits of a growing sentiment, to which, but for this error, they might have made their own contribution. It is not true to say that the Massachusetts people came seeking religious liberty. They came seeking such liberty for religion as understood and preached by and for themselves. That everyone else was seeking for himself.
The Puritans were seeking for themselves with such zeal that they had been tempted to deny it to all others. Would
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the Anglicans, had they been in possession have done dif- ferently? The Anglicans came claiming sole authority just as the Puritans on the spot claimed sole authority. It was an advantage to be on the spot. As we have seen, the Puritan uniformity was gradually yielding. This episode gave them something to which they felt that they could never yield. The Puritan determination to enforce uniformity depended, at least in the case of the purer minds among them, upon a view of Scripture which in the modern world has largely passed away. The Anglican view of one only church, and the desire to secure uniformity, rests upon a view of the nature of the church which has by no means passed away. From the point of view of Protestantism it rests, however, upon the same assumption, namely, the belief in the absolute in the midst of the world of the relative.
If the magistrates and ministers thought that under the new regime in England they would be safe from further interference, they were mistaken. They asked that the old Colonial charter be restored to them. The request was re- fused. King William III was a man of great ability and of firm purpose. The Bill of Rights of 1689 brought relief in England to vexed questions. His handling of questions per- taining to the colonies was on the same large lines. His policy was on the side of mutual understandings and more tolerant views. He could not permit a virtually independent govern- ment of the colonies; nor, in the logic of his treatment of such matters at home, could he permit the legal exclusiveness of a church. Yet in spite of this, the representatives of no sect were so slow to reap the benefit of this better situation as were the Anglicans.
OTHER BELIEFS
As to Roman Catholics, Jews and atheists - there were none. The disability of Roman Catholics in England after the failure of Mary Tudor were so great that, had the laws against them been strictly enforced, no Catholics could have remained within the realm. The laws were not thus enforced. Great Catholic nobles secured immunity for sums of money paid to the needy treasury of James and Charles. It is diffi- cult to conceive that within our period a Roman Catholic
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should have wished to go to New England. They would have preferred to go to Virginia and, presently, to Calvert's colony at Baltimore.
Here they could even expect protection, although they were warned "to practise their religion discreetly." After 1649, the assembly of Maryland with the full consent of Lord Bal- timore, proclaimed "the rights in Maryland of any who pro- fessed to believe in Jesus Christ."
There were few Jews in England at the time of which we speak. The first Jew of whom we have information as com- ing to America came from Holland to New Amsterdam at some time between 1650 and 1660. The first man of the race well known in Massachusetts was Judah Monis, instructor in Hebrew in Harvard College in 1722. Even he was not appointed until after he became a Christian.
The word atheist appears now and then in the literature of our period in New England. The connotation is difficult to establish. Even the most theoretical of the deists, at the end of the 17th century in England, had rarely advanced to the belief in no God at all. It is this which we should mean by the word atheist. In the seventeenth century usage, the term is apparently nothing more than a word of opprobrium applied rather indiscriminately to persons not holding ortho- dox views.
THE OUTCOME
In Massachusetts, within the period of which we speak, even tolerance was rare. It was, however, a step on the way to liberty. The idea that a sound body politic could be built upon the principle of religious liberty, as we understand it, was never even conceived by the authorities of the colony. For that matter, even in Europe, it was rarely conceived save by the most enlightened of those who were not governing.
For almost a whole century, between 1689 and 1789, the process which we have been following in Massachusetts went on in the country at large. In this wider process Anglicans and Roman Catholics had their share, along with branches of the church which we have had no occasion to discuss-Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Lutherans, Huguenots, even Jews.
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At last, in point of law, the slow result was secured, and is embodied in the Federal Constitution of 1787. It seems to us an inestimably precious thing. It was secured, however, in part, at the cost of an indifference to religion which marked much of the eighteenth century; just as dissension and frenzy about religion in the seventeenth century. In the workings of the inner spirit of man, the same age-long struggle is with us still. It places non-religiousness, or even anti-religion, in an- tagonism against a zeal which, flaming up and taking hold of outward things again endangers a large and liberal mind, a just and loving heart. With this broad and tolerant spirit, religion has been the highest blessing to mankind. Without it, religion may be, as has often been said it was in seventeenth century Massachusetts, a disruptive force and a bar to a truly united society.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
[See also the bibliographies to the following chapters: i (England) ; iv (Plymouth) ; vii (Winthrop) ; viii (Sister Settlements) ; x (Social Life) ; xii (Harvard College) ; xvii (Controversies with England) ; xx (Crises) ; xxi (Dominion) ; and the General Bibliography at the end of Volume V.]
ADAMS, Charles Francis .- Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (2 vols., Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin, 1892).
BARCLAY, R .- Apology (Aberdeen, 1678; 6 ed. Newport R. I., 1729; Franklin, Philadelphia, 1837; Kimber Conrad, 1805).
BARCLAY, Robert .- The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth (London, His widow, 1877).
BRADFORD, William .- History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston, Little, Brown, 1856).
BURRAGE, Henry S .- A History of the Baptists in New England (Phil- adelphia, 1894).
CHANNING, Edward .- History of the United States (N. Y., Macmillan, 1907 and 1910) .- Vols. I and II.
CLARKE, John .- Ill Newes from New England (London, 1652) .- Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, Vol. II, 4th series, (Boston, 1954).
DEXTER, Henry M .- Congregationalism (Boston, 1865, Harper, New York, 1880).
FISHER, George P .- The Colonial Era (New York, Knowles, 1892).
ELLIS, G. E .- The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1888).
FISKE, John .- Beginnings of New England (Boston, New York, Hough- ton Mifflin, 1889).
GAMMELL, W .- Life of Roger Williams (Boston, 1844).
GOOCH, G. P .- History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, University Press, 1898).
HALLOWELL, R. P .- The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts (Boston, 1887, Houghton Mifflin, 1883).
McCONNELL, S. D .- History of the American Episcopal Church (New York, Whittaker, 1890).
MASSON, David .- Life of John Milton and History of his Times (7 vols. London, Macmillan, 1859-1880).
MATHER, Cotton .- Magnalia Christi Americana (London, ed. Andrus, 1702, New Haven, Andrus, 1820).
PLATNER, John W. and others .- Religious History of New England Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1917).
RUSSELL, John .- A brief Narrative and some Considerable Passages concerning the First gathering, etc. (London, 1680).
THOMAS, Allen C .- History of the Society of Friends in America (New York, in the American Chuch Histories Series, 1894).
TREVELYAN, G. M .- England under the Stuarts (New York, 1904; Lon- don, 1905; New York, 1914, Putnam).
WALKER, Williston .- A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States (New York, Christian Literature Company, 1894).
WINTHROP, John .- Journal (Hartford, original edition, Hartford, 1790,
also edited by J. K. Hosmer, 2 vols., Scribners, 1908).
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CHAPTER XV
ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION (1620-1689)
BY DAVIS RICH DEWEY, Professor of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology
FINANCIAL BASIS OF PLYMOUTH (1620-1630)
Except for the more ample financial resources of the Mas- sachusetts Bay Company and the greater number of settlers enjoying its protection, there was little difference in the eco- nomic life of that colony and the Plymouth settlement. The economic organization of the two colonies may therefore, af- ter the first few years, be considered as one; the inhabitants were engaged in the same occupations, used the same forms of property rights, traded with the same kinds of monetary media, and supported their governments by similar methods of taxation.
The financial support of the Plymouth settlement was a loose joint-stock company based upon an agreement, but not incorporated. So-called "Adventurers," mostly in London and possibly seventy in number, made small subscriptions. Os- tensibly they were influenced by the desire to relieve religious persecution ; but in the negotiations with their brethren in Ley- den who were most active in seeking a new home, they showed themselves exceedingly timid in entrusting their capital to the new venture; and they were over-solicitous as to the profit which they themselves would derive. The Leyden folk and their companions who joined them at Southampton could raise but scanty funds ; and the financial burden lay largely on
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the Adventurers. This and the risk of the undertaking may furnish some excuse for the extreme caution and hard terms laid down in the agreement between the Adventurers and the planters, as the colonists were called.
Under this agreement a share was equal to £10. A single share was given to each person sixteen years and over who took part in the settlement, and two shares if the colonist furnished himself with £10 in money or provisions. For wives, older children and servants, a single share was also al- lotted for each, and doubled if the necessaries of life were provided. For children between ten and sixteen, two were to be reckoned as one; and children under ten were given a right to 50 acres of unmanured land.
The partnership held for seven years, and during that period all property was to be held in common, and the colo- nists were to have "their meat, drink, apparel, and all provi- sions" out of the common stock. This in particular was the clause to which the colonists made most strenuous protest. They did not object to the common or joint-stock regulation which governed the distribution of profits in trade and fishing ; but they did demand vigorously from the beginning individual ownership of houses, home lots, gardens and improved lands ; and also that they be allowed two days in each week for their own "private employment." No such concessions, however, were granted. Subsequent experience revealed, according to Governor Bradford, "the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients, that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing ; as if they were wiser than God."
The communal holdings of land imposed upon the Plymouth colonists did not last long. Demands were made that indi- vidual diligence and labor be recognized. Within three years a part of the land was allotted to each household to be culti- vated for a single season. This in turn did not give satis- faction; and, in the fourth year of settlement, one acre of land was given to each freeman in perpetuity. Apparently this was done with the silent consent of the Adventurers, who were too far away to exercise active control.
Information is wanting as to the occupations and training of most of the Pilgrim colony previous to sailing to their new
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home. Those that came from Leyden had been accustomed to hard work in trades and mechanical pursuits rather than farm- ing. Little effort was made to form a well-balanced economic group, qualified to found a settlement devoid of most of the comforts and conveniences which European homes afforded. It is evident that farming was not planned to be the chief occupation. The articles of agreement, drawn up by the com- pany financing the enterprise, specifically refer to the profits to be gained by "trade, traffic, trucking, working and fishing," and the colonists were instructed to choose fit persons to fur- nish ships and boats for fishing; the remainder were advised to work upon the land and build houses. The Leyden pastor, John Robinson, in the preliminary negotiations wrote that the greatest part of the colony would probably be employed, not upon dressing the land and building houses, but upon fishing and trading.
Even for trade and fishing there was little forethought; for this the colonists themselves were not responsible. The financ- ing company was not whole-hearted in its support, supplies were insufficient, and at the last moment the Mayflower pas- sengers sold at Southampton a part of their supplies, in order to satisfy pressing claims before they could set sail. As Gov- ernor Bradford pathetically wrote, the Pilgrims sailed with scarce any butter, no oil, not a sole to mend a shoe.
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