USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 43
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
HUTCHINSON, Thomas .- History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay from 1628, until 1774 (3 vols., 4th ed., London, 1778) .- An intimate account of the colony by a sometime Lieutenant- Governor of the province; illustrated with documents.
LETCHFORD, Thomas .- Notebook kept from 1638-1641 (Cambridge, Wilson & Son, 1885) .- A valuable source for the very early Massa- chusetts trade.
OSGOOD, Herbert L .- The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Cen- tury (3 vols., New York, Macmillan, 1907) .- Volume III, chapter vii, "The Acts of Trade", is particularly enlightening on the consequences of the New England trade.
PALFREY, John Gorham .- History of New England under the Stuart Dynasty (5 vols., Boston, Little, Brown, 1858-1890) .- Contains scat- tered references to conditions of trade and trade regulations.
SNOW, Caleb H .- A History of Boston from Its Origin to the
Present Period (Boston, Abel Bowen, 1825) .- An interesting narrative, based on contemporary and other early accounts, including the records of several early Massachusetts towns.
STATUTES OF THE REALM (Vol. 246. Printed by command of His Majesty George III.) .- Contains the texts of the Navigation Laws, the preambles of which are of considerable value for the purpose in hand.
WINSOR, Justin, editor .- The Memorial History of Boston 1630-1880 (4 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1880) .- A good collection of ma- terials on trade in volume I, chapter xviii, "The Colonial Period", by Horace E. Scudder.
WINTHROP, John .- Journal of Transactions and Occurrences in the Settlement of Massachusetts and Other New England Colonies from the years 1630 to 1644 (Hartford, Babcock, 1790) .- A fairly com- plete set of annals of the early years, including scattered references to shipbuilding and trade, by the first governor of the colony.
B. PERIODICAL REFERENCES
CHANNING, Edward .- "The Navigation Laws." (American Antiquar- ian Society, Proceedings, 1889-1890, pp. 165 ff. Worcester, 1890) .- On the commercial policy so far as it affected the English colonies in North America before 1760.
EDMONDS, John Henry .- "Burgis View of Boston" (Bostonian Society, Proceedings, vol. vii, 1913-1917 ; Boston, 1917) .- A paper read before the Society, in 1914; a vivid account of Boston at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
THE HIGGINSON LETTERS (Massachusetts Historical Society, Col- lections, Third Series, vol. VIII, pp. 196-222; Boston, Little, Brown, 1838) .- Letters, principally of John Higginson, a merchant of Salem, during the later years of the seventeenth century.
HULL, John .- "Diaries" (American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, Worcester, 1857) .- Interesting and authoritative statements on trade and finance by the mint master of Massachusetts in the middle of the seventeenth century.
TOPPAN, Robert Noxon, editor .- Edward Randolph; including his let- ters and official papers from the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies in America . 1676-1703 (Prince Society Publica- tions, 7 vols., 1898-1909) .- A very valuable source for the commercial history of Massachusetts after 1675, containing many reports and de- tailed accounts not accessible elsewhere.
WHITMORE, William Henry, editor .- The Andros Tracts (3 vols., Prince Society Publications, Boston, 1869) .- One of the most im- portant collections of papers and documents relating to the trade of Massachusetts during the latter part of the period.
CHAPTER XVII CONTROVERSIES WITH ENGLAND
(1640-1664)
BY J. HUNTER SEDGWICK
FORERUNNERS OF THE CONFLICT (1640-1660)
Among the anomolies of Massachusetts history is the small degree of attention apparently given by the colonies to the parliamentary and military struggles in England from 1640 to 1648. A few leaders, notably Sir Harry Vane, returned eastward and joined in the conflict. No body of colonials, however, went to the support of their brethren of the Purtain faith and their kindred and friends among the middle class of the parliamentary group.
The home and the Massachusetts authorities understood each other's religious and political convictions ; but that understanding carried no feeling of responsibility on either side. The records show that in the parliamentary period, as in the later royal period, Massachusetts men were think- ing of independence, although almost every man, woman and child in New England was of direct descent from Eng- lish stock, and as yet there was no conception of an American race.
They maintained friendly relations with England; but always with an eye to their liberty of action, and the best way to ensure it in future dealings with whatever govern- ment might prevail in England. The Commonwealth was friendly to Massachusetts; but had it lasted long enough would have lost patience with the General Court as quickly as did the Crown after the restoration. The Long Parlia- ment, the Protectorate and the restored royal power in
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succession, held off from a contest for authority in New England, till after 1670, because they were too busy with other things to skirmish effectively with a community whose habitual political and diplomatic procedure rested on legalism based on theocracy.
In 1651, Parliament proclaimed Virginia for that colony's contumacy. Winslow, the Massachusetts agent, warned the Massachusetts Court that a new patent might perhaps be secured. The court at once sent over a petition against such a step. The prayer was heeded, notwith- standing it contained an objection on the Massachusetts part to "finding ourselves wrapped upon in one bundle with all the other colonies; our case being different from all other English colonies in America for ought we know or have heard." This definition of the assumed special standing of Massachusetts accents itself the more in com- parison with the Navigation Act passed in 1661, one of a long series of statutes framed to secure colonial and for- eign trade in the first place for England ; and as a piece of empire legislation, in days when the Mercantile Theory had still a long life before it, it was well enough.
The serious difficulty, emphasized as time went on, was that Massachusetts and most of New England did not fit into the scheme of commercial legislation, the misfit be- coming more and more pronounced as time went on. The Mercantile Theory, which regarded colonies as suppliers of raw material to the mother country and buyers of its manufactures, was not unreasonable if it conceived of an empire as governed entirely by bookkeeping. What its exponents overlooked was that while colonies are com- mercial parts of imperial commerce as a whole, they are quite as much political entities ; this fact recognized, book- keeping must have less voice and men would have more. As opinions went at that time, a Puritian government in England would have been as insistent as a royal govern- ment on maintaining control of the empire.
It is reckoned that by 1640, when the first great impulse of emigration came to a stop, some 16,000 English had betaken themselves to Massachusetts. Probably this is an underestimate; whatever the figures, the population in
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1646 and thereafter was distinctly conscious of two facts : that it had a commercial charter upon which could be based a political system; and that three thousand miles of green water lay between it and whatever government might exist in the old country. The civil troubles in England and the war with the Dutch under the Protecto- rate made an England too distracted and too busy at home to do much towards regulating the colonies. These, especially Massachusetts and the rest of New England were left to do much as they pleased, an opportunity which all improved.
INTERCOLONIAL RELATIONS (1643-1660)
All the relations of Massachusetts with England and with its two international neighbors, France and the Netherlands, were affected by the New England Confed- eration which is the subject of an earlier chapter in this series. The services of the Confederation to its constitu- ent members, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven and Plymouth, were undeniable. The union greatly con- tributed to the sense of common origin, common interests, and of common destiny which has continued down to the twentieth century. During its active years from 1643 to 1676 it also accustomed those colonies to some degree of cooperation in international relations, for the Confederation hardly took notice of the supreme authority of England in such matters.
When the Confederation's Commissioners forbade en- rollment of volunteers from Massachusetts, to intervene in the quarrel between De La Tour and D'Aulnay in Can- ada, Richard Saltonstall and others warned the General Court that "D'Aulnay nor France are not so feeble in their intellectuals as to deem it no act of state." In the same letter, addressed to the Governor, Deputy Gover- nor and "Assistants and the Reverend Elders at or near the Bay," they ask pertinently, "for who knows not this to be a rule of state, that not to forbid, when there is no- tice and power, is to bid?"
Conversely, in 1651, Massachusetts, though a Confeder-
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ate, declined to join in the contest between the Dutch and Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island. Con- necticut's action was marked by the illegal seizure of the Dutch fort at Hartford; and in so far forth Massachusetts was right. When the General Court declared in 1651 that the Commissioners had power only to declare defensive war, it for the first time stated the doctrine of nulli- fication in American federal government. The habitual boundary controversies reappeared, and Massachusetts gained advantages in the Saybrook dispute, in that about Springfield, in the Lygonia controversy, in the Mason and Gorges claims; for the possession of preponderant weight and strength is a temptation to states as it is to individuals and the Massachusetts controlling group were no better and no worse than their century.
Again and again one feels the indefinable self conscious- ness of Massachusetts or at least of those who moved the levers of its government. At the Restoration in 1660 Ed- ward Godfrey wrote the Council at London about "the consequence of the Province and the usurpation of the Bostoners." Whatever they did was, by a wonder work- ing Providence, always headed towards their own profit, security and enlargement.
PROTECTORATE AND RESTORATION (1650-1661)
In general Massachusetts kept on good terms with the Commonwealth and Protectorate from 1648 to 1660. Doubtless if Oliver Cromwell had lived, with all the good will in the world for a Puritan colony, he would have brushed aside any serious attempt on the part of Massa- chusetts to act as an independent and sovereign commun- ity. It would have been a wild enterprise to attempt in- dependence in the fact of France and Dutch hostility; Massachusetts no more than the rest of New England could do without England whether Puritan or Cavalier, however much that consideration was in theory disre- garded by some of the greater zealots.
August 7, 1661, the General Court of Massachusetts caused Charles II to be proclaimed king. Oliver and his
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pale shadow son, Richard, were gone; the Stuart was come in; the Colony approached a day that must be dif- ferent from that of great migration.
At the time of the Restoration the question of religious toleration bulked larger, the issue became clearer. Charles cared as little for religious toleration, or freedom, as he did about Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; but in his way, he was a good-natured man, and if his friends were to be protected in England and in the empire, his policy must make in the direction of toleration.
In addition, the elements of constitutional experience in Massachusetts were gradually altering. The leaders and population were changing. John Winthrop died in 1649; Thomas Hooker two years before that; John Cotton some months after the adoption of the Cambridge platform in 1651. All these men, when left to themselves, were in- clined to a milder rule than such extremists as the politi- cal chieftain, John Endecott, and the military parson, Nor- ton; but Endecott passed off the stage in 1665. Reverend Increase Mather who now loomed on the horizon, what- ever his opinions and influence in other matters, had no thought of separation from England.
However ruthless Endecott and Norton might be, a popular party was forming, not very articulate as yet, but with a general consciousness that its numbers gave it claim to more rights than it possessed. Farmers and merchants were gradually becoming more prosperous and included many voteless and taxed individuals. Add to all these changes the question of the English colonial system which called for specific laws and a much more careful administration in New England.
During this period of rapid self-development Massa- chusetts did little theorizing concerning the nature of her relationship to England, and took care to keep out of the constitutional struggle which was dragging on in Eng- land. When other colonies stood out for the king, Massa- chusetts shrewdly maintained a position of neutrality un- til it should be evident which side would win. After the establishment of the commonwealth an appeal was made to Cromwell to recognize the colony as a sister state, but
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though the petition was not granted, Massachusetts did not consider herself under the jurisdiction of Parliament. Winthrop had pointed out in 1644 that if Parliament should later assume unwelcome prerogatives, then such action could be taken as would best serve the interests of the colony. From the very start, then, the colony's rela- tions with the mother country were based not on any theories of government but on a policy of expediency.
COMMERCIAL POLICY (1650-1660)
Cromwell had a sense of the colonies' importance. It was he who directed the expedition to Hispaniola; he wrested Jamaica from the Spaniards and thus began the long process of attraction which lasted to the cession of Cuba in 1898. Barbadoes and the Bermudas, as well as the southern and middle colonies on the continent, all played a part in England's well-being that the Protector well understood. The colonies, as James Truslow Adams observes, were by-products of English commercial activ- ity. Now a change had come; henceforth it was com- merce that was to determine the imperial policy of Eng- land. Under the Long Parliament and the Protectorate, there had been too much administrative confusion to get the results necessary for a working colonial system.
The history of the Colonial Commonwealth and the Protectorate period reveals a maze of Councils, Commit- tees and Boards trying to care for an infant that daily grew out of control. The "Overture" of Nowell and Povey bore some fruit; and these two very able men had more influence when Charles came to the throne. The now familiar Mercantile Theory was becoming a principle of government. It was still believed that gold and silver were wealth, but it was now understood that colonial commerce and government must be conducted as a busi- ness matter, as a means of acquiring gold and silver.
From the moment of the revival of a royal government we clearly perceive what was to be the future commer- cial attitude of the colonies, especially in New England. They were not saddled with tariffs, and under the Protectorate, enjoyed marked privileges; but whatever the law
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they would, so far as they could, trade when, where and as they wished, irrespective of the home government's pol- icy. Still less would they regard specific rules of trade laid down by England. England had a policy that was an immovable body; the colonies had one that was a body moving with the irresistible force of progress.
For all that the colonies would claim the protection of England's navy and indirectly of its army; in especial, Massachusetts with the thoughtlessness of a young com- munity at stated intervals forgot that without the moral and physical background of England's strength the colo- nies would be left to fall into the hands of other powers whose principles religious and political were utterly op- posed to what the colony chiefly prized and what it never tired of averring to be the reason of its founding. Not long after the Restoration, Colbert's agent wrote home to France that the Boston people worried very little about the king's prohibitions, "because they hardly recognize his authority."
Clarendon, as the official head of the English exec- utive, had a concrete colonial policy ; he would take New Netherland from the Dutch; secure the Mohawk-Hudson route; gain control of Lake Champlain, and dissipate Dutch influence in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. He would extend the English settlements southward. To hamstring Holland's carrying trade was his prime object, for unless this were accomplished, the Navigation Acts and Ordinances would be so much printed paper and the English navy must go unprovided with the necessary naval stores.
NAVIGATION ACTS (1650-1663)
Four of these Navigation Acts were passed in 1650, 1651, 1660 and 1663, respectively. Roughly described, their object was to compel the carrying in English or Colonial ships of all goods in the trade between England and the colonies; to insist on their being manned by British and colonial crews; to apply the same rules "to all goods imported into either from any foreign country or colony in America, Asia or Africa." The Act of 1663
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went further, by forbidding the shipment of any manufac- tured European goods to the colonies, unless first landed in "England, Berwick or Wales." A system of drawbacks was included that often favored the colonies, New Eng- land receiving particularly considerate treatment. There- after many complaints were to be made by British merch- ants of the favors granted Massachusetts.
As an imperial measure, the Navigation Acts were excel- lent provisions. As the measure of a home government, three thousand miles away from a lusty and opinionated colony that must largely live by the sea, they acted as a political and commercial irritant. In 1665, Massachusetts made answer to questions of the royal commissioners to the effect that the number of their ships and vessels was about eighty of twenty to forty tons, about forty of forty to an hundred tons and about a dozen ships above an hun- dred tons.
Massachusetts had carried on much as it liked; after the Restoration it was excepted from the Act of Uniformity in religion applying to the other colonies; and it is evi- dent that the English government was prepared to treat New England well. Nevertheless, the colony could not withdraw itself from some important questions of imperial interest, of religious toleration and of internal struggles due to the changing population. As theories then went, England was justified in the course she had chosen; she must live by the sea, and so must Massachusetts as the bulk of settlement was then disposed.
As far back as the middle of the fifteenth century the Libelle of Englysche Polycye had urged the Council to "Cherish marchandyse, kepe thamyraltie That we may maysters of the narrow sea." The discovery of America simply widened this policy. It was to break down in America's case, but not for many years. The marrow of the dispute between England and Massachusetts was the conflict between the concept of imperial sovereignty, im- perfect though it may have been, and the determination of an English colony to resist that sovereignity so far as safely might be. Massachusetts, though many of its ac- tions were indefensible and factitious, was right in con-
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tending, as the leaders did, that its circumstances were peculiar. It is impossible to treat what was a political entity from the moment the settlers landed, and was soon recognized as such, in the same way as a commercial cor- poration, whatever the technicalities.
All the New England colonies had been made the balk- ier by remaining so long undisturbed; and what is of great moment, their trade had increased not only with Eng- land's sugar-colonies, but with Europe. In 1656 Rhode Island proclaimed free-trade with the Dutch, and in 1660 Connecticut had no laws against such trade. As New England production rose, the surplus was sold to the sugar islands, foreign as well as English; and the proceeds paid New England's commercial bills drawn on the mother country. This free trading with other colonies, both Eng- lish and foreign, became one of the prime causes of the smuggling which became a regular element of Massachus- etts and New England commerce.
MASSACHUSETTS THEORY OF GOVERNMENT (1660-1670)
In 1660 there was appointed a Council for Trade and one for Plantations, the membership of either being made up of privy councellors, that is, of country gentlemen, customers, merchants, traders, naval officers, men versed in affairs and doctors of civil law. Wide powers were needed to deal with the petitions, claims and complaints that soon poured in copiously. Though many of the com- plaints against Massachusetts were obviously untrust- worthy, the behaviour of its General Court was more thoroughly ventilated than hitherto.
John Leverett, the colony's agent in London, wrote that complaints against the Colonial Government were many, whereupon Richard Saltonstall and William Ash- urst were joined with him to present to the King a letter from the General Court defending it from the Quaker scandal. Charles answered temperately enough; but the General Court, doubtless feeling the shift in the breeze, drew up a Declaration of Rights under date of June, 1661. The Declaration simply reaffirmed its stand in the contro-
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versies, in the very respects which a home government was sure to question. The "rights" seemed to come very near those of independence ; and their expression, although coupled with the promise to apprehend the regicides Whalley and Goffe, did not mend matters between Massa- chusetts and a home government that had it in its power to give the colony a bad quarter of an hour.
The familiar tactics of "avoid and protract," though still useful, had become much riskier. Aware of this, the Gen- eral Court sent over Simon Bradstreet and the Reverend John Norton as their agents with another address. This also the King answered mildly, but he touched on the mat- ter of the franchise, the oath of allegiance and the admini- stration of justice. The Massachusetts colony and its pol- ity had become conspicuous, its contacts had grown wider and this letter of Charles directly concerned the theo- cratic system. The powers in Massachusetts became more and more uneasy.
The elders and magistrates had their peculiar line of reasoning on colonial government. "This was what they called voluntary civil subjection, arising merely from com- pact; and from thence it followed, that whatsoever could be brought into question relative to their subjection must be determined by their charter." The charter was granted primarily to a land and commercial company, with about thirty freemen. It was hard to deduce from it a frame of liberties for 20,000 people. In application to circum- stances never foreseen when it was granted, it was an instrument through which any self respecting corporation lawyer of today could drive an automobile. Many subtle- ties were possible.
If the powers in Massachusetts did solve all such efforts in their own favor, it was only what any men in their circumstances would have done. They had no right to erect a theocracy, but they had a good right to protect the visibly growing state, though they sometimes hurt it. For the home government to accept the contentions of the elders and magistrates would be to abdicate England's imperial sovereignity.
From the portrait in the Essex Institute, Salem SIR JOHN LEVERETT
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THEOCRACY AND POWER (1630-1660)
During this period of the Civil War and the Protector- ate, Massachusetts had from time to time assumed author- ity for which a reckoning must be made. The colony be- gan to mint money in 1652, and continued the process. This was undeniably an act of sovereignity, such as must arouse the champion of prerogative and the mediaevalist. From the beginning Massachusetts restricted the franch- ise in a manner quite outside the terms of the charter of 1628, by requiring certain religious tests. In many public utterances it assumed the condition of an independent state, though canny in explanations to the home govern- ment. It denied Massachusetts litigants any right of ap- peal to England. Above all, it formed an unacknowledged but effective combination of Church and State, that men have called the Theocracy.
The system was not a purely ecclesiastical government ; but it was a system which gave the clergy far too great an influence in purely civil matters. This unauthorized and unchartered power of the clergy continued from decade to decade. The method was simple; in the beginning the charter provided for a certain number of freemen, whom today we should call "shareholders," who were authorized to act through certain officials and a body of their own choosing, the Assistants, corresponding to our modern di- rectors. Provision was made in the charter for admitting more freemen as circumstances required and this seemed to be plain enough sailing.
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