USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 9
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ters to the adventurers the sending over of enough newcomers to swing the church and the control of the town to their liking; and in other ways and with lying accusations he sought the undoing of the colony. His trial and banishment along with Oldham form one of the most interesting episodes in its early years. Three thousand miles from England, and not free from ecclesiastical mischief makers!
De Rasieres, the secretary of the Dutch government at Man- hattan, visited Plymouth in 1627, and on returning to Hol- land wrote a description of the place and of the services of the church. He says : "Upon the hill they have a large, square house with a flat roof, made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams, upon top of which they have six cannons, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for a church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays. They assemble by beat of drum, each with his musket or firelock, in front of the captain's door; they have their cloaks on, and place themselves in order, three abreast, and are led by a ser- geant without beat of drum. Behind comes the Governor in a long robe; beside him on the right hand comes the preacher with his cloak on; and on the left hand the captain with his side arms and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand; and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him." The service consisted of the reading of the Geneva Bible, prayer, psalm singing, a sermon, and an offertory was taken by the people passing the deacon's seat and dropping their money.
Brewster, the ruling elder, preached twice Sunday, but being a layman, thought it best not to administer the sacra- ments. In 1628 Allerton (with no authority) brought over a young clergyman named Rogers, furnishing him with clothes and passage out of the colony funds. He proved to be insane and the Pilgrims were at the expense of sending him back. Later Ralph Smith and John Reynor, ordained men, served as pastors in succession until 1654.
In the 1630's frequent occupants of the pulpit were two of the most distinguished men of the period, Roger Williams and Charles Chauncy. Williams spent two years in the colony and supported himself by hard manual labor. His ministra-
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tions were generally enjoyed, but being as John Quincy Adams has styled him "a conscientious contentious Christian," he created some division by advancing certain views which he afterwards put forth at Salem, but apparently not connected with the baptismal controversy. Chauncy was a resident of Plymouth for nearly three years, coming on the solicitation of the church to assist Mr. Reynor, but his insistence that baptism was only by immersion seems to have kept him from any offi- cial connection with the church, altho the people were willing for him to administer the rite that way, and let Mr. Reynor administer it in other ways, a surprisingly liberal position for that day; but Chauncy would not hear to the solution and left for Scituate. Afterwards, having learned to keep certain of his views to himself, he became the second president of Har- vard College.
Like the Baptists and the Society of Friends the Pilgrims were among the most tolerant Christians of their times, the chief blot on their record as respects intolerance being their treatment of the Quakers. Not one of them was ever put to death, nor any so called witch, but five were publicly whipped and the departure from the colony of ten members of the sect was enforced. It must be remembered that not all Quakers were conducting themselves in a becoming way toward wor- ship in the churches. As to tolerance it has been well said by Gardiner that "the question was not whether they were to tol- erate others, but whether they were to give others the oppor- tunity of being intolerant to them."
A picturesque example of the gentlemanly and Christian treatment of one far removed in religious practices is afforded in the visit to Plymouth of the French Jesuit Gabriel Druillette on December 22, 1650. He was accredited as an ambassador by the governor of Canada to treat of matters relating to the Abenaki indians. The day being Friday Governor Bradford served a fine fish dinner, and the Father left deeply appreciative of his hospitable entertainment.
The first winter (1628-29) of Endecott's colony in Salem, the mortality was like that of the Pilgrims their first winter, and a call to Plymouth for help brought Dr. Samuel Fuller northward. He ministered to the sick and proved of signal service, and explained the church situation in the older colony
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and the practical working of separatist principles. And in 1632 Gov. Winthrop of the Bay colony, and his pastor, Wil- son of the Boston church, spent a Sunday with the church in Plymouth. In this and other ways the little church in the fort on the hill had some influence in helping to win to a like ecclesiastical position the early settlers of Massachusetts Bay, still members of the Church of England. It seems certain that the more tolerant and genial spirit of Plymouth had large effect in softening the harshness and rigidity of the Puri- tan temper in New England.
THE PLYMOUTH GOVERNMENT (1620-1640)
The administration of the colony, once the merchant adven- turers had been bought out, proved singularly free from Eng- lish interference, due in part to the disturbances leading to the civil war in the mother country. It was based on the Compact signed in the Mayflower cabin, wherein they had combined themselves into a civil body politic to enact just and equal laws, and to give due obedience and submission to them. After 1630 they also relied on the Warwick patent giving Bradford and his associates power to make such laws. The great basic principle of the colony was equal rights for participants in the government, and common duties for justice, order and the safety of the whole community.
For the first three years the governor and one assistant comprised the administration, and they were elected in town meeting, which was also the general court, the purest form of democracy. Later there were five and then seven assistants. No general scheme of government, like that of Connecticut was ever framed; but new devices were created and laws en- acted as they were seen to be needed. For years there was no lawyer in the colony and no justice of the peace, and for fifteen years little legislation on the statute book. In that period the settlement was small and not widely scattered, and the high character of the people as a whole, and the wisdom and sagac- ity of the leaders kept the public affairs sound and peaceful.
In the latter part of the first decade, the people began to spread across the harbor to Duxbury, and as the dispersion went on, and newcomers arrived at Scituate, Barnstable and
NO:DON:165 JÆTIS: SVES
A. S. BURBANK PLY
From the portrait in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth Copyright, A. S. Burbank, Plymouth, Mass. GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW
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THE PILGRIM REPUBLIC
elsewhere, new towns were organized : Scituate in 1636; Dux- bury in 1637, under the gospel ministry of Rev. Ralph Part- ridge, escaped from the persecutions of Archbishop Laud of England; Taunton, Sandwich, Barnstable and Yarmouth in 1639; and Marshfield in 1640.
This diffusion of population made necessary a change in the government from a pure to a representative democracy. Therefore, the first general representative assembly met in Plymouth in 1639, and the little settlements became the Pil- grim Republic.
Plymouth of course was made the capital, and was given four votes in the assembly, each of the other towns having two. The governor and his seven assistants formed the upper house, and the town deputies the lower, but all sat and voted together as one body. Each town paid the salary of its own deputies. The general court as the assembly was usually called, met four times a year, and bills presented at one ses- sion went over to the next for action. The governor, his as- sistants and the treasurer were elected at one of these sessions, which was called the court of elections. An appeal lay from the court enactments to the freemen of the colony, who alone as a general thing had the right to vote. Provision was made for voting by proxy, and fines could be imposed for not voting.
Who were the freemen? Not all who came in the May- flower, for some were indented servants; but all those sur- viving who signed the Compact; and thereafter for some time others added by majority vote of those already freemen. In 1636 every freeman had to take the oath of allegiance to the king and to the colony. A dozen years beyond the period now under consideration, the requirements for the suffrage were made more stringent, and candidates had to be 21 years of age, and possessed of local town endorsement, sober, peace- ful and orthodox in religion, and with a ratable estate of £20. Church membership appears never to have been required as a condition of suffrage.
In 1636 a committee of eight from Plymouth, Scituate and Duxbury drew up a code of laws, revising the forty statutes then in force, and this became the body of colonial laws. The penal statutes were mild, capital offenses being limited to six or seven; and for only two of these were people ever deprived
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of life by legal process. At that time there were 31 such offenses in England; and so rapidly did statute barbarity in- crease in the mother land that in 1819 they reached the incred- ible number of 223. The Pilgrim statutes are a testimony to the truth that stiff Puritan doctrine was not a bar to humane and considerate treatment of one's neighbor. Just as the Plymouth government was a proof that the rule of the elders, such as persisted in Massachusetts for half a century, was not necessary in a Christian, Protestant and Puritan Common- wealth.
NEIGHBORS OF PLYMOUTH (1620-1643)
Trade brings different peoples into close relations, but profit- able trade needs a medium of exchange. In his visit De Ras- ieres, the Dutchman, taught Plymouth folk the use of wam- pum, an Indian currency circulating in the vicinity of Man- hattan. These small sea shells, polished, drilled and strung, were attractive, represented labor, and like modern jewelry, were thought a mark of distinction among the natives. The Plymouth folk bought £50 worth and soon its use became general in their Indian trade.
The enterprising Dutch made a lodgment on Manhattan Island in 1619, and soon were cruising along the coast of southern New England. Their closest trade fort was Mano- met, on Buzzards Bay where the Plymouth people early built a trading station. Two Englishmen were kept there with a pinnace. Foundations of this station have recently been dug up, along with relics of its occupancy. A thriving trade was done with the Dutch at this point. Later, on the solicitation of the Indians on the Connecticut a Plymouth bark was sent up the river, but the Dutch, with an eye to that same region, had established a post at Hartford. They threatened the Pil- grims, but the latter sailed by and built a station at Windsor near the falls. The following year a Dutch force of 70 men was sent against it, but so resolute were the men behind the stockade that they withdrew. A good paying traffic was done at this point for some years; but they were unjustly dispos- sessed in 1636 by the Hooker Company made up out of the Newtown (Cambridge) church. Commercial relations with
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the Dutch never came to armed conflict, and were usually friendly.
Relations with the French were early and disagreeable. Plymouth was remote from Maine, but the grant of land on the Kennebec and the building of a post at Augusta increased a lucrative trade already begun. When Allerton got a grant on the Penobscot at Castine, and asked the Plymouth under- takers to go in with him, for the protection of their Kenne- bec trade they felt compelled to accept. The Plymouth rep- resentative found Allerton's agents unreliable and the French under D'Aulnay, who was so mixed up with Massachusetts affairs, finally took posession of the post and of the trade.
Prior to the coming of the Puritans to Massachusetts Bay in force in 1630, little settlements had been springing up along the coast from Naumkeag to Piscataqua, among them that of Captain Wollaston near Boston at a place called after him Mt. Wollaston. He went there in 1625 with a large company of men, chiefly indented servants, and finding the climate unsuitable to his purpose, removed with a part of his followers to Virginia.
Among the remnant left was one Thomas Morton, who by craft, seized the leadership, and became a "veritable lord of misrule," with much of drunkenness and licentiousness in his train. He set up the famous May-pole which figures so much in the narratives of the times. It was a wild and brawling place, and seemed likely to denude the settlements of their in- dented servants, while the sale of firearms to the Indians threatened their very existence. Warnings were sent by the straggling plantations but were unheeded. Finally Plymouth was asked to assist in abating the nuisance, and Standish was sent there with his men, probably in May, 1628. He managed to capture Morton without loss of life to either side, and bring him to Plymouth, whence he was sent by way of the "Ile of Shols" to England. Morton, who was something of a wit dubbed Standish "Captain Shrimp". He also wrote New Eng- lish Canaan, in which Puritan creeds and practices are bitterly satirized.
By 1628 it was evident that Plymouth colony was an as- sured success and daily putting on strength; this was no small factor in stimulating the large, wealthy and powerful stream
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of immigration to the Bay, beginning in 1630. The great colony planted there with its superior site, strength, resources and prospects, was naturally self-assertive and domineering.
An instance of this spirit was their interference in the Hock- ing case on the Kennebec in 1634, when Hocking, leading a poaching party on the Pilgrim trade, was shot by Moses Tal- bot, and the latter killed as well. The affair was wholly outside the Bay jurisdiction, but when a Plymouth vessel put into Bos- ton harbor, Alden, as a prominent Plymouth man, was taken · off and imprisoned, which led to sharp exchanges of thought. Plymouth, on the other hand, ceased to be the one well estab- lished English plantation between Virginia and Canada, and as the feebler party was inclined to be somewhat touchy in occasional controversies.
Some other disputes of greater moment like the driving of the Pilgrims from their Windsor post by the Connecticut people in 1635 left bitterness, accented by various boundary disputes. The Massachusetts patent defined the southern lim- its of that colony as being three miles south of the Charles River. Did this mean three miles south of the mouth, or of the most southerly affluent? On Plymouth's western border, the Bay claimed Seekonk (Rehoboth), probably because they wanted it. Working agreements on the boundary were made until a formal settlement, which is discussed in the chapter on the United Colonies of New England, was settled on.
The relations of the sister colonies, however were generally friendly and mutually helpful. The Bay greatly stimulated Plymouth trade by supplying a large market for all the Pil- grims could raise ; and on their side furnished them with horses and other merchandise not easily obtainable by the smaller colony. Since no natural boundaries existed, the people of the two colonies inevitably grew together. Their commercial interests were not antagonistic; and after 1660 ecclesiastical differences gradually lost distinction.
In 1643 the New England confederation known as the United Colonies was formed, as set forth in Chapter IX of this volume which lasted forty years, and was the fore- runner of the larger union of larger colonies in the century following. The people of the New England colonies were English, of the same general religious and political opinions,
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ECONOMICS AND LIFE
all standing in much the same relations to the Indians, the Dutch in Manhattan, the French in Acadia, and the homeland. The union was for the common protection, the settlement of boundary disputes and other difficulties, and the furtherance of their common interests.
ECONOMICS AND LIFE
No exact figures as to population after the first few years are available. At the landing in 1620 it was 102, and a year later 86. John Smith tells us that in 1624 it was 180 with 32 houses. In 1630 the town of Plymouth is thought to have had about 300 inhabitants, of whom about 150 later mi- grated to Eastham. In 1644 there were 8 towns and a pop- ulation of 3000, on the basis of the colony's quota of 30 men to the forces of the United Colonies, one man to every hun- dred inhabitants; however, that total seems too large. In 1693, just after the merging with the Massachusetts Bay col- ony, the Plymouth section is credited with 17,000 people.
Small as was the population and slow the increase, the col- ony was an economic success. No great wealth was acquired as in the larger Puritan colony, where large means came in the ships with the people, while Plymouth started with nothing but a big debt to the adventurers. Nevertheless, after the first few trying years the Plymouth people in general were in the enjoyment of the fare and the comforts of the New England colonists elsewhere, and had in plenty all the means of subsis- tence. The inventories and wills reveal that property to a good amount was possessed by no inconsiderable number of the Plymouth folk.
The fisheries at times brought into the colonies considerable profits. The fur trade was remunerative until the growth of other colonies nearer to the source caused it to wane. Farm- ing was the chief occupation, and almost everything eaten, worn and otherwise used was raised or fashioned on the farm. Every householder in 1639 was compelled by law to sow a square rod of hemp or flax. No industries in the modern sense were established in seventeenth century Plymouth, but saw and grist mills sprang up; there were the beginnings of working of bog iron, and later of fulling mills. Tobacco was
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raised in large quantites as a commodity of commerce; and an extensive trade was carried on in corn, cattle and dressed lumber. As truly in efforts to better their economic condi- tion and enjoy more of the good things of life, as in their purpose to continue the liberty of worship, such as they had in Holland, the Pilgrim colony was, all things considered an outstanding economic success. The people reached their goal of self government under conditions of moderate comfort.
In 1643 Elder Brewster died. Next to Robinson and for many years he was the great spirtual teacher and leader of the Pilgrims. His was a most remarkable life. A student in Cambridge University, present as an attendant on Willam Davison, secretary of state, at the Queen's court when Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh were also there, master of the King's post at the little village of Scrooby, with Brewer a printer of proscribed Puritan books in Ley- den, revered and beloved pastor in all but man's ordination of the little church in the wilderness, Brewster was in the opinon of many, the first among his equals in fostering those moral and spiritual elements of strength, which underlie all great and enduring undertakings.
A little later occurred the long discussed removal of a large contingent of town and church from Plymouth to Eastham. The decline in the population of the town and the setting up of other towns was ascribed to Plymouth's location in the bottom of the bay, with no rivers flowing in from the wilder- ness. Eastham was inferior in situation to Plymouth. This migration greatly grieved Bradford who feared for the "poore church left growne olde, and forsaken of her chil- dren and like a widow left only to trust in God."
Considering the meagreness of the colony's population in the first half of its separate existence, it possessed a large number of remarkable men. Besides the great leaders al- ready mentioned there were among the ministers Ralph Par- tridge, of Duxbury and known by the particular enmity of Archbishop Laud, one of the formulators of the famous Cam- bridge Platform of 1648; John Lothrop, pastor of the London Jacob Church of 1616, who led thirty of his flock to Scituate in 1634, and later took a part of the church to Barnstable; Samuel Newman, an Oxford scholar, who located in Seekonk
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THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENT
in 1644; and Thomas Mayhew, the first of the five Mayhews, who were missionaries to the Indians of Martha's Vineyard. Among the many laymen, was Timothy Hatherly, an ad- venturer who cast his lot with the colony in 1632 and was treasurer, commissioner and assistant; James Cudworth, was as a military man perhaps second in fame only to Miles Standish; John Brown was a fearless defender of the colony's rights; Thomas Willet, once the agent of the Castine trading post, was afterward much engaged in trade with the Dutch, and so much in their confidence, that when the English took Manhattan he became the first mayor of New York. Others equally able and influential came forward in the latter period of the colony, and their descendants became men of promi- nence and mark after incorporation of the colony into Massa- chusetts in 1691.
THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENT
Plymouth colony occupies a large and honorable place in the history of New England and Massachusetts. It was founded by a little company of brave and faithful souls, poor in goods but rich in spirit. They were neglected by their capitalist partners, wronged by their own countrymen, de- frauded by some of their own number, sorely bereaved and afflicted; yet they founded the first English settlement north of the Potomac that succeeded and stayed. The great Pilgrim achievement was in breaking the ice, in showing the way, in giving a demonstration that Englishmen could plant a colony on the north Atlantic coast, and by their own efforts as colo- nists soon make it self sustaining and prosperous.
Theirs is also the teaching, significant in the history of hu- man liberty, that it could grow into a civil state, under the English crown and loyal to it, and yet by reason of the vast distance from the homeland remain largely free from inter- ference by the English government, and practically independ- ent in its own internal affairs. That demonstration was eagerly watched in England, and the lesson was soon taken to heart, for six and perhaps nine of the merchant adventurers, who financed the voyage of the Mayflower and had ample means of learning what was being done in Plymouth later be-
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came guarantors of the Bay colony. Their influence through this inspirational factor of their own creation on the Bay colony, and through it on New England and far beyond, has been in a high degree constructive in the religious and politi- cal life of the country.
How did they accomplish this triumph? How were they able to make the demonstration? Because they had been, as they said, inured to hardness in Holland and were not easily discouraged, because they crossed the seas with wives and children, not as an expedition to return, but as a migration to stay. Because they founded homes and secured genial eco- nomic living conditions. Because they were men of honor and integrity, honest and just in all their dealings. Because they had faith in God, and were persistent followers of their ideals.
From such men and such groups great achievements spring. They were the brave and hardy scouting line of the English people, the advance guard of the mighty tides of immigration that have filled the northern tier of States from sea to sea. As such this feeble folk, few in number, earning their own bread by hard work have placed themselves among the best known people of all time. Because of what they were and what they did the larger colony to the northward came speedily into being. Plymouth could not continue merely Plymouth because in all its life and interests it was closely knit with its neighbor. It was not separated from its neighbors by religious differences as were the Narragansett settlements. It was not cut off by the wilderness like Connecticut and New Haven. It was inevitable therefore that in the end it should contribute its own rich and lasting values to what has become the great and forward looking Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARBER, Edward .- The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, Ward & Downey, 1897) .- Contains Mourt's Relation, and Winslow's Re- lation, or Good News from New England. Complete and valuable from 1606 to 1623.
BANCROFT, George .- History of the United States (Boston, Little, Brown, 1837) .- See I, Chap. viii.
BRADFORD, William .- At Plymouth Plantation, published under title History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 (Boston, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1912) .- Also a one volume addition.
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