USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 4
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the model npon which they builded in the New World.1
The ecclesiastical polity of the Pilgrims is ascer- tained by reference to their chronicles, where its spirit and practice will be found set forth with sufficient candor and clearness. These exiles did not wish the Church of England, from which they had forever separated, and from whose persecution they had fled, to be established among them. We find this disposition altogether consistent with the time in which they lived ; and we also find it the natural outgrowth of their condition. Religions toleration did not, in their view at least, admit the right of the old hierarchy to free entrance into their little community. They desired no collision with it; but, on the other hand, the fact that they had emigrated three thousand miles to get away from it was freshly remembered. They asked nothing but to be let alone. An old maxim declares it to be a principle that every religion which is perse- cuted becomes itself persecuting : for as soon as it rises above persecution it attacks the religion which persecuted it. This condenses the religious history of the principal New England settlements in a nutshell.
It happened that some of the later emigrants to Plymouth Colony were Episcopalians. They were men sent over by the " undertakers," or commer- cial partners of the Pilgrims, and are to be consid- ered in a different light from the original colonists, by whom they were regarded with more or less dis- trust. These new-comers did not like the simple, austere life or the rigid religious ordinances of the
1 I am indebted to the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, D. D., the re- sult of whose researches in England and Holland into the ante- cedents of the Pilgrims is expected to be given to the public in connection with a new history of the Old Colony, for the follow- ing transcript from Richard Clyfton's Advertisement, etc., which is presumed to he nearly identical with the order of service fol- lowed by the Leyden Congregation : -
" 1. Prayer and giving thanks by the pastor or teacher.
" 2. Reading of two or three chapters of the Bible, with brief explanation of the same, as the time may serve.
"3. The singing of some of the Psalms of David.
" 4. A sermon, - that is, the pastor or teacher expounds and enforces some passage of the Scripture.
" 5. The singing again of some of the Psalms of David.
" 6. The sacraments are administered, - that is, the Lord's Supper on stated Sundays, and baptism whenever there might be a candidate.
" 7. Collection is then made, as each one is able, for the sup- port of the officers and the poor."
It will be perceived, by those who may he interested in mak- ing the comparison, that this order does not differ from that given hy Thomas Lechford as the practice of the early New England churches.
3.4
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Pilgrims. Still, as Governor Bradford says, the Pilgrims were willing and desirous that any honest men might live with them that would carry them- selves peaceably and seek the common good, " or at least do them no hurt." A few " honest men," like Roger Conant, who could not become recon- ciled to this principle of action, withdrew from Plymouth and began a small plantation at Nan- tasket. The disaffected who remained found in Rev. John Lyford and John Oldham two men so infatuated as to attempt the creation of a party hostile to the government, civil and religious, of the Pilgrims. They hoped, with the aid and coun- tenance of some of the merchant adventurers in England, who sympathized with thein, to obtain full control of both, - possibly to establish the same state of things in the colony that the Pil- grims had found so intolerable at home. They were suspected, watched, and after full conviction of their evil purpose in presence of the whole peo- ple, were expelled, not from the country, as after- wards happened to two Episcopalians at Salem, but from the colony. Lyford and Oldham went first to Nantasket ; the former afterwards joined Conant at Cape Ann, where he remained but a short time. It needs an accomplished casuist to prove that these men should have been allowed to pursue their design without hinderanee, and we hesitate to speculate upon what would have been the result of its success. In all communities and in all governments the law of self-preservation has always been held paramount, and nowhere perhaps was the necessity for swift action more fully real- ized than at Plymouth. Lyford's treachery was peculiarly dark, peculiarly wicked. It was unpar- donable. He had been sent over to act as minis- ter. He had begged to be admitted into the con- gregation ; begged humbly, servilely. As soon as he had won their confidence he began to betray it ; to plot against his unsuspecting brethren of New Plymouth, and to write letters home to England filled with misrepresentation, abuse, and insinua- tion. In the light of his public declarations his secret statements are amazing for their hardihood, baseness, and hypocrisy. Few will be found to question the justice of his sentence, for a more ignoble personal history does not disgrace New England annals.
All Christendom seems to have been at this pe- riod in a state of religious fermentation. Catholic persceuted Protestant ; Protestant, Catholie ; while the Jews were persecuted by both. The followers
of Luther and of Calvin were still widely separated. The year before the Pilgrims sailed for New Eng- land the synod of Dort had condemned the Armin- ians to exile. The Church of England was, as has been related, torn by dissensions. It was the day of Charles I. of England, the High Commission, the Star Chamber, the dissolution of the ancient and legal government of the realm by the exer- eise of arbitrary power. France was being deluged in blood. The very year that saw the founding of the colony at Salem witnessed also the siege of Rochelle by Louis and Richelieu ; its heroic defence, its fall, and with it Protestant power in France. Charles I. was pretending to help the cause of Protestantism there by affording feeble aid to the Huguenots, while grinding the Puritans at home beneath a tyranny so monstrous as shortly to excite civil war within his own kingdom, -a conflict in which he lost his crown and head, a struggle out of which arose the Commonwealth. It is not by way of apology that we say the English Puritans were not before their age in their ideas of religious toleration, but because it is one of the truths of history. What in the spirit of our laws and the breadth of our religious and political education would be considered indefensible in the nineteenth, was regarded in a very different light in the seven- teenth century.
Considering that the plantation at Salem con- sisted of the same elements, was begun by the same authority, and controlled by similar condi- tions with that afterwards begun at Charlestown, its precedence in point of time, perhaps the in- fluence of its example, entitle it to be treated as part of our subject. The church at Salem was merely the forerunner of those of Charlestown and Boston.
Here the planters seem to have had no settled form of religious worship until the arrival of Rev. Mr. Higginson with the second embarkation, which sailed from Gravesend on the 25th of April, 1629. Whatever may be the opiniou in regard to the use of the Book of Common Prayer by the colonists while on shipboard, the journal kept by Mr. Hig- ginson sets the question at rest so far as the vessel in which he was a passenger is concerned. Fur- thermore, he is considered the leader of this divis- ion of colonists.
" We constantly served God," says the reverend anthor, " morning and evening by reading and ex- pounding a chapter, singing, and prayer. And the Sabbath was solemnly kept by adding to the
35
RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE EMIGRATION.
former preaching twice and catechising. And in | our great need we kept two. solemu fasts, and found a gracious effect. Let all that love and use fasting and praying take notice that it is as prevailable by sea as by land, wheresoever it is faithfully performed. Besides, the shipmaster and his company used every night to set their eight and twelve o'clock watches with singing a psalm and prayer that was not read out of a book. This I write, not for boasting and flattery, but for the benefit of those that have a mind to come to New England here- after, that if they look for and desire to have as prosperous a voyage as we had, they may use the same means to attain the same." Mr. Higginson arrived at Naumkeag on the 29th of June. We may presume the hint contained above was not lost on those who came over the next year.
Rev. William Hubbard, speaking of the differ- ences between the old Puritans, or Non-conformists, and Separatists, says that Mr. Higginson leaned towards the latter, and that Rev. Mr. Hildersham 1 advised him and other ministers looking this way to agree upon their form of church government before leaving England, " which counsel, if it had been attended to, might have prevented some incon- venience that hath since fallen out, or at least have saved some of the succeeding ministers from the imputation of departing from their first principles because they were not publicly declared at the beginning of things." Mr. Hubbard was only a single generation removed from the first settlers, having been born one year after the settlement at Plymouth. Being ordained minister of Ipswiel as early as 1658, he is doubtless speaking from experience.
Before the arrival of Higginson, Skelton, and their company, Governor Endicott had written to Governor Bradford of Plymouth soliciting him to send a physician to Naumkeag, where the eolo- nists were suffering from disease contracted during the first long, dreary winter. Bradford imme- diately complied by sending Dr. Samuel Fuller to Naumkeag. In a second letter, after aeknowledg- ing the kindness of Bradford and the services rendered by Fuller, Governor Endicott says : " I acknowledge myselfe much bound to you for your kind love and care in sending Mr. Fuller among us
and rejoyce much yt I am by him satisfied touch- ing your judgments of ye outward form of God's worshipe. It is, as farr as I can yet gather, no other than is warrented by ye evidence of truth, and ye same which I have proffessed and maintained ever sinee ye Lord in mercic revealed himselfe unto me : being farr from ye commone reporte that hath been spread of you touching that perticuler." Endicott here avows himself in complete accord with the Plymouth Separatists.
The 20th of July was appointed a day of sol- emn prayer and fasting by Governor Endicott. On this day the people made choice of Mr. Skelton as pastor and Mr. Higginson as teacher ; both being inducted by imposition of hands. The or- ganization of a church was not, however, completed until August 6, when a covenant drawn up by Mr. Higginson was signed by thirty members. Gov- ernor Bradford and other delegates from the church at Plymouth assisted in the ceremony of ordination by giving the right hand of fellowship to Skelton and Higginson. The covenant was wholly drawn from Scripture authority, and nowhere mentions the Church of England. No form or ceremony of that church is known or believed to have been used on this occasion. The active par- ticipation of the church at Plymouth, by its dele- gates, establishes the fact of harmony in opinion and in practice. It is therefore almost needless to refer again to Hubbard, who says, in language that will bear no other interpretation, that the Salem congregation received its platform of church order from Plymouth.
Such being the organization of the second eon- gregational church in New England, it is inter- esting to know what was the spirit of its action toward the Church of England, or such as remained faithful to that church. It has already been related how the two Brownes were expelled from the colony. These men, with others that still adhered to the Old Church, had set up a separate society, and used the service of that church. This action, coupled perhaps with some ill-advised denunciation of the Separatists, constituted their whole offenee. The affair took place almost immediately after the church government was instituted, for on the 19th of September we find the Brownes back in England laying their grievances before the Company. We see, therefore, that the congregation at Salem was far more rigid in separation, far more intolerant toward the Church of England than the Plymouth congregation : and this faet, sufficiently attested,
1 Arthur Hildersham was the minister of Ashby de-la-Zouch, near Leicester, England, where he preached forty-three years. In that time he was four times silenced and restored. He had been imprisoned, heavily fincd, excommunicated by the High Commission. He died in 1632.
36
ILISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
we think, by the evidence presented, leads us to inquire why a distinction should be made between the religious character of the two. If the church at Salem was not an Independent, Separatist church, it is difficult to assign it a name that will embody a meaning, or characterize its principles. The sep- aration was enforced by the civil arm : the holding an Episcopal service made a test of citizenship. Churchmen were to be tolerated so long as they desisted from the attempt to worship God after the forms of Episcopacy, and no longer. This policy became thenceforward the rule of action in the colony. Its logical and legitimate result was the entire suppression of every form of Episcopacy for more than half a century; and it was only then suffered to appear as a form of public worship on the peremptory mandate of King James. The preservation of a distinction of religious ideas or usages between the founders of Plymouth, Salem, and Charlestown seems to us to belong to the cate- gory of futilities. Whatever may have been the opinions these colonists held in England, history recognizes only their public acts. Here Plymouth, Salem, and Boston were equally determined in separation.
It is in evidence that the Company in England viewed the action at Salem with inquietude if not with astonishment. In October a letter was de- spatched under its authority which conveys a sharp reprimand to Governor Endicott; and another of similar tenor was sent to Higginson and Skelton. It is noteworthy that the names of John Winthrop and Isaac Johnson are among those attached to these documents, because in less than a year both signed the church covenant at Charlestown, and became pioneers in organizing another independent congregational church in New England.
The terms of the Company's letter to Endicott are especially strong in reproof, and on no other hypothesis, except that a private letter accompanied the official one to explain it away, can the genuine- ness of the astonishment and alarm therein ex- pressed be questioned. Not only is Endicott rebuked for the " rash innovations begun and practised in the civil and ecclesiastical government" of the colony, he is told that he seems unequal to a sound and prudent administration of its affairs ; and he is warned against bringing the Company under the censure of the home government. Finally, they say to their over-zealous agent, that if he knows " anything which hath been spoken or done either by the ministers (whom the Brownes do
seem tacitly to blame for some things uttered in their sermons or prayers) or any others, we require you, if any such thing be, that you form due pro- cess against the offenders and send it to ns by the first, that we may, as our duty binds us, use means to have them duly punished."I We do not hear more of either process or punishment; and although the Brownes were not the first persons in New England to suffer for opinion's sake, yet their case is not strictly identical with that of Lyford and Oldham, who were banished from Plymouth not more on account of religion than for their efforts to create faction in the colony, and not then until forbearance had lost its virtue.
While the ships that bore Winthrop's company were lying in Yarmouth harbor a letter was drawn up on board entitled, " The humble request of his Majesty's loyal subjects, the Governor and the Company late gone for New England ; to the rest of their brethren in and of the Church of Eng- land."
After entreating the prayers of the reverend fathers and brethren of the Church, the letter pro- ceeds in the following unequivocal language : 2 .-
" And howsoever your charitie may have met with some occasion of discouragement through the misreport of our intentions, or through the disaf- fection, or indiscretion, of some of us, or rather, amongst us; for wee are not of those who dreame of perfection in this world ; yet we desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals, and body of our company, as those who esteeme it our honour to call the Church of England, from whence wee rise, our deare mother and cannot part from our native countrie, where she specially resid- eth, withont much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes ; ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common sal- vation, wee have received in her bosome and suckt it from her breasts ; wee leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith wee were nourished there, but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoyce in her good, and unfainedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while we have breath syncerely desire and endeavour
1 The letter may be read in Young's Chronicles of Massachu- setts, pp. 290, 291. The reader is requested to keep it in view as determining the religions character of the emigration.
2 This letter may be found, in full, in Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I., Appendix ; also Hubbard's New England, p. 126, ed. of 1815.
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RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE EMIGRATION.
the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the inlargement of her bounds in the kingdome of CHRIST JESUS."
We see no reason to impeach the entire honesty of this declaration, or to question the rectitude of those making it. In their view, - and we refer the reader to the extract from Neal in support of our deduction, -they who signed and they who assented to it considered themselves still within the Church of England. The deep love they express shows us how strongly their hearts yearned toward her, cruel and uunatural as that mother had proved herself ; and that up to this hour the idea of com- plete separation, however silently it might be making its way, had not developed into an active principle among the colonists. We infer from the language that some peculiar occasion - perhaps the affair of the Brownes - called forth the dec- laration which by its every word so unmistakably evidences the repugnance with which those men and women regarded a severance from the mother church. They had come together, for the first time, from all parts of the kingdom, and with little opportunity for interchange of religious opinion. They considered themselves still upon the soil of England, and would no more acknowledge them- selves Separatists in Yarmouth harbor than when in the streets of London or Leicester. Indeed, it is unlikely that they either asked or expected more in New England than liberty to secure those re- forms for which they had hopelessly battled in Old England, within its lawful church.
The voyage undoubtedly contributed to form settled opinions, by its opportunity for free discus- sion, and through the influence of such as held more advanced ideas than the great body of colo- nists. For the first time, too, in their lives, they found themselves freed from ecclesiastical tyranny and persecution. Broader views began to prevail ; so that the idea which they had repudiated grew into vigorous being as they approached- the shores of New England.1 But whether such an hypothe- sis is or is not sanctioned by the intelligent judg- ment of the descendants of these men, it is con-
1 An illustration of this undeveloped purpose among the colo- nists occurs to us. In the beginning of our great Civil War the purpose of government and people was proclaimed to be the integrity of the Union ; and this became the watchword of the North. Had the abolition of slavery been that avowed purpose, we donbt if the people would have sustained it, as they did, later, when it hecame the vital principle of the contest. Yet who shall say that thinking men did not foresee this at the be- ginning ?
sidered wholly consistent with the very peculiar conditions under which the colonists embarked in Old and disembarked in New England, where they found independent churches already established at Plymouth and at Salem, and a public opinion already formed which disallowed the reading of the Book of Common Prayer within the jurisdiction of either.
If we are not to read the letter of Winthrop and his associates in a Machiavellian sense, the religious status of the colonists seems sufficiently and authori- tatively pronounced by its terms. That Winthrop's followers became Separatists soon after landing in New England is shown by their first church covenant, adopted at Charlestown on the 30th of July, 1630. It was the day appointed for a public fast in consequence of the great sickness and mortality that had broken out among them. We may be sure that the occasion was one of un- usual solemnity to the four men who subscribed to the following articles : -
" We whose names are here underwritten, being by his most wise and good Providence brought together into this part of America, in the Bay of Massachusetts, and desirous to unite ourselves in one Congregation or Church under the Lord Jesus Christ, our head, in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed and sanctified to himself, Do hereby solemnly and religiously (as in his most holy Presence) promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the Rule of the Gos- pel, and in all Conformity to his holy Ordinances, and in mutual Love and Respect, each to the other, so near as God shall give us grace." 1
The first signers of this covenant were, as we have said, only four in number, Governor Win- throp, Dudley, Johnson, and John Wilson, subse- quently their pastor ; so that it seems unlikely the movement for founding a church could have been generally agreed upon. Two days afterward five more joined, and then others. Mr. Wilson was chosen pastor, and the first church of these colonists began its mission of gathering souls into the fold of the Lord Jesus Christ without the consecration of bishops, and without an allusion in their cove- nant to the Church of England, its authority, its ordinances, or its discipline. Whatever may have been the convictions, the preferences of the colo- nists at the moment of embarkation, connection with the mother church was now completely re- nounced, and an independent congregational church
1 Foxcroft's Century Sermon, preached August 23, 1730.
38
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
established under the authority and example of the | late associates " affirmed them to be Brownists in leaders in the enterprise of colonization.
It is true that the same anxiety to repel the charge of separation, so often instanced, charac- terizes the letter written by the deputy-governor, Dudley, to the Countess of Lincoln, dated the 28th of March, 1631. In this letter, which gives by far the most interesting and the most connected ac- count of the new plantation, Dudley refers to the " false and seandalons reports " of those who went back in the same ships that brought them over the last year, and who ont of their antipathy for their
religion and ill-affected " to the state. The deputy entreats his friends not to believe these reports. He asserts that no alteration in the civil or religions views of his confederates has taken place since their coming over; and instances that it was the daily custom to pray for the king and royal family. But, notwithstanding this averment, the policy of Endicott became that of his successor, and the " rash innovations " inaugurated in 1629, at Salem, the settled principle of civil and religious government within the limits of the Massachusetts charter.
IV.
THE SETTLEMENT AT CHARLESTOWN.
THE settlement under the personal direction of Winthrop and his associates began on the penin- sula between the Charles and Mystic Rivers, called by the Indians Mishawum and by the English Charlestown. It was the first spot, within the sub- sequent limits of Middlesex County, to receive an English name, and the cradle of the infant com- monwealth. In 1614 Captain John Smith saw the entrance to Boston Bay. Mistaking it for the es- tuary of a noble stream, he called it Charles River, in honor of the prince who afterward ascended the throne as Charles I. The name of Charlton was certainly applied to some locality in Massachusetts Bay as early as 1620. Governor Bradford tran- scribes, in his History of Plymouth Plantation, a portion of a letter written by Captain Dermer, in that year, in which Charlton is mentioned as a place adapted for English settlement because the savages there were less to be feared than those inhabiting the country farther south. Captain Dermer had seen Smith's map, but it is only on the later edi- tions, subsequent to 1614, that Charlton ·is desig- nated, on the south side of the river Charles. Still, as Smith assigned English names to localities along the coast according to his faney, it is quite possible the name of this future settlement, like that of Plymouth, may have originated with him, and if so he has the greater honor. His map and relation of New England had been seen and read previous to the emigration of cither the Pilgrims
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