USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 30
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 30
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 30
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The Massachusetts Company had been formed by Rev. John White, at Dorchester, one hundred and fifty miles southwest of London, Eng- land. He was a conforming Puritan and the rector of an English church, and his purpose was really to do the same thing, on a large scale and with a generous capital, which the handful of Leyden adven- turers had tried to do on a small scale, and under the frown of the gov- ernment. A body of merchants of character and position in Dorchester Plym-59
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united themselves with a larger body of such men in London, to form the Massachusetts Company.
It was formed precisely as in those days trading companies were often formed, for the development of the resources of Massachusetts Bay, and a subscription to its stock did not in the least imply that the sub- scribers intended to go to Massachusetts Bay themselves. They sim- ply meant to send out settlers there, and to furnish the capital on which adventures of hunting, fishing, mining, and, if necessary, agriculture, could be carried on. These men undoubtedly expected to receive a fair interest on the capital which they invested. At the same time they meant to make an establishment in Massachusetts Bay, where men could worship God as they chose, without being under the direction of Archbishop Laud, or of his court of the Star Chamber.
"In all the discussion with regard to their motives which comes up from time to time, no one has ever attempted to show that a single per- son invested a penny in the stock of the new company, who was not committed, more or less directly, to the Puritan or popular view, in the contest with the established church or with the Crown."
Many of the colonists at Salem were seized with the scurvy and other distempers the first winter and Endicott wrote to Plymouth for help. Dr. Samuel Fuller was sent and treated them as a conscientious physician. He had been through the first winter with the Pilgrims eight years be- fore when such a large number of the one hundred died. This was the beginning of a better understanding of Puritans and Separatists in Mas- sachusetts. The church at Salem was organized. The Pilgrim church at Plymouth was invited to send delegates and did so. Dr. Leonard Bacon said: "That elder church, cradled at Scrooby, nurtured and schooled at Leyden, and now victorious over the suffering and tempta- tions of the wilderness, greeted its younger sister in apostolic fashion."
The Massachusetts Company and its charter was transferred from London to Massachusetts Bay, July 28, 1629, and as Dr. Avery has said : "A commercial corporation became the germ of an independent com- monwealth." In October John Winthrop of Groton in Suffolk was chosen governor. A fleet of thirteen vessels was chartered and by the end of the year seventeen, including the "Mayflower," had been em- ployed to transport about a thousand persons to New England, and horses, cattle and other things were provided to help sustain life and carry on enterprises. There was no lack of money.
The charter which John Winthrop brought became the constitution of the state which they founded and under which it was governed for sixty years. The colony continued to increase by emigrations from England until 1640. After that, until the Revolutionary War, more people returned to England than came from England.
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The colony, as it was called until 1690, was officially called the prov- ince after that date.
The chief magistrates of Massachusetts during its life as a province and appendage of the Crown of England and its existence as a Common- wealth are of interest, historically and chronologically. The following list is therefore given as a guide to the better understanding of the story :
COLONIAL GOVERNORS (Plymouth Colony)
1620.
John Carver
1637
William Bradford
1621-1632 William Bradford
1638 Thomas Prince
1633. Edward Winslow
1639-1643 William Bradford
1634. Thomas Prince
1644. Edward Winslow
1635. William Bradford
1645-1656 William Bradford
1636. Edward Winslow
1657-1667 Thomas Prince
(Massachusetts Bay; under the first charter.)
1630-1633 John Winthrop
1665-1672 Richard Bellingham
1634. Thomas Dudley
1673-1678 John Leverett
1635. John Haynes
1679-1686 Simon Bradstreet*
1636. Henry Vane
1692-1695 William Phipps
1637-1639 John Winthrop
1697-1701 Earl of Bellomont
1640. Thomas Dudley
1702-1715 Joseph Dudley
1642-1643 John Winthrop
1716-1727 Samuel Shute
1644. John Endicott
1728-1729 William Burnet
'1645. Thomas Dudley
1730-1741 Jonathan Belcher
1646-1648 John Winthrop
1741-1757 William Shirley
1649. John Endicott
1757-1760 Thomas Pownall
1650. Thomas Dudley
1760-1769 Francis Bernard
1651-1653 John Endicott
1769-1774 Thomas Hutchinson
1654. Richard Bellingham
1774-1775 Thomas Gage
1655-1664 John Endicott
*In this year Andros arrived. After Andros was imprisoned, Simon Brad- street acted as "President" till a convention was called. This convention chose him to that office which he held until the arrival of the Second Charter. By this "Massachusetts Bay" and "Plymouth" were united.
CHAPTER XLIX
"ONLY CITIZENS BECAUSE SAINTS"
Robert Browne Non-conformed, Started Separatist Church, Then Re- conformed, But He Had Started Something-Persecution by Queen Elizabeth and James I-First New England Town Meeting-Dis- sent From Calvinistic Creed-Branches of Various Denominations- First Student of Founder of Christian Science A Stoughton Man- Use of Musical Instruments in Churches Met with Vigorous Opposi- tion-Old Bay Psalm Book Was Popular and Officer Was Chosen To "Tune the Psalm"-Rev. John Allin of Dedham Typical Early Pastor in the Colony-Liberalizing Effect of Eleventh Amendment to Con- stitution-First Roman Catholic Settled Missionary Was Converted Congregational Minister - John Adams Headed Subscription For Erecting First Catholic Church-Schoolhouse As Much A New England Institution as the Meeting-house-Boston Latin School and Harvard College.
When, in the course of events, the Plymouth and Bay colonies were united, one code of laws answered for both and, unless one goes back of the union of the colonies, he does not catch even a glimpse of the dif- ference between Pilgrims and Puritans, what one did and the other did not. What both or either did was often a legacy of early environment or custom or both, as there was nothing new under the New England sun which was not bred in the bone in the Old Country. Some Puritan- ical or Separatist convictions had full expression in the freedom on this side of the ocean which could not even be attempted elsewhere, and both followed customs and ideas which were handed down from the fathers.
Sunday and church laws at which we are inclined to smile were equal- ly severe in Virginia. They were of English origin, not Puritanical or American. All the English colonies had similar inheritances.
The Puritans attempted to merge church and state. All of age might vote in the Pilgrim colony, whether church members or not. To be ac- cused of witchcraft by a Puritan in the Puritan colony was equivalent to conviction and the result was hanging, but the Pilgrims, on two oc- casions when such accusations were made in the Plymouth Colony, ar- rested the accusers and tried them for false witnessing against their neighbors. Fanatical folly among the Puritans never even approached common practices in Europe in the same period. There was a rule that ministers must not shave from Saturday to Monday in colonial days.
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It was only a few years ago when storekeepers were arrested and fined for selling bread on Sunday, although it was lawful to sell tobacco. It was tobacco which was taboo in colonial days, until the ministers chose to smoke.
Early ministers preached that hell was paved with the skulls of un- baptized infants, but this doctrine came down from the early church and was not made in Boston, although there is a tomb in Copp's Hill Bury- ing Ground, set aside for the burial of unregenerate, unbaptized infants in unhallowed ground. It has not been much in demand for a long time. The Pilgrim housewife never brewed beer on Saturday that it might not "work" on the Sabbath, but the present-day makers of home brew are not as careful of their employment on Saturday half-holidays, it is feared.
That people of the present day may arrive at some understanding of the whys and wherefors and peculiarities of the Pilgrims and Puritans in their church customs and procedures, it is necessary to take a short backward look to early times.
The first organized Separatist church was formed at Norwich about 1580 by Robert Browne, a graduate of Cambridge. His associates were called "Brownists." When his Non-conformist principles were put to the test he conformed and was restored to his living. Two of his as- sociates, John Copping and Elias Thacker, died, in 1580, as felons for the crime now called Congregationalism. A few years later Greenwood and Barrow were hanged. John Penry, "a preacher of the Gospel to the Welsh," referred to them as "bold martyrs" and joined in martyrdom, with his archbishop's name heading his death warrant, "by authority of the petticoated pope who called herself 'Supreme Governor of the Church of England'." During her reign it is said that 60,000 Separatists were incarcerated and, in some instances, for many years.
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, the Separatists hoped that her successor, James I, might afford them some relief and they presented to him a Puritan petition called the "Millenary," bcause it was said to be signed by a thousand hands. After a conference at Hampton Court the new king who, as James VI of Scotland, had been sovereign over a Presbyterian country, declared: "I will make them conform or I will harry them out of the land, or else worse."
Avery, in his "History of the United States," says: "The blindest Pur- itan could see that he must choose between persecution and exile. In 1604, three hundred Puritan clergymen were 'silenced.' Thus were the soon-to-be pioneers of New England prepared for their work. Religion was their master motive; suffering their school. Conformists won the case in England ; non-conformists appealed the case from the Old World to the New."
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Upon arrival of the Puritans at Salem, the governor set apart a sol- emn day of humiliation for the choice of a pastor and a teacher. The candidates admitted that they "expected to derive their right as official ministers of Christ in the church, not from a prelatical or hierarchical vocation, but only from an inward call from God's spirit together with an outward call from the church itself."
The people then, by ballot, elected Samuel Skelton as their pastor and Francis Higginson as their teacher. It has been claimed that this was the first use, in America, of the ballot and was the first New England town meeting. For several years church and town officers were elected at the same meeting, as town and church were practically identical.
The first distinct town government organized was that at Dor- chester, where it was ordered that "there shall be every Monday before the Court, by 8 o'clock A. M., and presently by the beating of the drum, a general meeting of the inhabitants of the plantation at the meeting- house there to settle and set down such orders as may tend to the gen- eral good."
Other plantations took similar action and those which made provi- sion for an orthodox minister as well were recognized by the General Court as towns.
Ministerial Material Unsatisfactory-It has been said that the Pil- grims were Separatists who left the Church of England and sought ref- uge in a new country where they could worship according to the dic- tates of their conscience; and that the Puritans were Separatists who didn't leave the church bodily but remained and did their fighting from the inside. There were differences and distinctions between the Puritans and Pilgrims in their ecclesiasticism as well as in other matters. Both, however, when they arrived on these shores, set up a meeting-house. Al- most the entire population gathered at the meeting-house for their relig- ious and civic considerations. The church, its order, care and teachings was ever foremost in their minds. At Plymouth, for example, for more than one hundred years the meeting-house was the place for the tran- saction of all public business. In 1675 the court at Plymouth enacted an ordinance that every township within the colony should have a house of worship and a church duly organized, with proper provision for the support of an ordained minister.
So far as the Plymouth church was concerned, it had poor success in securing a satisfactory successor to Rev. John Robinson who had re- mained behind in Leyden. John Lyford had been a total loss and was shipped back to England in disgrace. Allerton brought a young Mr. Rogers from England in 1628 but the record is that he was "crazed in
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his brain, so they were fain to be at further charge to send him back again the next year." Ralph Smith was not of sufficient calibre to be satisfactory, and John Norton was brought by Winslow from England in 1635 as an assistant but he went to Massachusetts Bay after serving one winter. After six or seven years Smith withdrew, "partly by his own willingness and partly by the desire and persuasion of others."
Mr. Rayner was the next incumbent and, in 1638, Charles Chauncey came to assist him. All went well for a time until he announced his belief in the doctrine of baptism by immersion. After a three years' stay, he withdrew from Plymouth church, and so the matter of adjust- ment in the ministry was a matter of uneasiness for a while. There was a spirit of extreme liberality on the part of the Pilgrims in their colony, considering those times, which was not matched by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. For instance, the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritans is not pleasing history. The Quakers were the martyred pioneers of American religious liberty. "The theocracy of the Puritans -where is it? The democracy of the Quakers-where is it not?"
For three hundred years before the era of Philip II of Spain it had been the uncontested rule in church and state that the obstinate dissi- dent, or heretic, was to be put to death by fire. Henry C. Lea declares that the Massachusetts law of 1658, under which Quakers were put to death on Boston Common, "was the inevitable result of the deplorable doctrine of exclusive salvation, which rendered the extinction of heresy a duty to God and Man."
It is well to remember that the liberty men had known only as a dis- tant ideal reached the stage of practical experiment in these colonies. America furnished the opportunity. One of the early leaders declared that New England was "a plantation of religion, not of trade." The first comers to the Atlantic seaboard of Massachusetts "felt themselves to be in personal covenant with God, like Israel of old, who framed their state as a temple and invited the Eternal to rule over them, whose state assembly was a church council, whose voters were church members, only voters because members, only citizens because saints."
"Morning Gun of Revolution"-Into this camp of rigid disciplinarians were believers of a gentle order, like Ann Hutchinson, Roger Williams and later Whitefield, Theodore Parker, Mary Baker Eddy, and those whose names are legion, each standing for some new "great awakening" of the spiritual life.
In 1750, on the Sunday following the anniversary of Charles the mar- tyr, something occurred in Boston which has been called with consid- erable fitness the "morning gun of the Revolution." Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, in the West Church, took this occasion, observed in England
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"ONLY CITIZENS BECAUSE SAINTS"
as a national fast, when the clergy were required to read the service, or preach a sermon against disobedience to authority, to preach three dis- courses against the pretension of unlimited submission and non-resist- ance to authority. He set forth with eloquence the principles of free civil government, "with some reflections on the resistance made to King Charles I." Parts of these discourses were printed in England and America and both countries were deeply stirred. Intolerance of opinion had in a measure passed away and more generous views of faith and life had been introduced in contrast to the severity of pulpit manners prevalent during the first century.
Dr. Mayhew maintained that the Massachusetts charter gave abso- lute authority to the colonial government in matters of religion, and that there was no power in Church, Crown or Parliament to control or in- terfere with it. Before he died in 1766, Dr. Mayhew was the leading preacher in America in learning, courage and eloquence. "His genius and accomplishments were worthy of any age. The cause of liberty in the eighteenth century had no worthier advocate."
Until the Revolution the strength of the population in Boston and vicinity was Puritan, after the order of the first founders. The church development had been largely Congregational. There was a strong public sentiment against any religious beliefs or organizations differing from those of "the standing order." Better times came slowly. It was not until 1832 that the last vestige of oppressive legislation was removed from the statute books of Massachusetts. In 1634 Mr. Painter had been publicly whipped at Hingham for refusing to allow his child to be bap- tized. Some fifty years later, under date of March 8, 1680, a Baptist church was nailed up by order of the governor and council of the Col- ony of Massachusetts Bay.
The Methodist Episcopal church was established on the soil of the Puritans by Jesse Lee, a scion of an old Virgina family who founded societies of that church from Florida to New Brunswick. Rev. Joseph S. Clark, D. D., in his "Historical Sketch of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts," said: "In his doctrinal teaching Jesse Lee suited such as were of Arminian tendencies; in his fervent style of address he was acceptable to many warm-hearted Calvinists tired of dull preaching."
The late Bishop Phillips Brooks wrote of the Episcopal church in this vicinity : "To the old Puritan dislike of Episcopacy had been added the distrust of the English church as the church of the oppressors of the colonies. Up to the beginning of the Revolution the Episcopal church in Boston had been counted an intruder. It had never been the church of the people, but had largely lived upon the patronage and favor of the English governors."
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PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
When Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, already referred to, was settled as pas- tor of the West Church in Boston in 1747 it was an early intimation of dissent from the normal Calvinistic creed of the Congregational churches. He was regarded as heretical at the time and was never admitted to the Boston Association of Ministers. He may be regarded as the forerunner of Unitarianism in this vicinity although the name Unitarian did not come into general use till early in the nineteenth century. In 1789 near- ly all the Congregational pulpits in and around Boston were filled by Unitarians.
Organized Universalism began in this vicinity in 1785. The first Uni- versalist society in Roxbury was organized March 2, 1820.
The Boston Society of the New Jerusalem was established in 1818 and was the first organization formed in New England of believers in the doctrines taught by Emanuel Swedenborg.
All these liberal branches of Protestantism spread into the various towns in this part of Massachusetts rapidly and some of the ministers and congregations in the towns were of equal prominence and ability to those in the Athens of America. The Unitarian churches were, per- haps, more prominent in their leadership in thought from half a century to a century ago than now, in one sense of the word. On the other hand the Congregational, Methodist, Baptist and some other denominations have become so much more liberal in their teachings, convictions and requirements for membership that they may be said to stand manifestly more liberal at the present day than were the Unitarian and Universal- ist churches in the days of their prominence, if not popularity.
Transcendentalism, which Margaret Fuller described as an exalting conception of the Godlike nature of the human spirit, had such promi- nent teachers as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker. They made Unitarianism and Universalism possible as an outgrowth of Calvinism. Lyman Beecher went to Boston to "con- front and stay the movement" and shortly afterward he wrote "all the literary men of Boston, the professors of Harvard College, the judges on the bench are Unitarian." The movement spread from scholars and in- tellectuals to the common people. It was a revolt against dogmatic theology and a liberalizing work which had come to stay.
First Student of Christian Science-The greatest leavening influence of the nineteenth century, dominated by spiritual idealism, was partly brought forth in Norfolk County. Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, discoverer and founder of Christian Science, was at one time a resident of Stough- ton, boarding at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hiram S. Crafts. Mr. Crafts was Mrs. Eddy's first pupil. While a resident of Stoughton Mrs. Eddy
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did much of her early writing concerning the science which she named Christian Science and concerning which she wrote the textbook "Sci- ence and Health With Key to the Scriptures." "Christian Science is the revelation of the Science of the Christ mission. It shows that the heal- ing of the sick is a natural phenomenon of 'Scientific Christianity,' or the understanding of Jesus' teachings."
Inharmony Concerning Music In Churches-It is only within the present generation that a majority of the religious denominations have removed dancing and card playing from the list of special edged-tools of the devil. A generation before music was under suspicion and pos- itively ruled out of the churches. Some town's overcame this prejudice earlier than others. Foxborough voted, under date of April 6, 1801, "To admit the use of instruments of music in public worship." In fact the town of Foxborough took advanced local legislation along several lines. It is believed to have been the first town in the county and perhaps in the state to have an' eight-hour law. In 1798 the town voted "to allow sixty-six cents for eight hours' work, and $1.33 for eight hours' work of a man and a team sufficient to carry a ton weight." Under date of May 3, 1830, that town voted "That, in our opinion, the wearing of mourning ought to be discontinued." The latter vote was at least a hundred years in advance of the times, as the practice has not wholly been abandoned yet.
Undoubtedly the vote to use instruments of music in public worship in Foxborough was not passed unanimously, as it is set down in the records that when the first bass-viol was brought into the choir, Francis Daniels, an old Frenchman, was horrified This instrument was made by Marcus Everett who fashioned the woodwork with great skill, and George Holbrook, a bell-maker and a famous music teacher, who finished the instrument and saw that it had the correct tone. That it was a first- class instrument may be inferred from the fact that the church paid four dollars for it.
Those learned in Scripture argued with Daniels and others who took sides with him in the matter, but the opposition replied that there might be Biblical authority for the harp but the bass-viol was something en- tirely different and its voice should not resound through the meeting- house. As a matter of fact the meeting-houses were not considered es- pecially sacred, as they were secular meeting-houses as well as church edifices and some of the scenes and language in them on secular days was far more objectionable than the sounds from a bass-viol. The com- promise in the case under discussion was that Francis Daniels and others who were conscientious objectors should be allowed to leave the meeting-house while the music was going on and return when it ceased.
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PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
To show the aversion to musical instruments, wherever heard, one needs but recall the case of Swift Payson, the first town clerk of Fox- borough. He was the son of Rev. Phillips Payson, pastor of the church at Walpole. With his first savings Swift Payson purchased a violin, kept it carefully hidden, but practiced upon it whenever the opportu- nity came. One day the vibrations reached the ears of his clerical father who was horrified. He demanded of his son: "Where did you get that fiddle?"
"I bought it, sir," was the innocent reply.
"Then sell it at the first opportunity ; let me never hear it again."
When the Ministerial Association met at his father's parlor shortly after, Swift Payson walked demurely into the presence of the black clad members, with his violin under his arm.
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